SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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??–???
2004
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–27]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005—H.R. 4200
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
PROJECTION FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS
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ON
TITLE I—PROCUREMENT
TITLE II—RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
(H.R. 4200)
HEARINGS HELD
MARCH 3, 2004
PROJECTION FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
ROSCOE BARTLETT, Maryland, Chairman
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
EDWARD SCHROCK, Virginia
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JOHN HOSTETTLER, Indiana
KEN CALVERT, California
JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
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GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
STEVE ISRAEL, New York
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
Robert Lautrup, Professional Staff Member
Jean D. Reed, Professional Staff Member
John Sullivan, Professional Staff Member
Claire E. Dunne, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2004
HEARINGS:
Wednesday, March 3, 2004, Fiscal Year 2005 National Defense Authorization Act—Department of Defense Conventional Long-Range Strike Capabilities
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APPENDIX:
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 2004
FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CONVENTIONAL LONG-RANGE STRIKE CAPABILITIES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Bartlett, Hon. Roscoe, a Representative from Maryland, Chairman, Projection Forces Subcommittee
Taylor, Hon. Gene, a Representative from Mississippi, Ranking Member, Projection Forces Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Bolkcom, Christopher, Specialist in National Defense, Congressional Research Service
Cartwright, Lt. Gen. James E., USMC, Director of Force Structure, Resources and Assessment (J–8), Joint Chiefs of Staff
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Fitzgerald, Rear Adm. Mark P., USN, Director, Air Warfare, Staff, Chief of Naval Operations
Moseley, Gen. T. Michael, USAF, Vice Chief of Staff, United States Air Force
O'Rourke, Ronald, Specialist in National Defense, Congressional Research Service
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
Bartlett, Hon. Roscoe
Bolkcom, Christopher
Cartwright, Lt. Gen. James E.
Fitzgerald, Rear Adm. Mark P.
Moseley, Gen. T. Michael
O'Rourke, Ronald
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. Bartlett
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Mr. Hostettler
Mrs. Jo Ann Davis
FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CONVENTIONAL LONG-RANGE STRIKE CAPABILITIES
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Projection Forces Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 3, 2004.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:45 p.m., in room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Roscoe Bartlett (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROSCOE BARTLETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MARYLAND, CHAIRMAN, PROJECTION FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. BARTLETT. The subcommittee will come to order.
This afternoon we will receive testimony from the Congressional Research Service, the Joint Staff, the Air Force, and the Navy, on Department of Defense (DOD) long-range conventional strike capabilities.
While the United States enjoyed access to well-established military bases in Europe, the Persian Gulf, Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia during the Cold War, finding adequate forward bases from which to project forces with shorter ranges may be difficult to do in areas where threats are beginning to emerge.
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In Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the lack of regional bases limited the effectiveness of land-based tactical aircraft. As a result, Air Force long-range bombers and Navy and Marine Corps carrier-based aircraft dropped most of the bombs and conducted most of the combat sorties.
More recently, the inability to access, or fully access, bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia complicated U.S. air operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom, making those forces capable of operating over long distances, or from sea bases, much more valuable.
Today's conventional long-range strike capabilities are formidable. They include 96 B–1, B–2, and B–52 combat-ready bombers, but our bomber forces are aging.
For example, the 44 combat-ready B–52s average over 40 years of age. Our long-range cruise missile inventory includes the conventional air-launched cruise missile, or CALCM, which is launched from the B–52, and the Tomahawk land attack missile (TLAM), which can be launched from Navy surface ships or submarines.
However, after firing over 800 TLAMs in Operation Iraqi Freedom, our TLAM inventories needed to be replenished.
Today's naval aviation aircraft force structure includes ten active, and one Reserve, Navy carrier air wings. It also includes three active, and one Reserve, Marine air wings. Under the Navy-Marine Corps Tactical Air Integration Plan, the total number of primary authorized strike fighter aircraft in the Department of the Navy is being reduced from 872 down to 660.
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While we will have less actual force structure in the future, the new F/A–18E/F Super Hornets and Joint Strike Fighters will certainly provide a more capable carrier air wing than the F–14s, and F–18As and Cs of today.
Similarly, the modifications to our bomber force, and new weapons such as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) can provide improved long-range strike capabilities.
As we look across the menu of conventional long-range strike options in the Air Force and the Navy, the question becomes whether we are investing the right way to maintain and improve the Department of Defense's capabilities to conduct conventional strikes against distant targets in this era of limited and uncertain access to land bases.
To address these and other important issues, we have assembled a distinguished panel.
First, from the Congressional Research Service, Mr. Christopher Bolkcom, a specialist in national defense, who will help us understand aviation issues.
Second, also from the Congressional Research Service, Mr. Ron O'Rourke, a specialist in national defense, who will discuss naval issues.
Third, Lieutenant General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Director of Force Structure Resources and Requirements, J–8, Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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Fourth, General T. Michael Moseley, USAF, Vice Chief of Staff, United States Air Force, and finally, Rear Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, USN, Director of the Air Warfare Staff, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
The chairman of our full committee, Mr. Hunter, hopes to be able to join us shortly. He is now testifying before the Budget Committee, making sure we are going to have adequate resources to meet your needs for the coming year.
Mr. Skelton may join us and when either Mr. Hunter or Mr. Skelton joins us, we will recognize them for any comments they choose to make.
Let me now call on my ranking member and friend, Mr. Taylor, for any remarks he would choose to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bartlett can be viewed in the hard copy.]
STATEMENT OF HON. GENE TAYLOR, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSISSIPPI, RANKING MEMBER, PROJECTION FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I would always be remiss if I did not mention how smart the people of Maryland were to have chosen you yesterday by a better than 70 percent margin. Congratulations.
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And I want to thank our distinguished panel for being here. We welcome your thoughts and just want to hear what you have to say.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bolkcom, the floor is yours, followed by Mr. O'Rourke, General Cartwright, General Moseley, and then Admiral Fitzgerald.
Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER BOLKCOM, SPECIALIST IN NATIONAL DEFENSE, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
Mr. BOLKCOM. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today about long-range conventional strike.
As requested, my testimony today will focus on long-range, theater-range aircraft, and support aircraft.
Today, I will address three questions that frame the debate on investments to maintain and improve DOD's long-range strike capabilities. These three questions are addressed at greater length in my written statement, which I have submitted for the record.
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The first question pertains to air dominance: how many, and what kind of aircraft are required to achieve air dominance in an era of uncertain base access?
The Air Force's plan is to procure at least 278 F–22 Raptors and to maintain its B–2 fleet. The Air Force says that only these aircraft can survive tomorrow's biggest threat: SA–10, SA–12 and SA–20 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).
F–22s and B–2s would destroy these SAMs, allowing other aircraft to fly in relative safety. F–22s would also defeat the enemy air forces, if they exist and if they dare to fight.
It does not appear that an aircraft, as advanced and as expensive as the Raptor, is required to address near-term air defense threats. This service is to have flown over 400,000 combat sorties since 1991 and have lost only 39 aircraft: a survival rate of 99.99 percent.
This does not consider the hundreds of thousands of support sorties, which have been flown without a single combat loss.
In a nutshell, U.S. air forces today operate with impunity. As for tomorrow, the threat that the Air Force projects, may or may not emerge.
Despite Russia's aggressive marketing over the past 20 years, they have sold SA–10 and SA–12s to only countries outside the old Soviet Bloc.
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If less advanced and less expensive alternatives to the F/A–22 are to be explored, leading options may be unmanned aerial combat vehicles and the short take-off, vertical landing variant of the joint strike fighter (JSF), which would be less dependent on forward basing than the F–22.
The second question pertains to conventional long-range strike: how many and what kind of aircraft are required to conduct attacks against distant targets? In light of uncertain base access, DOD may wish to emphasize long-range bombers and Navy air carrier aircraft.
The Air Force currently operates 165 long-range bombers, but would prefer a smaller fleet. Thus far, Congress has resisted attempts to retire 18 B–52s and 33 B–1s. The Air Force plans to field a new bomber in the year 2037.
Bombers have played key roles in recent base-limited conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan; bombers flew a small number of combat sorties, but dropped the majority of air-delivered weapons.
Precision-guided munitions and improved targeting make bombers more versatile and more effective than they have been in the past, therefore, Air Force leaders argue, fewer bombers are required. Yet, the opposite argument can also be made. In light of their increased effectiveness, bombers are in greater demand.
The Navy and the Marine Corps have initiated a tactical air integration plan that will reduce the purchase of Super Hornets by 88 aircraft and the purchase of JSFs by 409 aircraft. These services hope that the smaller force will be as effective as the larger force because of increased readiness and modernization efforts.
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Also, more Navy and Marine Corps units will be cross assigned to the other service. However, increased spending on readiness will likely defray the plan's projected procurement savings; potentially cutting it in half.
More closely integrating Navy and Marine Corps aircraft appears constructive; however, it is unknown whether this integration will increase combat power sufficiently to offset the loss of almost 500 aircraft.
It is noteworthy that in an era that may be dominated by long-distance conflicts with limited base access, both the Air Force and the Navy are pursuing plans to reduce the number of their long-range aircraft.
The third, and final, question pertains to support aircraft: how many and what kind are required? Perhaps the most prominent oversight regards aerial refueling and standoff radar jamming, because both of these can enable both air dominance and long-range strike.
It is currently unclear whether KC–767 will be fielded. Regardless, four other aerial refueling options can be considered.
These include re-engining the KC–135Es; converting surplus commercial aircraft into tankers; increasing the use of aerial refueling contract services and acquiring new tankers derived from commercial aircraft other than the 767s.
Despite considerable congressional scrutiny last year, a number of aerial refueling questions remain unanswered, such as the total DOD aerial refueling requirements and how quickly the KC–135Es must be replaced. And assessment of potential aerial refueling options requires that these questions be answered.
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Today, stand-off radar jamming is performed by 120 Navy and Marine Corps EA–6B Prowlers. These aging aircraft also protect the Air Force, including its stealthy F–117s and B–2s.
The Navy plans to replace its Prowlers with 90 EA–18Gs, a variance of the Super Hornet. However, the EA–18G will be less common with the Super Hornet than originally planned and this divergence between the two aircraft may reduce this option's appeal.
The Air Force hopes to field a miniature air-launched decoy and to equip 12 B–52s over the set up to conduct stand-off radar jamming.
It may be that the Air Force would be better served by a stand-off jamming platform who could escort strike packages, which the B–52 can't do and is newer than the 40-year-old bomber.
Finally, Congress may wish to encourage its services to pursue joint approaches. The Marine Corps, for example, is studying a jamming version of the JSF, perhaps a joint program with the Air Force, and potentially the Navy, would have merit.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. Thank you, again, for the opportunity to speak with you.
I welcome any questions you may have.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolkcom can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
Without objection, all of your prepared remarks will be included in the record and thank you very much for summarizing.
Mr. O'Rourke.
STATEMENT OF MR. RONALD O'ROURKE, SPECIALIST IN NATIONAL DEFENSE, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
Mr. O'ROURKE. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My testimony focuses on Navy surface combatants and attack submarines, which have three characteristics that can make them particularly suitable as long-range strike platforms.
First, they can operate in international waters, without need for access to in-theater land bases, which is significant in a time of limited and uncertain access to such bases.
Second, they can remain on station, ready to fire their weapons on short notice continuously for months at a time, which can be particularly useful in certain situations.
And third, attack submarines can remain on station without being detected, giving them the ability to conduct strikes without warning, which can be particularly valuable in attacking targets that can respond to such warnings by relocating or taking defensive measures.
