[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 112-63]
THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE
AND THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS
AFTER 9/11: PERSPECTIVES FROM
OUTSIDE EXPERTS
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Twelfth Congress
HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, California, Chairman
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland ADAM SMITH, Washington
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JEFF MILLER, Florida ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio RICK LARSEN, Washington
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania DAVE LOEBSACK, Iowa
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
ROB WITTMAN, Virginia CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
DUNCAN HUNTER, California LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina
JOHN C. FLEMING, M.D., Louisiana MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado BILL OWENS, New York
TOM ROONEY, Florida JOHN R. GARAMENDI, California
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania MARK S. CRITZ, Pennsylvania
SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia TIM RYAN, Ohio
CHRIS GIBSON, New York C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri HANK JOHNSON, Georgia
JOE HECK, Nevada BETTY SUTTON, Ohio
BOBBY SCHILLING, Illinois COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
JON RUNYAN, New Jersey KATHLEEN C. HOCHUL, New York
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas
STEVEN PALAZZO, Mississippi
ALLEN B. WEST, Florida
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
MO BROOKS, Alabama
TODD YOUNG, Indiana
Robert L. Simmons II, Staff Director
Jenness Simler, Professional Staff Member
Michael Casey, Professional Staff Member
Lauren Hauhn, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2011
Page
Hearing:
Tuesday, September 13, 2011, The Future of National Defense and
the U.S. Military Ten Years After 9/11: Perspectives from
Outside Experts................................................ 1
Appendix:
Tuesday, September 13, 2011...................................... 43
----------
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER 9/
11: PERSPECTIVES FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' a Representative from
California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services.............. 1
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 2
WITNESSES
Boot, Max, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National
Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations................. 9
Donnelly, Thomas, Resident Fellow and Director, Center for
Defense Studies, American Enterprise Institute................. 6
O'Hanlon, Dr. Michael E., Director of Research and Senior Fellow,
Brookings Institution.......................................... 12
Thomas, Jim, Vice President and Director of Studies, Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments............................ 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Boot, Max.................................................... 74
Donnelly, Thomas............................................. 64
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 47
O'Hanlon, Dr. Michael E...................................... 83
Smith, Hon. Adam............................................. 49
Thomas, Jim.................................................. 51
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Andrews.................................................. 97
Mr. Bartlett................................................. 97
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER
9/11: PERSPECTIVES FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, September 13, 2011.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m. in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''
McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A
REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. Good morning. The committee will come to
order. I know some are caught in traffic, but we will go ahead
and get started, and I think we will be fine.
The House Armed Services Committee meets this morning to
receive testimony on ``The Future of National Defense and the
U.S. Military 10 Years After 9/11: Perspectives from Outside
Experts.''
As our Nation marked the 10-year anniversary of the attacks
on our Nation this past Sunday, we remember and commemorate the
lives lost on that day. We also honor the sacrifices made every
day since then by our military and their families as our Armed
Forces continue to fight for our Nation's safety.
This hearing is the second in our series of hearings to
evaluate lessons learned since 9/11 and to apply those lessons
to decisions we will soon be making about the future of our
force. Last Thursday, we heard from former chairmen and a vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Today, we will hear from
outside experts representing several well-known and highly
respected organizations to whom our committee regularly turns
for accurate and reliable research and analysis. While we will
continue to solicit the expertise of former and current senior
military and civilian leaders within the Department of Defense,
it is important to gain perspective from professionals such as
these who make their living conducting the type of forward-
looking strategic assessments that we seek.
I remain concerned that our Nation is slipping back into
the false confidence of a September 10th mindset--believing our
Nation to be secure because the homeland has not been
successfully attacked; believing that we can maintain a solid
defense that is driven by budget choices, not strategic ones.
As members of the Armed Services Committee, we must avoid
the cart-before-the-horse cliche. First, we must decide what we
want our military to do, and only then evaluate savings within
the Department. To date, that hasn't happened. Over half a
trillion dollars has been cut from the DOD [Department of
Defense] already. Nevertheless, if the Joint Select Committee
does not succeed in developing and passing a cohesive deficit
reduction plan, an additional half a trillion dollars could be
cut from our military automatically. On top of that looming
concern, it remains to be seen whether or not additional cuts
may be proposed by the Administration even if the super
committee is successful.
As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I have two
principal concerns that stem from recent military atrophy. The
first is a security issue. In a networked and globalized world,
the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean are no longer adequate to keep
America safe. September 11th taught us that.
The second is an economic concern. While it is true that
our military power is derived from our economic power, we must
realize that this relationship is symbiotic. Cuts to our
Nation's defense, either by eliminating programs or laying off
soldiers, comes with an economic cost. The U.S. military is the
modern era's greatest champion of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. It is time we focus our fiscal restraint
on the driver of our debt instead of the protector of our
prosperity.
With that in mind, I look forward to a frank discussion
today.
Representative Smith.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 47.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON,
RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank the chairman for holding not just this
hearing but this series of hearings. I think it is one of the
most important challenges that we face on the Armed Services
Committee and certainly in our national security Department of
Defense strategy, to figure out how we deal with the budget
deficit we face pending cuts. But, also, I think our experts
agree today, and everyone on the panel would agree, that even
if we weren't facing these budget cuts and deficit challenges,
there is a need to review the strategy at DOD.
A lot has changed in recent years. We are beginning to draw
down in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have the emergence of all
kinds of new weapons systems, potential challenges. Certainly,
a lot has changed since we had the fairly dependable Cold War
strategy of being able to fight two major regional
contingencies at the same time. So, no matter our budget
picture, it would be appropriate to have a strategic review.
And it is important to point out that the executive branch,
the President, is going through that strategic review right
now, going back, looking at where we spend our money in the
Department of Defense and saying, Where can we find savings?
Where should we spend it? What should our strategy be? I think
that is one of the most important things that we are going to
have to do on this committee, so I think it is great to hear
from outside experts and, frankly, from any experts that we can
get our hands on. It is going to be necessary.
And it is important to point out that the size of some of
the cuts that have been talked about on the Department of
Defense budget would be devastating. I did not support the debt
ceiling deal, despite the fact that I felt we should raise the
debt ceiling, in large part because all of the cuts were dumped
on to the nonentitlement portion of the spending, unless, of
course, the super committee manages to do what we have been
completely unable to do for the last 10 or 12 years and comes
up with savings elsewhere. So it is all dumped onto the
nonentitlement portion of the budget, and defense is over half
of that nonentitlement spending. National security spending
will be devastated if this plan goes forward, and we seriously
need to come up with some alternatives to that.
That said, we can clearly find savings in our national
security spending; we can clearly find savings in the
Department of Defense. Anybody who takes a passing look at the
last 10 years can clearly find places where we need to spend
money better, more effectively. And we could actually save
money and be stronger. You know, it doesn't necessarily have to
work in the opposite direction.
And the other point I would like to make is, resources are
part of a strategy. I am sure absolutely everybody who has ever
had to look at something where they want to spend money would
like to say, let's imagine that money is not a factor. What do
we want? I mean, that is the standard operating procedure for
any program you can imagine. It is also completely unrealistic.
You have to live within the resources that are available to
you, and you have to figure out what your strategy should be.
But the one thing that I absolutely believe is whatever we
decide in terms of our strategy, we have to make sure we fund
it. The one thing this committee, this Congress, the President,
the Department of Defense cannot do is come up with a strategy
and ask the men and women in our Armed Forces to carry it out
and then not give them the resources to carry it out. So my
personal opinion is you've got to look at the resources in
determining that strategy. Don't set a strategy imagining more
resources than you are actually going to have.
And the last point that I think is critical: We have to
make choices here. And this committee can do a great job, and
has done a great job, of pointing out where, if you cut this,
here is the implication. I think it is very important that we
do that, that we make it clear the impact that these cuts will
have on our ability to protect this Nation. We need to make
that argument.
But if we feel very, very strongly that those proposed cuts
are going to do irreparable harm to our national security
strategy, that they should not be made, then we also have an
obligation to come up with the money so that we don't make
them. And whether that is finding cuts in other programs or
finding more revenue, that is a critical piece of this.
And, again, everybody who is looking to spend money would
like to say, ``Well, this is my little piece. I can't worry
about where it is coming from; that is your job. I just got to
tell you that I have to have this.'' Well, if you have that
focus, you are going to look up and not have that money if you
are in the nonentitlement portion of the budget, because the
revenue is the revenue, the entitlements are the entitlements,
they are what they are. It takes an act of Congress every year
and the President to sign it to fund the Department of Defense.
So if you don't deal with those other issues, as I have
said repeatedly, you wind up being the person last in line at a
buffet where the food is running out. Not a good situation. So
we have to talk also about what our revenue should be and what
other programs we should cut.
I look forward to this discussion. I think it is the most
important thing we are doing right now because it will form our
national security policy in the years and decades to follow.
I thank the chairman for having this hearing and look
forward to the witnesses' testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the
Appendix on page 49.]
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Now, as I mentioned before, we have special witnesses that
have outside expertise, and I am looking forward to hearing
their testimonies.
First we will hear from Mr. Jim Thomas, Vice President and
Director of studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments.
Dr. O'Hanlon is still caught in traffic. We will move him
to the end.
We will hear next from Mr. Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow
and Director, Center for Defense Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute; and Mr. Max Boot, the Jeane Kirkpatrick
Senior Fellow for national security studies at the Council on
Foreign Relations; and then Dr. Michael O'Hanlon, Director of
research and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today. We all look
forward to hearing your testimony.
Mr. Thomas.
STATEMENT OF JIM THOMAS, VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF
STUDIES, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS
Mr. Thomas. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, and
members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify
today.
And, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, I just want to
underscore the importance of your opening comments this
morning, that truly our national and economic security are
intertwined, and it is not a question of one or the other but
it is a question of how we are going to manage both in the
years ahead. And the second that I think you both stressed was
that the cuts that would be anticipated by the sequestration
trigger truly would be devastating. And this, obviously, is in
the backs of all of our minds this morning.
Ten years on from the 9/11 attacks, America finds its
military forces still engaged in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
conducting combat and noncombat operations around the world.
But the United States does not have the luxury to focus only on
the threat posed by Islamic extremists. Three challenges, in
particular, will require greater attention over the next
several decades: The rise of China, new regional nuclear
powers, and the growing lethality and empowerment of other
transnational non-state actors besides Al Qaeda.
The security challenges we face in the decade ahead are
greater than they have been at any time since the Cold War,
while the resources to deal with them are tightening by the
day. There is a need to revise our defense strategy in light of
our changing security and fiscal circumstances. We have to make
choices. Even if we didn't face a grim fiscal outlook, we would
still need to make choices to address the range of security
challenges this Nation faces to maintain U.S. military staying
power.
A new strategy might call on allies and partners to do more
for their own defense, with the United States serving as a
global enabler rather than a first responder for every regional
crisis that comes along. It might place greater emphasis on
particular elements of the U.S. military to foster deterrence.
Just as President Eisenhower's ``New Look'' strategy in the
1950s emphasized nuclear weapons to deter aggression, the
United States today might emphasize Special Operations Forces
and global strike capabilities, including cyber capabilities,
conventional and nuclear, to deter aggression and coercion.
The United States, and DOD in particular, should also
consider revising the force planning construct that directs how
we size and shape our military forces, moving away from the
preparations for conducting concurrent large-scale land combat
campaigns focused specifically on conducting or repelling
invasions. Instead, it might consider a wider range of
contingencies, placing a particular emphasis on one of the most
stressing challenges our military faces, which might be the
elimination of a hostile power's WMD [weapon of mass
destruction] capabilities.
As we look ahead, we should assume that the United States
will conduct no more than one large-scale land combat campaign
at any given time. To deal with opportunistic aggression by a
third party if the United States is engaged in war--the threat
that the concurrency principle in our force planning construct
historically has intended to address--the United States should
maintain sufficient global strike capabilities, including a
deep magazine of precision-guided weapons, to halt invading
forces and conduct heavy punitive attacks over extended periods
of time against any second mover.
The United States should also consider revising its
military roles and missions. It should reduce duplication
across the Services, including in combat aircraft, unmanned air
vehicles, armored forces, and cyber capabilities.
Beyond changes in its strategy and the design of forces, we
should also look for greater savings and efficiencies in the
institutional functions of the Department, including reductions
in headquarters staffs. We must also act to arrest personnel
growth, cost growth, lest DOD follow the path of large American
corporations that have run into trouble in recent years as
their health care and pension costs have spiraled out of
control, leaving them less competitive.
We must also safeguard key elements of our defense
industrial base as a source of strategic advantage. And today,
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is releasing
in advance to members of this committee copies of our new
report on the defense industrial base.
And, finally, the Department of Defense should develop new
operational concepts, which serve a vital function as the
connective tissue between our strategic objectives and the
types of forces and capability investments that will be needed
in the future.
