SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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??–???
2001
[H.A.S.C. No. 107–3]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002—H.R. 2586
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
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MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS
ON
TITLE I—PROCUREMENT
HEARING HELD
MARCH 28, 2001
MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
FLOYD D. SPENCE, South Carolina, Chairman
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
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MARK STEVEN KIRK, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
NORMAN SISISKY, Virginia
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
LANE EVANS, Illinois
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
THOMAS H. 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 A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
Steve Thompson, Professional Staff Member
J.J. Gertler, Professional Staff Member
Jesse Tolleson, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2001
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HEARING:
Wednesday, March 28, 2001, Fiscal Year 2002 National Defense Authorization Act—Transformation Impact on Equipment Modernization
APPENDIX:
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2001
FISCAL YEAR 2002 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—TRANSFORMATION IMPACT ON EQUIPMENT MODERNIZATION
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Evans, Hon. Lane, a Representative from Illinois, Military Procurement Subcommittee
Spence, Hon. Floyd D., a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman, Military Procurement Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Bond, Maj. Gen. William L., Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Programs for Force Development, U.S. Army
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Deputla, Brig. Gen. David A., Director, Air Force Quadrennial Defense Review Division, U.S. Air Force
Magnus, Maj. Gen. Robert, Assistant Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies, and Operations, U.S. Marine Corps
Schneiter, Dr. George R., Director, Strategic and Tactical Systems, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Sestak, Rear Adm. Joseph A., Director, Navy Quadrennial Defense Review Division, U.S. Navy
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Bond, Maj. Gen. William L.
Deputla, Brig. Gen. David A.
Magnus, Maj. Gen. Robert
Schneiter, Dr. George R.
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Sestak, Rear Adm. Joseph A.
Spence, Hon. Floyd D.
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 2002 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—TRANSFORMATION IMPACT ON EQUIPMENT MODERNIZATION
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Procurement Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 28, 2001.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:10 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Floyd D. Spence (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD D. SPENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
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Mr. SPENCE. The committee will please be in order.
First, let me welcome the new members on the subcommittee, if I can find who is here today. Mrs. Davis is here, I think, from Virginia, Mrs. Jo Ann Davis. And then we have Mr. Simmons here from Connecticut. And Mr. Kirk is not here, and Mrs. Wilson is not here, and they are the other new members. Anyway, I look forward to working with each of you during the 107th Congress.
This afternoon, we will hear testimony from Department of Defense (DOD) witnesses on the services' plans to transform themselves to 21st century operations across the spectrum of warfare and the impact of these plans on equipment modernization programs. As I wrote to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld earlier this month, I believe it is important for the subcommittee to have an understanding of the current plans, even though they may change dramatically following this review or the ongoing assessment of DOD strategy, force structure, capabilities and procurement priorities that was directed by the President.
In view of this assessment, I realize, number one, any comments the witnesses may make today about various programs and their current plan should be taken with the caveat, at least, that they are subject to being overtaken by events later on, as most of you already know. And, number two, Fiscal Year 2002 and out-year funding levels for any program will be determined only after the assessment is complete.
According to press reports from the White House, the President's plan for transforming the Armed Forces states that, ''While some existing weapons will need to be modernized, the larger goal will be to skip a generation of technology, replacing existing systems with the new technologies.'' Although I certainly agree that maintaining U.S. leadership at the forefront of the information-age warfare era will require the exploitation of technology, I believe that canceling production of current generation systems in favor of leap-ahead ones should be taken only after considering two things: number one, the viability of the defense industrial base is very important, obviously; number two, the reduced opportunities for interoperability of United States equipment with that of our allies should systems be terminated which have strong foreign military sale potential.
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As all of you only too well know, some of our allies are already buying into systems that we are planning to produce, a good many of them, as a matter of fact, in one instance, and this would have a great impact on them if we terminated some systems or curtailed it too much.
Fortunately, Secretary Rumsfeld, the other day, addressed my concerns when, in reference to a question from the media, he responded that you have to look at the impact on your friends and allies and you have to look at the impact on the industrial base. So, at least, I am somewhat comforted by those remarks relative to the two things I have just mentioned.
I note that, for several years now, the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon—I am sure you are familiar with that group or person or whoever it is; I am not exactly sure myself right now—has been engaged in identifying new concepts of operation and organizational changes that, in combination with the new technologies, should provide order-of-magnitude increases in the services' ability to achieve desired outcomes in a conflict.
This effort is advertised as the revolution in military affairs, frequently referred to simply as RMA. Andrew Marshall, as most of you have heard of, if you have not met him, the individual leading Secretary Rumsfeld's defense strategy review, is the head of Net Assessment and the foremost opponent of RMA. I was just trying to decide if Andrew Marshall fit any way into RMA, but I guess it does somewhere.
''RMA is achieved by the combined impact of a long-range precision strike to hold an adversary at a distance and blind and immobilize him''—this is a quote from somewhere defining these things—''information warfare to deny an adversary critical knowledge of his own as well as U.S. and coalition forces, dominating maneuver to deploy the right force at the right time, and the exploitation of space assets to enable force projection at dramatically increased speed.''
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I also note that, last week, two prominent members of the congressionally created Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, former Senator Gary Hart and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, testified before the committee that the commission concluded that future United States forces will need, ''sustainable military capabilities characterized by stealth, speed, range, unprecedented accuracy, lethality, strategic mobility and superior intelligence,'' unquote. Although the commission's conclusions identified attributes similar to those advocated by RMA required to transform the United States military, there was no road map provided for achieving them.
It is these kinds of things, that I might add parenthetically right here and now, that worries me a great deal about all of these leap-ahead and skip-generation things and all of those kinds of things, because, as I told them on this commission, when they said that during the next century, homeland USA will be vulnerable to attack and we can look forward to losing large numbers of people in the homeland and I told them I agreed with that, but they should amend it to say that we are vulnerable right now, yesterday, today and tomorrow, not the next century.
I was trying to make the point that these next-generation threats are also today's threats, and we are trying to work now and in the future to solve the problem of meeting our threats today that exist today, and that is what worries me. We do not have the solution to that problem yet, so it is past time that we work on it.
To help the subcommittee put the RMA and the attributes needed by our future combat forces in context with transformation, our witnesses today are here to discuss their service's vision of the future. Additionally, our witnesses from the Office of the Secretary of Defense will discuss joint transformational efforts, such as a Single Integrated Air Picture, a multi service effort to share information in real time gathered by platforms and sensors across service lines in order to produce a consistent battle space picture for our air, sea and ground forces.
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The Army will discuss how it proposes to evolve from a force consisting of light and heavy combat divisions to a force which has the mobility and deployability of current light units but with the lethality and survivability of current heavy units.
The Navy will discuss its transformation in force posture from a platform-centric force to network centric, one characterized by its distributed firepower and how this network force will be improved with added lethality and stealth.
The Air Force will discuss its focus on achieving the capabilities required for its expeditionary aerospace forces to be effective from long ranges into anti-access environments.
The Marine Corps, like its Navy teammate, will discuss its transformation plans in terms of changes to force posture, not force structure. The Corps has no plans to reinvent the Marine air-ground task force. Its transformation will be achieved by replacing old and obsolete equipment with current-generation systems.
We are pleased to welcome all of our witnesses this afternoon for what should prove to be an interesting hearing. They are: Dr. George Schneiter, director, Strategic and Tactical Systems, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics—that is a whole mouthful—and welcome, Dr. Schneiter; Major General William L. Bond, assistant deputy chief of staff for force deployment, deputy chief of staff, operations and plans, Headquarters, United States Army; and Major General Robert Magnus, assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps; Rear Admiral Joseph A. Sestak, who I understand is an expectant father coming along, and we are all pulling for him, director of Navy Quadrennial Defense Review, Headquarters, United States Navy.
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We thank each of you for being present.
We did skip Major General Select—congratulations to you, too, General—David A. Deptula, director, Air Force Quadrennial Defense Review, Headquarters, United States Air Force.
I am very much interested in the Quadrennial Defense Review that the two of you are involved in—some others, too, I am sure—because that is going to be very interesting to see how that comes along and squares with this new net assessment thing that we have coming along, too.
I am sure, first of all, that most of you are aware that our ranking Democrat on the committee, Congressman Norm Sisisky, had surgery last week, and that is why he is not here today and we had to call on the next ranking man, Mr. Lane Evans, to fill in for him.
I understand that Norm is out of the hospital, and he is resting comfortably at home and hopes to be back with us soon. I know I speak for everyone on the subcommittee when I say that we wish him a speedy recovery.
In Mr. Sisisky's absence, I would like to call on Mr. Lane Evans for any remarks he would like to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Spence can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
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STATEMENT OF HON. LANE EVANS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ILLINOIS, MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join you in welcoming our witnesses today.
It used to be that we heard about national security matters only when America's military was in harm's way. Now, though, with widespread deployments, downsizing, base closures and the massive economic impact of changes in the military on its contractors, defense is in the national news just about every day.
Much of the attention comes as a result of budgetary pressures placed on the services. Other stories focus on the range of missions for our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen that they perform every day. Today's hearing touches on both topics.
The need to transform America's military comes from both fiscal and operational realities. With the end of the Cold War, this country faces a range of new challenges, and those require different tools than what we currently possess. In acquiring the right tools, it would let America achieve its goals with less risk to personnel and, in some cases, fewer personnel.
While the up-front cost of new technologies and systems is high, it can save money and, importantly, lives in the long run. But transformation is not just about systems. As with revitalizing a business, much of the gain can be found in the reforming process itself, making organizations more efficient and moving information faster.
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I should note that our witnesses today appear at somewhat of a disadvantage since their services have not been able to unveil all their plans for the future. Once the 2002 budget arrives, however, Mr. Chairman, we will be able to enjoy it in fuller detail, but now, I think we should hear from our witnesses on where we are and the road that lies ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, Mr. Evans.