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The Navy's current weapon for conducting long-range strikes from surface combatants and submarines is the Tomahawk. The Tomahawk and the new tactical Tomahawk, or TACTOM, are very capable weapons.
There are three issues, however, concerning the Navy's reliance on the Tomahawk. The first concerns the Navy's inventory of Tomahawks, which was significantly reduced by the Iraq war.
Following the war, the committee characterized the Tomahawk inventory as being in severe shortfalls, relative to the Navy's required inventory level.
In response, Congress last year increased the fiscal year 2004 TACTOM procurement request from 267 missiles to 350.
In addition, this committee and the House Appropriations Committee indicated in report language, their support for procuring TACTOMs in fiscal year 2005 and future years at higher rates, so as to replenish the Tomahawk inventory more quickly.
The Navy's fiscal year 2005 request is for 293 TACTOMs, that is more than the 218 that the Navy projected for fiscal year 2005 in last year's plan, but it is 16 percent less than the 350 missiles that Congress funded last year.
The second issue regarding the Navy's reliance on the Tomahawk concerns its cost. The TACTOM's projected procurement cost of about $600,000 is roughly one-half the cost of earlier versions of the Tomahawk, but is still about 30 times the cost of an air-delivered Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM).
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Given the relatively high cost of the TACTOM, compared to air-delivered precision weapons like the JDAM, surface combatants and attack submarines armed with Tomahawks may come to be viewed by U.S. military planners and DOD budget officials as less cost-effective platforms, relative to aircraft, for conducting long-range strikes than was once the case.
One way to restore the cost effectiveness of Navy surface combatants and attack submarines as long-range strike platforms, relative to aircraft, would be to supplement the Tomahawk with a long-range strike weapon that can be procured for a cost much closer to that of a JDAM.
One effort for developing such a weapon is the Affordable Weapon System (AWS), a low cost cruise missile supported by this committee. Navy officials have expressed some interest in the Affordable Weapon but Navy plans for procuring the weapon are unclear.
The third issue regarding the Navy's reliance on the Tomahawk concerns weapon speed. The Tomahawk and the Affordable Weapon are subsonic weapons that can take a long time to reach their target.
This raises the question of whether a high speed strike weapon should be acquired as a complement to the subsonic Tomahawk and Affordable Weapon.
A high speed weapon, such as a supersonic or hypersonic cruise missile would offer three potential advantages: an ability to attack very time sensitive targets; an ability to attack hardened or deeply buried targets; and, enhance weapon survivability against enemy defenses.
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The Navy, over the last decade, has started or has tried to start several efforts to develop a high speed cruise missile or technologies for such a weapon.
To date, however, none of these efforts has led to a firm acquisition program for developing and procuring an operational high speed strike weapon.
Redressing the Tomahawk inventory shortfall, procuring a low cost supplement to the Tomahawk and acquiring a high speed strike weapon, could be particularly important for the Navy in three areas.
First, doing these things could enhance the cost effectiveness of the Navy's new Expeditionary Strike Groups, or ESGs, as independently deployable, strike capable platforms, which is what these formations are intended to be.
Second, doing these things could enhance the strike capabilities and consequently the justification for the Navy's DD(X) Destroyer Program.
And, third, redressing the Tomahawk inventory shortfall, procuring a low cost supplement to the Tomahawk and acquiring a high speed strike weapon could enhance the operational cost effectiveness of the Navy's Trident SSGN submarine.
Mr. Chairman, that completes my statement and I will be happy to respond to any questions.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Rourke can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
I am not sure that our air conditioning and heating system has anticipated the warm outside temperatures. It is perfectly all right with us, any of you who need to remove your coat, please do so.
General Cartwright.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT, USMC, DIRECTOR OF FORCE STRUCTURE, RESOURCES AND ASSESSMENT (J–8), JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
General CARTWRIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Taylor, members of the committee. I would ask that this oral statement be submitted for the record.
I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today to discuss the U.S. military's role in conventional long-range strike.
I would like first to thank you for the continued bipartisan support that you give to the men and women of our armed forces. That support is appreciated and is critical to operational success.
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Today we remain ready to support the President's National Security Strategy to assure our allies, while we dissuade, deter and defeat any adversary.
Our challenge for the coming year and beyond is captured in three priorities: winning the war on terrorism, enhancing joint war fighting, and transforming for the future.
Our continued success in the area of conventional long-range strike is a vital component of each of these priorities and requires a well-integrated military, interagency and coalition effort which leverages the capabilities of our Naval Strike Groups, land-based long-range bombers, tactical strike aircraft, and their key enablers, the tanking, electronic warfare and surveillance aircraft.
To aid the Joint Requirements Oversight Council in determining warfighting needs with a capabilities-based approach, we are developing joint integrating concepts.
These concepts are far more focused than the functional and operating concepts, and define specific tasks to be conducted. They are designed to bridge the gap between how we want to fight and the capabilities we need.
Key to our discussion today is the Joint Integrating Concept for Global Strike.
To that end, US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has reported significant progress in their new mission area of Global Strike, and they are on schedule to achieve full operational capability this year. Global Strike will enable us to hold at risk emerging target sets not limited to a deliberate plan, where timeliness is critical.
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Looking into the future, we are drawing on analysis in many forms. With the support of this committee, studies like the alternative future fleet platform architectures, will examine traditional and alternate roles and missions, including long-range conventional strike and the impact of evolving technology on future forces.
In enhancing our conventional long-range strike capability, we seek to increase our persistence over the battlefield; our ability to range key targets in denied territory.
Our enhanced capabilities will also enable us to respond to commanders' needs in a timely fashion, achieving strategic and operational effects with lethal and non-lethal means.
In seeking these attributes, some of the future technologies we are pursuing with the services, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), include high-speed missile systems, hypersonics, high-speed turbines, advanced thermal protection systems for common aerial vehicles, and scram jet technologies and high temperature materials and low observables.
In short, the conventional long-range strike capabilities of today's military forces have demonstrated speed, flexibility and precision in Iraq and the ongoing global war on terrorism.
Maintaining our unchallenged military superiority requires investment to secure and ensure the current readiness of deployed forces while continuing to transform military capabilities for the future.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Cartwright can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
General Moseley.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL T. MICHAEL MOSELEY, USAF, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
General MOSELEY. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Taylor, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to come before you this afternoon to discuss critical capabilities that the United States Air Force provides this nation in terms of current and future long-range strike.
This national capability must be defined as a capability to achieve the desired effects rapidly and/or persistently upon any targets set in any environment, anywhere, at any time.
More simply said, we must continue to be able to hold any enemy target set at risk at any point on the earth.
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Today, the Air Force makes this capability to be responsive to multiple joint task force commanders around the world simultaneously as part of our Global Strike Concept of Operations (CONOP).
We understand that this mission requires lethality, survivability, supportability, flexibility and persistence and encompasses many more Air Force and joint systems than just bombers or theater-range combat aircraft.
Today, Mr. Chairman, your subcommittee is striving to answer the question, ''How should funds be invested to maintain and improve the Department of Defense's capabilities for conducting conventional strikes against distant targets in an era of limited and uncertain access to land bases and overseas theaters of operations?''
Although the short answer is to approve full funding of the President's budget, the comprehensive answer that you really seek must detail current fleet capabilities in our plans for modernization, describe our near, mid-and long-term investment strategies and end with plans a for realistic long-range strike capability that capitalizes on future technologies.
First, it is instructive to look back a bit at long-range strike and the significance of power projection. Throughout history, a nation's ability to project its power has been a necessary characteristic of all great powers since Athens and her powerful navy dominated the Peloponnesus. The United States has been no different.
Power projection for our great republic through air and space power has not only enabled other services but has enabled each of America's diplomatic, informational and economic instruments of power.
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Supporting the national military and national security strategies by creating decisive effects, at points and times of our choosing, are capabilities that are demanded of U.S. airmen and have been since World War I.
As airmen, we have always understood the criticality of the power projection mission and the challenges associated with it. As a matter of fact, these same issues, these same questions, we are being asked by the House Committee on Military Affairs in the early 1930s whose stated jurisdiction included the conduct of joint operations of the Navy, the Army, Marine Corps, promotion of military aviation and army aeronautics.
In that time, budgets submitted by President Hoover and later, President Roosevelt, forced airmen to decide if they wanted to pursue two-or four-engine bombers, effectively they were at the same crossroads that we are at today.
They had to make tough choices relative to a strike force based on range, on payload, on persistence and survivability.
In 1933, in response to the Army's request for a large multi-engine bomber, the B–17, which was, at that time, the model 299 prototype financed by Boeing, went from design to flight test in less than 12 months. And by December 7, 1941, we had 347 in service.
The planes, along with the B–24 and, later, the B–29, could strike points throughout Europe, and would eventually strike points across the Pacific.
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Mr. Chairman, times have changed a bit since then.
There is no longer the Committee on Military Affairs, corporations no longer fully finance their own aircraft, and long-range air power is a primary mission in the United States Air Force.
Earlier this year, we far surpassed the abilities that we demonstrated in World War II and in southeast Asia and also in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, when we dropped 80 independently targeted 500-pound joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs, off of a single B–2; each with a circular error average of less than the length of the bomb body; averaged 4.7 feet.
In essence, it is no longer an issue dependent totally on the number of aircraft available. Advances in targeting, weapon improvements and our net-centric focus has made each platform exponentially more effective.
What has not changed, however, is the requirement to be able to hold enemy targets at risk.
As the combined forces air component commander for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, I was privileged to command all air and space activities to the planning and execution of both of those campaigns.
I was charged with the responsibility of conducting multiple simultaneous flights in three separate operations inside Central Command's area of responsibility; most of these at great ranges.
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We used B–1s, B–2s, B–52s, F–117s, F–15Es, F–14s, F–18s, AV–8s, A–10s, Air 15–Es, British Tornadoes, Australian Hornets, to deliver almost 30,000 weapons of which 70 percent were guided.
Although the B–1, B–2 and B–52 comprised only 5 percent of the Air Force's sorties they delivered 65 percent of the total weapons in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
To me, the platform mattered little. In fact the terminology ''bomber'' and ''fighter'' have blurred over time; we are really talking about a theater strike capability. And instead we focused on the desired effect to be brought to bear by both air and space power.
These long range assets, some of them flying the approximate distance from Tampa, Florida to Anchorage, Alaska plus our tankers, electronic warfare aircraft and other supporting assets, performed incredibly in every mission.
During Operation Enduring Freedom, the longest bomber mission in history was flown—42 hours from Missouri to targets in Afghanistan and back—perfectly illustrates the true global reach in power that proves that the Air Force can put force on target at any point on the planet.
Equally impressive, the longest fighter mission flown in the history of combat aviation was flown also against targets in Kabul and Afghanistan. That mission was 15.8 hours.
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These are not capabilities lost on potential adversaries. Last year, armed with the terrific performance of all components in the past three years, the Air Force began an effort to aggressively move on long-range strike future.
First, at direction of the Secretary and the Chief, I opened the Long-Range Strike Summit in December of 2003, aiming at consolidating the finds of 24 ongoing studies they really weren't getting us anywhere closer to a capability.
Next, Secretary Roach and General Jumper announced that they would stand at two offices.
The first of these: the new, long-range strike office, led by Air Force Materiel Command, stood up on the 11th of February 04.
The second, an Air Force Air Combat Command-led study stood up an integrated planning team that began in operations in the last week in February.
These offices, both of them, are responsible for pre-milestone A activities, with regard to future long-range strike capabilities, specifically, we are asking them to develop an analysis of alternatives (AoA) to prepare the appropriate options for review by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and to manage possible acquisition of a future long-range strike capability.
