SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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82–886
2002
[H.A.S.C. No. 107–45]
HOW THE SERVICES ARE TRANSFORMING THEMSELVES TO BETTER CONDUCT ANTI- AND COUNTER-TERRORISM OPERATIONS
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SPECIAL OVERSIGHT PANEL ON TERRORISM
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
HEARING HELD
JUNE 28, 2002
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SPECIAL OVERSIGHT PANEL ON TERRORISM
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Chairman
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
KEN CALVERT, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
JIM TURNER, Texas
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut
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MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
Mark Esper, Professional Staff Member
Alexis Lasselle, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2002
HEARING:
Friday, June 28, 2002, How the Navy and Marine Corps Are Transforming Themselves to Better Conduct Anti- and Counter-Terrorism Operations
APPENDIX:
Friday, June 28, 2002
FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2002
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HOW THE NAVY AND MARINE CORPS ARE TRANSFORMING THEMSELVES TO BETTER CONDUCT ANTI- AND COUNTER-TERRORISM OPERATIONS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Saxton, Hon. Jim, a Representative from New Jersey, Chairman, Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism
Turner, Hon. Jim, a Representative from Texas, Ranking Member, Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism
WITNESSES
Bedard, Lt. Gen. Emil R., Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies, and Operations, United States Marine Corps
Krol, Rear Adm. Joseph J., Jr., Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Plans, Policy, and Operations), United States Navy
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
Bedard, Lt. Gen. Emil R.
Krol, Rear Adm. Joseph J., Jr.
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Saxton, Hon. Jim
Turner, Hon. Jim
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted for the Record.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Langevin, Hon. Jim
HOW THE NAVY AND MARINE CORPS ARE TRANSFORMING THEMSELVES TO BETTER CONDUCT ANTI- AND COUNTER-TERRORISM OPERATIONS
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism,
Washington, DC, Friday, June 28, 2002
The panel met, pursuant to call, at 8:33 a.m. In room 2212 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Saxton [chairman of the panel] presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JIM SAXTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY, CHAIRMAN, SPECIAL OVERSIGHT PANEL ON TERRORISM
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Mr. SAXTON. This morning the special Oversight Panel on Terrorism convenes to receive testimony from the Navy and the Marine Corps as to how they are transforming themselves to better conduct both anti- and counter-terrorism operations in the post 9/11 combat environment.
At a time when the Nation is focused on the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, it is important that we not forget the role our Armed Services play in fighting terrorism. Congress must also remember its constitutional responsibility to quote, raise, and support armies, and to provide and maintain a navy as well as other activities necessary for ensuring the common defense.
It is with these obligations and authority in mind that this panel will hold a series of hearings regarding the transformation of our military relative to these new threats and requirements. Today marks the first of several hearings on this critical matter.
Gentlemen, I know that given the current operational tempo, it was difficult for you both to be here this morning, so I would like to thank each of you for appearing today to brief the Congress and the American people on how the Navy and Marine Corps intend to protect our Nation. This morning, the panel is specifically interested in hearing about the new tactics, techniques and procedures being implemented or considered by each service as well as the Navy-Marine Corps team to enhance your war fighting capabilities.
We would also like to hear about the research, development, and procurement plans you are pursuing toward this goal. Today, we have two witnesses who have led distinguished military careers. They are Rear Admiral Joseph J. Krol, Jr., who is the assistant deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy, and operations, and General Emil R. Bedard, who is the deputy commandant for plans, policy, and operations for the United States Marine Corps.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Saxton can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. SAXTON. The panel is well aware of the breadth of questions being asked this morning, but we are confident that each of you will be able to offer the panel important insights into how the Navy and Marines Corps are making adjustments and enhancements to enhance their warfighting and force protection capabilities.
I thank you again for being here. I hope that we will be joined by some other members as they awaken this morning. So, General, why don't you begin. We are anxious to hear your testimony.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. EMIL R. BEDARD, DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR PLANS, POLICIES, AND OPERATIONS, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
General BEDARD. Well, Chairman Saxton, it is my privilege to report on the status of the Marine Corps and our efforts on the ongoing war and the global war on terrorism. Operation Enduring Freedom demonstrated the inherent flexibility, adaptability, and combat reach of the Navy-Marine Corps team.
