SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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00–000
2000
[H.A.S.C. No. 106–50]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001—H.R. 4205
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
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MEETING JOINTLY WITH
MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
ON
TITLE I—PROCUREMENT
TITLE II—RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
HEARING HELD
MARCH 9, 2000
MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
FLOYD D. SPENCE, South Carolina
BOB STUMP, Arizona
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JAMES TALENT, Missouri
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
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MARY BONO, California
JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
NORMAN SISISKY, Virginia
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South Carolina
LANE EVANS, Illinois
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
TOM ALLEN, Maine
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT BRADY, Pennsylvania
Steve Thompson, Professional Staff Member
Roger Smith, Professional Staff Member
J.J. Gertler, Professional Staff Member
Jesse Tolleson, Staff Assistant
MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
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CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania, Chairman
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
STEVEN KUYKENDALL, California
DONALD SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio
HERBERT H. BATEMAN, Virginia
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
HOWARD ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
BOB RILEY, Alabama
OWEN PICKETT, Virginia
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
TOM ALLEN, Maine
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
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CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
Stephen Ansley, Professional Staff Member
Robert Lautrup, Professional Staff Member
William Natter, Professional Staff Member
Erica Striebel, Staff Assistant
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2000
HEARING:
Thursday, March 9, 2000, Fiscal Year 2001 National Defense Authorization Act—Army Programs and Transformation for Fiscal Year 2001
APPENDIX:
Thursday, March 9, 2000
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2000
FISCAL YEAR 2001 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—ARMY PROGRAMS AND TRANSFORMATION FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001
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STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Military Procurement Subcommittee
Pickett, Hon. Owen, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
Weldon, Hon. Curt, a Representative from Pennsylvania, Chairman, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Andrews, Hon. A. Michael, II, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology
Hoeper, Hon. Paul J., Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology)
Kern, Lt. Gen. Paul J., Military Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology)
APPENDIX
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PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Andrews, Hon. A. Michael, II
Hoeper, Hon. Paul J.
Hunter, Hon. Duncan
Kern, Lt. Gen. Paul J.
Pickett, Hon. Owen
Sisisky, Hon. Norman, a Representative of Virginia, Ranking Member, Military Procurement Subcommittee
Weldon, Hon. Curt
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted for the Record.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers are pending.]
FISCAL YEAR 2001 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—ARMY PROGRAMS AND TRANSFORMATION FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001
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House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Military Procurement Subcommittee, Meeting Jointly with Military Research and Development Subcommmittee, Washington, DC, Wednesday, Thursday, March 9, 2000.
The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Procurement) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. HUNTER. The hearing will come to order.
Today, the Military Procurement and Research and Development Subcommittees will receive testimony from U.S. Army witnesses on the service's fiscal year 2001 modernization budget and the resources needed to start the Army's transformation from a heavy and light force structure to a more medium weight, highly deployable force.
Today's Army is challenged to meet all the deployments that the Administration calls upon it to make because of limited force structure and the limited resources it has been allocated for recapitalizing and modernizing the force. The Army's combined fiscal year 2001 procurement and research and development budgets total $14.7 billion. While this amount sounds like a large sum of money, it is only $200 million over the amount appropriated for the Army in fiscal year 2000.
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Accordingly, the Chief of Staff of the Army has submitted to the Chairman of the Full Committee a fiscal year 2001 unfunded requirements list totaling $5.5 billion, of which $4.5 billion is for modernization alone. To make matters more difficult, the Army is allocated only 16 percent of the total Defense Department's fiscal year 2001 modernization budget.
And, you know, the recent hearings we have had with former Secretary Jim Schlesinger and others and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have been to the effect that we are anywhere from 20 billion to 50, 60 billion short per year in terms of modernization funding, and the Army has a very, very big piece of that.
This past Monday, testifying before the other body, Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre stated that, and I quote, ''$60 billion does not provide enough money to recapitalize the force.''
He went on to say that the Pentagon needs at least 10 to 15 billion more for modernization to replace its aging systems with new ones. DOD figures indicate that the fiscal year 2001 request falls significantly short of the numbers needed to replace tactical aircraft, armored vehicles and helicopters.
Fiscal year 2001 is a pivotal year for the Army in modernization. The new Chief of Staff of the Army, General Eric Shinseki, has outlined a vision for transformation of the Army from a heavier force structure to a lighter and more lethal combat force.
This is driven by the fact that the Army must fulfill an urgent requirement to the National Command Authority to provide a highly deployable unit that can be rapidly sent into a number of contingencies from peacekeeping operations to low intensity conflict.
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As a result, the Chief of Staff has outlined an initiative to field the first medium weight brigade at Fort Lewis, Washington, by December 2001 and a total of five interim medium brigades not later than 2003. To begin this effort, the Army has requested $537 million in the fiscal year 2001 budget request for the procurement of a family of interim armored vehicles.
While the Secretary of Defense has publicly endorsed the Army's new modernization effort as one that meets the nation's emerging requirements, thus far, the Army has been forced to self-fund its initiative within its historical ''share'' of the budget. To implement the Chief's vision for transformation, the service has terminated seven critical modernization programs and is restructuring two others for a total savings of $382 million in fiscal year 2001.
Of note, the top two modernization programs on the Chief's fiscal year 2001 unfunded requirements list, the Wolverine Heavy Assault Bridge and the Grizzly Obstacle Breacher, which total $185 million in fiscal year 2001 shortfalls, were two of the seven terminated programs.
While the Army is to be commended for laying out a bold transformation initiative, half of the cost of this initiative is unfunded and many questions remain about how the Army will procure all the medium vehicles required to field a total of five interim brigades by fiscal year 2003.
In conclusion, the Army has a vision for transformation; however, there is no definitive plan that has been presented to Congress on the expenditure of modernization funds to field the interim brigades or future medium brigades. Moreover, the Army needs to provide adequate justification for the $537 million for the procurement of the interim family of vehicles in its fiscal year 2001 budget request.
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In today's hearing, I look forward to a frank and open discussion with our witnesses in hopes of gaining insights into these concerns and answering our questions on the service's modernization plan and where the additional funds will come from to pay for the Army's transformation.
We are pleased to welcome today with us Dr. Paul Hoeper.
Thank you, Secretary Hoeper, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. Thank you for being with us today.
Dr. Michael Andrews, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Development.
And also Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, Military Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.
General Kern, thank you for being with us also.
Before we hear from our witnesses, I would like to call on the gentleman from Pennsylvania, my good colleague and Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee who is holding this hearing jointly with us, Mr. Weldon, for his opening statement.
Curt.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Weldon. I thank my good friend and Chairman of the Procurement Subcommittee and welcome you all on behalf of the R&D Subcommittee. We have had a practice over the past six years of doing joint hearings on key issues such as we are discussing today with the Army and I look forward to hearing from each of you and appreciate the good work that you have done on our behalf.
As you all know, and I echo all of Duncan's comments here, as you know, the House Armed Services Committee under the leadership of Floyd Spence, with bipartisan support every step of the way, has increased defense spending by $43 billion over the President's request over the last six-year time period.
Heaven knows where we would be if we had not done that, even though each year we were criticized for putting more money into the military than the military requested. In fact, it was kind of ironic that a month ago former Defense Secretary Perry, when I asked that question, I said, ''Well, where would we be today, Secretary Perry, if we had listened to you when you criticized us for putting more money in?''
He said, ''You'd be a lot worse off than you are today.''
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Because, as you know, every year he criticized us and then took credit for those increases the following year, and we kept putting money in the fund that we knew the service chiefs and people like yourselves were asking for and yet it is still not enough. In fact, Secretary Perry believes we are 10 to 15 billion dollars short this next fiscal year. Even with the President's requested increase, he still believes that we are short overall funding.
But what really has bothered many of us, and on the R&D Subcommittee especially, is the frustration that the department has not acknowledged any negative impact resulting from steady declines in R&D funding. Our R&D budgets are down by about 25 percent.
I do want to commend the Army because it is the one service that has given us the insights into the impact on Army readiness and modernization caused by the unacceptably low defense budgets of the past five years. You have been very candid and forthright on that regard. The impact of this modernization train wreck is already hitting us.
The Chairman mentioned canceling seven major programs. Others have been cut back such as Crusader and I think they are only the beginning of what you are going to have to face as you face some very difficult challenges, as you digitize the Army for the 21st century, as you continue your great work in information technology.
Mr. Secretary, you know I think the Army is the leader of the entire Federal Government in terms of information dominance. Your center down at Fort Belvoir, your facility, is second to none. You have a far greater capability not only than any of the other services, than either the FBI or the CIA and that is because of your foresight and because of the leadership of the three of you sitting here today.
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And you have also done an important thing, as the Chairman mentioned, in shifting your modernization efforts, trying to come up with a new vision for what the Army has to be in the 21st century, even though my own feeling is that you are not really—we are not seeing the evidence of real support from within the Pentagon itself. A lot of lip service, a lot of talk. You are out there doing the visionary thinking for the future, but I do not think to this date that I have seen the support coming from Department of Defense (DOD) the way it should be.
In fact, I find it difficult to understand how the Army will be able to sustain all of its requirements and complete the transformation when you only receive 16 percent of the department's modernization funding. I mean, that is outrageous. How are you going to do that when you get the smallest slice out of the pie in terms of the Department of Defense and yet you are the first ones called for all of these deployments and, as you know, in the past eight years, we are now under our 34th major deployment, compared to eight in the previous 40 years and all those deployments involve Army personnel. And yet you are only getting 16 percent of the modernization funding.
So we are very concerned on both sides of the aisle, we are very concerned in both Committees and we are looking forward to hearing from you today. And asking you candidly on a personal level, if not professional, to share with us your own feelings and also as we begin to look for some additional funding for defense to give us—which I know Duncan wants and I want also—your lists of where if you had extra money you would put it to meet the needs that are not going to be met by the current budget projections of the President's budget.
