[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 112-17]
GLOBAL CHALLENGES TO READINESS
AND THE FISCAL YEAR 2012
BUDGET REQUEST
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 10, 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
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2011
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, March 10, 2011, Global Challenges to Readiness and the
Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Request................................ 1
Appendix:
Thursday, March 10, 2011......................................... 43
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011
GLOBAL CHALLENGES TO READINESS AND THE FISCAL YEAR 2012 BUDGET REQUEST
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Bordallo, Hon. Madeleine Z., a Representative from Guam, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Readiness.............................. 1
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Readiness...................................... 1
WITNESSES
Bolger, LTG Daniel P., USA, Deputy Chief of Staff (G3/5/7), U.S.
Army........................................................... 5
Carlisle, Lt. Gen. Herbert J., USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for
Operations, Plans and Requirements (A3/5), U.S. Air Force...... 7
Clingan, VADM Bruce W., USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations,
Plans and Strategy (N3/N5), U.S. Navy.......................... 9
Tryon, Lt. Gen. Richard T., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Plans,
Policies, and Operations, U.S. Marine Corps.................... 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Bolger, LTG Daniel P......................................... 51
Carlisle, Lt. Gen. Herbert J................................. 61
Clingan, VADM Bruce W........................................ 74
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy........................................ 47
Tryon, Lt. Gen. Richard T.................................... 78
Documents Submitted for the Record:
GEN Martin E. Dempsey's Letter to the Hon. Adam Smith
Regarding the U.S. Army's Fiscal Year 2012 Unfunded
Requirements............................................... 89
Lt. Gen. Richard T. Tryon's Responses to Questions Asked by
the Hon. J. Randy Forbes During the Hearing................ 87
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Forbes................................................... 93
Mrs. Hartzler................................................ 93
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Ms. Bordallo................................................. 111
Mr. Forbes................................................... 97
Mr. Runyan................................................... 114
GLOBAL CHALLENGES TO READINESS AND THE FISCAL YEAR 2012 BUDGET REQUEST
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Readiness,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 10, 2011.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:31 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. Now called to order. We want to welcome all of
our witnesses and tell you how excited we are to hear your
testimony today. I want to thank you for your service to our
country and particularly for taking time to share your
experiences and insight with us as we look at the readiness
needs for our men and women in uniform.
We did something a little bit out of order today. This is
one of the most bipartisan subcommittees, I think, that we have
in Congress. And I am proud to serve with my ranking member
from Guam, Madeleine Bordallo and she is not only our partner
in this, but she is a great resource for us in the entire
Pacific area having traveled there so much, lived there,
studied there.
And we all believe that the Pacific is a huge area of
concern for us and readiness concern, so I am going to turn now
to Madeleine and ask her to offer her opening remarks and any
comments that she might have.
Ms. Bordallo.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the
Appendix on page 47.]
STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
for your kind remarks. And I do look forward to seeing how this
new dialogue format works out during this morning's hearings.
To our witnesses, I look forward to your testimony.
General Carlisle, it is good to see you again. We miss you
out at the 13th Air Force in Hawaii, but we are glad to have
your background and expertise in the Pentagon.
To the other witnesses, it was nice to meet you all this
past week and discuss issues of mutual concern.
Today's hearing is the second part in a series that is
investigating the readiness of our military to respond, in the
context of the fiscal year 2012 budget submission, to the full
spectrum of threats that are known and threats that are
unknown.
During the last hearing with the panel of outside
witnesses, I stressed that assuming risk is expected in any
budget, especially in our operation and maintenance budgets.
And I think the key is to understand better where we assume
risk and why this committee should accept that risk.
The QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] Global Posture Review
and other strategic documents outline a broad and ambitious
goal of addressing the full spectrum of threats. And I hope
that our witnesses today can contextualize their remarks with
these strategic documents as guides. In other words, explain
the risk this budget request presents in the context of our
Nation's strategic global defense posture.
And further, I remain concerned that, given the size and
the scope of the operation and maintenance budget, these
accounts are prime targets for budget cuts. Given the current
era of fiscal austerity, I feel that these accounts will become
even easier targets for cuts as the Department pursues a broad
range of cost-cutting initiatives.
It may be easy to cut O&M [Operations and Maintenance]
funding now to make up shortfalls elsewhere, but the second-
and the third-order effects of these cuts can end up costing
the Department and our taxpayers more in the long run.
I also hope that our witnesses will address what impact a
potential year-long continuing resolution will have not just on
fiscal year 2011 but on the budget for 2012. I feel that if we
do not pass a defense appropriations bill with the requested
fiscal year 2011 funding levels, that we will end up with even
further significant shortfalls in 2012 that will negatively
affect readiness without truly addressing our country's core
fiscal issues.
In particular, I am concerned about the operational impact
of the canceled Navy ship maintenance availabilities. The key
to a 313-ship Navy is ensuring that our ships are continually
and well maintained to achieve their expected and even extended
service life. How will the Navy address this matter?
Further and in a broader context, I am deeply concerned
about training capabilities and overall readiness in the
Pacific AOR [Area of Responsibility]. I remain concerned that
even while our Services move to expanded ISR [Intelligence,
Surveillance, and Reconnaissance] platforms, we still--we
still--do not have sufficient coverage in the Pacific.
While I greatly appreciate the Administration's tremendous
focus on the Asia-Pacific region, I believe that more can be
done to better posture us against current and emerging threats
in this region. We focus on China's growing military power and
North Korea's nuclear capability, but we cannot lose sight of
asymmetric threats in Indonesia, southern Philippines and
southern Thailand.
So I hope our witnesses can also discuss the importance of
the military buildup on Guam and the strategic importance of
this realignment of military forces to meet both traditional
and asymmetric threats in the Asia-Pacific region.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you, and I yield back my time.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo.
And once again, I want to welcome all our members today to
what I think is going to prove to be one of the most important
hearings of the year. We have the opportunity to discuss not
only the state of military readiness today, but to also look to
the future readiness needs of the force.
Joining us today are four exceptional witnesses
representing each of our military services. They are Lieutenant
General Daniel P. Bolger, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations,
U.S. Army; Lieutenant General ``Hawk'' Carlisle, Deputy Chief
of Staff for Operations, Plans and Requirements, U.S. Air
Force; Vice Admiral Bruce W. Clingan, Deputy Chief of Naval
Operations for Operations, Plans and Strategy for the United
States Navy; and Lieutenant General Richard T. Tryon, Deputy
Commandant for Plans, Policies, and Operations, U.S. Marine
Corps.
These four distinguished gentlemen are often referred to as
the Ops [operations] deputies or Ops Deps inside the Pentagon.
They are charged with not only formulating policy to advance
their Services' core missions, but they are also responsible
for determining the operational requirements, capabilities and
training necessary to support the national security objectives
and military strategy.
Gentlemen, we are truly honored to have you join us today,
and we are extremely grateful for all you do to keep this
Nation safe. Thank you for your service.
This hearing is the second in a series of hearings we are
holding to ask the question, ``Are we ready?'' Last week's
testimony by a panel of independent witnesses was extremely
thought-provoking, and I believe it serves as a great framework
for our discussion today.
The witnesses all emphasized that our force levels are
inappropriately sized and apportioned to respond to challenges
of current global environment. Ms. Eaglen also illuminated the
fact that our Nation's armed forces are approaching a geriatric
state.
To give our members a few specific examples of what that
really means, our surface fleet has an average age of 19 years.
The average age of our strategic bombers is 34 years. The
average age of the C-130H fleet, which I know many members are
familiar with because we often fly on them when we go on CODELs
[Congressional Delegations], is 23 years. Our Air Force tanker
fleet is over 46 years, and the Marine Corps amphibious assault
vehicle fleet has an average age of 38 years.
Not only have we allowed our ships and aircraft to reach
this geriatric state, but we have also downsized our inventory.
In 1990, we had the equivalent of 76 Army brigades. Today, that
number is 45. In 1990, we had 546 Navy ships. Today we have
286. In 1990, we had 82 Air Force fighter squadrons. Today we
have the equivalent of 39. In 1990, we had 360 strategic
bombers. Today we have 162, and the Air Force wants to retire
six of these before the next one is even funded.
We find ourselves postured in this manner at a time when
China has rapidly grown and modernized its military. I ask
unanimous consent that this chart depicting the growth in
China's surface fleet, submarine force, air force and air
defense between 2000 and 2009 be entered into the record. The
chart is up on the screen, and each of our members will be
given a copy of it.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 50.]
Mr. Forbes. We cannot afford to allow a budget target to be
the sole governing basis in our decisions today, or we will
bear an enormous cost in the future. I like to refer to this as
the instant pudding mindset. We have grown accustomed to quick
solutions and fast results. However, the outcomes, in many
cases, have been devastating.
There will be no instant pudding solutions to these
challenges we face. We must break our dependence on deficit
spending, right our entitlement programs, unleash our labor
force, and reorder our Federal Government, if we are going to
successfully respond to China's economic momentum and military
buildup.
Once again, I am very thankful to our distinguished
witnesses, and I look forward to our discussion.
And as a logistical matter, as the ranking member and I
discussed prior to the hearing, I would like to dispense with
the 5-minute rule for this hearing and depart from regular
order so that members may ask questions during the course of
the discussion.
I think this will provide a roundtable-type forum that will
enhance the dialogue on these very important issues. We would
like to proceed with standard order for members to address the
witnesses. However, if any member has a question pertinent to
the matter being discussed at that time, please seek
acknowledgment and wait to be recognized by the chair.
We plan to keep questioning to the standard 5 minutes.
However, I don't want to curtail productive dialogue. I believe
we can do this and still ensure each member has the opportunity
to get his or her questions answered. If we get bogged down,
the chair will ask members to hold further discussion until the
first round of questioning is complete.
I ask unanimous consent that for the purposes of this
hearing we dispense with the 5-minute rule and proceed as
described. Since there is no objection, we will do that.
Let me do now two things logistically to our members. One
of the things we are trying to do is just get answers. As I
mentioned at the outset, we are blessed. This is one of the
most bipartisan committees probably in Congress. And we had
some suggestions at the last hearing that rather than wait
until your 5-minute time comes along, if a member has a
question or follow-up, we want you to ask that question when it
comes along.
So what we are going to do is go in the order that the
members are in terms of seniority. But if you have a question
at any time based on that question or anything else, please
just let me know. We are going try to be as flexible as we can
in trying to get those answers. And if it runs too long, I will
just try and stop that, and we will go into a second round.
Gentlemen, as I mentioned at the beginning, we thank you so
much for your service. And I want to just kind of frame the
opening of this something different than what we normally do.
We have your written testimony, and I have read it. Many of our
members have read it; if not, they will read it.
This morning what I am going to ask you to do is something
different. Normally, we will have witnesses that come in, they
give us written testimony, and then they give us 5 minutes of
prepared remarks. The hope sometimes for our witnesses, I
think, is to get out without having had to say anything. And we
are caught in this dilemma.
Some of us are frustrated because Congress has been
spending way too much money for years in the past, and we know
that exists. There are some frustrations with some of our
members because we don't feel--with some of the folks in the
Pentagon, I am not talking about you but just some of them--we
don't always get the answers we need on the analysis that we
need.
Sometimes people walk over here, and they tell us, ``the
DOD [Department of Defense] has decided to make cuts, but you
don't need to have any analysis on that at all. You just need
to trust us.'' But then when we make cuts, they come over and
say, ``That is going to be the sky falling, and you just need
to trust us.''
Oftentimes, you have all heard this. In the field, you have
heard the men and women that serve under you say, ``Those guys
in Washington just don't get it.'' This is your one opportunity
to help us get it. And so for each of you, I would like for you
to take about 5 minutes each before we go in to the question
and tell us your perception of what those men and women under
your commands need to be ready.
Are these budgets going to do it? What are your concerns
about our readiness? This is your opportunity to make sure when
a fight comes, we have done everything in our power to make
sure we have prepared them. And we thank you for doing that.
And in alphabetical order, we are going to start, General
Bolger, with you if you would. And thank you again for being
here.
STATEMENT OF LTG DANIEL P. BOLGER, USA, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF
(G3/5/7), U.S. ARMY
General Bolger. Thank you very much, Chairman Forbes and
Ranking Member Bordallo and all the distinguished members of
the House Armed Services Committee Readiness Subcommittee.
On behalf of Secretary McHugh, and General Casey, and more
than 1 million soldiers who are serving today in the active
Army, National Guard, and Army Reserve, thanks for giving me
this opportunity to talk about just what you just ask about,
and that is the state of our Army readiness.
And thanks also for all of the members and your continued
support and commitment to our soldiers and our operations
worldwide.
You know, we live in a dangerous world, and I know that is
not news to anybody here, but it bears repeating under these
circumstances. We are a people that has global, political,
economic, and security interests, and we do face threats that
include terrorists, aggressive states and movements, and even
nuclear-armed countries that have powerful conventional armed
forces.
And one thing we have learned--I think it has been
underscored for us in the last few weeks--we can rarely predict
the next crisis. When things go wrong, we do have to be ready
to fight. We do like to get ahead of the threats when we can,
to deter and shape them in a constructive way.
We are always ready to engage positively to help our
friends and partners. You know, right now, today soldiers are
working in more than a 100 countries to train local forces and
keep the peace and assist in humanitarian challenges. And
soldiers bring a big range of skills. Some of those skills are
unique even among the many skills provided by U.S. Government
agencies.
And because soldiers can secure themselves when they go in
to a foreign country, we can often go in to the toughest areas
and still make a difference. Whether in combat campaigns, or in
these shaping operations, successful efforts take time. And
America's enemies always question our staying power. So to
achieve lasting results our Army must sustain its operations
over the long haul.
We have built on the experience of the Navy, the Marine
Corps, and the Air Force, as well as our allies and have
reshaped our force on a cycle of readiness for Army forces that
runs year after year. We go out and we come back as trained,
formed, and well-equipped units, and our combat effectiveness,
I think, has been impressive.
We do have a strong Army today, Active, National Guard and
Reserve. And we are fighting two major land campaigns as we
gather this morning. We are also carrying our other key shaping
tasks all around the world. We put about 200,000 soldiers out,
about 170,000 rotational forces, and about 30,000 forward-
deployed in friendly countries.
About 50,000 to 70,000 of these soldiers on a daily basis
come from the National Guard and Reserve. Today, most of that
combat power, as we know, is in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as we
draw down in Iraq, we will let our forces come back from a
surge level pace to one we can follow for a long time and keep
going.
We would like to get to about 1 year out and 2 years back
for Active forces, and about 1 year out and 4 years back for
the Guard and Reserve, heading to a sustained rate of 1-to-3
and 1-to-5. And that tempo will let us reset and modernize our
combat vehicles and our aircraft and our radios and our weapons
and all our equipment.
And it will also allow to educate our leaders and our
soldiers and to train our units across the full spectrum of
operations from peacekeeping and wide area security up to and
including combined arms maneuver.
And most important, a sustainable tempo will reinvigorate
the strength of our force, our great volunteer soldiers. We
spin too fast. We have some hard results, and we know those. We
have got about 30,000 soldiers in long-term medical care, about
40,000 with post-traumatic stress. We have had challenges with
our suicide rate, misdemeanor crimes, spouse and child abuse,
all that.
There also has been a significant monetary cost of billions
of dollars, not just in the Army and the Armed Forces, but
across society. These are tragic long-term effects. And I think
we have to think that just as we need to reset our jet bombers
and our nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with timeout for
maintenance, we also have to take time to reset and recalibrate
our most important strength of our Army, our soldiers.
So that is what our Army is doing today. It is an Army
America can be proud of. And we will succeed today and in the
future with your continued help. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of General Bolger can be found in
the Appendix on page 51.]
Mr. Forbes. General Carlisle.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. HERBERT J. CARLISLE, USAF, DEPUTY CHIEF
OF STAFF FOR OPERATIONS, PLANS AND REQUIREMENTS (A3/5), U.S.
AIR FORCE
General Carlisle. Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Bordallo,
distinguished members of the committee, again, thank you for
the opportunity to provide an update on the readiness of your
United States Air Force.
Before we start, though, I would like to wish Congressman
Giffords a speedy recovery. And I look forward to her coming
back to this committee as soon as possible and for her to know
that all the members in the United States Military value her
and respect her for everything she does for us, and certainly
the men and women serving at Davis-Monthan in the Tucson area
look for her speedy recovery.
My intent today is to describe the current status,
activities and readiness of the United States Air Force. And I
am proud to be here with my joint partners as well, because
together we spend a lot of time just like this in different
forums.
Let me begin by saying that the 690,000 men and women in
the United States Air Force, Active Duty, Guard, Reserve, and
Department of Defense civilians who are ready to execute our
mission. We are committed to the readiness and the ongoing
operations abroad and at home.
Mr. Chairman, as you know--excuse me--since the events of
9/11, the tempo of our operations has continued to increase,
with 2010 serving as a benchmark in just everything we have
done. Close air support has increased. Our air refueling and
airlift within the AOR has increased. Our ISR shortage has
continued to double.
And we are asking more and more of these young men and
women every day. I think to your point, Mr. Chairman, as all
the members of Congress' job is to take care of their
constituents, the gentlemen sitting at this table, our job is
to take care of those men and women in harm's way outside the
Beltway. And that is what we are going to do.
As a matter of fact, you can--one example would be our
rescue forces. The heroic actions of our rescue forces have
been hailed by the British, our partners over there as well as
our U.S. partners, and as a matter of fact, the British combat
soldiers can call our ``Pedro'' guys. That is the call sign of
our rescue forces, the helicopters, and the airmen. It is the
only thing more popular than mail in the AOR.
It says a lot about what they do. And when you say,
``Pedro,'' we will come anywhere, anytime, during any weather.
And the helicopters have the holes in them to prove it. At the
same time we are trying to recapitalize that fleet and the CSR
[Combat Search and Rescue] fleet and how we get back on step in
giving them the equipment they need.
After 20 years of continuous deployments and 10 years of
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, these operations continue
to stress both people and platforms, and they challenge our
ability to maintain readiness to the full spectrum of
operations. And, Mr. Chairman, that is the key. It is the full
spectrum of operations, as Ms. Bordallo mentioned, these other
things going on in the world and we are incredibly engaged to
win the day's fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there are
things throughout this world we have to be ready for, and that
full spectrum of operations for all the Services is ones that
we have to be cognizant of all the time.
And again, I know, Mr. Chairman, that everyone in this
committee clearly knows that, given the increase in our
operations and the decision to extend the continuing
resolution, we all know that that will cause major
perturbations and problems for our readiness.
It will suspend some systems sustainment. Depot maintenance
activities will be deferred. Aircraft and airplanes going to
depot will be deferred, all of which will adversely affect our
people that are moving into harm's way every day, so we truly
hope that Congress can come to a resolution of the DOD budget
for fiscal year 2011 for the benefit of our military members.
They remain dedicated, and they are the foundation of our
Air Force. And as you said, Mr. Chairman, it is all about the
people and what they do for us day in and day out, out there.
Across the spectrum of what we do, we are meeting and exceeding
the combatant commanders' requirements today.
All of our capabilities are adequate to meet today's
demands. And my concern for the future is how do we prepare for
the next conflict in the next generation and what we are going
to face next. Our aircraft readiness is adequate. It is not
great. And it is not going up. It is level to going down, but--
--
I assume that is not me.
Mr. Forbes. It is our buzzer, General.
General Carlisle. It is maintaining the level. It is
adequate, but it is troubling for the future and again, our
ability to conduct full spectrum operations.
Our mobility forces have doubled their activity almost
every year. We are airdropping more in the AOR more than we
ever have before. I will tell you that with respect to
modernization and the slides you brought up, we have
challenges, and we have to face those soon with respect to both
modernization and recapitalization of all our fleets.
We are on a path with the F-35 and its way forward. The KC-
46X, the C130-J, and CV-22 are all good starts, but we got a
lot of work to do. And our combat forces continue to provide
the needs of our United States, and of course, of our combatant
commanders.
A strong Air Force will continue to deliver global
vigilance, reach and power. The resolution, as I said before,
the defense appropriations bill will certainly help continue
our readiness in the Air Force and the ability to serve this
Nation's daunting challenges in the future.
I have provided a written statement for the record. But I
would like to thank you again for your interest in taking care
of your airmen and on behalf of all the airmen and their
families, thank for what you do for us.
[The prepared statement of General Carlisle can be found in
the Appendix on page 61.]
Mr. Forbes. And thank you, General. I apologize for the
buzzing.
General Carlisle. Yes, sir.
Mr. Forbes. But the Air Force always comes through.
Admiral.
STATEMENT OF VADM BRUCE W. CLINGAN, USN, DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL
OPERATIONS, PLANS AND STRATEGY (N3/N5), U.S. NAVY
Admiral Clingan. Chairman Forbes, Ranking Member Bordallo
and members of the committee, I am in fact delighted and
privileged to be here today.
Today, as we have done for more than 235 years, the Navy is
forward-deployed around the world, protecting our national
interests. Global trends and an uncertain world underpin an
increasing demand for seapower.