Gentlemen, your complete remarks will be, without objection, submitted for the record, and you can proceed as you would like, beginning with Dr. Schneiter, followed by the service witnesses, from my left, General Bond, and to the right, General Magnus.
Doctor.
STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE R. SCHNEITER, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL SYSTEMS, OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ACQUISITION, TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS
Dr. SCHNEITER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My colleagues and I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today on the subject of military transformation and the impact on the Department's equipment modernization programs.
As you indicated in your letter of invitation to the Secretary, the Department is conducting a number of reviews which will set the course of this Administration's defense program. These are examining what changes we need to make in light of the ever-changing situation and challenges that we face.
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The Secretary of Defense has identified the need, and I quote, ''to transform our national defense posture from its current form to one that will address the challenges of 21st-century security,'' end quote. Obviously, this may require changes, not only in strategy and in objectives, but ultimately, what equipment we choose to develop, to procure and to deploy.
This may include more rapid development and deployment of capabilities to defend against missiles, against terrorism and threats against our space and information systems. Only after we go through this review process can we decide on a large scale which weapon systems should be modernized, which replaced, which retired and which new ones should be acquired.
Both the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary have indicated some of the characteristics our future force must have. The Deputy Secretary said it must at once be more agile, more lethal, and more rapidly deployable. It must be able to operate over increasingly longer ranges. It must integrate the capabilities of all the services, so that the field commanders have the best possible combination of air, sea and land weapons for each situation, and it must have the best technology that America can offer.
What I would like to do is to observe a few of the steps that have been taken recently that I think moves us in the directions that they indicated.
One example: Last fall, the department approved the initiation of the Interim Armored Vehicle program for the U.S. Army. This procures a family of vehicles to equip an interim brigade combat team that is capable of deployment quickly, anywhere in the world, in a combat-ready configuration.
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A second example is the Global Hawk high-altitude endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, (UAV). As you pointed out in your remarks, Mr. Chairman, the importance of information, particularly on enemy forces.
Over the past years, we have seen great benefits in operations by modern aerial reconnaissance, the Joint Stars program, which is a manned system, and unmanned ones, such as Predator. Global Hawk, which has considerable payload and very high altitude, has demonstrated great potential itself in a Joint Forces Command military utility assessment.
And on the basis of good results from that assessment, earlier this month, the department approved the Global Hawk system entry into engineering and manufacturing development and low-rate initial production, (LRIP). We are currently examining possibilities for even accelerating that program further, buying systems faster, putting better sensors on it sooner.
A third example is the Joint Direct Attack Munition, the JDAM. This is a gravity bomb. It has a relatively low-cost guidance and control system, and it uses global positioning system, GPS, guidance to achieve high accuracy. This was demonstrated to great effect in Kosovo, not only the great accuracy of the JDAM guided bombs, but also the ability to minimize collateral damage to areas we do not want to damage, which is increasingly important in today's war-fighting situations.
Only last week, the Department approved full rate production of the JDAM, Joint Direct Attack Munition, system, so that system is now in full-rate production.
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A final example has to do with jointness. Ensuring our services can fight together well as a team, we and the joint staff, together, have taken steps to require that interoperability, the ability to function well with other systems, with other services, with our allies, is now included among the requirements for every weapon system that we develop. So when we examine a system, to see if it is ready to go into production, for example, we look to make sure that it has satisfied this key performance parameter of interoperability.
Another step toward interoperability has been to establish some organizations and assign tasks to promote interoperability in certain mission areas. One such area is air and missile defense. The Department recently established an organization called the Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization, JTAMDO, for short, and they develop operational architectures that the services can use so they can better work together to defend against ballistic and cruise missile threats. This is the high-level architecture they work on.
We also need to make sure that the nitty-gritty of the systems work together, and to do this, we have established a system engineer for what we call the Single Integrated Air Picture, to make sure the different services' systems will work together, exchange information properly, so that all of the participants in air and missile defense see the same picture in terms of what the threat systems are.
Sir, these are just a few examples of the kinds of things that we are doing. We will consider many other new concepts and systems as the defense reviews continue, and we will be prepared to discuss these matters further as the review process continues later in the spring.
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Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Schneiter can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you.
General Bond.
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM L. BOND, DIRECTOR, FORCE DEVELOPMENT ON TRANSFORMATION AND THE IMPACT ON MODERNIZATION, U.S. ARMY
General BOND. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to appear before you today along with the representatives from the Department of Defense and my fellow services. I am prepared to discuss with you the current Army plans for future modernization and how we see this as the primary means of supporting Army transformation, which is currently well under way.
We are aware of the ongoing defense strategy review being conducted at the discretion and the direction of the present Secretary of Defense, and the Army leadership was briefed last week on the progress to date. We are confident that the current modernization strategy of the Army in support of transformation is the correct path for the future, and we believe we can make any needed adjustments within the framework of that strategy.
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Let me begin by thanking the subcommittee as well as the House Armed Services Committee as a whole for your past support of the Army and its soldiers. As you well know, the primary goal of our Army is to function as a part of a joint team of services, providing capabilities that will permit the U.S. Armed Forces to maintain and preserve a full-spectrum military dominance in all likely scenarios for the future.
As a part of that team, the Army, along with the Marine Corps, provides the world's pre-eminent land forces, particularly the associated capabilities and the operational concept area of dominant maneuver, to support our regional commanders in chief, (CINCs), in their missions and to fight and decisively win our nation's wars.
Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like to rise and walk you through a couple of charts.
This talks about the balance in which we in the Army are now accounted for. Providing legacy force, that force which we have here today will be with us for the next 26 years. The admiral's young daughter or son, if they should choose to join the Army, would be fighting and using those systems that we have here today, when they grow and come into the Army. We have to find a way in which to maintain that force.
As you well know here in the Procurement Subcommittee, procurement has always been the bill-payer for the readiness trust fund. Consequently, we are going to need to balance that with readiness today, so we do not have to raid future procurement dollars to support that readiness.
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The same capability, we talk about in an interim force: What do we do today to provide more capability for the light force that we need to provide in cases like Bosnia and Kosovo, to be able to get there faster, with more capability and survivability?
The Interim Armored Vehicle, the intermediate combat brigade teams, (IBCT) that we are building, provide that force the CINCs have so identified and will provide that interregnum before we get to what our object is, where we are waiting the main effort today, the objective force of the future.
Today, about 96 percent of our Scientific & Technology, (S&T) dollars are focused on that objective force and providing that capability for the future, that leap-ahead capability that will go into their search and development procurement to provide that capability in the future.
As we talked about that capability that we provide for the objective force, we need to remember that same ability to improve lethality, survivability, mobility, agility is applicable, if we should need to, apply it to our legacy forces, to provide some upgrades to that capability if we need to in the future.
As we have done this, we have had to balance these capabilities. We are trying now to find a way in which to field brigade combat capabilities instead of doing systems individually to provide combat capabilities, those enablers which allow us to do this.
What you see here is the procurement highs and lows for the last 30-some years. We reached the high of the peak of about $35 billion and gone down to the lows of about $13 billion. Those kind of ups and downs make it very difficult for us to maintain and support procurement objectives.
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Our last, though, capability is, we reap the peace dividend of $100 billion which we feel the Army has provided and has put us down into what we call now is a readiness shortfall for which we have skipped a procurement generation and now is requiring us to support those legacy systems in the readiness field because we have not been able to procure new ones.
And we have taken that shortfall and now are applying that in selected measures to provide that leap-ahead capability so that we can go to the next generation.
But as depicted on the chart, about $21.5 billion is what has been the average of those years across the board. We cannot continue to be able to go down to those low levels and then to have those peaks. We need to get up to a sustained level, so that we can provide that procurement stability that our industry and our combat and our soldiers need today.
And one thing that we have learned is that we are going to have to provide more dollars to support the same kinds of capabilities. Our systems in the future will cost more than they do today. We are going to have to shorten that cycle between the two, so we are going to provide that capability quicker and be able to adapt faster.
The Army has already made some hard choices. We have killed seven systems and selectively extended two systems, to reap about $16 billion in the capital that we could use to apply to the S&T and Research & Development (R&D) communities in the future. That has not been easy, and we have had to balance that with what we feel is modernization for the future but being able to take advantage of what we call the strategic pause that we have today and that application where we can actually go forward.
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This, I think, is one of the areas in which I think you have been able to reward us, because we have been making the capability ourselves and trying to help ourselves, and so you have been able to provide additional funds in which to accelerate some of our R&D procurements.
We have to work this thing through modernization, balancing near-term readiness and far-term revolution and capabilities. We have to make sure that we have that capability today and have that overmatch capability that we will need in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, so our soldiers will be able to have that eminent capability to overmatch over our enemies.
We have to balance that also with being able to take the next leap, so that we can make that leap ahead. We have to balance it between the three vectors, as we have talked about that, between the objective, the interim and where we are today with that legacy force.
We also have to make sure that we balance it with those enablers. We have to make sure that we are able to apply digitization, that capability that the industry provides through information technology, that we need to leverage together in which we can synergize and net our forces to provide significant combat capability.
We have to balance it. It does not pay for me to spend $200 million on a tank battalion if, in fact, I will only get $50 million of combat capability. I need to find a way to maximize that. What am I talking about? I spend $200 million for a tank battalion, but I do not have sustainment to make it fully mission capable. I do not have the training that allows those crews to function as a combat team, function fully. I do not have the ranges in which to utilize it. I do not have the ammunition in which to shoot it. That is where we have to balance that.
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Maybe it is better for me to spend $250 million on that capability so I get $200 million worth of combat capability. That is, versus talking about individual systems, we are talking about combat capability as a whole. We have to work it against the DTLOMS—doctrine, training, leader development, organization, material and soldiers—to make sure they are balanced. It does not do us to have a system but we do not have a doctrine in which to develop those tactics, techniques and procedures that we need to be able to fight them.
And of course, resource priorities of this nation add us, internally, we have to work better. We talk about our shortfalls we have in training ranges. We talk about shortfalls in supporting our installations in housing and places like that. We need to be able to work that.