In closing, let me say that I believe, despite the
conventional wisdom that America is in decline, the United
States continues to enjoy unrivaled strategic advantages and
the most favorable position relative to all the other great
powers of the day. With ample political will and shared
sacrifice, I am confident the United States can get its
economic house back in order while continuing to safeguard the
country from those who would harm us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas can be found in the
Appendix on page 51.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Donnelly.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS DONNELLY, RESIDENT FELLOW AND DIRECTOR,
CENTER FOR DEFENSE STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Mr. Donnelly. Thanks to you, Mr. Chairman, to the ranking
member, and the committee. I only lament that this hearing
isn't being conducted in front of the ``super committee''
[Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction] itself, the folks
who really have the fate of the U.S. Armed Forces in their
hands. So I hope you will make this result available to them
and urge them to confront the issue directly themselves.
I understand we are a last minute substitute for the former
Secretaries of Defense. That gives me an opportunity to frame
what I want to talk about and what I talk about in my written
testimony. So I am going to try to channel what I imagine
Secretary Perry, William Perry, might have said. I had the good
fortune to help him out, and the other members of the
Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, very much a
creation of this committee.
So what I would like to do is try to address the strategic
issues that you and the ranking member have raised and use the
construct that we came up with in the panel as a way to think
about what the consequences of these cuts, the ones that are
already in prospect, and the ones that, as Jim suggested,
sequestration or a similar negotiated outcome would produce out
of the super committee.
The Chairman. Without objection, your written testimonies
will be included in the record. Thank you.
Mr. Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And there were four--I mean, in the panel, we very quickly
came to a dead end once the members realized that the strategy
enunciated in the QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] itself was
really an empty vessel, not really a guide to planning for the
Department. And that was an observation that applied not only
to the 2010 QDR but increasingly to the QDR process since it
had been initiated.
The result was that members really kind of had to go back
or thrust back on their own resources and their own experience.
Fortunately, the 20 members were among the most intelligent and
experienced public servants and former military officers that
had ever served this country. And what we decided to do was,
essentially, to deduce from the behavior of the United States,
from what we have actually done in the world since the end of
World War II, what our de facto strategy is.
And the members of the panel very much came to the
conclusion that we are not beginning with a blank sheet of
paper, that there is no giant risk meter in the sky where we
can perfectly calibrate the dangers and threats that Americans
and American interests face in the world. And the best way to
think about what we need to prepare for is to ask what outcome,
what result, the United States would like to see, what kind of
world would we like to live in? And we very quickly came to
these four conclusions.
The number one priority for American strategy has been,
remains, and, certainly, 10 years after 9/11, we are reminded
that defense of the American homeland is the number one
priority. We have made a lot of investments and been very lucky
and people have worked extraordinarily hard to ensure that
those 9/11 attacks were not repeated. Certainly all of us who
work in Washington, one of the questions we asked ourselves on
9/11, even before the day was out, was, when is the next attack
going to be? That is a normal response, and the fact that we
have avoided that is a result of good luck but a lot of effort
and a lot of effort on the part of the Department of Defense.
It is obviously a multiagency task, but DOD has contributed a
lot to the fact that we believe ourselves to be safer today.
The second enduring premise of American strategy is access
to what is normally called ``the commons,'' the international
commons. That is a term that was derived mostly in regard to
naval and maritime power. That remains true in a world, a
globalized world that depends on international trade. Not only
the United States but the rest of the world and the most
rapidly modernizing parts of the world depend upon the ability
to ship goods easily, freely, and cheaply. But, obviously, the
oceans and the seas are an incredible and essential part of
American power projection around the world, of our posture
across the world and, in fact, our entire global position.
The atmosphere, the air, the skies, is also, like the seas
in being both an avenue for commerce but an essential component
of American military power. Indeed, American airpower has been
the signature form of American military power now really since
the end of World War II. And even our naval forces are largely
defined by their ability to employ airpower, to be mobile
platforms for strike aircraft or strike systems.
But what is true on the seas and in the skies is also true
in space, near-Earth space, and also in cyberspace now. And
particularly when you come to cyberspace, we are spending a lot
of money trying to figure out what cybersecurity really entails
and means, and it is still a process of discovery.
But it is also the case, reasoning backwards, that the
failure to provide a secure environment for international
commerce, which is more and more conducted across the Internet,
and international communications and all the elements of modern
life that the Internet is intertwined with, if that is not a
safe and secure realm for commerce and for military affairs,
then there will be geopolitical implications.
Imagine what a genuinely insecure or contested cyber realm
would look like and what international politics would be like.
People would, of course, turn first to the United States to
say, Where is the answer? Why isn't it safe for us to conduct
our business? But then, if we were unable to provide such
guarantees, again, I can't imagine in detail. I would defer to
experts in this field. But it is certainly something worth
thinking about and asking ourselves, as we prepare to cut and
as the newest investments may well be the first ones to fall
off the plate, what the consequences of that would be.
Two other elements of our strategy are long-enduring, and I
think, as we look forward, we have to ask ourselves, are we
going to continue to conduct our business in this way or shape
our strategy?
The first is the balance of power across the Eurasian
landmass, not to be too pedantic about it: In Europe, in the
greater Middle East, and in East Asia. We have been in Europe
for almost a century. The creation of a stable and peaceful
Europe, which is a punctuation mark on 400 years of struggle
and conflict, is the result of the American victory in World
War II and in the Cold War. It is a human historic achievement.
It costs us pennies compared to what it used to. The idea
that we could somehow reap savings by withdrawing our garrisons
in Europe I think is just, actuarially or as an accounting
matter, not the case. But it is also the case that these
positions are really useful lily pads for the projection of
power elsewhere. There is not an operation we have conducted in
the Middle East over the past two decades that hasn't relied on
either stopping for gas or, for example, returning casualties
quickly to very high-end medical facilities in Germany.
If we walk away from those commitments, it is not likely to
immediately put the peace of Europe at risk, but it is
certainly going to make our job more difficult elsewhere. We
could not have conducted the operation in Libya, even as
compromised as it was, absent access to European facilities and
without our European allies.
The same is true even more so in East Asia. Jim referred in
his testimony to the challenges that we face in that region. We
have been withdrawing from East Asia for the last generation,
particularly in Southeast Asia. And, not surprisingly, that is
the region where the Chinese have become more provocative and
more aggressive in recent years.
And, finally, in the Middle East, we are all weary of the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for good reasons, although
our sacrifices at home are nothing compared to the sacrifices
of those who are actually fighting the war, who are a very
small proportion of our population. But, again, if we step back
from the headlines and look at the experience of the past 30
years, if I had been an investor in a penny stock called U.S.
Central Command in 1979, I could have retired many times over,
because the number of Americans in all Services and all
capacities who are serving in that region has mushroomed, and
we have been remarkably successful--again, if you step back
from the attacks of the day--in terms of creating a region that
is more peaceful, more stable, and now, surprise, in the throes
of its own democratic revolution.
And, finally, there is the component of American strategy
that should not be undersold, and that is providing for the
public good, the international common public good, whether it
is humanitarian relief, even up to the more directly related to
our national interest tasks of nation- and state-building, and
army-building in particular, in states that are new allies of
ours and who we wish to be our strategic partners for the
future.
Again, I am simply trying to observe how we have acted.
Presidents of both parties, often who come into office saying,
``I will never do that again; I will control our appetite, and
I will lift the burden and save money on war and on military
expenses,'' to a man, they have reversed course and found that
the need for energetic engagement across the world remains the
core of American strategy.
So, as we contemplate these cuts, I think the benchmark
ought to be what our past behavior has been. And you need to
ask the super committee, and before we collectively as a Nation
make these decisions, ask which of these missions we are going
to shortchange. The people who conduct them have been running
at full speed for quite a while. And as we take away resources
from them, their ability to succeed is going to be put at risk
and so will their lives.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donnelly can be found in the
Appendix on page 64.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Boot.
STATEMENT OF MAX BOOT, JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK SENIOR FELLOW FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Mr. Boot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Congressman
Smith. Thank you, members of the committee. Thank you for
convening this very important series of hearings. Thank you for
inviting us to testify. And thank you, above all, for all you
are doing to sound the clarion call about the devastating
damage that will be done to our Nation's defense and to our
standing as a country if the full range of budget cuts
currently contemplated in Washington were actually to be
enacted.
Jim's colleague Todd Harrison at CSBA [Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments] has calculated that if you add in
the cuts that have already been made and the cuts that are
being contemplated--which, let us remember, is not only a
devastating possibility of sequestration but also the loss of
the overseas contingency funding as we wind down in Iraq and
Afghanistan--if you put all that together, according to Todd
Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
the defense budget could decline by 31 percent over the next
decade. That compares with cuts of 53 percent after the Korean
war, 26 percent after the Vietnam war, and 34 percent after the
end of the Cold War.
Now, some will say, ``Good. It is a historical norm that we
should wind down our military activities and spend the peace
dividend when wars are over.'' In the first place, I would
observe that it is more than curious that we are in a rush to
spend a peace dividend when there is no peace, when our
soldiers every day are still walking outside the wire in Iraq
and Afghanistan, facing deadly danger, confronting our Nation's
enemies. They are not at peace, our Nation is not at peace, and
yet we are rushing to wind down our military activities.
Beyond that, however, I would put on my hat as not only a
policy analyst but, first and foremost, as a historian and look
at what has happened in the past when we have engaged in this
activity of cutting defense after what we believe to be the end
of hostilities, when we suddenly imagine that peace is dawning
and we can afford to let down our guard. If there is one iron
law of American history, it is that those cuts have made future
wars more likely, and when those wars have come, they have made
it much more likely that we would lose the first battles of
those wars, at great cost in blood and treasure to our Nation.
Let me just review that history very briefly with you,
noting, to begin with, that after the American Revolution our
Armed Forces shrank from 35,000 men to just 10,000, which left
us completely unprepared to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion,
the quasi-war with France, the Barbary wars, the War of 1812,
all the conflicts of the early 19th century. After the Civil
War, our Armed Forces shrank from more than a million men to
just 50,000, which made it impossible to deal with the threat
posed by the Ku Klux Klan and other violent terrorist groups
seeking to subvert the aims of Reconstruction.
After World War I, our Armed Forces shrank from 2.9 million
men to 250,000 in 1928. That made World War II much more likely
by emboldening aggressors in both Japan and Germany.
After World War II, our Armed Forces shrank from 12 million
men in 1945 to 1.4 million in 1950. The Army saw truly steep
cuts, from 8.3 million soldiers to 593,000. And those that were
remained were ill-trained, ill-equipped. We paid the cost in
1950 when North Korean tanks rumbled across the DMZ
[Demilitarized Zone] and the very first American force to
confront them, Task Force Smith, was decimated because they had
neither the training nor even the ammunition to stop this
onslaught.
After the Korean war, our Armed Forces once again declined,
from 3.6 million men in 1952 to 2.5 million in 1959. The Army
lost almost half its Active Duty strength in those years.
Instead, President Eisenhower thought he could rely on the
``New Look,'' on nuclear deterrence, to prevent aggression in
the future. That strategy was not vindicated in the case of
Vietnam, where we confronted an enemy who could not be stopped
by a handheld Davy Crockett nuclear launcher.
After the Vietnam war, our Armed Forces shrank from 3.5
million personnel in 1969 to 2 million in 1979. This was the
era, as you all remember I am sure, the era of the ``hollow
Army,'' when we had inadequate equipment, discipline, training,
and morale, all of which emboldened our enemies to aggression,
whether it was anti-American revolutions in Nicaragua and Iran
or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We are still paying the
price, by the way, in that the anti-American regime in Iran
remains very firmly entrenched in power.
And then, after the end of the Cold War and the Persian
Gulf war, our Armed Forces shrank from 2.1 million personnel in
1989 to 1.3 million in 1999. We are still suffering the
consequences of that post-Cold War drawdown, which left us with
inadequate force numbers to deal with contingencies such as the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we know, our Armed Forces have
been tremendously stressed over the last decade. And it is not
only the Army; it is the Navy, it is the Air Force, all of
which are running their equipment ragged, running their
personnel ragged by maintaining an unsupportable operations
tempo.
This is the point when we should be recapitalizing our
Force, as called for by the Hadley-Perry Commission. This is
when we should be building up to make up for the decline in
overall American--for the lost procurement decade of the 1990s,
for the declining stocks of weapons systems and the aging of
our tanks, aircraft, Navy ships, and others.
It is certainly a time when, as has been pointed out by Tom
just a minute ago, we are facing numerous threats around the
world, which would certainly necessitate, if we were looking at
things from a strategic perspective, a buildup, not a drawdown.
When you look, certainly, at the fact that China is undergoing
double-digit increases in its defense spending every year, that
suggests the need for enhancing the American deterrent in the
Pacific, not drawing it down.
And yet, what are we already engaging in? We are already
seeing the Department of Defense cut back program after
program, whether it is the F-22 or the Future Combat System,
the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle--so many, over the last
several years, which have been canceled or cut back. So it is
not as if the Department of Defense has been exempt from the
budget-cutting ax. We are already cutting into what I believe
to be the muscle of our military defense. The danger now, of
course, is that, if sequestration occurs, we will start
chopping off entire limbs. Either way, our Nation's defense
will not remain whole if this budget-cutting imperative is
allowed to run willy-nilly out of control.
Now, in conclusion, I would note that, all that being said,
if it were truly the case that the defense spending that we
currently have were bankrupting the country, if the defense
spending were truly responsible for the grievous state of our
public finances, at that point I might very well join the
budget cutters and say we should cut back, because, in fact,
our Nation's economic wellbeing is the ultimate line of defense
and the ultimate guarantor of American strength.