Mr. Chairman, you asked what might be the preeminent
concerns of the sailors, both here and abroad, and I would say
that Congress writ large like this committee clearly does
appreciate that.
As a maritime Nation, the United States is dependent upon
the sea for both economic prosperity and national security.
This places global demands on our naval forces. Their
expeditionary capabilities enable and support joint force
efforts to combat both conventional and irregular challenges in
Iraq and Afghanistan, throughout Africa, and elsewhere
throughout the world.
As has been mentioned, while ground forces remain engaged
in our OCO [overseas contingency operations] and eventually
reconstitute and reset, naval forces will remain the Nation's
strategic reserve and immediate response force.
The sustained presence and engagement of forward-stationed
and rotational naval forces will take on even greater
importance as the future security environment promises to be
characterized by multiple, concurrent, diverse challenges that
demand an immediate response that often can't wait for
diplomatic access to be negotiated.
The President's budget in 2012 continues to maintain a Navy
that is forward-postured and present to prevent conflict, deter
aggression, enhance cooperative relationships, build the
maritime security capacity of partners, provide humanitarian
assistance, and prevail in combat at and from the sea, if
required.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment to our sailors,
our Navy civilians, and their families and for all you do to
make the United States Navy an effective and enduring global
force for peace.
I look forward to your questions, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Clingan can be found in
the Appendix on page 74.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Admiral.
General.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. RICHARD T. TRYON, USMC, DEPUTY COMMANDANT
FOR PLANS, POLICIES, AND OPERATIONS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
General Tryon. Good morning, Chairman Forbes, Ranking
Member Bordallo, and the distinguished members of the committee
here today.
Today, after nearly a decade of combat operations, the
United States Marine Crops remains the country's expeditionary
force in readiness. The ability of the Marine Corps to serve as
the Nation's crisis response force can be attributed to the
steadfast support of this committee and Congress, and for that,
sir, we thank you.
The Commandant has established four service-level
priorities as he has entered office--first, to provide the
best-trained and equipped Marine units to Afghanistan; second,
rebalance our corps and posture it for the future; third, to
better educate and train our marines to succeed in what is an
increasingly complex operational environment; and fourth, to
keep faith with our marines, our sailors, and their families.
At this moment there are roughly 32,000 marines deployed
around the world. Twenty thousand are serving in Afghanistan's
Helmand province. Partnering with the United States Navy, we
are forward-deployed and forward-engaged across the globe.
Deployed and deploying units report the highest levels of
readiness for their assigned missions.
The distributed nature of the battlefield in Afghanistan,
however, requires that we augment our forward-deployed forces
with additional equipment and personnel from non-deployed
forces and strategic programs. We can sustain this commitment
under current conditions for as long as the Nation requires,
acknowledging that it comes at a cost.
Our equipment abroad and at home station has been heavily
taxed after nearly 10 years of combat operations. Sixty-seven
percent of non-deployed units report degraded readiness in the
areas of capabilities and/or resources. Resource shortfalls
often manifest themselves as capability gaps in individual
units or collective core competencies.
The primary factor underlying this is equipment, and
approximately 63 percent of non-deployed forces report that
mission-essential equipment shortfalls exist within their
units. Home station equipment does not qualify for OCO funding
in general. Units in dwell are also heavily leveraged in terms
of leadership and occupational expertise.
Now, this is necessary in order to sustain our ongoing
operational commitments of the deployed force. And for this
reason, approximately 35 percent of non-deployed units report
key personnel shortfalls. Operations have placed an
unprecedented demand on ground weapon systems, vehicles,
aviation assets, and support equipment.
Congress' continuing support is needed to posture the
Marine Corps for the future, and this will require a multiyear
effort well beyond the end of operations in Afghanistan and the
drawdown thereafter. Our Commandant has directed that post OEF
[Operation Enduring Freedom], we will reconstitute as a
middleweight force capable of operating across the spectrum of
conflict.
And what this means is that we will be capable of operating
in the realm of theater security cooperation, humanitarian
assistance, disaster relief crisis response, as well as
conventional high-intensity combat, and amphibious forcible
entry. We are currently in the midst of a comprehensive
planning effort to fulfill the Commandant's vision.
Building upon our strong traditional foundation and
incorporating lessons learned from this conflict, we are
confident the future Marine Corps will remain a capabilities-
based organization, agile, flexible, and versatile. As marines
continue to serve in combat, the Marine Corps remain the
Nation's crisis response force, ready to respond to today's
crisis with today's forces, today.
The Marine Corps needs the sustained support of the
American people and Congress to maintain that readiness.
In order to meet the challenges of the future in the future
security environment, we will require significant consideration
with respect to reset and reconstitution. The Marine Corps is
grateful for the support that Congress has provided to date. We
are also mindful of the fiscal realities confronting our
Nation.
We are committed to being responsible stewards of the
scarce public funds that are available, and we are dedicated to
serve the Nation with honor, courage, and commitment as
America's expeditionary force in readiness.
So thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today, and I look forward to the discussion and to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of General Tryon can be found in
the Appendix on page 78.]
Mr. Forbes. General, thank you.
And thank all of our witnesses.
At this point in time we are going into our questioning.
And one of the things that I am going to do is to defer my
questions to the end, because I want to hear our members'
questions, and I may intersperse some of mine throughout, but I
would like to, at this particular point in time recognize the
ranking member, the gentlelady from Guam, for any questions she
might have.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I
will be very quick.
I have an immediate concern relative to the fiscal year
2011 continuing resolution, and I would like to hear from all
of the witnesses in just a very brief answer what impact a
continuing resolution would have on operational matters in
fiscal year 2011, as well as in fiscal year 2012.
We have already seen cancellations of ship availabilities
in the Navy, so this situation is deeply concerning to me. So
if you could just briefly answer that, beginning with General
Bolger.
General Bolger. Thank you, ma'am.
For us in the Army the continuing resolution challenge
really comes down to operations and maintenance writ large. And
that is we are going to do those things necessary to maintain
our forces that are going into the fight. The challenges will
begin to defer maintenance and training to give us capability
for the full spectrum.
So based on a year-long continuing resolution, our effect,
we would lose about $3 billion in operations and maintenance
budget, and we have to focus our remaining resources clearly on
the next to deploy. That would mean some of the full-spectrum
training we have scheduled this year to regain our capability--
for example, to do airborne assaults with elements of the 82nd
Airborne, to do tank-on-tank combat with our armored forces, to
do middleweight combat, as Rick Tryon referred to, that the
Marines are doing that--some of that will be deferred, because
we are going to put our money towards the next-to-deploy units.
There will be some significant impacts, I believe, on
housing and installations, because military construction,
obviously, is awaiting this, and so the new starts will not
occur.
In addition, as I think you are aware, the Department of
the Army has just recently extended their 30-day hiring freeze
on civil servants another 30 days, so as that continues, that
means that some soldiers will probably have to be diverted to
do tasks that civil servants might be doing now, take us back
to maybe 15 years ago where soldiers were doing things like
checking vehicle registrations at gates and mowing the lawn and
all that kind of stuff, which again diverts from the training
and readiness that our force would need.
And finally, ma'am, I think the other thing that I would
mention is the challenge it will cause in terms of
modernization, because obviously with the continuing resolution
we are going to maintain what we have, but we are not going to
procure new weapons, some of which were in the middle of
procurement phase, and some like our ground combat vehicles are
just to start some major phases in their development. So all of
that would be on hold as we go through the continuing
resolution.
I guess I would summarize by saying that it will create a
deferred maintenance in this year, and that bill will have to
be paid at the same time we are trying to fight a war in
Afghanistan and close out combat major operations in Iraq,
ma'am.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, General.
General Carlisle.
General Carlisle. Yes, ma'am, thank you.
Very similar, I think probably all four of us will have
much the same comments. The O&M budget will be significantly
affected. The flying-out programs and depot maintenance and
depot level repairables will all be deferred. Today we are cash
flowing to maintaining the capability to serve the fight, but
that is going to run out. And at that point we are going to
have to start doing other pretty draconian things to just
support the fight with no training back home.
So on the O&M budget, as we move money within the O&M
budget to cash flow what we are doing now, if it is not fixed
in the fairly near term, then it is going to cause some pretty
significant problems as we move forward.
Also MILCON [military construction] is another one--new
mission MILCON as well as existing mission MILCON. We have
projects out there and capabilities that we are going to bring
to the fight fairly soon that we can't with no MILCON budget.
And also on the procurement side, we were going to ramp up,
for example, our MQ-9 purchase to provide more ISR to the
fight. And we can't increase that buy until we get a budget, so
we are stuck at a lower capability. And although it is
procurement, it is near-term procurement that we can't do.
Also new starts, some of the capabilities that we are
putting on those platforms, whether it is an ISR platform and
kinetic or non-kinetic manner or some system or weapon that is
a fairly short procurement timeline that we can get out in the
field but we have to defer, and all this time it is causing us.
And then the third one again, as Dan said, is the milpers
[military personnel] and civpers [civilian personnel]
shortfalls are ones that are going--the hiring is an issue, as
well as the fact that we know we have a milpers and civpers
shortfall that we are going to have to figure out where that
money is going to come from to pay for that. And again, we are
going to have probably folks in uniform doing things that were
done by civilians that we can't do, so.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you. Thank you, General.
Admiral.
Admiral Clingan. Ma'am, the continuing resolution is having
an effect both on current readiness and future readiness. Like
all the Services, we will guarantee that the forces going
forward into conflict and to do the forward-deployed missions
are ready.
So as we find ourselves in a situation where we need to
reduce both flying hours and steaming days, those shortfalls
will be allocated against the forces that we are maintaining in
their sustainment phase, which are our surge forces to respond
to crises that may emerge and in those forces that are
preparing to deploy. So we will see a decline in readiness to
complete the mission set.
Quite specifically, if the continuing resolution were to
continue through the balance of the year, we would find
ourselves canceling 29 of 89--85, excuse me--maintenance
availabilities for ships. Seventy aircraft requiring depot
maintenance wouldn't get it; 290 engines wouldn't get their
overhauls; 140 maintenance and construction projects across
about 74 bases wouldn't be completed.
And then you look to the procurement side, the future
readiness side, we would find ourselves not being able to
procure two DDG-51s, which are BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense]
and multipurpose combatants. Virginia-class submarine wouldn't
be procured. Two reactor cores, one for an SSBN and one for a
carrier wouldn't be procured.
Well, thousands of orders for individual sailors wouldn't
be processed, so they would miss some of their important career
milestones. And lastly, our travel is curtailed as we endeavor
to go build relationships with partners and enhance their
abilities to carry their own security burdens. That is being
reduced as well.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Admiral.
General.
General Tryon. Yes, ma'am. Many of the same issues raised
by my colleagues here apply. Equipment reset and future
reconstitution is, of course, the greatest concern that we all
have. We also will experience some concerns with civpers
funding levels.
The continuing resolution affects us in the current year,
and it will have a ripple effect in the out-years.
Immediately, MILCON comes to mind. $567 million in
contracts have not been awarded to date. $2.4 billion is at
risk for the remainder of the year. Contained in that is 13
BEQs, bachelor enlisted quarters that are necessary to get our
marines and serving sailors out of Cold War Era barracks that
are 40 to 50 years old and put them into facilities that are
appropriate for them.
$71 million has not been awarded for our high-mobility
artillery rocket system. There is $168 million in the budget,
but that significantly hampers our ability to procure and build
toward the future, and it also violates some of the economy of
scales that we would typically enjoy as we make these
purchases.
Equipment reset as discussed is delayed, and there also we
lose our economy of scales in making purchases that we can with
the United States Army and the other Services.
Flight hours projected to shortfall is about $225 million
in our flight hour program at the rate that we are currently
progressing, and we are flying at normal rates right now. Our
sortie-based training plan will be suspended sometime during
the fourth quarter of this fiscal year.
Marine air ground and control system contracts have not
been awarded. Tactical communication, modernization contracts
to the tune of $61 million have not been awarded, and the list
goes on. It is significant today in the here and the now, and
it won't get any better, because the cost of recovery we would
anticipate will only increase.
Thank you.
Ms. Bordallo. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for allowing me to
ask that question, and as you can see all branches of the
military agree on this. I know that Congress is looking for
ways to address our financial situation, but a continuing
resolution for the Department of Defense will only cost us more
money and will certainly be very serious to our security in the
future.
So I thank all of the witnesses and if any of the others
would like to----
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo, and I think all of us
concur. We just wish that the last Congress could have gotten
their budget out so you guys weren't having this hanging over
your head. But, unfortunately, that didn't happen, so we have
to try to look and see how we can put Humpty Dumpty back
together again. And that is going mean as the CR [continuing
resolution] goes through also looking at your fiscal year 2012
figures, because we know they are all based on the fact that
you had the fiscal year 2011 figures as well.
Our next question will be done by Dr. Heck.
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thanks to all of the members here today for your
dedication to our men and women in uniform and for your careers
of selfless sacrifice to our Nation.
My question is for General Bolger. I appreciated the line
in your written testimony regarding the Reserve Force as being
a well-equipped, highly-trained and battle-wise operational
force. The Reserve Force is the area that is near and dear to
my heart.
And my question is regarding the ARFORGEN [Army Force
Generation] model and trying to get to the, you know, one-to-
two Active Duty and one-to-five Reserve dwell time. And I am
speaking as a commander who has got units either deployed,
getting ready to deploy, or just coming back from deployment.
It seems that in the ARFORGEN model there is a disconnect
between TDA [Table of Distribution and Allowance] forces and
TO&E [Table of Organization and Equipment] forces.
I live on the TO&E side--I am sorry, on the TDA side. And
so, as we are cannibalized to back-fill units that are
otherwise deploying, we wind up falling out of our ARFORGEN
cycle. For instance, I have got a unit that is in year TR-2
that is currently deployed. What, if any, efforts are under way
to try to come up with a force sustainment model that takes in
the unique needs of the TDA side of the Reserve house?
General Bolger. Sir, a great question. And the situation
you described my colleague Rick Tryon talked about the same
challenge that is occurring in the Marine Corps in particular,
but in other Services.
What we are doing in the Army now, sir, is we have looked
at not just our operations force, where we put our first
emphasis, naturally, to get forces in the field to fight. Now
we are also looking at the institutional side of the Army, what
we call the generating force, the part of the Army that gets
the other part ready. And we are trying to apply some of the
same methods to them to get them on to our cyclical readiness
just as you described, so we don't have to borrow from those
units to fill up the next deployers.
And I will tell you, sir, the two things that are going to
help with that, I believe, are, one, sort of systematizing our
access to the Reserve Components, because the Guard and the
Reserve are integral to what we do. As we gather this morning,
there are almost 70,000 guardsmen and reservists on duty today
with the U.S. Army.
We could not carry out our task around the world without
this unprecedented amount of support from our citizen soldiers,
so we got to think of ways to make sure that that great veteran
force is looked after and fully integrated in everything we do.
And along those lines, sir, as you may be aware, Secretary
McHugh asked General Reimer, the retired Army Chief of Staff,
General Dennis Reimer. He and Lieutenant General Helmly and
Lieutenant General Schultz, senior leaders of our Guard and
Reserve, came together, ran a panel, and looked at how do we
operationalize the Guard and Reserve. And not surprisingly,
they brought back the exact kind of cases as you just described
and said we have to do the institutional and the policy work
that will solve that.
And some of that may require--after we get done looking at
it, we may want to come back to the Congress for potential
legislative assistance, if it is some authorities or something
that we need to look at to better integrate our Guard and
Reserve and the force, sir.
So a long answer, but a really critical subject for our
force today, sir.
Dr. Heck. Thank you, General.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Dr. Heck, and that was an excellent
question.
General, could I just follow up with one of the things that
Dr. Heck raised? In your testimony you also mentioned the Army
is institutionalizing or trying a rotational scheme, and you go
on to mention the need to deliver a predictable supply of
military power.
One of the questions we always ask ourselves are, is the
Army ready, based on the current readiness state that we have
and how stretched out you are, to deal with unpredictable
events around the world, because one thing we know is that we
are not good at predicting where they are going to be.
General Bolger. Sir, exactly right. As we gather this
morning, the Army does have the capability in the global
response force that if I would have met you a few years back, I
wouldn't have been able to say that.
We have an airborne brigade command team in readiness at
Fort Bragg, if they are needed for anything around the world.
Our intent is to expand that surge force or that emergency
force so that eventually it will grow to a size of one division
headquarters or--I am sorry--one corps headquarters, three
division headquarters, 10 brigade combat teams and about 41,000
enabling forces of troops.
We are not there yet, and that is really contingent on our
drawdown in Iraq proceeding on schedule and no increase in our
commitments worldwide. But if those things go into effect, we
believe in our planning that soldiers who deploy after the
first of October in the Active Component can expect a year out
and then 2 years back, and then the Reserve Component can
expect a year out mobilized and then 4 years back. And that
will allow us to reconstitute that surge force or that
emergency force for just the kind of contingencies you are
describing, sir.
We are not there yet but we can see it, and the only
warning I would say is that it is always dependent on world
conditions, sir.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, General.
Mr. Gibson from New York had a quick follow-up question on
that.
Mr. Gibson. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank the distinguished panelists, both for
being here, your testimony and for your leadership of our
service men and women and their families.
I did want to follow up on General Bolger's comments there.
Based on my experience, recent experience, I led that global
response force Army element to Haiti, and as a quick prefacing
remark, let me just say that I have full faith that all the
Services are dealing with the significant challenges of reset.
And I know that there are hard choices, prioritization, and
that we are trying to recapitalize our fleet. We are trying to
restore the balance to the force and all the emotional and
mental challenges that go with resetting the soldier, sailor,
airman, marine as well.
But my concern about readiness has more to do with how you
all interrelate. You know, when I led that unit to Haiti, the
challenges we had had to do with lift, having the capability to
get our forces there to meet that mission, and then to have the
enablers to come in a synchronized manner.
All Services came to the fore to respond to the President's
request, but there were issues with how we synchronize the
assets and certainly how we got the assets to get there. So my
question really is how often--you alluded to you get together
often--how often do you speak about this, about----
When you talk about readiness--I am not talking about all
that hard work you do to get your own Services ready--how much
discussion is there about con ops [concept of operations],
about how you put together the suite of forces so that we can
respond in a joint manner, which we know is the way we are
going to respond. And how much did we learn from the Haitian
experience?
General Bolger. Well, sir, I will start off and then defer
to my colleagues, but I would mention that jointness is very
critical to everything we do. We couldn't function without it.
Soldiers, in particular, I mean, we need a ride everywhere we
are going, and thank God we got the Air Force, the Navy to give
us that ride.
You mentioned the Haiti experience, a short notice
deployment with a force. You know, your force was ready to go,
but a great hazard and great challenge to get them ready. And
the other Services are just as stressed by worldwide
operations, as you heard my colleagues say.
I think this is why it is really, really important that we
continue our pace of modernization and continue to get all the
Services on a sustainable rate of operations in dwell, because
that is what gives you the time to do the joint training and
education you need to gain those capabilities.
For us as the operations deputies, this is one of the
things we have looked at. And, of course, as you know, one of
the things we are looking at right now is how to keep the hard-
won gains of jointness since the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of
1986, how to keep them going with the lessons learned from the
current conflict and what we foresee as our challenges in the
future.
And that is something we do discuss quite a bit. It is
often a subject of operations deputies meetings. And we
definitely do bring in folks on things like Haiti and say,
``What did we learn from that? You know, what went right? What
went wrong? What can we do to mitigate these gaps,'' sir.
Mr. Forbes. And now we are going to go to Mr. Kissell, from
North Carolina.
Mr. Kissell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And kind of follow-up to the questions and comments just
made, maybe a little bit of a plug to my colleagues. The Army
is working on a CODEL for a 1-day trip to Fort Bragg, I think,
in June, I believe, Chris, in June, that will feature a lot of
this global response capability. We refer to Fort Bragg as
being the center of the universe.
And Special Ops is there, Special Forces are there. Ten
percent of all the Army will soon be based there with several
commands and 34 flag officers there, so the most flag officers
outside of the Pentagon, which I think a lot of our members
might be able to learn a lot about this readiness component
that we have in the global context. And as we get more
information, we will pass that around.
But honestly, my question--and I will preface real quickly,
the most important assignment that we have is where our men and
women are in harm's way. And that is where our attention should
be in making sure that we do everything we can to minimize the
threats there and support those men and women.
But also, as the chairman said, we are looking to the
future, and this series of hearings is upon readiness. The
chairman read over a series of numbers that actually made me
feel a little bit young to hear how old some of our equipment
is.
I am going to ask each one of you, and feel free to be
brief in your answer. As the chairman said, one of the most
important things we can have is information, to know what you
are thinking, what your thoughts are. And so I am going to ask
each of you to respond. What is the biggest deficiency that we
face right now as we get ready for future challenges? And once
again, feel free to be brief.
General Bolger. Sir, I will start off. The biggest
deficiency is time. As much as we enjoy good modernization, we
have programs, it is time to train and integrate, put the great
people we have together and have time to prepare for full-
spectrum operations. And I think you would hear that same thing
from any of our sergeants or any of our officers as they
prepare that training.