Our goal is to achieve maximum combat effectiveness with our dollars and not necessarily how many tanks we buy or how many Bradleys we buy or how many missiles we buy.
We also want to work with these keys to winning decisively on the battlefield. These are just representatives. These are not at all supposed to encompass all of the systems that are in each one of these different vectors.
But we talk about objective: Comanche, revolutionize the way we fight. Not only is this a significant difference in the way that we gather intelligence and are able to fight and bring the fight to the enemy, but this is moving that intelligence gathering system from being in the rear, up to the cockpit of that aircraft. And they will do the integration and functioning of synergizing intelligence and providing that back, a real decentralized capability.
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The Future Combat System, what is that going to be like? We know it is going to be as survivable and lethal as today's heavy system, if not more so, but without the weight, less than 20 tons, giving us significant capability in which to be able to deploy.
And it goes farther than that. It is the reducing of the logistics footprint. Today, when we put a force into battle, 20 percent is combat, 80 percent is support. So, every day, we are able to find ways to reduce that law of footprint and that law of support, that is the capability that the Air Force has been able reap to provide more capability for our scope.
The Army Battle Command and Control System is on there. That is the information operation capability. That is the information technology that is out there today, it is available. Leveraging off of that is provided from the commercial marketplace to net our fires and be able to provide that sensor-to-shooter capability that we need to be able to put weapons on target at the desired time and place.
The interim systems, that capability to fill that void that we have today out there, the legacy force, Crusader, that dominant force of precision fires that we need to bring up and support our legacy force in the future, as we go forward.
And, of course, recapitalization. That is two pieces: When you talk about recapitalization, we are talking about both modernization, we provide selective upgrades, providing more combat capability to some of our legacy systems; and then recap them, where we take some of our systems and bring them back to zero hours and zero miles in which we can then start our half-life metric again on them.
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The key point we talk about in here with information superiority, the real power of command and control, communications and computers, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, linking our Air Force brethren, our space assets, our Navy, along with our forces down here, providing shooter-sensor commonality, that ability to provide sensors from the Air Force to shooters on the ground and vice versa, it works both ways. That netted capability to provide and link those five are what we are going to be able to do in the future to provide dominant overmatch for enemies that should come forward.
And it really is the capability of today providing information technology.
Mr. SPENCE. General, we have to break right here and go vote, because you have a few more minutes on your presentation. So we will break and vote and come right back.
[Recess.]
Mr. SPENCE. The committee will please be in order.
General, you can proceed as you like.
General BOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As I was saying, what we are trying to do is to really leverage off of what the information technology age is now allowing us to do by integrating and linking and netting, not only the information, but the fires and linking those two capabilities, the sensors with the shooters, using the good command and control capability the information technology is applying to it.
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We are then evolving that from information technology and information superiority, knowing not only where we are and where the enemy is, but moving that into knowledge management, to knowing not only where the enemy is, but where he is going to go, so that we can get inside of his decision cycle, so that we can, not only see first, but we can know first, anticipation, and then we can act first and, consequently, act decisively and shorten significantly any kind of engagement and in probability, preclude any kind of engagement such as that sort, working those with our Joint Service Predator.
The bottom line: The Army has made some hard choices. We have generated $16 billion internally to try to jump-start this capability to move ahead with technology. We are working very hard to try to balance that strategy, not only among the three vectors that we talk about in there, but providing the capability with science and technology along with modernization of those legacy forces that we have out there that we are going to have for the next 20 to 30 years.
We are also looking across that capability to fielding combat capability versus individual systems, systems of systems with fight capability, so that we can maximize our dollars that we spend on combat power and combat effectiveness. We cannot afford to skip another procurement generation. We are already feeling the pains of that skipped generation now in our readiness accounts. So, consequently, we need to look at that very succinctly.
And, of course, leveraging the C4ISR interoperability across all the joint services, linking those Air Force, space and Navy assets, along with our Army and Marine assets, to provide the maximum capability for the defense of this country.
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Mr. Chairman and committee members, I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Bond can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, General.
Rear Admiral Sestak.
STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. JOSEPH A. SESTAK, DIRECTOR, NAVY QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW DIVISION, U.S. NAVY
Admiral SESTAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee. It has been interesting over the past few months, as we have led up to a review or quadrennial defense review, I often got asked the question, ''Is the Navy properly sized and shaped for the two MTW?'' and/or ''Is it properly sized and shaped for some different construct, for instance, the smaller-scale contingencies?''
And, Mr. Chairman, I always thought those questions were good questions for DOD as a whole, but less relevant for the U.S. Navy. The reason for that, sir, is we have always been sized, we have been shaped to provide this nation something forward. I mean, that was where your child was born, over there in the 6th Fleet while you were deployed forward.
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You have also watched, however, since you have been here in the committee, the transformation and the change in this Navy since the time you were in the service. Back then, the Navy had to first gain control of the seas and, on a secondary, a sequential basis, finally close the shores in war and have 15 ships that could strike land—aircraft carriers.
Today, we command those seas. We have 144 ships that strike up to 1,000 nautical miles inland. We have a Navy for the first time in the history of the world that struck a land-locked country, Afghanistan, and it did it on two continents simultaneously, Asia and Africa, out of that same battle group distributed 1,700 nautical miles. And soon, you will have a Navy that for the first time in the history of the world projects, not just offense ashore, but, with theater missile defense, defense ashore.
So, Mr. Chairman, what I would like to walk through today, quickly, is what this nation gets when it invests in the Navy, a Navy that is forward-deployed. I would like to talk about four returns on the nation's investment of our being forward.
First, the value to this nation to command the seas, that great global commons from which we project power and influence but we also secure our economic prosperity and peace.
Second, the twofer this nation accrues by then having a Navy forward-deployed in peace so that in crisis it has, in theater, a timely and often the initial response tool.
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Third, and what is different for our Navy today and in the future, that when crisis goes to war, instead of going back to the high seas, now remain in littorals to provide access, immediate, sustained, to the battle space. And if we are successful in that, we believe we are a critical enabler of the transformation of the Joint Force.
Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, those four points. Everyone knows that we are a maritime nation. Our interests are overseas, economically, politically, militarily.
You have probably seen this slide. 1997, our e-linked satellites around the world recorded all the electronic emissions. The areas in green, Mr. Chairman, are the areas of the heaviest concentration. It is where we went with the U.S. Marine Corps, in 1827, the western Pacific, 1879, the Persian Gulf, in 1807, the Mediterranean. It is where you were, and where I go.
Look at the global trade routes around the world. They tend to go through, except for around South Africa, those three hubs overseas. Those are the major fiber optic telecommunication cables of the world. Note that their termini tend to be in or their cables go through those three vital hubs.
What has interested me, Mr. Chairman, are these 16 blue dots. Those are the 16 super ports of the world, the only ports in the world in which the mega-container ships go. Two are in the United States. The rest are overseas.
The New Yorker wrote a great article on this in December, when it spoke about globalization, a world coming closer together economically, and it said the conveyor belt of the world is the container ship industry. By 2020, 80 percent of all trade in the world will be on a container at sea. In short, it said that the ship at sea is now the world's inventory.
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The point of this first part is to say we often take for granted that stability of the global commons. It is the dog that does not bark. But it is probably worth some amount of this nation's treasure to have a Navy forward-deployed, that only the Navy can secure that stability. But it is the twofer that this nation then accrues by having a Navy already forward to do that, and that is an in-theater speed of response, immediately employable without asking any host nation.
In 24 hours, 48 hours, 96 hours, we can respond within those vital arcs, with an extended reach over 1,000 nautical miles. In fact, we have done so 144 times for this nation this past decade.
There to respond, Mr. Chairman, gives this nation the potential—if it is not a cardboard ship with a flag, but combat-credible war-fighting force forward—the power to shape. Every day of the year, one-third of this nation's Navy is forward-deployed. That is one-third of our two-MTW force is already overseas.
One example of what that can do in a crisis, or to be used during peace: Last summer, we were in the Persian Gulf, as we have been every day for the last two years, the George Washington battle group. Responding with bombs on target, every battle group of the last two years has been in combat operations.
We were asked to leave the Persian Gulf to go to another area of responsibility, U.S. Atlantic Command (LANTCOM), to visit South Africa, a nation that had been disenfranchised for a number of decades, as a diplomatic port visit, a show of support. It was canceled at the last moment because of a decision by the CINC not to have absent from that theater unrestricted tactical air power.
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One month later, however, that carrier battle group went to a third AOR, area of responsibility, to U.S. European Command (EUCOM). It was in the Adriatic, because this nation wanted the unrestricted use of this at-sea power, because of our concern that Milosevic may pull another Kosovo operation into Montenegro. There to respond gives the power to shape.
But what is different in your Navy, and what has become our transformation, is that in the old days, we could reach Mr. Gadhafi in Libya, but then we would go back to the high seas for the war. No longer, Mr. Chairman. If we program correctly, stay in the littorals for war, we help enable our sister services to get there more rapidly, more quickly.
Let me quickly walk you through a scenario in 2009, a decade from now, when we are concerned that there will be some area denial, anti-access challenges. We are in the Persian Gulf anyway, securing those sea lanes for economic prosperity. We are there, dropping bombs if we need them in a crisis.
We are there. What our nation likes to do for war, it likes away games. It wants the wars over there. We play every day in those away stadiums. We learn the playing field. More than that, we get to know the opponent.
We watch these centers of gravity, and we know, day in and day out, that we are building the tacit knowledge base that will become the foundation of the knowledge grid for our joint forces as they come forward to plug and play. We cannot win the war without the Air Force, without the Army. Any war will be joint.
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Our role, being forward, is to be immediately employable to permit them to be rapidly deployable as they go to Aerospace Expeditionary Forces (AEFs) and brigade combat teams.
I will often say Navy, sir, but please bear in mind that we in the Navy are like a coat without buttons without the Marines. They are with us at all times.
