SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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80–727
2002
[H.A.S.C. No. 107–33]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2003—H.R. 4546
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AND FACILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
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ON
DIVISION B—MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZATIONS
HEARING HELD
APRIL 10, 2002
MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AND FACILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Chairman
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
KEN CALVERT, California
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida
ED SCHROCK, Virginia
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD P. (BUCK) McKEON, California
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
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SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
MIKE THOMPSON, California
Thomas E. Hawley, Professional Staff Member
George O. Withers, Professional Staff Member
Danleigh S. Halfast, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
HEARING
2002
HEARING:
Wednesday, April 10, 2002, Hearing on Force Protection Aspects of Military Construction and Long-Term Planning for Military Infrastructure and Installation Management Requirements
APPENDIX:
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Wednesday, April 10, 2002
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2002
HEARING ON FORCE PROTECTION ASPECTS OF MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND LONG-TERM PLANNING FOR MILITARY INFRASTURE AND INSTALLATION MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Abercrombie, Hon. Neil, a Representative from Hawaii, Ranking Member, Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee
Saxton, Hon. Jim, a Representative from New Jersey, Chairman, Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Cole, Rear Adm. Christopher W., Director, Ashore Readiness Division, U.S. Navy
Coleman, Brig. Gen. (Sel) Ronald S., Assistant Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics (Facilities), U.S. Marine Corps
DuBois, Hon. Raymond F., Jr., Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment
Robbins, Maj. Gen. Earnest O., II, The Air Force Civil Engineer
Van Antwerp, Maj. Gen. Robert L., Jr., Assistant Chief of Staff for Installations Management, U.S. Army
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APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
Abercrombie, Hon. Neil
Cole, Rear Adm. Christopher W.
Coleman, Brig. Gen. (Sel) Ronald S.
DuBois, Hon. Raymond F., Jr.
Robbins, Maj. Gen. Earnest O. II
Saxton, Hon. Jim
Van Antwerp, Maj. Gen. Robert L., Jr.
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents Submitted for the Record.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
Mr. Abercrombie
Mr. Saxton
Mr. Taylor
Mr. Underwood
HEARING ON FORCE PROTECTION ASPECTS OF MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND LONG-TERM PLANNING FOR MILITARY INFRASTRUCTURE AND INSTALLATION MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS
House of Representatives,
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Committee on Armed Services,
Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, April 10, 2002.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:03 p.m., in room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Saxton (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JIM SAXTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AND FACILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. SAXTON.The Subcommittee on Military Installations and Facilities meets this afternoon to continue consideration of the President's budget request for the military construction (MILCON) and military family housing programs of the Department of Defense (DOD) for fiscal year 2003. The good news is that the House has completed its work for the day, and so we will not be interrupted.
Today, we will concentrate on two topics within the framework of the 2003 budget request: force protection of military installations and long-range facility planning by the military services.
At the outset, I want to say that I am pleased with the Department of Defense's recent action to increase the military construction budget. In our first two hearings, my colleagues and I made it very clear that we were dissatisfied with the level of funding provided for military construction this year.
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Another particular interest of mine is combating terrorism, I chair the Armed Services Committee's Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism. So you know that I am especially gratified when the President decides to increase the budget for both of the committees I chair.
What I am referring to is the Department of Defense's recent request to spend an additional $564.8 million dollars for military construction to upgrade force protection throughout the military services. As happy as I am about this increase, I do have some questions.
There does not appear to be a coherent strategy in the projects requested. For example, the Army asks for security improvements at four large bases, Forts Riley, Benning, Bragg, and Hood. At each, improvements are requested at vehicle access gates, which is understandable.
At Bragg, however, the Army intends to fence the entire post. At Hood, the Army wants to fence four family housing areas. At Riley and Benning, no fencing is requested. I do not know what the right answer is, but I have to wonder what the plan is for Army installations as a whole, not to pick on the Army, because I have similar concerns with the other service requests.
So question No. 1 is: What is the plan? Question two is: How long will it take to finish the plan, if there is one, and how much will it cost? I have no illusions that $564.8 million, though a lot of money, will solve all our problems.
Finally, I think all members would like to know when life will return to normal at the very supportive civilian communities that thrive outside our bases. What am I talking about? The lengthy lines of vehicles awaiting base clearance, spilling into and clogging community roads; significant delays faced by local delivery people as they await base clearance; and, last, something that affects only some bases, which is how to find ways to reopen important community roads, now closed, which happen to traverse military bases.
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On those last two points, just let me, by way of clarification, say that I am not for making changes that affect security of bases. But we have to take into consideration the needs of the communities surrounding our bases.
An equally important part of this hearing is long-range facility planning at military installations. This subcommittee addresses this issue every few years, and every few years it seems the story is the same.
The military services are doing a good job of providing for quality of life projects and for bedding down new missions, but current missions and the requirements for them always, always take a back seat. I am well aware that this year all of you have increased your sustainment, restoration, and modernization accounts (SRM), and that is very good news.
However, this single year increase comes after years of neglect, and some very important current missions remain in World War II era structures. I believe that the witnesses here today sincerely want to do more, but are limited by competing demands within their respective services.
I want you to take back the message that the subcommittee understands what is happening and expects better. Our troops deserve to work in decent facilities, and we will continue to press the point.
At this point, I would like to yield to the ranking member, my friend from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Saxton can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know the issue of force protection is one that you have been working on since long before the events of last September 11th, and I commend you for all your diligence and for calling this important hearing today in that context. I join you in this effort and welcome all the witnesses today as we talk about force protection, about the difficult issue of long-term investment strategy.
As you noted, the President's original request surprisingly did little to address the issue of military construction for force protection. It was only when the amended request was sent to the Hill that over half a billion dollars was identified as necessary construction for the protection of our troops and military assets. And I am pleased to see that your intention is to do what you can to accommodate this late request.
As for our long-term investment plan, I am concerned that the sustainment approach may be overwhelming the investment needs. It is important to reduce the backlog of maintenance, to be sure, but not at the expense of recapitalizing the infrastructure in the most timely manner.
This year's reduction in the military construction requests could have only pushed the goal of lowering the recapitalization rate down the road. And as our witnesses, including the Under Secretary, are well aware, they have heard that many times, and there are several critics of that approach here in the Congress.
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So in that context, Mr. Chairman, I am looking forward to the rest of today's activities, and I certainly look forward to the testimony of our witnesses.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Abercrombie can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie.
We have two panels of witnesses for our proceedings this afternoon. I want to welcome our first panelist, Mr. Raymond F. DuBois, Jr., Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment.
We welcome your participation, Mr. Secretary. At the outset, I will state that, without objection, your prepared statement will be entered into the record. Mr. Secretary, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF RAYMOND F. DUBOIS, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
FOR INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT
Secretary DUBOIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the panel. Secretary Rumsfeld is, as you all are, concerned about anti-terrorism and force protection. The supplemental request of nearly $565 million in funding for those anti-terrorism and force protection projects will be delineated in some detail by my colleagues who will follow me.
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Let me begin by saying that this subcommittee has in the past, specifically in 1997, questioned whether the Department had a long-range plan for managing our installations and facilities, and at that point, as you know, we did not. Today, we have developed and are implementing a plan for getting our facilities back on track and ensuring that they are sustained for the long term.
Recognizing the need to halt degradation of our facilities, in 1998, then Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre commissioned an Installations Policy Board, which I chair and which is represented by all the major constituencies within the Department of Defense, to obviously include the three military departments.
The Defense Facilities Strategic Plan was originally published back in August of last year. It was the result of a number of years of work by the services and the defense agencies and, in no small measure, a difficult task, because until that point, there were not standard terms, and there were not standard applications of concepts and models. Today, with the agreement of the military departments, we have those standard terms and concepts.
Now, it is important to recognize what the Defense Facilities Strategic Plan attempts to accomplish. One, obviously, is to have the right size of installation in the right place. Two, obviously, to provide quality living and work environments. Three is leveraging those financial resources, to achieve the proper balance between requirements and available funding, not an insignificant task, as you have pointed out, Mr. Chairman, in the world of competing priorities. And four is having the right tools, the right management tools, the right metrics to measure our progress or lack thereof, which is extremely important.
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We are now working to integrate the environmental management elements into that strategic plan. As I commented on one of my previous appearances before this subcommittee, it was Secretary Rumsfeld's considered view last spring that we should combine and integrate the efforts of the Department in infrastructure, in installations, as well as in the environmental area. And, therefore, the portfolio, for which I am now honored to be responsible, was created.
To determine funding requirements, always to some a mysterious process, we needed to develop credible models and collect accurate and verifiable data. Now, the first step in achieving this was to, as I said, institute a common framework, a common lexicon, a common set of terms across the Department, a common set of assessment criteria, if you will.
We also converted the terminology. As you all remember, in the old days, there was a term called BMAR, a so-called backlog of maintenance and repair. It was, as it turned out, not a very useful metric in no small measure, because it got to be an enormously huge metric. Terms like $60 billion in BMAR were often referred to. It was extremely difficult to validate that.
When I came into this job, fortunately, that particular metric had been replaced with the emphasis on focusing on outcomes and focusing on what we thought was a better way to look at our appropriate requirements and funding, that is to say, how do we sustain the infrastructure which we have, and then how do we restore, modernize, replace, demolish that infrastructure based on our requirements.
Sustainment, as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, was an area in fiscal year 2003 that the Secretary of Defense and the service secretaries made a major commitment to. As part of our facilities management approach, we increased the funding for sustainment from 89 percent in our fiscal year 2002 budget request to 93.3 percent in the fiscal year 2003 budget request, which is interesting, because if you go back to fiscal year 2001—which we did not have this metric, but when you try to rebuild it or try to recreate it based on the data available to us, in fiscal year 2001, the facilities sustainment percentage was only 70 percent. We have now moved to 93 plus.
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Sustainment requirements are calculated using the so-called facilities sustainment model. That model, I think it is important to recognize, for those of you who have been in the private sector who have been working in the construction and/or real estate development industry—we chose to use industry benchmarks to project sustainment costs and enable requirements to be based on accurate and verifiable information.
Now, the military departments, the four services, first used the facilities sustainment model to compute their sustainment requirements for the purposes of developing their fiscal year 2002 budget request. Therefore, we are dealing with a relatively new management tool. The defense agencies will be using that model to build their fiscal year 2004 requests.
Now, the higher fidelity of the data will also improve the information provided in our financial statements. For example, the fiscal year 2000 Chief Financial Officer statement roughly—and I underline the word, roughly—estimated the funding requirements for sustainment since there was no system to capture or forecast these costs.
The recapitalization factor, one that we have referred to in previous testimony, remains the standard benchmark by which we compute how often and how much money to spend on restoring and modernizing our facilities. Now, again, we went to the industry. We went to the private sector.
Industry plans, on average, for building replacements about every 50 years, given the nature of the Department of Defense facilities, in some ways different from that which the private sector must sustain and restore—the goal, based on engineering studies, came out, on average, to estimate a replacement every 67 years, and we believe that to be sufficient to meet our requirements. But I do want to emphasize that that does not mean that every building in the Department of Defense is sustained or is restored and recapitalized every 67 years, but a blended combination of piers and office buildings and warehouses and hangars and aprons, et cetera, blend to that metric.
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There are other tools and models which some of you have asked us about, both in questions for the record as well as in open testimony—the so-called installations readiness report, which measures the capability of our infrastructure to support wartime missions. And since fiscal year 2002, the services have based their R&M, their restoration and modernization budgets, on the results of the installations readiness report, as well as facility condition assessments.
Now, we are also trying to use modern information technology tools. Web enabled tools, such as the real property enterprise system, are under development and, we believe, will provide by 2005, if not before, a system that can be shared by all the services as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in managing its real property. As you know, the real property replacement value is in excess of $600 billion and, therefore, a rather large asset package.
Military housing—we have talked about this before, but I think it deserves reemphasis, especially in terms of the President's and the Secretary of Defense's emphasis on it. I have personally visited 52, as of last week—I just came back from Germany and Italy—52 separate installations, facilities, training and test ranges, and in each one of them, I am very concerned about housing. It remains a problem area.
The family housing master plans, which were originally directed by Congress and correctly so, continue to be our roadmap. It is true, however, that we are still dealing with overall inadequate housing for our troops of some 60 percent.
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Working with all the services, we intend to meet the Secretary of Defense's new goal of eliminating all inadequate housing by 2007. The only service that currently does not meet that goal is the Air Force. However, we have worked with the new Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Jumper; the new Vice Chief, General Foglesong; and the new Secretary, Jim Roche, to work out ways to accelerate the elimination of all inadequate housing in the Air Force before their current goal of 2010.
Now, the privatization issue, an issue which several years ago you in the Congress gave firm and strong guidance to the Department on, I think has been a success story. We plan to achieve a cumulative total for that program of over 60,000 units privatized by the end of this fiscal year.
Now, housing is not just for the military family. Housing is for the junior officer, the junior enlisted, the unaccompanied soldier, sailor, airman, marine. Several years ago, the Department directed the military services to program resources to eliminate the worst barracks conditions that our single service members endure. That is—and for those of you who have served in uniform, you will appreciate this—the permanent party gang latrine barracks. They will be eliminated no later than 2008, per Secretary Rumsfeld's direction.
Now, we have in the Navy situations where young sailors who are on board ships come back to port, and they have no place to go, other than to sleep on board the ships. The Navy is focusing on this, and they are exploring privatization as one method for reducing their unaccompanied housing shortfall.
Now, let me move quickly to force protection. Whether it was pre-September 11th or post-September 11th, no one can deny the fact that force protection has always been in the forefront of any service secretary or any secretary of defense, irrespective of Administration. Now, the events of September 11th—let's make no mistake about it—refocused our efforts on more stringent—yes, more stringent—antiterrorism and force protection measures for our facilities. They have, as the chairman has referred to, affected in some ways how a community interacts with installations, to include Texas Avenue at Fort Dix and other places.