As we look at our way ahead from here, the plan is straightforward.
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The 2005 budget requests almost $600 million and more than $3 billion over the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) for various upgrades and at improving the lethality, survivability, sustainability, persistence and flexibility of our legacy bomber fleets.
Our fleet of B–1, B–2 and B–52s are combat proven. Thanks to each of you, increased spare parts funding, your commitment to platform modernization in the fleet consolidations, have given us aircraft with record mission capable rates and a fleet that is more lethal and certainly more survivable.
Without question, we must maintain this fleet and its vital capability. However, we also know that the B–17, the B–24, the B–29, the B–36 and the B–47s cannot fly forever.
Today we are investing in future technologies that will enable long-range strike for 2025 and beyond. Relying on the formal AoA process, we will determine what form that long-range strike capability will take.
Additionally, this AoA will serve as the foundation that drives investments and supporting capabilities such as electronic warfare.
We must marry all of these investments to produce the synergistic and comprehensive long-range strike capabilities. From our requirements post to academia in the industry we have heard everything from B–2 alternatives and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to hypersonic cruise vehicles.
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Instead of committing to a single platform yet to be determined, we are investing in platform technologies that we will build on regardless of the AoA outcome.
In short, we are looking at a 2025 portfolio of options that includes manned and unmanned systems, air breathing and space systems and a wide mix of munitions connected to a network backbone of command and control that facilitates global strike at any target at any time.
While we are seriously committed to science and technology investments, we realize that we must continue to be responsive to numerous joint force commanders to provide de facto effects to any battlefield under any conditions.
To get from this legacy fleet of today to the long-range strike capability of the future, we believe there is a need for an intermediate capability, or bridge capability.
In some cases we will use advances in stand-off weapons and net-centric improvements to legacy bombers to maintain our global response and we are also looking at, perhaps, a different platform.
In practice, this will mean retaining some bombers that were slated for retirement, upgrading them from their current configuration to a fully capable fleet standard. In other cases, we may need to explore derivative platforms of existing systems that can fill the midterm gap or the bridge.
As General Jumper said before the entire committee last week, any option will certainly take advantage already done on the F/A–22, and for that matter, will take advantage of work done throughout the research community.
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Again, the purpose of a long-range strike, or bomber, bridging capability is not to wait until the long return technologies mature, but rather to field midterm requirements.
Mr. Chairman, regardless of whether that bridge capability is a derivative aircraft or a set of continued modifications, there is no doubt this committee can help maintain our long-range strike dominance by full funding 2005 requests.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, we are America's airmen. We take these platforms into combat, we send our brothers and sisters into combat in them, we live and die with the capabilities we are discussing here today.
Just as Congress and the Airmen of the 1930s did, we must continue to take a global view of this unique capability and we must always work together to fulfill America's national security strategy.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce three of my babies that I brought with me today, who are combat-experienced bomber crewman.
Major Chris Bruner, B–1, weapons school graduate, weapons school instructor is sitting behind me. Major Stan Peter, B–52, weapons school graduate, instructor, combat veteran, and Lieutenant Colonel Chad Stevenson, B–2 weapons officer, combat experienced. And so we take this serious.
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In that, sir, I want to thank you for holding this hearing today.
Thank you and Congressman Taylor for the opportunity to discuss this critical issue and I welcome the chance to answer any questions you or the committee may have.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Moseley can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
The three that you mentioned, would you please stand so that we can appreciate you.
Thank you very much.
And now, Admiral Fitzgerald.
STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. MARK P. FITZGERALD, USN, DIRECTOR, AIR WARFARE, STAFF, CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS
Admiral FITZGERALD. Thank you, Chairman Bartlett, Representative Taylor, distinguished members of the committee. It is great to be here today and it is a real honor representing the Navy-Marine Corps team.
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We, the Navy-Marine Corps team, along with the Air Force are joint partners in long-range precision strike and we are working together to improve our future capabilities.
Long-range strike is an accepted fact in U.S. force projection today. And during the last three years, continuous operations ranging 500 to 800 miles over Afghanistan and Iraq, from a sea base, have demonstrated the persistence, the precision and the agility of our naval strike forces.
This committee knows that deep strike capability is key to national security and is vitally necessary to keep America's enemies far from our shores. And those enemies are aware that they can be attacked at any time and any location.
During Operation Enduring Freedom, I had the privilege of commanding the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group and watching our Navy and Marine Corps long-range precision strike capability in action.
Our expeditionary strike force secured the sea lanes, while projecting power continuously over Afghanistan, 24 hours a day for over an 8 month period.
The joint force of U.S. Air Force bombers and tankers and Navy tactical aircraft allowed distributed reconnaissance, surveillance and fire power over the entire nation of Afghanistan.
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Over 80 percent of our strike sorties launched not knowing where their target location was. And working with our SEALs and other special forces, under Joint Command and Control, they provided timely and accurate reconnaissance and firepower to turn the tide of battle.
Naval strike, electronic attack and surveillance aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles were pivotal in delivering precision weapons on target. Our Marine Expeditionary Force attacked 500 miles from their sea base to Rhino, their operating base in Afghanistan.
The USS Kitty Hawk acted as afloat forward staging base for the Army and Air Force special operations units.
The asymmetric advantage residing in sea basing, where a joint force does not have operational dependence upon fixed and vulnerable land bases offered the joint force commander increased freedom of action to deploy, employ and sustain his forces.
Operation Iraqi Freedom again proved why we have a Navy and Marine Corps: the value of sovereign naval platforms operating in the far reaches of this world, taking the fight to a distant and remote enemy to execute America's foreign policy.
Significant long-range strike support to Special Operations Forces (SOF) in Northern Iraq was provided from carrier strike groups in the Mediterranean when the Turkish bases were not available, while carriers in the Arabian Gulf provided deep strike and close-air support to our forces closing on Baghdad.
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During Operation Iraqi Freedom we used the vast maneuver space of the sea to lift 94 percent of the joint force to theater.
We projected offensive combat power ashore with the deliver of Tomahawk cruise missiles over 2,700 tons of air-dropped munitions and the delivery of 60,000 combat-ready Marines to the fight.
All of this highlighted our ability to take credible, persistent combat power to the far corners of the earth, anywhere, anytime and without requirements for host nation approval.
The Navy and Marine Corps' continual success in providing long-range precision strike is the result of your investment and flexible, multi-role platforms with ever-improving capabilities.
The development of the long-range F/A–18 Super Hornet strike fighters and Tomahawk cruise missiles, coupled with the development of joint precise munitions, such as JDAM, the Joint Direct Attack Munition, and JSOW, the Joint Stand Off Weapon, have significantly increased lethality, accuracy and eight-point prosecution while reducing collateral damage.
Today's metric is targets per aircraft, vice the old metric of aircraft per target. We, with the enormous help from Congress, made good decisions that today are paying very great dividends.
Our focus is not on the successes of the past, though. In fact, we look forward to improving long-range strike capability and battlefield persistence in the future.
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The increase in range, stealth and sensor capability of the Joint Strike Fighter, an unmanned air combat vehicle, will ensure the vitality and striking power of our future carrier battle groups, maintaining our tactical advantage over the enemy.
The foresight required to develop today's very successful sea-based, deep strike platforms has been well supported by this committee: CVN 21, DD(X), SSGN, Virginia-SSN, tactical Tomahawk and Joint Strike Fighter are all part of the Navy's vision for seabasing long-range strike capability far into the future.
The Navy is not only committed to pursuing the very best platforms for executing deep strike, it is also committed to using those assets in a transformational way that will provide the most firepower and impact on the enemy.
The Fleet Response Plan in our Navy-Marine Corps tactical integration plan has provided new, more efficient ways to employ our force.
When naval forces arrive, we are ready, we are immediately employable, we are by nature sovereign, we enable a joint force and we provide decisive firepower.
This unique combination of independence, mobility, lethality, precision and persistence is, I believe, critical to our 21st century joint force and to the viability of our national strategy.
The unprecedented level of joint operations, demonstrated everyday, makes our team: the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps a force without equal.
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We thank you for your continued support for our Sailors and Marines on the tip of the spear. And I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Fitzgerald can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you all very much for your testimony.
As I was listening to your testimony, I noted that there are at least five ways of delivering weapons.
Collectively, representing our deep strike capability, they could be missiles—that is absent close by bases—one would be cruise missiles launched from bases many hundreds of miles away.
A second would be missiles launched from submarines—I think all of these were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
A third would be aircraft launched from our carriers, fourth would be our deep strike heavy bombers, some of them flying from as much as half a world away and fifth, guns and missiles from ships.
I am intrigued by the rationale that has been used in the past in determining the exact mix that we need to have.
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And so, I am going to be listening during the questions and answers to see if I can better understand the rationale about how we got to where we are and how we are going to decide in the future what mix of these five capabilities that we need for meeting our future threat.
Let me now recognize my ranking member and friend, Mr. Taylor from Mississippi.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thought Mr. Bolkcom, in particular, was interested on your comments on the Soviet SA–10s and–12s, I believe you said. What threats are being generated around the world that you feel we need to respond to?
In addition to that, are the Russians the sole providers of this type of threat or is that fairly common technology being developed by other potential foes?
And by the way, do you see any of this making its way to the Iraq theater of operations?
Mr. BOLKCOM. Sir, in terms of long-range strike, I believe the surface-to-air missile threat is really the predominant threat we have to be careful of. The Russians certainly have been aggressive marketers of technology and we worry about their——
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Mr. TAYLOR. If I may.
Mr. BOLKCOM. Sure.
Mr. TAYLOR. Are they equally aggressive developers of technology, or are these legacy programs from the end of the 1980s or early 1990s?
Mr. BOLKCOM. Right. Well, sir, I think most of them are legacy programs.
They have their roots in programs that were initiated a long time ago. And I think the big difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is now the Russians have to choose to limit more carefully what they tend to upgrade and produce in the future.
And an eye towards export is one of their biggest considerations, as their internal demand diminishes.
What I was going to say about the SA–10s,–12s and–20s what really makes them a concern is they are high altitude, they are long-range and their sophisticated radars and the fact that they are mobile, which makes them difficult to predict and track.
And I mentioned in my written statement a number of other commercially available networking technologies that may allow an adversary to disperse and network their systems in a very troublesome way.
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So, I mention the Russians as really the worst case. I would also mention that a number of NATO countries, France, for instance, not to pick on them, but a number of NATO countries have very sophisticated industry and are capable of making and exporting quite good surface-to-air missile systems.
Mr. TAYLOR. Have you seen any evidence—I realize that we have been fortunate thus far in the Iraq conflict to have had minimal losses to enemy missiles—is there any evidence that you can see of that type of technology, or those type of weapons, making its way to the insurgents in Iraq?
And I am curious, when you talk about the SA–10s and-12s you mention their mobility. How affordable are they for a potential foe?
Mr. BOLKCOM. Sir, I don't have the exact estimate of their price off the top of my head.
It is easily researchable, but I would characterize them as real military systems and not the sort of system an insurgent or a non-stage actor could really operate because of all the associated training and support equipment and the like that is required.
What I see as the biggest, sort of, air defense threat would be the shoulder-fired threat, the man portable surface-to-air missile, which we have seen used to great effect and fast because they are cheap, highly proliferated, easy to hide and use.
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The main limiting factor for them, of course is their altitude, typically flying above 15,000 feet denies them the ability to reach out and hurt you.