But think, there we are, day in, day out, in the Persian Gulf, immediately projecting, if needed, defense ashore. It is there in peacetime to reassure. It is there in wartime to work, not for the Navy, but for our sister services, as we bring in our early arriving AEFs and brigade combat teams. We need their overwhelming power forward.
But we also use those same vessels to strike offensively from the moment the war begins, because we can, in the future, secure the seas, even in the littorals.
Look underneath the seas where many of those threats may arise. We are building some new Virginia-class submarines. But more than that, Mr. Chairman, look at the sensors that we are distributing on the ground underneath the sea, those hydrophones there, miniature hydrophones that we lay on the sea, and with near certainty, we detect diesel and nuclear submarines, little sonobuoys going up to the satellites, coming down, telling the submarine 50, 100 nautical miles away, ''No, wait a moment, tell the ship with a helicopter 50 miles away to drop a torpedo on it.''
More than that, look at the miniature submarines that we are deploying from our class of submarine, the Virginia. Out the torpedo tube, in the future, high-chip sonars, every day, to do what we do above the water, learn the battle space.
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We have been there. We know there are refrigerators on those bottoms of the ocean. We find them in peace, so when war occurs, we just look for what business does, change management, did something drop, and that Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV), this decade, will neutralize that mine.
Then we step back and remember that, as you watch us procure things, they are to impact events ashore, where we can and have been, this decade, impacting directly and decisively. Artillery from the sea to put our naval brethren ashore quickly, swiftly, not 50, but 200 nautical miles inland. And as they get established—if it is my sister or my son that does go in the Army—to put them quickly ashore underneath theater missile defense.
In short, Mr. Chairman, the transformation for the Navy, strategically, is to be inland, to project power ashore and remain there, not for us. We keep the door open to get our sister services in the door and then help ransack the rooms inside the house.
That is their goals, to get there rapidly. If we can project the artillery, the power projection, defensively and offensively, to lighten what they need to bring forward, because we are already there, where you were, where I am, where my son or daughter may be, we enable the transformation of a joint force.
So, Mr. Chairman, it is not just force structure. It is force posture. It was, for us, sea control, then power projection; no more. Look inside our boxes out there at sea and what connects them: 60 percent of the ships that we have underway today or that are on the way to being built will be with us in 2020.
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So what we have done is the following: We have distributed sensors. We have taken the Aegis radar, Spy I radar off of our surface combatants, miniaturized it, and stuck it on the F–18 E and F, all of them.
Then what we have done is we have linked them, and then we put smaller weapons, six of them now, on that platform, and the result is this: Desert Storm, we could strike, in 24 hours, 160-plus aim points. Today, that same carrier, survivable because of cooperative engagement capability, which deploys for the first time with a battle group next February, with near certainty, can take any cruise missile, and the underwater warfare I showed you gives us sea control for this output: In 2008, a seven-fold magnitude from a box that has been totally transformed and is survivable forward.
Think what that can do already forward in those critical opening days of a war. That is transformation.
So you step back and say, ''That is capability, but do numbers matter?'' Yes, they do. We used to have 15 carriers and 14 amphibious ready groups. We could put the Marines and the Navy all year long in all three of those areas where we went first time back in the 1800s. No longer.
And so what happened, not by us, but by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that back when we slipped from 15 down to 12, he created the Global Naval Force Presence Policy. And every year, the customer, the person who demands us, comes into a conference and distributes who gets how many days in each Area of Responsibility (AOR).
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We already are apportioning risk. When we went from 197 surface combatants to 127, because everybody wanted those Tomahawks. They then stuck those platforms into Global Naval Force Presence Policy. We are at 116 today, and soon those platforms will project defense ashore, also something that we need to come to grips with.
And so, in summary, sir, what this nation needs to look at, as it always has, is the first two items. We secure economic prosperity—the dog that does not bark every day, 99 percent of the volume of all trade, 80 percent of the value of all trade goes across the seas.
We are also forward to provide sovereign power, when you need us, not asking anyone's permission. The last two are different for us. We can assure access now to the battle space immediately ashore, projection of defense and offense, by maintaining sea control, and that enables our sister services to come forward.
President Bush said it best when he said, it is linking information and weapons in new ways. The Navy will now project power over sea and land to assure access for the Joint Force.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Sestak can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
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Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, Admiral.
Brigadier General Deptula.
STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. DAVID A. DEPTULA, DIRECTOR, AIR FORCE DEFENSE REVIEW, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. AIR FORCE
General DEPTULA. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, good afternoon, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today on the critical issue of transformation. In the interest of time, I will keep my comments brief so we can get on with your questions, but, with your permission, I offer the committee a more complete written version for the record.
The Air Force approach to transformation starts with the notion that we cannot achieve meaningful transformation without integrating our expanding capabilities with those of the other services and other elements of national power. The Air Force's modernization program is driven by an understanding that the Air Force forces operate as part of a joint interagency and coalition team.
The Air Force is committed to joint warfare, committed to giving joint warriors the modern aerospace power advantage. And we make our contribution to the joint effort through our core competencies: beginning with aerospace superiority, providing for the Joint Force the freedom from attack to enable the Joint Force freedom to attack; information superiority, to provide the Joint Force decision dominance; global attack, to hold any adversary at risk anywhere on the planet; precision engagement, to deliver desired effects with minimal risk and collateral damage; rapid global mobility, to responsively position forces anywhere in the world; and agile combat support, to sustain efficient combat operations.
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Each of these is designed to enhance the capability of the Joint Force. Now, to grow this capability, we need to continue our transformation journey.
In the Air Force, we define transformation as fundamental change involving three elements: One, advanced technologies that because of the new capability they yield enable, two, innovative and new concepts of operation that produce order-of-magnitude increases and desired military effects, and then, three, organizational change that codifies these changes or enhances our ability to execute our nation's security strategy.
During the Gulf War, for example, we capitalized on the new technology of stealth in conjunction with the maturing precision of weapons to enable a new concept of operations that allowed the simultaneous application of force across the breadth and depth of an entire theater.
After the Gulf War, the Air Force accomplished a major organizational transformation. We merged Tactical Air Command and Strategic Air Command into Air Combat Command, and we formed our Mobility Command. The underlying idea was to eliminate stovepipes and organize functionally, recognizing there is no such thing as a strategic or a tactical aircraft, but rather it is how aircraft or weapon systems are used that will determine whether the effects they accomplish are strategic or tactical.
So there you have the three elements of the definition of transformation accomplished. And then as we moved into the mid-1990s, the national security strategy of containment shifted to one of global engagement. We transformed our organization once again, moving our garrison-based force to an expeditionary aerospace force, building 10 separate and fully deployable aerospace expeditionary forces.
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As our chief of staff has said, transformation for the Air Force is not a destination, it is a journey. The transformation of our aerospace force of the future seeks persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, watching every area of interest around the world all the time. Space-based radar is the kind of system that may allow us to do that.
Air Force programs will also prove critical to enabling missile defense with systems like space-based infrared system. We will seek to achieve a near real-time global force application capability, with systems like space-based laser, combat aerospace vehicle, and space maneuver vehicles.
But it is not just systems that will enable these effects. Computer network defense and computer network attack in cyberspace will contribute at the speed of light. We aim to achieve dynamic battle space control, integrating and fusing information to rapidly pass targeting quality data direct to joint employment systems.
Our transformation is about creating a system of systems that will allow force application minutes from a decision to engage. Leaps in means of force application, like directed energy systems, will be incorporated in vehicles like the airborne laser. Directed energy systems hold the promise of enormous leaps in capability as well as the potential to entirely change the conduct of warfare as we know it.
The F–22 is another system critical to the transformation of, not just the Air Force, but the entire U.S. military. In anti-access environments, like those depicted on that chart, a growing threat to our traditional means of projecting force, the F–22 will be the lynchpin of a new joint operational concept known as global reconnaissance strike.
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The Air Force component contribution of this joint concept, the Global Strike Task Force, is designed to negate the anti-access threats that are posed against each of our service components. The F–22 will operate in conjunction with the B–2 and other service component contributions, such as cruise missiles and theater ballistic missile defense, to enable entry for the rest of the Joint Force.
When theater access is achieved, the F–22 and B–2, along with the Joint Strike Fighter, can operate with great precision and survivability in the modern air defense environment, an environment where non-stealthy aircraft simply cannot go.
Next-generation stealth, super cruise, integrated and networked avionics, reach back through space are all capabilities that no other nation in the world possesses. These capabilities are the United States' asymmetric advantage and are key to retaining our position as the world's sole superpower.
Our aim is to make possible joint global network-centric warfare, not just operating in small groups and affecting small locales, but operating across the entire globe routinely. This is the transformation that the Air Force is conducting, developing leap-ahead capabilities that are already skipping a generation, developing new concepts of operation that fully exploit those capabilities and stepping forward to implement sweeping organizational changes to best execute them.
The Air Force transformation is designed to produce the effects of mass without having to mass as we have in the past. President Bush recently said, ''The best way to keep the peace is to redefine war on our terms,'' unquote. Air Force transformation is aimed to do just that.
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What does it all mean for this subcommittee? I would offer, sir, that it is extremely important to adopt a capability-based approach when making procurement decisions. Cost per unit is often used as a measure of merit in making procurement decisions. I would suggest that perhaps a more accurate measure of merit that captures real value or capability of a particular system is cost per target engaged, or better yet, cost per effect desired. In this fashion, one is led to consider all the elements required to achieve a specific effect.
Mr. Chairman, it has been my honor to appear before you here today, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Deptula can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you very much.
General.
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. ROBERT MAGNUS, ASSISTANT DEPUTY COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS FOR PLANS, POLICIES, AND OPERATIONS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
General MAGNUS. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, I want to thank you for this opportunity to appear and testify on Marine Corps transformation on behalf of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Jones, and, most importantly, on behalf of the 212,000 members of our active and reserve total force, on behalf of our sailors and on behalf of the families that support them.