So we thank you for being here. I look forward to listening to your testimony. I will have to leave for part of the hearing, but my thoughts are with you and my support will be with you.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weldon can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Curt.
Now I would like to turn to my good colleague, the very articulate gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Sisisky.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Because of the timeframe and a lot of people have a lot of things to do, I have a pretty long statement and I would ask that the entire statement be placed into the record.
Gentlemen, knowing the problems that you face, you are not just asking to do something for less, but do something with the same and that is an unusual thing, but hopefully you are up to it and we certainly wish you a lot of luck in that. And I would yield to my colleague from Missouri for a moment.
Mr. HUNTER. Without objection. And your whole statement will go into the record, Norm.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sisisky can be found in the Appendix.]
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Mr. SKELTON. Thank you for yielding to me for a moment.
Would the Chairman please time me for that moment? I would appreciate it.
Two things quickly. Number one, when former Secretary Bill Perry testified a few days ago, he said that the procurement level for the budget is $10 to $20 billion short. My recollection is that the unfunded numbers from all of the services total right at 16 to $17 billion short.
I testified before the Budget Committee regarding Secretary Perry's recommendations. I hope that there was an open ear over there.
Along the same line, because of budgetary constraints, the Grizzly and Wolverine systems were terminated, but I understand they are the top two of the Army Chief of Staff's on the unfunded list. Not just because I represent Fort Leonard Wood, but the Army Corps of Engineers helps and did help and the entire Desert Storm would have been different but for the engineers and what they did in the Grizzly and Wolverine systems to bring them up to date, so I hope that in your comments today you would be kind enough to address those.
Thank you for the moment.
Mr. HUNTER. Certainly. We always appreciate the Ranking Member joining us and appreciate his input.
And now the other gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Pickett.
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STATEMENT OF HON. OWEN PICKETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you providing this opportunity for us to hear more about the Army's modernization plans and priorities, and I welcome our distinguished witnesses here today.
Given the federal budget limitations under the existing discretionary budget caps and recognizing the financial pressure arising from either maintaining or replacing the rapidly aging weapon systems, I feel that the Administration's overall budget is perhaps about as good as we can do for Army research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E).
Now, this is not to say that it is adequate. The Army's portion of the total RDT&E budget remains relatively small and as you, Mr. Chairman, have previously noted, the Army receives proportionately half as much for their modernization budget as the other military services.
Along with that, this paltry share must be stretched to accommodate both near term and long term modernization goals. At the same time, the Army has embarked on a major transformation initiative to create a more deployable, survivable and lethal capability.
Today's hearing should focus on the specifics of the new Army vision and its proposal to evolve from a force of legacy systems to both an interim and then an objective force in the future and to be sure its bold vision, fielding five to eight brigade combat teams at Fort Lewis, Washington utilizing this new concept will be a huge concept. And I wonder if the investments are there at the present time to meet this challenge.
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I am encouraged that the Army has entered into several teaming arrangements with other agencies in an effort to leverage their existing resources and seek answers to the questions about the objective forces' maneuverability, lethality and survivability.
I also have a positive view about the Army's renewed interest in tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), battlefield interoperability and the use of robotics. I hope today's hearing will yield additional specifics on all of these topics.
A number of questions remain unanswered. If we are to embark on a major research and development effort to equip the objective force, I believe Congress needs to know more about the specifics and the schedule of this vision.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pickett can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
Secretary Hoeper, all statements will be entered into the record without objection, and the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL J. HOEPER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY (ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS, AND TECHNOLOGY)
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Secretary HOEPER. Thank you very much, Chairman Hunter.
Thank you, Chairman Weldon, Members of the Committee, for this opportunity.
With me today are Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, who is my military deputy and also the director of the Army Acquisition Career Management.
Dr. Mike Andrews is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology and also the Army's chief scientist.
We have submitted a joint statement and appreciate the fact that that will be entered into the record.
Mr. Chairman, this has been a year of bold, sweeping changes for the Army. We have embarked on an ambitious transformation to better align our capabilities with the international security environment we see emerging in this century. Our plan is to transform the Army in three major phases: an initial phase going on right now at Fort Lewis, an interim capability and an objective force.
Lt. Gen. Kern will discuss the initial and interim phases and Dr. Andrews will discuss the objective force phase.
Overall, our acquisition, logistics, and technology community has a critical role, although not the only role, to play in this transformation.
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Our changes have not been limited to transformation. When we took on the logistics function last year, the Army clearly placed responsibility for managing life cycle costs on new and fielded systems in my office. This holistic approach to systems development, acquisition and sustainment permeates all we do and every decision that we make.
A shining example of this is the Army's approach to maintain today's land force dominance capabilities. We do this through a combination of recapitalization programs for our legacy systems and the fielding of new already programmed equipment.
Recapitalization of legacy equipment, by Army definition, and this definition has been agreed upon throughout the Army, is the maintenance and systematic upgrade of currently fielded systems to ensure operational readiness and zero time/zero miles system. Our objectives include extending service life, reducing operating and support costs, improving systems reliability, maintainability, safety and efficiency and enhancing capability.
The Army's modernization plan, which we will send you early next month, places great emphasis on recapitalization of our aging equipment.
Our recapitalization strategy will partner Army depots with private industry to upgrade and recapitalize several key warfighting systems. These programs will build upon the success we are experiencing with the Abrams AIM 21 program, AIMS stands for Abrams Integrated Management program, which is a partnership between the Anniston Army Depot and General Dynamics Land Systems.
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Additionally, we are buying new engines for the Abrams to reduce fuel consumption by up to 30 percent while increasing reliability.
We are modifying Bradleys to increase their lethality, reliability and survivability through digitization, adding night vision capabilities and other significant improvements.
In aviation, we continue to upgrade the Apache attack helicopters to the Longbow variant while pursuing recapitalization for the Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.
To provide important logistical capabilities to the force, we are upgrading our fleet of heavy expanded mobility tactical trucks, or HEMTTS, with improved engines, anti-lock brakes and load handling systems.
Digitizing the Army overlays every aspect of modernization. We are committed to acquiring digital capabilities to support our soldiers, our units and our ability to communicate securely and effectively. The process of applying information technologies to allow warfighters to share a constantly updated common view of the battle space is an ongoing modernization priority that relates directly to the transformation.
We continue to develop the Comanche helicopter and the Crusader howitzer. Both are vitally important to our remodernization. Comanche will provide a new and much needed capability to conduct armed reconnaissance around the clock and in adverse weather conditions. It will significantly expand the Army's ability to conduct operations in a wide range of scenarios.
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We have restructured the Crusader program to gain vital improvements in indirect fire support capability and weight reduction through increased use of titanium and changes to its suspension and power plant.
The Army continues to develop and modernize its theater missile defense systems to protect our forces against the growing missile threat. Our successes with the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the PAC–3, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, flight testing have proven hit-to-kill as a concept.
Lessons learned from these programs will be applied to the Medium Extended Air Defense System, the MEADS program, which will be our next generation in effective missile defense.
The Army is committed to fielding these critical force protection systems as soon as possible.
All of you have pointed out this morning that the Army is the world's preeminent land combat force. As we continue to meet the needs of the nation, we ask for the continued support of all in this room so that the Army can continue to be persuasive in peace and invincible in war.
This concludes my opening remarks. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to have General Kern and Dr. Andrews brief you on the transformation. We will then be pleased to answer questions.
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[The prepared statement of Secretary Hoeper, can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Secretary Hoeper.
General Kern, go right ahead.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. PAUL J. KERN, MILITARY DEPUTY TO THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY (ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS, AND TECHNOLOGY)
General KERN. Mr. Chairmen, Congressmen Hunter and Weldon, thank you for letting us present to you the Army's programs today. It is always an honor to appear before this Committee because you certainly have helped us in the past and we look forward to working with you and answering your questions in the future.
This is an exciting year to be part of the Army's research and development acquisition. As you have noted, we are in the process of both sustaining our current force, the greatest Army that there is in the world today, an Army which I noted that you have helped by investing almost $84 billion in just our big five systems over the past ten years. And that gives you some idea of the order of magnitude of what lies ahead in transforming the Army for the 21st century.
That certainly has created an Army today which is recognized around the world as being the best equipped, the best trained and the best led Army and our goal is to keep it that way.
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Our priority is to achieve an objective force design. And, again, your Committee has helped us through work with the RDT&E accounts and Dr. Andrews will provide more detail on that, and agreements that we have worked out very recently with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other agencies to push that work forward. That is a very challenging objective, as Dr. Andrews will clarify for you, but it should be kept in mind that that is the priority that we are moving to. And so the interim force is in fact a description of a force which we see as meeting an urgent requirement today and therefore is an interim measure to establish that capability as quickly as possible in the United States Army.
I should also point out that the development programs which you have funded for the past years are coming to fruition.
The Comanche helicopter is about ready to enter its engineering manufacturing development phase and we will hold a review with the Defense Acquisition Executive on that next month. The two prototypes which are flying now have accumulated more than 200 hours and are doing exceedingly well in meeting their capabilities.
The digitization effort which Lt. Gen. Bill Campbell has spearheaded for the United States Army and as Congressman Weldon has pointed out is a leader in information networks across not only the Department of Defense but across the whole U.S. Government. We are completing our testing at Fort Hood today. If you went down and visited the 3rd Corps, you would find them in the middle of an exercise using this digital capability and proceeding on to their next phase of testing which will be the integration of those systems, our Force 21 battle command systems, our maneuver and control systems which are wrapped up into our Army battle command system, which roll into the integrated systems that fit into the joint world into global command and control.
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All those pieces are moving ahead rapidly today and form a cornerstone of the fielding of the first digital division at Fort Hood, which includes the upgraded Abrams tank, the M1A2SEP, which is in this year's budget; the Bradley A–3, which is also in this year's budget request; and our FBCB2 and WIN–T, the terrestrial network of information systems which will be part of our first digital division.