Mr. TAYLOR. If the insurgency in Iraq were to continue at its present level for another year—I would open up my question to the entire panel—as to what sort of missile threat does it pose a year from today for the larger aircraft operating in the theater: the 130s, the 17s?
Where do your prognostications—they have shown an ability to develop the Improvised Explosive Devises (IEDs) and apparently to refine that tactic—I am just curious if any of the panel's minds they have progressed to the next step, which is to rocket and missile attacks on our aircraft?
Mr. BOLKCOM. Well, I am really at the fringe of my expertise here talking about the proliferation and the like.
But again, I agree with you that we have seen a very resourceful adversary there and I think their resourcefulness will probably continue to focus on those things that are easily achievable for them.
I see the import of a high-altitude, long-range missile threat to be probably quite difficult. And so, my prognostication would be they would stick with those more easily acceptable, sort of, systems for the foreseeable future.
Mr. TAYLOR. I would like to open that up to the panel.
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I think we have been fortunate to date and I would like to hear your thoughts on this as to whether or not that continues, or do you anticipate things getting tougher for the larger aircraft operating in that theater?
General MOSELEY. Congressman Taylor, let me take a stab at that for you. Since I commanded that operation, I have thought about this quite a bit.
The opportunity for the bigger systems, the strategic systems that we are talking about that are such a significant, revolving threat to all air activity in this long-range strike business: the bigger Soviet systems and some of the others produced by surrogates; I don't see as a imported threat into Iraq to be used by the opposition.
These are big systems with big vehicles and big radars and big canisters.
Prior to H hour, this time last year though, worried me a lot, because as a commander, there are times when you don't know what you don't know.
And so, the notion of these as being readily accessible on the market is a fact. The going price for the baseline entry into these new systems is about $300 million for a battery. So, anyone with access to those sorts of resources can in fact, buy these things.
We watch this very carefully, but I was prepared to deal with this on H hour because we put a lot of people at risk, to include some of these guys behind me.
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But to make the leap that the opposition would have access to these sorts of systems in Iraq; Sir, I am not willing to go that far.
What I would tell you though, is there is a variety of man-held systems, shoulder-fired systems that are out there. We see that being shot at us quite a bit.
Some of the older ones, some of the more recent ones, but the Army and the Marines also have adapted with rotary wing tactics that are much improved. We are also looking at a variety in families in systems of systems for decoys for countermeasures.
This is a technology game, as much as it is an interactive game with people trying to hurt you. So, pods, various forms of jammers, various forms of countermeasures are also in the mix.
And so, over the next year, I will tell you, there is no guarantee we are not going to get airplanes hit by these things and there is no guarantee that they won't attempt to find newer systems, but we are on top of this and working this hard: Marines and Navy and Army and Air Force aviation.
But sir, I would also add with our coalition partners to include the British and others that are flying airplanes inside that country, to include also Afghanistan. Because the opposition are fairly creative and they have access to some interesting technologies.
So, I don't know if I have made you feel better, but that is an honest answer from a fighter pilot who commanded the operation.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Well thank you. Would anyone else care to enlighten me on that?
General CARTWRIGHT. I might just catch another part of the envelope, just to be holistic here and while the large canister weapons—I am absolutely in agreement with General Moseley—what we have seen though is the vulnerability of these large aircraft as they get closer to the ground. Same is true for the helicopters.
The shoulder-fired weapons are increasing in sophistication, but even probably more problematic for us is that the way they are being used: the teaming efforts, the so-called herding and channeling of predictable flight paths, particularly around airports or landing areas.
They have gotten considerably smarter in how they use the weapons that they have; whether they be the old SA–7 shoulder, or the newer variants, or teaming those in combination with ground fires.
And they have taken to their own net-centric approach of being able to communicate and use older legacy weapons to hold newer platforms at risk, even with our upgrades to protection capabilities.
So, there is a combination of the platform's capabilities of our defensive measures and of our own tactics, techniques and procedures that have to be put together here and one solution only lasts for a few weeks and then you have to move on, because if you get predictable, they also get very high in their confidence and their ability to do something.
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And so, I think there is an accurate portrayal here of the long-range highly maneuverable missiles that likely are not going to show up in the theater again.
But there is also the threat of the less sophisticated weapons and their ability against large aircraft in particular and long range aircraft as they get into vulnerable flight regimes, particularly around landing and take off.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Congressman Taylor, let me add to that also. There is an opportunity here to explain tactics, techniques and procedures. We have had three big airplanes hit with missiles.
Mr. TAYLOR. That is ours, no? You would not be including, what is it, the commercial carrier was a D–8?
Admiral FITZGERALD. That was the first one.
Mr. TAYLOR. That is one of the three. Okay.
Admiral FITZGERALD. We have had a C–5 and a C–17 hit.
The answer to this, to get at what General Cartwright is talking about is a cordon of safety out to X kilometers around the landing surface, also to include the descent and offset quarters for takeoff and landing.
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And that is what the surface, whether they are Army or Marine folks are doing for us right now, before we bring an airplane into a location the surface commander supports that operation with being able to secure the periphery of the airfield, as well as the arrival and departure corridors for the airplane, because you have to descend to land and ascend to take off.
We also have rotary wing assets and unmanned aerial vehicles that are also in the vicinity of these airfields, and also the artillery radars that are looking for various objects that fly and being able to put sensors on this.
So, Congressman Taylor, there is no free lunch in any of this and warfare is an interactive game and your opponent gets to shoot. And so, the ability to stay ahead of his evolution and tactics and his evolution and lethality is what we are about here.
And to be able to put sensors and pods and countermeasures on the airplanes and be able to work this real-time is the challenge.
And sir, while I have the mike, let me also talk about the fixed-wing threats that you alluded to.
The Russians and Russian companies—we are into the fourth generation of the Sukhoi SU–27. There is an SU–27, an SU–30, SU–37 and an SU–47.
Those aircraft, and versions of those aircraft, are being co-produced by people outside the Soviet Union. There is a wide proliferation——
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Mr. TAYLOR. Such as?
Admiral FITZGERALD. China.
Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. Thank you.
Admiral FITZGERALD [continuing]. There are multiple users of those types of aircraft outside what used to be the Soviet Union, to include the MIG-series fighters.
We also have on the market now some very sophisticated aircraft that come out of Europe: the Euro fighter and the Rafael and some of the other aircraft that present threats. So, the notion of survivability in this long-range strike business is to be able to survive not only, an emerging and very, very lethal airborne threat, but also the surface-to-air missile threat.
And these new aircraft have incredibly capable radars with incredibly lethal missiles onboard. And you have heard our chief say several times that our pilots flying their airplanes beat our pilots flying our airplanes every time.
So, there is a threat out there and it is a threat to survivability of these long-range assets.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, sir.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Taylor.
Our full committee chair has now joined us. He just came from testifying before the Budget Committee.
And please know Mr. Chairman, that while you were there defending our budget, our prayers were with you.
Thank you very much for joining us and now if you would like to make any remarks or comments, ask any questions you wish.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate you letting me come in and participate here.
Yes, they rolled over and want to give us an extra $50 billion, but they said, ''Only in your subcommittee, Roscoe.''
I look at the successes that we have had with Precision Strike over the last couple of campaigns and the one thing that worries me is the idea of a challenge in the future that would require lots of persistence, where the targets don't all go down easily, where the targets can be renewed—and I am thinking of places like the artillery caves in North Korea and other locations—and we find out that in the end, coverage did matter and numbers did matter.
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We got 21 B–2s, got just a handful of B–1s and we are kind of arm wrestling over whether we can get a measly 23 more than you are taking out of service, back into the ranks, and we have the ancient B–52.
So, I want to ask Mr. O'Rourke, because I know he puts pen to paper on these issues quite a bit.
Mr. O'Rourke, looking at the overall U.S. strike picture with long-range aircraft and the possibility of having to move or work with the conflict in the area of China, North Korea, in that type of an Area of Operations (A.O.)
Do you think we have the numbers to provide a persistent strike capability that can attend a more lengthy conflict than what we have had in the past? What do you see?
Mr. O'ROURKE. Mr. Chairman, I am going to give you half of the answer and then I am going to defer to my colleague, Christopher Bolkcom for the other half.
I am here to talk about Navy surface combatants and attack submarines and they offer a potential for being on station persistently for weeks or months at a time, even without access to in-theater land bases.
So, they have the first half of the persistence equation down, which is, they can be there for a long time without having to return to base.
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And that is the characteristic that distinguishes them from aircraft, whose on station persistence at weapon launch locations is measured usually in hours rather than in days or weeks or months.
The question for the persistence of attack from surface ships and attack submarines is not so much related to the platform, because they can be there; that is a lot of the reason why we buy a navy.
It has to do more with the weapon. Right now, we have a limited number of Tomahawks, so if we were to shoot them persistently over time, they would work well until we ran out of them.
And the other question is, especially in regard to what you mentioned with targets popping back up after we attack them is that the Tomahawk is a fairly expensive weapon and you don't necessarily want to use a fairly expensive weapon to go persistently after a target set that can regenerate itself over short periods of time.
You would, perhaps, want to have a less-expensive weapon take those targets out if they could. And that is what the Affordable Weapon, I think, in part, would have great value.
It would allow these platforms, which can remain persistently in-theater to conduct attacks persistently against targets at a much lower cost than what surface combatants and attack submarines can do right now with the much more expensive Tomahawk.
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And for the second half of the answer relating to aircraft, I will turn that over to Chris.
Mr. BOLKCOM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In the many milieus of warfare, mass really matters. I think, we pride ourselves on our quality, but numbers really count. And great distances oftentimes make it difficult to apply great mass.
A couple points: it has been difficult in the past to generate lots of sorties from the United States to distant theaters.
I think the reduction in the size of weapons and the ability to use GPS (Global Positioning System) and other targeting capabilities has really changed that equation. We still have to fly long distances, but as was mentioned, drop 80 bombs and in the future 320 for aircraft.
So, I see that as a very positive improvement.
And the point I will also make is that we are fighting an away game and the war starts when we get there.
So, just like Afghanistan, we built up, we prepared, and even though bases were limited, we got what we needed in-theater and we did the job. And many people said that Saddam Hussein would never allow us to build up over a six-month period and attack him again. Well, in fact, he did.
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So, I think we have to bear that in mind when we think about great distances is not every conflict will leave you prosecuted immediately and on the hair trigger.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay.
General Moseley, any ideas here?
General MOSELEY. Mr. Chairman, I do. Let me add to that. I don't disagree with anything that has been said. Let me make a couple of points.
When we spun up for Afghanistan and Iraq I heard a lot of people say we were going to have issues with access and basing. The fact of the matter is, we operated out of 50 bases within a region.
At any one time we operated at a 36 of 38 and for the Iraqi phase, we operated at 36 bases plus the five battle groups afloat.
I was blessed to have opportunities afloat and ashore. I was blessed to have multiple opportunities relative to range and payload. Whether they are F–14s, F–18s, Harriers, et cetera.
The challenge that you just described is effectively still one of range, of payload, of persistence and of survivability. And the weapon against the relative target is still one of blast effect and desired effect.
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Do I have to penetrate granite to get to it? Is it an emerging target that I don't know exists until I know it?
Is it a fleeting target; is it a time-critical target; is it fixed? All of those have to be dealt with at the same time.
And the penetrating characteristics take us to a class of weapon that perhaps, is not Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile (TLAM)-capable or Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM)-capable, but perhaps is a gravity weapon depending on my structure and we have weapons to do that. And we carry those on fixed-wing platforms.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would say it is all of that. It is an ability to operate from expeditionary airfields; it is ability to operate from afloat; from bases in the Continental United States or within the theater.