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I have raised this issue a number of times with my colleagues who will follow me, with my colleagues, the assistant service secretaries for installations and environment. I do not think it is useful to have the Department of Defense or the Office of the Secretary of Defense dictate to the installation commander or the garrison commander at Fort Hood or Fort Stewart or Naval Air Station Coronado how to deal with this. I think they must deal with it on a local basis.
Now, there is money, as you have referred to, allocated to the Army and the Navy and the Air Force and the Marine Corps and the Guard and Reserves and defense agencies for military construction related projects out of the Defense Emergency Response Fund (DERF) account. As I said, details will be forthcoming.
I think the issue, however, of some of the specifics, such as maximum or minimum, more particularly, statistics in terms of standoff distance—as an aside, on September 13th, among the several special projects that Secretary Rumsfeld gave to me was the security of the military reservation called the Pentagon. One of the first questions asked was: What is the minimum standoff distance for the Pentagon? It is 45 meters or 148 feet.
There are also issues pertaining to construction standards, which I can get into, if you wish, during the question and answer period.
I think that infrastructures in the United States are certainly a focus of our attention. Infrastructure overseas—as I indicated, I just came back from Europe, having spent 4 days there last week—are also under serious focus as to what ought to be changed in terms of force protection. As all politics are local, a lot of force protection is local, too.
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I want to say that both General Meigs, the United States Army Europe commander, and General Schwartz, the Commander in Chief (CINC) in Korea, and I have talked about issues pertaining to consolidation. As you know, the land partnership plan was recently announced for consolidation of installations in Korea, and the efficient basing concept for consolidation in Germany, again reducing our force protection problems and profile.
I think, in closing, it is important to recognize that the Department remains committed to arresting the deterioration of our installations and facilities. And while the President's budget request for this fiscal year was lower than last year's, it is the second largest one in six years.
I do want to thank all of you on behalf of Secretary Rumsfeld for your unstinting attention paid to the platforms from which our troops deploy, the places where they work and train, the places where they leave their families when they go to Afghanistan, et cetera. The plan we have today, the long-term strategy for installations and facilities, we think is certainly an improvement over what was the case when you first raised this issue back in 1997. The framework is in place, and we look forward to working with you all as we continue to improve the infrastructure.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Secretary DuBois can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
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Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
I am going to yield to Mr. Abercrombie for questions very soon, but before I do, I would just like to say a word of welcome to the many students who are here in the room. This is the Military Facilities and Infrastructure Subcommittee. We are a subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee.
Along with my friends, Republicans to my right and Democrats to my left, we work together on a bipartisan basis to do what we think is a very, very important job. We have an all-volunteer force throughout all of our services, and in order to have people volunteer to be in the services, it is our job to create sets of facilities that make them comfortable places to live and places to work.
We take our job very seriously, and it has become even more serious now that we, especially in the United States, never had to face the problem before of keeping them comfortable and safe. Today's hearing is about keeping them safe.
So we take this seriously, and the Secretary is here to inform us as to how he sees the picture and what we need to do. And each of the services will be represented on the next panel by people who are actually in the field planning and carrying out those plans to meet our objectives.
So at this point, let me welcome you again.
Mr. Abercrombie, the floor is yours.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I noticed among the young people that came in, there was a young man wearing a shirt that said very prominently on the front, Abercrombie, and I thought that either he had no idea about what he was doing, or he was really sucking up for a good grade for today. He can let everybody know he was noticed.
[Laughter.]
And I do want to say for the record, Mr. Chairman, that I get no royalties out of the deal. I only wish I could.
Thank you very much, Mr. Under Secretary. This concerns me, because I do believe we are making progress now. Do you have any idea of how this—what I can only take as a conceptual undertaking so far about a Northern Command (NORTHCOM)—affects any of this? The reason I am asking you now is because the second panel that is coming up better be prepared to answer it as well.
I am very, very concerned that the progress we are making, particularly where privatization is concerned in housing, is now all going to have to be run through a whole different command structure in order to make decisions. Do you have any idea about what this will do to change how we make these decisions, if, in fact, we go ahead with it?
Secretary DUBOIS. As you know, Mr. Abercrombie, the Unified Command Plan, which the Secretary has forwarded to the President, in my understanding, pertains to the CINCs. With respect to installations, with respect to housing, those Title 10 responsibilities reside within the military departments. They do not reside within the CINCs.
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Therefore, if there is a Commander in Chief, Northern Command (CINCNORTH), irrespective of the CINCNORTH's area of responsibility, he or she will not have any responsibility in regard to resourcing, recapitalization calculations, or military family housing, or infrastructures in general.
Now, having said that, I will point out that we at the OSD level do expect the CINCs to look at infrastructure in their areas of responsibility and to work with their component commanders to prioritize what should be an appropriate level of funding overall, as well as what specific installation requirements in support of missions ought to look like. But the CINCdom, if you will, of CINCNORTH will not impact directly the Title 10 responsibilities of the service secretaries——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But right now, they have responsibility for setting priorities, though, do they not, in terms of which they then make recommendations to you?
Secretary DUBOIS. The priorities are essentially set, at this time, by the component commanders going back to their administrative control with their respective military departments.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes. Their administrative control.
Secretary DUBOIS. Administrative control and resourcing comes from the military departments. It does not come from the CINCs.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes, okay.
Secretary DUBOIS. Now, having said that, as I indicated, we believe in OSD that it is important for the CINC to sit down with his component commanders and look at their respective requirements and try to, to the extent possible and reasonable, rationalize within each of those components, components in between them, what makes the most sense for that CINC to support his war fighting mission.
CINCNORTH, however—and I——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Before you go further, in other words, what you are saying now is the Secretary of Defense says your present CINC structure is inadequate and unable to do its job.
Secretary DUBOIS. No, I did not say that, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Then why are we adding a Northern Command?
Secretary DUBOIS. That is not within my area of responsibility, and I would ask you to refer that question to the Secretary.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. All right.
Secretary DUBOIS. I am trying to explain the way that the administrative and resourcing construct exists. A CINC does not control nor directly resource installations or infrastructure within his geographic area.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I understand that. But you said that they need—well, okay. You are nonetheless asking them to be aware——
Secretary DUBOIS. Right.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE [continuing]. ——and the only way I can take it is if there is a contemplation of adding another command, the Secretary must not believe that the present structure is doing that.
Secretary DUBOIS. Well, I can only submit that Secretary Rumsfeld and the President are in discussions over what would be best with respect to the defense of the United States.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. I appreciate that, and you obviously cannot make a decision for them. I am sure I am not the only one that feels this way, and perhaps the message could go back to the President and to the Secretary of Defense that they might better spend their time on other things——
Secretary DUBOIS. Acknowledged.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE [continuing]. ——than trying to reinvent a fifth wheel or a sixth wheel.
Are these projects executable in the supplemental—I am going to call it a supplemental budget—that we have before us, as broken down over the $500 million plus? Are they all executable within this next fiscal year, do you think?
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Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, sir. And perhaps to anticipate some questions—certainly, the chairman alluded to the possibility that he would ask a question about process insofar as how it came about. The comptroller of the Department, Dr. Zakheim, sent a memo asking each military department—and, in turn, the four services—for projects which would be eligible under DERF funding.
The Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Dr. Barry Watts, in turn compared those inputs from the services with the J–34, the joint staff's Vulnerability Assessments, to make final determination. Insofar as that analysis took place, the services and defense agencies then received, as you know, a total of nearly $565 million for funding for MILCON under the DERF accounts. Each of the services got differing amounts, and each of the services chose, as has been alluded to, to spend it in slightly different ways, and I would defer to my colleagues to answer those questions specifically.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. All right. I appreciate the background as to how it came about. But can you assure us that if we work on these projects in terms of getting them authorized, they can be done in the next year?
Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. That said, then, and taking into account what you just indicated about how the request came about, I am still a little concerned. I am not nit-picking, but it is the idea of what we pick and choose, because we still have to work with the appropriators after all, too, on this.
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Let me just give you an example, and that is all it is, just an example. These are not being chosen for spite or anything like that.
There are two requests for small arms firing ranges, one in Ohio and one in Washington. That did not strike me, given what you just said about how they were chosen, as something that would be right up there in the first line of request for force protection projects.
Now, they might need the firing ranges. I do not doubt that. But my point is to you—and you do not necessarily have to answer this, but I am making an observation. I am not entirely certain that all of the projects that are in the half billion plus that you have outlined are necessarily easily construed as being force protection. They may very well be necessary and unfunded requests and so on and so forth, but they are not necessarily the kind of thing that when we prioritize, or when the chairman and the committee prioritizes or makes suggestions, would be high on the list, or even on the list.
Secretary DUBOIS. Mr. Abercrombie, I was unaware of those two particular projects, and my colleagues may be able to answer with more specificity. My understanding was that, again, many, or the majority of the projects——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am sure that the majority——
Secretary DUBOIS. [continuing]. ——are for force protection, and, in particular, you know, things that have been discussed already today, perimeter security issues, gates, and so forth, lighting, hardening of certain walls and certain buildings, and planning and design. There is also a $6,300,000 line item for our schools, hence force protection for our schools where our children are, and I think that is very important.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I could understand that. Then one last point while I have the time—obviously, we are happy with the recognition of the force protection measures that are addressed in this budget. And I understand completely that there are unfunded requests, and not all the requirements are met or would have been met in this budget as well. There are probably others.
But this, I guess, takes me almost back to my first question, in terms of how you get your priorities. There are obviously unmet priorities, even in this request. How are we going to deal with this in the future, then? I am not quite sure exactly, even from your opening statement.
Is there a proposal that will include—I have written down here sustainment model, facilities aging model, et cetera. Do you have an outline? Am I understanding your testimony correctly? Do you have an outline of everything that is going to work through this formulation about sustainment model, aging model, et cetera, and that will be the presentation you will make for the next fiscal year after this one?
Secretary DUBOIS. Well, as I indicated, the facilities sustainment model is just that. It is a model to indicate where we stand against the baseline.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Right. I am talking about future presentations to the committee. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself on this. But I am taking you seriously in your——
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Secretary DUBOIS. If I may, sir, your question about unfunded priorities is a very important one, and I would only refer to the testimony of my boss, Secretary Rumsfeld, and repeat what he said. We have funded in this DERF account the priorities.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Right.
Secretary DUBOIS. There are unfunded requirements, and I do not mean to split hairs here or say, you know, the definition—but definitions are important.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Sure.
Secretary DUBOIS. The Secretary of Defense said we have funded our priorities. There are unfunded requirements. I know every year there are unfunded requirements.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes. That is all right. My question to you is will the chairman and the committee be able to look forward, then, in the future, in the next budget—once we are through this particular cycle, this little supplemental and our budget for this year, is your testimony that in the future, we will receive a budget based on the integration of these three or four models that you have outlined in your testimony, and that will constitute the rationale for future budgets?
Secretary DUBOIS. I think that the models, as management tools—and I will give you an example. Let's take sustainment, for example.
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For fiscal year 2003, we have requested funding to achieve a sustainment rate, blended, entire department-wise, of 93.3 percent. We want to increase that every year. Therefore, our (FYDP) Future Years Defense Plan, our budget request, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, increases it every year to where 2007—again, on a blended basis, total departmental basis, which includes the four services—will be at 96.6 percent, the highest in history.
So the model does not drive, necessarily, the funding, although when you determine what level of funding you are going to use to sustain your infrastructure that yields——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Does the model, then, drive what you are going to ask for, regardless of the amount?
Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, it does.
Secretary ABERCROMBIE. That is what I am trying to get at, because who knows what the amount is going to be? But what I want to understand is will we be getting a budget where what is in the budget will be determined by the model?
Secretary DUBOIS. Right. If the defense planning guidance from the Secretary says you shall achieve, department wide, no less than 95 percent sustainment, that yields a specific figure, funding number, and that is what the Secretary——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But what is in that number? What do you use to determine what is in there?
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Secretary DUBOIS. Each service has its own percentage achievement goal, and when we blend it for the Department wide, if the defense planning guidance is 95-plus percent——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I am taking too much time. Maybe you can send over to the committee exactly what constitutes the facility aging model.
Secretary DUBOIS. Okay.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So if you have 10 pieces to it, you know—what is it?
Secretary DUBOIS. My understanding is there are nine categories of buildings, facilities, and each one carries with it a recapitalization rate.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay, good. Thanks.
Secretary DUBOIS. But we will take the question for the record and have more details for you.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
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[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
Let me follow up with a couple of things. In my opening statement, I asked my first question, and that is that when you look down the list of proposed requested funding for projects, there does not emerge, immediately, at least, an overall strategy or plan.
Would you speak to that, particularly—I used the example in my opening statement of the fencing at four bases. Would you try to enlighten us on what kind of a strategy you have?
Secretary DUBOIS. Let me try to do that in two regards, one, macro, and one, micro, if you will. As I indicated, the types of projects included for force protection were directed, determined, and submitted by the individual services.
The majority of the projects are for perimeter security and gates, which, as we all know, cost less than new construction or refurbishment. Thirty-eight percent of the MILCON portion of the DERF is for new buildings, or refurbishment, however, of existing facilities, and 35 percent is for perimeter security and gates. The remainder of the $565 million is for planning and design, building hardening, lighting, and visitor processing centers. As you know, the flow of authorized versus unauthorized personnel is a very important force protection issue and how you control that.
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Now, that is the macro answer in terms of categories of funding, as the services' requests were put into the blender, so to speak. Each of the services looked at—and this is my micro answer, if you will. For those of you who have been on various bases in your districts and elsewhere, each base is slightly different. How one handles a public thoroughfare going through Fort Belvoir—we may handle it differently than we handle it going through Fort Hood or Fort Dix.
Clearly, the higher the threat condition, the more stringent the restriction on access. Each of those bases, however—not from my standpoint, because I do not direct—but each of those base commanders, working with their installation regional commanders and major commanders, are going to determine if it is threat condition (THREATCON) Charlie—do we close down Texas Avenue beginning and end? Do we look forward to an ongoing threat condition, thereby fencing off, thereby berming, thereby changing the roads?