They really need the time not to focus on the Afghan fight
or the Iraq stability operations, but to focus on that full-
spectrum integration.
Mr. Kissell. Okay.
General Carlisle. Sir, I would echo that. I think we have
spent 10 years doing what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have got to get that right, and we have got to win, but as I
said in my opening statement, the full spectrum and the points
that the chairman brought up referenced the growth of, for
example, the PRC [People's Republic of China] and their forces.
And that is just one, and there are many more that have spent a
lot of time expanding.
So, our modernization and our ability to operate in an
anti-access air denial environment, in a degraded environment
for electromagnetic spectrum, all those are things that we in
Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty comfortable with the fact
anything more than about 6 feet up the ground we own.
And we don't have to worry about our space capability
because it is pretty well--there is not a lot of threat. But
that won't be the case wherever we go next. And those are the
things that I think that--and it is time, it is practice, it is
concentration, it is modernization of the systems, it is--and I
know Bruce will probably mention this, but the air-sea battle,
the construct that the Department of Navy and Department of the
Air Force put together--those are the things that we have
really got to move. We got to take--our belief is we really
have to go to the next level in joint. We don't need to be
joint, we need to be integrated. And we need to go across
domains to make things happen.
Mr. Kissell. Admiral.
Admiral Clingan. Sir, I have to echo my shipmates here--
time. The Navy has been operating for the last 3 years at a
pace that is equivalent to our surge capacity. That has come at
a cost where we have been deployed forward so much that time
available for maintenance has resulted in a degrade in material
readiness.
And the time available for training has caused us to
constrain our training to mission-tailored as opposed to the
full range of military operations. So as we look forward, we
would need time.
And I might say as well that the rate of the stress on the
force would be a little bit less, if we were at our aspiration
of 313 ships or so as afloat for the force structure.
Mr. Kissell. Okay.
General.
General Tryon. Sir, I would probably report that in my
judgment, jointness across the board is very good. Me and my
colleagues here, I think we work together to achieve joint
solutions in every instance. One of the ways we do that is
through the Global Force Management Board that routinely meets
to discuss how forces are going to be used, where they are
going to be used and what the economies of scale can be to
address the given situation.
And the Marine Corps is postured uniquely perhaps with the
United States Navy in a--more than a joint partnership, it is
family. And that is evidenced in a recent experience where with
the repositioning of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a
requirement to reinforce that unit with a battalion became
manifest to address the scenario that is developing off the
coast of Libya.
1st Battalion 2nd Marines within 20 hours of receiving the
execute order deployed into Souda Bay and across that to the
amphibious ships and are now positioned off the coast of Libya.
They did that because they are inherently a team that is
task-organized and can very quickly and in an agile fashion
adapt to the situation. However, I mentioned in my earlier
comments about home station equipment sets. That is becoming an
increasingly more important issue with us.
As you probably know, a little bit different from the Army,
when marines deploy, we take our gear forward with us. For
example, as the marines came out of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 40
percent of the equipment that was in Iraq was transferred to
Afghanistan without the benefit of a full refurbishment or
reset.
So, that gear is still forward and it is undergoing the
wear and the tear that is typically associated with combat
operations. So, a lengthy answer to your question, but the
equipment reset is indeed a priority.
Mr. Kissell. Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Kissell.
And now the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia,
Mr. Scott, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to go back to kind of your original comments
and, Generals, for all of you. I think every member of this
committee wants you to have everything that you need to support
the warfighter. And yet as we look at February's numbers, we
had an $8 billion-a-day deficit. That is approximately an
aircraft carrier a day, if I understand the pricing correctly.
When we asked DOD for proposals and information, on one
hand, we understand that we need additional dwell time for our
soldiers, yet we know that they propose to reduce the number of
soldiers in the Army by approximately 27,000 and the soldiers
in the Marines by 15,000. We don't have the ships that we need.
We don't have the planes that we need. We don't have the
vehicles or the equipment that we need.
And I guess as someone who has been here in Congress for
less than 3 months, my question is what is wrong with the
procurement process at DOD? How do we fix it? Because we
cannot--we cannot--sustain an $8 billion a day deficit in this
country. And as you answer those questions, I would like for
you to tell me if you think that the national debt and deficit
spending is a threat to our security as a country as well.
General Bolger. Sir, thanks for that question. I will go
first, and I would say that I think the national debt and
deficit is a concern to all American citizens whether in
uniform right now or not, and I know it is for me.
And, sir, your question about procurement and the need for
procurement reform, I think what we would say is procurement as
written now is designed about making it perfect in every regard
as we can, and we probably made it too complicated. And I think
we need to settle for just good enough.
I know for the Army, in particular in this war, we have
brought a lot of things on to our operational need statement,
which doesn't go through the normal procurement process, from
small business and from others, good ideas. Maybe of 10 good
ideas that are brought to a unit, maybe 8 of them don't work,
but 2 of them do.
And among those good ideas that we are currently using
today in Afghanistan and Iraq that came to us courtesy of a
Marine Corps program like that is the Mine Resistant Ambush
Protected vehicle series that are keeping our soldiers alive on
operations, our marines, our sailors, our airmen who are on the
ground.
So, I think there is great merit in looking at those so-
called operational need or joint operational needs programs as
a way ahead for procurement reform. And I hope we will do that.
And then, sir, another thing I would mention, you mentioned
the proposed reduction of soldiers. There were two really
important caveats on that that I think the Secretary of Defense
wisely put on that. And the first was timing.
It is set for the year 2015, which is 4 years from now.
That is close in budget and programming terms, but it is a bit
distant in terms of strategic and what may happen in the world.
So I think we have left ourselves the opportunity to revisit
that, if the world conditions alter.
And then the second point is that not only is it close in
that regard, the number is not great by itself. Our Active Duty
strength is set at 547,400, and this would represent about 5
percent of that. So, with 4 years to prepare, I think we can
give the best range of options to you all and to our chain of
command as to what type of reduction may make sense, based on
the world situation, sir.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, General.
General Carlisle. Sir, I would agree and echo much of what
Dan said. Clearly, in my opinion, our economy and our national
debt is a national security issue. And I don't think there is
any doubt in anybody's mind, certainly in uniform and all
Americans, that our economy is one of our strengths itself, so
it is something that we have to protect. And I would agree with
you 1,000 percent.
On the procurement side and acquisition side, sir, I think
all the things that bureaucracy does can sometime inflate
costs. I think there is a--and I am not a procurement or an
acquisition expert; that is why they let us be the Ops Deps
[Operations Deputies], because we are probably not as good at
acquisition--but I think that we have a tendency sometimes to
go to the exquisite, and we can't afford to go to the
exquisite. So, I think good enough is exactly--as Dan said--is
right.
I think there are economies of scale. I think there is
stability in a program that allows it to go through a process.
I think sometimes impatience on the part of a variety of
audiences--be it a consumer, the warfighter or job creation,
whatever--there are a lot of people that will create
impatience, and sometimes that causes problems in your programs
as you move forward.
And I couldn't agree more that we have got to get it right,
and we have got to fix the procurement and acquisition process
in the Department of Defense, if we are going to be able to
maintain the level of fielding of our combat forces that we
need for the future.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, General.
Admiral Clingan. Sir, in regard to the deficit spending, we
as a Nation are equally concerned about that challenge going
forward to develop solutions. From at least my personal
perspective, the Department of Defense, and certainly the Navy
budget, is carrying a level of risk this year, fiscal year
2012, and in the out-years as we look at that.
That would cause me to suggest that one of the solutions to
the deficit spending that I would not advise is to diminish
DOD, and certainly the Navy's budget. I think the Secretary of
Defense has said that 2012 is a reduction from what we thought
would be an increase, but still an increase. And then as we
begin to plan in the out-years, it is pretty flat.
But to cause a decline, I think, at a time when we are
trying to reset and reconstitute the force and meet an evolving
security environment, that is going to invite multiple
concurrent diverse crises, would in fact increase risk.
Regarding procurement, we understand and have been working
for a number of years to address that. I believe part of 2012's
budget across all Services was to increase the cadre of
procurement professionals. And certainly we are looking to do
that in the Navy as well as continue and enhance very rigorous
oversight.
Just one example, the type of oversight that is in my lane
is the requirement. What is the capability requirement to make
sure that we can generate the effects necessary on the
battlefield that the Nation expects of us?
And so, we don't gold watch them as we might have in the
beginning of my career. We are looking for parity or over match
sufficient to match the capacity equation. And so, we are
taking a holistic approach to resolving the procurement
challenges that we face.
General Tryon. Sir, your second question first. I think all
of us share concern with respect to the budget deficit and the
implications that it has long-term.
To your question or your comment with respect to end
strength, I would like to just comment on the fact as this war
progressed, both the Army and the Marine Corps were authorized
to grow the force in order to meet the threat that was seen as
confronting our Nation.
And the Marine Corps began in 2007 and, in fact, although
we achieved the numbers, the end strength, we are still in the
process of forming units and will round out in fiscal year 2012
to complete the ``Grow the Force'' initiative.
Having said that, in August our Commandant directed that we
meet and we look deep, we look down range to consider how we
might posture ourselves for the future. And based on his
direction, we gathered and conducted an internally driven force
structure review leveraging lessons learned over the course of
the 10 years of combat in order to figure out how we might
posture ourselves better in the future, how we do more with
less and how we can leverage the capabilities of technology in
the operating battlefield environment today to accomplish our
mission.
With respect to procurement I am not a programmatic guy.
But I would say I think we are informed to a certain extent
with the urgent unfilled requirements, the UUNS [Urgent
Universal Needs Statement] process that manifested over the
course of the Iraq and now the Afghan conflict that facilitated
the acquisition of gear that was needed on the battlefield
quickly.
And I know that the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, DARPA, is examining exactly the kind of question that
you just posed to us to determine how we might better
streamline process and accelerate acquisition to achieve the
kind of products that we need, the reliable kind of products
that we need to succeed in the battlefield.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. Thank the gentleman for his question.
The gentlelady from Hawaii is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Hanabusa. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to begin with General Bolger, primarily
because your statement is the only one that referenced it. And
I would like the other generals and admirals to respond to it
as well--on page three of your statement made an interesting
comment about the concept of versatile force mix
characteristic. We sort of touched upon it earlier, and that is
of course using the Guard as well as the Reserves to sort of, I
guess, define readiness. And that is what you are looking into
the future, I understand your statement is saying, as to how we
would then meet readiness requirements.
What I am curious about is, for example, the Guard,
Adjutant Generals are basically State appointments. It is a
jurisdictional issue, first of all. Secondly, there are funding
considerations, that which the State governments may pay for
that which the Federal Government pays for.
So, in your perception on how you feel we are moving to
this new joint mix force, how do you anticipate actually coming
to address jurisdictional concerns? And how are they going to
work side-by-side? Guard units are permanent, for one thing.
Yours rotate for another. So, how do we do this? I understand
wartime, I am just curious about how you anticipate seeing this
actually fulfilled for the future in terms of readiness.
General Bolger. Ma'am, I think that is a great question, a
great point. And exactly one of the challenges we are looking
at as we--we refer to it as convert the Guard and Reserve from
a strategic Reserve--in other words a force that is primarily
gaining readiness, but you use it only in the event of a very
major conflict, you know, the Cold War, World War III-type
scenario.
We are talking about it now being an operational reserve.
And we actually learned a lot from our brothers and sisters in
the Air Force on this. The Air Guard and the Air Reserve have
been integrated in the Air Force for quite a while. And they
also have to deal with the challenges of State duty versus
Federal duty.
And so, mirroring a little of what they learned and then
modifying it naturally for the needs of ground forces, we think
what we do is we are going to prioritize it so that we can
serve the Governors and the Adjutants General.
So, if for example, we give a predicted schedule that says,
``Five years from now, your brigade that is normally available
in your State is going to be rotated in and do combat duty in
Afghanistan,'' the Governor then has time for he or she and
their team to look at that, know that is coming up, and then, I
think, make the prudent arrangements for who is going to pick
that duty up.
And I think some of the things that have been recommended,
and these are cases we have seen, there is an Army Reserve as
well that it does not have a State duty, but sometimes they are
available.
Could there an arrangement, a task organization that would
tell the Governor, ``Look, these Active Component forces or
these Army Reserve forces will be available to fill the gap
while your combat brigade is deployed,'' because I think,
ma'am, that is the real concern at the State level, and I think
rightly so, for homeland missions.
The other thing that helps us, ma'am, is the reorganization
that the Department of Defense did when they established U.S.
Northern Command and their strong relation to a strengthened
National Guard Bureau, because our number one priority is
always homeland defense.
We don't always put most of our forces against it. But
should a homeland defense issue occur, everything goes to that
first. And I think that was one of the big lessons after 9/11,
although most that was handled by local and State elements.
So, we are looking very closely at that, ma'am. But I think
this is a fundamental responsibility that goes back to the
founding of America with the militia versus the Active Force
and the regular forces. And I think it is one that we really
got a great opportunity to make some good changes right now,
because we got a very veteran Guard and Reserve.
They don't require that great amount of training and
mobilization time they might have needed when they were less
well-equipped or less well-trained. They are as veteran as they
have ever been in the Army. And I think it really gives us
opportunity to solve these challenges that in many cases have
existed for quite awhile, ma'am.
Mrs. Hanabusa. Thank you.
And I do know that the Air Force has done it very
successfully. So, if you would, General, if you would respond
to that.
General Carlisle. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the question.
I think we at the United States Air Force, in some ways our
mission is uniquely suited to have a mutual capability. And to
be honest, we could not--we, the United States Air Force, could
not conduct our mission without our Guard and Reserve partners,
and it's every part of the mission.
It depends on mission set. Air superiority alert or air
defense alert that we that we set in Hawaii with 154th, for
example, or the ASA [Air Sovereignty Alert] folks that are
scattered and doing an incredible job throughout the Nation for
homeland defense, those are, you know, the Title 10, Title 32
question you asked about. But we have worked it out very well.
They are on Title 32 orders till the klaxon goes off. The
minute the klaxon goes off, they are on Title 10, and they are
doing the mission for NORTHCOM [U.S. Northern Command] or PACOM
[U.S. Pacific Command] in Hawaii.
So we have worked our way through some of that, and we are
sharing everything we have with our brethren here. But it is a
unique capability in a lot of ways because of our mission set.
The other thing that I think is that we have gone into the
total force enterprise in the case of KC-135s and F-22s, where
part of the squadron is Guard, part of it's Active. You have an
amazing amount of flexibility when you build total force
enterprise like that.
And we still have a lot to learn. There are things we need
to do. And with other missions where it is predominantly State.
If we have C-130s in the southern part of the country, they can
do firefighting in the fire seasons. The ability to back those
guys up and send more planes out with that capability is,
again, those are things that we can continue to work on.
But whether it is the attributes that the Guard and Reserve
bring with respect to continuity, which is incredibly valuable,
experience, because they generally are very experienced, very
good in what they do, I will tell you in my previous job in the
13th Air Force command, that organization could not operate
without the Guard and the 109th in the background and
supporting us all the time. And so, I think we are fortunate in
our ability to do that.
Admiral Clingan. Ma'am, thank you for your question.
We have it a little bit easier, not having a Guard force.
And so we have embarked in the last decade on a total force
concept where we size and shape the Active and Reserve
Components in concert with each other.
And we look at what our current demands are, and we assess
what the demand will be in the future security environment. And
we size and shape the Reserve Component on a real-time basis to
make sure that the total force can respond to the requirements
that we anticipate.
We also employ our Reserve forces, whether we are involved
in a conflict or not, day-to-day as they augment various
activities that we have ongoing. So that keeps them refreshed
and able to add value when they are called upon.
General Tryon. And Ma'am, like the Navy, we have no
National Guard, as you all know. We have a total force concept
with our Reserve community and have had a total force concept
for a number of years.
Our Reserve, selected Marine Corps Reserve is 39,600
strong. I alluded to a force structure review earlier, and just
for point of clarification, our Reserve establishment will
remain at 39,600. There will be no change and no impact on our
Reserve Force.
We also will tailor our reserve component so that it
complements the Active Duty structure that we have. We bring
complete units on to Active Duty. They train in our
installations. They train side-by-side with the Active Duty
forces. And we also utilize some of the unique capabilities in
terms of manpower to bring Reserves forward for individual
augments to fill joint manning documents and the like.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
The chair now recognizes gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
Schilling, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Schilling. Thank you very much. I appreciate your
gentlemen's service to this great Nation.
This past weekend I was actually in Afghanistan and got to
see some of the great work that is happening there. Myself and
four other members of Congress had the opportunity to walk
through a city called Marja, which a little over a year ago,
our men and women couldn't land there without taking fire. And
we didn't have to wear a vest. So, you know, I just want to
thank you for that and the work that is going on over there.
You know, I understand the folks are getting kind of burnt
out, lots of tours going across. And, you know, I think a lot
of it comes down to, you know, giving them the break and make
sure the families are taken care of. And, you know,
constitutionally, that is our job as the Congress is to make
sure we are well-protected, that our money is spent properly.
And, you know, I think that the one thing that I look at it
is the defense of this Nation is huge, because a lot of the
other issues that we are dealing with today don't really
matter, if we don't have a good defense system.
So I look at it as a top priority to make sure things are
spent properly. And then----
Looks like I get the buzzer now--but, you know, when I
visited with several of the troops there, they were all very
positive, upbeat. And some of them, you know, had been over
there for quite some time. And, you know, I guess, we look, you
know, to you folks to just kind of help direct us and just help
us make good solid decisions on supporting the troops, their
families.
You know, I know, I had a personal experience with one of
the guys that came back. He had been back home for a couple of
years. And about 2 months ago, he ended up taking his life. And
it wasn't because of going in and serving the military. It was,
you know, it was a broken home and things like that.
But, you know, I think that there are a lot of things that
we are taking note of, and we are focusing our efforts into
fixing that. But, you know, I just want to thank you for what
you are doing.
And, you know, I think with the financial condition of the
country, you know, every penny that we spend--you know, the one
thing that I was talking to one of my colleagues about
yesterday is the fact that when China spends a dollar, they
know that dollar, every penny of it, is being spent properly.
And, you know, that is the one thing that we have an obligation
to the citizens to do is make sure we spend it properly.
And look forward to just working with you all. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Forbes. Thank the gentleman.
And the gentlelady from Missouri, Ms. Hartzler, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for all that you are doing.
With all we have been hearing about readiness and our
desire, our joint effort to make sure that we are ready and
that we are fully equipped and our country is going to be safe
in the years to come, I know we have got lots of challenges of
equipment and dwell time and other issues.
But at the same time, we are also approaching changing a
major, major policy within the military, the repeal of the
``Don't Ask/Don't Tell'' policy. And I want to get your
thoughts about some of those things.
And first of all, with this proposal as it is coming forth,
what changes to facilities are you contemplating in order to
address privacy concerns of servicemembers? And what is the
cost going to be for that?
General Bolger. Ma'am, I will start out with that. As you
know right now, at the direction of the President and the
Secretary of Defense, pursuant to the act of Congress that was
signed last December, we are carrying out the training--to
train our force right now and then provide an assessment. Our
Services will provide the best military advice back on what we
think those implications will be as we complete this policy
change.
I will tell you right now, ma'am, that we are anticipating
no change at the facilities. The Army recognizes two sexes--
male and female--sexual-orientation neutral, that is whatever.
And our goal will be the same, and the standards of conduct
will not change.
And what we have found in our training so far, for folks at
my age, it is quite concerning in many cases. For folks the age
of my son or daughter, they don't know what we are talking
about and why it is a big deal. And the ones in the military
are more concerned about their next deployment to Afghanistan
or Iraq, ma'am.
Mrs. Hartzler. So but you say right now--is the policy now
that men and women servicemembers who have opposite sex
attraction shower together and room together, sleep together?
Is that the policy now in the facilities?
General Bolger. Ma'am, right now the policy that we have is
that males live with males and females live with the females.
We can make an exception for that in combat, and we do. You
know, a crew in a vehicle or something like that has mixed sex.
Mrs. Hartzler. Why do have that separation?
General Bolger. I am sorry, ma'am?
Mrs. Hartzler. Why do have separation between facilities
between men and women?
General Bolger. Right now, really, just for privacy reasons
and----
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. So we are going make a change your
policy so people with the same-sex attraction are being able to
shower together and to sleep in the same area, so why wouldn't
we have separate facilities in those cases?
General Bolger. Well, ma'am, part of it is because,
basically, you are not allowed to act out on your inclinations
or interest without the permission of the other person. I mean,
the military----
Mrs. Hartzler. And why don't we have men and women, service
men and women sleeping in the same areas and showering?
General Bolger. Well, ma'am, they do not shower together,
but they do sleep in the same areas routinely. I mean, that is
very common. And we make normal privacy arrangements, because
when you are living very close to somebody, you are still--one
of the biggest challenges, of course--and I say this as an
infantry guy with almost 33 years of service--is to have any
kind of personal space in that kind of an environment.