I should note to you that that one is one of the key performance parameters of the transformation of the brigades at Fort Lewis on those interim brigades and so one of the objectives that will have to be met will be to integrate those digital systems for command and control into the new platforms and fighting capability of those interim brigades.
Crusader has been restructured as noted. After a software problem was discovered last year, we both had to delay that program two years and we took advantage in doing that to downsize the vehicle, taking some 15 tons off of it, which we were able to do because we had built that through a pro-engineering simulation model which allowed us to quickly re-engineer that to a fighting system.
I should also note it has fired its first full up round in an automated system very recently, in the past two weeks, successfully at a range of 40 kilometers.
We also as noted have had some problems with the software development there and we have used the software program managers network to help us solve some of those problems. Again, that was funding provided by this Committee to help us in that area and we appreciate that because it does in fact solve some tough software integration issues.
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We have down selected in a competition the tactical unmanned aerial vehicle this year and that will also provide a reconnaissance capability for our current divisions but also for the interim force and provide a key part of unmanned reconnaissance which the Army participated in the battlefield in Kosovo this year with our Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle doing a great deal of work for that effort.
Mr. HUNTER. A superb system, I might add, the Hunter.
General KERN. Yes. Thank you, sir.
Our Chem DEMIL programs are also progressing, which I also would note because there is a large investment that you all have made to produce a safe country and so we have made substantial progress in that area and have almost 90 percent of that entire stockpile today under contract for destruction.
The initial phases which were started up on Johnston Island will come to closure this year at the end of the year and our production today at Tooele has exceeded by almost threefold what we are doing on Johnston Island and that capability today has destroyed close to 18 percent of the total stockpile, so we are making this a safer nation in the process as our executive agent in that area.
But the focus we have today on the transformation I think is one which has captured everyone's imagination on moving ahead very quickly with an aggressive program, as I said, to meet an urgent shortfall of the United States Army and that is the ability to strategically deploy our forces rapidly anywhere in the world.
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General Shinseki and Secretary Caldera have set out some very tough objectives for us in the research, development and acquisition area to meet in the next few years. We are beginning that by the transformation of the initial brigades at Fort Lewis in which we are using loaned equipment under NATO loan agreements to learn how to operate with smaller, lighter weight equipment.
We are also preparing and have submitted to Congress a letter requesting us to move ahead with the $100 million which you appropriated last year with the beginning of the transformation project to acquire new equipment which will be part of the interim force to replace that loaned equipment and to establish five to eight brigades for the United States Army. We have a draft request for proposal which is under review right now and we hope to convert that to a final request for proposal and put that out on the street for bid in an about two weeks after review by the Defense Acquisition Executive.
We will do that with your concurrence in the response to the letters which we have submitted to Congress on how we will use that $100 million.
That will be a full and open competition, and that will allow us to choose the best equipment to meet that interim force capability. There has been a number of discussions that have occurred on whether it is wheeled or track. We have not made that decision yet. We have at Fort Knox this past year in December and January had platform demonstrations in which both types of vehicles made their appearance. We have written a requirements document which meets our requirement to be a rapidly deployable force to be able to fight in the stability and support operations those type operations which you see in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as to fit into a divisional structure for the major theaters of war.
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And so the proposals that we are looking for will be able to fit into that urgent requirement and that is what we are seeking your approval for to move ahead this year.
Every day that we wait on making that selection and then finally awarding that bid is a day that we do not meet in solving that urgent requirement and so we have a great sense of urgency in the United States Army to get on with this. We have seen what is available off the shelf around not only this country but around the world and we have some, we believe, good solutions to the problems that we are trying to solve.
So that is the objective force step that we are taking which we call the interim brigades to be fielded at Fort Lewis and we are prepared to discuss that in any level of detail that you wish this morning.
But I must come back again to the point that where we would really like to get to is our objective force design. It is not a platform replacement, it is a new Army for the 21st century. It is an Army designed to fight in the environment which we see today, not the cold war which we have designed the current Army to fight in and then have adapted to the world as it has evolved. It will take substantial investments. We recognize that. It will take substantial work by our program managers and by industry, and we hope to work with Congress on doing that as quickly as possible.
Sir, I thank you for your time and attention and offer Dr. Andrews.
[The prepared statement of General Kern can be found in the Appendix.]
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STATEMENT OF HON. A. MICHAEL ANDREWS, II, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
Secretary ANDREWS. Chairman Hunter, Chairman Weldon, members of the Committee, I thank you for this opportunity to discuss how the Army's science and technology program is enabling the objective force.
Mr. Chairman, it is my privilege to report to you that the Army's scientists and engineers—
Mr. HUNTER. Secretary Andrews, you might pull that mike up a little closer, sir.
Secretary ANDREWS. Thank you.
It is my privilege to report to you that the Army's scientists and engineers and our industrial partners and academic partners are excited about the drive to achieve the Army's new vision for transformation. We are committed to provide the technology to accelerate this transformation.
The Army's Chief of Staff, General Shinseki, has asked us to answer some very tough questions about achieving the objective force by the 2012 timeframe. We are challenged to provide him a comprehensive set of answers by 2003.
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Perhaps the best way to view our focus on the objective force is to understand the Army's and its technical community's emphasis on developing and fielding an entirely new land combat capability that we call the future combat systems (FCS).
FCS is not just a platform. We are not developing ''a tank'' or ''an artillery system'' or ''an infantry carrier.'' FCS is a system of battlefield capabilities in which the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.
Fielding FCS enables a true paradigm shift, perhaps as significant as the development of the tank or the helicopter. Fielding FCS technologies will make heavy forces lighter, lighter forces more lethal, and reduce our logistics demands.
As you are aware, we have a diverse portfolio of technology investments to maintain today's land force dominance and we have committed to invest about $500 million per year over the next six years to achieve this future combat systems capability.
Fielding FCS for the objective force will require us to overcome many technology challenges. Let me talk to you about one critical technology challenge, survivability. We must provide our soldiers the lethality of the Abrams tank and survivability, all within a 20-ton vehicle.
Survivability, lethality, sensors and communications are synergistically linked in the FCS. The intent is to see before being seen, shoot first, and kill the enemy first. I brought some technology samples to show you how far we have already come in achieving lightweight advanced armors for survivability and to tell you how far we need to go.
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This first block that I show you here is a cross-section from the Bradley fighting vehicle. It weighs in at 55 pounds per square foot.
This is a ceramic armor piece. It does the same ballistic protection, 25 pounds per square foot, now transitioned from science and technology into the Crusader turret. We are on a path for the future combat system to provide about a 15 pounds per square foot, dramatic reductions to get the survivability we need for the future combat systems.
To assure success in overcoming all the technology barriers we have for future combat systems, we have partnered with DARPA in a collaborative program. We are enthusiastic about our collaboration because their reputation for pushing the technology envelope is just what we need and for the opportunity to combine our resources to focus on this important Army problem.
General Shinseki has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged the Army to transform. The Army Scientific & Technical (S&T) community has accepted this challenge for the objective force and energized all our resources to meet it. We are accelerating the pace of transformation.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittees, on behalf of all the Army's scientists and engineers, I thank you for your support.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Andrews can be found in the Appendix.]
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Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Dr. Andrews.
For the Members, we have two votes, one 17-minute followed by a five, so we will break here in a few minutes and go to that vote.
First, Secretary Hoeper, you folks have a fairly small piece of the procurement R&D budget. You may have looked at some of the testimony to the effect that—by a number of people now, from CBO to Jim Schlesinger to now John Hamre speaking up that we are not modernizing at a rapid pace, in fact, not even at a moderate pace, and former Secretary Schlesinger said it pretty well, he said you do not have to be a rocket scientist, you just take all these old taxicabs that we have now, basically our systems, and you lay down their projected lives and you match that up against how fast we are replacing them, and he came up with the group that was testifying with him with procurement requirements upwards of 100 billion bucks a year.
CBO said you need about 90 to replace these old systems. You cannot replace with what you have. You cannot even come close with the budget that you have. Is that right?
Secretary HOEPER. Well, we probably cannot replace all the systems that are aging with new systems with our current budget. That is correct.
Mr. HUNTER. But you cannot even replace them at a steady state and keep anywhere close to a median age on these systems.
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Secretary HOEPER. Sir, we are in fact trying to address that right now in our Program Objective Memorandum (POM) 2002 submission as part of the recapitalization effort that I mentioned. We are trying to figure out how we can recapitalize our legacy systems and what money we will need to budget for that.
Mr. HUNTER. You are going to need a ton of money.
Secretary HOEPER. We are going to need quite a bit of money.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, you have not analyzed that out?
Secretary HOEPER. I have actually been working pretty much every week on doing that and towards our POM submission, our 2002 POM, to try to figure out exactly what we are going to need to recapitalize to approach a steady state.
But the other part of that is a judgment about whether we need the same number of vehicles as we move into the transformation. The transformation vehicles will also affect what we need in terms of recapitalization.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, there are always other aspects to this formulation, but let me tell you, you cannot recapitalize with a tenth of the number of platforms with the dollars you have. I mean, you guys are falling off the cliff.
Secretary HOEPER. We certainly cannot buy new ones, so—
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Mr. HUNTER. Well, you cannot buy new ones, you cannot fix old ones.
Secretary HOEPER. We have to do our best to fix old ones.
Mr. HUNTER. But you cannot even come close, Secretary Hoeper.
Secretary HOEPER. I think we are going to be very challenged in this area. I think—as I look at it, we are going to have to figure out—the challenge that we have is, as you said, to try to do more, to try to remain the world's preeminent Army with relatively small resources, and that is a tremendous challenge for us.
Mr. HUNTER. I think you should be pounding the table for more money. You know, sometimes there is a substitute for dollars and sometimes there is no substitute and whether you go lighter or faster or quicker or more lethal, you are going to need a lot more money. And this transformation is going to be an expensive thing.
Dr. Andrews, in 1950 when the North Koreans invaded the south and they came down and knocked the 25th Division around, captured their commander, General Dean, our bazookas were bouncing off their tanks. We were developing some great things, we did not have them fielded, and we paid for that heavily.