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Just as the committee has supported us and this subcommittee has supported us, as well as my other fine members of the military services over the years, marines are heartened by the news of the recovery of Congressman Sisisky. We provide for the welfare of the nation, and you provide for our welfare, and it has been a mutual wonderful relationship for 225 years.
I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for accepting my written testimony for the record, so that we could move into your questions. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to stand and provide you a brief visual and oral depiction of what the Marine Corps transformation is.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As you can see from the screen, the Marine Corps regards transformation as an evolutionary process. We have been in the business of making sure that Marines survive to win the nation's battles for 225 years. We are in the business of succeeding and not failing, so we have to think ahead over the next hill to ensure that.
As you can see in the foreground, you see the marines. The marines are the Corps, and the Corps is the marines. If anything, we are a marine-centric organization, not a platform-or system-centric organization, although the equipment and technology that America provides its marines is critical to their success in battle.
Barely visible in the background, in the upper left, is some of the technology the marines are still operating, and that is a CH–46 helicopter that the fathers or uncles of those young marines in the foreground probably flew, and the lieutenants and sergeants are maintaining and flying to this day. We provide the nation a full-spectrum force in readiness, and that is what we do today, and we intend to remain ready and relevant for the future.
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The strategic environment that many talk about today is an environment of uncertainty and sometimes chaos. America has grown over its 225 years to a nation that has global interests, global responsibilities.
America also is facing new enemies, in many ways not different from old enemies, but having new capabilities through the globalization of commerce. But if you realize that there are tens of thousands of foreign students in America's higher institutions of learning, learning math, learning science, learning engineering, and many thousands of those are going home, and they are taking that technical and scientific knowledge with them, we will soon see a technological diffusion where they can develop the stuff that they buy from us at home.
So it is a very challenging and uncertain environment in the future, but it is not an unfamiliar environment. Once you leave home port in the United States or in Japan for 225 years, it is always been an uncertain environment.
The Marine Corps and our Navy shipmates provide naval expeditionary forces and readiness, and you will see the rheostat symbol there at the lower center of that chart. We provide scalable forces, from a few dozen marines to 100,000 marines, depending upon what the national command authorities and our joint force commanders require. Whatever the mission requires, however deep the port is, however many spots are on the airfield, whatever is necessary, we will provide.
You can see some real-world pictures there of marines in action in the last few years, depicting our full-spectrum capabilities of our combined arms teams. In the lower left, you see marines that are doing humanitarian assistance operations in the Balkans, and in the upper portion of the screen, marines doing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance in West Africa, and peace support operations in the center part of the screen.
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A few years ago, we did a non-combatant evacuation from the platforms that the Navy provides us at sea in Albania, and there you will see one of those old CH–46 helicopters bringing Americans to safety and freedom. And in the lower right, you see marines operating in support of Operation Southern Watch, that aircraft operating with the expeditionary air force from a base in Kuwait, as well as operating from carriers at sea.
So you can see the full spectrum. Whether it is feeding starving children and women or killing bad boys and breaking their toys, that is the full-spectrum Marine Corps.
We have a vision of the future. We will remain the nation's premiere total force in readiness, ready to answer the call today, tomorrow and in the future, at home and abroad.
We will provide, with our Navy shipmates, continuous foreign presence that the Nation and the Nation's joint force commanders need, and we will provide scalable, interoperable, combined arms teams that we call Marine Air Ground Task Forces to those joint force commanders. We have strategic agility, and we plan to improve that in the future, and we have the operational reach and the tactical flexibility to be useful tools for the joint force commanders.
The Marine Corps has an integrated combined arms team which we call our Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTFs). That is provided to us in the structure that the Congress gave us, and we have innovated within that template that we call the MAGTF the structure that the Congress has provided in law. We exist to serve the needs and the mission needs for the joint task force commanders as directed by the national command authorities.
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The template that I talked about, that integrated combined arms team that we call the Marine Air Ground Task Force, the MAGTF, has four common elements that deploy overseas, regardless of the size of that scalable template. There is a command element, a ground combat element, an aviation combat element including rotary wing and Tactical Air (TACAIR), and a combat service support element. In fact, the Marine Corps has on active duty one-third of the combat service support in the active armed forces.
We are the joint force commanders' Leatherman tool. One call does not get it all, but one call gets the tool that is useful in multiple situations across that spectrum of conflict.
As you can see here from this depiction, the largest Marine force is the Marine Expeditionary Force, (MEF) in which we have three. As our major war-fighting force, it goes to war with 60 days of sustainment. It is the cradle to oversee, train and produce the smaller scale Marine Air Ground Task Force that are contained within each MEF.
We have revitalized our Marine Expeditionary Brigades, which can go on operational missions overseas either on the Navy's amphibious shipping or in the over 1,000 sorties worth of gear that are contained in each maritime pre-position force squadron that are in three strategic locations around the world. The Marine Expeditionary Brigades are the intermediate organization. They are our centerpiece organization for the kinds of conflicts we see in the future, but our routinely deployed forward presence in crisis response, MAGTF, are the Marine Expeditionary Units with their special operations capabilities.
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And, as you can see, each one of these organizations has to be, along with our Navy shipmates, capable of enabling, through command and control and through combat service support, a follow-on larger joint task force, or be capable of being the centerpiece and lead that joint task force should the unified commander so direct. We are mission oriented, we are task organized, and we are scalable across that spectrum.
As you can see, those three Marine Expeditionary Forces that I talked about are depicted on this global map. Each one of our Marine Expeditionary Force commanders serves more than one unified commander in chief. In fact, the Marine Corps, if it goes to major war, has a one major theater war capability, simply because that is the capability we built into the structure that the Congress has given us.
One MEF in California, two MEFs in the Carolinas, and three MEFs in Japan are already designated joint task force commanders by their respective CINCs. We globally source the needs of the CINCs, and we are regionally responsive.
We see innovation in a broad context, and it is a continuing process for your Marine Corps. It is not just technology and equipment, although, of course, that is a principal item of focus for the subcommittee, but to be able to properly understand and utilize that, it has to be in the context of our innovation and our experimentation.
As we innovate and experiment through our war-fighting labs and advanced concept technology demonstrators, our advanced war-fighting experiments and with our Navy shipmates in the fleet battle experiments, those ideas tell us how to better use the legacy equipment that we always have, will always have, legacy equipment and as we introduce new leap-ahead technology systems into our force, how we can influence the design and the utilization of that new technology.
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Likewise, the experimentation gives us failures and gives us successes, and with those successes, we influence the way we think about our operational concepts and our doctrine about the art of war. And, as you can see, we have developed a new capstone war-fighting doctrine called the Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare Concept. We are also working on our integrated logistics support, as well as sea-based logistic concepts.
But innovative thinking also is business. It is business reforms in our depots. It is business reform in the process of supply chain management, so we can more efficiently utilize the precious resources that the Congress and the American people give us.
But, most importantly, it is the marines. It is transformation of the individual marines, as General Krulak did with the transformation of our recruit training of America's finest young men and women. It is the taking of those transformed marines through a process called the crucible and then infusing them as cohesive elements into our battalions and squadrons so the team is greater than the sum of its parts.
And it is taking those teams and those organizations that we call MAGTFs and working and innovating on the model of the MAGTF, putting in a different kind of fire team, a different kind of battalion structure, a different kind of squadron structure so that we can continue to improve on our art of war.
An example of this is our new martial arts program. The commandant of the Marine Corps has instituted a martial arts program for our young officers and enlisted, and through their careers, they will aspire and grow toward black belts, so that every time an adversary faces a marine or a unit of marines, he faces a potential group of black belts. This has a great influence on their minds, in terms of shock and awe. It has a tremendous influence on the marines, in terms of self-discipline and in terms of the way they think agilely about not only combat, but about how they do everyday life.
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Our actions to advance in the future has three major goals. We will continue to make America's marines who win the nation's battles. We will optimize the readiness of the operating forces that are forward, and we will capitalize on innovation, experimentation and technology.
We see our Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare Concept as our contribution to national security. It has organizational, deployment and employment concepts, and it emphasizes the Marine Corps' 225 years of expeditionary know-how and our basic maritime character.
We are transformational by design. You can see here a picture of a marine wearing today's utility uniform. They have served us well, but not the future. The future for us is, at the end of a year-long process of talking to over 40,000 of our marines, we have designed with their help the new digitally camouflage utility uniform, and that is going to not only wear better, but it is going to protect them better against the visuals and optics and sensors of the future. This is the Marines uniform designed by the marines.
We have also taken the Marines rifle, the current M–16A2 rifle. It is often said that quality of life to a marine is a good rifle. We are improving upon a good rifle, and we are taking M–4 rifles, which are basically the M–16 system with a more robust barrel, a telescoping stock, and a modular sight system, so that marines who get in and out of tight spaces like helicopters and assault fighting vehicles and buildings have a weapon that is suitable for the missions that they are called upon.
We are also improving upon our tactical mobility triad. An example here is the nearly 20-year-old assault amphibian AAV7, which we are currently literally nursing along on the backs of our marines into the future, and the future is what I will call the all-terrain fighting vehicle, or AAAV. This is a vehicle that, at sea, goes at the same speed as a DDG–51 destroyer and, ashore, will move at the same velocity as an M1A1 tank, seamless speed and maneuver ashore, the same kind of transformation of the Marine Corps that Admiral Sestak talked about of our Navy.
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Transforming fires has been a big thing for marines, because we do not want to mass marines and use them to attract the enemy. We want to be able to maneuver and use precision fires.
We are transforming our old Howitzer, the M198 howitzer, to a new generation of fires. With the Army, we are procuring a lightweight 155 howitzer and taking the Army's MLRS rocket system, taking the rockets and the rocket launcher system, putting in our new lightweight chassis. We have the high mobility artillery rocket system, which will give us long-range and precision fires to support those units as they maneuver.