But, as all of you know, that is not the case. Even now,
even with defense spending having doubled in absolute terms
over the last decade, we are still spending less than 5 percent
of our gross domestic product on defense. It is still consuming
less than 20 percent of the Federal budget. These are both
relatively low figures by historic standards, and it is
impossible to argue with a straight face that defense is
bankrupting our country. Clearly, as Congressman Smith
mentioned, it is the entitlement problem that we have to
grapple with. And even if we eliminated the defense budget
tomorrow, we would still be left with a dire fiscal situation.
But instead of dealing with our true fiscal woes, I fear we
are being distracted by them, again, as Congresswoman Smith
noted, by the fact that it is relatively easy to go after
defense and much harder to go after entitlements. And what this
raises for me is the prospect of a dangerous world that I hope
that I will not live to see, that I hope that none of us will
live to see, which is a world in which America is no longer
number one, a world in which our primacy is actively
challenged, a world of competing power blocks, a Hobbesian
world where the rule of law becomes a laughingstock, where our
power is not respected.
That will be a much dangerous world. And if history is any
guide, we will pay a very high praise if we allow the waning of
our military power and we live to see a world such as that. And
yet I fear that will be the inevitable consequence if
sequestration occurs, and perhaps even if not.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boot can be found in the
Appendix on page 74.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. O'Hanlon, I already introduced you as Director of
Research, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Sorry you
were held up in traffic. We will now hear from you.
STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL E. O'HANLON, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND
SENIOR FELLOW, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize, and I
will be brief. I was with a group of Army generals talking
about a similar topic out in Fairfax, and that is a long ways
with D.C. traffic. But my apologies and my appreciation for the
opportunity.
I will just make a couple of brief points. I know some of
what has already been said, having reviewed some of their
writings.
I think there are ways to do $350 billion to $400 billion
or so in 10-year defense cuts but not trillion-dollar cuts. And
that is the bottom line for me.
And I say this based on an ongoing research project that I
have been conducting where I try to begin with five or six what
I consider irreducible requirements for American national
security policy. And I think, for example, just to give you a
highlight, we don't want to be in a position where we have to
choose between protecting the western Pacific as China rises in
a promising but challenging way and protecting the Persian
Gulf. We don't want to ask the Navy to make that choice. I
think it would be fundamentally unwise. We don't want to ask
the Army to choose between a potential capability to protect
Korea, because as unlikely as war may be there it is not
impossible, and being able to conduct its ongoing stability
efforts in the broader Middle Eastern region. We don't want to
have to ask the defense industrial base to make a choice
between keeping top-of-the-line excellence in certain
technology areas like stealth, but not maintaining that
excellence in other areas like submarines. And yet these are
the kinds of choices I believe we are forced into if we make
trillion-dollar, 10-year cuts.
If we make half-trillion-dollar, 10-year cuts, it is still
hard, it is still uncomfortable, but just to give you a quick
sampling of the kinds of ideas that I think we can consider and
that are difficult and risky but still, I think, worth looking
into at this kind of a moment in our Nation's fiscal peril, I
think we can consider a range of ideas that still allow us to
maintain these core requirements but that, frankly, are going
to be tough. For example, consider a ``nuclear dyad'' instead
of a triad. I am open to that.
Another idea that I think we should be open to, recognizing
that unmanned drones now allow us to cut back the F-35
procurement buy from 2,500 to perhaps something that is only
half to two-thirds as much, using drones and precision strike
munitions instead of the number of manned tactical fighters
that we previously anticipated.
Another example of where I think we can be a little bit
provocative--and we should be--is to ask the Navy to start
considering rotating crews overseas by airplane and leaving the
ships forward-deployed for a longer period of time. The Navy
has done this with mine sweepers, and it has a variant on this
for its ballistic missile submarines, but it does not do it
with its surface combatants, even though I believe it could and
even though they have done experiments that show that it is
doable. Now, you still have to have a ship back home for
training, but when you go through the math, you can actually
get 35, 40 percent more utility per ship, at least in
peacetime. This doesn't account for the need for a warfighting
attrition reserve, but in peacetime you can probably do better.
That is the kind of uncomfortable idea I think the Navy has
to consider. And I think the Army and Marine Corps are going to
have to go back to Clinton-era, 1990s-era levels in terms of
size and overall manpower strength as the war winds down in
Afghanistan. So I am open to these sorts of things.
But even if you do these--and these are pretty aggressive,
and they are going to make a lot of people uncomfortable and
add some risk to our national security portfolio--I think you
can get to $350 billion, $400 billion in 10-year cuts; you
can't get anywhere close to a trillion. And if you go for a
trillion, you are playing Russian roulette: Which interests do
I take a risk on? Which capabilities do I forgo?
And I will leave it at that, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. O'Hanlon can be found in the
Appendix on page 83.]
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
And I am glad you brought that up. In the Deficit Reduction
Act, we have $350 billion, and that is what everybody is
focused on. But it is actually, if you look at the numbers, if
you go back to the Secretary when he went to the chiefs and
asked them to cut $100 billion, find efficiencies and you will
be able to keep that for more important things, when he went
back to them, he said, ``Actually, you will get to keep $74
billion, and the $26 billion will be used for must-pay things
you will have to continue with, so you won't keep the whole
$100 billion.''
And then when he presented that to us, he said, ``And when
we were going through that, we found another $78 billion in
cuts that we will institute at this point,'' which went against
everything he had been saying for the last several years, that
we needed to have a 1 percent increase going forward just to
maintain stability. And with the $78 billion, it reduced end
strength by 47,000 in the year 2015 out of the Army and the
Marines, but he said we could go no further than that without
significant cuts in end strength.
Then the President gave a speech and said we want to cut
another $400 billion out of defense. All of this has happened
in the last year.
And so the Joint Chiefs--I met with Admiral Mullen last
week--are working on $465 billion in cuts that have not been
put into place yet, not the $350 billion that we are looking
at. And if the joint committee is not successful in their
operation, then we are looking at another half-trillion
dollars, which brings us up to the trillion that you just said
is devastating.
I thank you, each of you, for your comments and for giving
us some ideas of things. I think all of us here understand that
we had to make cuts, but I want to make sure that we understand
that we are looking at $465 billion in cuts in the last year
going forward for the next 10 years, which the chiefs have not
yet given us what that really means. All we are looking at this
point are numbers on a chalkboard. When we see how that
translates down to program reduction, end strength reduction,
we are going to have to deal with that.
But that has already passed, and we are already grappling
with that, without getting any further into these cuts. You
have provided us a lot of thought-provoking material, and I am
sure that these are things that we will have to look at as we
go forward.
Could you please, each of you, comment on the likelihood
that the United States would be able to reduce our military's
commitments? In other words, all of these cuts have been thrown
at us without any change in strategy. It has been, just pick a
number. I think we are going to have to look at what the
commitment is, what do we expect our military to do.
In light of the expected roles and missions of the
military, please provide an assessment of the additional risk
we assume in fulfilling these missions with a substantially
reduced force, reductions to operation and maintenance budgets,
and cuts to procurement.
Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. Well, I think, as we look ahead, for as bad as
our fiscal predicament may be, the predicaments that face many
of our allies are perhaps as bad or even worse.
I think it would be perilous if the United States were to
reduce its security commitments around the world. We have
maintained close ties with allies in Europe and in Northeast
Asia for decades, and this really has been a source of peace
across, as Tom was saying earlier, the Eurasian landmass. And
that is not something we would want to walk away from.
The real question is going to be how we reshape our
commitments as we look ahead. How do we change the division of
labor and the bargains that we struck in the post-war world,
after World War II, and renovate and update them, bring them up
to speed for the 21st century?
For the longest time, our allies have been more or less
protectorates of the United States. We have extended our
nuclear umbrella and the cloak and shield of our conventional
capabilities to protect those allies so that they could
flourish as industrialized nations and prosper in
reconstructing after World War II. But as we look ahead, we are
going to have to re-craft those bargains and expect more of our
allies, especially in terms of their own defense.
And here, I think, we can actually learn from some of the
moves that some of our competitors have been making. If you
look at what China has been doing over the past 15 years in
terms of building up a robust anti-access/area-denial battle
network that is really focused on preventing and constraining
the power-projection options of others, it is possible that our
allies could emulate China to some extent, especially in the
Indo-Pacific region, where they can build up their own
capabilities to hold at bay those who would do harm to them.
They can better defend their own sovereignty more effectively
than relying on the United States to project power into the
theater to protect their sovereignty for them.
So I think this is one of the things that we will have to
look at in the years ahead.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Just to make one specific point, Mr.
Chairman--and this is both an indication of where I think we
can take a little more risk but where we also have to be
careful not to go too far.
As this committee well knows, for 20 years we have been
thinking about two major regional conflicts at a time as our
planning metric. And, in fact, for the last 10 years, we have
been fighting two at a time as our reality. That raises the
question of, what should the planning framework be for the
future? And, as you know, the 2010 QDR essentially reaffirms
the two as the number, and then it adds on other missions. In
the old days, other missions used to be thought of as lesser-
included cases, to some extent, which was probably a misnomer.
But I think, at this point, we don't necessarily need to
have the capability for two all out, simultaneous wars. And
that, by itself, is a pretty risky proposition, to go from two
to one. But I think we can consider that, with Saddam gone and
with our other threats, our fiscal and debt threats.
But if you are going to go to one, you don't cut the Force
in half. You have to be able to sustain ongoing stabilization
efforts in places, in the broader Middle East in particular,
that may remain dangerous for quite some time. I am not
suggesting another big regime-change operation, but if we even
wind up putting one or two brigades in a future Yemen
contingency or, Heaven forbid, Libya or Syria--who knows where
these things are headed? Or Afghanistan for a longer period of
time than some of us would now like, and you add those things
to a one-war capability, you still wind up with a need for
probably 450,000 Active Duty soldiers and 160,000 Active Duty
marines.
So even if you are prepared to be somewhat radical like
that and go from two to one as your major regional war planning
metric, it doesn't mean that you can do a trillion dollars in
10-year cuts or that you can slash the Force. If you are trying
to be at all prudent, it means something much more modest than
that.
Mr. Donnelly. It is always worse as far as, you go down the
line, there are more comments you want to make. I will try to
limit mine to three quickies.
First of all, a matter of some facts. We have left the two-
war force-planning construct two QDRs ago. The late Bush QDR
had that one-four-two-one, whatever that added up to, but it
was a one-major-war planning construct. And the 2010 QDR had no
force-planning construct whatsoever. Secretary Gates said as
much. And all the service chiefs complained loudly and long
about that fact because they had no yardstick to measure their
programs against.
The other thing I would emphasize--actually, two things--is
that it is better for us to think of our global strategy as in
a holistic way, not as a pile, an aggregated pile, of
commitments that we have picked up. It really is a system. The
balance of power in the Middle East is critically important to
the direction that East Asia will take because East Asia
depends critically on those natural resources, and particularly
energy resources, that come out of the Persian Gulf and the
region around there. And the world is just--a globalized world
is a globalized world.
Finally, Jim's point about changing the nature of our
alliances is worth exploring in detail, particularly
emphasizing new partners and new allies, the ones that we have
won in Iraq and Afghanistan--it would be, I think, a strategic
myopia to turn our backs on those people--but also trying to
enlist new partners like the Indians or revitalizing our East
Asian alliances, where there has been broad peace and stability
that has allowed prosperity for the last generation but which
is now much more strategically up in the air than it has been
at any time.
And what that means for us and our programs is that we need
to be able to really integrate this idea of building
partnership capacity from the start. We should never, or only
under extreme circumstances, build systems in the future that
we can't share with our partners and our allies. And a program
like F-35, for example, that was structured for exactly that
purpose, is now one of the strongest reasons for maintaining
and recouping that investment is to be able to proliferate it
among these new partnerships and alliances that we are trying
to revitalize.
Mr. Boot. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you raise a very
important issue about what is the American strategy going
forward. And what concerns me and I am sure concerns all of you
is the lack of strategic thinking going along with the budget-
cutting process. I see very little desire on the part of the
Administration or the American people in general to give up any
of the major roles that our Armed Forces perform around the
world. Instead, we are constantly having new missions thrown
their way--for example, deposing Qadhafi in Libya, just to name
one of many, or providing disaster relief after a tsunami in
Japan. It is hard to imagine that we would forgo those kinds of
missions in the future.
Instead, I think the far more likely scenario would be that
we would still be trying to undertake pretty much all of the
missions that we are currently doing but we would just be doing
them on a shoestring. We would be hollowing out the Force in
order to keep this aura of American power but losing the
reality of American power underneath.
You know, some of the ideas which are actually presented
for dramatically redefining the American posture around the
world I don't think stand up to much scrutiny. I mean, for
example, I know just going out and talking to various audiences
about budget cuts, you often hear questions raised about, well,
why do we still have 80,000 personnel in Europe? I mean, what
is the point of defending the Germans or the Italians? Why
can't they defend themselves? But, in fact, as I think we all
know, the primary role of those forces is not anymore defending
the Germans or Italians; it is simply a way that we can be
forward-deployed in the areas where our troops are most likely
to see combat in the future.