But it is still an issue of range and payload and persistence and survivability.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. But in the end, you have to reload those bombers, you have to reload those strike boats, whether they are sub platforms or surface platforms.
In the old days, we could turn these bombs out hundreds at a time out of a given factory. Today, it takes a long time to make a bomb.
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So, I was looking at a conflict that could take some time, where you had targets that could take a lot of pounding. I think we have the ability to put a high quality strike for a limited period of time, until we run out of ammo, on almost any target in the world.
But my worries are that in a fight where the other guy can take a lot of hits and keep coming out of holes and keep shooting, we don't have an industrial base that can, within a few months, resupply an expended force.
Does that worry you at all?
General MOSELEY. Sir, it worries me. I will tell you as the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, I am not sure I could do much about the industrial base, but I will take what we are able to do with the tools that we are given: we are able to crossdeck without Navy and Marine brothers, bombed bodies and kits and laser heads, depending on their requirement.
We have moved hundreds of weapons from ashore to afloat to compensate for expenditures; we have moved from afloat to ashore to compensate for potential expenditures.
And in the spin up for Iraqi Freedom, the only issue I have was an laser-guided bomb (LGB) was in guided bomb unit 12 (GBU12), which is the 500 pound-class weapon and we were able to take those stocks out of Navy systems and able to work that between the services.
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I don't know whether I can answer your question about industrial base, but I do think we have a pretty good idea of how to deal with what we have in the inventories, have it on the right airplane.
Doesn't matter whether it says U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force on the side of it and drop it on the right target.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Chairman, you added a new dimension to an observation I made at the very beginning of our questioning.
I noted that we had five different capabilities for delivering weapons, minus nearby bases. They were land bases, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from which we could launch cruise missiles.
There were submarines, which could pop up and launch cruise missiles. They were carriers just off-shore, from which we could launch aircraft and their weapons.
They were deep strike bombers that could attack on as much as half a world away and there were ships, surface platforms, with both guns and missiles.
And my question was, ''How did we arrive at the quantity of each one of these in this mix?'', because any one of them, with the last enemy, would have probably been adequate.
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You have added now a new dimension to it, that is, ''How do we decide how much of each of the weapons we need?'' And how do we do that, sir?
Mr. HUNTER. I think you have to look at a—and I know we do this in our war game and you got to look at a war game and you got to figure out how long the bad guy stands up you had a conflict in China and Korea and how long he continues to put new targets up. And at some point, you run out.
So, I think what you do is look at your mix of sea-based stuff. Also look at your mix of deep-based stuff. And that means your long-range bombers and just try to make sure you put enough explosives on target.
The one thing I am worried about, Roscoe, is that you have these huge distances that you have to cross now to get deep stuff into a Chinese or Korean theater.
So, you have the equivalent of a long, long logistical line, if you will, that you historically, could compare it to the German Army trying to get to Moscow and stretch out its logistical line until it was vulnerable.
So, you got a long, long distance you got to cross and now you have a very small number of platforms that are available to do this.
And, in the end, if you run out of bullets, you can't replenish that bullet supply quickly, which we could in the old days. In the old days, our factories could turn on, bullets were a lot simpler then, you could make them.
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And so, that was my concern with the number of platforms. I think we have high quality attack capability, but whether or not we could service, for example, some shootdowns, some attacks.
Hell, we had attacks in World War II where we took greater losses than the entire B–2 force in a matter of hours. Right? General?
General CARTWRIGHT. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. And yet we had to keep on fighting and we had to keep on slugging.
We are now down to a very small number of platforms that doesn't give us much margin for surprise, for surprising losses or surprisingly tough targets. That is what I am concerned about.
I guess, Roscoe, What I was trying to do, too, was kind of get to the bomber part of this equation and that you don't have many bombers now.
We got a ton of money on the board for fighter aircraft. You got a few MIG types that can take us on in various aspects; you don't have very large air forces. And yet, you do have an increasingly sophisticated surface-to-air missile capability springing up.
And I think we are going to need some more bombers. You have an old, old bomber force and not a dime budgeted for bombing.
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General MOSELEY. Sir, could I answer that?
Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely. If you got a new bomber, I want to hear about it, General.
General MOSELEY. Sir, you and I have had this discussion before.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, you see, Roscoe pulled this out of me here. I was reluctant to bring it up, but he did a good job.
General MOSELEY. Let me take each one of the bombers: the B–1—in 2005 alone we have about $87 million into that airplane and over the FYDP, we have $632 million in the B–1.
And I can't talk about that at any detail or I can provide those to Mr. Sullivan on each of those programs——
Mr. HUNTER. No, we know you are putting money into existing old planes. We know that. And we keep upgrading them.
General MOSELEY. But there are levels of efforts thrust into the B–2, it is $1.8 billion over the FYDP. And then, each of these, we have to get the systems capable enough for the current threat.
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Our plan, as we discussed before with Mr. Sullivan, is to make the B–2s as relevant as we can with all the command and control assets to get the B–1s to the right number and get them into Block Echo status, which is the highest capability we can get with the airplanes.
Get the B–52s into that same mold with pods on them, so we can use to drop either laser-or satellite-guided weapons.
And, look at turning a number of them into standoff jammers, which we need for Marines, for Naval Aviation, for ourselves and for surface commanders.
We have stood up the office at Air Combat Command to look at alternatives for a bridge bomber. We have stood up an office at Wright-Patt to look at the long-range strike options of the future.
Looking at a 2025 option on a new platform; we are looking at our portfolio of capabilities to include munitions, sensors, the enablers, command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaussance (ISR), electronic warfare and we are concluding that there is a requirement for a bridge capability to get us from where we are with existing airplanes out to that period.
Now, is that a derivative of an F/A–22, is it an F/B–22; Mr. Chairman, that is what we are looking at right now. And, do we have the numbers of that, we do not.
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We are going through the studies now to see a derivative platform of some kind: how many would it be and how long would it take to get it?
And then, how will that bridge us out into something that may be atmospheric, exo-atmospheric, hypersonic, or a synergy of space and orbital systems?
So, Mr. Chairman, I am agreeing with you.
We are working our way to that and we are putting money into the B–1 and B–52 and B–2 fleet. We are looking at a bridge capability, and we are looking at what lives out beyond 2025.
We had 24 ongoing studies that we stopped in December, after we talked in November, and rolled into those two offices, one at Air Combat Command for Requirements, and one at Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB, to do this very thing.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, thank you, General.
And Mr. Chairman, I want to apologize to my colleagues, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Marshall and Mr. Kline: if they haven't had sufficient time to ask questions. I didn't mean to hog all the time in here.
Mr. BARTLETT. Relative to your questions, you raise a very important issue here. We in Congress, particularly this committee, feel that we need more bombers and we have put in legislation that you have not asked for, you have not asked for it, to bring some of our bombers out of retirement and you are kind of resisting that.
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Mr. Chairman, we need some sort of a structured approach where we can determine the right mix of these platforms: the five different ways.
I mentioned delivering these weapons; we now have a difference of opinion with our services as to the role that bombers ought to play and they are sitting there. Ought to be a structured process that we all can agree to that would lead us to an arbitration that we could live with.
I would like to go down to our witnesses and just ask them if they aren't comfortable that we now have, in our inventory, enough weapons to meet the kind of a potential threat that you addressed.
And I would just like to have them go on the record, very briefly, just start with Mr. Bolkcom and go down the line, ''Are you now comfortable that we have enough Tomahawks and all of the other weapons that we have used and will need to use in the future?''
Mr. BOLKCOM. I am going to have to fudge just a little bit, Sir, and tell you I think that the military is very adaptable.
I don't know if we have the optimal mix, but I am pretty confident that against most threats we foresee in the future, that we can make look at what we have.
With regard to surface combatants and attack submarines, no, I am not comfortable. There is currently, apparently, a shortfall of Tomahawks.
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I am also not comfortable with our ability to attack very large target set, such as the one that Chairman Hunter mentioned, with weapons at low cost.
And so, in my testimony I have focused on three issues, two of which were replenishing the Tomahawk inventory and finding a lower cost cruise missile as a supplement to the Tomahawk for attacking targets that would be suitable for such a weapon.
Mr. HUNTER. What should be the Affordable Weapon?
Mr. BOLKCOM. That is the only effort that I am aware of underway right now to develop such a weapon.
Mr. HUNTER. And you would encourage that to be more expeditious in bringing that to production?
Mr. BOLKCOM. Well, it goes back to your original question of, ''Am I comfortable with the Navy's ability, in the case of surface combatants and attack submarines to attack a target set like the one Chairman Hunter described.
And my answer is, ''No, I am not comfortable, especially in regard to the ability to attack the target set with weapons that themselves are relatively inexpensive.
And the Affordable Weapons System program is the only effort that I am aware of currently for developing a weapon that is significantly less than the Tomahawk and much closer in cost to the relatively expensive JDAMs that our aircraft can deliver.
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Mr. HUNTER. General Cartwright?
General CARTWRIGHT. Congressmen, my sense is, number one: that no single service is going to do any of this alone. And that as a joint military, with all of the services combined, that we possess both the fire power and the ingenuity to take on any credible enemy that we have today.
All of the attributes that have been listed here, the concerns that the congressmen have, I think are valuable and should point in a direction that we carry the future development of weapons and that future can be tomorrow and the next day, and certainly has to address the near-term, as well as, starting to look into the long-term of those things, like hypersonics and persistent surveillance, persistent presence on that battlefield.
So, am I comfortable that we have what we need today to take on any enemy that is out there? Yes.
Am I comfortable that we are aggressively going after the technologies we need, both in the near-term and the long-term, to get us to what we don't know will be an enemy tomorrow. And have the ability to take on any regret factor that this nation may field.
And the idea here being, we should put together a military that can handle any of those regret factors that this nation can't stand to have happen, and we ought to be targeting those technologies towards those type of regret factors.
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And are we are doing that? To the best of our ability, but we need these kinds of interchanges to make sure we are going in the right direction.
Mr. HUNTER. General Moseley.
General MOSELEY. Mr. Chairman, I would say given the threat that we know today and given the planning factors that we have been given, I am confident that there is no opponent out there that we cannot impose our will on.
Having said that, the level of comfort is relative to where you are. If you are the air commander in the theater, you are more comfortable with more assets. Let me answer that question by saying in the world of not too long ago, in the Southeast Asia era, the circular error average of a bomb was about 400 feet.
So, it took 200 airplanes to strike a target with some certainty. And in fact, the bridges in Hanoi, in the vicinity of Haptong, we lost a wing of F–105s, striking those bridges.
Now we can strike multiple bridges with a single airplane. We can drop 8,500 pound-class JDAMs off of a B–2 and soon, 300-plus. We can drop 24 off of a B–1, et cetera.
And the JDAM kits, if I remember, are about $12,500 to put the JDAM kit on an existing bomb body.
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So, can we strike multiple targets now with a single, very valuable platform, what we historically have called a bomber? Yes.
Can we hold deep targets at risk with the 500 pound-class weapon that we can drop with a B–2 or the F–15E? Yes.
Can we hold multiple mobile targets at risk when we can get at them with centrifuge weapon and wind-corrected munitions dispenser? Yes. So, can we strike these targets? Yes.
Are we more efficient? Yes. Are we more effective? Yes, because we can use multiple weapons off of a single platform.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would offer the old calculation of a bomber with eight 500 pound bombs in the belly is not the same equation today with a single bomber with 80 independently targetable weapons.
So, have we made extreme progress?