We were able to strike deep into Afghanistan, to seize the initiative, and to take the fight to our opponent. We were able to control the pace and tempo of operations. Our enemy could not. And finally we were able to shape the tactical and operational environment in such a way as to ensure future success. Our adversary could only run.
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Our expeditionary forces, both ground and air, operation from an offshore sea base, were able to project naval combat power and Marine forces over some 600 miles inland in a matter of hours. To put this accomplishment into perspective, the operational distance covered were greater than the distance from Washington, D.C. To Nashville, Tennessee, some 586 miles.
The biggest lessons that we have learned for Operation Enduring Freedom and the ones have a wider significance are the importance of agility, speed, readiness, and focus. While chance favors the terrorists, we must make our own luck. In order to do that, we must continue to deploy expeditionary forces that are agile and flexible.
Our Navy Marine Corps team provided the combatant commanders with multiple options so that it could readily switch between different thrusts, exploit feeding opportunities in the battle space, and quickly retailer resources for the mission at hand.
We were able to keep the pressure on our opponent by forcing him to combat multiple-faceted attacks. Then by exploiting our agility, we were able to take immediate advantage of his mistakes. The lesson is, strategic, operational, and tactical agility in this fight is not a requirement for victory, it is a necessity. We are engaged in a war that spans not only minutes but months and years as well. Moreover, we are fighting on two distinct fronts. The deep battle abroad and around the world, and the close battle here at home.
We don't know where or when the tipping point will occur, the point when we decisively tip the scales against the terrorists. It may be in the next few days; it may be in the next few years or longer. It may be far from our homes, or it may be in our back yards. But regardless of the time and place, we must remain focused on that threat.
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We have found in Afghanistan and elsewhere that if we cannot control the pace and sequence of operations, that is the pace at which things happen and their order, we can create opportunities. And if we are focused enough we can certainly exploit these opportunities. I believe that is absolutely critical that all of us, all Americans, remain focused on the grave threat against our Nation, a threat that is both far and near.
We cannot simply let ourselves become complacent or lulled into a false sense of security by apparent, easy victories. Nor at home can we mistake no terrorist attacks mean no terrorists. I feel very strongly that it is our future, our children's future, the future of our Nation are at great risk. Our opponent desires the destruction of our natural fabric, our institution, and our country's hopes. We cannot let that happen.
However, if our heritage is a guide, I am confident that we will prevail. As President Lincoln said to Congress in the darkest days of the Civil War, ''The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.'' The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. The Navy-Marine Corps team has risen to the occasion. We are trained, ready, focused, and forward deployed around the world as we sit in this room this morning.
Your Marine Corps is ready to take the fight to the enemy. Know we are eager to take the fight to them. And we fully appreciate your great support.
I look forward to your questions this morning, sir.
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Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, General.
[The prepared statement of General Bedard can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. SAXTON. Before we move to the Admiral, let me just say that Ranking Member Jim Turner has joined us. Jim, do you have anything you would like to say at this point?
STATEMENT OF HON. JIM TURNER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, RANKING MEMBER, SPECIAL OVERSIGHT PANEL ON TERRORISM
Mr. TURNER. Glad to have both of our witnesses. Thank you for being here.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Turner can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. SAXTON. Admiral.
STATEMENT OF RADM. JOSEPH J. KROL, JR., ASSISTANT DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS (PLANS, POLICY, AND OPERATIONS), UNITED STATES NAVY
Admiral KROL. Chairman Saxton, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. It is a privilege to be here to discuss the status of the Navy's role in the global war on terrorism. I also thank you for your strong interest in our Navy and for your continuing support that has so positively impacted our ability to take the fight to the enemy, that is dispersed throughout the world.
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The global war on terrorism has highlighted the need for forward deployed, on-scene forces with imbedded strike and expeditionary capabilities. Because we place readiness at the top of our agenda, September 11th found the Navy-Marine Corps team well equipped, superbly trained, and forward deployed, able to respond with prompt and sustained combat operations.
The day after the attacks on our Nation, two carrier battle groups, 25 ships, 177 aircraft, and 18,000 members of the Navy-Marine Corps team were on station and ready to respond to the defense of our freedom. When America went to war, the Navy took the fight to the enemy to destroy its infrastructure, disrupt its leadership, cut off its escape, and prevent other terrorist attacks.