And the fact that we were able to shape events in Libya in
recent months was due in no small part to the fact that we had
those bases in Europe, that we can project power into the
Middle East, into the Central Asia, into areas of--into the
zones of conflict in the future. And, oh, by the way, it is not
necessarily cheaper to bring troops home from Europe and to
keep them at home, because the Europeans contribute to their
maintenance in Europe in a way they would not do if they were
based in Texas.
So some of these ideas that might be thrown around out
there for how we can safely contract our missions around the
world I don't think stand up to much scrutiny. And then you get
into the really difficult tradeoffs, the kind that Mike alluded
to, about, are we going to keep the Persian Gulf open or are we
going to deter China? I mean, those are truly nightmare choices
that I couldn't imagine any administration really making and
saying, ``Oh, we are going to give up the Middle East,'' or,
``We are going to give up the Western Pacific.''
Of course we are going to try to keep a hand everywhere,
but the question is, will we have a credible capacity to back
up those commitments? And, unfortunately, I think if, as Mike
suggested, if we face a trillion dollars in cuts, if we face
the loss of 30 percent of our defense budget over the next
decade, we are not going to have the capacity to back up our
commitments. And then they will be exposed as hollow, and our
power will become a shadow of itself.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ranking Member Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In the interest of getting some other Members in here, I
just have a couple quick comments. I am not going to ask a
question. I think all of your comments have been very helpful
to the panel, certainly to me. And I appreciate some of the
insights.
I just want to focus a little bit on the budget issue,
because Mr. Boot pointed out defense is 20 percent of the
budget and went through the list of arguments as to why defense
isn't the problem. Let me tell you, everywhere in the budget,
every little piece of it, the people who advocate for that
piece of it have an outstanding argument for why their piece of
it isn't the problem. But it all adds up.
So I take a very simple, straightforward approach to this.
It is a math problem. It is a very simple math problem. If you
are 20 percent of a budget that is 40 percent out of whack, you
are part of the problem, by definition. If you are 5 percent of
a budget that is 40 percent out of whack, you are part of the
problem.
Certainly, the entitlements add up to 55 percent, so they
get the largest share of it, but it depends on how you break
those down. You know, Social Security is 12 percent, Medicare
is 18 percent, and you can go through it. But I think what we
have done collectively here is, you know, we defend our little
corner of it. But the whole thing adds up to a big, huge
problem.
And I do appreciate Mr. Boot's phrase that it is hard to
imagine that we would make some of the choices that you laid
out, and it is. But the thing that everyone has got to start to
come to grips with is, we are going to have to do a whole
series of things that are unimaginable right now and have been
unimaginable. That is what the numbers are in front of us. And
instead, we spend all this time arguing about how, well, we
can't possibly do this because it is unimaginable. We are 40
percent out of whack. We are going to have to do something that
is unimaginable. Now, I don't want it to be too much in the
defense area, but it has got to be part of the conversation.
I would correct one thing Mr. Boot said. He said that I
stated that the problem was entitlements. That wasn't actually
what I said. I said that it is all there. What I said was,
right now, the only portion of the budget that is being
targeted for cuts is the nonentitlement portion of the budget.
And when you take 38 percent of the budget--38 percent of a
budget that is 40 percent out of whack--and you leave the other
62 percent out of the conversation and, I believe just as
importantly, you leave revenue out of the conversation, revenue
that has gone down as a percentage of GDP [gross domestic
product] by almost 30 percent over the course of the last
decade--and just to sort of close here with the unimaginable,
if you take the overall position, primarily of the majority
party, that defense cuts are going to be a big problem--and we
have heard that, and I agree with that--raising revenue is
completely off the table. If you do that, you have to cut
everything else in the budget by almost 50 percent to get to
balance.
Now, keep in mind, a chunk of entitlements is retirement
pay for the military, people who retire from the military.
I don't think this committee would be too anxious about
going after that. So once you take that off the table, you are
over 50 percent.
If you accept that we have to get to balance--and I think,
again, I think the majority party and I accept that we have to
get the balance. So when we are talking ``unimaginable'' here,
it is all unimaginable. We have to start making people aware of
that and then make those choices.
Now, I agree with the assessment here; I think defense can
take a hit. And Dr. O'Hanlon, I think, laid it out fairly well.
Right now it is taking too big a hit, and we ought to bring
some of these other folks on to the table. But let's not
imagine that defense isn't part of the problem. It is 20
percent of a budget that is 40 percent out of whack.
With that, I will yield back and look forward to the other
questions.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I would like to point out to Members that, in addition to
Mr. Thomas' testimony, CSBA has provided us with copies of
their new report, ``Sustaining Critical Sectors of the U.S.
Defense Industrial Base.'' We have copies for every Member.
But, in particular, this is a report I hope our new Panel on
the defense industry, headed by Representative Shuster and
Representative Larsen, will dig into.
Thank you for providing this information to the committee.
[The information referred to is retained in the committee
files and can be viewed upon request.]
The Chairman. Now we will turn to the committee for
questions. I will be enforcing the 5-minute rule so as we can
get all of the Members to have an opportunity to ask their
questions.
Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
Our deficit is several hundred billion dollars more than
all the money we vote to spend. Roughly every 6 hours we have
another billion-dollar debt, and roughly every 12 hours we have
another billion-dollar trade deficit, thanks to our moving to
this service-based economy.
We were asking for cuts to be equal with spending, but
these cuts are over a 10-year period, so the cuts are one-tenth
of the deficit. The Ryan budget, which is a very tough budget,
doesn't balance for 25 years, during which time the debt
essentially doubles. And it balances then only if you make what
I think are unrealistic assumptions about economic growth, 2.6
percent average. I think that will be very difficult. We are up
against a ceiling of 84 million barrels of oil a day, which
hasn't budged for 5 years now.
So it is going to be very difficult to take defense off the
table, and yet it is unthinkable that we would cut defense to
the point that we are really affecting our national security.
But we really cannot know what the sufficient support level
is for defense until we have answered a number of questions.
Are we going to continue to fight these discretionary wars?
Hugely expensive, the most asymmetric wars in the history of
the world. Some say that we are following Osama bin Laden's
playbook, who wanted to engage us in endless, hugely asymmetric
wars which eventually bankrupt us. At the end of the day, will
the benefit really justify the cost of these wars?
We still have troops in more than a hundred countries
around the world. Do they really need to be there? After half a
century now, we still have very large numbers of troops in
South Korea and Germany. A number of people ask, Why are we
there?
We have a huge decision to make relative to R&D [research
and development] and procurement. If we continue with all of
our procurement items now, it will just suck all of the oxygen
out of the budget, and R&D is really going to be cut. How much
R&D are we really going to need to protect ourselves in the
future?
We really need to answer a number of questions about the
future military environment. The deep-strike heavy bomber: Will
our stealth capabilities really run faster than detection and
defenses? Are we developing a bomber that is not going to be
survivable 20, 30 years from now? Should it be manned or
unmanned?
Carriers versus missiles: Clearly, a missile is very
expensive compared to one of our precision weapons, but the
care and keeping of a carrier task force is just hugely costly.
There is no place on Earth more than a half hour away from an
intercontinental ballistic missile. There are a lot of places
on Earth more than a half-hour away from our planes on our
carriers. What will be that balance? What should we do?
Access denial and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle or its
follow-on: Will we really have the luxury of getting that close
to shores in the future that we could use a vehicle like this?
Should we really be developing a follow-on?
How big should our Pentagon be? Dr. Parkinson noted that
the smaller the British Navy got, the larger their Admiralty
got, which is their equivalent of our Pentagon. Does it really
need to be that big?
We have 187 F-22s and B-2 bombers. Are they adequate to
take out air defenses? Do we really need the F-35 and the
numbers that we are going to be procuring at?
How do we get an answer to these questions so that we
really can determine the real needs of our military?
Mr. Donnelly. I am happy to go first, if that was a
question.
Mr. Bartlett, you ask, you know, really a fraction of the
questions that need to be and should be asked and answered.
Unfortunately, the time is short. As everybody on the panel has
observed, we have found ourselves unable to address these
fundamental strategic and operational, budgetary, and
programmatic questions in a durable and lasting way since the
end of the Cold War. The idea that we don't need to have a
force-planning construct is a recipe for further chaos.
And, finally, we also can reason backward from just the
experience that we have had over the past 20 years and
particularly since 9/11. My summary analysis of that would be
that the military that we went to war with after 9/11 was not
particularly well-prepared for the mission it got, yet it has
adapted and performed quite remarkably. I wish the rest of our
Government were as adaptive and as mentally agile as people in
uniform had been.
And, finally, I would say----
The Chairman. I am going to ask if you could please respond
to that for the record. Thank you very much.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 97.]
The Chairman. Mr. Andrews.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Thomas, on page 6 of your testimony, you note that the
defense budget, including war costs, has gone from a little
less than $400 billion in FY [fiscal year] '01 to around $700
billion in FY '11 in constant dollars. You say that the buildup
is markedly different from other defense buildups in the past
because we didn't change end strength by very much, so it is
not like you can let a lot of people go. And then you note that
recapitalization and modernization plans for large parts of the
forces are largely deferred. So the buildup didn't come from a
lot of extra end strength, and it didn't come from a lot of
modernization and recapitalization.
Since 2001, if you take us out to 2011, the defense budget
is 76 percent higher than it was in 2001. And if you take away
the OCO [Overseas Contingency Operations], if you take away the
Iraq and Afghanistan spending, and you assume all that is gone,
which I know you can't assume, but you take all that away, the
core defense budget in constant dollars is 39 percent higher
than it was in 2001.
If we didn't spend it on end strength and we didn't spend
it on modernization, where is the money? Anybody have any ideas
on that?
Mr. Thomas. The buildup that we have seen over the past
decade really departs from military buildups we have seen in
the past, in the sense that it really has been, in many ways, a
ghost buildup. We have not seen increases and large numbers of
forces in our active component of the military. We have not
seen something like the Reagan buildup, where we went out and
procured all kinds of new systems. With some notable exceptions
like the MRAP [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected], which has been
deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, where has the money gone?
In particular, one of the main leaders in terms of cost
growth in the Department has been personnel costs----
Mr. Andrews. Now, with all due respect, let's talk about
that. Personnel costs went up by $39 billion--went up by 39
percent. So they account for $39 billion of this increase. So,
yes, they have gone up, but, frankly, had they--that is $39
billion of an increase that is $311 billion. So that accounts
for a little bit more than 10 percent of it. Where is the rest?
Dr. O'Hanlon. I think that is a great question and a great
way to phrase it and frame it. I think about $50 billion or $60
billion is in what I would call ending the procurement holiday.
As you know, Congressman, we didn't spend much in the 1990s on
buying equipment. We didn't need to, at that point. But we have
had to get back to spending roughly a quarter of the defense
budget on----
Mr. Andrews. Actually, it is actually $27 billion of the
$311 billion.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, I think that in--I think it is a little
more. I think in the 1990s we were averaging in the range of
$45 billion to $50 billion a year on procurement, and we are
now over $100 billion.
Mr. Andrews. No, procurement was $77 billion in 2001. It is
$104 billion.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, throughout----
Mr. Andrews. So that is $27 billion.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Seventy-seven in 2001?
Mr. Andrews. Yep. It went from 77 to 101. So it is $27
billion out of the $311 billion increase.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, you have the advantage of a book in
front of you that--the overall 1990s average on procurement was
$45 billion to $50 billion. And I am quite confident of that.
We needed to get that number up by about $60 billion.
And so I am not really trying to disagree with you. I
actually like this framing, because I think it does point to
where we need to look. Because the other point that I was going
to get to, where I am hopeful that we would be more in
agreement, is that there have been a number of inefficiencies
introduced. There have been some sloppy ways of spending money.
And I think this builds on Jim's point as well. Some of these
things, frankly, have been part of the politics of a nation at
war with an All-Volunteer Force. I think we have put too much
money into retirement benefits----
Mr. Andrews. I wanted ask Mr. Boot a question. He talks
about the 90,000-some troops in Europe and says that their
mission really is not to defend the Europeans; it is to be
forward-deployed to achieve other defense objectives.
What defense objectives could not be achieved if that force
were based on the continental United States instead of Europe?
Tell me what specific objectives we could not achieve if we
moved that force here.
Mr. Boot. Well, it would be very difficult to carry out
operations, for example, as we recently did in Libya, if we
were flying out of the continental United States, unless you
were flying a B-2 from Missouri, which you can certainly do,
but you are not going to be flying F-16s, F-15s, A-10s, and so
forth. You are not going to be operating naval ships to
blockade Libya out of Norfolk. You have to be forward-deployed
to do that.
Mr. Andrews. So what if you got rid of all the bases that
didn't have air capacity and then just kept the ones that have
air capacity?
Mr. Boot. Well, you also have to have a point for Army
troops. For example, troops deploying to the Middle East often
go through Germany. And troops that are evacuated--badly
wounded troops who are evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan
often go to a medical center in Germany, which is much closer
to the theater of operations than would be if they were coming
back to the United States.
So there are huge benefits that we gain from having
forward-deployed bases.
Mr. Andrews. Mr. Chairman, I know my time----
The Chairman. Again----
Mr. Andrews [continuing]. Is up. I would be happy if the
record could be supplemented by any of the witnesses.
The Chairman. I would appreciate that.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 97.]