But let me supplement that answer with we need tankers. We need intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance assets. We need electronic warfare assets.
We need the key enablers for all of us, whether I am the air commander in a joint world supporting naval strike aviation or marine aviation, we still need tankers, we need a new tanker, we still need intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, which we are working on with the E–10 and we need electronic warfare and big, high-powered jamming capabilities that we can complement and supplement EA–6 and the Navy's programs with our potentially EB–52.
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So, that is how I would see it.
Mr. HUNTER. Admiral Fitzgerald.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to get at both questions: do we have enough weapons and why do we have five different types of employment methods. And, I think we have left out a little bit of the big picture here.
There are certain target classes that every weapon has to go against, from the strategic, to the tactical. You may have to go against some hardened and deeply buried targets; you may be going after Saddam Hussein running down the road in a pickup truck.
So you have to be able to have different weapons classes to go after that. And those drive you to different employment methods.
In addition, you may have an army in the field that is hiding in foxholes, or you may have a single, high-value target that is hiding in a cave.
That drives you in different kind of weapons, to area weapons versus precise, penetrating weapons. So you have different classes of weapons.
And then you have different employment types. You have standoff weapons, then you have direct attack weapons and you have something in the middle.
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And I think we have tried to fill all of those holes because it is not a one-size-fits-all kind of employment.
And the other thing that drives you is cost. As Ron O'Rourke has pointed out, the cost of a TLAM to kill a very low-value target is not cost effective.
It is probably better that you just drop a very low cost weapon on him, whereas if it is a really high value target, you may want to put a TLAM on it. So, you have to balance all of those when you employ this force.
On top of all of this, as General Moseley pointed out, the ISR, the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, is absolutely critical here because you can't put a precision weapon on a target that you don't know where it is.
So, you have to make that investment. So, there is an entire kill chain here, it is not just the weapon.
So, I think we have tried to balance that investment for you as we presented our budget this year.
I would tell you, to answer your question directly: do we have enough weapons? The answer is yes, but.
And it is yes, but in that we have come back up to the levels pre-OEF and pre-OIF, pre-Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and we have gotten back up to those levels.
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But there are still challenges in the precision weapons roadmaps here. JSOW: we don't have enough JSOW in our inventory. The reason we need JSOW is for our F–18s.
You want to be able to have that standoff capability when you have those double digit SAMs out there in order to employ that weapon and get it in there, in either the area of denial row or in the JSOW–C, the unitary.
Do you want a balanced TLAM with Affordable Weapon System? We are going through that analysis now. We have a technology demonstrator to see how the Affordable Weapons System will do.
It is a slow weapon that gives you a lot of persistence over the battlefield and can be reprogrammed by the guy on the ground.
It is only a 200 pound warhead, so it can't go over that strategic target set that you would want to go after with a TLAM, but it is great on the battlefield to go after a tank or after a reasonably low-cost, but maybe high-value target to that Marine on the ground who is going barrel-to-barrel with him.
So, I think there are some challenges there. So, I would say overall the news is good.
Yes, we have the weapons to do this. Do we have the right weapons set to do what we need to do? We have to keep working our way through that.
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And with new weapons like JASSM, long-range air-to-surface missile; when you look at some of the other weapons that we have coming down the pike here, I think those weapons are all there so that we reduce, not only the threat to the airplane, but also increase our ability to service empties for targets.
So, it drives your lighter weapons, more precise weapons, more precise sensors on the aircraft and the ability to hit those pinpoint targets.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just thought that maybe my question was a bit unfair to those of our witnesses in uniform, who I know of necessity must defend the administration's budget and I am making the assumption, sir, that if they had retired yesterday, were here out of uniform, that their answers might have been slightly different, would you think?
Mr. BARTLETT. I don't know. When we are out of uniform, we have different answers, too.
Mr. HUNTER. But, listen, I appreciate it so much. Thanks for letting me sit in here.
And, I have one other question here that you mentioned, General Moseley, the new hot MIGs that are going to proliferate, at least in China, we think.
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They have lots of American dollars to spend on these things and the technology and the technology to build them.
Joint Strike Fighter: we are sending out licenses like 60, a lot of them with some fairly sensitive security information to a plethora of contractors off shore who live under regimes of varying levels of security, in terms of technology transfer to the bad guys.
My thoughts are that we are going to see down the line, we are going to see some Joint Strike Fighter technologies, some stealth technologies and other things showing up in China's industrial base.
All these guys have relationships with China; they like money, China has lots of greenbacks. Lots of companies moving back and forth and pretty soon you are going to see some stuff shooting back at us that looks remarkably like stuff that we made.
Like a lot of stuff out of the Soviet Bloc in the old days. Remember? We would look at weapons systems, and say, ''That looks a hell of a lot like ours.'' Right?
Are you worried about that, Joint Strike Fighter?
General MOSELEY. Sir, you asking me?
Mr. HUNTER. Yes.
General MOSELEY. Sir, Joint Strike Fighter is a critical niche in our portfolio of capabilities. It is critical to the Air Force because it is the backfill for so many of our aging systems.
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It is an ideal complement to the F/A–22. And, sir, you know and you have heard us say this, we have built two bombers since we built the fighter. The B–1 and the B–2 we fielded since we built fighters.
Mr. HUNTER. I don't disagree with building Joint Strike Fighter, but I do have a question, as does the Government Accounting Office (GAO), about this extremely liberal licensing of Joint Strike Fighter technology to lots of these participating countries that are going to build bits and pieces presumably.
General MOSELEY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. I am worried about that technology flowing out into the wrong hands.
General MOSELEY. The program office is very acutely aware of your questions and of all of our sensitivities to the protection of software source codes, key technologies, and emerging technologies.
The program office, our friends in the Joint Staff, J–8, and the Department of the Navy, the Marines, and the Department of the Air Force take that serious.
We believe that the program office—and we believe it is way ahead on this—is to build this airplane the way we have this laid out and to be ever vigilant about exactly the challenge that you are talking about.
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Mr. BOLKCOM. I would like to just chime in on the vigilance piece. Even if we put the oversight bodies in place to watch this, if we don't continue to watch it and we don't monitor it, the technologies are changing; the opportunities to make a mistake are there.
We have to be vigilant on this; this is absolutely critical. It is our competitive edge.
Mr. HUNTER. I would say so and Admiral Fitzgerald, you put some stealth into those aircraft, into China's aircraft, your fleet is at risk.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Yes, sir, I think we are very concerned about this.
I would tell you that technology transfer is reviewed very carefully, but——
Mr. HUNTER. When I saw that GAO report, it has all of these licenses flowing out of Lockheed like water: haven't been reviewed carefully.
And so, I would hope that you folks would invest heavily in this review, because I think this is a crucial thing.
Didn't Chuck Yeager used to tell that story about this little stabilizer thing that they developed, whether used in the X–1 thing and we later got that on our fighter aircraft and it gave us a big advantage.
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It wasn't a sophisticated thing, but it was a small thing and once discovered by the other guys, they employed it also.
But there is a lot of stuff that comes out of our enormous R&D base that we have got, which may be not considered to be high level technology, but maybe practical technology that helps the bad guys kill Americans.
I would just hope that you folks would invest in this rather carefully, because I think that is crucial to U.S. survival in that theater.
General CARTWRIGHT. Mr. Chairman, the other side of that is there are lots of technologies out there that are being proliferated, which gets us to that survivability piece of that range payload, persistence and survivability.
That survivability word sometimes is written as an afterthought of the systems out there after the Soviet Union went away. Those systems are out there.
They are being marketed by folks that have some very sophisticated techniques. Those airplanes are very capable, whether they are French or whether they are British, whether they are the Eurofighter or the Rafael or the latest versions of the Mirage, or even some of our own equipment that is out there.
That stuff is out there now and it is a threat.
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Mr. HUNTER. Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for your indulgence.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, thank you very much.
Mr. Kline, you have been very patient.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Chairman.
All the good questions have been asked by the chairman and the ranking member, but I am going to pursue a couple of small things, if I might.
I am going to put a nail in this issue of the Tomahawk purchases. The numbers I am looking at show that in fiscal year 2005 we are purchasing something on the order of 290 or 293 and in the out years we are going to 400.
Without pinning down any exact numbers here, I suppose, the question is, does this buy put us ahead of and keep us ahead of where we were at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom?
Admiral FITZGERALD. Yes, sir. Right now we are at about over 1,700 missiles, which is about where we were when we started Iraqi Freedom. Given the pommel 5x, that will get us in the 2006 timeframe over about 2,000 missiles.
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Mr. KLINE. Assuming we don't use any of them.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Assuming we don't use any. What you don't see here is the 454 conversions of the Tomahawk block 2 missiles to Tomahawk block 3, which have occurred over the past few years.
So, in addition to that Tomahawk buy, we have upgraded the older Tomahawks to a newer capability. So, I think our fleet is viable with Tomahawk missiles.
Mr. KLINE. Okay. Thank you.
That does make me feel a little bit better, because my—maybe not as better as I would like to feel, because it was clear to me that we used them up at an alarming rate during Operation Iraqi Freedom and took them down to a pretty low level.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Yes.
Mr. KLINE. And I am worried, considering Chairman Hunter's initial question about what happens if we have to launch a few more the next time because we have a little bit tougher target. How quickly would we run out?
So, thank you for the clarification.
Mr. Taylor was talking about current operations a little bit in his questions and I have a concern that even though it may not be the deep strike that we have been talking about so far, I am not sure that that is always the distinction sometimes between deep strike and not-so-deep strike and depending upon where and how we are operating.
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We saw some and read about some spectacular successes in designating targets and being able to hit targets with very precise weapons, but in large part, it is because we were able to designate them with somebody on the ground.
And I am concerned that we may not have as much and enough of that capability as we would like to have.
I am thinking—going back to my own past—about the Marine Corps' mule system which is aptly named, I would say.
And so, my question to you, recognizing you are defending the president's budget, where do you think we are in our ability to designate those targets?
Anybody?
General.
General CARTWRIGHT. I will start first by an acknowledgement even going into these recent conflicts that we had solutions for those problems that were, in some cases, hobby shop and some cases were developed for a service, matched up to a services' platform and didn't really address whoever happened to come overhead, et cetera.
And we have done a couple of things here over the past three years, particularly the effort that started out of a joint test that migrated out to Nellis and now it has migrated down to Joint Forces Command that has tried to get Close Air Support (CAS) into a joint connotation and perspective to set standards for designation, set standards for control of the aircraft, set standards for execution.
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That has really garnered us a lot of value.
But in order to get down to the things like the mule and saying, ''Well, if your ranging device is less accurate than mine and I don't know in the cockpit what capability you are giving me over the radio.''
Things like that, that we are starting to close those envelopes down so that the so-called stack-up of tolerances does not become our enemy, and so that we can operate in a very complex terrain, whether that be urban, whether that be caves, et cetera, with some assurance that the guy on the ground and the guy in the airplane are really talking the same language and able to deliver effect.
We are starting to get the material solutions and field them now. And I am sure my two counterparts here will talk to the material solutions. But I am going to talk to you just getting at the TTP, the tactics, techniques and procedures, getting them standardized, getting all of the services into that game, which is so critical and gave us such great benefit, particularly in Operation Enduring Freedom, but we also saw it in Iraqi Freedom.
And I will turn it over.
General MOSELEY. Congressman, there are a couple of things I think that are a predicate to that answer.
One, anything we do has to be a joint solution. No longer will a Marine fight with just Marines. We are in a joint world. That is the right place to be and it is taking us a long time to get here. I have had five joint assignments and I conclude at every one of those that we can do this better.