As some of you may have heard—and let's take the Pentagon, where I live and work. We are looking seriously at Route 110. Route 110 comes dangerously close to the river entrance. In fact, it goes under the river entrance parade ground where the Secretary and the Chairman greet their peers from foreign countries.
I think we will make a presentation at the appropriate time to bend Route 110 away from the river face of the Pentagon. In each case, in each installation, they are, I am sure—I am told, are looking at what is best for them.
Mr. SAXTON. Do you have any idea what future year phases of force protection will look like, in terms of expenditures and in terms of how long it will take to get us to where we feel that our infrastructure and personnel are secure?
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Secretary DUBOIS. I do not have a general answer to that question, Mr. Chairman. We are trying to build, obviously, over the FYDP of antiterrorism/force protection (AT/FP) line items, some of which are MILCON and some of which are operations and management. I will take that for the record and respond more particularly to you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. SAXTON. I have another question. You mentioned Texas Avenue at Fort Dix, and I do not want to ask you about that specific instance, but I want to use it as an example, because I am familiar with it.
Texas Avenue, for those of you who have not been to McGuire Air Force Base or Fort Dix, is a road that bisects the two bases, and immediately after 9–11, it was closed, and the only access to Texas Avenue is through checkpoints at the gates of Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. Naturally, the residents of the communities on either end of Texas Avenue who commute back and forth now have a 15 or 20 mile detour, which changes the traffic pattern and changes the commerce that residents of the two communities are able to take part in. So there is great pressure on the part of the communities to reopen Texas Avenue.
Now, I use this as an example, because every continental United States (CONUS) base that I know of was established and grew up in a non-threat environment, a relative non-threat environment. So we did not have to worry about the Texas Avenues and those kinds of security issues that we are here to talk about today.
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I guess I have to say that there is a great diversity of opinion. The Air Force has one opinion. They want to keep Texas Avenue closed. The Army has another opinion. They want to have Texas Avenue opened. The communities on both ends of Texas Avenue want it opened, and now they are asking me what I think, and that is not comfortable for me.
So my question is this: How do we come to a—I know you want to let the base commanders make the decisions. But there has to be some THREATCON criteria——
Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. SAXTON [continuing]. ——for the base commanders to use so that we do not have these debates about what is safe and what is not and what our policy should be.
Let me just add one more thought to my question. All of us live in a world, and we view it from our own perspectives. Therefore, wherever I am becomes pretty important to me. And the folks that work at the Air Mobility Warfare Center, 142 feet from Texas Avenue—that is the center of their world, and they want to protect it.
By the same token, everybody who has a facility like the Air Mobility Warfare Center located in a like location—that is the center of their world, and they want it protected. And yet our facilities are targets with different vulnerabilities and with different levels of importance to would-be attackers.
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How do we sort this out so that we can prioritize and make logical decisions?
Secretary DUBOIS. We have established interim standards and criteria. In fact, they were established before 9–11. The final antiterrorism/force protection standards will be published very soon in a unified facilities criteria directive. We have it both in terms of, as I said, setbacks—I indicated what the Pentagon setback was, based on what—in the Pentagon it has to be a minimum of 148 feet.
We have criteria in terms of construction standards. We have criteria in terms of what kind of leased space we are going to go into.
We do vulnerability assessments. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency does some 90 of them every year. In fact, I am about to get the vulnerability assessment, the most recent one, done on the Pentagon itself, the Pentagon reservation.
I think in terms of any given location, any given installation, I think we have to depend upon the installation commander and common sense and, as you pointed out, what goes on in that facility and how close it is to that road.
Now, I will say with respect to Fort Dix and Texas Avenue, in particular, that highway will be reopened, and it will be reopened after the fence is installed to control access. The project has been approved by the Army Reserve engineer. It is pending completion of staff judge advocate review, and we expect project approval literally within days.
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The fence will be built using a job order contract, which is already ready to go, and the fence should be complete within 90 days of approval. Now, perhaps 90 days is longer than the local community wanted, but it, nonetheless, has been addressed, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. I did not intend for this to be a forum on Texas Avenue. I am sure there are members that have individual projects they discuss to the——
Secretary DUBOIS. But I used it as an example. There are individual projects in many places that are being addressed particularly as time——
Mr. SAXTON. I appreciate that. Let me ask you one final question before we move on here. While I was back in my district office over the break, it was called to my attention by some folks at Fort Dix that the Department of Defense had contacted the commander at Fort Dix requesting information on an Army hospital, Walson Army Hospital, which later became Walson Air Force Hospital, and other facilities that would be available at Fort Dix for the Northern Command headquarters.
So I called a high-ranking military official to obtain an update on the status of the decision in the process and whether Fort Dix was in the running. They told me no, Fort Dix was not in the running, and the primary reason was that Walson Army Hospital would require military construction dollars to retrofit it and make it suitable for the Northern Command headquarters, and the criteria that was laid out by the Secretary did not permit the expenditure of military construction dollars, and that we needed to find a place where we could go and move into a facility without spending money on it, and I accepted that.
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Well, unfortunately, I now see in this proposal that you have sent us that there is a $25 million request to stand up a new CINC for homeland security to support the war on terrorism. That gives me——
Secretary DUBOIS. I can only say, sir, that it would give me the same if I were in your shoes. I do not know who mentioned that one of the criteria that the Secretary of Defense would use would be to not spend any MILCON dollars.
My understanding is that there were criteria laid down, and while cost was one of the criteria, an elimination of all costs was not one of the criteria at all. I saw the criteria, sir.
I also am under the impression—and I understand—that there were a number of installations that were looked at. I think there were some 36, perhaps 37, around the United States, which satisfied some of the initial preliminary criteria, and that was then necked down to 7, and then it was necked down further.
The Secretary, to my understanding, is close to making a decision as to the siting. But all I can say is that the no-MILCON was not, to my understanding, one of the criteria.
Mr. SAXTON. That is unfortunate.
Mr. Hostettler?
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Under Secretary. I have some questions for the following panel, but I just wanted to share with you—I had the opportunity to visit our forces in South Korea last August, and in your oral testimony and in your written testimony, you speak about the land partnership plan in Korea, and I think that is very important.
I just wanted to express to you my concerns about the living and working conditions that we have for our men and women in South Korea these days. It has been said there is no congressman or senator from South Korea, so there is the tendency to forget about that very hot spot in the world. Prior to September 11th, it was probably the most dangerous place in the world to have our men and women in uniform.
Given the economic conditions in North Korea and the fact that they are testing long and medium-range ballistic missiles in North Korea and that sort of thing, it is turned down, I understand, more than any other possible place that we can station our men and women in uniform, turned down with regard to their desire to want to serve there. And I just wanted to share with you my concern that we continue to look at this area.
While we are not the congressmen from South Korea, we have constituents that go there. I had an opportunity to have dinner with some constituents that were there that really love their job, that really love serving our country, that really did not want to be in South Korea, not because of the challenge there. They wanted to be there for the challenge, but the conditions that they have to live in, that they have to put their families in, and the conditions that they have to work in are just not very good conditions.
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I spoke to General Schwartz, and he has talked about the plan to move forward in making our living and working conditions for our men and women in uniform better. And I just wanted to share with you before I ask the questions of the second panel that there is an interest in the Congress to do the right things for our people, even when they are abroad.
As you mentioned earlier, you have been abroad, and you have seen the conditions that they live and work under there. And given the fact that that is the case, I want to make sure that you understand that we want to give you the resources to adequately supply those volunteers with the housing and the work facilities that will cause South Korea to not be the most turned down choice for a station.
So I just wanted to express that to you. I will have some questions later. If you want to respond to that, you can. But I just wanted to share that with you.
Secretary DUBOIS. Well, just quickly, I accompanied a congressional delegation, a number of your colleagues, to Korea last year, chaired by Dave Hobson of Ohio, the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction. Secretary Rumsfeld extended General Schwartz for a number of reasons, and one of them was that he saw the progress that was being made by that CINC in that area of responsibility (AOR) in regard to quality of life and was sufficiently impressed with it that he has extended him in that job to continue that good work.
As we all know, 25-plus percent of our military personnel are deployed overseas, but only 21 percent of our MILCON dollars go overseas. Korea is very much in the forefront of the Secretary of Defense's mind, and because it is principally an Army related issue, you will hear from General Van Antwerp, I am sure, later in the second panel, that the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army are equally as concerned.
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Ortiz?
Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Referring back to what Mr. Abercrombie was saying, one of our concerns is that we would like to see—and I know that they have not appointed that individual yet to be the Commander in Chief for Northern Command. This does not include Canada. We know that.
But what we want to know is—each military base now trains for a particular mission. And my question is if we appoint that individual, in case of an emergency or a threat in the United States, where is he going to draw his manpower from?
This is something that I think the committee would like to know. Is that going to require additional funding for additional troops? I know that it now requires additional funding for military construction. Hopefully, as we move along through this process, we can maybe understand this a little better, not only the new command, but what kind of mission they are going to be training for.
You know, in light of the current efforts by all services to support a higher state of force protection at installations amid all the war efforts, I would like to address the following. Is enough being done right now to balance security and force protection requirements with the need for installation access? Are these efforts sustainable?
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Could you describe what is being done to educate service members, civilian workers, contractors, retirees, and military dependents on the need for these security measures? Is there anything that we can do to help, that this committee could help with, because I know that we need trained soldiers, but those that work at these installations need to be better prepared. And maybe they are being trained adequately as to how to respond in case of a real serious threat to these bases.
Secretary DUBOIS. Based on my experience in traveling to a number of these installations—as I said, some 50-plus over the last 18 months, last 15 or 16 months—certainly since September 11th, I only take my own office building, called the Pentagon, and the plans that we have for evacuation, for reconstitution of operations, for continuity of operations, for maintaining the staff support for the Secretary of Defense, wherever he might be, have been thoroughly reviewed and tested.
Now, I think there is another part of your question, a very important one, and it is not just force protection, potential terrorist acts in and around installations, in our communities. It is also about the general ability to communicate with those who live around you.
Some of your colleagues have talked to me about installation commanders who seem, for whatever reason, to be unwilling or unable to communicate more effectively with the communities in which they live and the communities where those installations are. I can only tell you that there is a considered effort between myself and the assistant service secretaries for installations and environment to better prepare installation commanders on how and when and under what circumstances they communicate with the local communities. They, in some cases, as is the case across the country, do well. In some cases, they do not do so well.
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I will admit this, something that I have found out since I have taken this job, and I will confess to it on behalf of the Department. We do not do a very good job at training installation commanders, not in terms of management of money and men and women and material, but in terms of public relations. We are not training our installation commanders very well in terms of public relations. That is not part of the plan. Maybe we should do a better job of that.
Mr. ORTIZ. The reason I asked this question is because we went through some of this right here. We walked out of the Capitol and were just milling around, sitting around, with no place to go. And I just hope that we can take all the precautions necessary to train civilian workers, the dependents, and all those people, and, hopefully, they will never need this training.
Secretary DUBOIS. I hope that you are right, Mr. Ortiz, and I will only recount a personal anecdote. Not too long after September 11th, when the Secretary of Defense assigned to me a rather sensitive and classified project, my wife turned to me a couple of nights later and said, ''Oh, this is terrific. You and the Secretary will go to some undisclosed secure location. What about me and the two kids?'' And there was a long, emotional discussion, and we came up with a plan.
Mr. ORTIZ. I thank you for your answer, and I appreciate you being with us today.
Secretary DUBOIS. Thank you, sir.
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Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Schrock?
Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, I think one of the things you said right off the bat was the right size installation in the right place. That probably says it all.
I can tell you 4 Members of Congress last August, among them Mr. Reyes, Mr. Ortiz, Mr. Weldon, and me, went on a 4-day, 12-state, 25-base tour. We saw some of the deterioration of some of the facilities and how incredibly bad it is, especially in the living quarters, in the barracks of some bases and some posts. So I think trying to straighten that out is a good thing.
I know, personally, in the area I represent in Norfolk, they are getting ready to build a massive, massive barracks—in fact, you should not even call them barracks, because they are going to be so nice—so people can come off the carriers to live in those when they are in ports rather than staying on the ship. I think they are doing a mighty good job.
Do not sell the commander short in the community. I can tell you in the community where I live, the commanders of the bases do a magnificent job. One of them is in this room right now, who was in Norfolk for a while. He did a magnificent job. They do do a good job.
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But, yes, I was a public affairs officer, so any time you can give them training, the better, so they can communicate a lot better. I appreciate that comment.
That is really all I had. Thanks.
Secretary DUBOIS. Thank you, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Taylor?
Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Secretary, thank you for coming. I have three concerns I wish you could touch on. I have had an anonymous but fairly reliable letter from someone stationed in Uzbekistan, saying that our installation there is on the site of an old Soviet Union base, that they are convinced that in 2 months' time, every person who was assigned there is getting a lifetime dose of radiation.
I say this because everybody in this committee has got a buddy who shall remain nameless who is being tested right now for cancer because of his duty in Vietnam and exposure to Agent Orange. I have personally got a staffer who almost died over the Christmas holidays of mercury poisoning, who was a Marine reservist called up to Desert Storm, and the Veteran's Administration is pretty well convinced it is because of the stuff he was breathing over there.
So, you know, these things do happen. Not all of them are preventable. Some of them are. But if that is the case, I would certainly hope that you would use your position to see to it that we move off that installation.
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I realize we had to do a lot of things in a hurry to respond to the events of September 11th, and we were looking for friends who would let us stage there, and we did not have a lot of time to be picky. But since this is evolving into something that is apparently going to last for a while, we are certainly expected to look into this. And if there is any doubt in anybody's mind, we ought to get the government of Uzbekistan to find another suitable location. But that would be No. 1.