The Chairman. Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank each of you for your expertise and being
willing to come and share with us today.
I have enormous respect for each of you and for the members
of this committee, but the ranking member said something that
just took me back. He said that we had to make some
unimaginable choices. And I agree with him on that. But I can't
agree that passing an $800 billion stimulus package that didn't
work was unimaginable if we hadn't have done that. I can't
agree that it was unimaginable to not pass a health care agenda
that is hurting our businesses and hurting our economy
enormously. What is unimaginable is for us not to defend the
United States of America. And, fortunately, that is what the
business of this committee is about, regardless of everything
else.
And sometimes I feel like, when we do that, we are in this
rhetorical war of apples and oranges, and the public doesn't
see what we are doing. Because it is like being on a computer
where I digitally zoom in to something with specificity and I
kind of miss the bigger picture.
And if we could zoom out for just a moment, Mr. Donnelly,
you mentioned four components that the Independent Panel had
looked at: Defending the homeland; access to our seas, air, and
cyberspace; favorable balance of power across Eurasia; and also
the common good.
Tell me, if you would, all four of you, how do we take away
one of those components and not have a serious impact on the
others? Because I hear a lot of that in the rhetoric: Let's
just don't do anything in Asia, let's just don't do anything in
Europe, let's forget dominating the seas and air superiority.
How do those interconnect if we zoom back and look at that
bigger picture?
Mr. Donnelly. That is a very fine question, and it would
require more time and more analysis. Figuring out, for example,
how China's rise will be affected by its ability to get
resources from not only the Middle East, but Africa, but other
parts outside of East Asia----
Mr. Forbes. Then let me ask you to do this.
Mr. Donnelly [continuing]. Is an important question.
Mr. Forbes. Take that for the record, but let's----
Mr. Donnelly. Will do.
Mr. Forbes [continuing]. Drill in on China.
Mr. Donnelly. Okay.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Thomas, I know this is where you have been
an expert.
We are looking an air-sea battle concept that we have spent
months trying to see and develop. Do we have the resources to
do that now, forgetting all the cuts? And if not, what are
these cuts going to look like, in terms of us creating any kind
of air-sea battle concept that we can deal with? And what are
the implications to the defense of the country for that?
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Congressman, for your question. I
think it really is terrific because I think there is oftentimes
a view that everything we talk about--and the reality we face
is that, in the international security environment, we are
constantly going to be confronted with new challenges, with new
threats that are out there, but we are not necessarily going to
have additive resources to address all of them. So we are going
to have to make some trades.
What we have seen with China building up over the last 15
years in terms of its anti-access and area-denial capabilities,
its submarines, its ballistic and cruise missiles and other
forms of precision weaponry, are only the first manifestation
of what we are going to see in other places around the world--
in the Persian Gulf and even with non-state actors, like
Hezbollah, as they acquire some of these systems in the future.
Across the board, whether you are talking about the Western
Pacific or the Persian Gulf or other areas around the world,
the operating environments in which our forces are going to
fight are going to be far less permissive in the future than
they have been in the past.
And this is really what concepts like air-sea battle are
driving at: How do we maintain our ability to project power
transoceanically as a superpower to these areas where we have
vital strategic interests, to defend allies, to ensure the free
flow of critical resources to and from those areas? That is the
real challenge at hand. But the concepts, I think, are really
critical, providing the intellectual guidance that helps us
connect the resources with those objectives. How are we going
to accomplish these things?
And, in particular, in a world which is going to become
increasingly less permissive, how do we think about
rebalancing? Some of our forces that we have today, some of the
capabilities we have today really depend on very benign
assumptions about the environments in which they are going to
fight. They assume that we will be able to use forward bases
and operate from them. They assume that our satellite
communications will not be attacked or that our cyber networks
will not be attacked. These are very fragile assumptions on
which to base----
Mr. Forbes. What is the implications, any of you, in the 50
seconds I have left, on us not getting that right just with the
Pacific alone?
Mr. Boot. I would just remind committee members that 3
years ago, in 2008, RAND was already projecting that by 2020 we
would not necessarily be able to prevail in a conflict with
China over the Taiwan Strait. And that was before the unveiling
of the J-20 stealth fighter; that was before China put a new
aircraft carrier into the water. The balance is tilting very
rapidly against us already in the Pacific, even without these
major cuts. And that trend will be exacerbated with the cuts.
And you have to think about, what does that mean for our
allies? People talk about allies doing more. Well, if we have
allies like Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan doing more, they may
well decide that they need their own nuclear arms. They may
well set off a nuclear arms race with China because they can no
longer count on American protection. That is a much more
dangerous world.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
And thank you, gentlemen, for being here today and engaging
in this discussion.
Last week, when General Pace was here, along with a panel,
he testified that we really don't have a cohesive national
security strategy. And he suggested we need something akin to
an interagency Goldwater-Nichols Act in order to have a
coherent national strategy--national security apparatus which
combines all elements of national power.
I know, Mr. Donnelly, you mentioned that the military
became very adaptive but the rest of Government has not.
I wonder if you all could comment, beginning with Dr.
O'Hanlon, perhaps, but others, what importance do you place on
this issue in terms of our defense overall and in terms of the
budget constraints that we are facing today?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, thanks, Congresswoman. A big question.
I will just maybe make one specific comment.
On the issue of interagency collaboration, I am sympathetic
to the idea, but I am not sure that is really the crux of it,
because I think that the crux of it really is deciding where we
have irreducible requirements overseas that we have to be
prepared to help defend militarily.
The State Department and other agencies are very important,
but their costs are so much less, as an order of magnitude, and
their missions are fundamentally different, that I think if we
are thinking about first principles on defense spending, this
is an important conversation, but I would begin with key
interests and threats. That is why I start with Korea, the
Western Pacific, the Persian Gulf. And I don't want to go into
detail on each one. I would also add South Asia and possible
Indo-Pakistani problems.
But let me just say one word on Korea because it has come
up a couple of times. I don't think the North Koreans are going
to wake up tomorrow and decide, ``Let's give it a shot. Let's
try to reunify the peninsula again.'' That is not the way the
war is going to begin. That is not the scenario we have to
worry about.
What they might do, like they did last year, is some other
kind of unprovoked, cold-blooded aggression in which they
killed 46 South Korean sailors out of the blue. They might also
intensify their uranium enrichment program. They might start
talking about selling fissile material to overseas groups. By
the way, they have done some of that before, at least in terms
of the technology, the underlying technology, if not the
fissile material. They might, in other words, provoke crises in
one way or another.
What do we do in response? I am not saying we dust off the
preemption doctrine and go after them, but I am suggesting that
firmness and a demonstrated capability to handle any kind of a
conflagration are important. And, also, looking at niche
technological capabilities where we need to get better, not
just hold the line, but get better: Missile defense, precision
strike against their long-range artillery.
And we also need to be able, if there is, Heaven forbid, a
war, to get some number of American ground forces there fast,
because the South Koreans are going to need help in securing
the perimeter of the country so the existing nuclear arsenal
doesn't escape before we can prevent that from happening. The
South Koreans can handle the longer-term occupation, assuming
that reunification is the destination we would be headed toward
in this kind of a conflict, but they are going to need help at
first to make sure those fissile materials don't get loose.
And so a future Korean contingency, I think, needs to be
part of our planning framework. And that is just one example of
how I don't see an easy ability to discard certain interests or
threats. I just think we have to be a lot more creative in
protecting some of these more economically and innovatively.
But I don't think there are too many that we can actually
discard.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh.
Mr. Boot, did you want to comment?
Mr. Boot. Well, I just wanted to add, on the subject of
interagency cooperation, which I am very much in favor of, I am
very much in favor of enhancing the State Department and other
civilian capacity to take on some of these tasks which have
been given to the military, but we have to be realistic about
it and understand that their capacities are, as Mike suggested,
an order of magnitude lower than those of the Department of
Defense, and they could not possibly fill the gap of what the
Department of Defense does.
We are actually going to see a test of that, by the way, in
Iraq, where currently there are about 46,000 troops. At the end
of the year, their task is going to be performed by maybe 3,000
troops and 1,000 State Department personnel. I am very
concerned about that happening. But if you can imagine that
writ-large across the rest of the world, I don't think there is
any way that the civilian branches of government can make up
for what the U.S. military does, and not only in terms of
fighting and deterring wars, but even in the engagement mission
and the kind of military exercises, the kind of engagement that
foreign area officers and others undertake, which are such a
vital part of our diplomatic effort overall.
Mr. Donnelly. If I could be very quick, I would really
worried that, in this budget environment, that a lot of the
progress that has been made over the past 10 years is likely to
be lost. The State Department has not resolved, but I think has
taken seriously, the question of its larger development role,
its role in, kind of, state-building, if you will, just to use
the shorthand terms.
And, also, I would worry about losing the close integration
that we have achieved between the intelligence community and
the military, best epitomized by the raid that killed Osama bin
Laden. As Jim kind of suggested in his initial statement, those
kinds of capabilities are likely to be things that we will want
to have in other situations in a very different environment in
the future. And I think the temptation and, sort of, the
bureaucratic impulse will be for the departments to protect
their core missions.
Mrs. Davis. How would you want to see those issues framed,
though, so that that doesn't happen? Because, you know, it is
one thing for the Defense Department to say, ``Yeah, sure, we
want the State Department funded,'' but it is another thing to
find out ways in which they can economize in order to do that.
Mr. Donnelly. Well, as I said, this has not really been
resolved over the past 10 years. A lot of the progress that has
been made and has been paid for, kind of, in a year-by-year
supplementally funded kind of way, there--you know, AID [U.S.
Agency for International Development], for example, has not
been really refashioned into an appropriate or, really,
powerful agency.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for being here today.
I also want to thank our colleagues on the other side. This
really has been, again, a bipartisan hearing. In fact, I had to
ask Congressman Forbes who had been invited by which party. And
so, that is the way it should be, because, indeed, the primary
function of the national government is national defense.
And, Mr. Donnelly, I appreciate very much your citing
victory in the Cold War. Truly, people seem to have forgotten
how successful the American military was with our allies: the
greatest spread of democracy and freedom in the history of the
world. Whether it be from Lithuania to Thailand, South Korea to
Bulgaria, there are dozens of countries today free that have
been under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, and the
people are blossoming, which is good for them and us, and it
fulfills the dreams of President Reagan of peace through
strength.
With that, briefly, if possible--and it has been touched
on--but for each one of you, beginning with Mr. Thomas over,
what do you see as the biggest threats facing the U.S. today?
What should the U.S. military role be in deterring the threat?
And how is our level of preparedness?
Mr. Thomas. I think, unlike the period after the Second
World War, where the United States faced one major threat, in
terms of the Soviet Union and the expansion of Stalinist
communism around the world, today we face a panoply of threats.
But I would really pick on three.
The first is the continued rise of China and particularly
the growth of its military capabilities that are of concern.
China is not necessarily an enemy, but we have to be mindful of
the capabilities that it is developing, as those can challenge
our own military and strategic position.
The second is the rise of new nuclear powers--countries
like North Korea, as Michael discussed, Iran, and others that
are emerging. If we think about land combat operations in the
future, the greatest challenge we would face is conducting them
in WMD environments.
And the last, really, is, we have seen with Al Qaeda and we
have learned our lesson since 9/11 in terms of dealing with a
non-state actor that can use great forms of violence almost
like a state. We may face others in the future along these
lines, and we need to be mindful. And I think this places a lot
of emphasis on the need for a preventive aspect in our
strategy, of trying to prevent these small groups from
emerging, working with others in the world and building partner
capacity so that countries can police themselves effectively
within their borders and not permit them to become sanctuaries
to groups like Al Qaeda.
Thanks.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Congressman, thank you for the question. I
will just add a brief word on Iran.
And it is an interesting question and a reasonable
question: What kind of a threat does Iran really pose? What
would it want to do if it had more power and saw us doing less,
you know, if it saw us retrenching? And, of course, this is a
difficult question to answer, but I think we can look at a
couple of things about Iran's recent behavior and speculate
usefully.
One, it would up the pressure on Israel even more through
Hezbollah and Hamas.
Two, it would try to create weak states to its west, as it
has tried in Iraq for many years. And, of course, it had a war
with Iraq, which may have left a legacy of mistrust there, but
even when Iraq was being run by a Shia-majority government
after the overthrow of Saddam, Iran was more interested in
keeping Iraq weak. And even after it saw that whatever George
Bush's early preemption doctrine might have implied and might
have made some Iranians worry that they could be next, by '05,
'06, it was obvious that they were not going to be next. This
country was not about to embark on another preemptive campaign,
and yet Iran kept up the arming of the Shia militias and even
Sunni extremist forces to cause us casualties and to keep Iraq
weak.
So I think Iran would welcome a Middle East that is
dominated by trying to push Israel, at a minimum, out of the
West Bank area but maybe even out of existence and weakening as
many Sunni-majority and even Shia-majority Arab states as it
could. And that would be its preferred Middle East and the kind
of threat we need to worry about.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you.
Mr. Donnelly. I would just agree with what both Mike and
Jim have said but draw a little bit of a line underneath the
question about China's future.
The rise of a great power within the context of a global
system is a somewhat unprecedented historical situation. We
tend to think of China really as an East Asia power. It is
already a global actor. And even if there is not a direct
confrontation with China, I can imagine that there will be,
essentially, proxy competitions, if not conflicts, in other
theaters.