And so people try to allow a little time for somebody to
read a letter or for somebody to clean up or something like
that without hassling when they can avoid it. So we are used to
that. That is one of the things you learn from when you first
come into the Service.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Thank you. I would like to hear from
the other Services, what changes to the facilities you
anticipate and what the cost would be.
General Carlisle. Ma'am, much like the Army, as we work our
way through it--and I will take for the record and come back
with more specifics, but because it is not primarily in my area
of responsibility within the Department of the Air Force--but
in talking with the--as we implement this, our intent is very
similar in that we will provide privacy.
But additional facilities is not--additional facilities or
splitting things up to where you have four different groups of
people that have to maintain separation, that is not our
intent, as far as I know right now. Again, I will come with
more information as you need it.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 93.]
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you.
General Carlisle. And I would agree with Dan that, you
know, the common refrain, and we all think about the turbulence
and what it is going to cause, but to a large extent, the
younger folks there was--``don't ask/don't tell/don't care'' in
a lot of cases was the refrain, because they don't necessarily
understand it. They have grown up in a different world than we
grew up in, so.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Thank you.
Admiral.
Admiral Clingan. Thank you for your question, ma'am. The
Navy policy is no change at the facilities and, therefore, no
related costs. The facilities are based on gender, not sexual
orientation.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Thank you.
General Tryon. Ma'am, consistent with the Department of
Defense policy, the Marine Corps policy is the same. The focus
for successful implementation in our judgment is to concentrate
on leadership, professionalism, discipline and respect.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. I would like all of you to address how
you think that this change will improve the all-volunteer force
and not undermine morale, discipline, readiness, recruiting and
retention.
General Bolger. Ma'am, I would offer that the all-volunteer
force represents the America that it is drawn from, and it is
important that all Americans feel like the military that we are
putting on the battlefield is their military.
General Carlisle. Ma'am, I would echo what has been said by
others. It is about professionalism. It is about professional
courtesy and respect for one another, regardless. And I can
give you my opinion with respect to what I think it will do to
the force. I don't think any of us know right now. I think--
time will tell.
Having said that, I think if you recruit and retain
professional, respectful people, it won't degrade our force at
all.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay.
Admiral Clingan. The fact is that the current force has a
number of individuals with varying sexual orientations. And as
we go to recruit, we recruit based on other things--performance
and their capabilities and willingness to go do the missions.
And so I don't expect that it is going to change the recruiting
demographics particularly.
And, certainly, within the Service, once you have been
inducted, or whatever the case may be, it is all governed by
standards of behavior, which have not changed. So we don't
consider in the Navy, based on the planning that we have done
and the surveys we have done, that it will have a significant
impact at all.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you.
General Tryon. Ma'am, I think today's all-volunteer force
is a tremendous success, and I wouldn't anticipate any changes
to that in the future.
Mrs. Hartzler. I would concur we have a wonderful force
right now, but I am very concerned that we in this time of war
are getting ready to change this radical policy where, just
like you said, General, we do not know the implication of it,
and so I have a lot of concerns. But thank you for your
answers. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. Thank the lady for her questions.
The gentleman from New York, Mr. Gibson, is recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. Gibson. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I am going to make a comment as far as long-term readiness
and then I would like to reengage the near-term readiness issue
that we were dialoguing about earlier.
And talking about readiness, of course, it begs the
question, ``Ready for what?'' One of the things that General
Bolger mentioned in his early set of remarks is quite
remarkable that we have got soldiers right now in a hundred
countries. He made the point on time to get missions done and
the need for staying power.
When I'm back home in the district, my constituents really
don't understand Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is my
challenge. I take that on. I explain why it is that we need to
stay. We can't afford to start a war that we don't finish. So
it is my leadership responsibility to follow through on that.
But I think going forward we need to have--we, the country
need to have a national dialogue. I think everyone on this
committee, regardless of party, we are fully committed. We are
going to protect our cherished way of life, but there are a
variety of views and opinions as to what that means.
And I am of the mind that we have too many requirements. We
are asking too much of our military right now. And, you know,
while I think we could all pass a civics test that we are a
republic, not an empire, to me, when I look at the facts, we
evidence an empire in terms of where we are laid down.
So, you know, going forward, this is a conversation I am
having with my colleagues right now as we look towards
completing, successfully completing our objectives in Iraq and
Afghanistan. I think that the time is right to take a serious
look at what does it mean to protect our cherished way of life
as we go forward.
I would like to reengage the topic of near-term readiness.
I appreciate all of the responses that I received on that and
certainly acknowledge the readiness that was displayed as it
relates to moving forces towards any kind of potential response
in Libya.
But with regard to the Global Force Management Board, it is
my view that we have got risk. We have got significant risk as
it relates to the Global Response Force, the GRF. And, of
course, that is in large measure because we are resourcing the
current fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But please tell me a little bit more about how you go
through that on a joint level and how do you track the status
of readiness among the forces and what commitment do we have in
the out-years as far as exercises to ensure that we have the
capability--because I think the general was getting ready to
make a remark about the C-17 availability.
And so the question, really, did you know--you probably
did--did you know we had this shortfall, that if we got called,
we weren't going to have the capability to move the Global
Response Force? And going forward, how much situational
awareness do we have about this challenge to readiness, to
joint readiness deployability? Thanks.
General Carlisle. Yes, sir. Thanks. I appreciate that
question. I think it is. It is a question--and you are exactly
right--it is a question of managing risk and ready to do what.
And that is your point, so I would reiterate that.
I think in the case of when we look at what is demanded of
the United States military today, realizing what we have done
for the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is risk out
there. There is risk to every part of our force. I don't think
there is a part of force that is not at risk.
We spend an exhaustive amount of time, this crowd in
particular in the ops deps tanks, and we go through Global
Force Management and hard-to-source solutions, and it is a
joint solution. And we do turn to one another. And if it is
direct support C-130s trying to backfill CH-47s as much as we
can, we can't do it across the board, because they don't go to
the same place all the time. But we do that.
So we spend a lot of time working joint solutions to issues
of how we manage the force in the near-term. And to be honest,
and I think it has been brought up before, with our Army and
Marine brethren in their engagements that they have had over
the last decade in a lot of cases, some of that has been Air
Force and Navy backfill, whether it is joint expeditionary
taskings or individual augmentees. And that is exactly what we
need to do.
And I think that part of the risk, that we have to realize
is that we have incredible men and women in our military, and
they are pretty adaptable and flexible. And we can take a
computer technician from Lackland Air Force Base or Syracuse,
and you can send him to do a joint expeditionary tasking in
support of a convoy and they do great work for you.
So we did look at joint solutions. We did look across
Services and the synergy. We can do that. And we look to take
advantage of our greatest asset, which is our people and their
flexibility and adaptability.
General Bolger. I think, sir, building on what Hawk said,
the jointness and the people aspect to me are the two great
multipliers we have that allows us to get more out of the
numbers of people and planes and ships and tanks and all the
other things we have. And we have to look for opportunities to
build on that. Anything we can do should always look to empower
our folks.
And I think one of the aspects that a little additional
dwell time is going give surely for the Army is the ability to
get some of our folks back into professional schooling and some
of these broadening experiences where they may have a chance to
come over, be an intern for you or something like that, just
give them a bigger picture than the world of kicking down the
next door in a village in Afghanistan. And then that part is
important, but got to get that broader view.
And I think as that generation, with all the skills they
are showing and the multiple talents that Hawk referred to, as
they take charge of our military, I think we are going to see
them come up with some of these solutions. So, you know, it
doesn't have to be top down, sir.
Mr. Gibson. Yes, and I appreciate those responses, too.
And, Chairman, I am just going to make about 10 to 15
seconds to close it up.
The thing that is concerning to me is that as we look at
the potential threats that we face and we look at the Global
Response Force and we think about in terms of joint command and
control, joint fires, sustainment capability, mobility and
strategic mobility, I think you would agree we have got some
risk in terms of identifying the joint forces required to
address emerging circumstances.
Now, in situations where we can move a fleet and we have a
ground force with a highly trained, motivated, disciplined
Marine Corps, that is great. But when we have to go deeper,
when we have to reach across and maybe go to the airborne
forces, we need a way to convey that force. We need a way to
sustain that force and to complement that force. And it is that
joint packaging that has got me concerned in the near-term.
I know that that is on your radar screen. And I think it is
important we communicate risk as we go forward in the near-term
and as we bridge towards what I hope is a more judicious view
of the long-term. And we are going to protect this cherished
way of life.
I yield back. Thanks very much.
Mr. Forbes. Thank the gentleman.
And the next individual for questions is the gentleman from
Arkansas.
And before he comes back in, General Tryon, I have a
question for you, if I could, on pre-positioning of our stocks.
How important is that to the Marines, because one of the things
that we are hearing today is that that is not that important,
that we have just sustainment vessels, we can pull them back,
and we can be back to the fight in a week or two. You have seen
that firsthand. How important are those prepositioned stocks?
General Tryon. Sir, thank you. Thank you for that question.
The Maritime Preposition Force is comprised of three squadrons
that are forward-deployed around the world--one in the Med
[Mediterranean], one in the Pacific, and one in the Indian
Ocean.
For the Marine Corps and for the program that we have,
these are capability sets and not simply floating warehouses
that you would draw supplies from. They are intentionally
designed to support fly-in echelons and marry up so that
formations can quickly assemble in a reception staging area and
then complete their onward movement and take on whatever
mission that might be there.
This is a strategic program, in my judgment. Having these
forces, these assets, these resources forward-deployed I think
is fundamentally important, not just to the organizational
constructs that the Marine Corps has and how we operate with
them, but I think to the combatant commanders as well.
It provides the combatant commanders with what is
singularly their most important--it addresses singularly what
their most important concern is, and that is responsiveness.
And by having maritime preposition assets forward-deployed, we
have a far greater ability to respond in time to a crisis or a
contingency.
Mr. Forbes. And two questions on that. First one is how
important is time to you in that response capability?
General Tryon. Sir, I think time is always of the essence,
you know, from the Marine Corps' ethos, First to Fight, we
can't get there fast enough. And so we want to make sure that
we are where we need to be with what we need to have in order
to carry the day. And the way we are organized and equipped and
the way the resources that are located aboard the Maritime
Prepositioning Squadrons, or the way they are arranged, they
complement our capability to forward deploy quickly.
Mr. Forbes. If we did not have those stocks prepositioned
and we had the ships back in homeport, is there a difference in
timing between just the sail time to be able to get to wherever
the destination is? In other words, how much time does it take
to assemble the stocks that you would need on those vessels
before they could move forward?
General Tryon. Sir, if the squadron is, for instance, back
in the continental United States, East or West Coast,
obviously, you would have to deal with whatever the tyranny of
distance is between departing the United States and moving to
wherever the crisis or the contingency area might be.
Providing that the ships would remain loaded with the
stockages that we're required to support, that would minimize
delay in moving them forward. But when we sacrifice time, we
assume risk.
Mr. Forbes. What if they did not keep those ships loaded?
General Tryon. Sir, that would then require additional time
in order to be able to load the vessels and----
Mr. Forbes. Could that be several weeks' time?
General Tryon. Sir, it would depend on the squadron, but it
would take a matter of time. And I can get back to you and tell
you exactly what the load time for those--for a squadron might
be. It depends on port facilities. It depends on the type of
ship. There are a number of factors associated with that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 87.]
Mr. Forbes. The gentleman from Arkansas is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Griffin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for having
this very informative hearing.
Thank you all for your service. I appreciate it very much.
I appreciate you, General Carlisle, mentioning in C-130s. You
know we have a lot of great ones in Little Rock in my district.
General Bolger, I wanted to ask you, when you are dealing
with the transition from a strategic Reserve to operational
Reserve, can you talk a little bit about how you are going to
balance the Guard's role in the States? That is particularly
important in a State like Arkansas, where we have a lot of
tornadoes and storms and things like that. And I know that they
will continue to respond to several incidents like that.
But if you could provide a little guidance, I am
particularly interested in the training balance and how they
accommodate that in light of a shift to an operational Reserve?
General Bolger. Sir, that is a great question, and I think
it comes down to the fundamental nature of the Guard having
arisen out of the militia tradition of the United States,
always ready for home service and then, you know, like the old
minutemen, and then deploying overseas when necessary.
Now, Guard in particular and our Reserve, too, have done a
great job in that for the last decade for the Army. You
mentioned the term ``operational.'' In the old days, the Guard
really and the Reserve were a strategic Reserve. They were the
force to be called on when things really got big and maybe in
the Cold War where we were looking at a major World War III-
type scale of conflict.
So now we use about 70,000 guardsmen and reservists on
Active Duty today every day, really keeping them on Active
Duty, a good number deployed overseas. And so, how do we
balance that with the Governor's needs and expectations that
their Guard would be available in the event of a state of
emergency or a natural disaster?
Two things we have done that I think are helping us in that
area, sir. The first is trying to get the Guard and Reserve,
and the Guard in particular, for State duty on a predictable
schedule of deployment, which is to say about 4 years at home
for every year deployed.
If a Governor knew that he or she would have that Guard
available for 4 years out of 5, then they know at least that 80
percent of the time is covered with a trained, ready unit that
knows the State and that lives there and is ready to go. And I
think our Guard has done really, really well on these homeland
tasks.
And then, what about the year where they are going to get
mobilized, deployed, and deployed overseas? I think this brings
us to the second point. Secretary McHugh and General Casey
actually commissioned a study led by General Dennis Reimer, one
of our former Army chiefs of staff. Lieutenant General Roger
Schultz, Lieutenant General Helmly helped them out with this.
They were key leaders in the Guard and Reserve.
And they came back and they said, you know, we need to look
at a way to create more of a total force for homeland missions
as well. Maybe we can see a future with some changes to how we
task organize where the Governor, he or she might have able if
the Guard brigade was deployed, they could have Army Reserve
forces resident in that State, which are Federal forces and
Reserve. They could have active Army units registered in that
State. And all that would come together.
And, sir, of course we have had some great and hard-won
lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, from Hurricanes Gustav
and Ike, from the flooding as recently as this month in the
United States, where we have seen some opportunities there to
really get a better homeland force.
And, sir, I would underscore that in the direction we
received from the President and the Secretary of Defense,
homeland defense is the number one responsibility of the
Department of Defense. And normally, our forces are not doing
that every day, but they are all available and should an event
occur in the homeland, just as we saw after 9/11, everything
will have that direction until that event is dealt with, sir.
Mr. Griffin. Sure. I got in the Reserve in 1996, am still
in the Reserve now, and I can tell you the clear difference
between the 1996 strategic Reserve and the operational now, and
particularly in terms of readiness. We call this the Readiness
Subcommittee. I don't think I have ever heard the word
``readiness'' until post 9/11 in the Reserve, and everything
changed. So I know exactly what you are talking about there.
I want to ask you about an issue that is more about
personnel, not equipment, and that is OERs, Officer
Evaluations--to some extent, NCOERs [Non-Commissioned Officer
Evaluation Reports] as well for noncommissioned officers, but I
am particularly interested in our leaders and how they are
rated. I am waiting on an OER now as I am leaving my Reserve
unit, and I have written and rated folks, so I am intimately
familiar with OERs.
And there was a great article in The Atlantic magazine
about a month ago, and it talked about John Nagl and a bunch of
the really sharp military leaders who have gotten out of the
Army. And I know that we have taken steps, particularly in the
last decade or 5 years, to be more innovative to encourage the
cliche ``outside the box'' thinking. I saw that firsthand when
I went to Fort Dix to phase one of ILE [Intermediate Level
Education].
Instead of a lecture format where you just sit, take notes
and listen to an officer, you sit in a sort of a horseshoe, you
are given all these hypotheticals, you are encouraged to think
and to dialogue and to----
It was actually surprising to me to see that kind of
freedom in thinking and in structure in the military. And I was
encouraged by it because I thought that it was teaching folks
how to think instead of how to memorize some things that they
would probably soon forget.
So, I know that you all have--that there has been an
evolution. I know we are making progress. But I think the way
that people are rated--and I am sort of laying it as a
predicate so you can comment on it--I think the way people are
rated and then the way they are assigned is of concern to me.
The Atlantic article mentioned that, first of all, as I
have seen on the OER side, you see just all sorts of inflation
where no one gets any negative comments, because a negative
comment, God forbid, completely ruins their career.
So you get at least good things said about you. And then if
you did a really good job, you get extraordinary things said
about you, but nothing bad, because then your career is dead,
particularly as an officer, particularly as a field-grade
officer. So the artificiality of the OER process is a concern
to me.
On the assignment side, what concerns me is--and the
Atlantic article, I commend it to you, if you haven't read it--
but it talks about the fact that commanders don't have the
ability to develop relationships with individual soldiers and
seek those individual soldiers out on a routine basis for
assignment.
You get to know a soldier, you see that they are well-
suited for this position or that position, you seek them out,
and say, ``This is the one I want.'' Now there may be some of
that at your level. You probably have the ability to get
whoever you want working for you.
But down at, particularly, at the company-grade level and
moving into the field-grade level, those assignments do
sometimes seem random. They don't seem connected with the
history of the individuals involved. And so I would just ask,
if you could, to comment on that.
And I would welcome anybody's comments on this, because I
think that a lot of these leaders in the Army go on to lead in
the civilian world. Sometimes, though, we lose them too soon
from the military, and they get out not because they are ready
to get out and they have had a fulfilling career, but many
times, they are ready to get out because they are frustrated
with the system.
And if you would address that--sorry for the long
question--but if you would address that, I would appreciate it.
General Bolger. Well, sir, I think it is actually a very
fundamental question because the military is all about people.
And our goal, as you know, is when anybody joins the Army, we
see every soldier, every private as a potential leader.
And whether they stay in and become noncommissioned
officers, warrant officers or commissioned officers or whether
they do their time and get out with an honorable discharge and
go to civil life, in any case, we think we have some leader
development responsibilities to everyone. And we really do.
So, even in our basic training, even in our very low level
training, there are some of those folks who get leadership
responsibilities. And we encourage that, because as we have
seen over and over in the current fight, it really is a couple
of privates first class or a young sergeant who are often
having to make some very, very critical decisions that can have
strategic implications.
You mentioned evaluation, our officer evaluation. The
current one has been around for about over 20 years, and we are
about due to relook it. In fact, General Casey has directed
that we come back with some options on some changes we may need
to make, and maybe expand the way we do evaluations.
At least for the Army, we are still pretty traditional in
the sense that you are evaluated by your chain of command, your
immediate commander and then commander one level up. There is
some thought that maybe you need to get some peer feedback
involved in that. There is some thought that maybe we need to
hear from subordinates, you know, get what would be called in
industry a 360-degree view.
Now how do you do that in a hierarchical organization with
a uniformed court of military justice--we have to work our way
through that. But I think we have got an innovative enough
force, so we can come up with some options there, sir. And
since you have got some views on that, I will take back to our
task force to come see you, because you have got some unique
perspectives where we are at now.
Sir, the final comment had to do sort of with, for want of
a better term, what makes a young person stay in the military?
And the answer is unique to every man and woman, but I think
for the people who reach that crossroad when they decide to
stay in or get out, it really has to do with one thing. ``Am I
making a difference? Does the Army think that what I am doing
is doing something?''
I think some people think it is because of money or because
of rank or because of getting an award. I don't think that is
it. I think folks, they come in and they swear in front of the
American flag, and they know it is an important task they do
when they put on a uniform. And they want to make that
contribution. And I think it is incumbent on us in our leader
development to give them that opportunity to use their talents,
sir.
Mr. Forbes. General, thank you for that.
And we thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his service.
And if you have any other thoughts, if you could get back with
the gentleman, I know he would love to work with you on doing
that.
Mr. Griffin. I would like to work with you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. General, we just have a couple of questions
left. And I would just like to--since you got the microphone
warmed up, General Bolger, I will just ask you. You have a
unique perspective on jointness--that was the question that was
asked a little bit earlier--because you were Chief Strategy
Division J-8, and later you were Director of Strategy &
Analysis J-5 in Joint Forces Command.
How important is jointness to the Army? And when the flag
goes down on the Joint Forces Command, who will have the legal
authority to put together the teams within the Services that
the Joint Forces Command currently have?
General Bolger. Sir, I think that is a great question.
Jointness for us really--and this has been long-standing in the
American military, I mean, you can go all the way back to our
origins when we were first working with the Army and the Navy
and the Marines and then got the Air Force as an independent
Service after World War II--it is absolutely critical.
No single Service in the United States can carry out a task
by itself. We need the team, and we are representative of a
much larger team, obviously. You are right, sir, I had the
privilege to serve at Joint Forces Command and to see that in
action, because that command is charged with really enhancing
and strengthening jointness across the force.
And I think the proof is in the operations. I mean, there
are things that we have been able to carry out since the
Goldwater-Nichols Reform with Joint Forces Command, in many
cases providing leadership, and the Services themselves working
well together under the Joint Staff and the OSD [Office of the
Secretary of Defense]. I think we have been able to achieve a
lot.