The Army, in my estimation, has at times been the master of R&Ding stuff forever. We need fast fielding capability and that has always been a goal, I know, of your acquisition people, but it is not one we have realized.
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You just showed us this nice brand new stuff here. When are we going to have it? Are you going to be around or will our children be around when that thing gets fielded?
Secretary ANDREWS. Sir, as I mentioned, this ceramic technology was introduced into the Crusader turret two years ago, so that technology is already in use. This technology for the Bradley has been there for some time. The new technologies for the future combat system for ceramic armor also will be there in the timeframe inserted for acquisition.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. I would like you for the record to go over some of your technologies that you think are important, some vital technologies the Army has developed recently. Maybe the top five or six. When they started developing them and when they are going to be fielded, if you could, for us.
Secretary ANDREWS. I would be glad to.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Thank you very much.
Gentlemen, we are going to break for this vote. I think we have about five minutes or so and when we come back Mr. Sisisky is up.
[Recess.]
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Mr. HUNTER. Folks, we are going to resume.
Before I turn to my good friend Norm Sisisky, I just wanted General Kern to have a shot at the question that I asked, and that is, are you not massively underfunded in terms of modernization?
Have you come up with a ballpark figure in terms of what you need each year to maintain a steady state modernization of the force structure that you have now, assuming that you did not have to buy new stuff and what is it?
General KERN. Mr. Chairman, I would start by what you referred to earlier as the Chief of Staff's unfunded requirements, which outline over $5 billion in the 2001 period. So when our Deputy Secretary, Dr. Hamre, said there's $10 billion, I would like a big share of that.
I think the Army has a considerable problem. The Air Intercept Missile (AIM) program which was referred to which is the rebuild of Abrams tank, we are only doing 100 a year, so all of our sustainment and recapitalization of those efforts are moving along at a very low pace and will take us 10 to 20 years at that rate just to move out and try to capture forces that are in the field today.
My estimate for recapitalization has been, and I have stated in previous testimony, that the Army has been three to five billion dollars a year short of those dollars prior to our transformation, and so trying to both change the force and keep the current force ready, I believe the unfunded requirement, our previous testimony, what the Deputy Secretary has said is that there is a minimum of five billion dollars a year that the Army today is short. And I could add to that on how quickly you would like to overcome those deficits.
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Mr. HUNTER. Well, yes. Most of the unfunded requirements list that you go through are what I would call short-term readiness-oriented items. I mean, you do not have large—at least my recollection of your list is you do not have a lot of big ticket platforms.
General KERN. That is correct, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. You do not have a lot of modernization in there. Is that right?
General KERN. That is correct. There is not a lot of modernization.
Mr. HUNTER. So the problem is short-term, nuts and bolts, let us get ready, generators, ammunition, training, et cetera, aside from replacing these big old taxi cabs that are wearing out. You must be putting together a blueprint as to how you are going to replace your platforms, right?
General KERN. We have at least the three efforts that were described to you earlier on recapitalizing the force, transforming the force, and getting to the objective force that are occurring simultaneously. All of those are in process today.
The recapitalization piece of it, which Secretary Hoeper referred to earlier, is getting back to bringing the current force to the capability of sustaining it in the field at the readiness levels that we need to meet our requirements. I believe that the right answer to that is that we are short about three to five billion dollars a year right now.
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Mr. HUNTER. So basically consistent with the unfunded requirements list that you sent out of a little over five for this year.
General KERN. That is correct. Now—
Mr. HUNTER. But your second problem is your modernization or recapitalizing your platforms.
General KERN. That is correct. And that is broken down into not only sustaining the current force but then acquiring a new force. We believe that the brigades that we are going to acquire and we want to acquire them as a complete brigade set are going to be about $1.4 billion a year. We have only been able to fund half of that in our current budget, so you could say that half of that is still a requirement that is left unfunded.
We have an objective force which we have yet to design which Dr. Andrews described which we are funding, we believe, in science and technology efforts about 500 million, but we have had to reprioritize our own funding internally to be able to do that, so that means we are short in some area, aviation is one and future requirements.
We would like to do that more aggressively and get more innovative technologies into it, so there is probably a science and technology piece of that that is short this year of about $50 million.
I mentioned earlier that Congress appropriated almost $85 billion to just build five systems for us in the past ten years that got us through the cold war. We are not approaching that yet today because all of the systems that we are building that I have described to you as unfunded, the Apache Longbow, the AH–64D, is a rebuilt Apache Alpha model and not completely rebuilt. We need to go back and look at how we do that.
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The Abrams tank, the M1A2SEP, is a rebuilt M–1 tank as well. So all of our systems today are rebuilds of the equipment which we have already acquired. There is no new equipment in that with the exception of a few smaller systems such as the Javelin and the tactical unmanned aerial vehicle.
So you do not have in our budget requests yet with the exception of the initial request we have made in this budget for the transformation of those brigades at Fort Lewis the first step in that process of rebuilding our equipment.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Sisisky.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
While you are on the unfunded list, from today's view, are any items on that list more important to the Army than things that made it through the funding process? And what funding items would you trade for the top unfunded?
If you do not know the answer now, you can submit it. Or you would not trade any? Is that—
Secretary HOEPER. I think that we have funded what is most important and we have prioritized what we have been unable to fund in order of priority.
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General KERN. I think I would add to that, if I could, Mr. Secretary, what our Chief of Staff said yesterday. The first two items on it, the Wolverine Grizzly, the Army would have preferred to have funded it, but we had to pay our bills. And so they are at the top of our unfunded list, but they did not make the cut line for us, so in terms of priorities, I think that is about right. And that is what our chief said yesterday.
Mr. SISISKY. General Kern, I think you talked in your statement about the Army's transformation, a focus on lighter air mobile forces, particularly those that can be deployed by the C–130. Am I correct in that?
General KERN. Yes, sir. That is correct.
Mr. SISISKY. The 130 would be—
General KERN. The C–130 is the baseline that we are using.
Mr. SISISKY. Well, how are you going to—it is what fits the 130. I mean, an Abrams tank does not fit a 130, does it?
General KERN. No, sir. It does not.
Mr. SISISKY. So if that is going to be your centerpiece, what are you going to transport them in? I mean, I am not trying to trap you in anything, I am trying to get my mind straight on how do you do that, if the 130 is the air mobility piece, then how do you transport these things?
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General KERN. Clearly what the Air Force has in its inventory today, the C–17s, the C–141s, the C–5s and the C–130s, the 141s are on their way out and there is a limited number of C–17s and C–5s. They will all take—the C–17s and C–15s—take our outsized equipment, and we are designed around that.
What we have recognized in looking at operations such as Kosovo that we need to be able to rapidly deploy our force even when there are no airfields available. And so the C–130 not only—not because of its size characteristic, but also allows us to operate in areas where there are not prepared airstrips, and that has become a key factor.
The Army Science Board has also done a number of studies for us over the past few years looking at air transportability, as well as fast sealift and other transportabilities. If we look at the commercial sector, we will have far more airlift available than we will in the Defense Department.
The C–130 size, when you start getting down into that package—
Mr. SISISKY. But the real mobility of the 130 is the ability to land in places that you cannot land in other aircraft, I think.
General KERN. That is correct. That is the key factor and that drives the size, weight characteristics of the systems that we are looking for.
Mr. SISISKY. I am going to come back to the budget a minute because time is limited.
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General Shinseki announced the transformation in October and that was five months ago. Did you have time to fully implement it in your budgeting for 2001? But the basic question is do you have the ability to put it into the Five Year Defense Program (FYDP)?
Secretary HOEPER. I think we do. I think we have made that rudder correction very quickly. We have implemented it in the 2001 budget. We are getting ready to release an Request for Production (RFP) for the interim vehicles in the very near future and we do have it in the—we are putting it in the five-year plan in an effective way. We have worked very, very hard to do that. If it is an urgent requirement, then we are treating it like an urgent requirement.
Mr. SISISKY. You will terminate the planned procurement of systems that do not fit the new vision. Is that correct?
Secretary HOEPER. Yes.
Mr. SISISKY. Now, Secretary Hamre has been quoted here today, he will be quoted another few months, but he recently said that the winner take all competitions may no longer be feasible. He was speaking, obviously, of the aircraft industry, but the Army relies on a number of similarly specialized manufacturers.
What do you think? Is the winner take all healthy for your suppliers? Or is it better that you look at more formalized teaming arrangements?
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Secretary HOEPER. Most of the time what we do see is teaming in fact. That is the reality across the defense industrial base today. You do have to look at the health of the industrial base and that will vary depending on what you are buying. For example, in this interim procurement that we are embarking on, we are going to buy perhaps 2000 vehicles and that is not a great many.
We are not requiring one winner, one contract. There might be one winner, one contract. We might find that different competitors provide value in different variants. We are going to buy the best for the Army, but we probably will down select to the contractor or contractors that will produce those vehicles. On the other hand, if there were a much longer procurement, we might try to have a dual source.
So you have to look at each individual procurement to see what the best way to proceed would be.
Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, just one more question and I want to ask it for the Ranking Member and I think he mentioned it and you mentioned it in your testimony, it is the decision to terminate the Grizzly and Wolverine systems. They are the top two on the chief's unfunded list and the engineering corps was counting on these systems to enable our forces to operate in unprepared terrain.
Would you like to comment for the Ranking Member?
Secretary HOEPER. We terminated it as an Army and I personally terminated these with great reluctance. These are systems that are very valuable. They are not as high a priority as the transformation, but they are right afterwards. We terminated these with great reluctance and we would like to have them back if more money were to be available.
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Mr. SISISKY. Very good. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you.
Mr. Everett.
Mr. EVERETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank the panel for being here today.
Mr. Secretary, we are looking forward to the modernization plan when it comes in April.