Mr. Boot. I don't think I have time to comment, but I
basically agree with my colleagues.
Mr. Wilson. Okay. I thank all of you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. O'Hanlon, you were sort of in the middle of your answer
to Mr. Andrews a while ago, talking about the ghost buildup.
And you talked about the sloppiness factor, in terms of where
some of the money went. I am not sure if you had a chance to
finish your thought, and I wanted to just give you an
opportunity to revisit that.
Dr. O'Hanlon. That is kind of you, Congressman. And maybe I
used the word ``sloppy'' in a little bit of a too quick of a
way, because maybe the better word is just ``undisciplined.''
I think there were areas of military compensation, for
example, where we said, ``Listen, we are a Nation at war, we
have an All-Volunteer Force that we are asking to do really
unreasonable things on behalf of the rest of us, and we are
going to err on the side of providing more money than we may
need in certain areas.'' I am not talking about deployed troops
and their families or survivors or the injured. I am talking
about, you know--and I don't want to beat on them too much, but
sort of the mid-career retiree who goes on and maybe winds up,
you know, in a job at Brookings or runs for Congress or has
some other nice income, and they are not asked to pay even a
basic, normal health-care premium, for example.
Or a retirement system that, as much as we do understand
there is deferred compensation in the military, why do we feel
that it is okay to ask a young person, an enlisted person, to
work for 5 or 10 years and serve the Nation and go in harm's
way, leave the military with no retirement whatsoever, but then
give a very generous package to a retiring major or colonel?
And there are ways to reform that system and also save some
money in the process.
These are the kinds of ideas that I think perhaps
Congressman Andrews and I might agree, in philosophy, that
there are some needs to relook at some of the decisions we've
made in the last 10 to 20 years. And sometimes I think the
politics of defense spending in a time of war lead us to do
things that are not as efficient as they should be. That is the
spirit of what I was trying to say. And I think several tens of
billions a year in annual spending are involved in these kinds
of things.
Mr. Courtney. I mean, obviously, another piece of the
sloppiness factor is in procurement. And there has been another
spate of stories just in the last couple of months about, you
know, embarrassing overpayments by the Army and others for
parts that off the shelf, you know, would have been a fraction
of what--I mean, is that just something that is just like the
weather, we have to live with it.
I mean, you know, if we are looking at ways to save money,
it just seems like, you know, waste, fraud, and abuse, which is
kind of a nice phrase and easy for everybody, but, I mean, is
it hopeless for us to ever sort of expect to have a system that
actually, really, you know, the taxpayer would feel total
confidence is really working to get the best price?
Mr. Boot. If I could just jump in on that, I think you are
right to talk about the waste, fraud, and abuse and about the
runaway procurement. We all know it is out there. What I don't
know and I don't think anybody has a great solution for is how
do you reform that so you can suddenly get more bang for your
buck.
Now, I think there are things you can certainly do at the
margin, but I think it is unrealistic to expect that we can
suddenly wave this magic wand and all of the sudden we cut
defense spending by one-third but still produce the same
defense capacity that we were producing before.
At the end of the day, we all decry the huge cost of
weapons systems and the rising cost, but we don't know how to
create that cutting-edge capacity at a much lower cost. And I
don't think that is going to change in the next 6 months; it is
not going to change in the next year. All that is going to
change is we are going to cut back on the top line, and the
systems will get cancelled. They are not suddenly going to
start to be produced for a lot less.
Mr. Donnelly. One last shameless commercial for the QDR
Independent Panel, which addressed this subject directly.
I was convinced, in listening to that discussion, that the
single most important thing we could do is procure things in a
timely fashion. What has really been a killer over the last
decade has been this protracted development period where the
original technologies get overtaken by new technologies, and so
bells and whistles are added and added and added and
requirements added and added and added.
And things like the F-22 or the Future Combat Systems are
perfect examples of those, whereas the previous generation,
with the F-16 being the perfect example of something that was
bought as a simple daylight fighter in large numbers and has
been revised and modified to do a range of missions that was
never anticipated, is a much better model.
So a lot of the money that has gone down the rat hole has
gone to changing our minds, deferring development, with the
result that we get 187 F-22s for what we originally planned to
get 750 aircraft for essentially the same amount of money.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you.
Really quick, Dr. O'Hanlon, your recommendation about
eliminating one leg of the triad--I mean, we have heard a lot
of testimony about rising nuclear states. I mean, how does that
sort of dovetail?
And thank you.
Dr. O'Hanlon. No, it is a very good question. I think,
Congressman, what I would do, in terms of nuclear capability, I
would not reduce our forces any faster than Russia reduces its.
I would make sure that in this period of transition we stay
well ahead of China, not so much because I anticipate a nuclear
exchange, but I just don't want to give China the wrong kind of
encouragement or wrong ideas about, you know, being able to
catch up and all of a sudden act the part. And I would make
sure that our nuclear weapons are safe and reliable.
That leads to a number of recommendations, but I think you
can do that and still take, potentially, one leg out of the
triad or at least cut back systematically across a couple.
Mr. Bartlett. [Presiding.] Thank you.
I would like to ask members of the panel if you could also
watch the countdown clock. And when it reaches zero, try to
conclude your answer as quickly as possible so that we don't
have to rudely use the gavel here. Thank you very much.
Mr. Runyan.
Mr. Runyan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, gentlemen, thank you for coming today.
We have brought up the word ``adaptive'' many times. I have
a few questions. I think they pertain more to our Guard and
Reserve Component, which I think is very adaptive. And from
speaking to the generals that I deal with in the Guard and
Reserve, they tend to run a lot more efficiently and cheaper
than our traditional forces.
What do you see--and I probably won't get to each of you--
but what do you see for the future of the Guard and Reserve as
we move forward, and how we are implementing them in our fights
as of now? And also, from the components' ability, from an
equipment perspective, pre-9/11 to now also?
So, Mr. Donnelly, do you want to start?
Mr. Donnelly. Yeah, I will try to be quick.
Really, the adaptability of the Guard and Reserve has
surprised everybody who would have pretended to be an expert on
9/11. They have deployed more frequently, performed more
competently, had non-deployment rates that are far below what
anybody would have anticipated. That said--and they have become
essentially an operational reserve. The distinction between the
Active Force and the deploying Guard and Reserve force is much
less than it used to be.
That said, there is still a marginal cost associated with a
mobilized--when you use them, that is when the cost, you know,
arises. It is, again, much less than anybody imagined it would
be. These guys have adapted and performed and have been
deployed over and over again and done yeoman work. And I think
we still are trying to understand what that may mean for future
strategy-making. It also means that they are not a genuinely
strategic reserve; they are just on the conveyor belt at a
slightly slower pace than the Active Force is.
Mr. Thomas. If I could just add, I think, as we look ahead,
there may be some real changes that we can make, and real
opportunities, as we think about broader changes in our roles
and missions across the military in terms of how we would use
the Reserve Component.
New missions that are out there--missions like cyber
warfare and thinking about operating unmanned air vehicles and
other unmanned systems in the future--these may actually be
very well-suited for the use of Guard and Reserve forces in the
future, especially given the synergies with some of their
civilian occupations.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Just a brief note. I think it is always worth
relooking, but I think that, at a time when you are doing
sustained operations, the economics of it are more or less a
wash between the Guard and the Active Forces. If you are
doing--if you are preparing for the one biggie that may or may
not ever happen, then I think there is a little bit more of a
shift toward the Guard being preferential, in some ways, or
advantageous.
But I think, on balance, I feel pretty comfortable with the
current mix. But just to back up, I think, Congressman, some of
what you were driving at, that is a mix that now supports the
Guard and Reserve more than we used to. And as we draw down
from these conflicts, I think we have to remember that it took
some effort to get them to where they are today, and we
probably want to keep them there, in terms of capability.
Mr. Runyan. Mr. Boot? No?
Thank you all very much.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bartlett. Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to give Mr. Boot, in particular, one more chance
to come up with constructive suggestions for defense cuts that
could be made without endangering American strength. You may
dismiss some of these ideas as marginal, but I think it is very
important that every sector of our Government make a good faith
effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
Mr. Boot. Well, Congressman, I think that the Defense
Department actually has made a good faith effort, and, as we
saw in the last 2 years, Secretary Gates either cancelled or
reduced numerous acquisition programs. I mean, when you look at
the--as well as closing headquarters, like the U.S. Joint
Forces Command, eliminating general officer slots, eliminating
the Future Combat System, eliminating the Expeditionary
Fighting Vehicle, the VH-71 helicopter, the CG(X) cruiser,
ending the buy of the F-22 and the C-17, ending the Airborne
Laser, delaying the aircraft carrier, the F-35, littoral combat
ships, reducing--vowing to--announcing a reduction in Army and
Marine end strength by 47,000 personnel, I don't think anybody
can argue that the Defense Department has been exempt from
cuts.
In fact, the way I look at it, the Defense Department----
Mr. Cooper. I didn't argue that, sir.
Mr. Boot [continuing]. Has already taken----
Mr. Cooper. I didn't say that they had been exempt from
cuts. I was asking you for constructive suggestions of what
could be done, going forward, to trim waste from the defense
budget without endangering American strength.
Mr. Boot. I think it would be very difficult to do, as I
was trying to suggest. I think that the cuts----
Mr. Cooper. So you would have no suggestions?
Mr. Boot. I don't. Because I think we have already cut
defense considerably. We have already----
Mr. Cooper. So the military budget is currently perfect?
Mr. Boot. No. Nobody argues that the defense budget is
currently perfect, but the world is----
Mr. Cooper. Well, show me how it is imperfect.
Mr. Boot. The world is highly imperfect. There are a range
of contingencies, Congressman, that we have to be prepared for,
and I don't think that there are easy cuts to be made. My
colleagues, Jim Thomas and Mike O'Hanlon, have----
Mr. Cooper. I didn't ask for easy cuts, I asked for any
cuts. Is there any waste in the Pentagon budget? And if so,
where is it? You are a defense expert, you----
Mr. Boot. I think that Secretary Gates went about as far as
one could possibly go in responsibly cutting back defense
programs over the last couple of years. I would not be
comfortable advocating more defense program cuts, which I
believe would imperil the security of the United States.
Mr. Cooper. So any cut at all in the defense budget would
imperil the security of the United States?
Mr. Boot. I suppose if you had a $5 cut in the Defense
budget it would not imperil the security of the United States.
Mr. Cooper. Can you help us identify any of those $5 cuts?
Mr. Boot. Well, we already--Congressman, I don't know why
it is necessary to identify cuts when we are already cutting a
record----
Mr. Cooper. You are a defense----
Mr. Boot [continuing]. This year alone, as the chairman
noted, we are already this year cutting $465 billion from the
defense budget. I don't know why there is a need for more
defense cuts. I certainly don't see it from a budgetary
perspective, and I definitely don't see it from a strategic
perspective.
Mr. Cooper. Mr. Boot, you are a defense expert, and you
know that the GAO [Government Accountability Office] has
identified the Pentagon budget for almost two decades now as
one of the highest-risk areas of all of Federal spending, due
largely to its inauditability, its untraceability. The Bowles-
Simpson Commission, when they asked Secretary Gates whether
they had 1 million defense contractors or privatized
outsourcers or 10 million, they couldn't tell the difference.
Mr. Boot. Well----
Mr. Cooper. The Defense audit agency itself was found
guilty of not adhering to generally accepted accounting
standards. So, lots of times, we literally don't know where the
money is going. Is that defensible?
Mr. Boot. Congressman, you will find waste, fraud, and
abuse across all sectors of government. But, as was pointed out
here before, I think that the Defense Department is actually
the most important department of our Government because it is
the one that provides for the common defense. And I don't know
any way that we can simply take out a line item for waste,
fraud, and abuse and leave our military capacity intact.
There are differences and, certainly, arguments that occur
on the Hill all the time in terms of what is actually wasteful
and abuse. And we see many instances, when the Pentagon tries
to eliminate programs, they all have their champions on the
Hill, all of them arguing that these are not, in fact, pork
barrel spending but, in fact, vital programs. So I don't think
there is any consensus about what constitutes the wasteful
programs.
Mr. Cooper. With your expertise, surely you could help
advise us on locating areas of, at least, lower-priority
spending.
Mr. Boot. What I am----
Mr. Cooper. Surely you could help us clean up the
procurement process. Surely you could use your experience and
wisdom to trim some of the excess.
Mr. Boot. Congressman, as I said before, I don't know how
to usefully reform the procurement process to save money. Many
of the procurement reforms we have had in the past have
actually wound up adding costs rather than subtracting them. I
don't think we have any consensus in this town about how to
reform procurement so we can do more with less. And that is not
going to----
Mr. Cooper. So you are giving up?
Mr. Boot. We are not going to have a magical way to do that
in the next year that will----
Mr. Cooper. You are giving up?
Mr. Boot [continuing]. Allow us to cut the defense budget
without losing vital military capacity, something that Bob
Gates, Leon Panetta, and other leaders have warned about.
Mr. Cooper. Uh-huh.
I see that my time has expired, Mr. Chairman. I am
disappointed that someone with such noted defense expertise
would give up such an important task.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
Mr. Gibson.