And I think, sir, your question that you asked that is
really important is, as Joint Forces Command is disestablished
and their responsibilities are put elsewhere, who really brings
the team together? And, sir, my understanding of the law is
that the statutory authority rests with the Secretary of
Defense, always has, I mean, and obviously, with the President
as well.
Mr. Forbes. The Secretary obviously can't do that on a day-
to-day basis like the Joint Forces Command did.
General Bolger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Forbes. Does it rest anywhere else?
General Bolger. Sir, it does. Combatant commanders have
that authority right now.
Mr. Forbes. Do they shift between Services?
General Bolger. They do. For example, in Central Command,
General Mattis can make task organization changes as necessary.
General Ham, who just took over Africa Command, is making some
significant ones right now, as he postures for potential
contingencies in North Africa. So that is a combatant
commander. That responsibility is delegated to them from the
President and the Secretary of Defense.
And that is one of the reasons Joint Forces Command in
particular was a command that had a great deal of utility in
the time that it was there.
We are currently in the middle of preparing plans to make
sure that the core capabilities of Joint Forces Command are
preserved and I think, sir, we may have to come back to you all
through the, obviously, through our Service departments and
through the Secretary of Defense on potential authorities or
something that may need to shift, as that organization
transitions from being a combatant command to whatever it is
when we are complete with this execution.
Mr. Forbes. One last question on that, you talked about the
teams. One of the teams that has been put together very
uniquely has been the team of Joint Forces Command in terms of
their ability to do jointness. Do you know of any other place
in the world that has that unique set of individuals that have
that kind of experience and expertise in doing that?
General Bolger. Sir, I think you make a really good point.
It is unique in the United States Armed Forces. It is unique
worldwide among our allies. As you know many of our allies come
through Supreme Allied Command transformation, which is
headquartered in Norfolk, to work with us in that joint
environment and to understand our hard-won lessons that go all
the way back to the World Wars and such, what we have learned
about operating in that joint environment.
That workforce that lives in that area is very, very
unique, and I can tell you at least in the planning that we are
doing so far, sir, that is a strong consideration. How do we
keep the core of that team together? How do we maintain that
hard-won expertise? How do we continue to build it for the
future? Because jointness will be just as important a year from
now or 5 years from now or 10 years from now as it is today,
sir.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
General Carlisle, just a quick question for you. You saw
the charts we had on China and one of the things we are worried
about is the modernization of our air force. You have to watch
those airmen get into those planes and defend freedom around
the world.
How concerned are you with readiness capabilities when we
look at the growing modernization of China's military and what
should we be expecting for that in the next 5, 10, 15 years?
General Carlisle. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Great
question. And I think my brother here, my shipmate Bruce, said
to add this. You know certainly in the air component or the
cross-domain space component, cyberspace component, air,
maritime, we look at where they are putting so many of their
resources, and it is a big concern because for the last 10
years our focus has been in Iraq and Afghanistan and theirs has
been on modernizing.
I mean, it is a statement of fact. And they are doing it in
their subsurface. They are doing it in their surface fleet.
They are doing it in their air. They are doing it in their
space and counter-space capability as well as in the known
cyberspace.
So it is very big concern, and I think Admiral Willard
probably thinks about it every day when he gets up and every
night when he goes to bed.
I think that with respect to readiness, I think there is
qualitative advantage that we still possess, despite their
rolling out of their newest airplane. And in our legacy and new
systems is our current hedge against what they are doing. I
believe our future--a successful F-35 program for all the
Services, a successful long-range strike capability, a
successful SSBN and DDG fleet--all those things are critical as
we move forward.
And this is a time I believe with respect to future
readiness that as we make this transition and as we back out
the forces out of Iraq and we look to investments in the future
and given the economy and the deficit that we have to deal
with, we have got to do those right in how we modernize into
the future so that we can still maintain our influence
throughout the world that we have today.
So, again, I mentioned the other day to you, Mr. Chairman,
you can't make them 10 feet tall, because they are not. But you
also can't disregard them. There is an area there where you
have to pay very, very close attention to what they are doing
and why they are doing it and what we will do to maintain our
capability to influence and maintain our capability, in
particular in that part of the world.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, General.
One last question from me then I think Ms. Bordallo has one
final question.
Admiral, one of the concerns we all have--and you and I
have talked about this--is with ship maintenance. And we are
looking at fiscal year 2010. We had a $200 million shortfall.
We don't have a fiscal year 2011. Fiscal year 2012, we are
looking about $367 million shortfall.
At what point, with the all of the surge time that you were
talking about earlier with the deferred maintenance that we
have, do we start becoming concerned that we need to have a
reevaluation of the service life of the vessels that we have?
Admiral Clingan. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the question.
We obviously look to share risk across the Navy's entire
portfolio. And one of the areas that we are reluctant to share
risk in is the maintenance, because we are absolutely dedicated
to get our fleet to its expected service life.
Since 2009 through the 2012 budget, we have added $800
million to the maintenance program. We have shifted manpower
from staffs and units back to the ships themselves and to the
shore-based maintenance so that we can address this. We have
increased our planning capacity, and we have developed class
maintenance plans, and within that, individual ship plans.
So, we have put ourselves on a path which didn't begin this
year, but, frankly, a year or 2 ago, to make sure that we can
plan and execute maintenance with more precision and finely
tuned to get those ships into the condition they need to be.
That doesn't mean that the shortfall doesn't concern us.
And as we look at a couple of drivers, the continuing
resolution will put us behind the expected maintenance and,
therefore, the material condition of some number of ships I
mentioned. Twenty-nine of 85 availabilities, if the continuing
resolution goes through the balance of this year, will not be
accomplished. That will back wave or backlog into what we had
in terms of shortfalls for fiscal year 2012.
And as we look out to the coming years, that was why I
mentioned earlier the Secretary's funding profile in regard to
lessening the increase this year and then flattening in the
out-years was what we thought was a righteous contribution to
the Nation's deficit challenges.
If we were to find a decline in the DOD or Navy budget in
this particular case, we would be concerned again about our
ability to maintain the ships and get them to service life,
considering the balance of the portfolio that has equal
requirements as well.
Mr. Forbes. Just want to just elaborate on that answer just
a little bit if I could.
And then Ms. Bordallo, you have the final question.
Explain to me, if you would, the impact in terms of lost
maintenance capabilities in dollars that we would have, if the
continuing resolution continues.
And then, help me explain to other members of Congress, who
tell me the Navy is coming in and telling us that they are
going to have this enormous problem on the CR, if they don't
get that--if that continues with maintenance--and that is going
to horrible--but they are not so worried about the $567 million
shortfall that was budgeted and the impact that that is going
to have.
And maybe I am not articulate on my questioning, but help
me bridge those gaps.
Admiral Clingan. Yes, sir. Every budget, of course, is
built on the preceding year. And so while we might, as we
manage material readiness risk across our fleet, making sure
that the ships that we deploy and the aircrafts that we push
forward are prepared to do the mission in terms of their
material condition, we have a backlog of some maintenance that
has accumulated for a variety of reasons over the last 3 years.
One of them has been, as I mentioned earlier, time. As we
have operated at surge tempo, both training time and
maintenance time has been constrained. That has caused us to
reduce the scope of maintenance done on ships, sometimes to
forego doing the maintenance all together, and there has been a
shortfall in the funding of the maintenance as well.
But that is a manageable risk, as we work just in time to
get the capacity we need for deployments and for our surge
obligations, in case of unforeseen circumstances or crises.
When you then walk into the continuing resolution, it takes
that risk that we are managing temporarily year to year, and it
adjusts the calculus.
As I mentioned, we did not anticipate 29 of 85
availabilities not being completed. And so that is an
exacerbation of the problem of 29 ships that didn't get
maintenance that we expected that would. And then, that, of
course, for the budget under consideration today, fiscal year
2012, the $367 million shortfall in availabilities, again, is
managing risk across a whole number of considerations.
But that additional 29 plus the availabilities in terms of
scope and number that we were planning on carrying in 2012 is
now disproportionately risky. It doesn't mean it has become
intolerable, but it is carrying more risk than we anticipated.
And, of course, we would like to mitigate that by some budget
solution for 2011 and then get on with 2012.
Mr. Forbes. If you have the opportunity to do it, I don't
expect you to do it today, but at some point in time, could you
supply our committee with a list of what maintenance that $560
million would incorporate? In other words, what are we doing?
Because everybody's tolerable risk maybe somebody else's
intolerable risk.
And we would just like to take a look at that, to get a
snapshot of what risk we are taking by not doing that
maintenance. Is that is something that you could do at some
particular point in time for us for the record?
Admiral Clingan. I would be pleased to.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 93.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Admiral.
Now, I would like to recognize the distinguished ranking
member for her final question.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And, of course, you know coming from Guam and with the
military buildup you know my questions will be centered to
General Tryon.
General, can you address concerns about training
capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. The QDR stated,
``Finally, the United States seeks to develop additional
opportunities for joint and combined training in the Western
Pacific that respond to the need for constant readiness of U.S.
forces to carry out joint operations.''
So, that is the written statement there. Now, one of my
concerns, General, I have long expressed, and, of course, Guam
is looking forward to the 8,600 marines from Okinawa. We are
welcoming the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Forces. And as you
probably know, these are the same forces that liberated Guam 65
years ago, so our people look at it as a homecoming.
But I have long expressed my concern about the preferred
alternative location for the firing ranges on Guam. Although
the problematic agreement has been signed by our governor a
couple of days ago, there are still concerns about this
property.
And I, along with Senator Webb, have urged that DOD to look
more closely at Tinian for the firing ranges. And that is our
neighboring island in the Northern Marianas. The Marine
requirement seemed to have shifted since the beginning of the
EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] process in 2006, so I
remain skeptical that the land on Guam needed for the range can
be leased by the Department of Defense.
Now, what I wanted to get from you today in a statement for
the record is--what is it? We have never really received any
specific information about why is it more advantageous for
training on Guam versus Tinian. And I would think that more
virtual urban-style training could be done in Guam and live
fire in Tinian. Could you comment on that?
General Tryon. Yes, ma'am. Thanks for your question.
Obviously, we are still early in the implementation of the AIP
[Agreed Implementation Plan] process.
The Commandant's intent in the Pacific is really
threefold--first, to ensure that the marines are properly
positioned in the Pacific writ large to respond to whatever
threat and to support our national security objectives and that
wherever marines are, that they have the ability to properly
train in order to be prepared for those contingencies and, last
but certainly not least, that wherever marines are, that their
quality of life meets standards and promotes a high state of
morale and readiness.
Guam is clearly strategically located in the Pacific region
and offers unique advantages to forward-deployed forces that
provide us with a flexible response. We are indeed working with
the government of Guam right now with respect to ranges and our
ability to train.
We have recently entertained, I think as you know, the
governor of Guam and had the opportunity of taking him down to
Quantico to show him some of our operational ranges and provide
him with a perspective as to how we operate our ranges, the
safety measures and margins that are associated with range
operation, and how we cohabit side-by-side with the civilian
communities that adjoin our various bases.
The Department of the Navy is our lead in conducting the
dialogue with Guam. The guiding principles that the Under
Secretary is using in his dialogue is that first and foremost,
OneGuam, as you know, that we will coordinate projects that
meet both the Marine Corps' needs as well as the needs of the
government of Guam in terms of infrastructure and the like;
Green Guam that will protect the natural resources and promote
energy efficiency; 24/7 access to Pagat, into Pagat Cave, the
cultural sites that are on the eastern side of the island; and
that we will also minimize the footprint that the Marine Corps
has on the island with the goal of a net negative land
acquisition strategy.
At this point in time, we are still stepping through the
pros and cons of what kind of a range can be constructed
adjacent to Route 15 on Guam.
The downside of having a range off the island is a couple
of things. First, marines would not have immediate access to a
range or training area, which again goes back to the question
of time and risk in the event that we have to deploy quickly.
Field-firing weapons and preparing for a rapid move would
require close and ready access to ranges.
Transportation to off-island training creates a time
requirement. It generates additional operational and
maintenance expense. And at this point in time, we haven't
conducted enough of an assessment on any of the off-island--the
potential off-island training sites to understand whether they
can even meet our training requirements or not.
So, it is very much a work in progress, ma'am. And I don't
want to not answer your question, but I also don't want to make
a statement that would be conjecture.
Ms. Bordallo. So, in other words, no definite decisions
have been made, and as you said it is a work in progress.
General Tryon. It is, indeed, a work in progress, ma'am.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, General. Thank you.
Mr. Forbes. Admiral, Generals, we want to thank you for
your service to our country. Thank you so much for what you do
to train and protect our men and women in uniform. We really
appreciate you taking time to be with us today.
I think I speak for the Ranking Member, our door is open to
you at any time that there is something you see that we need to
be doing to help the readiness of our country. We just have an
open invitation, and we just appreciate your help in helping us
do that job we need to do.
Thank you, and this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:39 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 10, 2011
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
March 10, 2011
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. FORBES
Admiral Clingan. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.] [See page 39.]
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. HARTZLER
General Carlisle. No facility changes are anticipated in order to
implement the repeal of ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'' Therefore, there are
no expected costs. [See page 27.]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 10, 2011
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. FORBES
Mr. Forbes. General Casey said at last week's posture hearing 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? Can the Army rapidly respond to an unplanned event--or
several should they occur simultaneously? How much strategic risk are
we accepting with these rotational force models that provide ``just-in-
time'' readiness?
General Bolger. The Army's rotational force generation model is
designed to provide strategic flexibility and depth to meet unexpected
contingencies. The high demand for forces over the past nine years
consumed the readiness of forces as quickly as it was generated and
caused the Army to accumulate additional risk due to limited strategic
depth. Restoring balance to the Army is the critical first step to
reduce strategic risk. The Army's plan includes a decrease in the
global demands for forces, full implementation of our force generation
model (including favorable deployment to dwell ratios), and assured
access to the Reserve Component. The Army rapidly responds to unplanned
events through the use of its Surge Force. If there are several events,
the Army will utilize the Surge Force that is trained/ready for
contingency missions. The Army has low level strategic risk with our
supply based force generation model because it generates progressive
readiness across the Total Force.
Mr. Forbes. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready for the
types of threats described by the witnesses at last week's hearing? If
not, what should we be doing?
General Bolger. The Army remains a resilient, professional, and
combat-seasoned force. However, operational demands continue to strain
our Soldiers, Civilians, Families, equipment, and infrastructure.
Deployment-to-dwell ratios remain high, putting stress on the All-
Volunteer Force and hampering the Army's ability to train for full
spectrum operations. The Army's plan to reduce this risk to the force
is contingent upon achieving sustainable deploy-to-dwell ratios over
the long-term, maintaining assured access to the Reserve Component,
adequately providing for Soldiers, Civilians, and Families, and
receiving reliable, timely, and consistent funding.
To ensure we are ready and to restore strategic depth to the Army,
our leadership is working to establish manageable deploy-to-dwell
ratios. This will not only provide adequate time for Soldiers to
recover and equipment to be repaired, but also provide the time to
conduct full spectrum training so we are prepared for the range of
missions mentioned last week. Maintaining access to the Reserve
Component will assist us in achieving favorable deploy-to-dwell ratios
and bring skill sets and experience essential to be successful in these
complex environments.
With the demands placed on Soldiers and Families, we must also take
care to ensure we provide them a quality of life commensurate with the
quality of their sacrifice. Providing adequate reintegration time and
assistance, ensuring they have a high quality of life on Army
installations, and meeting other health and family needs will be
essential in sustaining an All-Volunteer Force by having Soldiers and
Families continue to choose to stay Army.
Effective repair and replacement of equipment after a deployment is
also vital to maintaining readiness. Currently, the Army spends
approximately $11 billion each fiscal year on procurement and
maintenance actions for reset of a redeploying force of approximately
150,000 Soldiers and their equipment. Because of the large reset
requirement driven by wartime demands, the pace with which equipment
can be retrograded and repaired, and the critical need to reconstitute
our prepositioned stocks of equipment, the Army will continue to
require supplemental Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding for
reset for 2 to 3 years upon completion of military operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
These measures will help ensure we are ready by completing the
rebalancing of our Army and restoring strategic depth and capacity
necessary to provide a sustainable flow of trained and ready forces for
these missions at a tempo that is sustainable for our All-Volunteer
Force.
Mr. Forbes. While I understand that a rotational readiness model,
such as the Army's Force Generation Model, enables ready forces for
Afghanistan and Iraq, it comes at the expense of the non-deployed
forces. What are the strategic implications to the readiness of the
force and our ability to respond to the types of threats the witnesses
described in the hearing last week?
General Bolger. The rotational model allows the Army to generate
readiness to meet both current demands and unforeseen contingencies.
The Mission Force consists of available pool units that satisfy current
combatant command demands such as Operations New Dawn, Enduring
Freedom, Global Response Force, and theater posture on the Korean
peninsula. In steady-state, the generated will be sufficient to satisfy
Department of Defense's projected needs. The Surge Force consists of
selected units at high readiness levels that are available to respond
to unforeseen threats. The Surge Forces are sized to meet Army
requirements for the early phases of the Department of Defense's
operational contingency plans, an additional small scale contingency,
and homeland security event; additional strategic forces will flow for
later phases.
Mr. Forbes. 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?
General Bolger. The Army has no equities. This is best addressed by
the United States Navy and the United States Air Force.
Mr. Forbes. How is Congress to assess the long-term readiness
requirements for the force when the QDR failed to provide the long-
range, 20-year assessment required by Title 10?
General Bolger. This question is perhaps better suited for the
Secretary of Defense or the Under Secretaries of Defense for Policy or
Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. However, the 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review (QDR) considered the 20-year timeframe directed in
legislation, but focused the bulk of its efforts about 5-10 years in
the future where the DoD can begin to make a difference now with near-
term investment decisions. As recent events have demonstrated, our
ability to clearly and precisely foresee challenges to our national
security is spotty, at best. The Secretary of Defense recently
commented that our ability to predict the future is perfect--perfectly
wrong. So it would make sense for us to explore and consider what
challenges and opportunities could arise over the 20-year timeframe of
a QDR, but focus the bulk of our rigorous analysis and professional
judgment on near-term and mid-term issues. A good amount of our
Research and Development investments, including Science and Technology,
should be focused on developing new capabilities to preserve our
competitive advantage in all domains (air, land, sea, space, and
cyberspace) throughout the 20-year QDR timeframe.
Mr. Forbes. Timing and concurrency of events in the analysis must
be examined by assuming more time between demand on the force, the
requirements on the force are lowered (i.e., two near-simultaneous
major combat operations across the globe require a different force
structure than if the force planners assume the exact same events were
to occur 30 days apart). In your view, are we ready to respond to
multiple contingencies occurring in a near-simultaneous fashion?
General Bolger. Over the past several years, operational demands
have exceeded the Army's sustainable supply of forces, which has
challenged the Army's ability to maintain readiness for multiple
additional contingencies. These current operational demands have
included Operations New Dawn and Enduring Freedom and other
requirements such as deterrence posture on the Korean peninsula and the
Global Response Force. As demand approaches a more sustainable level,
the Army will build increased capacity to respond to additional
contingencies. The Army's rotational model accommodates this increased
capacity through a Surge Force consisting of units in training at
elevated readiness levels. Another factor that will increase the Army's
ability to respond to additional unforeseen contingencies is longer
unit dwell times. Longer dwell times enable units to train for the full
spectrum of operations rather than focusing on specific missions such
as counterinsurgency.
Mr. Forbes. We are all very concerned with development and
procurement costs of military ships, airplanes and vehicles. However,
GAO has routinely stated that more than 75% of the total ownership
costs of weapons systems are associated with the operation and
sustainment of those assets. What can this subcommittee do to ensure
that we can afford to operate and maintain the equipment we've already
paid for?
General Bolger. The Army has a very structured process to estimate
life cycle costs to ensure program requirements and resources are
identified to operate and maintain equipment. These costs are
continually revisited during program execution and reviews and actions
are taken to address operation and maintenance costs and requirements.
These requirements are then reflected in our annual budget submissions.
Our fleet management strategy/modernization plans consider the
viability of our fleets in terms of capabilities and conditions and
result in the proper repair or modernization strategies to support
readiness requirements, fleet reliability and costs. Additionally, some
programs like Condition Based Maintenance + provide significant
enablers (sensors on equipment and condition reporting) to identify
maintenance conditions and requirements that reduce costs while
improving fleet availability and readiness.
Mr. Forbes. What do you feel is DoD's role in investing in
alternative sources of energy? If so, which types of alternative energy
(fuels, renewable energy, etc.), and do you believe the DoD is doing
enough?
General Bolger. Mr. Chairman, the Army's role in the development of
alternative energy must be done with the goal of building a robust
energy portfolio that assures its ability to perform missions around
the globe. Energy plays an important role in command and control,
mobility, endurance, resilience and protection capabilities for Army
forces conducting the range of military operations in often remote
locations worldwide. Likewise, energy is critical to supporting
operations such as space, intelligence, information and communications,
often in more developed but nevertheless vulnerable locations, both at
home and abroad. In order to ensure that it is able to meet mission
requirements now and into the future, the Army must pursue alternative
energy sources, particularly those that can be generated locally or
regionally to deployed forces. In addition, the Army must pursue
research, development and fielding of associated technologies such as
storage and intelligent control/distribution to strengthen its secure
energy portfolio. Decisions on development of specific technologies,
and system designs, by the Army must take into account factors of
mission and operating environment.