General Kern, as you know, I live about four miles from Enterprise Gate at Fort Rucker, Alabama and so I am going to talk about helicopters and Army aviation. One of the businesses I used to be in was the homebuilding business, so I want to start with some foundation questions.
How does Army aviation fit into the Army's transition strategy?
General KERN. Mr. Everett, I think you know that the Army is preparing right now an aviation modernization plan at the request of Congress. That has been a very challenging plan for us to put together with the resources that we have available and to both sustain an aging fleet of aircraft as well as to meet the future requirements.
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The focus of the transformation process has been on the ground brigades, because they have given us the deployability issues which we have, and that is what we have focused on in this budget request. However, the Army's aviation will remain a centerpiece of the Army's fighting capability as a combined arms force in the future and so Comanche still remains our number one priority aviation program and we have fully funded that with the help of Congress last year who added money to the Comanche and a commitment by our Secretary. We have also plussed up the Comanche RDT&E effort to get it into production as quickly as possible.
Mr. EVERETT. Other than the Comanche, what other types of Army aviation aircraft will be needed to make this plan work?
General KERN. We will focus our aviation modernization on the most current aircraft we have. Our heavy lift will be dependent upon the upgrade to the CH–47 and that is the CH–47F or the ICH, improved cargo helicopter program. That is in our budget request this year and we plan to move that ahead and that is our heavy lift focus.
The UH–60 program, we are buying at a fairly low rate, but we are in the process of going through a complete review of that which will be an RDT&E effort to create the UH–60L plus and the L plus will then provide us the utility helicopter fleet for our forces. And the Apache delta model which is then our first digitized aircraft, the AH–64D, two battalions of that currently fielded, one at Fort Hood, Texas with the 1st Cavalry and one to the 101st. They will form the backbone of our attack helicopter.
Until we get the Comanche into production, we will be relying on the OH–58 Deltas to provide us the reconnaissance capability but that aircraft also is one which we would put in the category of an older aircraft which we would like to be replaced by the Comanche as quickly as possible.
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The other remaining aircraft that are in our fleet today, the UH–1s and the AH–1s, we will make every effort to remove them as quickly as possible from our inventory. And so the entire Army, Guard, Reserve, and active duty, will be focused, then, on our main aircraft of the AH–64s for attack helicopter, the CH–47 for heavy lift, and the UH–60s for utility.
Mr. EVERETT. For the record, on the Comanche, is the aircraft not on cost, on schedule, and meeting or exceeding all requirements for a positive low rate initial production decision later?
General KERN. Yes, sir. It is. We are very proud of the record of the Comanche.
Mr. EVERETT. Okay. How about the Longbow? Is it not a quantum leap over the A model and other attack helicopters?
General KERN. Yes, sir. It is. I had the opportunity to fly in a delta model about a month ago at the plant at Mesa where they are producing it with one of our test pilots. It is a remarkable aircraft in its ability to acquire targets with its fire control radar, with a digital system to pass those targets to its wing man and for the two pilots then to be able to launch their Hellfire missiles in either a fire and forget mode or in a self-protection mode and do that very rapidly with very little conversation between the pilots so that they do not have to confuse themselves with a lot of chatter and give themselves away. They are able to do it from a high position so it will hold in a hover and hide and be able to acquire and target very rapidly.
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I had also the opportunity to take them in the Force 21 demonstrations and we have an alpha model and a delta model in the same engagements and the alpha model took almost four times as long to launch the Hellfires and was exposed almost five or six times as much as the delta model in that same environment.
Mr. EVERETT. Then I can assume you would support additional funds for the Apache Longbow upgrade.
General KERN. Sir, I would. I think the delta model is an extremely capable aircraft. However, you know we do have some parts on that which have not been replaced in an upgrade which I wish I had the money to do.
Mr. EVERETT. Finally, what would the role of the reserve component units that are not in the warfight, what would that role be and how would you modernize this force, particularly the Healys in that force?
General KERN. Sir, we are addressing that in the aviation modernization plan. Our goal is to get the entire United States Army active and reserve components into the same type aircraft. That helps us both with the training issues and it also helps us with the sustainment of those aircraft.
In particular, the aging Cobras, the AH–1s, are ones that we would like to eliminate as quickly as possible. Given the earlier discussion with the Chairman, we do not have enough money to get everybody into Apache delta models as quickly as we would like, but we do need those pilots, and so we are going to look at how we can do that in this aviation modernization plan to put everybody in the same aircraft fleet.
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I would add one other thing, though. In a lift side, the National Guard in their state requirements has a different requirement than we do in the active in our combat role and that is one that we have to come to grips with which has been probably the most challenging.
Mr. EVERETT. Well, I was pleased to hear that the Comanche is still the number one acquisition priority for the Army.
Mr. Chairman, I would have to agree with you. It has been said several times that the Army had half of what the other services were getting. It is not half. It is actually less than half. And I agree with the Chairman also. I think I would be pounding on the table.
Thank you very much.
General KERN. Sir, I will pound.
Mr. EVERETT. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend.
Mr. Taylor, you are up next.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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General Kern, if I may start with you. Congressman Bonior and I and others, members of the Guard and Reserve caucus, in that capacity we helped submit to the Chairman a wish list of procurement needs for the Guard and Reserve.
What I would ask you to do, if possible, is take a look at those units that will be called up in the next—from now for the next three years, anticipated call-ups for the Bosnia and Kosovo mission, if you could give us some recommendations on what those units will need in order to fulfill that mission.
General KERN. Sir, I will be glad to do that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. TAYLOR. I know the list goes out for at least two years and I think it might even go out a little bit farther than that. And, as you can guess, we are on a fairly short timeframe here. Again, we are also asking for their input, but I would certainly welcome yours.
General KERN. Roger. We will do that. We work, I think you know, with General Schultz and General Pleus very closely on that. We have funded over a billion dollars to the National Guard and Reserve components in this budget and I think we have held to our record where not only have projected in future years in the FYDP that we would fund it, but we are actually doing that, so if you went back and looked at what we said in 2000 we would do for 2001, we did that in this budget.
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Mr. TAYLOR. But, again, I am aware that some units will be going in the fairly near future, some are going in two years. Since it takes a while for this to make its way through the stream, if you could give us some guidance.
General KERN. We will do that.
Mr. TAYLOR. The second question I have is an industrial base question since not only are we responsible to the troops in the field but also a sustainable industrial base to support them.
Given the probability that there will be a Colombia aid package, given the probability that it should include about 30 Blackhawks, how does that request along with the high priority that the Army Reserve has placed on Blackhawk acquisitions in addition to the Army's request for Blackhawks, how does that put us in terms of a sustainable build rate at the manufacturer?
What I would hope as a nation we would try to avoid is a huge ramp up and then just fall off the cliff once we reach that point. I would rather see a sustainable build rate that serves everyone well and avoids the traditional roller coaster that we have had from many of our manufacturers.
General KERN. The sustainable rate right now, the minimum sustainable rate of Blackhawks is about 36 per year at Sikorsky. Our budget request is only for six this year, so I do not think we are going to strain them in the short term at all. We ramp up as we move out to the future and then as we go to the L plus. So the procurement request for the emergency operations, I believe we can accommodate in the industrial base at Sikorsky without causing them to have to refacilitize for further production, but we will look at that carefully.
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Mr. TAYLOR. A third question would be I noted that the Wolverine heavy assault bridge was one of the programs terminated, not because you wanted to, but because of lack of funds. I am aware of the work that is being done on composites for the medium brigade bridge. My question is, is it coincidental that one is being terminated? Does that mean there is a potential for the composite bridge in the future? Are they separate programs? There is no linkage? I would hate to think we are buying a whole lot of one only to have them replaced with the other, is what I am trying to get to.
General KERN. There is no linkage in the way our budget came out. As the secretary had stated, we very reluctantly terminated the Wolverine, both the bridge and the breaching mine field capability. The bridging in our necessity then to go back and look at our older Armor Vehicle-Launched Bridge (AVLB) will take some upgrades because they cannot sustain the current equipment, the Abrams A–2 in particular, that we have in the field today and we have to shorten the span, so we have to do improvements on the current bridging if we do not get the Wolverine Grizzly. But there was no correlation between that and we will have to look at future bridging requirements as part of that objective force design that Dr. Andrews referred to.
Mr. TAYLOR. Just for my information, how far out in the future would the Army consider something like a composite bridge?
General KERN. I would have to ask Dr. Andrews for a little help in that area.
Mr. TAYLOR. I know that you have done the testing on it.
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Secretary ANDREWS. I would have to take that for the record.
Mr. TAYLOR. Would you, please?
Secretary ANDREWS. Yes, I will.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. TAYLOR. Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General KERN. Mr. Chairman, could I add one comment?
Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely.
General KERN. And say thank you. You noted on the National Guard role, the 49th Armored Division took over the leadership role in Bosnia this week and General Shinseki was there at the assumption of command. That is the first time in 50 years that they have been on active duty. So we are truly thankful for the effort that they have done. That has been extremely helpful for the active force and we do need to look at how we make that equipping decision.
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, if I may?
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And, again, it is obviously for those units called up, it is going to be tough on the individuals, it is going to be tough on their families, it is going to be tough on their employers, and I would really hope that both the active and the reserve component would go out of their way to reward those units in some way, and obviously one of the ways would be with the best equipment coming down the line.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend.
Mr. Thornberry.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I just have to note if you have a tough job, you send some Texans to go do it and they are ready. I got to go with General Shinseki to the change of command, and they have high spirits and they are anxious to do that job.
Gentlemen, I strongly support what the chief is trying to do to change the Army and I certainly have admiration for his willingness to take on that job. And like a number of my colleagues, I have concerns that the Army is being forced to fund this internally. In addition to that, it does not look to me like that even the defense-wide entities are bellying up to the bar the way they ought to.
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Secretary Andrews, let me ask you, what is your personal view about the amount of money that DARPA has committed to this future combat vehicle? Was it what you were expecting or not?