Mr. Gibson. Well, thanks, Mr. Chairman.
And I thank the panelists for being here. I certainly have
enjoyed reading your materials and research in the past. And I
think, without a doubt, everyone on the committee here wants to
make sure that we protect our cherished way of life. I think
that we diverge when we start to look at the specifics of that.
And I guess I would challenge in the main direction of the
testimony this morning. I really think it comes down to an a
priori question of what our role should be in protecting our
cherished way of life vis-a-vis other countries in the world--
Iran, North Korea, China, Venezuela--the list--we could go on,
certainly of concern, but the question is, what would a vibrant
republic do in response to that?
From my vantage point, from my experience and my research,
if we continue on this path of assumptions, there isn't going
to be any amount of increase that is successfully going to get
it done. We are just not. We can find threats until the end of
the earth, and we are not going to be able to address it. I
think there is a fundamental question--I mean, look, what would
be the point of having a military with the force projection and
capability of the Roman legions if Rome no longer existed?
So I think what we really need to do is have an a priori
discussion about what it means to protect our cherished way of
life in a manner consistent for a republic and then do a QDR
based on those assumptions. And I would maintain that where we
would go first is looking at how we can better neutralize the
extremist threat.
I think that if you look at the intel [intelligence]
community, we have had a threefold increase in our intelligence
agencies and funding. And, in my view, while we have incredible
professionals in the intel community, we have a system that
really confuses and really disappoints. And there are many
examples; the Christmas Day bomber of 2009 is just one
illustration.
And then streamlining the intelligence community and
infusing it with operations in a manner that I saw tactically
and, to some degree, operationally as the G3 of Multinational
Division-North during the surge--highly effective, an
integrated joint special operations task force working with
conventional forces and local forces to neutralize the
leadership of Al Qaeda. I don't see, sort of, a same global
reach in response when I look at us neutralizing the Al Qaeda
threat.
And then, beyond that, taking a look at the way we command
and control forces, the way we lay down forces, the way we
arrange our national security.
So I am concerned, as somebody who looks at this broadly
across the full spectrum of American life and looking at the
priorities that we have, that if we continue on this line of
thinking, we are just going to basically move until we burn
out, until we don't have the funds to get done what we need to
get done and as we crumble as a republic.
So I guess, you know, challenging the direction of most of
the testimony this morning, with all due respect to your
incredible research and certainly your publications that stand
behind, I would be curious to your response to that.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Congressman, very eloquent and provocative
and useful. Let me just say one thing--well, actually, two.
First, missions that I would not say we need to be ready
for: You mentioned Venezuela. I don't see any need to provoke a
fight there. Russia: Russia is still prickly and problematic,
but I don't think it has a major role in our defense planning;
I don't think it should be. I think the Bush administration
handled the 2008 Georgia crisis more or less correctly, which
was not to brandish our sword. I think we have to be willing to
say that there are certain parts of the world where the risks
are too high for the stakes, and we have to use the threat of
economic sanctions or some other means of trying to defend our
values and interests.
And then, finally, let me say just one brief word about
where I think the strategy is working. Because you implied
that--and I think you are right--there is a danger that the
price tag could keep going up. I think the strategy is
basically working at current spending levels in regard to
China. Now, Jim is right, others are right on the panel to say
that we have to worry about Chinese capabilities. But the
overall strategy, I think, is working. China is becoming an
incredibly impressive superpower without using force, at least
so far, to try to assert itself, and partly because we have
been so firm and resolute in the Western Pacific and so capable
in working with our allies, which is a huge strength of our
broader national security policy.
So I think that is not a situation where the price has to
keep going up, but I think we'd better be careful about cutting
the price and the capability too much.
Mr. Donnelly. If I may very quickly, I just don't see it as
being an unsustainable system. If you look at it as a slice of
proportion of GDP, of American wealth, the cost of American
military power has diminished and diminished and diminished,
but the extent of its effect has been absolutely global. We get
an immense bargain. And even if you include the war costs, it
is less than 5 percent of GDP.
The numbers used by Mr. Andrews mostly reflect the expanded
size of the American economy. We are wealthier, even allowing
for the difficulties of the last couple years. We can certainly
afford to do what we have been doing for the foreseeable future
if we choose to.
Mr. Gibson. Okay, Mr. Chairman. Well, I appreciate their
responses, and I guess we will have to continue the dialogue
going forward. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
Ms. Hanabusa.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Donnelly, can we kind of continue where you were? And I
am very curious, first of all, this statement that you make in
your second paragraph in your testimony where you basically do
not concur with Admiral Mullen's views that our deficits and
debts are the greatest security challenges that we face, and
you said you are worried about our future prosperity depending
first and foremost on our future security.
So it is kind of an open-ended question, but what exactly
are you saying with that statement?
Mr. Donnelly. I am saying that the global trading system,
which is the source of our economic growth but also the source
of economic growth around the world, rests on a system of
safety and security that is essentially provided by the United
States--there are others who help--and that the costs of trade
and the profits and the economic growth that accrue from trade
would be put at risk if the seas, the Internet, the skies, all
those common areas, and the international politics were more
contentious, more ridden with conflict, and that our prosperity
would suffer from international political competition and the
prospect of war.
Ms. Hanabusa. I am also very interested in the fact that
your expertise is in China. And I represent Hawaii, and, of
course, China is--the Pacific is very important to me.
I happen to believe that when you speak about the stability
in the Pacific, I know one view of it is that the United States
is providing the stability in the Pacific. The other view is
that, because the United States is providing a certain amount
of stability in the Pacific, it permits China to do its
economic growth, which is really--and being the number-one
trading partner. And that is something that we are not able to
really compete in.
So, in that light, when you say about the United States'
future prosperity--and we are doing this stability or we are
providing something that permits China to now do the economic
stability and trade--do you see that at some point we are going
to have to change our focus in the Pacific and become more
active in one of those areas?
Mr. Donnelly. You make a critical point, and I think
actually both are true. China's economic rise, its prosperity,
would be unimaginable but for the stability and security of the
regional trading system that is based on American military
power. That has been a great thing for China; it is a great
thing for humanity. Hundreds of millions of people who were in
abject poverty are now prosperous, and it has been a benefit to
the United States and, indeed, to the world.
However, the direction, as Jim and others have pointed out,
the direction of China's military modernization is solely in a
direction that would tend to upset or overthrow the security
system now in place. And those are two paths--you know, that is
a collision course, and I don't think that--that is why I would
say that the direction that China is taking is the most
worrisome aspect that I see in the future.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you.
Dr. O'Hanlon, you said something very early in passing. And
when you came in, you mentioned something that I am very
curious about. And you said something about 35 to 40 percent
more utility on our Navy. And I assume what you were getting at
was sort of like keeping our--or utilizing our forces sort of
like a float. That is the way I refer to it. And if I am
mistaken, can you please explain what you meant when you said
35 percent more efficiency with the Navy, especially in the
Pacific?
Thank you.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Congresswoman.
The basic idea here is that, I think as you appreciate,
especially serving from where you do, whenever we send ships
from harbor off to a distant region, we lose the time in
transit, but on top of that we also--the Navy enforces a very
appropriate policy of no more than 6 months away from home
station for any sailor, unless it is an extreme circumstance.
And when you go through the math on all of that, plus allow the
Navy to then shift crews from one station to another, you know,
after a 2- or 3-year billet, and then allow for ship repair,
you wind up with a situation where the Navy needs about, on
average, five ships to maintain one steady forward deployment
in an overseas theater. If we homeport more in places like Guam
or even Hawaii, we will improve the ratio somewhat. But,
largely, this is because of the tyranny of distance.
Whereas if you leave the ship overseas and you have
adequate local maintenance capability in a port, Singapore or
someplace else, you can actually leave the ship maybe for 12 to
18 months and then you can rotate the crew by airplane. That
means the crews have to share ships, both on the deployed end
and on the training end. And it gets complicated. The Navy
doesn't like it for that reason, that there are idiosyncrasies
to any ship; they would rather have one crew stay with the ship
all the time. I think there are also, frankly, parochial,
budgetary reasons why the Navy prefers not to do this.
But that is what it boils down to. And if you do the
rotation by sealift--or, excuse me, by airplane, you can
actually get 35 percent more capability, more days on station
for a given number of ships in the fleet.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to hear your thoughts about missile defense. I
just had an opportunity a couple weeks ago to travel to Israel.
And while we were there, Hamas, from the Gaza Strip, was
lobbing rockets in there, and it was encouraging to see their
``Iron Dome'' being successful in addressing that.
And according to a 2010 edition of the annual report of the
Director of national security on ``Acquisition of Technology
Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction,'' it says, Iran
continues, quote, ``developing space launch vehicles which
incorporate technology directly applicable to longer-range
missile systems.'' And it also said North Korea ``continues to
pursue the development, production, and deployment of ballistic
missiles with increasing range and sophistication and continues
to develop a mobile IRBM [intermediate-range ballistic missile]
as well as a mobile solid propellant ballistic missile.''
So, in view of the risk that growing ballistic missile
threats pose to the United States homeland, do you have
concerns about budget cuts to missile defense, especially as it
relates to the United States?
Mr. Thomas. I think for all of the reasons you just
mentioned, ballistic missile defense, as well as defense
against even shorter-range guided rockets and even artillery
systems, as you talk about the Israeli case, these capabilities
are only going to become more important as we look out ahead.
One of the key challenges is thinking about how we change
the cost-exchange ratio between those sorts of systems and the
sorts of defenses that we will develop and deploy in the
future. One of the promising areas that we would want to
protect among many R&D programs as we look ahead, no matter how
austere our budget cuts, is going to be looking at directed
energy weapons systems. This is potentially a game-changer that
is out there, not only for missile defense but for countering
swarming naval activity on the part of the Iranians and in a
host of other fields.
Mr. Boot. I would just add that this is not cheap. I mean,
this is, as you rightly point out, this is a major threat that
we face. I think the American people expect us to defend
ourselves and our allies against the threat of missile attacks,
certainly the threat of WMD attack, but this is on top of all
of the other expenses that we bear for defending numerous other
vulnerabilities. This is just another vulnerability that we
absolutely have to address.
And dealing with some of the threats that Jim points out
are absolutely accurate: the anti-access threats, the cyber-
weapons threat, threats to our satellite capabilities, threats
to our homeland from ballistic missile attacks as well as from
terrorist attacks. All of these are very real, and they are not
going away. And what that suggests to me is the impossibility
of massive cuts if we are going to deal with all of these
threats, real or possible, that we face in the next few years.
Mrs. Hartzler. Mr. Donnelly.
Mr. Donnelly. Yeah, I would agree with both Max and Jim,
particularly on the technology of directed energy. One of the
unfortunate cuts of recent years was to the Airborne Laser
program, which was not a perfect system in many ways but I
think was a critical program for exploring what direct energy
would mean, not just in the missile defense role but in the
other roles that Jim suggests.
I just think this problem is metastasizing in ways that we
will find very difficult to catch up to simply by looking at it
as an intercept question. You have to look, I think, at what
would happen before launch and try to identify where the
launches are likely to come from and, particularly when you are
talking about China or other larger scenarios, what a war, a
longer war, after an exchange hopefully not of nuclear warheads
but of a big conventional barrage, would mean. Would we be able
to recover and to make sure that that was not a knockout blow,
so to speak, that would take us out of the war?
Mrs. Hartzler. Do you want to comment?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Go ahead. I mostly agree.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Well, we just have 30 seconds. But,
even without cuts, how do you view our ability to defend
ourselves in missile defense? Like, from a 1-to-10 scale, how--
if 10 being that we are ready, we are able to protect and
defend ourselves, where are we at today?
Dr. O'Hanlon. I will start with a 5. I think we are pretty
good against--I shouldn't say we are pretty good--we are
getting better against low-technology, small-numbers-of-attack
threats. We are not very good--and I am not sure, frankly, that
we would be all that good even if we increased the budget in
the short term--against decoys and other such sophisticated
threats.
Mr. Thomas. If I could just quickly second the 5. I think
that some of the key areas where we are going to have trouble
as we look ahead are going to be in the shorter-range systems
that our deployed forces are going to face in the field and
many of our allies are going to face, as well as in terms of
the intercontinental capabilities and longer-range capabilities
where we are going to see salvo attacks, which are going to
place far greater premiums on our ability to do battle
management and command and control to orchestrate our defenses.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I wanted to thank all of our witnesses today.
I am from Guam, representing Guam, and I am following up on
Representative Hanabusa's questions. And they are for you, Dr.
O'Hanlon.
In your remarks, you mentioned the dangers of drawing back
our range of influence and power around the world. You phrased
it as ``coming home from the world.''
Now, can you highlight some areas in the Pacific--and I
will throw in Asia, as well--theater where we could be more
cost-effective in upholding our treaties and our alliances
while maintaining our ability to project power?
And, along with that, do you think we presently have enough
of a presence in the Pacific theater to prepare us for what our
long-range national interests will likely be in the region?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thanks, Congresswoman.
A couple of things. On the latter question, I think the
numbers are basically pretty good, but I think the capabilities
have to keep getting better. And one area we have to worry
about--and, again, Jim and others have been alluding to this
throughout the hearing and in their writings--is the threat to
airfields from an increasingly precise capability with the
Chinese missile force, whether ballistic or cruise.