Historically, the Army's pursuit of mission-related capabilities
has produced technologies that prove useful for broader applications,
both Government and civilian. Various sensors, communications systems
and unmanned vehicles are simple but salient examples. Military demand
also may support industry capability growth to produce better or more
cost-effective materials or technologies--again benefitting American
society. In fact, given the growing awareness of energy and water as
important factors impacting our economy and domestic security, these
additional benefits could prove significant. However, the Army must
focus on military capabilities and readiness to guide its investments
in energy capabilities. While the Army has made important strides to
reduce its energy footprint, more must and will be done.
Mr. Forbes. The costs of our weapons systems have risen
dramatically in the last two decades. And in these current economic
times, we can't afford to buy the quantities we need at these high
procurement costs. This, in turn, reduces the economies of scale and
drives up the cost even further. What recommendations do you have for
us to break this cycle so we can afford to provide modern, safe,
effective equipment to our men and women in the military?
General Bolger. The Army is aggressively pursuing initiatives to
better and more prudently manage its acquisition process and resources.
The Secretary of the Army and Army Chief of Staff commissioned an
unprecedented blue ribbon review last May of the Army's acquisition
system--a cradle to grave assessment. The Acquisition Review Panel
submitted its report in February 2011. It included 76 recommendations
in four broad areas that extend across various Army organizations.
Those broad areas address requirements generation, risk management,
organizational alignment, and resources. The Secretary of the Army has
directed the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics
and Technology (ASA(ALT)) to assess those recommendations. The ASA(ALT)
will provide specific recommendations for implementation of those
portions of the report which are judged to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of the Army's Acquisition process.
However, the Army leadership did not stop there. To ensure that we
purchased the right equipment to meet the needs of our Soldiers, the
Army instituted a series of capability portfolio reviews to examine all
existing Army requirements and terminate programs that we judged to be
redundant, did not work or were just too expensive. These broad based
reviews have already helped the Army identify key gaps and unnecessary
redundancies while promoting good stewardship of our nation's
resources. We remain committed to using every effort to obtain the
right systems, supplies and services at the right time and at the most
cost-effective, streamlined manner.
Mr. Forbes. Are there other ``out-of-the-box'' ideas we should be
considering in order to respond to our national defense needs in this
extremely risky financial time?
General Bolger. The Army is implementing two innovative initiatives
that are intended to increase overall force readiness without spending
more money. The first initiative aims to decrease non-deployables in
the four highest categories (legal, medical, Theater Specific
Individual Readiness Training (TSIRT) and separations). The second
initiative implements policy and procedural changes the Army has
developed to increase personnel stability in units as they move through
the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) cycle. These changes help to
improve the timing of assignments, reassignments, separations, and
extensions to limit any negative impact on unit readiness.
Mr. Forbes. In fiscal year 2010, Secretary Gates began an
insourcing initiative to bring contracted functions back into the
government. While the stated goal was to bring inherently governmental
work back in house, we also were told that a 40% ``savings'' was being
budgeted against the insourcing goals. As we look at the fiscal year
2012 budget request, we see many cases where the Secretary's
``efficiencies initiative'' are driving reductions in civilian
personnel authorizations and pay. Are there areas where functions that
were identified for ``insourcing'' last year are now unfunded due to
the ``efficiencies initiative''? If so, how much risk is associated
with these functions or positions being unfunded?
General Bolger. There are 5,391 un-funded civilian positions which
were previously scheduled for in-sourcing. Several Army Commands have
notified Headquarter Department of the Army of a potential for mission
risk if these positions are not filled. Headquarters Department of the
Army is evaluating these risks for Secretary of the Army decision. The
Secretary of the Army has already approved 30 positions in Army Cyber
Command for in-sourcing due to mission risk.
Mr. Forbes. I understand that all the services continue to improve
and increase their ISR capabilities across the various Combatant
Commands. I am concerned that there is an over-focus of those assets in
the CENTCOM AOR to the detriment of other AOR's like the Pacific. Can
both of you describe what their respective service is doing to close
this gap which poses significant risk, in my estimation, to our forces
in the Pacific? I think we can all agree, as our independent panel
testified last week, that it is paramount to our national security to
continue to have unimpeded access to the Pacific theater and to have
better intelligence in this AOR.
General Bolger. The Army has begun to rebalance its Military
Intelligence Force to institutionalize and enhance core intelligence
capabilities, invest these capabilities where ``risk-to-force'' is
greatest and generate sufficient capacity to sustain mission-essential
support to committed forces through the Army Force Generation process.
This is in response to the Secretary of Defense's emphasis to rebalance
Defense programs to institutionalize and enhance current warfighting
capabilities as well as prepare for future risks and contingencies. The
Army's Military Intelligence Rebalance Strategy will provide greater
core intelligence capability at the Brigade Combat Teams and Division/
Corps to mitigate intelligence capability gaps. This strategy will
inherently improve the Army Intelligence capability for Army units
supporting the Pacific theater as well as improve Army Intelligence
support to units deploying in support of other world-wide
contingencies.
The Army has not decreased Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance (ISR) support to U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) as a
result of Army ISR support to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The
command and control of Army ISR and processing, exploitation, and
dissemination (PED) assets reside within the Combatant Commands. As a
result, any cross leveling of ISR and PED assets require concurrence
from both the Combatant Commands and Joint Forces Command. In addition,
modifications to the Global Force Management Allocation Plan would
require Secretary of Defense approval. These structural measures have
allowed the Army to maintain its ISR support at a steady state to
PACOM.
The number of Army ISR missions in support of PACOM has remained
relatively unchanged. The minimal changes that have occurred were
mission related in nature and not a result of divesting assets in
support of other Combatant Commands. In addition, the United States
Army Pacific Command's (USARPAC) ISR PED capacity remains unchanged.
USARPAC has been able to provide PED support to the other Combatant
Commands on an ad hoc basis, when capacity permits and at the
discretion of PACOM. We will continue to support CENTCOM ISR
requirements without any detriment to PACOM or the other Combatant
Commands. With the exception of a minimum amount of ISR training assets
in CONUS to support force generation requirements, all Army ISR assets
are dedicated in support of the Combatant Commands.
Mr. Forbes. The FY12 budget request is short of your requirement
for depot maintenance by more than 16%. What are the risks to
readiness,--both in the near term and in the long term--of this request
as the Air Force continues to sustain what was described as a
``geriatric'' fleet by Ms. Eaglen in last week's testimony?
General Carlisle. Although we took risk in weapon systems support
by initially funding it at 80 percent, we identified efficiencies that
improved funding to 85 percent. Additionally, we are managing near term
risk and maintaining our warfighting readiness through balanced support
to our legacy fleet and new aircraft. The 16 percent in unfunded
requirement risk includes software, sustaining engineering and
technical orders; however, this is mitigated through enterprise-wide
prioritization to fund the highest priority systems in the year of
execution while ensuring a stable depot workload and workforce are
maintained. The long-term depot maintenance risk is mitigated through
Full Scale Fatigue Testing and Structural Integrity and Service Life
Extension Programs which will improve the sustainability of legacy
aircraft and ensure total force readiness.
Mr. Forbes. There is little detail in the FY12 budget to inform
Congress as to how the Air Force plans to sustain the nuclear
enterprise and to correct the deficiencies of the past. Can you please
tell us what your plan is in FY12 to ensure that the corrective actions
that have been taken over the past two years are sufficiently
resourced?
General Carlisle. A concerted Air Force focused on reinvigorating
the nuclear enterprise resulted in significant structure, process and
cultural change. This focus has revitalized critical aspects of the
nuclear enterprise resulting in renewed visibility and stringent
adherence to established nuclear standards, additional personnel to
recapitalize the nuclear workforce and increased funding to sustain
legacy systems and infrastructure. In FY12, the Air Force plans to
continue critical deterrence initiatives including: the future of
Ground-Based Strategic Deterrence (GBSD), the Common Vertical Lift
Support Platform (CVLSP), the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM)
Follow-on, and the F-35A Dual Capable Aircraft (DCA) capability.
Additionally, the Air Force is initiating the new Penetrating Bomber
program in FY12. For GBSD, the Air Force is planning to internally
source funds to develop initial pre-AoA concept characterization and
technical descriptions. For CVLSP, the Air Force will pursue a full and
open competition with projected contract award in late FY12. Also, the
Air Force is analyzing an ALCM Follow-on per Nuclear Posture Review
guidance and OSD direction. The ALCM Follow-on AoA is planned to be
complete in FY12. In addition, development efforts for a nuclear
capable Penetrating Bomber will begin in FY12. F-35A DCA integration
efforts with the B61-12 are planned to support Extended Deterrence.
Lastly, Air Force modernization efforts to sustain legacy systems
including the current ALCM, the current bomber fleet and the Minuteman
III ICBM will continue in FY12. For the current ALCM, multiple service
life extension programs will continue to ensure viability through 2030.
The current bomber fleet and Minuteman III ICBM will be sustained
through ongoing and future modernization programs. These efforts will
help ensure that the corrective actions taken over the past two years
are sufficiently resourced.
Mr. Forbes. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready for the
types of threats described by the witnesses at last week's hearing? If
not, what should we be doing?
General Carlisle. The Air Force is ready to counter current threats
to our national interests and committed to meeting future readiness
challenges. Our long-term readiness concerns focus on aging equipment
and weapon systems, and the current high operations tempo for our
people.
Overseas Contingency Operations have posed constant personnel and
platform challenges since late 2001. In response, we have modified our
personnel deployment construct to better support the Combatant
Commanders while better managing our people, especially those with high
demand/limited supply skill sets.
We have balanced and rebalanced our resources--personnel, weapons
systems, training, and equipment--to remain ready to execute today's
operations and foster the flexibility required to meet the uncertain
requirements of tomorrow. It will take constant diligence and the
support of our national leaders to maintain this balance in a world of
increasing technology and lethality.
Mr. Forbes. While I understand that a rotational readiness model,
such as the Army's Force Generation Model, enables ready forces for
Afghanistan and Iraq, it comes at the expense of the non-deployed
forces. What are the strategic implications to the readiness of the
force and our ability to respond to the types of threats the witnesses
described in the hearing last week?
General Carlisle. The Air Force funds the entire force to the same
readiness level, thereby eliminating tiered readiness and minimizing
any strategic implications. Similar to the Army's Force Generation
Model, the Air Force's force generation construct is the Air & Space
Expeditionary Force, or AEF. As part of the AEF battle rhythm, Air
Force capabilities enter a ``normal training and exercises'' phase from
the period immediately following deployment up to the next
predeployment spin-up time. Included in this phase is a brief period of
reconstitution to regain mission-ready status following deployments.
Additionally, the Air Force typically deploys its forces as task-
organized capabilities thereby mitigating lengthy reconstitution times.
Mr. Forbes. 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?
General Carlisle. Providing airmen to support the joint fights in
Iraq and Afghanistan has had no measurable impact on Air Force
operational readiness. The AF continues to support ground forces in the
CENTCOM AOR with Joint Expeditionary Taskings (JET) and support
deployed AF headquarters functions with Individual Augmentees (IA). The
AF has followed a policy of providing personnel for these JET and IA
taskings from within our institutional forces (non-operational staffs)
to reduce impacts on Air Force operational units. All personnel
assigned to JET or IA taskings are fully qualified for their assigned
mission prior to deployment.
JET and IA taskings have trended downward over the past four years,
in line with the levels of combat forces in CENTCOM. The Air Force
currently has 7,954 personnel deployed to the region, down from 9,273
in 2010 and 12,896 in 2009. In 2008 and 2007 the totals were 13,338 and
13,752, respectively.
The DoD and AF continue to balance the demands of Iraq, Afghanistan
and other contingencies such as Japan humanitarian relief and Operation
UNIFIED PROTECTOR (Libya) with preparations for future conflicts.
Recent operations have tested the capacity and resolve of our armed
forces, but our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines continue to adapt
and meet the demands placed upon them.
Mr. Forbes. How is Congress to assess the long-term readiness
requirements for the force when the QDR failed to provide the long-
range, 20-year assessment required by Title 10?
General Carlisle. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review set the
course for the Department of Defense for the next 20 years through its
articulation of a strategy and investment to further its rebalancing
and reform efforts. The 2010 QDR Report addresses readiness
requirements in several respects. For example, the report discusses the
importance of having continued access to land, air, and sea training
ranges and operating areas that are needed to maintain DoD's
operational readiness. In his portion of the report, the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff articulated the requirements associated with
Joint force readiness across the full range of military operations.
Specifically, he identified the need for investment in critical
enablers (such as Special Operations Forces) where shortages have
persisted, and for investment in expanded electronic warfare and other
capabilities. He also highlighted resetting the force and replacing
prepositioned stocks as two crucial readiness requirements. The
Chairman estimated that full restoration (replacement and repair of
equipment lost in combat and degraded by wear and tear) would take
years after OIF and OEF are completed.
Mr. Forbes. Timing and concurrency of events in the analysis must
be examined by assuming more time between demand on the force, the
requirements on the force are lowered (i.e., two near-simultaneous
major combat operations across the globe require a different force
structure than if the force planners assume the exact same events were
to occur 30 days apart). In your view, are we ready to respond to
multiple contingencies occurring in a near-simultaneous fashion?
General Carlisle. Yes, the AF is ready to respond to multiple near-
simultaneous contingencies--in fact, we are doing it now. We must
recognize, however, that the compounding effects of major combat
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unplanned contingencies such as
Japan humanitarian relief and Libya, will make it increasingly
difficult. Recapitalization of combat losses, repair and replenishment
of equipment, and targeted capability upgrades are still required to
maintain the levels of readiness our nation demands.
In the context of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, our
data shows that the USAF has experienced decreasing readiness since
2001 due to aging aircraft and high operations tempo. Nonetheless, we
have been able to match resources with readiness requirements to
support Combatant Commander needs and conduct combat operations.
Mr. Forbes. We are all very concerned with development and
procurement costs of military ships, airplanes and vehicles. However,
GAO has routinely stated that more than 75% of the total ownership
costs of weapons systems are associated with the operation and
sustainment of those assets. What can this subcommittee do to ensure
that we can afford to operate and maintain the equipment we've already
paid for?
General Carlisle. The Air Force shares your concern about the
affordability of operating and maintaining our weapon systems. We
continue to identify efficiencies and cost reduction initiatives to
reduce total ownership cost. For example, the Air Force conducts
Business Case Analyses to determine the most affordable sustainment
approach for many of our weapon systems. Implementation can require
upfront investment that will ultimately result in overall cost
reduction. Your funding support for these investments as well as
funding for tech data and sustaining engineering studies (where
warranted) will drive more affordable sustainment for our Air Force
programs.
Mr. Forbes. What do you feel is DoD's role in investing in
alternative sources of energy? If so, which types of alternative energy
(fuels, renewable energy, etc.), and do you believe the DoD is doing
enough?
General Carlisle. From the Air Force perspective, it is of vital
importance to have the energy available necessary to accomplish our
global mission to fly fight and win in air, space, and cyberspace, and
we are working to further advance our energy security posture. For the
Air Force, energy security means having assured access to reliable
supplies of energy and the ability to protect and deliver sufficient
energy to meet operational needs. This includes ensuring critical
assets have the power to operate in the event of a natural disaster or
attack, and improving our energy security posture by providing domestic
alternatives to foreign oil.
Although not without challenges, alternative sources of energy and
fuels present opportunities for the Air Force to increase its supply of
energy and improve its energy security posture. The Air Force must
consider all sources of energy, renewable, alternative and even
traditional fossil fuels to improve our energy security and expand our
energy portfolio. This includes evaluating all sources. However, the
Air Force will generally be a consumer, and not a producer, of energy
and fuel.
We are in the process of certifying our aircraft to fly on
synthetic and bio-based fuels blended with traditional JP-8. The
certification process expands the types of fuel our aircraft can use.
Once the commercial market is ready, having the ability to use non-
traditional aviation fuels provides us with an improved energy security
posture and increased protection from price fluctuations resulting from
foreign oil sources. The Air Force is continuing to review and evaluate
potential alternative aviation fuel candidates beyond the synthetic and
biofuel-based fuel blends.
Regarding renewable energy for our facilities, we recognize that
there is not a ``one size fits all'' solution and that the economics
will dictate our approach. However, we are open to consider long-term
business arrangements with companies who are ready to build, operate,
and maintain renewable energy projects to generate electricity, heat,
or other positive energy benefits for our air bases. In this regard, we
are not viewing nor are we wed to ``inside the installation boundary''
as the only option.
Mr. Forbes. The costs of our weapons systems have risen
dramatically in the last two decades. And in these current economic
times, we can't afford to buy the quantities we need at these high
procurement costs. This, in turn, reduces the economies of scale and
drives up the cost even further. What recommendations do you have for
us to break this cycle so we can afford to provide modern, safe,
effective equipment to our men and women in the military?
General Carlisle. Yes, we agree. The Secretary and Chief of Staff
of the Air Force recognized the importance of Recapturing Acquisition
Excellence (Air Force Strategic Plan--Priority 5) and implemented the
Acquisition Improvement Plan (AIP). A combination of the AIP's 33
completed improvement actions resulted in a stronger workforce, clearly
defined requirements, incremental development strategies, predictable
schedules and budgetary needs; all directed at improving the ability to
provide industry with clear and concise requests for proposal enabling
better buying power for the Air Force.
Specifically, two AIP initiative areas ``Improve Requirements
Generation Process'' and ``Instill Budget and Financial Discipline''
made significant improvements to help the Air Force ``Recapture
Acquisition Excellence''. On the AIP Initiative 2, ``Improve
Requirements Generation Process'' requires the Service Acquisition
Executive, and when applicable, the Air Force Materiel Command
Commander or Air Force Space Command Commander, in conjunction with the
Air Force Requirements Oversight Council, to attest that the
acquisition community can fulfill the Capabilities Development Document
requirements. On AIP Initiative 3, ``Instill Budget and Financial
Discipline'' improves cost estimating process (budgeting programs to a
confidence level typically 55-65%), program baseline guidance, and
funding stability.
Today, the Air Force continues to implement Dr Carter's 23 directed
``Better Buying Power'' initiatives targeted to reducing expenses
allocated to overhead and support functions. The Air Force's goal is to
continue improvements to redirect savings to modernization and
readiness programs for our warfighters without jeopardizing product
delivery.
Mr. Forbes. Are there other ``out-of-the-box'' ideas we should be
considering in order to respond to our national defense needs in this
extremely risky financial time?
General Carlisle. The United States Air Force continues to assess
how to best meet national defense needs. As one way to develop and
study ``out of the box'' ideas we conduct two Title 10 war games to
determine what capabilities and force structure USAF should possess in
near and far term. Unified Engagement looks at how to better work with
partner nations through the full spectrum of conflict 12 to 15 years in
the future; while the Future Capabilities Game looks 20 to 25 years
into the future to what the broad range of technology will be, and how
that may influence and affect the future of the Air Force. These war
games provide us the ability to explore and test alternative force
structures that better address future challenges, using affordable,
technically feasible and operationally balanced platforms across all AF
missions. The war game results are used alongside Science and
Technology investments to continue to look for ``out-of-the-box'' ideas
to respond to our national defense needs.
Mr. Forbes. In fiscal year 2010, Secretary Gates began an
insourcing initiative to bring contracted functions back into the
government. While the stated goal was to bring inherently governmental
work back in house, we also were told that a 40% ``savings'' was being
budgeted against the insourcing goals. As we look at the fiscal year
2012 budget request, we see many cases where the Secretary's
``efficiencies initiative'' are driving reductions in civilian
personnel authorizations and pay. Are there areas where functions that
were identified for ``insourcing'' last year are now unfunded due to
the ``efficiencies initiative''? If so, how much risk is associated
with these functions or positions being unfunded?
General Carlisle. The AF is presently conducting a highly focused,
strategic review of the entire AF civilian workforce. The goal is to
ensure the AF executes this reduction strategically and in a manner
that meets all mission requirements while continuing to support our
Airmen and their families. The AF will review all Core Functions to
balance risk, while satisfying our efficiency targets. While the total
AF reduction amount will remain unchanged, the program specific
adjustments will be determined by our strategic review and programmed
during our FY13 POM submission with our actual execution plan.
All ideas are on the table and the final distribution will be
approved by the CSAF and SECAF. Again, the resulting decisions will
adjust FY12 and inform the FY13 POM.
Mr. Forbes. I understand that all the services continue to improve
and increase their ISR capabilities across the various Combatant
Commands. I am concerned that there is an over-focus of those assets in
the CENTCOM AOR to the detriment of other AOR's like the Pacific. Can
both of you describe what their respective service is doing to close
this gap which poses significant risk, in my estimation, to our forces
in the Pacific? I think we can all agree, as our independent panel
testified last week, that it is paramount to our national security to
continue to have unimpeded access to the Pacific theater and to have
better intelligence in this AOR.