Secretary ANDREWS. Thank you. We were expecting originally a higher value, about 500 million sort of investment with them along with our 500 million that we are investing with them in the collaboration program. We managed to negotiate about a 400 million investment from them total, so all together both of us contributed to this collaborative piece a little over $900 million. We would have liked to have seen more, did not get it.
Mr. THORNBERRY. How much is in the 2001?
Secretary ANDREWS. 2001 for both of us in this collaboration program, 44 million for us and 61 million from DARPA.
Mr. THORNBERRY. So they are starting out a little more on the first year.
Secretary ANDREWS. They start out on the high side.
Mr. THORNBERRY. But then it goes down.
One of the concerns that has been expressed is that after the exercises at Fort Knox that you all have reduced the standards that you have created for vehicles and there is a whole list of changes, less protection, less mobility, it does not have to defeat one sort of tank, it can defeat a lower level tank.
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Can you tell me what is happening? Did you get those 36 vehicles out there and decide that none of them could meet your original expectations?
Secretary HOEPER. Let me address that first, and I may get General Kern to help me with this.
I would say that first of all, remember that what we did at Fort Knox was essentially a market survey. As we go to buy this interim force, we are trying to get things that are off the shelf. Now, that means that we are going to get a chassis that is off the shelf and then we are going to take some equipment, some mission equipment, that we have in the Army, some sights, some Forward-Looking Infrared Radar (FLIRs), some guns, and integrate it onto those chassis. So there will be an integration piece that is not trivial. We cannot buy thus a system, a complete system, off the shelf. There will be an integration piece to it.
We took some systems down to Fort Knox and we looked at what the market offered in terms of what was out there. And probably nothing that showed up at Fort Knox would completely meet what we wanted.
I would not conclude from that that we reduced the standards. Our requirement setters have taken a real careful look at what the Army needs and how we will fight this force and they have come back to us with the requirements that will be needed.
Now, I know you have some specifics and some of this is actually still in flux now, it has not been completely nailed down.
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Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, there are a number of specifics and I do not know that it is worth going through all of them, but, General Kern, as you answer that, I would also like you to tell me whether or not the Army has considered having a tracked wheel brigade plus a tire brigade so that you can compare and experiment and see what the different characteristics are. I mean, getting back to the question, it is kind of like this all or nothing sort of deal, even on the interim brigades.
General KERN. Mr. Thornberry, I think the Army has done a very thoughtful and deliberate process, put itself through a process, to determine both the requirements and then what will go into the request for proposals to meet those requirements. The Training and Doctrine Command in their analysis center have run multiple scenarios to demonstrate to ourselves what is this organization that we need and that has driven the type of requirement.
It is an urgent requirement, however, and so we did the market survey to find out exactly what was available so that we did not ask for something that would take ten years of development to meet an urgent requirement that was going unfilled today. And so we have very deliberately set out to establish a request to meet those requirements as established by the analysis that the Training and Doctrine Command has done and established a request for proposal. And the draft which is out on the street today is very preliminary. We hope to get a second draft of that out to give industry a better idea of what we are going to do. I am optimistic it will be this week. That will give us, I think, again, a better idea of where we are headed.
To answer your other question on whether we have compared the two, yes, but because this is an urgent requirement, we do not intend to go into an experimentation phase. That is happening today with the loaned equipment to develop the organizations and operational requirements. And what we have not precluded, however, is that we could choose and it is going to be within the way we establish the competition a mixed fleet and so we will look for the best value to the government to meet those requirements which are set out and it could be a combination of wheels and tracks, it could be a pure fleet of one or the other and we do not know that yet until we get those proposals back after we submit our final request for proposals.
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Mr. THORNBERRY. Secretary Andrews, let me just ask you, as you look ahead towards the objective force, what are your all's plans as far as utilizing joint experimentation with the Joint Forces Command? Are you taking full advantage of the possibilities that could reside there, not just in sorting out what kind of vehicle you want, but how this is all going to work together?
Secretary ANDREWS. Yes, sir. As we begin to build the demonstrators for this program which will be in about the 2005, 2006 timeframe, we want to go out into the field with some of these experimental pieces and make sure that they play in a joint environment. We have not set up such an arrangement yet, but it is an obvious thing we will go do.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, you know, there is a fair amount of concern that you are putting the cart before the horse. You are trying to get the equipment there and not doing the organization and doctrinal stuff that really should come first and then you get the equipment to fit into that.
Secretary HOEPER. That is not what we are doing. The equipment actually does follow the operational and organizational concepts.
Now, there is, of course, a feedback loop there because naturally you have an organizational and operational concept and you field equipment through that concept and you will learn some new things and develop tactics, techniques and procedures in that phase, but particularly the part that Mike is working on—remember, this is a three phase program. We have the initial brigades that are developing the organizational and operational concepts right now. We have not even purchased the interim armored vehicle yet. That will be next and then the objective is further out potentially about 2012.
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Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, I would just like to encourage you all to think about how we might use joint experimentation to get us further down the road. And even if you could come up with some specific suggestions, I think they need to hear from you on we have this need and they need to be able to tailor their experiments to meet the real needs that you have, not just pie in the sky stuff.
Secretary ANDREWS. Sir, if I could comment briefly? If I could add to that just for a minute more.
Our first phase of the DARPA collaboration program is the design and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) phase and experiments and that will be from this year, 2000 through about 2002 before we get into the final designs. And that is parallel, then, with what goes on at Fort Lewis. When you asked earlier about the shortfall from DARPA, there is really—we wound up with a shortfall. It would have been to have more competition there in this 2000 and 2001 phase. And so because of the adjusted funds, we have had to limit the amount of competition there.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General KERN. Could I just make one comment?
We do work with the Joint Forces Command on Experimentation. We are participating in finishing up this week in an exercise at Fort Stuart, Georgia called ASIAT and that is a combat Infantry Division (ID) exercise and we are introducing into that some of our advanced technologies.
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Further, there is a joint contingency force warfighting experiment which will take place this summer which we are participating in and jointly with the Marine Corps, we will be looking at how we can use some of our new technologies in urban terrain which will also then flow into our ability to design those future forces and we will look at in or out mission planning which will allow us to do, again, rapid contingency planning and deployments. And we are working with Joint Forces Command both this summer and we will continue to push that.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much.
Mr. Snyder.
Mr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about communication with the other services.
First of all, Mr. Secretary, in your opening statement you say ''A bold and comprehensive new vision to transform the Army into a full effective force capable of dominating at every point on the spectrum of operations.''
With regard to your communication with the Marine Corps, is that saying that one aspect of your full spectrum capability would be that you would have the same capability as the Marine Corps? Are we going to transform part of the Army into looking like the Marine Corps? Or are we going to say there is one niche on that spectrum that we think is going to be occupied by the Marine Corps and we will not duplicate ourselves or transform ourselves into looking like the Marine Corps?
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Secretary HOEPER. Mr. Snyder, I think our goal is to be complementary to the Marine Corps and I talk with the commandant, General Jones, fairly frequently on this subject. The Army does not intend to replace the Marine Corps, but we do want to be complementary with the Marine Corps across that full spectrum of operations.
Now, we can not operate effectively everywhere in the spectrum right now. We need to do that. That is the urgent requirement.
Mr. SNYDER. I understand. I was just struck by your—maybe that is just a lofty goal there, but at some point I think that we are going to have to—I would think you would want to have something formally written down, this is what we see as the full spectrum of the Army in its transformed state will occupy and this particular niche here will be a Marine Corps function.
Secretary HOEPER. All the services contribute to winning wars, sir.
Mr. SNYDER. Right.
Secretary HOEPER. And we need them all.
Mr. SNYDER. With regard to communication with the Air Force, I was struck by—I guess to overstate one of your responses to Mr. Sisisky is if our looking ahead to the future, this whole transformation process is being determined by the square footage of a C–130 cargo bay—I think that is an overstatement, but it seems to me that this is partly an R&D Committee, as you know, here today. Are we doing enough R&D in this whole area in the Air Force budget with regard to strategic lift?
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I mean, basically, we still move things around the same way we have for decades now.
Secretary HOEPER. We are doing a lot of—we are actually doing a fair amount of thinking out into the future on the general area of strategic lift, both in the various science boards and in our S&T budgets in all the services. It is, as we look out into the future, something we are going to have to pay attention to.
We have a lot of C–130s. We know what we have now. If we have to respond now and in the foreseeable future, we need to be able to fit onto C–130s. That is why I am very encouraged by some of the things that Secretary Andrews is doing in science and technology to allow us to pack enormous capability into smaller and lighter packages and I am pretty confident that we will be able to do that.
Mr. SNYDER. I was thinking the other day, I think every Member of Congress is entitled to one off-the-wall comment every few months. Now, some of the membership here meet their quota quicker than others, but I was thinking about some of this stuff in terms of Star Trek, you know, in terms of people who look ahead at the future. And when we think about why do we think that is science fiction it is not because of how they knock things out of the sky, because basically they still shoot stuff and things explode, it is strategic lift. You know, it is how personnel and equipment is moved. I mean, that is what their transformation was. We spend a lot of time talking about the weapons system and I am not sure we spend as much time as we should about how we are going to move things around, given that the ability to forward to deploy stuff in the future is going to be much, much more restricted, at least that is the folks that look at threats out there.
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General KERN. If I could comment, I think that is exactly what we are doing and that is why we have looked at strategic mobility as a keystone of our ability to fight in the 21st century. And so we do not see that we can design another 70-ton or larger platform because it meets our requirements without taking into consideration those strategic deployment requirements.
At the same time, we know what aircraft are available today. We also work very closely with the space and aviation community, both government, NASA, as well as our producers in this country, the Lockheed Martins and the Boeings, at what they are considering for heavy lift. We are looking for many different types of strategic deployability and they have some very intriguing concepts that are going to be available in the future. So we are looking at that.
Mr. SNYDER. I mean, just going back to what we were saying, when you talk about our capabilities today, I think the R&D Subcommittee likes to pride itself on looking several decades ahead and I am not always sure if we are doing that. I do not know if we are talking about it enough with regard to our strategic lift capabilities of the future.