Operation Enduring Freedom has demonstrated the vital utility of employing the sovereign ocean expanses to project U.S. Power in an era of constrained and precarious access to overseas basis. Here at home the Navy responded to defend America's maritime approaches and mitigate the tragic attack on New York City.
The committee's support has been instrumental in given America a Navy with the flexible capability to meet the operational challenges of the war, both at home and around the world. Although we have enjoyed success to date, the war has highlighted some challenges we must address. The operating tempo is up sharply. Ship steaming days have increased 50 percent, from 54 per quarter to over 80 per quarter.
While flying hours have increased from 115 to approximately 193 hours per day.
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This high pace translates into increased fuel usage, more replacement repair parts, and a demand for faster engine replacements. The Navy responded to the emergent battlefield requirements in Afghanistan with many tactical innovations. Enduring Freedom was the first campaign in which real-time imagery and targeting was fed directly to the trigger puller.
Although a tremendous success, this technological achievement highlighted a shortcoming, intelligence that was consistently both timely and useful. Further, the combat environment in scenarios such as Afghanistan demand that we better integrate intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) for the theater decision makers.
Along with more time critical ISR, we need to continue to improve the integration of joint special operations forces with Navy conventional forces to enhance flexibility, rapid and precision strike capability.
Last, we must establish maritime interdiction operations as a Navy vital core competency to better prepare our sailors for the role of this expanded mission on the war on terror.
I am pleased to report that the Navy has been able to fulfill the essential and urgent operational war requirements through quick action by Congress in approving the defense emergency response fund, and supporting the supplemental funding requests.
Specifically, and of note to this subcommittee, a substantial portion of these critical funds has been allocated to fund the increased costs of such categories as increased force protection, increased worldwide posture, and offensive counterterrorism. I thank the members of this committee for all you have done for the Navy. The Navy will, with the continued support of this committee, meet whatever challenges lie ahead in defense of America. On behalf of our sailors and the families who proudly serve our Nation, we are grateful for your continued support and our Nation's security.
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I am pleased to answer your questions, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. Admiral, thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Krol can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. SAXTON. Let me being with just kind of a general question and then turn to my colleagues for their questions.
It has been less than a year, of course, since we realized the nature of the new threat, or since we saw it demonstrated so vividly. And post 9/11, of course, the President made a policy decision about our response. And it seems to me that when we responded, we responded in a very capable way. But in a way that was kind of a conventional response against an unconventional attack.
And I am wondering, based on the experience that we have had since last September, how you see the success of our response, as well as things that we learned during that period of time that are lessons learned and lessons that we need to take into consideration for the future against this type of threat.
General.
General BEDARD. Well, sir, I would start by saying that I think one of the things that we have certainly learned in operations in Afghanistan, and in the global war on terrorism, is the ability to react quickly with the right capability.
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As I am sure that you are well aware of, when we projected combat forces into Afghanistan, this is one of the few times where we did not have a land bridge. In other words, we did not, in fact, project combat power across the ground through Pakistan. And this is certainly a challenge. And I think a real tribute to our forces that we were able to go 4- or 500 miles inland and build a combat force up very, very rapidly on the ground, and then be able to expand the capabilities from there.
One of the things we are finding out, certainly the make-up of our force in finding out that when you fly and work in areas where the altitude is 10,000 feet, the kind of platforms that you have and the kind of capabilities you have are very important. In fact, we have reconfigured our forward deployed Marine expeditionary units, special operations (ops) capable, and added 53–E helicopters, which is our heavy lift bird to be able to operate at those altitudes and provide more redundancy to the force.
We have also found that the—the requirement for us to operate closer with the special operations command is extremely important. They are in there first. They are on the ground. And our ability to work side by side in complement and supplement what they do is critical.
We started this effort about a year and a half ago, though, I might add. And, in fact, this past November, we signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the special operations command between the Commandant and General Holland to bring our forces closer together both in the way we operate, the kind of equipment compatibility and so on and so forth. And this effort will only continue to get greater.
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I would go back to Admiral Krol's opening complete about the criticality of intelligence and actionable intelligence. And in this kind of war, I believe more and more the critical aspect of intelligence and the ability and the agility of forces to react to it is going to continue to be our key to success.