General Carlisle. In addition to currently fielded Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance capabilities, the Navy is developing
complementary capabilities above, on and below the surface of the sea
to provide global ISR support to each Combatant Commander, including
Pacific Command. Across all three realms Navy is implementing a family
of systems approach to employ more sensors and increase time on
station. Equipped with plug-and-play sensors utilizing automated
processing, these systems will provide focused collection with reduced
manpower.
Current airborne ISR aircraft, such as the EP-3 and P-3, continue
to deploy in support of PACOM mission requirements. Successful P-3
redstripe recovery efforts will increase the P-3 AIP presence in the
PACOM AOR to 12 deployed aircraft in Dec 2011. Development of a new
generation of Unmanned Aerial Systems (Fire Scout, Broad Area Maritime
Surveillance (BAMS), Medium Range Maritime (MRMUAS), and Unmanned
Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS)) continues
and will provide both land and sea-based capability with greater
persistence and area coverage than current platforms. The Navy will
deploy Fire Scout on the Littoral Combat Ship as that class comes on
line and deploys to PACOM in the FY13 timeframe. Also, the Navy will
establish the first of two BAMS UAS orbits in the PACOM AOR in FY17.
The Navy is also funding additional surface assets that provide
critical ISR to fleet assets, including investment in Surveillance
Towed Array Sonar System (SURTASS) equipped ships that will support the
Pacific theater. Additionally, the Navy continues to develop Unmanned
Undersea Vehicles (UUVs). UUVs will expand access into areas that are
inaccessible or hazardous to manned platforms as well as fill capacity
gaps.
Mr. Forbes. Energy has been repeatedly highlighted as an area that
could impact future military readiness based on availability of supply.
RAND recently published a report regarding alternative fuels. Some of
the conclusions suggested that the alternative fuel industry is
immature, could not scale up to make an appreciable difference as a
domestic alternative, and recommended that DoD not invest in this
market.
A. Could you please comment on that report?
B. Can you also provide your opinion whether you believe DoD has a
role in the development and procurement of alternative fuels?
Admiral Clingan. A. The RAND Corporation study accurately states
that the Department of the Navy's switch to biofuels, in and of itself,
will not reduce the nation's total energy consumption by a significant
margin. However, the RAND Report was not well researched and did not
take into account the recent research and development advances in the
biofuels technologies. RAND stated in their report that the Fischer-
Tropsch coal-to-liquid/biomass-to-liquid fuels are the most promising
near-term options for meeting the Department of Defense's needs cleanly
and affordably. Currently, there are no Fischer-Tropsch plants here in
the United States. Additionally, under the guidelines of the Energy
Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, Section 526, any
replacement fuel has to have a greenhouse gas emission profile less
than petroleum. In order to meet this guideline, any Fischer-Tropsch
coal-to-liquid plant would have to have carbon capture and
sequestration incorporated into this overall process. While there is
important carbon capture and sequestration research and development
ongoing at DOE, there has not been any carbon capture and sequestration
process built to commercial scale in the United States. In summary, due
to the EISA 2007, Section 526 guidelines and the cost prohibitive
carbon capture and storage process, we feel that the Fischer-Tropsch
coal-to-liquid/biomass-to-liquid fuels are not the most promising near-
term option for meeting the Department of Defense's needs cleanly and
affordably.
While the use of alternative fuels can contribute toward
guaranteeing our energy supplies, reducing our operational risks, and
during volatile upward price swings in petroleum, could represent
additional cost savings, the Department of the Navy's energy strategy
has not been limited to alternative fuels. We have aggressively adopted
proven energy efficient applications and practices commonly found in
the commercial sector. We have funded both science and technology/
research and development projects in pursuit of increased energy
efficiency since these projects can potentially and directly contribute
to the combat capability of our operating forces by reducing our energy
consumption both afloat and ashore, and by achieving significant cost
savings.
B. The Navy prefers to see itself as an ``early adopter'' of
available biofuels. The military has often led in the development of
new technologies where there was a compelling military use, even if the
civilian use was ultimately greater (ex. GPS, the Internet). The
operational use of alternative fuels by the Department of the Navy will
be hastened by collaborating with federal agencies and private industry
at every step of the research, development, and certification process.
The alternative fuel program establishes the Department of the Navy as
an early adopter for investors in a nascent industry that could
significantly enhance energy security, and thereby national security,
in the mid- to long-term. By positioning itself as an early adopter by
testing available biofuels and certifying them ``fit for use across our
major platforms and leveraging test and certifications accomplished by
the other services that meets our specifications'', the Navy is better
poised to reap the following benefits:
Cost savings. Increasing our use of alternative energy
sources helps us achieve a level of protection from energy price
volatility. For every $10 increase in the cost of a barrel of oil, the
Navy spends an additional $300 million dollars a year. Operating more
efficiently saves money by reducing the amount we spend for fuel.
Savings can be reinvested to strengthen combat capability. The cheapest
barrel of fuel afloat or kilowatt-hour ashore is the one we do not have
to use.
Guaranteed Supply. Our reliance on energy can be
exploited by potential adversaries. Efficiency and alternatives may be
our best countermeasure. Energy efficiency increases our mission
effectiveness by expanding our range and endurance, and reducing our
need for logistics support. Efficiency improvements minimize
operational risks of that logistics tether, saving time, money, and
lives. Alternative fuels provide the Navy an `off-ramp from petroleum,'
mitigating the risk to a volatile and ever more expensive petroleum
market.
Fossil Fuel Dependence. The Navy recognizes that our
dependence on fossil fuels and foreign sources of oil makes us more
susceptible to price shocks, supply shocks, natural and man-made
disasters, and political unrest in countries far from our shores.
Combat Capability. Making our ships and aircraft more
efficient improves their fuel economy. We can increase the days between
refueling for our ships, improving their security and combat
capability. We can also extend the range of our aircraft strike
missions, allowing us to launch our aircraft farther away from combat
areas. Increasing our efficiency and the diversity in our sources of
fuel improves our combat capability strategically and tactically.
Mr. Forbes. There has been significant discussion of energy as an
issue that may impact military readiness particularly regarding assured
access to oil. The Arctic is said to contain nearly 20% of the world's
untapped oil, natural gas, and mineral resources; estimates include
over 400 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and gas and mineral
deposits worth over $1 trillion.
a. While the United States is one of eight Arctic nations
with sovereign claims, do you feel it is in our national security
interest to be more proactive in this region due to the prospect of oil
in this region?
b. What are the consequences if the nation fails to act?
c. What is the military's role in this region, and is the
DoD prepared?
Admiral Clingan. a. Navy's national security responsibilities in
the Arctic are similar to those in any other maritime domain. Although
the current potential for conflict in the Arctic appears to be low,
Navy's core responsibility is to defend the United States from attack
upon its territory at home and to secure its interests abroad. In this
regard, the nation's ability to defend its interests and avoid
potential crises and conflicts in the Arctic would be significantly
enhanced if the United States joined the other seven Arctic littoral
states and acceded to the United Nations Convention of the Law of the
Sea. While sea ice loss is increasing access to energy and mineral
deposits in the region, the rate at which these deposits have been
extracted has not dramatically increased. Additionally, the Arctic will
continue to be ice-covered during the winter months through the next
several decades, further complicating resource extraction. Navy is
proactively addressing cooperative partnerships in the Arctic to
promote safety, stability, and security as detailed in the Navy's
Strategic Objectives for the Arctic.
b. Because the U.S. is an Arctic nation and the Arctic is primarily
a maritime domain, the U.S. Navy has an obligation to be prepared for
the changes that are occurring in the region. Failure to prepare for
the increasing access to the Arctic will limit our overall ability to
respond to security incidents and challenges.
c. Arctic-related security requirements stem from increased human
activity in the region that can invite crises over resources,
territorial boundaries or excessive claims. While the Navy has operated
in the Arctic on a limited basis for decades, we must balance limited
resources with ever-expanding global requirements. Navy's Task Force
Climate Change is carefully reviewing the right capabilities at the
right cost at the right time to meet national requirements for the
Arctic, as they potentially represent a considerable commitment of
funds during a resource-constrained period.
Mr. Forbes. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready for the
types of threats described by the witnesses at last week's hearing? If
not, what should we be doing?
Admiral Clingan. The readiness of the Navy to provide the
warfighting resources needed by our Combatant Commanders is a function
of capability, capacity and proficiency across the full range of naval
missions. Achieving the required levels of each requires a fine balance
between acquiring new warfighting capabilities to address emerging
threats; modernizing existing capabilities to keep them relevant;
sustaining systems and platforms so that they function properly until
the end of their expected service life; and training our personnel to
guarantee they can employ the systems and platforms effectively in a
combat environment. The Navy has succeeded in ensuring our forward
deployed forces are prepared to accomplish their planned missions.
Additionally, the Navy continues to develop the future capabilities and
capacity necessary to support the National Military Strategy in a
security environment increasingly characterized by sophisticated anti-
access/area denial (A2/AD) systems. The Department of Navy in concert
with the Department of Air Force, has developed an Air Sea Battle
Concept and associated initiatives that outline necessary enhancements
across Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership,
Personnel, and Facilities (DOTMLPF) to address the A2/AD threat. The
President's FY12 Budget request addresses these initiatives
appropriately in an implementation effort that will span several years.
Mr. Forbes. While I understand that a rotational readiness model,
such as the Army's Force Generation Model, enables ready forces for
Afghanistan and Iraq, it comes at the expense of the non-deployed
forces. What are the strategic implications to the readiness of the
force and our ability to respond to the types of threats the witnesses
described in the hearing last week?
Admiral Clingan. The Navy has been forward deployed since its
inception to protect our national interests abroad and to rapidly
respond to crises with mission tailored forces. While some forward
presence has been provided by units stationed overseas, historically
most has been generated by a rotational model from the continental
United States. The current model, termed the Fleet Response Plan, is
comprised of phases: Maintenance; Training (Basic, Integrated); and
Sustainment, during which an overseas deployment typically occurs.
Properly resourced and managed, the Fleet Response Plan provides
maintenance opportunities to ensure the systems and platforms are
effective against extant threats throughout their expected service
life; training across the full range of naval operations to ensure
personnel can succeed in missions from humanitarian assistance to high-
end warfare against a peer rival; 6-7 months of forward deployed time
each cycle to support the Combatant Commanders; and a period following
deployment when a unit's high readiness is sustained to enable surging
forward in response to crises. The President's FY12 Budget request
provides sufficient resources to meet the Combatant Commander's most
critical requirements and to sustain a relevant Navy into the future.
Mr. Forbes. 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?
Admiral Clingan. The long-term use of Sailors to meet ground force
requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan has been necessary to address the
evolving needs of the joint force as these conflicts have progressed
through various phases. The Navy provides over half of its IA support
in core skill areas, such as cargo handling, airlift support, and
SeaBees, with approximately 5,500 serving in these ``core'' missions.
Navy also provides approximately 4,700 Sailors for provincial
reconstruction, detainee operations, civil affairs, customs inspection,
and a variety of other ``non-core'' missions. The joint sourcing
process to meet both ``core'' and ``non-core'' requirements is
deliberate and is currently focused on reducing IA requirements without
unduly increasing the risk to mission success.
Navy's FY12 end strength anticipates a phased reduction in IA
demand in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should IA demand remain at current
levels, or increase over time, we will be challenged to meet manning
requirements for the Fleet. The Navy continues to size, shape, and
stabilize our force through a series of performance-based measures
designed to retain the skills, pay grades, and experience mix necessary
to meet current and future requirements.
Mr. Forbes. How is Congress to assess the long-term readiness
requirements for the force when the QDR failed to provide the long-
range, 20-year assessment required by Title 10?
Admiral Clingan. The most recent Quadrennial Defense Review focused
on two objectives: to further rebalance the capabilities of the Armed
Forces and institutionalize successful wartime innovations to better
enable success in today's wars while ensuring our forces are prepared
for a complex future; and to reform how the department does business.
In conjunction with the completion of the QDR, the Deputy Secretary of
Defense submitted the long-range plans for the construction of Naval
vessels and the procurement of aircraft for the Navy and Air Force.
These plans reflect the best effort of the Department of Defense to
address the difficult planning challenge of forecasting requirements
and procurement for a thirty year time frame. These products provide
Congress a basic foundation for the assessment of the long-term
readiness requirements of the force. Additional detail regarding the
QDR is more appropriately addressed by the Office of the Secretary of
Defense.
Mr. Forbes. Timing and concurrency of events in the analysis must
be examined by assuming more time between demand on the force, the
requirements on the force are lowered (i.e., two near-simultaneous
major combat operations across the globe require a different force
structure than if the force planners assume the exact same events were
to occur 30 days apart). In your view, are we ready to respond to
multiple contingencies occurring in a near-simultaneous fashion?
Admiral Clingan. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. We are all very concerned with development and
procurement costs of military ships, airplanes and vehicles. However,
GAO has routinely stated that more than 75% of the total ownership
costs of weapons systems are associated with the operation and
sustainment of those assets. What can this subcommittee do to ensure
that we can afford to operate and maintain the equipment we've already
paid for?
Admiral Clingan. The combined President's FY12 Budget request
baseline and OCO budget submissions represent the best balance of risk
and available resources across the Navy portfolio. The Navy appreciates
the subcommittee's continuing support and believes both ship and
aviation maintenance will be best served by supporting the President's
FY12 Budget request. A comprehensive maintenance strategy is essential
to minimizing the total ownership cost (TOC) of Navy platforms and to
ensuring that these assets reach their expected service life. Crucial
to executing any maintenance strategy is a clear understanding of the
current condition of each asset and a detailed plan for properly
maintaining and logistically supporting the equipment.
Submarines and aircraft carriers have well defined engineering
processes that closely manage maintenance and repair work. Navy
investments in the past several budget cycles in the Surface
Maintenance Engineering Planning Program (SURFMEPP) and enhanced
assessments of surface ships are providing Navy maintenance planners
with greater insight on the maintenance and repair requirements and are
facilitating refined ship life cycle management.
For aircraft, each Type/Model/Series of Naval aircraft have a
rigorous sustainment construct that relies on a robust Fleet Support
Team (FST) of engineers, logisticians, and other key aviation subject
matter experts that utilize the concept of RCM (Reliability Centered
Maintenance) to continuously monitor and improve the maintenance of in-
service aircraft. The President's FY12 Budget request increased
emphasis on continuing these key aviation FST functions.
Mr. Forbes. What do you feel is DoD's role in investing in
alternative sources of energy? If so, which types of alternative energy
(fuels, renewable energy, etc.), and do you believe the DoD is doing
enough?
Admiral Clingan. The Department of the Navy (DON) has set two
priorities that illustrate its role in investing in alternative sources
of energy: Energy Security and Energy Independence. Energy Security is
achieved by utilizing sustainable sources that meet tactical,
expeditionary, and shore operational requirements and force sustainment
functions, and, having the ability to protect and deliver sufficient
energy to meet operational needs. Energy Independence is achieved when
Naval forces rely only on energy resources that are not subject to
intentional or accidental supply disruptions. As a priority, Energy
Independence increases operational effectiveness by making Naval forces
more energy self-sufficient and less dependent on vulnerable energy
production and supply lines.
To demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing alternative sources of
energy for tactical purposes, we have flown an F/A-18 Hornet on a 50/50
blend of JP-5/camelina fuel; operated a Riverine Command Boat (RCB-X)
on a 50/50 blend of F-76/algae fuel; and test flown a Seahawk
helicopter on a 50/50 blend of JP-5/camelina fuel. DON also
commissioned the USS Makin Island that utilizes a gas turbine engine
and electric auxiliary propulsion system, which leads to increased fuel
efficiency. Like the other Services in DoD, DON leverages many
different types of alternative energy solutions based upon various
installations' geographic location, natural resources, and available
technology that includes solar, wind, geothermal, and waste to energy
applications. We have plans to install over 100 MW of solar power
through the FYDP and are currently conducting 22 anemometer (wind)
studies. In our Expeditionary Forward Operating Bases, we are using
flexible solar panels to recharge batteries and light the insides of
tents with energy efficient LED lighting. These are just a few examples
of the different types of alternative energy sources that DON is
currently using.
Lastly, the Secretary of the Navy has set forth five energy goals
to reduce the Department of the Navy's overall consumption of energy,
decrease its reliance on petroleum and significantly increase its use
of alternative energy. DON is committed to thoughtfully investing in
alternative sources of energy for the future.
The Secretary of the Navy's Energy Goals:
1. Increase Alternative Energy Use DON-Wide: By 2020, 50% of total
DON energy consumption will come from alternative sources.
2. Increase Alternative Energy Ashore: By 2020, at least 50% of
shore-based energy requirements will come from alternative sources; 50%
of DON installations will be net-zero.
3. Reduce Non-Tactical Petroleum Use: By 2015, DON will reduce
petroleum use in the commercial fleet by 50%.
4. Sail the ``Great Green Fleet'': DON will demonstrate a Green
Strike Group in local operations by 2012 and sail it by 2016.
5. Energy Efficient Acquisition: Evaluation of energy factors will
be mandatory when awarding contracts for systems and buildings.
Mr. Forbes. The costs of our weapons systems have risen
dramatically in the last two decades. And in these current economic
times, we can't afford to buy the quantities we need at these high
procurement costs. This, in turn, reduces the economies of scale and
drives up the cost even further. What recommendations do you have for
us to break this cycle so we can afford to provide modern, safe,
effective equipment to our men and women in the military?
Admiral Clingan. To partially address the historic cost growth in
weapons systems, the Navy has strengthened acquisition policy to
improve program oversight, control requirements, and more effectively
monitor contractor performance through acquisition program and
portfolio reviews of acquisition programs and the supplier base. A
Department of Navy instruction established acquisition governance
comprised of a 2 pass, 6 Gate review that has achieved closer
coordination between the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research,
Development and Acquisition, Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant
of the Marine Corps. It also provided enterprise constructs to afford
the opportunity to better understand and control costs, including
operations and sustainment costs.
Navy has engaged in vigorous control of requirements growth and
changes with the establishment of annual Configuration Steering Boards
within the program review and oversight process. The Configuration
Steering Board requires programs to provide business case analysis and
tradeoff discussions to stringently control adjustments to
requirements.
Process improvement initiatives are also being pursued in
accountability, acquisition workforce management, and efficiencies as
described in the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology
and Logistics memo titled ``Better Buying Power, Guidance for Obtaining
Greater Efficiency and Productivity in Defense Spending'', dated 14 SEP
2010.
Complementary to these initiatives, Navy recommends stable funding
for Programs throughout their development and economic quantity/multi-
year procurements. These disciplined actions, which provide industry
with steady workforce projections and encourage industry to invest in
capital improvements, break the noted cycle and have a proven record of
success.
Mr. Forbes. Are there other ``out-of-the-box'' ideas we should be
considering in order to respond to our national defense needs in this
extremely risky financial time?
Admiral Clingan. From intense analysis of anti-access and area
denial challenges to emerging energy technologies, new ideas are
constantly being generated in order to ensure the Navy continues to
perform its roles and missions in the evolving security and economic
environments.
The Navy has a robust process for inspiring, developing and
implementing new concepts and approaches in response to changing
defense needs. The Navy's concept generation and concept development
(CGCD) program provides a collaborative approach and structure for
developing new strategic and operational concepts that address current
and future challenges, position the service to seize opportunities, and
serve to shape the Navy across the Doctrine, Organization, Training,
Materiel, Leadership, Education, Personnel, and Facilities (DOTMLPF)
spectrum. The process includes vetting and validating new ideas through
analytical studies, workshops, experimentation, Naval War College war
games, and, as required, Fleet level live force experiments and
exercises.
This process capitalizes on a strategic top-down approach, while
enabling full and seamless integration with joint and coalition
operations and requirements. The President's FY12 budget submission
resources a variety of ideas across Doctrine, Organization, Training,
Materiel, Leadership, Personnel, and Facilities (DOTMLPF) that have
been vetted and are mature enough to merit investment.
Mr. Forbes. In fiscal year 2010, Secretary Gates began an
insourcing initiative to bring contracted functions back into the
government. While the stated goal was to bring inherently governmental
work back in house, we also were told that a 40% ``savings'' was being
budgeted against the insourcing goals. As we look at the fiscal year
2012 budget request, we see many cases where the Secretary's
``efficiencies initiative'' are driving reductions in civilian
personnel authorizations and pay. Are there areas where functions that
were identified for ``insourcing'' last year are now unfunded due to
the ``efficiencies initiative''? If so, how much risk is associated
with these functions or positions being unfunded?
Admiral Clingan. In-sourcing is one of the tools the Navy uses to
ensure the appropriate mix of military, civilian, and contractor
employees is available to accomplish its roles and missions. To meet
FY12 budget expectations, in-sourcing priorities were re-evaluated,
along with contractors overall, as part of a holistic workforce
balancing effort.