Thank you for your comments.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Snyder.
Mr. Kuykendall.
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Mr. KUYKENDALL. Some of this has been touched on briefly. Mr. Snyder hit one of my—the same comment hit me, at some point are these forces complementary, Marine and Army, once they reach the beach anyway, and I was concerned a little about that, too, and I was pleased to hear your comments.
I know at least from the Marine Corps' perspective, I do not think they want to run all over the land side of it, they would just as soon let you guys do that. But sometimes getting to shore might be their strong point.
One of the systems that has been terminated and I do not necessarily agree or disagree with its termination, is this Crusader artillery system. I think that is the name of it. Have I got that right? It is the big—
General KERN. It has been restructured, sir.
Secretary HOEPER. We have not terminated it.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Oh, it has not been terminated? Have you figured out how much the development for the aircraft to haul it is going to be?
Secretary HOEPER. Well, we have an aircraft developed that will haul it quite nicely. In fact, two of them. A Crusader will fit on a C–17 and we can get—
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Mr. KUYKENDALL. Self-contained, both pieces?
Secretary HOEPER. We can get both pieces or any two pieces on a C–5. We can get one piece on a C–17 and on a C–5, we can get any two pieces, either the resupply vehicle or the self-propelled howitzer.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. I guess the question I have then is what is Secretary Andrews or General Kern working on to come up with something that you can get a whole lot more of them on a lot less airplanes? Because that is just too heavy in the current environment. We are not going to build enough airplanes to haul that around.
Secretary HOEPER. The Crusader gives us enormous capability and there certainly is a place for the Crusader on the battlefield, but we also have a fairly near term program, a towed howitzer, called the Lightweight 155 Howitzer.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. And where is that coming along?
Secretary HOEPER. We are actually procuring with the Marines and that is a towed howitzer. It actually can be sling loaded under a helicopter, so it is fairly light.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. That is a very important program from the perspective that—I mean, I was a cannon cocker in my previous day and I must tell you, there are no weapons systems really to give a very potent punch right at the tactical line there in the tactical forces. With the lack of supporting arms from the water, if you are coming from the water, if you are coming from the water, or from overhead if you have bad weather, you need somebody that can deliver something and the Crusader is so big and so heavy and so—I mean, it has a logistics tail that reads like you need a train, you do not need somebody driving up new ammunition, you need a trainload coming behind it.
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And just some comments, the whole idea of this tactical artillery piece and how to make it lighter in this new force, that is an area that maybe General Kern could comment on as well.
Secretary HOEPER. Sure. We have another one called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) which is another approach to meeting the artillery mission. So we have a couple of things coming along which are lighter. As I say, the Crusader, I think, does have a place on the battlefield, it is deployable and it actually does cut the logistics footprint over what we are doing today.
Do you want to add to that, Paul?
General KERN. Yes. In the restructuring of the Crusader program, we are trying to take the best of what we did by reducing the cruise size, increasing the mobility and then decreasing that footprint as we redesign that for the future. We have also gone to the resupply vehicle which previously was just a track vehicle to also a wheeled variant which considerably cuts down on the weight and space claim so that we can get that transportability.
But I think even more importantly, we are going to take a very aggressive look at our whole fire support structure this year and what has emerged out of our interim brigade requirements is another focus on the necessity for a self-propelled 155-type howitzer, but that is probably not affordable within our current budgets. And so what we are going to do is take a look at how we can take the best of all the worlds, the lightweight 155 which we are jointly developing with the Marine Corps, the technologies of automation which we have developed with Crusader and see if we cannot come up with a better way to attack that requirement in a single development effort that uses the technologies. And so we are not ignoring it at all. We feel it is a very critical component of the future and we are going to find out what technology solutions may be available to converge some of those.
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There is a piece of it which is back in Secretary Andrews' area which is what we have referred to as the ultra lightweight 155 which has some real material challenges on how to get the structure for that because we are looking for things that can be both deployed by aircraft but also on the tactical battlefield we can look at sling loading with ammunition, with crews, to make sure that we bring together that fire support capability intact and do not piecemeal it into the battle.
Secretary ANDREWS. Maybe I could comment on that, sir?
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Could you, please?
Secretary ANDREWS. That is the—we have something called the super lightweight 155 and it is going to be on the order of about 5,000 pounds, and getting at the materials problem is a crucial part of this. The recoil is one of the key things. You have a very good recoil that will occur with this and so finding the right materials that will absorb all that impact is part of the solution set.
Also our future combat systems that we are designing today for that future force in about 2012, that will have an indirect fire mission with it and will get at that both with the possibility of the 105 round that can get extended range through some technologies with propulsion in the round, also with missiles that will go at this with a very long range and loiter capability. So those are also forward looking solutions to that problem.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Well, right now, it is clear we are in a very transitional period because we went through a long period of time with that cold war where we knew exactly you need so many of these kind of tubes and they are going to be driven some on tracks and some are going to be towed and then you are going to—and now we are in a period where we are about half missile and about half artillery and do not know what piece of artillery quite yet fits and is it too heavy, the Crusader, we have got to lighten up where we can fit enough of them.
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If you are ever the person on the ground, it is a tremendous answer to your help if you need it and it does not have to be with the weather or anything else, it is usually there. There is a gap between what a rifle company carries around with it or an infantry battalion carries around with it and what you can do when you can bring the world to bear with air support and all that, and that is the piece that is very, very critical to saving lives on the ground. And right now, it is not real clear that we are focused on how we are going to accomplish the next system. We are kind of clearly in transition, it looks like, and I was just interested in your comments on it.
Secretary HOEPER. We would like to keep talking with you about this, sir.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Kuykendall. Great questions.
Gentlemen, we have a couple of votes coming up here. We will try to wrap up and let you out of here.
As we were talking about this transition to the new faster, more lethal systems, which sounds great, because sometimes you need some weight to deliver lethality, but I was kind of reminded, I have a friend of mine, a constituent, here, Rocky Anderson, who is sitting behind you here in the hearing room and last year I had a problem with my septic tank and Rocky is an underground engineer and he has lots of big backhoes and tractors and things.
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And I called him and I said, ''Rocky, we have got to start digging, we have this terrible problem, my septic system is backed up and we have to get backhoes out here and we are going to lay another line.''
And Rocky had a profound recommendation.
He said, ''You know, before you do all that stuff, you may want to just get somebody who knows something about septic systems out to look at it.''
And I said, ''Well''—that is kind of a shocking answer from an old friend of mine—I said, ''Well, let's do that.''
And he brought a gentleman out who knows something about septic systems.
The guy looked at it and he said, ''You just need one piece of pipe about five feet long, it's all set.''
I said, ''That's it?''
He said, ''Yes, that's it.''
I said, ''How long will it take you?''
He said, ''Oh, 10, 20 minutes.''
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I was real happy to hear that answer. And I was reflecting on that as we were talking about going to these new systems. And I know you folks have been shopping around the world, you have looked at a lot of the folks that use wheeled vehicles, and I know you have got to get from point A to point B, you have to be able to get across bridges that are narrow, you have to be able to move fairly quickly and airlift.
One thought along the Rocky Anderson line was this. Why not go to one of our allies who has one of these brigades that is up and ask them to come in on a guest basis and integrate with one of our forces for a certain period of time and do a little monitoring and compare capability and ability to transport and down time because of repairs and integration of your soft bodies and your infantry and your vehicles and the fire power that is delivered and the chemical/biological protection that is afforded by the platforms?
I mean, we have a lot of allies who love to have us foot the big piece of the bill in these conflicts around the world, this would seem to be a nice time to call on them to send us an exchange student for a couple of months, i.e., a fast light brigade.
Have you done that?
General KERN. Yes, sir. We have.
Mr. HUNTER. Where at?
General KERN. We have put a request out to many of our allies and they have responded. The Canadians, as you know, I think are loaning us some vehicles.
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Mr. HUNTER. Well, I understand that.
General KERN. And the French have responded to us that they want to send part of a French brigade light, part of—in fact, one of their divisions that fought with us in the desert, to come this summer to Fort Lewis to join with the effort out there. And so we are working that coordination right now.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay So you are actually going to have a guest brigade come in, integrate with you, and work with you.
General KERN. It will not be a complete brigade, but it will be an organization which encompasses those components which you described.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. But do you think it is going to be enough to afford you a pretty good analytical test bed?
General KERN. Sir, I think if we can get all the pieces to work together that it will afford us that opportunity. We do not have this nailed down yet. They have responded to our request, and so we are going to see how we can do that.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Great.
Rocky, I want you to shake hands with this General when he leaves because he is on the right track here. Get somebody that has done it. Okay.
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You know, the Army submitted a $252 million shortfall for ammo as part of the Chief of Staff's unfunded requirements list. You folks are aware of that. And I have asked you for your updated total unfunded requirements for all munitions with or without substitutes for preferred munitions. I understand the total ammo shortfall for 2001 using preferred munitions has now grown to 14.6 billion from the fiscal year 2000 amount of 12.5 billion.
Is the fiscal year 2001 amount correct? How much of that figure is executable and when is the list going to be sent to the Committee?
General KERN. Sir, I will have to take that for the record to confirm those numbers for you, but we will provide that to you this week.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. The chart you did send to us said 14.6 billion. That seems to be a huge shortfall in preferred ammo.
General KERN. Sir, something does not sound quite right in the translation of what we provided, and as I am listening to it, because I know in the training munitions we are very close to meeting our full requirements and the preferred ammunition list, while we had shortages, I think that clearly is not just the 2001 piece, that is the entire funded delivery period which extends far into the future.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Yes. I know we looked at—we had a $13.5 billion overall shortfall, Army shortfall, that you sent to us last year when we were putting together ammo shortfalls across the services.