The second concern is, you know, one of the things we were told is that the Department was not asking for a whole lot of military construction money, because they did not want to prejudice the decisionmakers of the next round of base realignment and closure (BRAC) by spending money on bases that might be perceived as picking favorites of which ones should be saved and which ones should be closed. But your decision to spend about a half a million dollars to improve the security at some rather than others could be perceived—since every base is, to a certain extent, paranoid—that you already are prejudiced in that decisionmaking process by saying through that spending that some bases are more important than others. And I wish you would comment on that.
The third thing is—and, again, it goes to your installations, but one of the things we are told that is one of the selling points of BRAC is that when you have got a good property, we can sell it and pump some money back into the economy. When I was 18, I was stationed on probably some of the most valuable real estate that we owned, and that is Governor's Island, New York. And just last week, the Commander in Chief gave it away. Now, my hunch is it is worth anywhere from a half a billion to a billion. It is right there at the foot of Wall Street.
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So it kind of makes that whole BRAC argument kind of phony. If we take what should have been the easiest property to sell and give it away, does that not mean we do not really intend to sell any of it? And the money part of the sale should not even be figured into the equation. If we could not sell Governor's Island, or will not sell Governor's Island because of political pressure, I really do not believe we are going to sell any of them.
Secretary DUBOIS. Mr. Taylor, let me take your questions in order, if I might. Uzbekistan—I am familiar with the air base you are speaking of. Also, it may sound odd, but I am very glad you raised this issue.
In my portfolio, we have a directorate of safety and occupational health. It is also connected to our environmental portfolio.
When bases were being assessed for possible short, intermediate, or long-term locations for our troops, this is one of the bases that was assessed. Without getting into classified material, we assessed files on this base and determined that part of it, as a matter of fact, was polluted, but not with radiation pollution. And part of that segment, that section, if you will, of that particular base was not built upon. We did not put our troops there.
I am unaware—and I have looked at the evidence—of any radiation situation. I will, however, go back and ask some serious questions. What you raise is quite serious.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
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Mr. TAYLOR. I sure thought that I had been told by a medical doctor who works with the DOD that in some of the excavations of the bone that they had detected radiation.
Secretary DUBOIS. I will certainly look into that. In response to your second question about the military construction Presidential budget request and the idea that we would not want to prejudice any BRAC 2005 analyses, recommendations, decisions, and connecting that to the $500 million of DERF funding for antiterrorism/force protection, as I indicated, priorities were developed by the services. There was no cap, per se, put on the amount that they could request for these purposes.
As the chairman pointed out—I believe it was the chairman. I apologize if it was not Chairman Saxton—what was executable was also an issue. And each base has individual requirements for force protection. Some bases, quite frankly, are already pretty well structured in that regard.
Governor's Island—my understanding of Governor's Island is—and with respect to the notion that we would sell BRAC property, although I did not think Governor's Island was a BRAC property——
[The information referred to can be found in Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. TAYLOR. It was a Coast Guard base.
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Secretary DUBOIS. Sir?
Mr. TAYLOR. It was first Army and then a Coast Guard base.
Secretary DUBOIS. Right. And the Coast Guard walked away from it in 1977 or so. But anyway——
Mr. TAYLOR. The point being, Mr. Secretary, that it was, indeed, U.S. Federal property.
Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, sir. And as you know——
Mr. TAYLOR. Extremely valuable.
Secretary DUBOIS. As you know, the original concept of BRAC was to sell the property, use the proceeds for moving missions, environmental cleanup, et cetera. And since 1988, when the first BRAC round took place, the Congress has been quite vocal in strongly urging no cost conveyances to the local redevelopment authorities.
Having said that, the Navy—and my colleague, Admiral Cole, could testify to this—has most recently conveyed property to local redevelopment authorities and kept back some of it and sold it to private developers in conjunction with a negotiation with the local redevelopment authority. It is, indeed, my understanding that El Toro, a former Marine Corps air station, will essentially be put on the block, now that the local citizens have voted down the use of El Toro for an airport, wherein the Navy will also recognize for their BRAC account income by virtue of this sale. So it is not one or the other. That is my understanding.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Calvert?
Mr. CALVERT. Well, since I am going to represent the property next to El Toro in the redistricting, that is an interesting statement. I thought that that determination had not been made yet.
Secretary DUBOIS. Which determination?
Mr. CALVERT. That the El Toro property would be sold at block.
Secretary DUBOIS. My understanding is that negotiations are bringing it to basically that conclusion. If it has not been announced yet, I stand corrected.
Mr. CALVERT. At one point, I know that the Department of Defense was looking at a no-cost conveyance if it was transferred for an airport facility, but there was a recent election in that community to change the land use determination. But based upon that, the Department of Defense has made the determination that that will not happen.
Secretary DUBOIS. My understanding is that, given the referendum—and, again, I would defer to the Navy in this regard—but given the referendum, there will be a—it is not all, but certainly part of it.
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Mr. CALVERT. I was wondering, what does one have to do with the other, as far as—if there was going to be a no-cost conveyance to the community based upon problems in those communities, what does—if it was used for one use or another, why would the Department of Defense make the determination different than what they had prior——
Secretary DUBOIS. Again—and I do not mean to avoid your question. No final decision—it is true—has been made about El Toro. But I would defer to the Department of the Navy, as it is their decision what to do in this regard.
Mr. CALVERT. I know these local communities—as in the case of the Presidio in San Francisco, in which there was also a no-cost conveyance to the community—and if communities are going to be treated differently in this issue by changes in policy, I think that those communities probably should be notified, and it certainly will have an impact.
But that was not my question. The issue of reconveyed bases and flexibility on the part of bases that are being realigned, I should say, that have the combination of civilian and military uses—they have kind of a special circumstance which obviously opens itself to security issues, normally because of the checkerboard type of properties which are within those bases.
Existing BRAC law does not give a lot of flexibility to start doing land exchanges and so forth to help secure those bases which theoretically would be no cost to the Treasury. Is there any way that we can maximize that?
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I have a military base in my own district, March Air Force Base, which is the largest Air Reserve base in the system, which is having those kinds of difficulties. I would hope you would take a look at that. Facilities that were going to be built next to highways are not yet built, but they do not have the flexibility, for instance, to exchange a piece of property for another piece of property and make it work better for our security purposes and at the same time at no cost to the U.S. Government.
Secretary DUBOIS. My answer would be only in ignorance about that specific situation at March Air Force Base. But I would say that it is not—the Secretary of Defense would not object to an authority to be able to swap land, if that turned out to be the best thing for the installation and the mission on that installation.
Mr. CALVERT. It might be worth looking into——
Secretary DUBOIS. I agree.
Mr. CALVERT [continuing]. ——as there would be no cost. It would just simplify matters entirely. Another issue is, for instance—I am being parochial for the moment—at the same base, they have a security gate issue, the same thing, fencing, as you have on other bases. Land that has been already excessed, they would like to probably take that, move it on that—even though the land is still presently owned by the United States Government—to move that gate in that area. It is not that much property, but the way that the BRAC works, it is very difficult to do that, and it would certainly make that base operate much more effectively. So, hopefully——
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Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. CALVERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Underwood?
Mr. UNDERWOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Secretary. My concern and my question pertains to the issue of economic activity on military bases or going through military bases for economic activity in light of these new force protection issues now.
I am trying to get a handle on the relationship between overall DOD policy and individual service policy, and then discretion given to individual base commanders regarding these issues. But just on the general topic of access to military facilities for people to conduct commercial activities, I understand that in the initial time period after 9–11, of course, there was almost a total cessation of this.
But increasingly, in various facilities, people are being allowed more and more as time goes on to go through military bases to landlocked property in order to conduct commercial activities, but there does not seem to be any kind of uniform policy on that. Could you speak to the issue of to what degree individual base commanders are allowed the flexibility to make that determination?
Secretary DUBOIS. With respect to economic activity on post, with respect to access to facilities for individuals to conduct commercial activities, the general policy of the Department, obviously, is for individual base commanders, based on the threat condition, to determine access for those activities.
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Mr. UNDERWOOD. In one sense, that could be helpful, but in another sense, it is not very helpful. Here is the problem I am having in one case in Guam. There is adjacent Federal property through which access could be given. And if, in the case of DOD property, that access is not given, can DOD perhaps be more helpful with us to have access through the other property, because it is a question of people who are landlocked by Federal property conducting commercial activity.
Secretary DUBOIS. As you know, on Guam, you have got the Air Force and the Navy and the Marines. I will look into it. I will see whether or not there is some difficulty between the services in this regard and report back to you.
Mr. UNDERWOOD. Thank you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Rodriguez?
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you.
I know that utilizing the private and public sector, we have been able to get additional resources, for example, on the housing, where we have needed housing, and that has been extremely helpful. I was just wondering what roles the committee could play in enhancing that to be able to make some gains in some of those areas, because there is no doubt that we need a lot more resources, and we do not have those resources, and there are some other possibilities. I was wondering if you want to comment in that area.
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Secretary DUBOIS. There are other tools and methods in terms of reducing total cost of ownership to the Department of Defense and the taxpayers of this country with respect to infrastructure. As you know, sir, in your district, we have the so-called city basing approach, emblematic of the situation at Brooks Air Force Base.
Utility privatization is another methodology which the Department and the military services are using to, quite frankly, make up for the years of underfunding of the unseen infrastructure on installations. We have a goal of addressing the some 1,600 utility systems around the world owned by one of the military departments and privatizing them, not all of them, but a significant percentage of them, 90-plus percent.
I believe you know of the pilot projects that were authorized by this committee in this fiscal year for each of the services to come up with two opportunities for enhanced use leasing, building on the, I believe, success of the city basing concept and construct at Brooks. In fact, I am chairing an Installation Policy Board meeting tomorrow, and that is one of the things that we will be discussing.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. With regard to the comments made by Congressman Taylor regarding selling, I know that——
Secretary DUBOIS. Regarding what, sir?
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Selling of the property after closure. At Kelly, in all honesty, after it was initially sold for $100 million to the city, right now, we are having a dilemma of just the infrastructure—you mentioned giving the utilities to the companies. For example, just taking utilities, the local water districts do not want it because they are substandard.
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And so at Kelly, we are looking at almost $300 million that we have to pump into the infrastructure system at a base that was already closed in the last BRAC because of the fact that the infrastructure is not appropriate. It does not meet standards. Buildings do not meet the standards, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
So it is a real dilemma, after you go through closing a base, and then trying to see if people are even interested in utilizing them. I do not know if you want to make any comments, but it is hard for the community to come back and——
Secretary DUBOIS. It is a serious dilemma and one in which, with respect to our operational installations, we found that there was no other alternative, similar to the housing situation, but to depend upon and explore avenues in the private sector for private capital.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Congressman Taylor also talked about the base closures and how the prioritization is going to take place. I was wondering how, as you prioritize in terms of those resources on those same special projects that we might have—how that might impact, such as, you know, Brooks city base concept.
Secretary DUBOIS. The investments that are recommended by the Secretary of Defense that are in the President's budget are focused on mission critical requirements. They are not facility centric, per se. As I have testified in the past, as has the Secretary of Defense, we did not make decisions that Base A versus Base B would be invested in.
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Let's also be honest with ourselves and recognize, and correctly so, that there will always be stranded investment in a BRAC process, not because we want to, but because we recognize that there are important investments that need to be made in terms of sustainment, restoration, modernization across the board. But we do not have today, nor have we started, an analysis that says Base A versus Base B. You all gave us 3 years to do that, and we are going to take that time and do it methodically and deliberately and comprehensively and from a joint cross-service standpoint.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez.
Mr. Reyes?
Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, I know we are under the gun in terms of force protection, and the amount of money, that is, around a $564 million increase, is certainly not enough to take care of all the needs that are present in today's environment. Is there a coherent, uniform strategy, either from DOD or anyplace else, for addressing the shortfalls? Is that going to be primarily left up to the individual base commander? What is the thinking in that area?
Secretary DUBOIS. With respect to antiterrorism/force protection, installation specific, as I indicated, the Secretary of Defense did not say to the service secretaries, ''You have got $100 million, you have got $100 million, and you have got $100 million.'' Those requirements came up—they were bottom-up requirements submitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and those requirements were mapped against an executability issue, as was raised earlier, and they were also mapped against vulnerability assessments for final determination.
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My understanding is there was no dictation or dictum from OSD to the services. And each one of them made an assessment of what their immediate needs were.
Now, construction criteria and the kinds of buildings that we would lease for our needs, our requirements—those unified criteria are about to be published. Now, needless to say, you cannot publish the criteria 1 day and say now they are all applicable immediately the next.
We have leases in some buildings now—it has been reported in the press, so this is no secret, that certain buildings in northern Virginia, for instance, where we have military missions, military folks—we have made adjustments with respect to whether they stay there, whether they do not stay there, whether other non-DOD resources or assets continue to stay in that building by virtue of the underground parking, et cetera. We have made immediate adjustments to that kind of critical situation.
I think this question was asked earlier: How much money are we going to propose next year and the year after and the year after? I do not know that.
Mr. REYES. But my question was who makes the determination in areas where there are shortfalls, and when decisions are made, is there an appeals process?
Secretary DUBOIS. Again, I would defer to the services. It was their considered judgment as to where the money was needed in this fiscal year.
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Mr. REYES. But the distribution of money was done out of DOD.
Secretary DUBOIS. No, sir. The decisions as to where to spend the money—fence line X in Base Y—was done by the individual military departments, the individual services.
Mr. REYES. Is there an appeal process, in case a base commander or somebody——
Secretary DUBOIS. My understanding is that the appeal process is internal to each military department. Again, the Department of Defense or the Office of the Secretary of Defense did not believe it a legitimate exercise of their authority, direction, and control under Title 10 to dictate to the Secretary of the Air Force, ''You will put a fence on Hill Air Force Base,'' or whatever, versus a fence at Davis——
Mr. REYES. Right. I understand that. I was just curious, because I have seen a lot of the same situations, not just here in the United States, but abroad, that we have a situation of a facility that is going to fall somewhere in the pecking order in terms of force protection, and you happen to miss the cut. What do we do, and what happens, and who will be responsible if there is an organization out there that is looking at the areas where we are focusing on and trying to find the vulnerable ones in order to make maximum impact, by many different means?
Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, sir. And as I indicated, I would be much more comfortable with the individual services' determination as to their needs and what they could efficiently execute within the remainder of this fiscal year in terms of, again, Facility X, Y, or Z.
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Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Reyes.
Mr. Secretary, you have been generous with your time. Mr. Abercrombie has one follow-up question or set of questions, and then we will move on to our next panel.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Secretary, I want to make sure I understand your answer to the chairman about this Northern Command and the money. Was it your answer that the only part of this budget that you knew about for this Northern Command was $25 million for a CINC for homeland security to support the war on terrorism. Requested funding will refurbish existing facilities to support a new headquarters, includes the cost of anti-terrorism force protection upgrades to any existing facility, creation of secure spaces for classified information processing, upgrades to facilities to meet current standards. That is all you are aware of?
Secretary DUBOIS. Well, the question, as I understood it, from the chairman was: Was one of the criteria used to select or down select for potential sites for CINCNORTH headquarters that there be no MILCON dollars spent? My understanding was that that was not a criteria.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay, look. You are a smart man, and I respect you. I really do. I think we have had a good relationship here. But I do not want to get into word games.
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Secretary DUBOIS. I apologize if I am not answering your question. I want to understand. I truly do.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay, because when this comes out—I have talked to other members of the committee, including the Military Personnel Subcommittee and so on, and people are not aware of this. We just got this in the first week. This is a defense emergency response fund. That is what we are talking about here.
Secretary DUBOIS. That is right, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. $564 million.
Secretary DUBOIS. $25 million for facility refurbishment——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes, but under the Army here—military construction, $100 million, and $25 million, then, is coming out of the Army. Is that right? Is that $25 million in the $100 million?
Secretary DUBOIS. Negative, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. It is in addition, isn't it?
Secretary DUBOIS. Yes, it is.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Then we are not talking about $564 million. What we are really talking about when we get finished here is another $296 million for this so-called homeland security.
Secretary DUBOIS. I am not following you.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, it is right in the budget here. I am just reading the budget.
Secretary DUBOIS. The spreadsheet that I have——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. The MILCON part of it is $25 million, and when you add up the rest of it, including the operation and maintenance for the Army and the National Guard and so on, you are talking $296 million, $25 million of which is MILCON for this homeland security CINC. Is that right?
Secretary DUBOIS. I am only aware of those dollars, the $25 million, for so-called facility refurbishment, which is listed in my spreadsheet under joint staff, not under the Army, for the purposes——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Then is it appropriate for me to ask General Van Antwerp what is going on?
Secretary DUBOIS. I would not put General Van Antwerp in that position. All I am saying is——
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I will do it.
Secretary DUBOIS [continuing]. ——if there are other DERF monies allocated against the CINCNORTH issue, I do not—all I focused on in my testimony was MILCON.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. All right. So far, then, this homeland security CINC that the DOD is going to stand up—jeez, I love these phrases—war on terrorism. There is a war on fiscal sensibility here, too.
You mean there is $25 million so far. Is that a fair statement?
Secretary DUBOIS. It is.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. $25 million in construction costs.
Secretary DUBOIS. That is what is requested under the DERF 2002 supplemental.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Just so that I am sure that I am clear, the $296 million that Mr. Abercrombie mentioned is the total cost of the homeland security command.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So far.
Mr. SAXTON. So far. And the $25 million is the MILCON portion of that.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Right. That is how I understand it.
Secretary DUBOIS. My only insights are into the $25 million. I do not have insights into the other.
Mr. SAXTON. Right, and you are not expected to.
Secretary DUBOIS. But you have peaked my interest.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Oh, man, what a scam. What a tremendous scam.
Mr. SAXTON. Well, I am not sure I agree with my friend's analysis of the homeland security and the Northern Command. We have a threat that we never had before.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, do not get me wrong. I am for having it, but we have already got an existing structure with the National Guard and all the rest of it that is perfectly capable of handling all of this without getting a whole new career opportunity path for hundreds of millions of dollars, especially after 9–11. I do not like the idea that people are taking advantage of what happened on 9–11 in order to start a whole new opportunity, spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and create new career paths.
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Mr. SAXTON. Okay. We are going to have plenty of time to discuss this issue, and it is obviously going to be a spirited discussion. So, thank you, Neil, for your thoughts.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. For my helpfulness?
Mr. SAXTON. For your helpfulness, right.
Mr. Secretary, thank you. You have been with us now for an hour and 40 minutes. That has got to be some kind of a record. We appreciate your indulgence and the information that you brought with you to share with us. Thank you for being here, sir, and we look forward to working with you as we move forward.
Secretary DUBOIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Our second panel this afternoon will provide the military services' perspective to this issue. Our witnesses are Major General Robert Van Antwerp, Jr., Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management in the United States Army; Major General Earnest O. Robbins, II, the Air Force Civil Engineer; Rear Admiral Christopher W. Cole, Director of the Ashore Readiness Division of the United States Navy; and Brigadier General Select Ronald S. Coleman, Assistant Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics Facilities, United States Marine Corps.
While you are arranging yourselves at the table, I would just like to note that this is likely to be General Van Antwerp's last appearance before the subcommittee. He has been selected as the new commander of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in our distinguished full committee ranking member's district, Mr. Ike Skelton.
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Congratulations, General. I know that you are going to enjoy your new command, and we wish you well.
General VAN ANTWERP. Thank you, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. Do we have a choice as to who is going to be the lead-off hitter here?
General VAN ANTWERP. I will.
Mr. SAXTON. General Van Antwerp.
STATEMENTS OF MAJOR GENERAL ROBERT L. VAN ANTWERP, JR., ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF FOR INSTALLATION MANAGEMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY; REAR ADMIRAL CHRISTOPHER W. COLE, DIRECTOR OF ASHORE READINESS DIVISION, UNITED STATES NAVY; MAJOR GENERAL EARNEST O. ROBBINS II, AIR FORCE CIVIL ENGINEER AND BRIGADIER GENERAL (SELECT) RONALD S. COLEMAN, ASSISTANT DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR INSTALLATIONS AND LOGISTICS (FACILITIES), UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
General VAN ANTWERP. I will go, based on longevity and number of testimonies probably that I have given over time.
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to come and talk about our facility strategy and about anti-terrorism force protection, both very important topics.
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I will take the Army facility strategy first, our future strategy. Basically, it is a stool with four legs. One leg is the sustainment piece, and by sustaining, if we sustain at 100 percent, that means we are halting the deterioration of our facilities.
Another leg of that stool is the recapitalization piece, which is the modernization and restoration, and if it is a new facility, it would be taking care of the quantity shortfalls, which is the third leg of the stool. And then the fourth leg is the quality piece.
Right now, we are basically a C–1 Army mission ready, mission capable, living on C–3, C–4 installations, and so that is what we have to get at. And, sir, as you mentioned, in Korea, we are very much aware of that. We do have a plan.
Frankly, in Korea, we have done 50 years, 1 year at a time, and we really are moving past that work on the barracks, family housing, and other initiatives. But we have a long way to go, and we thank you for your support on that.
Additionally, I would like to just talk for a second about the transformation of installation management. The Army is embarking on a transformation where we are going to organize our installations where we have a corporate structure that is responsible solely for the installations, and we hope that it will do a couple of things.
One is to provide a higher level of funding and a more level level of funding, if you will, a smoother level of funding to the installations. It consists of seven geographic regions, four in CONUS and three overseas, and, basically, it will protect our SRM resources to the installations.
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I would like to talk just for a second, as I close here, on force protection. We had embarked on a force protection program before 9–11, and, in retrospect, our Vice Chief and Chief are really prophets for doing this, because it got us part way, and then, of course, we have continued.
Basically, we have in our 2002 and 2003 budget submissions those upgrades in our projects to provide antiterrorism/force protection, standoff distance on siting, mylar windows, window protection, steel—it adds about five percent to our MILCON projects, but we have those in our 2002 and 2003 projects. We started to establish the access control before 9–11, and, of course, that is really where the emphasis has been.
Sir, I noted you talked about the different fence lines, what we did was send teams out to try and get standardization. The first input was from the installations, so we are really trying to standardize that.
Every case is a little different. In some cases, you have other barriers that provide that, and you do not need fences. Or in some cases, the housing is internal to the base and other places on the perimeter. But we are looking at the standardization.
Up to this point in 2002, we have $55 million in MILCON. And then in 2003, our portion of MILCON is $100 million for the Army. It basically goes into guards and guardhouses, lighting, fences, barriers, and new technologies that, frankly, would make this less manpower intensive. We have an awful lot of soldiers we call on gate guard and doing that installation security business.
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Sir, I thank you for the opportunity to come and testify before you today, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Van Antwerp can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, General.
Admiral?
Admiral COLE. Thank you, sir. I am extremely honored to be here. It is nice to see you again, sir.
On recapitalization, this is the highest level of facility investment the Navy has ever submitted. But I think, as you have heard, it is going to take more than just funding to get our bases back to where they need to be.
As a regional commander, as more of a customer of my predecessor, I can tell you that a lot of great things have been happening in the area of planning. We are going to plan from a regional standpoint. We have put together plans based on something greater than just the installation perspective.
Also, the assessment tools that the Secretary mentioned, I think are extremely important, because it allows us to tell where the money went, and did it get the results that we were looking for. That has been a problem. We put money in, we know money is going in, but how do we really measure the output. And I think that is what we have in the new executive review (ER) system, and I am very pleased to see that working, both when I was a regional commander and now up here in Washington.
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Following leadership from the Secretary of Defense and the Installation Policy Board, of which we are all members, this budget is implementing a new approach to facilities maintenance, as you heard. This approach seeks a life cycle balance that is the most economical to attain and sustain facilities in good condition, get them there.
In addressing our recapitalization goals for family housing, we are also expanding our use of partnerships, as I know you know, and you have been very helpful on. We are tapping the strengths of this country's private enterprise system to leverage our ability to obtain quality housing for our sailors and their families more quickly than we could solely through MILCON.
Based on this success, we are also investigating privatization as a tool to house bachelors. In bachelor housing, we have a pilot that will be coming to you in Norfolk, and also the Marines have a couple of pilots that they will be presenting to you. Hopefully, you will support us on that, because we think this is a great way to get our sailors off ships and give them quality bachelor housing.
In force protection, this budget enhances the Navy's posture. I think all the services probably were doing some things prior to 9–11. I know the Navy got a wake-up call, particularly with ship protection, following the Cole bombing. We did a lot of things, as, Mr. Chairman, I know you observed.
We are working to make our bases and operational assets less vulnerable to attack, mitigating possible damage from attack, and then increasing our ability to respond should something happen. Some of the components of our force protection measures are perimeter security, access control, well trained response forces, standoff distances, construction standards, command and control, and, I think very importantly, a rigorous assessment of how we are doing by both the joint staff and Navy experts.
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Every installation has increased its security posture since the attacks of September 11th. This budget provides additional security personnel, training, technology, fencing, barriers, security craft, intrusion detection systems, chemical detection systems, and communication devices.
In addition, Congress approved the use of the DERF to meet critical emerging AT/FP requirements, and it is allocated to the services during budget execution. We received DERF during 2002, and we expect to get some in 2003 as well.
In summary, I feel this budget provides a commitment to long-term recapitalization of the Navy facilities through a balanced life cycle approach. It also provides enhanced force protection through a balance of investments in personnel, technology, equipment, and physical infrastructure construction.
The net result of this budget is the Navy shore installations will increase current readiness, invest in the future, and improve the quality of service to our sailors and their families.
I thank you very much for giving me this opportunity, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Cole can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
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Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Admiral Cole.
General Robbins?
General ROBBINS. Good afternoon, sir. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I also appreciate the opportunity to appear before you, in my case, to discuss force protection and the Air Force's investment strategy for long-term recapitalization of our physical plant.
Our nation has received repeated reminders of the dangers our military personnel, family members, and civilian employees face from the growing threat of terrorism. Bombings at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, at two of our embassies in Africa, and against the USS Cole underscore our need to protect personnel operating abroad. Sadly, the events of September 11th have now brought that threat home as well.
Our military installations and facilities play a key role in defending against this rapidly growing concern. In recent years, we have made tremendous advances in the ways we identify, program, design, and construct force protection measures into our physical plant, and the events of September 11th put an exclamation point on our efforts in this arena.
Our fiscal year 2003 budget request includes prudent investment to ensure the men and women of our installations and our facilities are protected against potential threats. And we anticipate this emphasis will continue as we develop our infrastructure plans for the future.
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This supplement or DERF request—an additional $200 million in MILCON, $30 million in family housing, and over $220 million in sustainment, restoration, and modernization—targets specifically at force protection issues within the Air Force.
In addition to our focus on force protection planning and programming, we continue to focus on the long-term recapitalization of our physical plant. Generally speaking, our strategy for facility and infrastructure recapitalization is built upon both near-term and long-term sustainment of what we currently own and restoration and modernization to recapitalize our physical plant as it reaches the end of its economic life.
To ensure the continued viability of our installations around the U.S. and overseas, we must balance sustainment expenditures with restoration and modernization investment. Without proper sustainment, our facility repair and replacement costs increase.
When building our fiscal year 2003 overall facility investment request, we began by fully funding facility sustainment and intend to do the same in the future. In fiscal year 2003, we have budgeted $1.8 billion for sustainment of non-family housing facilities and $476 million for family housing sustainment.
During the last decade, constrained budgets and competing needs resulted in the underfunding of both facility sustainment and recapitalization. As a result, we have incurred a significant backlog of critical restoration and modernization requirements. The fiscal years 2003 to 2007 Defense Planning Guidance directs us to fund restoration, modernization, and replacement at a 67-year recapitalization rate for 80 percent of the current infrastructure by 2010.