We are going to change our entire TAC air force and finally get to the program that the Congress has demanded of us over so many years, not only a single type model series aircraft to replace all of the Marine aircraft, but a single type model series aircraft that will serve the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines, truly interoperable, truly jointly and logistically supportable; more than just a joint program, however, a program which the United Kingdom now relies on, with an over $2 billion commitment for 300 aircraft to support the Royal Navy with the Joint Strike Fighter.
And I know you have probably followed in the press the literally awesome performance of the concept demonstrators that have been manufactured by Lockheed-Martin and Boeing with those powerful Pratt engines. We have taken Vertical Short Take-off and Landing (VSTOL), and with the knowledge and beauty of American technology, we are delivering some powerful demonstrations out there in the desert.
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We are also transforming another part of our tactical mobility force, which are medium assault lift force. Those CH–53D helicopters and those CH–46s I showed you before, while they were around during the Vietnam War, they are fine examples of 1960s technology, and they belong in American museums right now.
Upon the conclusion of the rigorous inquiries that are ongoing right now about the MV–22 program, we are looking forward to the decision on the part of this Administration to proceed with development of the MV–22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, a truly transformational capability in terms of its strategic self-deployment capability and its tremendous reach to be able to go 200 miles from ship to objective.
I told you before, we have an innovative tradition that spans 225 years. Our forces are always ready, and they are scalable across the spectrum of operations to meet the needs of the national command authorities and the joint force commanders.
Beginning back in the Revolutionary War, when marines were images of sharp shooters in the rigging of wooden ships, they also went ashore with the Navy, spiking the guns of the British in Bermuda, and with John Paul Jones on raids into England. We were America's first expeditionary force.
At the end of our first century as a country, we moved into the 19th century, and the marines went as brigades with the Army into the fields of France, and we were in major theater war for the first time. General John Lejeune was the commander of the Army's 2nd Division, which had Marine brigades attached, and we learned major war.
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We took the tools of that war, such as the light aircraft that were there, and when we went into the jungles of Nicaragua, we pioneered close air support. We are still the executive agent for close air support for the Department of Defense. That is the flying artillery that supports our battalions as they maneuver to engage the enemy.
In the Pacific campaign during the 1920s and 1930s, when the country had very little money, we did a lot of thinking and innovation. The sailors and marines came up with the concepts that led to the technology and the procedures that gave us the highly successful campaigns of the Pacific in World War II. And in World War II, the country discovered the infant helicopter technology. So by the time we were faced with the Korean War, in 1951, Marines pioneered, again with the movement of battalions by helicopters, two marines at a time, but the concept was there, the innovation was there.
And in Vietnam, we innovated with our organizational concepts, putting the combined action platoons out there in the hamlets and the villages, so that young marine Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and company-grade officers could stand alongside Vietnamese regional and popular forces to give them the professional skills and the presence of America's greatest treasure, its young men, in those villages to steel them against the communist threat.
In Desert Storm, we took the technology developed by the British in the Harrier, and we put it into places where there were not any bases—Lonesome Dove—on the large deck amphibious ships at sea, to take that technology we developed in Nicaragua and make sure that it was responsive as the flying artillery for those battalions as they punched through the line into Kuwait.
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And today, we continue innovation. After the terrible incident in the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikio, General Krulak pioneered with the development of our chemical-biological instant response force, which is in the capital region today, providing a capability for planning, for training of local civil emergency forces, as well as a capability to respond should there be a chemical or biological incident, particularly in our large urban areas.
The Commandant is the executive agent for the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Program, an example of which is seen there, which is our vehicle-mounted area denial system, which is looking forward to a decision on the part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to proceed into human factors testing.
But the future is a constant evolution of the thinking of marines: Joint Strike Fighters, all-terrain fighting vehicles like the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV), a new generation of amphibious ships, LPD–17s and the LHD–8 transition ship, a new generation of maritime pre-position force ships, tiltrotor aircraft that can get us to self-deploy from the United States to the Middle East in three days and be in operation, and, of course, the transformation of that irreplaceable precious American resource, the young American men and women who make the Marines that are the Corps.
We are transformational by design. We remain and will remain the nation's premiere force in readiness, and with the Congress's continuing support, we will be the right force for the next fight.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.
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[The prepared statement of General Magnus can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you very much, all of you. I commend you for your presentations and, as we say at home, you done good.
I was just sitting here thinking, as all of you were going through your parts of it, and we are talking about transformation and skipped generations and the future and all those kinds of things, before I get to the questions I want to ask, I have to repeat, I am worried, too, about right now. Readiness, right now, is what worries me, because—perhaps, then, what I wanted to ask you about, all the next-generation type things, we were talking this morning about the strike fighter and the F-22 and those kinds of things, and how far we have to go before they are actually deployed and get to the force.
The way I look at it, we will probably fight two wars before then if we go by history in the past. So I have to worry about what we are going to do in the meantime. We cannot just let all the things we have now go.
But in that connection, I wanted to ask each of you if you might tell me of examples each one of you have about weapon systems that are being developed by your service which, in your judgment, have already skipped a generation of technology. Is the F–22 a good example, General Deptula?
General DEPTULA. Yes, sir. I think F–22 is a premiere example of a weapon system that has already skipped a generation.
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When you take a look at the characteristics and capabilities that are all distilled into one platform, advanced stealth technology, the ability to fly sustainable supersonic speeds without using afterburners, the advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system, the integration of integrated avionics on board the platform basically give this aircraft the ability to synthesize what previously was required of many different aircraft.
The F–22 will be able to conduct the missions of aerospace dominance in conjunction with precision of engagement, in conjunction with destruction of enemy air defenses, all as one platform.
Why is that important? Well, it is important because that enables and gives to the Joint Force an ability to counter some of the growing anti-access threats that are a concern to all of the services. And these are capabilities resident on this single platform that no other nation in the world possesses. That is the definition of what asymmetric advantage is all about, and those are the kinds of capabilities and that is the kind of systems that we need to invest in to assure that the United States remains the world's sole superpower.
In terms of skipping a generation, that is a view in terms of capability. If you take a look at some of the systems that are out there that the F–22 will replace or recapitalize, to be quite frank, Mr. Chairman, the Air Force is operating a geriatric fighter force.
The first flight of the F–15C was in 1972. Next year, that will be 30 years. By the time the F–22 goes to initial operational capability, that will be over 35 years.
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So we have already skipped a generation, I believe. The definition of generation is 20 years. And if you take a look at the kind of threats that exist out there in the world today—I do not know if you have seen the video that has been floating around of the Russians' new Su–35, but it is a pretty spectacular piece of film, with thrust vectoring nozzles and control canards. This airplane can do things that none of our current generation of aircraft can do.
Well, that is the generation that we skipped. We had a test vehicle that McDonnell Douglas put together back in the mid-1990s that could do those same things, but we elected to skip that generation of technology to develop and incorporate the kinds of systems and capabilities that are resident in the F–22.
Mr. SPENCE. What about the Joint Strike Fighter?
General DEPTULA. The Joint Strike Fighter, again, while designed for a different purpose, to provide that persistent force over the battlefield, will operate in conjunction with the F–22 to provide a synergy for our joint forces that simply is not possible with any other kind of system under consideration today.
Mr. SPENCE. Sounds like the Marines are talking about it and the Navy, too. They will be using the same aircraft, as well as some of our allies overseas.
General Bond, what about the Army? So you have some systems there you are thinking about that have already skipped a generation that you are looking at?
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General BOND. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Specifically, the Comanche, we would say, would be a skipped generation, a significant increase in capability. The ability to process that information and fuse it forward and to be that quarterback, that we think is going to be an objective force, to be able to leverage that computer sensor capability forward and provide.
Today, every single time that we have to process information that goes through a node we are talking a minimum of five minutes per human interaction in making decisions. Linking that forward, we can significantly reduce the number of those nodes and bring that decision forward to that cockpit and have only one person to have to make a decision whether to shoot or not to shoot and be able to provide that capability.
It is the ability to link with other systems that are out there, especially the tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), with other uniformed services here, specifically the F–22 and those capabilities, to be the eyes and the ears for that force and provide that lethal capability that we think is forward.
So, from our perspective, we think that the Comanche is our force that we have been able to now demonstrate and will be that technology leap forward. It is going to be the quarterback of our objective force.
Mr. SPENCE. And, Admiral, what about the Navy? Of course, we did not talk about systems—
Admiral SESTAK. Yes, sir.
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Mr. SPENCE.—the new destroyer and all those kinds of things.
Admiral SESTAK. Yes, sir. I could pick a couple, but if it is all right, I will talk DD–21, beginning from how we have asked industry to go about it, letting cost be an independent variable and having them come back to us.
Second, the design. A brand new ship design, acoustically, magnetically and radar signatures upwards of 1/64 of what the other signatures are out there today: electric ship, integrated power source, just plug in a cord; do away with that entire shaft that has to turn the propeller and the reduction gears; volume creation, to then put more payload inside; AGS guns, 100 nautical miles to get the Marine brethren ashore and support the Army as they come forward as artillery from the sea; but more than that, the Land Attack Standard Missile (LASM) and the Advanced Land Attack Missile (ALAM) out to 200 nautical miles; one-third the number of people who are on a ship today and UAVs, two of them, to be on this ship.
Your other question with Joint Strike Fighter (JSF); a good point was made by the general here when he talked about the most advanced threats, double digit SAMs, being able to take them. That is what we do with the F–18 E and F today. Your concern, what can we do today?
We consciously built it on a triad, a little bit of stealth, better than the C/D, to bring the signature down, some jamming from one other aircraft, and then a Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) weapon to stand off and destroy that worst threat. Two aircraft is all it takes, two pretty inexpensive aircraft. And then the JSF, it naturally comes on and gives, as General Deptula stated, that sustainability to bring it in naturally at 12.
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So those are how we are addressing the future, as well as the present.
Mr. SPENCE. That is what I was talking about, and, General, I guess you can talk about the Osprey again, too, and those kinds of things.