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General KERN. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Secretary, another issue. The Army aviation accident rate which is something I think requires immediate attention. We have been putting a lot of time in looking at this thing. Last year's rate, I understand, was the worst of the decade. We directed a study last year or in the 1998 bill that stated that a warning device called ground proximity warning system be studied and analyzed and the study that you did in response to our direction said, and I am paraphrasing it, that a GPWS, ground proximity warning system, could have prevented 51 fatalities in 57 accidents involving the loss of $200.8 million worth of aircraft.
Now, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force are using these GPWSs on their helicopters. Current estimates suggest that the Army choppers could be equipped for about 30 grand an aircraft.
Why are we not putting those things on these helicopters?
Secretary HOEPER. Mr. Chairman, at the present time, we do not have a requirement for them. I know that—and I do not want to beg the question here, but—
Mr. HUNTER. Well, you have a requirement every time a helicopter goes down.
Secretary HOEPER. We need a formal requirement—I need a formal requirement from the requirement side of the Army to buy them. But more to the point, what we want to do is to look across all of the ways we can improve safety in our aviation and put our money towards those things which would improve it most. I do not know, as I sit here right now, where ground proximity warning devices would fall in terms of that hierarchy. They may indeed be something we should be doing. As I sit here now, I do not know whether they are the most effective way of spending money to reduce accidents or whether they are further down the list.
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Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Secretary, I think we are losing—you know, I was looking at the list of crashes last year across the services. In a 12-month period, it was in excess of 55 aircraft. That was pretty close to being about—at least 75 percent of what we are buying. We are crashing almost as many aircraft as we are buying.
Now, it is pretty clear that you are not going to have the extra 10 to 15 billion dollars that a number of studies say you need to buy new aircraft. I think we are going to have to make the ones we have left last for a long time. I mean, that is the reality of this budget. I would think for two reasons, number one, you are short on pilots, it is tough to get people in right now, you know, so doing everything you can to keep these things in the air is pretty important, I think, and in terms of having the best safety equipment, so you have to do that.
Number two, you are going to have to keep your birds working because you are not going to get new ones. I would think that those factors compel you to get this system. And you have the highest crash rate you have had in a long time, so that factor is a requirement. You do not have to have some bean counter say ''I have decided that it is not good to fall out of the sky and therefore I am going to tell you that that is a requirement.'' You know that.
Secretary HOEPER. Mr. Chairman, I think we should put our available money towards those improvements which will give us the highest increase in safety. As I earlier stated, I do not know where that ground proximity warning fits in that hierarchy, but I agree with you—
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Mr. HUNTER. Well, but 57 accidents and 51 fatalities is pretty huge in peacetime operations, Mr. Secretary.
General KERN. Mr. Chairman, if I could, we have studied this and we will re-look at this again because we agree with you that any aircraft accident that we can avoid is the right thing to do.
The challenge that Army aviation has is flying at low altitudes at night in inherently hazardous conditions and there is a problem, a technical issue, that we need to address on false alarms versus real alarms, and so we want to make sure that we do not cause a negative training in the environment we ask our pilots to fly.
Mr. HUNTER. Have you been looking at that issue?
General KERN. Sir, we have been looking at that issue and I will promise you that we will re-look at it again.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. If you could. Okay.
Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. We may submit some questions to you for the record.
General KERN. Sir, could I make one last statement?
Mr. HUNTER. General Kern, sure. Please.
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General KERN. Sir, not to challenge the Chairman, but I am very proud of a unit that I had three tours with called the Victory Division.
Mr. HUNTER. The 24th Infantry Division.
General KERN. The 24th Infantry Division.
Mr. HUNTER. And I called it the 25th.
General KERN. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. I am sorry.
General KERN. And both General McCaffrey and I worked with that division in Desert Storm and wear that patch proudly. We are also very, very familiar with the history of the division in Korea and the lessons learned between where we were from 1949 to 1950. I use that every time I visit our students at our pre-command course as a lesson that we should not repeat. And so both the R&D piece of it, the training piece of it and where we are today versus where we were in 1949 are all lessons that we have learned well. So I appreciate your attention to it and I just want to give credit for the pain that was suffered to the right division.
Mr. HUNTER. Good. Well, General Kern, I think you have made my point, because my point is not that you had a bad division in the 24th Division. We called them, I think, out of Japan and got them up there and they tried to hold off the North Koreans at the Osan Pass and the fact that their bazookas were bouncing off these Russian-made tanks was not their fault, it was the fault of the people sitting in the chair where you are sitting right now who failed to deliver to our military the equipment that could take on the emerging Warsaw Pact weapons. And that was—in fact, as a matter of fact, if you look at Korea, there are a lot of similarities to today. You know, we went from having eight million people under arms in World War II to just throwing our weapons away in the demobilization that General Marshall called a rout in 1948. We had ten Army divisions in 1950, exactly the same number we have cut down to today. And we ended up with the military getting the bottom of the barrel in the funding process, which is what is happening right now, as you are aware. And we took some 50,000 KIA in Korea, a lot of them, I think, as a result of military unpreparedness.
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So I have never doubted the capability of our men and women who wear the uniform, but we own the best. That is why I would take issue with Secretary Hoeper who says we do not have a requirement. You have 57 crashes, 51 deaths, and nobody has sent up a requirement for a safety system that your own study says would have prevented those particular crashes. And I know there is an issue, but you know something, we have been looking at that issue for a long time. There has to be an answer to it, right?
We should be able to figure that one out. Either the Army is going to be able to use this or they are not and if they are able to use it, let us saddle it up. But I think one of our big problems, General Kern, has always been getting stuff to the field. I mean, that is an American problem. And General Custer proudly represented a bunch of great Americans at the Little Big Horn who were shooting single shot rifles and our adversaries had implemented and fielded lever action Henrys and Winchesters, that was the Sioux Indians, before we did. And they did it because I am sure we had a procurement system that said, well, we have not gone through the last test with those lever actions, so the armory back in Illinois is still working on it and when we got to the field, we did not have that fire power.
So getting this stuff fielded has always been a monster problem that we have. It is not your fault, I mean, it is across the board, but if you look at our missile defense systems, here we have all the king's horses and all the king's men and enormous funding, and THAAD has now had two successes and we are very proud for that, but the Israelis with what I refer to as three engineers and a pick-up truck are getting ready to field their theater missile defense system because they actually have to have one very quickly because they have a lot of people who may throw missiles at them very soon.
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And so maybe necessity is the mother of invention, but my judgment is that we have a big problem and it is that getting stuff to the field moves with the speed of bureaucracy, and we in Congress are largely responsible for that. We have lots of rules and regulations you have to jump through. And so you cannot just move from point A to point B very quickly. But I think we have to try, and that is why I would hope when you get this brigade from France in or somebody else, and you may want to take somebody from another nation that is a strong ally and move them into another place and let us stack up some data and some field exercises and do some shopping with the real thing and see if this transition is going to move.
Thank you for reminding me it was the 24th Infantry Division, not the 25th, and that they were great people.
General KERN. They were great people, it was a great division. You are right on all your accounts of what happened to them. I think you and I with that sign in front of us that says it is your mission and mine to equip our forces to make sure we do not send soldiers back into harm's way again with the wrong equipment—
Mr. HUNTER. Yes. Well, let us work on it this year. It is going to be a tough year and we do not have much money again, as usual.
Yes, sir?
Secretary HOEPER. Mr. Chairman, if I could be permitted a closing comment, coming back to your very first question and the earlier discussion about the Army getting 16 percent of the procurement funds for the Department of Defense, I probably cannot say whether the Army is getting a fair share or the right share of the procurement budget because I do not know the needs of the other services, but let me tell you what I do know. I do know that the Army has carried the larger share in 32 of 34 deployments that you mentioned and I do know that our Army today is the best Army in the world, the most powerful Army in the world, and only the eighth largest Army in the world. And that leads me to conclude that we have not approached the point of diminishing returns in investing in our Army.
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Mr. HUNTER. Well, Secretary Hoeper, nobody is going to dispute you when you say we have great men and women, we have the best Army in the world, but you have a bunch of platforms that are aging, and as the guy who used to be the boss of the Pentagon, Jim Schlesinger, said, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to look at these platforms and say this tank has a life that is X years and if you in Congress are not replacing these things, you are building up an enormous bow wave, you are going to get to the point where you have a lot of systems that are now too old and you have in excess of $100 billion a year price tags just for modernization and you are going to have massive competition in 2010, 2020 with Social Security and lots of other social expenditures for that money, and he said—and I am paraphrasing him—he said it is going to be a disaster.
So us just taking a snapshot and saying we are the best—you know, I read all the testimony in 1950 from the Administration. Only Omar Bradley was honest. He said we cannot fight and win a major war. The other guys all talked glowingly about being leaner, meaner, tougher, rougher, and when we ended up having this third-rate military push us down the Korean peninsula, we realized that we had neglected the military.
By all accounts, your modernization is vastly underfunded. It is vastly underfunded. You should be pounding the table with your guys saying I need money, I do not care if you go with the new light system or you replace the old systems or you have a combination thereof. You cannot have a system that has a life of 30 years and have no plan to replace it. And that is what we have right now. We have no plan to replace most of these systems or even budget for it. So we are going to—you do not want to have young men and women in uniform who are out there wearing nothing but price. They have to have the best equipment. We are not supplying them the best equipment, we are not supplying it to them in a timely way.
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Secretary HOEPER. Mr. Chairman, I greatly fear that you misinterpreted my comment. What I said was we are carrying a heavy load, we are the best despite being only the eighth largest, and what that leads me to conclude is that the American people would get a tremendous return from additional dollars put into the Army.
Mr. HUNTER. Oh, I agree with that.
Secretary HOEPER. We have not reached anywhere near a point of diminishing returns in terms of investing in the Army. And that is the point I was trying to make with you.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. That is a good point. I will help you carry that point if you will bang on the table inside the building and try to get more money.
Gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. We have massive challenges, but let us work together and try to solve them.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:22 p.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
March 9, 2000
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[The Appendix is pending.]