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As we increase our level of restoration and modernization investment on our way toward meeting DOD's goal, we will gradually buy down our backlog. And if we sustain our programmed level of investment beyond 2007, we expect to eliminate the backlog by 2010.
I thank the committee for its strong support of Air Force facilities and infrastructure and for your interest in recapitalization and force protection. With your help, we will ensure we meet the most urgent needs of commanders in the field while providing safe, efficient, and secure facilities for the men and women who serve our nation here and abroad.
I will be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of General Robbins can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
Mr. SAXTON. General, thank you very much.
General Coleman?
General COLEMAN. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it is a pleasure to appear before you today.
First, I would like to thank you for your ongoing support for Marine Corps military construction. Facilities are a critical component of our readiness to fight and win our nation's battles.
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The benefits of infrastructure recapitalization are two-fold. First, recapitalization of our infrastructure is a critical element of our antiterrorism and force protection effort.
Both restoration and modernization funding and new construction provide enhanced structural systems, doors, windows, ceilings, roofs, walls and floors. These systems significantly reduce the risk of mass casualties from terrorist attacks in the buildings where our service members work and live.
Second, recapitalization has the added benefit of eliminating old, inadequate structures and replacing them with new, energy and mission efficient structures.
We continue to make progress in our effort to adequately fund our infrastructure support. Although our facility sustainment is adequately resourced, operational and maintenance, restoration and modernization, and active and reserve military construction continue to struggle for additional resources.
In 2003, our plant replacement rate is 156 years and an average of 101 years between fiscal year 2003 and fiscal year 2007, well short of the Department of Defense guidance that directed us to fund at a level that would replace our plant every 67 years. The Marine Corps is working toward an adequate plant replacement rate.
In fiscal year 2002, 57 percent of our facilities ratings are C–3 or C–4. This means that these facilities have major deficiencies that preclude satisfactory mission accomplishment.
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Despite these less than satisfactory metrics, the Marines and their families that I have spoken with are more optimistic about their future than every before. Family housing, bachelor housing, and operational facilities construction, supported by this committee, has finally begun to become visible on Marine Corps installations.
Our fiscal year 2003 military construction, family housing, and reserve budget provides over $500 million. Our proposal will support our most urgent requirements for readiness and quality of life construction.
Operational and training facilities will support aircraft maintenance, weapons maintenance, and added essential recruit training opportunities at Beaufort, Parris Island, and Cherry Point. Camp Pendleton will be able to implement further improvements to its potable water system, and Quantico will have new barracks and a new weapons maintenance facility. The 2003 program continues to provide in excess of $50 million for new barracks construction, and this is mainly for enlisted.
Every dollar spent on our facilities is an investment that pays long-term dividends in readiness, retention, and mission accomplishment. The Marine Corps thanks you for your continued support.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening remarks, and I will be pleased to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of General Coleman can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
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Mr. SAXTON. General Coleman, thank you very much. When is the big day when we will see those stars on your shoulder?
General COLEMAN. Sir, from where I sit, not soon enough.
[Laughter.]
Sir, I believe late this year, November or December.
Mr. SAXTON. Well, we look forward to it.
Mr. Abercrombie?
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General, I want to add my congratulations as well to where you will be going, and I am sure you are well acquainted over the years with Mr. Skelton and know the tremendous respect we all have for him. I am sure it will be a pleasure to be there in that command.
That said, I want to make sure that you understand, because I noticed you listening with rapt attention to the last conversation, and I saw when I said I was going to ask you some questions a big smile on your face, saying, ''Boy, I am really looking forward to that.'' But, as a matter of fact, you should.
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I want to make it clear here, stating my premise here. I am sure you are aware of the budgets that I am talking about here, right? It is the Defense Emergency Response Fund, and I believe the staff has given you a copy of the pages that I am referring to in it, pages 63 and so on, under homeland security.
Here is what bothers me. Well, first, let me tell you what does not bother me. It does not bother me in the least—in fact, the record will show I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Army and National Guard activity with respect to emergency responses and giving the National Guard Bureau the opportunity to integrate better than it has already in terms of communication. And I said that well before September 11th, and I can assure you I have said it afterwards.
So a major portion of the budget that we are talking about here will go for—and I am going to read it, not because you do not know it, but because not everybody may have this in front of them. ''Funding secures interstate National Guard Bureau voice video data transmission for classified traffic, additional hardware, software, et cetera,'' right?
So a lot of the millions of dollars we are talking about here would go for upgrading and, in fact, creating the capacity for the Guard to have a communication system worthy of the name in terms of the United States, right?
General VAN ANTWERP. Correct.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And with respect to the mission of the Guard, police forces, firefighters, emergency medical people, civil defense folks, et cetera, to be able to deal with various and sundry emergencies coming up in any individual area, right?
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General VAN ANTWERP. Correct.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Is that your understanding of what this is for? That comes under the title in here of Homeland Security. And because it is in the Guard and it has to have a budget home, it is with the Army, right? I assume you agree that is a natural home for it, given the fact that it is the Guard.
General VAN ANTWERP. Yes, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. All that said, then, what I do not understand—and this is where I think that OSD has to come up with some rationale, or, for that matter, the Army itself. Why aren't we utilizing, then, the National Guard Bureau or using the present structure within the Army to be the coordinating vehicle, if you will, institutional vehicle, for homeland security?
I am not trying to run Mr. Ridge out of town or make fun of him or anything else, you know. This is all coming after September 11th, and a lot of it we are doing as we go along. There was no model. There was no sustainment model or aging facility model until after 9/11.
But that is my question. Is it your understanding that if we spend this money, you will have the capacity, i.e., the National Guard Bureau will have the capacity to essentially coordinate all homeland security activity as it might arise in any individual location or any local circumstance?
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General VAN ANTWERP. Sir, I am not sure of that. I am going to have to take that for the record. I think that is certainly the intent of it, but I am not into those numbers. I have not had the opportunity to go into them.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Well, then, has it been discussed with you as to what exactly, then, this $25 million is for, with respect to the—''refurbish existing facilities to support a new headquarters, creation of secure spaces for classified information.'' Do you have any idea what that means?
General VAN ANTWERP. My understanding is that is for the new facility, the new headquarters, for NORTHCOM when they go in there that needs refurbishment and the secure facilities.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, did they discuss with you the necessity for having such a facility if everything is going to be coordinated through the National Guard Bureau?
General VAN ANTWERP. Sir, really, in fact, those lines were put in by the joint staff. So I really do not have——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I noticed that. That was my next question. What does all this have to do with this thing called in here—after we get through CINC, homeland security, Army—you will get stuck with this, because it says, ''CINC, homeland security, Army.'' Then it says, ''CINC, homeland security, the joint staff.'' But when you come to the budget summary, you are all in this together.
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General VAN ANTWERP. Right.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Has it been discussed with you, I guess, is the best question for me to ask.
General VAN ANTWERP. It has not.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. So this is going to have to go to another level, right, in terms of what it is.
Major General VAN ANTWERP. Sure.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, what I said before may sound a bit dramatic. What I am saying about the scam part of it here—I mean, I am not trying to overstate it, but it is irritating to me, and I am sure it is irritating to others.
It bothers me when we are making a sincere effort—and I know you are, Mr. Chairman, because of my long association with you and the committee—to deal with construction projects that need to be done in defense of the strategic interests of the United States and on behalf of our troops to have to come into a situation where it gives every appearance of people saying, ''Boy, now is our chance to set up a whole new deal with a new career path and everything else and put money behind it,'' when every one of you has projects right now that are unfunded, every one of you has priorities that you have worked very hard to put together.
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I am very concerned about this, because I know one thing, having been in public office for 28 years. If somebody is asking you for $25 million to get started on facilities, that means that millions and millions and millions cannot be far behind in requests.
And, finally, then, Mr. Chairman, the question I would ask, not of General Van Antwerp, certainly, because I do not think he is in a position to answer it today—but the question needs to be asked. If we fund this facility in our budget or authorize it, do we have accompanying that some kind of an organizational chart that shows how the other services or the other CINCs are going to be affected by this new command.
Are people going to be drawn from other places? Are there going to be other facilities? Will commands and obligations and responsibilities be channeled to this new command? Will people have to be moved? Part of the budget, as I understand it here, means you have to move people.
And there is $10 million to pay for civilian personnel compensation for employees in the new headquarters; $12 million to pay for supplies, office equipment, services to support the headquarters; $15 million to lease interim facilities. Has any of that been discussed with you?
General VAN ANTWERP. No, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I just think that we are off on a whirlwind or a merry-go-round of expenditures, Mr. Chairman, and we are going to inevitably end up with MILCON requests that we are going to then have to balance against the responsibilities that this committee already has to assume.
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Thank you very much.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
General Robbins, I would just like to give you the opportunity to comment on the Secretary's comment that while the target for replacing inferior facilities for housing is 2007 servicewide, the Air Force is on line to complete the job by 2010. Tell us, if you would, the rationale that exists for 2010.
General ROBBINS. Yes, sir. The Air Force subscribes to the 2007 goal as something that we would like to do. But when we laid out our requirements across all the inadequate housing in the Air Force—and it is about 46,000 units that we face today—and we looked at the combination of MILCON investment and privatization opportunities to address that dilemma.
We determined that we simply could not get there by 2007, primarily because there are 14 bases in the Air Force that are going to get a MILCON project every year for family housing between now and 2010 in order to mitigate the inadequate housing at those installations. If we were to try to compress those last 3 years, 2008, 2009, and 2010, forward into 2007 or before, we would have to displace somewhere around 9,000 additional families, move them out, so that we could go in and replace or renovate the existing units.
At those installations, we do not believe that there is adequate cushion outside the gate in the civilian market to absorb those families who would be temporarily displaced. So it is a matter of timing and phasing of the projects more so than it is actually the fiscal constraint.
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Mr. SAXTON. The Secretary indicated that he had had conversations with Air Force representatives to bring the process forward so that the Air Force would, in fact, conclude by 2007. But from what you say, it appears that it would create some hardships on some families if we forced you or the Air Force to comply with the 2007 deadline.
General ROBBINS. Yes, sir. Again, I am not privy to the conversations that Mr. DuBois may have had with the Chief or the Secretary, although I know both of those gentlemen do, as I said, subscribe to a goal that would allow us to do that, to reach it by 2007.
We have said we are going to do everything we can, looking at additional privatization opportunities, whatever we can do, to try to move the goal forward. But as of today—and we have briefed this to Mr. DuBois and on up—it looks like it is 2010 for the Air Force.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
As I indicated earlier, I am pleased that the military services have requested additional funding for military construction in the area of force protection, which I happen to believe is extremely important. And I will not go into all that, because you have all heard my speech more than once.
Unfortunately, I do not see a coherent plan in the various projects requested. What does your service view as the protection priorities, and how is that view reflected in the request? Is there an individual service plan? Is there a DOD plan, because so far, I cannot identify it.
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General Van Antwerp?
General VAN ANTWERP. We do have a service plan, yes, sir. And, basically, our plan has had several pieces to it. The first piece, obviously, was to provide access control, and that was done through a number of means, fencing, Jersey barriers, guards, guardhouses, increased lighting, surveillance cameras, all of those.
The next position is to look at those new technologies that would allow you to do vehicle scanning, for instance, and maybe even people scanning using the technology that is available today and maybe into the future. And the other areas that we have really concentrated on are areas that are particularly vulnerable to weapons of mass destruction or large car bombs or those where we had very high value, high risk targets.
So we have a system we call perimeters within the perimeter, so it means we go deeper into the installation, and some areas need further protection, either standoff distance or special coding on the windows or a special steel treatment as the facility is constructed.
What we did in every one of the major commands—we sent out teams that had the standard. So those teams went to every installation to try and get uniformity among those installations.
Of course, the starting point was very different out there. Some already had pretty good access control. Others had zero access control. So it depended on where the installation started what was in that picture.
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But that is basically where we are. We are trying to standardize as much as possible. There is still a lot of leeway given to the installation commander to make calls.
Mr. SAXTON. I do not think this is quite your department, but you mentioned the vehicle scanning devices. Can you tell us a little bit about the type of technology and how it is available?
General VAN ANTWERP. Sure. It really falls under our G–3 in our Office of Defense and Law Enforcement. But basically, what the vehicle scanning devices that we have seen and that have been demonstrated in various places do is a density scan.
So they are able to, by scanning a vehicle —one of our real problems is, you know, when we have delivery trucks, the ones that you really need to check. And what these things do is scan for density, they are able to pick up variations in density, much like the X-ray machines as you go into the airport, except it is for a vehicle now. They also would scan underneath the vehicle, so it would be a way to get a total look at that vehicle.
Mr. SAXTON. Is there more than one source, more than one technology? I am familiar with——
General VAN ANTWERP. I believe there is more than one technology, but the main one is based on this density idea.
Mr. SAXTON. Back scatter?
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General VAN ANTWERP. Right, it is a back scatter.
Mr. SAXTON. Admiral?
Admiral COLE. Sir, I think there are individual service plans. I have not checked, but I am pretty sure that when you get through, you will see some uniformity in there. And I think the uniformity comes from the joint staff working in conjunction with OSD on the vulnerability assessments. I know we all take our cues from the exercises they do with us. I know we have benefited a lot.
Our own particular service plan is perimeter security. We have fairly small bases, relative to the Army, where we really can do that affordably.
We do have the waterfront issue, which gives us new challenges, and we are doing things to help our perimeter security there. Certainly access control—we want to make sure that people on the base are authorized, and things that come on the base are authorized.
We would like to look at back scatter. We used that in Bahrain. We are looking at that now for all our truck inspection stations onto the ports.
Then, of course, the construction standards, I think, with the standoff, lead us to base designs that are all very similar. But I think the services do have different problems and perhaps come up with different solutions.
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Mr. SAXTON. General Robbins?