General MAGNUS. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
One point I would like to make at the very beginning, though, is that you are right, sir. We cannot wait for the future, because the future will come to us if we are waiting for some transformational capability at a point in time.
The Marine Corps' primary focus has been, is today and will always be readiness and responsiveness of the force. Our transformation process has to smoothly integrate leap-ahead technologies into the Marine Corps because we only have one Marine Corps. We do not have two or three Marine Corps to wait until the future, and that force has to be ready to go whenever the joint force commanders require.
I am pleased to inform you—and the commandant, I believe, has spoken to this previously—that within the fiscal year 2001 future years defense plan, we see a convergence already of the capabilities of the 21st-century Marine Corps.
The planning for our first Joint Strike Fighter procurement was inside of that future years defense plan. So we see a convergence of those capabilities already, but we will be ready throughout that period.
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I will give you some brief examples. We have two wonderful joint programs. First, the Joint Strike Fighter, as I spoke to you during my visual testimony there, Mr. Chairman and members, the Joint Strike Fighter is truly leap-ahead technology, but, more importantly, as you said, we actually skipped a generation because, through some tremendous discussion within the Department of the Navy, we have chosen to skip the E/F, and we could take that risk, whereas our brethren in the Navy needed to have those capable platforms filling out their carrier decks.
So, where the Navy will come on with Joint Strike Fighter later, the Marines have taken the risk, and the risk is showing up in the attrition of our F–18 force and our Harrier force, and we are looking forward to bringing on board the first Joint Strike Fighters in the year 2008.
Likewise, we have another joint program that has tremendous operational capabilities, the V–22 program, which is another joint program where the Air Force is procuring the airplane to carry soldiers and Navy special operations forces, and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has funds to put the mission equipment package in there; truly a transformational capability.
And two other examples I would give you is, although it seems to be pedestrian, the complete changeover of our medium tactical vehicle fleet with the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) vehicles is going to improve ground mobility across that Marine Air Ground Task Force, skip a generation—bunch of geriatric ground vehicles. It seems very mundane, but not if you happen to be a marine.
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And last, and most importantly, the transformation of our command and control with our common air command and control system, which we hope to integrate into our unit operations center as a common command and control system to link into the joint network. The two key joint enablers, Mr. Chairman, are transforming command and control for the joint forces and transforming logistics.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SPENCE. I will give my colleagues an opportunity to ask you questions now. But the reason I was trying to bring these things out, we are talking about skipping a generation and working so much on things in the future. That is what we are doing already. We have to just fund those things for the future now.
Beyond what you have already given me as what you are doing, I do not know what else is out there. There has to be some things; all the whiz kids always have some kinds of things out there that we do not know about, that they conjure up. But we already are doing a lot of those things. We just have not done them yet. We are working on them.
Mr. Evans.
Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
After hearing General Magnus's comments, I think I am ready to re-enlist. But in the interest of time, Mr. Chairman, I will waive any questions and perhaps ask unanimous consent to submit written questions and get the answers.
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Mr. SPENCE. Yes, I will be happy to.
Mr. Gibbons, our fighter pilot, we will put him in there.
Mr. GIBBONS. Old fighter pilot.
I, Mr. Chairman, want to thank you for having this hearing. I think the concept of transformation of our military forces is a very important concept for the committee to look at in its procurement. And as such, having listened and read the comments and the testimony of our witnesses before us today, perhaps I can suggest that I have maybe one comment for the Army, a short question for the Navy, and a question for the Air Force, and the Marines have done a fine job, and I will not belabor them any longer.
But my comment, Mr. Chairman, with your permission, for the Army, is, as I listened to General Bond's testimony, I was caught by the thought that they are proposing modernization of their systems, while at the same time maintaining the current legacy systems that they have.
I am not sure that we can, as a financial ability, afford the concept of keeping all of those antiquated systems on deck at the same time as we go forward in modernizing. And perhaps that is something that maybe the Army might want to consider, how they transition into it without the concept of maintaining a legacy system at the same until they are completely modernized.
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For the Navy, let me just ask a question that will help me.
I listened to, Admiral, your testimony where you took the carrier out of the Persian Gulf and moved it to the Adriatic for Yugoslavian purposes. If something had happened in Iraq, say in Baghdad, what is the combat radius of your carrier right now? Could you have made a strike at Iraq? What range are you looking at with your current aircraft off a carrier?
Admiral SESTAK. Yes, sir. Let's take the F–18E and F, because that we are in multi-year buy. The combat range, unrefueled, is 600 nautical miles, there and back. Now, to refuel it, you can go all the way from the Mediterranean to Iraq.
Mr. GIBBONS. What refueling resources do you have that will reach?
Admiral SESTAK. We have consciously worked very closely with our brethren, the Air Force. Any war, as I mentioned, will assuredly be joint. So, much as we used our jammers with their bombers in Kosovo for each stealth that came in with the EA–6B, we also, at times, used the Air Force bombers, or what we use, sir, presently, as you know, is the S–3s. We will be using the aircraft, the F–18, for a tanker on board.
Mr. GIBBONS. All right. So, strategic thinking.
Admiral SESTAK. Yes, sir.
Mr. GIBBONS. You are looking out there 300 nautical miles as a combat range, approximately around there.
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Admiral SESTAK. Yes, sir.
Mr. GIBBONS. That is basically what I was asking for. Without, of course, refueling capability provided by another service.
Admiral SESTAK. Easy. Yes, sir, at 300 nautical miles, we do that unrefueled. Just go and come back.
Mr. GIBBONS. General Deptula, I have read your testimony. You talk about four platforms in there. I presume two are the F–22 and the Joint Strike Fighter.
Please discuss, if you will, the other two platforms that you are looking for in the modernization transformation era, their importance to your operation. But, also, I would ask you to be very candid and tell me what the quantities of these platforms are that you expect to meet your needs in the future.
General DEPTULA. Yes, sir. The four platforms that I talk about that the Air Force is interested in acquiring as we move our transformation journey to our vision force of an all stealth force are the B–2, the F–22, the JSF and the uninhabited combat aerial vehicle.
I talked to you just a little bit about the F–22 and JSF. And the reason it is important that we acquire these systems is just like I alluded to in my testimony: Transformation really consists of what these technologies will be able to do for us in terms of new concepts of operation.
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And what stealth, in conjunction with precision, allows us to do, along with long-range—here is where I bring in the B–2—is to be able to operate from outside the range of enemy anti-access threats. So, the B–2 will be able to operate very rapidly and to go into an anti-access situation and begin to attack the heart of an adversary's centers of gravity, from the very opening hours of a conflict.
But the B–2, as you know, along with systems like the F–117, are limited to operations at night and in bad weather. Here is where the F–22 comes into play, because the F–22 can enable 24-hour operations of the B–2 and older systems like the F–117, by being able to accomplish air dominance against any threat that we anticipate for the future.
Now, JSF comes on board, because once we are able to overcome and achieve air space dominance, the JSF will allow us to provide persistent force across the entire battle space on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis, which then allows us the capacity to track and engage mobile targets.
And, of course, probably the one vehicle of the four that I mentioned, the uninhabited combat aerial vehicle, holds great promise for the future, but yet there is still a lot of challenges there in terms of how we operationalize its capability as we move into the future. It will allow us even greater degrees of stealthiness to be able to operate against any imagined anti-access threat.
With regard, sir, to your question on appropriate numbers, I would suggest to you that the current Secretary of Defense is conducting a defense review which will outline and define what our next defense strategy will be. And clearly, numbers are an issue that has to be directly tied to the defense strategy.
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So, I would prefer to not comment on particular numbers, but I would add or tell you that some of the numbers that are out there with respect to some of these systems that came out of the Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997 were not strategy-driven numbers; those were numbers driven by the budget and budgetary restrictions.
I would also suggest or comment that the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) occurred in 1997, which is before the United States Air Force shifted, did its organizational transformation to an expeditionary aerospace force, and the numbers of some of these systems that were generated from QDR 1997 do not even provide enough systems to outfit one squadron per AEF, which those are the kinds of issues that I am sure will be reviewed in the upcoming defense review in Quadrennial Defense Review. But the last thing we want to do is create another LD/HD system.
Thank you.
Mr. GIBBONS. Gentlemen, thank you for your contributions, not only here today to this committee hearing today, but for what you do for our nation. We are very proud of all of you for what you do.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SPENCE. As the flight attendant says, this is a perfect opportunity for us to go in and make this vote and we can break right now. And incidentally, we are going to come back and allow other members to ask questions, if you could stay with us for a little while longer.
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Incidentally, we are voting on the budget right now, and that is the kind of relativity of things. It is not the kind of budget that in the final analysis we are going to have, we hope, for the military, but at least it is a budget right now we have to vote on.
Be right back.
[Recess.]
Mr. SPENCE. The meeting will please be in order. Thank you, gentlemen, for waiting on us. We had another vote we had to make and I think that will be the last one for a while.
The chair recognizes the gentlelady from Virginia, Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for coming and testifying and telling us what is important to you.
My first question is going to be to General Magnus. I have heard recently that the Marine Corps is moving toward more contingencies that are similar to the Three Block War. And at the same time, Marines are telling me that they need better air support.
So my question is, would you be concerned about a reduction in the standard size of a carrier air wing?
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General MAGNUS. Ma'am, you bet we would be very concerned about that. The flying artillery that are represented in Navy and Marine TACAIR, that is naval aviation, ma'am, operating from that piece of American territory that is called an aircraft carrier at sea with the battle group, provides us the responsive 24-hour, all-weather capability with the modern weapons and platforms we have today.
And as I spoke earlier in my testimony, ma'am, those 12 carrier battle groups and the 12 amphibious ready groups are in short supply and great demand from the unified commanders in peacetime. And in wartime, the ability to generate the kind of sorties that are needed to project power and influence, those offensive and defensive shields that Admiral Sestak talked about, are critical to protecting Americans, our allies and our friendly forces and coalitions of the future.