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Having been blessed with being the commander for Afghanistan and for Iraq, I can tell you it has to be a joint solution. It also has to be a solution that includes special operations as well as conventional forces.
The equippage of the people have to be standard. The competencies of the people have to be a given. The currencies of the people have to be a given. These cannot be assumed.
And so, if there are 30 parties on the ground, all 30 have to have the capabilities, the currencies and the competencies that you can work a variety of air.
Because when you bring weapons to bear, as you know, against a surface target with friendlies close, there are two parts to that. My pilot has to fly through that cylinder of air that is contested to deliver the weapon. The weapon has to be delivered to the right place.
All people involved in this have to be competent and current to be able to do that, because once you tell a JDAM or an LGB where to go, it will go there.
So at Nellis, what we are attempting to work now is a complete grid of the Western ranges: Goldwater, Twentynine Palms, Yuma, NTC, Nellis, Fallon, Euter. Every range in the West will be gridded the same as if we did a kill box in Afghanistan or in Iraq.
Mr. KLINE. And way overdue, by the way.
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General MOSELEY. Absolutely. Again: joint solutions.
Every kid that will go out there in the future will have a consistent set of gear, whether he or she is a Marine or a rifleman in the Marines or an infantryman in the Army or a special ops team.
But that also includes the sensors, it includes the command and control, it includes all of the connectivity with a command and control node, be it a CFLCC, a coalition forces land component commander, an air component commander, a maritime or special ops commander. And at every one of these levels, you have to come back to the notion of it has to be a joint solution.
We have to train this entity, this enlisted tactical air controller (ETAC), this ground forward air controller (FAC), this entire ground tactical air control system has to be trained to a standard that we can hold everyone to. And we have to be able to practice this.
We have to be able to do this, whether it is Twentynine Palms or Nellis or Fallon or Euter. Or we have to be able to do advanced composite force training as a team; to include special ops, which is an interesting unto itself relative to equippage and training.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you.
Admiral, you may want to jump in too, but I guess what this is pushing to is, sort of, where I started with this is, are we buying that common equipment now?
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When I look deeper into this budget we are looking at, are we buying something that essentially replaces the mule, and that the soldier will have, the special operator will have, the Marine will have, that has the confidence of people with wings whether they are gold or silver? Are we buying that?
General MOSELEY. Congressman, if you ask right now, ''Is everyone equipped standard?'' the answer is ''No.''
Mr. KLINE. I know they are not but are we——
General MOSELEY. We are moving the ball another 10 or 15 or 20 yards toward a goal line that gets at your point.
Because remember in Afghanistan, the teams on the ground acted as sensors for me to drop bombs on, not close air support——
Mr. KLINE. Exactly.
General MOSELEY [continuing]. Not interdiction, but to deliver air ordnance on sets of bad guys. So the ground parties were effectively no much different than a Litening pod or another sensor.
And now when you transition that to troops in contact, when Jim Maddas took his Marine team into southern Afghanistan, in Durano he went 350 miles into Afghanistan with no artillery because an airman was there with the capability to bring ordnance to bear.
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So I would tell you, I am optimistic because guys like me and Jim Maddas and Jim Amos and David McCarin and J.R. Vines who have actually fought this for two years, have got it.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you.
Admiral, are you confident that we are buying it?
Admiral FITZGERALD. I will try to get at your question a little bit here.
As you know, a mule in the old days was just a laser that you fired and you dropped a weapon, and the weapon went were the laser spot was.
We have taken a generational leap from that, where we now have the ability for fielded SOF forces and fielded Marines to take and not only lase a point, but also triangulate that point and give you precise coordinates that you can put a weapon on; i.e., a JDAM or a GPS kind of weapon.
So the answer is ''Yes.'' That capability is in the budget and going out to the fleet.
But there is a bigger issue here, and that is, ''How do you make the leap from analogue to digital?'' Analogue being a person transmitting a set of coordinates over radio and then having that weapon end up on those coordinates. We have had several friendly fire incidents because of that. We have to get to the digital side of this.
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So it is not just a matter of equipping a guy in the field with a piece of equipment and give those coordinates. It is also closing the infrastructure so that you can do that.
I will tell you, we are trying to get at it with systems in our Super Hornet, systems in our Marine AV–8s, that are able to communicate digitally between that air controller on the ground and that airplane, so that you can communicate that nine-line brief direct to the airplane.
We also have the capability now of doing point-to-point transmission of imagery from the airplane to the ground or from the ground to the airplane.
We had in northern Iraq special forces out there taking pictures, sending them up to airplanes, things like that. So there is a whole larger piece to this than just that capability on the ground.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you.
Just let me say I appreciate very much that everybody is working on tactics and techniques and using whatever equipment we have out there to good effect.
I have great confidence in that. And I have spent some time talking to majors in the Army and the Marines recently who were all veterans of Iraqi Freedom. So I know that everybody is working hard, we have a lot of smart people.
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What I was really driving at is, for this year, for next year, are we buying the equipment that the troops that are over there now in Operation Iraqi Freedom II and III and IV, and how many we go to, are going to have, because, frankly, we don't know how that war is going to go from day to day?
And what I was trying to get at, is are we making the buy of the hardware? And I got the answer yes, I think.
Admiral FITZGERALD. I will have to get back to you on quantity, sir, but the answer is that that equipment is getting up there.
General MOSELEY. Sir, there is also a part of this from the Air Force, because we are the people that have the air-to-ground operations school at Nellis.
The secretary and the chief and the leadership have stood up another focus area, which is battlefield airmen. For the Air Force, we have had sets of people that did various things, whether they were ground forward air controller (FACs) or ETACS or whether they were ALOs (Air Liaison Officer), or whether they were special tactics or combat weather, et cetera, combat controllers.
We are going to merge all of this into a single Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC), like an Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). You are going to go through the equivalent of undergraduate pilot training. Then you will go to a lead-in and a top-off.
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You will maintain that AFSC. You are a battlefield airman. And that standard training will be the goal post for all ETACS.
And we are working with Navy, Army, Marines and coalition partners to baseline the requirements so you get a qualification and a currency and an expected level of performance.
And you are able to do that at a place like Nellis, so you can partner with National Training Center, Twentynine Palms, Yuma, Fallon.
And you can do this not just if you are about to deploy, but every single time you go into the field, you go with that equipment, with those expected performance criteria, and with that gridded range, so that when you grid a range in country X, your habit pattern is exactly the same as it was at National Training Center, Twentynine Palms.
And that is ongoing right now, sir.
Mr. KLINE. And that is excellent and very heartening. Thank you.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
I would like to recognize Mr. Marshall.
Mr. Marshall and I appeared together several weeks ago on a Fox news channel. Because we are Republican and Democrat, they expected there to be some sparks, but they didn't know that we were both on the Armed Services Committee.
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And here we have complementary, rather than adversarial, relationships. So they were disappointed. There were no sparks.
Mr. MARSHALL. And we will never be invited back. [Laughter.]
Mr. MARSHALL. And we will never have any difference of opinion.
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Marshall?
Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Never have any difference of opinion on the Armed Services Committee.
I have to say, I am here mostly just to listen, learn. I am very impressed by the quality of what I have heard. And it includes the civilian folks who are here, as well as the military. So it comforts me a lot.
I have a couple questions. One, everybody here has mentioned human intelligence (HUMINT) as being a critical ingredient to being able to actually use the weaponry that we have, that is incredibly accurate. And we are in a joint Army, Navy, Air Force, everybody is working together kind of a mode here.
What are we doing? Do you know offhand, what are we doing? What sort of commitment is DOD making in the direction of improving our human intel?
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I was in Israel this summer. I talked with General Elan, who I think at that time was their planner. He has now moved up to another level. I am not quite sure what his level was.
And I asked him what he thought our challenge would be in Iraq. And he was extremely complimentary of our capabilities.
And he said, ''The challenge is going to be that you don't have any human intelligence on the ground, so you are really not going to know what your targets are. And you are going to have a very difficult time as time progresses finding out where the bad guys are and knowing when they are going to attack you.'' Those sorts of things.
What are we doing about that? Do you gentlemen know?
General CARTWRIGHT. I will start, and then let others pick up.
Expand it out to a few dimensions here. There are those countries in which we have a presence and a conflict erupts to which in the theater security, cooperation, et cetera, we want to have a good interface at the cultural level so that we understand the people and to the extent that we have interfaces, we might gain intelligence.
There are those scenarios where we have no presence at all. It is a denied area.
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What we might have would be probably the onesie, twosies, and it is a very clandestine, limited exchange level. That is our biggest challenge in those areas.
There is a substantial increase in this budget for that kind of capability at a broader range than we have it today.
There is also, during the conflict piece, of your ability to find these targets that are a very complex terrain, whether you talk about caves or you talk about cities or you just talk about mobile-type targets that are difficult to pinpoint, and your ability to keep track of them.
And both in our investment portfolio you will see capabilities to try to be able to do that, both from the human standpoint and from the sensor standpoint. Both investments you will see substantially in this particular budget.
Then on the backside of a conflict, should you have to go to conflict and then resolve, the idea of security in your abilities, whether it be an insurgency somewhat to what we see in Iraq, or whether it be just in taking the local population, which may not be ready to capitulate completely, the ability to have those cultural interfaces for the soldiers or the Marines that are in the cities or in the rural areas to be able to create security, which is the first attribute that you want to get post-conflict, to enable you to move on to strategic objectives.
You have to establish that kind of HUMINT. But again, it is more likely to be at the individual servicemember level and their relationship with the local population.
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The question that we are trying to struggle with right now is have we given our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines sufficient training to be able to do that and to take advantage of it.
We can do better at that. And there are resources in this budget to address that issue. There are also training programs that you will see in each of the services that are starting to reach out in those areas.
So from a sensor standpoint, pre-, during and post-conflict, we have investment. From an individual human aspect we have investment pre-, post and during.
And then there are training programs that are going at that issue also to proliferate that capability. It is critical. We relearn this lesson too often.
General MOSELEY. Congressman, I think General Cartwright has answered at the tactical and operational level, exactly how I would answer.
Because at the tactical and operational level, you may have a Marine patrol or you may have an 82nd Airborne foot patrol or you may have a company's military police that should be and must be trained into capturing nuances and capturing things that we would class as HUMINT.
We also have to be able to match, at the operational level, things that are signals and imaging, things that are infrared and electro-optic and imaging electro-optic.
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We have to be able to match that with both signals and electronic means. And we have to be able to fuse that to paint a picture to know what is actionable and what is not.
And so that spectrum at the tactical and operational level runs normally from a tip to the movement of an actionable sensor to the movement of a shooting asset, whether it is surface or air, to a decision made to engage it based on now confirmation of the tip. The tip likely turns out not to be a valid target.
You have to be able to cross-reference and you have to be able to matrix all of your intelligence assets to be able to figure out very quickly whether you drop on a target or engage a target that may in fact turn out to be noncombatant.
Because, as you would expect us to be: we are very, very sensitive and professional when it comes to proportionality in noncombatant losses.
So I would agree 100 percent from the operational and tactical level down.
At the strategic level of HUMINT, that is out of my expertise level and would get us into the notions of directors of central intelligence and would get us into other classifications as to expenditures or funding of HUMINT at those levels.
But as an operational guy, you will never have enough, you will never have it quick enough, you will never have it so you have 100 percent solution. You have to be willing to operate at the 80 or 85 percent solution, which takes you to all of those complementing and supplementary systems based on that tip.
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So are we okay with that? Not as good as we would like to be. But are we moving down the right road? Yes, sir.