General ROBBINS. Yes, sir. I ditto pretty much what you have heard previously, although I would suggest that if we are looking for a plan in the form of something like our Family Housing Master Plan or our Dormitory Master Plan for AT/FP, I know, speaking for the Air Force, we do not have that, because, quite frankly, it has been 7 months since 9–11 today, I think, and given the propensity for committees, we would still be working on the plan, and we would have had nothing.
But what we did do, very quickly, was very much the process that is described here, where we did the vulnerability assessments across the Air Force and all the departments, then relied on the local commanders to take the criteria that we had, take the vulnerability assessment, determine where the weaknesses were, and that is, for example, how we built our input to this DERF request. We looked at where we were weakest, where the soft spots were, prioritized them, and then quickly developed the programming documents to get them to you. And I think it has worked very well. I think the list that we have submitted is very sound in terms of the priority that we have them in.
Mr. SAXTON. General Coleman?
General COLEMAN. Sir, I believe we are all on track in pretty much the same way. No. 1 for us would be access to the base and setbacks or standoffs. Most of our bases are small, and most of the buildings are set back off the main road of the base.
I will use Camp Pendleton as an example. When you first get in the gate, you go miles before you actually get to anything—so those sorts of things.
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Where we do not have that, we avoid the progressive collapse of the building, reduce the flying debris, and this is all through the construction of the building. And as with all the services, sir, these were things that were started prior to both 9–11 and the Cole. We also all use the Joint Services Integrated Vulnerability Assessment Team to go out at a joint staff's A–34, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
This is a quick question and elicits a quick answer. Many of the projects submitted in the amended budget request are slated for bid in the last 2 months of fiscal year 2003. Are you certain all these projects are executable? Is everybody saying yes? Okay.
Now, let me ask a very elementary question. This is my last question, and I almost want to apologize for asking this question, because, in a sense, these issues are other people's business.
But when I watch access points to bases all around this country and overseas as well, I see a variety of patterns, and I am curious as to why this variety exists. At air bases, I have seen what looked like some kind of a fighting vehicle—I am not quite sure what it is—with a 50 caliber machine gun on top and a guy sitting behind the machine gun, and that gets my attention real quick.
On the other end of the spectrum, I see guys standing out on the roadway with M–16s on their shoulders, and they look to me like targets. I do not understand, from a personnel protection point of view, why we would put guards out on the side of the road, standing there with a non-bullet proof shack with M–16s on their shoulders. They look like targets to me.
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Is there any explanation for the diversity of patterns?
General ROBBINS. For the Air Force, I would just suggest that if you look at the list of projects we have submitted, you are going to see an awful lot of entrance projects, entrance gates with the bullet proof glass and all the force protection measures that can be incorporated into them.
Also, speaking from experience, when 9–11 happened—and I happen to live on Bolling Air Force Base—every day when I would drive home, during the time that we were in the heightened THREATCON, those guys were not out beyond the perimeter. You drove up, and they would come right up to the gate, and then we had all those people in the armored vehicles that you speak of with the 50 calibers pointed at you.
So I think as the threat condition has decreased, you have, in fact, probably seen more of a migration outside. And they do not have the bullet proof vests on anymore, whereas for the first month or so, our security forces were pretty well armed, pretty well protected, and I do not think anybody was putting them in a position where they felt that they were particularly vulnerable. And if they were outside that gate, they would be able to very quickly retreat back inside it. But, again, in this budget submission, you will see a lot of requests for enhancing security at our entry points.
Mr. SAXTON. Any other comments?
Admiral COLE. Well, I would agree. We do have a lot of access control, gate improvements, so we can eliminate some of those vulnerabilities.
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Just another related comment is when I was the regional commander, one of our intents was to change the look of the security at the gate on a random basis. That is one of the things that is recommended by the joint staff, that you change the look, because routine is a vulnerability. So I will say that if you went to Norfolk, you would see different things, different procedures happening, and that was intentional, and I think perhaps the other services are doing some of those same things.
But we are trying to address the vulnerabilities. We do not want the young men and women to be targets.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hostettler?
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Van Antwerp, as you heard awhile ago in my discussion with Under Secretary DuBois, I visited our troops in South Korea last August, and I was very disturbed by the living conditions and working conditions that they operate in. And I can also see why South Korea is the worst location in the Department of Defense for a permanent change of station location.
Could you tell me what the recapitalization rate is for installations in South Korea and what more needs to be done to attain an acceptable quality of life for personnel on the peninsula?
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General VAN ANTWERP. I do not have that recapitalization rate, sir, for Korea broken out. But for the Army, this year, it is 127 years. So it is far off of that 67-year target.
We are shooting to get to that target by 2010, but we are a long way from it right now. I would say Korea is worse than the 127 years. I mean, they are——
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Pretty far down in the weighted average, as you would say.
General VAN ANTWERP. Pretty far down. We are really going after the quality of life issues there. We are improving the barracks as quickly as we can work the swing space issue, much like General Robbins was saying for the housing. That really is the governing factor.
The other thing is we are working—General Schwartz included—very hard with the host nation for host nation family housing. They may have shown you some of that. One of their goals is to try and increase the number of accompanied spaces, but it is all dependent on getting that family housing.
We are going after the motor pools. It is a feature of our facility strategy to really go after the tactical equipment shops and the motor pools, where most of the soldiers work. So we do have a multi-pronged attack.
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The other part is to upgrade the other facilities. We are working with the Army and Air Force Exchange Service and the Defense Commissary Agency on our commissaries and post exchanges to try and upgrade those things, realizing, in many cases, that is the only place to shop.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I am intrigued by your response, because I was given the Korea story while I was over there. And for members, we had photos of the Korea story—the Quonset huts of 1950 and the corresponding dress for the personnel, and then for 2001, as I visited, and 2050, members showed us personnel——
General VAN ANTWERP. I hope that 2050 is not real.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. That is right. I mean, this was being very optimistic, I assessed at this point. I mean, 100 years, and you are saying now it is possibly 127 years, and you are wanting to get that down to 67. But as you pointed out, Korea will be at the bottom of the weighted average.
So I am just very concerned about that, because, like I said, before September 11th, Korea—I visited the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and went right up to the line and witnessed those fine gentlemen on the northern side watching me watching them. These people are just in a very dangerous situation.
I probably mischaracterized it earlier. It is not that they do not want to be in South Korea. They love their job. They love serving their country. But we just do not give them a very good situation to work and live in, and it is an evil place on the other side of that DMZ, in my personal opinion.
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I think we need to really examine, as Congress, and if you can give us the real picture which you have, we need to know the story of where we do send our constituents whenever they are tasked to serve us in that very dangerous part of the world. It continues to be a very dangerous part of the world.
And, second, and my last question, General Van Antwerp, how does the land partnership plan in South Korea enhance force protection, and could this be a model for force protection in other parts of the world?
General VAN ANTWERP. It very much does enhance force protection, because it closes a lot of smaller installations, as I am sure they briefed you, and consolidates that, turns some of that property back. But it also gives us property that is better for training, gives us better standoff.
So one of the features of those places where we are going to and consolidating is the force protection. It is a model that I think can be used and is being used. There is an efficient basing east and efficient basing south that the European theater is working on that is very much the same to get rid of smaller, really high maintenance—and one of the aspects in Korea is to look at those facilities.
If we can get out of those Quonset hut type facilities and consolidate and build new facilities at the consolidated installations, that is what we want to do. It gives us a leg up for the upgrade. It is very much a good model for what we want to do.
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. Very good. Thank you, General.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Taylor is next.
Mr. TAYLOR. Gentlemen, I do appreciate you all sticking around so long. I was intrigued—and I believe it was you, Admiral Cole, who was talking about how you think you can solve the housing problem by about 2007. I do not want to put words in your mouth.
Based on what I have seen when we closed bases last time and what I have seen when we closed bases in Europe, this leads me to a couple of questions. Do any of you have more good family housing than you need? And this is a straight up question.
General VAN ANTWERP. No, sir.
Mr. TAYLOR. Are any of you just sitting on family housing units, more than you have got people for?
General VAN ANTWERP. Well, in the Army, sir, we do have a couple of installations. At Fort Polk, we have more housing at Fort Polk than we need, based on the demand.
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Mr. TAYLOR. About how many houses, how many families?
General VAN ANTWERP. Well, I would say it is probably in the neighborhood of 5,200. But in most cases, we are running a deficit.
Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. Do any of you have more barracks that get to the new standard, the one-plus-one standard or the two-plus-one standard, than you need?
General VAN ANTWERP. Again, for the Army, we are building those specifically on what the requirement is, as we are going to the one-plus-one.
Mr. TAYLOR. Has the administration told you all something they are not willing to tell us about reducing the size of your forces? Is there any heads-up that you can expect major force reductions?
General VAN ANTWERP. No.
Mr. TAYLOR. Because something strange is going to happen. When we start closing bases 4 years from now, every one of those bases that we close is going to have family housing. And if they are not going to reduce the size of the force, that means they have got to be moved someplace else, which exacerbates the family housing problem someplace else, which leads me back to your statement, Admiral Cole.
How can you tell me with confidence that we are going to solve the problem by 2007 when we are just getting ready to start a whole new round of moving people around. I did watch what happened, particularly in Germany, where some of the installations we gave up had the very best housing that we had, some of the newest stuff.
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I do consider that to be a waste of the taxpayers' money, to build a house for no other reason than to turn around and shut it down or sell it to the private sector or give it away for homeless shelters or whatever. I would like your thoughts on that.
I do not think it is fair to say that you think you are getting ready to solve this problem by 2010, because I just do not see how you will do it when we start playing this shell game of moving troops around again.
Admiral COLE. That is a great question. We do make assumptions. I mean, we do look at our current situation, and we look at the places where we have housing, we look at the waiting lists, look at the condition of the houses, and things like that. So we do not account for what will be inevitable—I think we base it on what we know now.
The answer to your question, do we have empty barracks and housing someplace——
Mr. TAYLOR. Good barracks, the kind you are shooting for.
Admiral COLE. Good barracks. I think the answer to that is probably yes, at times. Deployment cycles at some of the bases—at Mayport, Florida, for instance, when the carrier battle group is gone, like they are now, there is probably some empty barracks.
But, unfortunately, we in Washington count total requirement and total number of barracks. So we probably have a mismatch of capacity. We probably have under-capacity at some places and over-capacity at other places.
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But, in general, based on what we know now, we think we will get it done by 2007.
I will say that we also have an executability problem, like the Air Force—specifically. There are no places for the families to go when we refurbish the homes. So we may fund it in 2007 but not actually have them move in until a year or so later.
Mr. TAYLOR. Is there a servicewide goal—I am just curious, given the events of September 11th, which is not the only time Americans have been under attack. Is there a servicewide tendency to try to consolidate family housing, and that way you have a smaller perimeter to guard?
Is there a tendency to spread them out, and that way, in the case of a biological attack, they are not all in one place at one time? How is it that you deal with that now? And I am curious. What is it that you are shooting for, or have you even, on behalf of each of your services, thought this thing through?
Based on the gentleman's comments—I remember the folks—I got the same briefing in Korea—talking about the nightmare of having a handful of folks here and a handful of folks there and what a security problem that was. So what is it that we are shooting for now?
General ROBBINS. Of course, we have the competing situation of roughly 60 percent of our people living off base already. But where we do put housing on our bases in the Air Force, we are typically constrained by existing land mass. We are not acquiring new real estate in most instances.
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As we design these replacement projects, the MILCON projects, we take into consideration all those factors that have been discussed today in terms of setback where it may be necessary, the inclusion of structural features that will help protect against some sort of an explosion. By and large, we are not trying to consolidate, because we already are.
A few places like Langley come to mind. We have a family housing area that is eight miles down the road from the main base, and that is all that is out there, family housing, and we are going to privatize it. So it is going to be a privatized family housing area.
Our goal there for the privatized units is going to be to build into these deals that we have with developers provisions that will allow us, when we go into an increased threat condition, to invoke some special security measures, whether it be to step up police protection from the local jurisdiction, or somehow make some kind of agreement with the Air Force and the local jurisdiction to augment security gates, whatever. So we have thought it through, but it is a very tough question, again, when you have people scattered all over the communities to start with.
We can deal pretty effectively with those that live on the installation. It is those that are off the installation that perhaps could be in clusters that have become something of a problem.
Mr. TAYLOR. Do you still seek clusters?
General ROBBINS. We do, yes, sir. We have just gone through a project in Aviano, Italy. It is an 801 type deal over there. But we have got a number of small clusters of American housing now scattered all around that town, and it is become a problem. I mean, it is not a problem, but it is a concern.
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Again, they have had to step up the security forces and patrols to make sure that, again, we can control access and just be very wary of what is going on in our surroundings. It is more of a problem overseas.
At Aviano, the land partnership plan (LPP)—there is an Air Force component of this. I know the Army tends to dwarf the Air Force in Korea, but that LPP is going to help us bring families on base that now have lived in an area off base in Osan. We are going to be able to move those families onto Osan proper, and you will see the first phase of that project in the 2003 budget. It was not in the supplemental. It is in our regular submission to build a 120-person family housing complex there on Osan. So the LPP is going to help us do that.
General COLEMAN. Sir, with us, it is setbacks. We are going to fix our family housing problem by 2005. We are 2 years above the Secretary's goal.
I have been fortunate enough to visit all of our bases where we are putting in new or restoring housing. The goal is where you are building new houses, such as at Quantico—and we are also doing it at Beaufort and Parris Island—we are building the houses in an area set back away from the gate, so the cluster thing is being taken care of.
Again, as I told the chairman, Quantico will be fixed with the help of this committee and an increase in privatization. We are going to fix Quantico's housing in 2003. In all, there will be no such thing as inadequate Marine Corps housing.
Mr. TAYLOR. Are you confident that no new bases will close?
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General COLEMAN. Sir, we have no excess capacity.