And that is not just confined to China; that is a trend in
technology. So I think we have to worry about more hardened
shelters for airplanes. We have to worry about buying aircraft
like the F-35. Even though I would limit the buy, I would make
sure we do purchase a number that are capable of operating off
of degraded or short airfields. And I would make sure we have
plenty of equipment to repair airfields as they are struck. And
there are a lot of other things that need to be done, as well.
To your first question, capabilities where we could be more
efficient, I think one area is putting more attack submarines
homeported in Guam. I think to the extent the good people of
Guam are willing to host even more attack submarines--and I
realize Guam is already getting a little full with a lot of
military capability, but I think it would be, actually, a very
good tradeoff, because if one goes through the mathematics on
that--and CBO [Congressional Budget Office] has done some very
nice work here--you see that being that close to some of the
theaters that we want to watch--because, after all, attack
submarines are often used in the surveillance mode--but that is
actually hugely beneficial if you are carrying it out from a
forward location like Guam rather than having to waste all the
time going back and forth to the good States of California and
the like back on the continental 48.
Ms. Bordallo. Well, I don't know what you meant when you
said Guam is getting full, but I do know we are not going to
sink.
I have one other question that I would like you to answer.
Currently, one of the big parts of the budget is the military
buildup ongoing in Guam. How do you feel about cutting anything
from that?
Dr. O'Hanlon. I support the buildup on Guam because I think
it generally is playing to our strengths of focusing on a key
theater that is important, taking advantage of American
territory that is more or less in a forward-deployed location
but also a little bit removed from the immediate environs where
China's short-term capabilities are becoming more threatening.
And it also spreads, sort of, our capabilities around in a
wider array of places, which reduces our vulnerability to a
surprise attack, which is an area I think we have to worry more
and more about in general.
And so, for all these reasons, I support expansion of
airfields, also hardening of airfields, improvement of aircraft
shelters, putting things underground like fuel capability so
they are safer from attack, using airplanes that are capable of
using degraded runways, putting more attack submarines on Guam,
and, if the Japanese, if our good friends in Tokyo can work
this out, actually completing the deal on moving some of the
Marines to Okinawa, as well.
Ms. Bordallo. Good.
Does anybody else have any comments on that buildup?
Mr. Donnelly. Very briefly, I would support it. I am
worried about putting all our eggs in few baskets. In addition
to creating----
Ms. Bordallo. Putting--what did you say?
Mr. Donnelly. Putting all our eggs in relatively few
baskets in the theater, you know, just to be frank.
Ms. Bordallo. But Guam is ours, too.
Mr. Donnelly. Yes, but it will be a target. It is a target.
And it is easier for the Chinese to make the missile go farther
than it is for us.
I think we need to consider a more dispersed posture, a
kind of week-two or second-day posture, throughout the region,
for which Guam would be critical but not exactly in the same
way that it is being considered now. I would like to be in more
places.
Ms. Bordallo. Anybody else?
Mr. Boot. Well, I think Tom makes an important point, which
is that----
Ms. Bordallo. I just have 28 seconds left.
Mr. Boot. Okay. Well, an important point, which is that we
talk about duplication and streamlining the Department of
Defense, and there may be budgetary reasons for doing that, but
in terms of strategic reasons, you actually want to have some
duplication, you want to have redundancy, so that if, God
forbid, the balloon goes up and war breaks out and you lose
certain assets, you have others in place. And so what may seem
wasteful in peacetime is actually absolutely necessary when the
hostilities actually start.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony. I apologize that I
had come in later. We had Director Clapper and Director
Petraeus before us in the Intelligence Committee, and I had to
attend that meeting first. But, in any event, I want to thank
you for what you have had to say today. And some of the things
I may ask may already be covered.
But I have noticed that, obviously, since the--over the
last 10 years, post-9/11, in addition to our greater reliance
on Special Operations Forces, we also have a greater reliance
and dependence now on cybersecurity, which is an area that I
have spent a great deal of time on.
So my question is, are we properly resourced in that area?
And, as we go forward and we look over the next decade, what
areas in cyber do we need to be focused more on? Where should
we be devoting our resources in that area so we are properly
resourced?
I give President Obama high marks on the way he is handling
cyber. I am not satisfied that we are where we need to be on
the broader picture. I think there need to be greater
authorities in the role of the cybersecurity coordinator--that
should be a director's position--and strengths in that area.
But where should we be most focused in cyber?
Mr. Thomas. Last year, the United Kingdom conducted an
exhaustive review of its defense programs, and it made
substantial cuts across the board. What I think is instructive,
however, is that there was really one area where they actually
were increasing spending, and that was in the area of cyber,
both in terms of cybersecurity as well as thinking about how do
you use non-kinetic systems as an adjunct or as a complement to
kinetic forms of warfare as we look ahead.
One of the real challenges is how we think about this
problem. In our war games over the past couple years, everyone
emphasizes cyber as a growth area where you want to make
increased investments. The challenge is actually determining
where and what sorts of investments you want to make. Do you
focus more on a strategic capability, both in terms of a
strategic defense capability for a critical infrastructure in
the United States or potentially as a strategic offensive
system weapon that you could use against your adversaries? Do
you think of it as an adjunct or as a means of suppressing
enemy air defenses and going after other networks in the
future? All of these things are going to have to be thought
through.
I would say that cyber will be incredibly attractive,
especially as an offensive weapon, for all of the great powers
and non-state actors as well. And we would only not make
investments in this area at our own peril.
I think the second point that is really critical to keep in
mind is the intricate relationship between offensive and
defensive cyber warfare. It will be very difficult to be good
defensively if we do not think offensively as well, and vice
versa.
Mr. Boot. I would just reiterate a point that I made in
reply to the question that Mrs. Hartzler had earlier about
missile defense and that--totally legitimate and appropriate to
worry about ballistic missiles, totally legitimate and
appropriate to worry about cyber attack. These are all areas
where, unfortunately, our capabilities are deficient right now
and we need more spending. But we can't just--it is hard, as we
have been discussing, to see other areas of the budget, of the
defense budget, where we can painlessly cut and give up other
capabilities so that we can enhance these, and it is a zero-sum
game right now. And it is hard to make the case for ignoring
the looming threat on cyber or ballistic or other looming
threats.
Mr. Langevin. Yeah. I would also point out to you that,
obviously, under President Obama's administration, we have
created the new Cyber Command, headed by General Alexander,
which I think is an important coordination model for bringing
the best of all the Services together and properly using all
the talents that we have among the various Services, again,
bringing them into a more coordinated model.
Let me, as time is expiring--you know, typically--and this
does relate to cyber, I think, directly but more broadly,
additionally. Typically, when faced with budgetary pressures or
downward trends in top-line spending, research and development
programs are often among the first areas to experience
reductions.
From your perspective, what impacts, both short- and long-
term, would a reduction in the current RDT&E [Research,
Development, Test, and Evaluation] accounts, particularly basic
research, have on military capability?
Mr. Donnelly. Very quickly, I would just say that I would
adjudge that our problem over the past couple of decades has
been that we have not been able to actually produce what we
have invented, and the distinction between what is R&D and
procurement is a very fine line. We need to be able to produce
things in quantities so that they are militarily important.
And so, what I would be concerned about is the balance both
of basic science and defense research and development and the
ability to produce large numbers of systems and capabilities in
ways that will be important in the real world.
Mr. Langevin. Okay.
I thank the panel. I appreciate your time today and your
patience and your thoughtful answers to our questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you, Mr. Langevin.
And, members of the panel, thank you very much for your
testimony.
The committee stands in adjournment.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
September 13, 2011
=======================================================================
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
September 13, 2011
=======================================================================
Statement of Hon. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon
Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services
Hearing on
The Future of National Defense and the U.S.
Military Ten Years After 9/11: Perspectives from
Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
September 8, 2011
Good morning. The House Armed Services Committee meets this
morning to receive testimony on The Future of National Defense
and the U.S. Military Ten Years After 9/11: Perspectives from
Outside Experts.
As our Nation marked the ten-year anniversary of the
attacks on our Nation this past Sunday, we remember and
commemorate the lives lost on that day. We also honor the
sacrifices made every day since then by our military and their
families, as our Armed Forces continue to fight for our
Nation's safety. This hearing is the second in our series of
hearings to evaluate lessons learned since 9/11 and to apply
those lessons to decisions we will soon be making about the
future of our force. Last Thursday, we heard from former
Chairmen and a Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Today, we will hear from outside experts, representing several
well-known and highly respected organizations, to whom our
Committee regularly turns for accurate and reliable research
and analysis. While we will continue to solicit the expertise
of former and current senior military and civilian leaders
within the Department of Defense, it is important to gain
perspective from professionals such as these who make their
living conducting the type of forward-looking, strategic
assessments we seek.
I remain concerned that our Nation is slipping back into
the false confidence of a September 10th mindset, believing our
Nation to be secure because the homeland has not been
successfully attacked--believing that we can maintain a solid
defense that is driven by budget choices, not strategic ones.
As members of the Armed Services Committee, we must avoid the
cart-before-the-horse cliche. First we must decide what do we
want our military to do, and only then evaluate savings within
the Department.
To date, that hasn't happened--over half a trillion dollars
has been cut from DOD already. Nevertheless, if the Joint
Select Committee does not succeed in developing and passing a
cohesive deficit reduction plan, an additional half a trillion
dollars could be cut from our military automatically. On top of
that looming concern, it remains to be seen whether or not
additional cuts may be proposed by the Administration, even if
the Super Committee is successful.
As Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I have two
principal concerns that stem from recent military atrophy. The
first is a security issue. In a networked and globalized world,
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are no longer adequate to keep
America safe. September 11th taught us that. The second is an
economic concern. While it is true that our military power is
derived from our economic power, we must recognize that this
relationship is symbiotic. Cuts to our Nation's defense, either
by eliminating programs or laying off soldiers, comes with an
economic cost.
The U.S. military is the modern era's greatest champion of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is time we
focus our fiscal restraint on the driver of the debt, instead
of the protector of our prosperity.
With that in mind, I look forward to a frank discussion.
Now please let me welcome our witnesses this morning. We
have:
LMr. Jim Thomas, Vice President and Director
of Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments;
LDr. Michael E. O'Hanlon, Director of Research
and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution;
LMr. Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow and
Director, Center for Defense Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute; and
LMr. Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior
Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on
Foreign Relations.
Thank you gentlemen for being here today and we look
forward to your testimony.
Statement of Hon. Adam Smith
Ranking Member, House Committee on Armed Services
Hearing on
The Future of National Defense and the U.S.
Military Ten Years After 9/11: Perspectives from
Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
September 8, 2011
I would like to thank the witnesses for appearing here
today. As we head into this period of budget uncertainty, we
appreciate your willingness to help us think through our
options.
Our Nation is faced with a long-term, systemic budget
dilemma--revenues and expenditures are simply misaligned. We
don't collect enough revenue to cover our expenditures. Going
forward, it is my belief that we are going to have to fix this
problem from both ends--spending will have to come down, and
we're going to have to fix the revenue problem.
However, what we need you to help us think through today
are the implications of a reduction in the defense budget.
Defense spending makes up about 20 percent of all Federal
spending and about half of all nonentitlement. Since 9/11,
defense spending has risen, in real terms, somewhere over 40
percent without counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Like many, if not most, of our members here, I
share the view that large, immediate cuts to the defense budget
would have substantially negative impacts to the ability of the
U.S. military to carry out those missions we assign them, and
this is why I opposed the recent agreement to raise the debt
ceiling. But, I do believe that we can rationally evaluate our
national security strategy, our defense expenditures, and the
current set of missions we ask the military to undertake and
come up with a strategy that requires less funding. We can, I
believe, spend smarter and not just more.
It is this belief that causes me to congratulate the
Administration for undertaking a zero-based review of our
defense strategy. Undertaking a strategic review at this moment
is a rational and responsible choice, and I hope Congress will
consider its results seriously as we go forward. We on this
committee like to say that strategy should not be driven by
arbitrary budget numbers, but by the same token not considering
the available resources when developing a strategy is
irresponsible and leads inevitably to asking our military to do
too much with too little.
I have two hopes for this hearing today and for this entire
series of hearings. First, I hope the witnesses here today and
at future hearings can help us think through our national
security strategy and potential changes. How can we put
together a sustainable national defense strategy? If our
witnesses were asked, what would they tell those undertaking
the comprehensive review? What can we as a country, we as a
Congress, and those who run the Department of Defense do
smarter?
Secondly, it is my hope that these hearings will help
illustrate to my colleagues and the Nation at large that we
have to make some serious choices here. Our budget problems
must be looked at in a comprehensive manner. If we are serious
about not cutting large amounts of funding from the defense
budget, something else has to give. I share with my colleagues
on the other side of the aisle the concern that large,
immediate, across-the-board cuts to the defense budget may well
do damage to our national security. But I hope that on their
part, they will come to share the reality that we can't just
wish our problems away, and that if we want to avoid large cuts
to the defense budget, we're going to have to address our
budget problems comprehensively, through smarter defense
spending, reformed entitlements, and yes, new sources of
revenue.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing.
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
September 13, 2011
=======================================================================
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. BARTLETT
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.] [See page 20.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. ANDREWS
Mr. Boot. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.] [See page 22.]
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