So, we would be very concerned about a degradation of the capability in the carrier.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, sir.
My next question is to Admiral Sestak.
Admiral SESTAK. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. You mentioned your support for a strategic review of DOD so that we can determine, in quotations, ''the purpose and goal of transformation and the other required components.'' It seems from press reports that I have read, that the question of cutting or shrinking the carriers is in the mix. And just this morning, the full committee heard from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander that he had serious concerns about shrinking carriers and their air wings. My question is, do you personally have the same concerns?
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Admiral SESTAK. Yes, ma'am. I think the Secretary of Defense said it well when he sent over the shipbuilding report to Congress last summer that in that report, Secretary Cohen said that the unified commanders have each asked for a continuous presence of a carrier. It would take 15 carriers to do that.
And on the air wing, were you to change it, you have in the air wing, ma'am, as you know, a very balanced and lethal force. Think about it.
You have the ability to gain and maintain your superiority. You have the ability to clamp down in peace or crisis a no-fly zone on a country. You also have the ability, with our E–2Cs and our future UAVs flying from a carrier, the ability in the theater to build a comprehensive picture, the ability for close air support, the ability with the E–2C in the future to have overland cruise missile defense capability looking down, with F–18s hunting them, waiting to shoot down the missiles. You have the ability to control maritime choke points, and I could go on. But that 1,000 aim points a day by 2008 you can get is irreplaceable.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. I agree with you. This unclassified report from the Navel Research Advisory Committee that concludes the same thing regarding the CVX, why do you think they have come back with the same age-old question now on reducing the size of the carrier, when this stated in 1997 we should not reduce it? Why do you think we are coming back to it now? I think that we are doing it over and over and over again.
Admiral SESTAK. Yes, ma'am. It is a good question. I was asked a similar question during the break by someone from the press.
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Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. They did not put me up to it.
Admiral SESTAK. But the answer to that is, sometimes, as people raise it, it is just a matter of education.
Think about it. Let's take an aircraft carrier today, 80 aircraft. Let's cut it in half, 40 aircraft, 40,000-ton, 50,000-ton ship. Two of those small aircraft carriers it would take to have the same number of aircraft forward, it costs one-third more to do that, as that study indicates.
Take another thing, that LHD today, comparable 38,000 tons, has one-fourth the amount of ammo availability space on it than an aircraft carrier has. You do not get that the number of aircraft on the roof of an aircraft carrier that you need on a smaller platform.
Attrition happens in war. And you need the requisite capability, not just for peace or crisis, but to do damage downtown. And that is why that study has concluded not only what is needed forward, but that it can survive. With cooperative engagement capability, giving certainty that future Anti-ship Cruise Missile (ASCM) threats can be taken with our E–2C being able to look down with the radar and modernization program and undersea we distribute sensors. What a unique capability this nation has.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Admiral.
General Deptula, I was not ignoring you, but you answered my question when you answered the chairman.
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And General Bond, I do not have one for you, but thank you for being here.
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, ma'am.
Mr. Simmons, I think, had gone back to vote. He would come over here, so I am going to wait just a little bit on him.
In the meantime, we have talked around about it, I guess, in different ways, and I have heard other talks about maybe changing our two major theater war strategy. And a lot of people are concerned about that, because we do not know what is going to happen, what the recommendation is going to be or anything else.
But as I was talking to one of the CINCs this morning, for a long time on this committee, we have been trying to make the case with our own chiefs and the chairman that we could not fight two major theater wars. Every time we would ask the question, the answer would be, ''We can do it. It would just take longer.'' And I remember asking, ''What does take longer mean?'' ''What it means,'' they said, ''it would take us longer to reach our objectives and we would lose a lot more people.''
And we said, ''Well, what would the risks be?'' Well, at first it started off being moderate. It ended up being high-risk, high-risk that we are going to be able carry out our national strategy.
And so the best solution, some people are saying now, is if we cannot do that, we cannot fight two wars, we will just try to fight one. The only problem with that is, our adversaries might not go along with our strategy.
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On the other hand, they are going to be putting us to the test if something breaks out in one place. The best example I can give is Kosovo. I was not a big fan of Kosovo, if you want to know the truth about it, and I told them that as threats go to this country, that was not even on the screen compared to other threats we had, real threats, like the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East and these kinds of things.
And after Kosovo was over, the Air Force tells us that they had to marshal a whole lot of their assets up to do that air campaign, essentially. The Air Force shot off about all of the cruise missiles they had, no production line up to replenish it. The Navy shot off a lot of them, too.
And then I am asking the question, ''What would we have done if Korea had broken out?'' We had to bring one of our carrier task forces down from Korea around to the Adriatic. And General Jumper, I remember him saying that we would have a difficult time doing it. We would not have had the resources or the assets to do it.
That should have proved it to the satisfaction of everybody, but still, we are going to try to change it. Kind of like the fellow said one time, Admiral, about not getting enough people to man our ships. The solution was to cut back on the number of ships. That is a screwy way of looking at things, as far as I am concerned.
But anyway, I just wanted to let you know how I feel and a lot of other people about changing this strategy. We have all kinds of people in this world who had not fought wars. And they want to tell the people who fight wars how to fight wars. And I do not come down that side at all.
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I remember the story about someone named McNamara back a few years in the past, and the whiz kids, if you remember. And they envisioned that we would not fight anymore. We would not have more dogfights in aircraft. And we did not have a strategy to have dogfights and that kind of thing.
Our resident authority, Duke Cunningham, the top gun we had, says what happened to them when we got in places like Korea and Vietnam, we did not have the right kind of aircraft to fight the enemy, the strategy. We had to do that afterwards and throw out the whiz kids' plans and get back down to fighting wars.
And so, that concerned me a great deal, too, that we are going to have people who do not fight wars and do not know how to fight wars telling us how to fight wars and when to fight them and all the strategies involved in it, too.
There again, I trust people who have as their job, their business, of fighting wars to defend this country.
Having said that, I apologize, Doctor, along the way. I need to ask you about what these other gentlemen have been talking about. You are the acquisition man. You are the big man over there on all these things. I know you have not been plugged in yet, I guess, on what this final report is going to be, know what to acquire and all those kinds of things.
Have you got any comments to make about what you think, as I asked the others about the systems that we have now, that have already skipped a generation and what things are out there that we could not be prepared for that we are not working on right now?
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Dr. SCHNEITER. I think in terms of new systems, Mr. Chairman, the one that has been referred to before and I referred to it in my statement, particularly the unmanned aerial vehicles, I think both in combat and in reconnaissance, we will see making a big difference in terms of how we can prosecute wars, and peacekeeping as well.
And as we are looking at replacing manned aircraft systems with new manned aircraft systems, possibly, I will give an example: The P–3 is a system that is getting very old now. So, we need a way to replace that. In addition to just looking at different manned aircraft, we are looking at combinations of manned and unmanned, such as Global Hawk systems.
So, I think that is an area where, particularly given that we work the interoperability problems, the data exchange problems, that we can make a great step forward.
Mr. SPENCE. Well, I remember most people have been talking in terms of those unmanned platforms that way. And, of course, that is already being envisioned and along the way.
But it is not something that is entirely new out there that we just have to implement all the plans already that we are working on, the way I understand it, in making it possible to have unmanned platforms doing a lot of the work of others, like the P–3 you were talking about.
Dr. SCHNEITER. And that will be true, not only on air systems, but land systems as well. I know part of the future combat system that is being looked at is seeing what we can do with unmanned land vehicles.
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Mr. SPENCE. Yes, ma'am, you go ahead.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. This would be, I guess, for General Deptula and/or General Magnus. If we were to skip the F–22 and the Joint Strike Fighter and wait for another generation and just built additional F–16s and F–18s, what would that do to our forces?
General DEPTULA. That certainly would be the opposite of the definition of transformation. What that would do is end up costing the American people about 95 to 100 percent of the same cost to build 30-year-old technology.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, General. That is what I thought.
General Magnus, would you like to add anything?
General MAGNUS. Yes, ma'am. The reason why we skipped a generation that is in the FATDS is precisely to take the risk, which is resulting in force structure attrition, that is loss of capability today, for the promise of capability tomorrow, while we have combat readiness.
If we skip the generation that is in the Joint Strike Fighter, I do not know what technology America's industry is about ready to produce, and I do not know that we can skip two generations, because we have already skipped one. The risk to maintaining the readiness of today's force, to ensure the readiness of the future force, in my estimation, would be far too great given our experience with technologies like unmanned aircraft today.
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We are just now fielding the first viable unmanned aerial vehicles. The step to uninhabited combat aircraft is, in my estimation, and I am not an engineer or a scientist, about a generation away.
Mrs. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, General.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you.
And gentlemen, again, thank you. And I apologize for having to break and keep you waiting as long as we have. But what you have told us today has been very valuable to us, and I commend you for it.
We are going to be experiencing some new times, indeed, in the next few months. All of you, I am sure, in your positions, do not really know what is going to happen. As I said in my opening remarks, a lot of things that we have talked about today might be subject to change, depending on what we find out in this review and all the other things associated with it.
But I want you to know on the committee, we are in suspense, too, because we cannot even go and mark up our bill. I mean, the budget is going to be passed today. We cannot even mark up our bill based on that figure in the budget.
The way the thing works out, I understand is, we have to wait until this later time, after the review has been concluded and people decide what they are going to decide, and then submit to us the request for the Pentagon. Then we will go forward and mark up our bill.
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I do not know when that is going to be, quite frankly. I have never been in this position in the 30 years I have been here. We have never waited that long out in the future. The time lines I am given are something like out in June, somewhere along in there.
And so, right now, we are just trying to have our basic hearings on things and talking to the people to see what the lay of the land is like out there without knowing, really, what is going to happen on down the road.
But that is our concern right now, and I know you are concerned about it, all of you, because that is your jobs, where you are. But you have helped us tremendously and we appreciate that. And I apologize again for keeping you so long.
Thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
March 28, 2001
[The Appendix is pending.]
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