General VAN ANTWERP. I think your point is well taken. We cannot predict what is going to happen in that 2005 BRAC, and it may create a need for housing at a new location. We are going with the best information we have right now.
We have over 100,000 sets of quarters in the Army. Most of those are on installations proper, and as we do our revitalization and our privatization, most of those are going in existing footprints. We, like the Air Force, do not have a lot of extra land where we are going to go out into a training area or something and move that housing location.
Where we can and we are building new, we are trying to site that properly in a community, around the school setting, to provide security and safety for families, and that will be inside the gate. All of our housing is inside the gate.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. I would just like to follow up on Mr. Taylor's first question on current excess housing, and, essentially, you all said you had a very small amount of excess housing. And during the process leading up to our adoption of a BRAC—incidentally, you are looking at four or five of the guys that made it go to 2005 instead of—what was it—2003, I guess.
We were told over and over again by a variety of folks that excess infrastructure amounts to maybe 20 percent or thereabouts. So I guess my question is if we are going to close 20 percent of the bases which involves, presumably, 20 percent of the housing, or somewhere close to that, and if you are not telling us that you have 20 percent excess housing now, where are these guys and ladies going to live?
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What is the answer? I mean, this is a very logical question, which we ought to be able to have—maybe not today from you, but we need to answer this question. Otherwise, somebody is going to be knocking on our door, Gene, to build more housing on the surviving bases. Does that make sense?
General VAN ANTWERP. In all fairness, Mr. Chairman, is not that what we are doing right now in Germany? We are giving up some pretty good housing. We are giving up the hotel that was actually built with morale, welfare and recreation funds, I think. We have got to start all over down the road, 20 miles down the road. So it is happening right now.
Mr. SAXTON. The other part of this question is that we are beginning to hear that our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines are tired out because of the deployments. And along with that, we do not know what our force structure is going to look like in the future. So if you conclude that our military folks are too busy, you might conclude that we need a few more military folks.
So if you do a BRAC in 2005, and at the same time, maybe because of the new threat, we will have to increase the number of folks in the military, you know, maybe we need to look at this housing situation again as it relates to BRAC.
Thank you. Who is next?
Mr. Hayes?
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Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To frame my question, I want to talk with you specifically about force protection.
General Van Antwerp, I know you lost people just across the river, so it is very personal, and maybe some of you other gentlemen did as well. So my concern is not that we spend money, but I want to spend money to make our troops safe. I do not want to spend money to make us feel like they are safe or to make them feel that they are safe.
That picks up a little bit on what Neil was saying. There is unanimity among this committee and the larger committee. But when we go to the floor—we have already been accused by the other body of bootstrapping 9–11 to meet military needs that may not be necessarily related.
I want to be able to focus our entire attention in this committee on the soldier and make sure that that protection is real, not imagined, not accused of being something else. So that is the framework in which I ask the following questions.
On page seven and eight, General Van Antwerp—again, you have been there, you have lost people—we talk about a projected cost increase of five percent on total projects for things like glazing of windows and structural enhancement. How do you determine those areas in which to spend that extra money in terms of—is this a real threat? I mean, the Pentagon—clearly real, very, very visible.
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Does that five percent go to any construction project from this point forward? Could you break that out a little bit for me?
General VAN ANTWERP. It is selective. If you had a warehouse, for instance, depending on what was being stored in that warehouse, you probably would not give that additional treatment. It would be a very traditional.
If you have a headquarters for a division, for instance, you probably would put window protection, standoff distance, and if you are building a new facility, steel enhancements to absorb a blast. So it is facility specific. But it comes out to about 5 percent on average per project.
Mr. HAYES. Where needed.
General VAN ANTWERP. Where needed.
Mr. HAYES. Not across the board.
General VAN ANTWERP. Right.
Mr. HAYES. Good answer. I was hoping that is what it was, but it was not clear.
On page nine, we talk about a force protection assessment team. Briefly, tell me how they operate. I am sure you get into some of that. How do you assess?
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There are all kinds of things that could happen—Bolling, Parris Island, Fort Bragg—different things at different places. How does that team work, because they sure seem to have a critical part here in making sure we are doing the smart thing.
General VAN ANTWERP. Right. Those assessment teams—first of all, they went through extensive training to know what they were looking for. And one of the first things they do is, for access control, they assess the total perimeter of the installation, because there are places that you can access. If you take Fort Bragg, for instance, there is a lot of training——
Mr. HAYES. There are 55 places to get in.
General VAN ANTWERP. Right. And to fence the whole area would be pretty phenomenal. So what they do is look at where there are areas where you could channel and provide access control. So they are making recommendations.
One of the things that came out of their recommendations—a lot of places where we allowed access before have been closed down and we have limited the number of accesses. Some installations had 20 access points. So they have cut that down to maybe four or five. It creates inconveniences, but—it is those kinds of things.
The other things they did—they went and looked at the key facilities where our soldiers live and where they work and looked at the vulnerability of those particular areas. Barracks is the big one that we are really looking at, and what we need to do to protect those troops.
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And then the final one is other areas of high risk, high risk targets. We sent them out to all of our chemical demilitarization facilities, for instance, where we had storage equipment and had stores of those kinds of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. HAYES. What is the breakdown of your study for assessment teams? Is it all generals and colonels, or have you got some sergeants and——
General VAN ANTWERP. It certainly is a mixture. A lot of them were civilians that went out that are experts in security and law enforcement.
In the Army's case, we had General Curry heading up the process. He is the commandant at the Military Police School out of Fort Leonard Wood. He put the teams together and focused their efforts. But he was not on every team. The teams were headed up by all—several teams were headed up by majors that went out and assessed.
Mr. HAYES. So those things included enlisted folks and——
General VAN ANTWERP. Sure. And, in addition, when they went on the installation, they combined with installation folks from that particular installation to form a larger team that could really make the assessment.
Mr. HAYES. It was recently called to my attention by someone in the South Carolina National Guard—there may be some of you in this room, like in other places, that do not know, but there is a difference between North Carolina and South Carolina. They are two separate states.
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But they were responding to the request for the National Guard to up their readiness, their preparedness, for dealing with terrorism and other threats. In the information I got, it was very practical. They were using existing facilities, existing people, forming teams that could immediately move. It looked like a good use of money. But there was a requirement for additional communications capabilities.
So based on what you are saying, in looking at that, I think you all certainly are looking in the right direction. But we have got to make sure these soldiers are safe. I am never satisfied that we are there, but I am pleased at what I hear you all saying, although I did not follow some of the stuff earlier today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Hayes.
Mr. Rodriguez?
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. General Van Antwerp, I think there might have been an error on page four of your statement, when you looked at Brooks Army Medical, you mentioned that after 50 years, you were going to make $2 million. It is $52 million.
General VAN ANTWERP. $52 million. Yes, sure.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. So it is a little bit over a million per year, a little less at the beginning, a little more at the end. It is on page four, just for the sake of the others.
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Prior to 9–11, there was an assessment that was done by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on vulnerability. Was that done at a lot of the military bases, also? Is that correct? Are you familiar with that at all?
General VAN ANTWERP. I am not familiar with it, no, sir.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Okay. I was under the impression that GAO had done an assessment of our Federal facilities. Is that correct? And if so, I was wondering if you guys had had access to that at all.
Okay. You are not aware of that. Okay. It just makes sense that if they have already made some recommendations—because I have seen the recommendations on the Department of Energy and some of the other departments, and I thought that they had made some recommendations in terms of bases also. If so, I think it would be a good idea to look to see what they recommend as to where you are.
You get a chance to testify before us and tell us what your needs are and what your priorities are. I gather you have not had a chance to tell the Administration what your priorities are. Have you met with them, personally?
General VAN ANTWERP. Through the Department of Defense and Mr. DuBois' office, we have met and discussed in general terms, and, of course, we submitted our budget request for the amended budget through them.
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Mr. RODRIGUEZ. And you prioritized the items and the whole thing?
General VAN ANTWERP. Sure.
General ROBBINS. What Mr. DuBois testified to earlier was a very good description of the way this budget request was put together in terms of the way the antiterrorism/force protection component was developed. The services were allowed to develop their own priority list.
Nobody told us what to put in there, and I assume we all handled it much the same way. We went to our major commands, who, in turn, went to the installations and developed—based on these vulnerability assessments we have discussed, we put together our priority list.
Then when they filtered into the Pentagon, we tried to do exactly what has been discussed here in terms of putting them through the filter of common sense to see if they will stand the test—is this a legitimate requirement tied to what we are going through in this country today? And I think all the other services handled it much the same way.
So he had it right. We were not told to not submit this or to submit that. There was absolutely no interference, if that is the right term, from OSD.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. And in terms of this homeland defense, have you had a chance to look at the—because I gather you had not seen those other recommendations that were made by who, in terms of the homeland defense—DOD?
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General ROBBINS. Yes, sir, the joint staff, yes.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. So that came from—what source—you know, who made that up? Who came up with that?
General ROBBINS. Sir, I cannot speak for the $25 million. I saw it for the first time yesterday.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. I was a school board member, and I remember my superintendent used to come up with all this stuff in terms of needs. Then I would go talk to the principal, and he says, ''Well, I do not know where that one came from, but I definitely do need that carpet in my room.''
General ROBBINS. There has been discussion earlier about what did you not get, and what does the future look like in terms of the service requirements in the coming fiscal years in this arena? And, obviously, it is going to evolve.
We received a lot of requests from installations for things, for projects, requirements. And, like always, we could not do all of them, nor did we think we had enough justification to do them all.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. One of my fears is when things get tight—also, there is a real need for us to continue on some of the research projects that are going on, and that some of those might not, you know—and the training projects that are needed—that some of those might not take priority, or those facilities might not take priority over others, based on whatever, you know, comes about.
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I am real concerned in terms of—you know, Mr. Chairman, the dialog that you had—for as long as I have been here, I have been told we need more troops. We need 40,000 in the Army, 2,500 more Marines, 8,000 more Air Force, and there has got to be some other money tied into that in terms of needs, housing, resources, and other types of——
I know that back in the 1970's, when I knew that there were going to be so many kindergarten kids coming in, that told us we needed so many classrooms. And you guys have not put that number to that, based on that assessment that is up—we have got what, 76,000, 79,000 reservists and guard out there full time? We can only do that for so long.
Has that been formulated in terms of the need on facilities?
General ROBBINS. In our case, we have not included any additional troop strength in the calculations for dormitories or housing or anything else. It is all based on what was in the President's budget for projected troop strength out through 2007.
I read in today's Post—and I am sure everyone saw it—that the Administration's position on the request for additional troop strength is perhaps, but we first want to make sure that we need every last military person that we have got now wearing a uniform. So we have all been asked to go back and look at core competencies and what is true military necessity versus perhaps commercial activity. At least, that is what we are doing in the Air Force.
So we have identified those career fields where we are short. Now we are going back and looking at the whole body of military personnel to see if we can make some tradeoffs and rather than add end strength, perhaps convert some existing military personnel to the civilian or contract operation, and that is where we are.
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Admiral COLE. We are certainly looking and working with our reserves on that very issue. We never envisioned that we would use reserves in the Navy like we are using them for security, where they come to our base, and they are security guards.
Our vision was that they would replace operating forces, they would forward deploy, they would replace people who were forward deployed. So we have a real problem in housing them and it has been very disruptive.
We are looking at ways to mitigate that and perhaps work some contracts with some local hotels so we can have the capacity to do something so that we can handle this should this occur in the future for extended periods of time. But it was something we did not think of.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Mr. Chairman, we have got a problem.
Mr. SAXTON. Ciro, thank you very much.
Gentlemen, I want to thank you, and I just would like to make a comment before we all leave. There are a lot of Americans who want things to get back to normal, and the President has told us that we may be a long way from there.
I believe there is a very basic reason why we are a long way from there, and that is why the subject that you are here to help us understand today is so important. That basic reason is that, from my studies on the other panel that some of us belong to here, the Armed Services Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism, we have found some pretty amazing things.
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One of the amazing things is a very basic set of circumstances that makes me believe the President is right, that we are a long way from the end of this thing, and that is simply this: The Islamic extremist movement has a very basic set of beliefs that are based on the Koran, as interpreted by Mohammed, and as updated from time to time by Islamic extremist clerics.
To be a good Islamic, in their minds, you go by that set of rules. That is what governs the way you act, and to do otherwise is wrong.
On the other hand, we live in a democracy, and our belief is that we need to change rules as we go along, and that the Koran does not govern what we do. We do. We have the power to make the rules that we live by, and by definition, for them, that makes us bad. That makes us infidels.
So I do not see that going away real soon, and there is another element that worries me a lot. I do not think we understand that all that well. The other thing that bothers me is that we have not figured out yet that they also see compromise as weakness.
When Neil Abercrombie and I have a problem to solve, and he wants to do it one way, and I want to do it the other, we figure out some way in the middle, and we get it done, whether it is here——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. We figure out a way to do it your way.
Mr. SAXTON. We figure out a way to do it my way.
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[Laughter.]
We see that as a strength, because our society is based on compromise. Their society is not based on compromise, and when we set out to compromise with whichever one that we have to deal with—Arafat right now—and he sees us coming to negotiate, they go, ''ah-ha, a weakness.''
And we saw the weakness exhibit itself when Baroque pulled out of southern Lebanon. We saw the weakness exhibit itself to them when we failed to respond to Khobar Towers or the Cole or the embassies in Africa.
We need to understand these basic principles of the people with whom we are dealing before this is going to go away, and I do not see that—I mean, I hope we understand it, but I do not see this going away real soon. So what you are doing here in terms of protecting the folks that we want—we ask people to serve in the services. We ask them to go into harm's way, but we cannot ask them to live every day in harm's way.
So force protection and secure bases, both in the continental United States and outside the continental United States, is an extremely, extremely important issue and one that I am glad you are here to help us—I am glad we are here to help you deal with it. I will put it that way.
So thank you for being here today. We appreciate it very much, and we look forward to working with you as we move forward.
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Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 6:00 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]