Mr. O'ROURKE. Mr. Marshall.
Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir?
Mr. O'ROURKE. I would just say if you look at Afghanistan and Iraq, you see great evidence that we are very good at state-on-state conflicts. One is accomplished very easily and that is one thing we excel at.
But certainly after the state-on-state conflict, dealing with non-state actors, insurgents, is a much more difficult endeavor. And that is where HUMINT becomes critical.
The one thing I would mention is that we are learning and working quite closely with the Brits. Our coalition partners have a very extensive experience with stability operations. So that is one effort that I know of.
And in connection with insurgencies, it has been reported that in trying to track down Saddam Hussein, we had to develop different kinds of intelligence-collecting and intelligence-assessing techniques.
We had to take rules that were developed for battlefield intelligence and essentially set them aside in favor of procedures and software that were developed for understanding and tracking organized crime families.
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It was that kind of approach to intelligence, to learn about family and clan relationships, that our forces in Iraq apparently had to learn, had to teach themselves, so that they could get at this different kind of problem.
So the kind of human intelligence that you would want to get and your ways of developing it for an insurgency are different from the classic techniques that you would apply for tactical battlefield kind of intelligence.
General MOSELEY. Congressman, could I add one more thing?
Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.
General MOSELEY. Just as an adjunct of that. I haven't had the privilege of actually doing this for a while.
I am here to tell you that our soldiers and our Marines that are on the ground are absolutely the finest and quickest to adapt of any of the other coalition partners, whether it is 82nd Airborne, 4th Infantry Division (I.D.), 3rd I.D., 1st Marine Division, or any of the combat teams, to include Guard and Reserve, I might add.
These kids are the finest, most professional, most capable and the most quickly adaptive of any of the coalition partners.
We all should be very proud of them and hold them in very high regard, because they are adapting on the fly to a very, very creative and very well-resourced and capable opponent.
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And they are doing the Lord's work every day and they are making it look easy, and it is not.
Mr. MARSHALL. Admiral, you got out of responding, so I have a question for you.
You were commanding the, what is it, the Roosevelt Task Force, is that what you call it?
Admiral FITZGERALD. I commanded Task Force 50, which was——
Mr. MARSHALL. Is that the Roosevelt?
Admiral FITZGERALD. Roosevelt. Yes, sir.
Mr. MARSHALL. You had a Reserve squadron that participated, and I understand performed quite well: grading landings, superior, 100 percent mission completion. In fact lending planes to the regular Navy squadrons.
That is one of four squadrons and I understand the Navy is thinking about decommissioning one of the four squadrons. And I wonder whether or not that is a wise move.
I wonder, frankly, if we ought not to be heading in exactly the opposite direction, whether it isn't both more cost-effective and battle-effective to keep the Reserve squadrons where you have more senior pilots, you can pick and choose, get the cream of the crop.
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You have more senior mechanic teams; they are going to beat the pants off of the typical younger pilots everyday, and certainly beat the pants off the younger mechanics teams. And we are not paying them full-time.
It just seems to me to be headed in exactly the wrong direction. There are certainly many instances in which you want a younger crowd.
I was a 21-, 20-year-old recon platoon sergeant ranger in Vietnam. I can't do now or wouldn't do now what I would do then, even if I could. But I don't think that is true where air is concerned.
And so, I wonder if the Navy ought not to rethink that, I think, plan in light of the experience that you had on the Roosevelt, if for no other reason.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Congressman, there are about three different pieces to that question. Well, let me try to answer that.
I couldn't agree with you more, that those pilots and those senior mechanics are incredibly valued to the Navy.
The problem we have is that those folks are in our oldest equipment. And that equipment isn't necessarily transferable to the skills and those things required to fly our newer airplanes.
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For instance, our reserve P–3s, our older block two P–3s that don't even have the same equipment as P–3. The F–18As that were flown by that squadron were an amalgamation of all of the Reserve F–18A-pluses so that we could have enough to get them out there.
The real value is in the person in the Selective Reserve and in those pilots and the Selective Reserve that are in the crews there.
And so, while it is true we are decommissioning the squadron, we are not getting rid of those people. Those selective reserves are being augmented into what we are calling FAUs, fleet augment units, that provide the capability to surge people versus having to maintain the hardware.
So, we are more interested in the bodies than we are in the actual hardware, because the hardware is aging. We just don't have the money to maintain that old hardware.
So, I guess that would be the first point.
The second point is, as we have gone through TACAIR integration here, we have said we are fighting from the flight deck, that, as was alluded to here earlier, that the number of airplanes has been reduced.
And the reason it has been reduced is because the availability of the airplanes is much better now so that you don't have to have all your reserve airplanes down in the hangar base so that when the one breaks on top you can bring another one up.
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But what that has done is it has reduced the air crew manning on the aircraft carriers. So, when you want to surge, you have actually more sorties available in the airplanes than you have people to fly those sorties.
So that is where we see the real value of being able to surge those pilots into squadrons that they have trained with through the work up cycle, so you have Selective Reserve crews who are trained, who know that new airplane, who have the skills necessary to get out there in the squadron and do that.
So we see incredible value in these folks. We just need to restructure the way that we use them, because yes, that was the first time that we deployed a Reserve squadron on a carrier in 50 years.
We have carried that overhead for a long period of time, when the overhead we really wanted to carry was those Selective Reserves themselves.
Mr. MARSHALL. One of the ways in which you draw such qualified people is location.
Admiral FITZGERALD. Yes, sir.
Mr. MARSHALL. And how do you deal with the locational problem of the great mechanics? Take Atlanta, for example, the pilots are there, because that is the largest, the busiest airport in the country.
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How do you keep them abreast with flight hours, training, you just keep them from getting rusty on the particular platform that they are going to be flying if you ever call them up when they are located in Atlanta and the platform is located God knows where?
Admiral FITZGERALD. From the pilot side, that is relatively easy.
The analysis that we have done, most of those Selective Reserves actually fly into the base where they are going to go train from, several states away normally.
So, whether that base is in Atlanta or wherever, that is not as big an issue as it is for the maintainers.
We are looking at a little different model for the maintainers, in that they all do 14 days a year active duty for training, bringing them on, doing that, and then having them do remote training, those kind of things.
Mr. MARSHALL. I don't know that it was fair to my fellow committee members to even ask that question. I appreciate your responses.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
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Because this is an oversight hearing, there are some questions to which we must get the answer.
I have four pages of small print here of questions we need to ask you. With your permission, we will submit these to you for the record. Is that okay?
Admiral FITZGERALD. Yes, sir.
Mr. BARTLETT. Okay. Thank you very much. We really appreciate your testimony.
We really appreciate our chairman coming to join you.
An additional comment or question, sir?
Mr. HUNTER. I just had one.
And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting me come in and join you. I think this has been a great hearing, and thanks to my colleagues for putting up with me coming in and taking some time.
I just had one last question for you, General Moseley.
And that is you folks didn't much like the congressional direction that we retrieve these 23 B–1 bombers. But I understand you think you could live with retrieving seven of them, is that right?
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General MOSELEY. Sir, we have seven that we have now taken the $17 million that you gave us; we have put $200 million of our non-program money into the seven. We will then get 67 total, 60 plus the seven, into Block Echo status, which is as far as we have the B–1 now.
We are now looking at also mounting Litening pods on the B–1s to give them an additional capability. And in a hearing at a different level, I would like to share with you another couple of programs that we have planned for those 67 airplanes.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Let me ask you just a little follow-up on that.
And the planes performed well. Your initial strategy to upgrade the planes that you had by taking some planes out of the force and using the money to upgrade the remaining planes worked well, did it not? You had an effective plane in this last theater.
General MOSELEY. It did, sir.
But there is also another part of that which are the airplanes out at A marker in the boneyard. We have had to use a number of those airplanes for major structural sub-assemblies to keep the existing fleet viable and survivable.
Mr. HUNTER. And you said so some of them aren't retrievable?
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General MOSELEY. Seven of them are not.
Mr. HUNTER. Seven of them aren't?
General MOSELEY. Seven of them are not.
Mr. HUNTER. So you have 16 that are retrievable.
General MOSELEY. There are 17 that are retrievable.
Mr. HUNTER. Seventeen.
General MOSELEY. We are going to take seven, spend the $17 million you gave us, put about $200 million of our own money in that, get those all up to Block E status.
And then that leaves us the 10 out there that we have as a continual option on main structural assemblies and parts and pieces so we don't have to cannibalize the existing 67.
Mr. HUNTER. Upgrading the remaining ten is basically a matter of money, is it not?
General MOSELEY. Sir, it is a matter of money, but please let me also say, to get the B–2 fleet and to get the B–52 fleet and the B–1 fleet out with attrition reserve airplanes in the right numbers to 2025, while looking at these two offices to build perhaps the bridge airplane, F/B–22-like platform of some kind, conduct the synergy of efforts that we are looking at with munitions, ISR tankers, command and control to look at the E–10s to put Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), Rivet Joint, Compass Call, AB–CCC, Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) all on the same platform to do all of that is going to take money.
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And so, we want to work with you on this to be absolutely open. And we are not closed to good ideas.
But we are looking at a fleet of tankers that is not viable: Eisenhower-era tankers to be able to get us into the 21st century——
Mr. HUNTER. And I guess—and that is the last question. I think you folks would rather they put aside the personalities and the present skirmish, especially the one that exists in the other body over these tankers, and separate that from the need to have an aircraft and build the aircraft.
Is that right?
General MOSELEY. Sir, let me try to answer that for you.
There is a requirement for the tanker. There is a——
Mr. HUNTER. Do you think it is a valid requirement? It's not a made-up requirement?
General MOSELEY. I am the operating commander from two campaigns.
Mr. HUNTER. We agree with you.
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General MOSELEY. I could not take the KC–135E and in fact said, ''Do not deploy it; I don't want it over here.''
The Rs, once we configure them to do baskets, we can only do baskets. We only have eight of the KC–135s that can refuel themselves.
The plan that we have for the KCX with a 767 is valid. The options of contracting are not operationally viable. The options of re-engining old 707s gives us a re-engined 50-year-old Eisenhower-era tanker: not viable from my perspective.
Or the ability to go look at something out there that is outside the boundaries of a 767-class airplane.
Something bigger is too big, because it sinks through the asphalt in the desert. Something with a bigger wingspan is too big because we can't park enough to do Navy, Marine, coalition and Air Force assets. Something smaller doesn't carry the load for us.
So it takes us to a 767-class airplane.
So a long answer, Mr. Chairman, yes, the requirement is valid. Yes, we need a new tanker. And yes, we cannot operate these 707s at the level that we have in the past.
Because remember the studies that said they will go longer were all pre-9/11 studies. We surged this fleet.
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We are still taking about 300 days to get one through depot. We are still manufacturing major subassemblies at the depot instead of doing program depot maintenance. And we have still about a third of the fleet down at any one time, which impacts naval air, Marine air, coalition air and U.S. Air Force air.
So long answer to a short question.
Mr. HUNTER. We are going to try to help you.
General MOSELEY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. You know, we put money in for tankers before the big fuss over how we were going to get them.
And I think we agree with the idea that we need to get them, and separate that from the rest of this mess and move ahead and acquire them.
General MOSELEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, you have helped us.
We have $150 million in the 2006 Program Objective Memorandum (POM) for the KCX. And over the FYDP we have a little over $4 billion in this.
So, this is not our first rodeo. We do understand 707s and how to maintain them, and we have a plan to get us to the new world.
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Mr. HUNTER. Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, Chairman Hunter.
And thank you all very much for your testimony. And we stand in adjournment. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]