Mr. Forbes. In the past year, the USMC successfully demonstrated
its Experimental Forward Operating Base (ExFOB) which incorporates
solar power technologies with a unit currently deployed to Afghanistan.
That initiative had resounding success and buy-in from the individuals
in the unit.
Will the USMC continue the ExFOB?
If so, will you incorporate new technologies and redeploy
with future units?
What is the FY12 PB request to fund these efforts?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready for the
types of threats described by the witnesses at last week's hearing? If
not, what should we be doing?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. While I understand that a rotational readiness model,
such as the Army's Force Generation Model, enables ready forces for
Afghanistan and Iraq, it comes at the expense of the non-deployed
forces. What are the strategic implications to the readiness of the
force and our ability to respond to the types of threats the witnesses
described in the hearing last week?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. 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?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. How is Congress to assess the long-term readiness
requirements for the force when the QDR failed to provide the long-
range, 20-year assessment required by Title 10?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. Timing and concurrency of events in the analysis must
be examined by assuming more time between demand on the force, the
requirements on the force are lowered (i.e., two near-simultaneous
major combat operations across the globe require a different force
structure than if the force planners assume the exact same events were
to occur 30 days apart). In your view, are we ready to respond to
multiple contingencies occurring in a near-simultaneous fashion?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. We are all very concerned with development and
procurement costs of military ships, airplanes and vehicles. However,
GAO has routinely stated that more than 75% of the total ownership
costs of weapons systems are associated with the operation and
sustainment of those assets. What can this subcommittee do to ensure
that we can afford to operate and maintain the equipment we've already
paid for?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. What do you feel is DoD's role in investing in
alternative sources of energy? If so, which types of alternative energy
(fuels, renewable energy, etc.), and do you believe the DoD is doing
enough?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. The costs of our weapons systems have risen
dramatically in the last two decades. And in these current economic
times, we can't afford to buy the quantities we need at these high
procurement costs. This, in turn, reduces the economies of scale and
drives up the cost even further. What recommendations do you have for
us to break this cycle so we can afford to provide modern, safe,
effective equipment to our men and women in the military?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. Are there other ``out-of-the-box'' ideas we should be
considering in order to respond to our national defense needs in this
extremely risky financial time?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Forbes. In fiscal year 2010, Secretary Gates began an
insourcing initiative to bring contracted functions back into the
government. While the stated goal was to bring inherently governmental
work back in house, we also were told that a 40% ``savings'' was being
budgeted against the insourcing goals. As we look at the fiscal year
2012 budget request, we see many cases where the Secretary's
``efficiencies initiative'' are driving reductions in civilian
personnel authorizations and pay. Are there areas where functions that
were identified for ``insourcing'' last year are now unfunded due to
the ``efficiencies initiative''? If so, how much risk is associated
with these functions or positions being unfunded?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO
Ms. Bordallo. When Secretary of Defense Gates first accepted his
post under the Bush Administration, he called for a 12-months boots on
the ground policy to sustain dwell time goals. To date, home station
mobilization and demobilization continues to be challenge for our men
and women in the Guard and Reserves. I believe it improves readiness as
well as morale and welfare when a soldier can deploy and demob from
home station. Can you detail what efforts the Army has taken to achieve
this policy objective of Secretary Gates? What can Congress do to help
facilitate and expedite this matter?
General Bolger. The Army utilizes a rotational force generation
readiness model as a core process to achieve the SecDef 12-months boots
on the ground policy and is actively engaged with making decisions in
the Army's Campaign Plan for First Army's transformation initiative.
This initiative will realign the deployment and demobilization
stations. The Army recognizes that readiness and morale are key
components of determining the locations of deployment and
demobilization stations.
The Army continues its effort to reduce stress on the Active
Component (AC) and Reserve Component (RC) forces by achieving near term
boots on the ground (BOG): Dwell goals of 1:2 AC and 1:4 RC. Starting
in FY12, Reserve Component Soldiers (USAR and ARNG) will have at least
four years at home for every year deployed.
The Army's effort is contingent upon continued decrease in global
demands and assured access to the Reserve Component. This effort will
provide citizen Soldiers, Families and Employers with predictable
deployment schedules. With your support for this plan, the Army will
meet near-term BOG: Dwell goals of 1:2 AC and 1:4 RC starting in FY 12.
Ms. Bordallo. What are each of the services top 3 unfunded
requirements associated with ensuring a ready force, both in the near-
term and in the out-years?
General Bolger. The Army's FY12 President's Budget request funds
the Service's highest priorities to support the current wars, ensure
readiness and strategic depth in an uncertain and increasingly complex
strategic environment, and care for Soldiers, their families and Army
civilians. We will ensure that Army priorities are appropriately
resourced using whatever means are appropriated by the Congress.
However, as we look toward FY12 program execution, we ask for Congress'
support in helping the Army mitigate any fact of life changes that may
develop during the course of the year. The Army appreciates the
continued commitment and support of the U.S. Congress in all that we
do.
Please see attached April 15th, 2011, letter from GEN Dempsey to
Representative Adam Smith. [See page 89.]
Ms. Bordallo. The Department of Defense has become overly dependent
on the use of services contractors. In your role as your service's
operations planner, how do you factor in the use and role of services
contractor? How do you measure how much your readiness to respond to
continuing and emerging threats is reliant upon services contractors?
General Bolger. Logistics contractor requirements increased over
time due to the extended duration of conflict, the nature of the
conflict, and combatant commander operational decisions. The Army is
reliant, but not over-reliant, on contractors for logistics and other
base support services, as concluded by a 2010 Joint Staff study on
contractor dependency in which the Army participated. The Army does not
factor in the role of contractors when calculating Readiness. However,
contractors that provide maintenance operations (i.e., aircraft
maintenance for Army aviation) do directly support the serviceability
ratings of those organizations.
Ms. Bordallo. Describe for me the Air Force's force sizing
construct. Specifically, what type of force size metrics will be used
in the future to capture accurately the inventory of aircraft available
to the commanders? My understanding is, historically, the Air Force has
counted structure via combat wings but is now moving to a tail-metric.
I'm concerned that this will lead to an inflated perception about the
readiness of our Air Force since a total count of wings won't be able
to denote which aircraft are in depots or training. What is the
rationale behind this change?
General Carlisle. As the question has several parts, each will be
addressed in turn.
Regarding force sizing inputs/direction: As threats to our national
security have changed over time, so have our force sizing constructs.
Accordingly, the force options that the AF provides to the President
through the combatant commanders have changed from the one-size-fits-
all fighter or combat wing to something more adaptable, scalable, and
flexible to counter the evolving threat. To size a force that is able
to respond to the pressing needs of combatant commanders today--yet
remain adaptable to the ambiguous future threat--the AF participates
actively in the Secretary of Defense's Support to Strategic Analysis
(SSA).
Force sizing process: In the SSA framework there are scenarios in
which demand for Service capabilities is measured after all the
competing demands for forces are combined. Within the SSA, Integrated
Security Constructs (ISCs) are built to represent a series of demands
on forces. This is based on potential contingency operations in various
theaters and in combination is sourced using only PMAI (Primary Mission
Aircraft Inventory) ``combat'' and ``combat support,'' coded aircraft
inventory ensuring aircraft in depot and training units are properly
accounted for. Within each of the ISCs there are three primary phases
(non-surge, surge, and post-surge) in the planning construct.
Component-specific (Active, ANG, AFR) rotation policies apply during
the non- and post-surge phases that are included in force sizing to
meet the demands.
Force Readiness: AF forces are counted and task-organized as wings,
groups and squadrons which capture the total force numbers to include
the number of aircraft platforms. The AF generates and presents its
force to desired readiness levels, thereby eliminating tiered readiness
and minimizing any strategic implications. For counting forces, the AF
uses tail-metrics that include PMAI counts as well as total tails; for
determining readiness, PMAI is used along with other factors. This will
increase visibility into our fleets for sustainment and
recapitalization purposes.
Ms. Bordallo. What are each of the services top 3 unfunded
requirements associated with ensuring a ready force, both in the near-
term and in the out-years?
General Carlisle. The Air Force made difficult choices while
building the FY12 President's Budget, and we balanced our mission in a
way that maximizes our efforts to support the joint fight, while
embracing SECDEF guidance to achieve efficiencies goals. In accordance
with Secretary Gates' intent, we looked within our own programs,
strived to be more efficient, and used the savings for higher
priorities, including readiness. We have identified several items that
provide direct support to our combatant commanders in today's joint
fight that emerged since the FY12 President's Budget submission. The A-
10 Maintenance Tester and the EC-130H avionics upgrade improve our
readiness posture and operational capabilities by resolving issues that
could require grounding Aircraft. We also require a variety of
munitions replacement in support of ongoing operations that will
provide replenishment of weapons critical to meeting future wartime
needs. If we receive full support of our FY12 budget request, we are
confident we can fund our most critical requirements to ensure a ready
force.
Ms. Bordallo. The Department of Defense has become overly dependent
on the use of services contractors. In your role as your service's
operations planner, how do you factor in the use and role of services
contractor? How do you measure how much your readiness to respond to
continuing and emerging threats is reliant upon services contractors?
General Carlisle. Contractors play an important role from an
operational perspective, and sometimes provide niche and interim
maintenance support. Currently, contract maintenance comprises a small
percentage of the total maintenance effort for 13 airframes. However,
contract maintenance provides a high percentage in mission areas that
expanded rapidly to meet warfighter needs or in situations where there
are no trained Air Force personnel to maintain the aircraft. Five
aircraft types (C-27J, MQ-1/9, MC-12W, and RC-26) fall into this
category and rely solely on contract maintenance. The Remotely Piloted
Aircraft category is scheduled to increase to 800 aircraft by 2020 in
order to meet warfighter demands. This rapid growth outpaced the Air
Force's ability to staff and train personnel to maintain this high-
demand capability, necessitating the use of contract maintenance. While
readiness is not an issue with contractor maintained aircraft, the Air
Force will transition the MQ-1/9 to organic support over time.
Ms. Bordallo. I understand that all the services continue to
improve and increase their ISR capabilities across the various
Combatant Commands. I am concerned that there is an over-focus of those
assets in the CENTCOM AOR to the detriment of other AOR's like the
Pacific. Can both of you describe what their respective service is
doing to close this gap which poses significant risk, in my estimation,
to our forces in the Pacific? I think we can all agree, as our
independent panel testified last week, that it is paramount to our
national security to continue to have unimpeded access to the Pacific
theater and to have better intelligence in this AOR.
General Carlisle. The Air Force provides Intelligence, Surveillance
and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets to the combatant commands to support
daily, steady-state operations and can redistribute assets when surge
operations are required. The Joint Staff prioritizes and allocates ISR
assets according to the Global Force Management Allocation Plan which
matches available assets to combatant command requirements. While the
majority of airborne ISR assets are currently supporting CENTCOM due to
the high demand, assets are available to support efforts in the Pacific
region. In addition to ``national'' assets that are available to meet
COCOM requirements, the Air Force has established a Global Hawk
squadron at Andersen AFB, Guam, and continues U-2 missions in the
Republic of Korea. Additionally, Global Hawk, U-2 and WC-135 assets
have all contributed to recent humanitarian operations in Japan.
Ms. Bordallo. What are each of the services top 3 unfunded
requirements associated with ensuring a ready force, both in the near-
term and in the out-years?
Admiral Clingan. The Navy has two unfunded priorities for the PB12
budget submission. There is a $367M shortfall in ship depot maintenance
that equates to the deferral of 44 surface ship availabilities.
Additionally, there is a $317M shortfall in aviation spares which are
used to support over 3,700 individual fleet aircraft.
Ms. Bordallo. The Department of Defense has become overly dependent
on the use of services contractors. In your role as your service's
operations planner, how do you factor in the use and role of services
contractor? How do you measure how much your readiness to respond to
continuing and emerging threats is reliant upon services contractors?
Admiral Clingan. As mandated by Congress, the Navy is responsible
to man, train, and equip the force while the Combatant Commanders are
responsible for operational planning and employment. The Combatant
Commanders are in a better position to explain how service contractors
are factored into operational planning.
The Navy employs a total force construct that applies the most
suitable manpower--active, reserve, civilian, contractor--to accomplish
specific tasks. The balance is adjusted annually as we shape the force
to meet the needs of the Navy and address policy and fiscal guidance.
The total force remains well postured to prevail in current
conflicts and respond effectively to the multiple, concurrent, diverse
crises anticipated in the future.
Ms. Bordallo. I understand that all the services continue to
improve and increase their ISR capabilities across the various
Combatant Commands. I am concerned that there is an over-focus of those
assets in the CENTCOM AOR to the detriment of other AOR's like the
Pacific. Can both of you describe what their respective service is
doing to close this gap which poses significant risk, in my estimation,
to our forces in the Pacific? I think we can all agree, as our
independent panel testified last week, that it is paramount to our
national security to continue to have unimpeded access to the Pacific
theater and to have better intelligence in this AOR.
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. What are each of the services top 3 unfunded
requirements associated with ensuring a ready force, both in the near-
term and in the out-years?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The Department of Defense has become overly dependent
on the use of services contractors. In your role as your service's
operations planner, how do you factor in the use and role of services
contractor? How do you measure how much your readiness to respond to
continuing and emerging threats is reliant upon services contractors?
General Tryon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. RUNYAN
Mr. Runyan. Ensuring that our deploying and deployed forces have
the equipment, training, and personnel they need often comes at the
expense of non-deployed Army units. Under current budget constraints,
what are the strategic implications for Reserve and National Guard Army
units and their ability to provide ``surge'' capability to meet current
and future threats?
General Bolger. Manning: The Army Reserve/National Guard (ARNG) has
been very successful in maintaining its assigned End Strength. However,
the ARNG does not have the ability to pull from a pool of Soldiers at
schools or in the accession pipeline as the Active Component does. All
ARNG Soldiers are assigned to a Modified Table of Organization &
Equipment (MTOE) or Table of Distribution and Allowances (TDA)
position. This creates a situation where the ARNG must cross level
between units and sometimes states in order to ensure that all ARNG
formations are deploying at 100%. The ARNG has successfully met all
requirements to date in support of overseas contingency operations. If
recruiting and individual training resources do not meet requirements,
the ARNG will be in a degraded position to continue to support Overseas
Contingency Operations (OCO) demands.
Equipping: The ARNG is at the highest level of equipment
modernization and readiness that it has ever been. If that level of
readiness is not sustained with the required resource levels then the
ARNG's future ability to surge in support of overseas contingencies as
well as Homeland Defense/Security will be degraded.
Training: Pre-mobilization training resources set the stage for
successful post-mobilization training and validation for deployment.
The ARNG in conjunction with United States Army Forces Command
(FORSCOM) and First Army has worked to decrease the amount of post-
mobilization training time over the last 10 years. This decreased post-
mobilization training time enables increased ``Boots on the Ground''
(BOG) time in theater. If pre-mobilization training resources are
decreased, there will be a direct impact to the amount of BOG that
Reserve Component (RC) units will perform.
Overall decreased funding for the ARNG will create a situation
whereby supporting surge efforts will be significantly degraded. The
timelines involved with building readiness for RC units mandate that
funding be at or near required levels. It is too late to apply
increased funding when a surge demand is received. The timelines for
acquiring and fielding equipment, sending Soldiers to Schools, and
conducting individual pre-mobilization training are too long to support
immediate reaction to OCO demand. If the RC is funded at required
levels, units can respond to immediate demands as evidenced most
recently by the 60-90 day notification to mobilization experienced by
the 77TH Theater Aviation Brigade, the 116TH Infantry Brigade
Headquarters, and six ARNG Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (TUAS)
Platoons.
Mr. Runyan. We have not had a very good track record of predicting
the next contingency. What is the Army doing to be ready for that next
contingency and where do you think it will occur?
General Bolger. While we cannot predict with certainty when and
where crises may occur, we do anticipate that in an era of persistent
conflict Army forces will continue to be required for a variety of
missions. In order to best respond to a full spectrum of future
operations the Army is creating a Surge Force. This Surge Force is
capable of resourcing all Army requirements for the first two phases of
the Department of Defense's operational contingency plans, one
additional small scale contingency, and a homeland security event. The
Surge Force will consist of one corps headquarters, three division
headquarters, ten brigade combat teams, and 41,000 enablers in support
of these formations. The Army's rotational model resources these units
to high readiness levels before they enter the Surge Force window.
Surge Force units will have sufficient dwell time to train to full
spectrum standards.
Mr. Runyan. We have been in combat now for almost ten years with
many soldiers having repeated deployments. What effect has this had on
unit, soldier and family readiness? How will your rotational model
assist in preserving the all volunteer force and provide for a more
ready force?
General Bolger. Multiple deployments have rendered our Army out of
balance. The effects of repeated deployments are increases in
behavioral health stress in Soldiers, the number of non-deployable
Soldiers in units, and high risk behaviors that affect the Soldier and
their Families. Additional effects are a deployment to dwell ratio
below 1:2 Active Component (AC) and 1:4 Reserve Component (RC),
backlogs in Professional Military Education, and the lack of strategic
depth and flexibility to support unforeseen contingencies. Restoring
balance to the Army is a high priority. Full implementation of the Army
supply based force generation model establishes predictable BOG:Dwell
ratios, prepares the Army for full spectrum operations and sustains the
All-Volunteer Force. The Army fully supports programs that sustain and
build resilient Soldiers, Families, and Civilians. The Comprehensive
Soldier Fitness Program and Army Risk Reduction and Health Promotion
Program will assist in improving behavioral health. We will also
maintain our pledge to the Army Family Covenant by assisting our
Families in meeting the challenges, stresses and strains on those left
behind.
Mr. Runyan. What are the Army's three main challenges in readiness
today?
General Bolger. 1. Demand. The number one challenge to readiness
today remains the continued and excessive demand for Army forces. While
the overall demand for Army forces has been reduced, the demand for
critical enablers continues to exceed sustainable levels, further
challenging the Army's ability to meet required dwell time ratios for
those units. Unique, ad hoc, and individual manning demands (joint
manning documents, individual augmentations, etc.) place additional
burdens on the force.
2. Balance. The Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model provides a
path for Army units to build readiness over time in order to maximize
mission or contingency related readiness prior to arrival date or
availability windows. However, because of the continued and excessive
demand, the Army remains out of balance, both across the ARFORGEN Force
Pools (Reset, Train/Ready and Available) and across the Components
(Active and Reserve). Additionally, critical resources are often
shifted from our non-deployed forces to ensure the success of our
deployed forces. This is especially problematic for those units in the
Train/Ready window, which under the doctrinal design of ARFORGEN, are
to be manned and equipped to respond to un-foreseen contingencies.
Currently, the Army's ability to respond to those contingencies is
challenged and is addressed in the Chairman's Comprehensive Joint
Assessment (CJA).
3. Material Availability. The Reset phase of ARFORGEN is critical
to ensuring that equipment is refitted, re-distributed, and/or fielded
as new equipment to units. The Army forecasts the need for Reset may
continue for multiple years following the end of Operation New Dawn (CY
2011) and Operation Enduring Freedom. Steady, predictable, and
continued support for both procurement and modernization of equipment
coupled with continued support for the Army's Reset program is
imperative to ensuring the adequate availability of equipment.
Mr. Runyan. General Carlisle, in the near term what are your top
Unfunded Requirements (UFRs) for Air Force readiness?
General Carlisle. The Air Force made difficult choices while
building the FY12 President's Budget, and we balanced our mission in a
way that maximizes our efforts to support the joint fight, while
embracing SECDEF guidance to achieve efficiencies goals. In accordance
with Secretary Gates' intent, we looked within our own programs,
strived to be more efficient, and used the savings for higher
priorities, to include readiness. We have identified several items that
provide direct support to our Combatant Commanders in today's joint
fight that emerged since the FY12 President's Budget submission. The A-
10 Maintenance Tester and the EC-130H avionics upgrade improve our
readiness posture and operational capabilities by resolving issues that
could require grounding Aircraft. We also require a variety of
munitions replacement in support of ongoing operations that will
provide replenishment of weapons critical to meeting future wartime
needs. If we receive full support of our FY12 budget request, we are
confident we can fund our most critical requirements to ensure a ready
force.
Mr. Runyan. The fiscal year 2012 budget request reflects shortfalls
in depot maintenance requirements. With an aging aircraft fleet how
much risk does this pose to Air Force Readiness. What is the impact?
General Carlisle. Although we took risk in weapon system support by
initially funding it at 80 percent, we identified efficiencies that
improved funding to 85 percent. Additionally, we are managing near term
risk and maintaining our warfighting readiness through balanced support
to our legacy fleet and new aircraft. The 16 percent in unfunded
requirement risk includes software, sustaining engineering and
technical orders; however, this is mitigated through enterprise-wide
prioritization to fund the highest priority systems in the year of
execution while ensuring a stable depot workload and workforce is
maintained. The long-term depot maintenance risk is mitigated through
Full Scale Fatigue Testing and Structural Integrity and Service Life
Extension Programs which will improve the sustainability of legacy
aircraft and ensure total force readiness.
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