Admiral KROL. Playing off what General Bedard just said, sir, is the intelligence aspect of this effort has become of the utmost importance. Now, I agree with General Bedard in that a lot of these things that we have put in place, we started pre 9/11. But, with this type of situation, we find ourselves in, it tends to focus us. When you get focused on an area like this, you came up with seams, you come up with areas that we can do things better at.
For example, and all of these things I am going to mention we are doing things much better. The Navy's relationship with the Coast Guard in the area of maritime commercial intelligence has really been taking off after 9/11. We have had a very close consort with them in sharing maritime intelligence and providing them with information that covers a broad range of maritime interests. And that has continued to develop to the point where we are the major collector. And we have fused ourselves with the Coast Guard and provided tremendous amounts of intel on merchant ship tracking, that type of thing, that puts them in a better position to do their job.
If you go in theater, I think one of the things we are all learning is the sharing of intelligence and how important that is. An example is, this is a conflict that, where it is popular to use the word ''asymmetric,'' from an intelligence point of view, the way I see this thing is that a lot of the intelligence that is being collected in Afghanistan has direct relevance to us here in the United States.
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So the sharing of that intelligence, the searches of the caves, the computers, all of that stuff that we collect, we normally think in the combat zone of intelligence being applied to direct combat in that area. This is sort of a different deal where we are collecting loads of intelligence that needs to be shared across many seams, because it could have an effect on our homeland.
So that sharing of intelligence is—has come to be an important event. And we are all working very hard on that to get that data to the end users so it can be applied effectively. Networking has become much more important. And when I say ''networking,'' I am not trying to be too geeky. In theater, our ability to connect and operate with our allies, it has been a huge success story, the coming together of the maritime coalition. But we need to get better at it. We need to have a more plug-and-play situation where if a German ship comes in, they are part of the coalition, that we can immediately establish good conductivity to conduct combat ops.
The Charles De Gaulle, the French carrier came in theater, and it is a huge success story. She came in on her maiden voyage and was in the air tasking order within 5 days. That is a tremendous accomplishment. But our goal ought to be the first day. I am not being critical. But, it is an area we have to just work harder on and get better at.
Reconnaissance. We did some different things. General Bedard alluded to them in Afghanistan. And the sharing of that reconnaissance data that we collect real-time, we need to be more nimble on passing that around real-time in the battle field scenario. So there is a lot of things that showed that we were on the right track, but we have some extraordinary lessons learned that we can apply in these areas.
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Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. You both talked, you tended to concentrate on the subject of intelligence, which is obviously very important. Conventional force, it seems to me, has a lot of capabilities to deal with this threat. One of our—one of the things that seems to me however to be different is that where we all think of going to war as having a conventional foe, and when we have got guys that are hiding in caves and are hard to find, they are less of a conventional foe than we are accustomed to fighting.
So in the early days of the operation in Afghanistan, tell us whether you had the right kind of reconnaissance intelligence whether there were things that you had to learn to do different, or do did we do okay?
General BEDARD. I will start out by saying that I think the capabilities that we possess in the force today were probably adequate. And as we started operations, the thing we found that searching for the enemy, having direct feeds from intelligence gathering platforms down to the people that needed to execute the mission, we probably need to continue to work that. It is not as good as we need it.
For example, Predator flying, which is a great capability. But where the actual feeds of the Predator are, and of course we are introducing this platform, it doesn't necessarily go down to all of the units that need that information. And we want it almost instantaneously, if you will. If you are flying and you are looking for a target to strike or where people are gathering or operating, you want to have that intelligence really going, or that picture going directly to the person who needs it. I don't think we are quite there yet.
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And I think that is something that we have all identified we just need to continue to work at it. We are making some progress. But as you know, this was really a different level of conflict. I mean, searching for people in the hills in the caves, trying to sort out the distinction between friend and enemy, in amongst the tribes and so on and so forth is an extreme challenge.
But I would say that—and I use the word ''adequate,'' I think better than adequate. The fact that our forces were able to go in there and operate immediately with capabilities that they had I think speaks very, very well for our forces. We conducted these operations with legacy systems that we have today. And we have got tremendous improvements coming as the force continues to transform.
I think the important aspect, and the comment I would make this morning, is that our transformation in path that we are on is a critical one, in ensuring that we continue to bring technology and the platforms on that we so desperately need for future operations and for the future of our forces is a critical aspect of the Marine Corps.
Admiral KROL. In a word, Mr. Chairman, speed. In support of what General Bedard said. We need to be more nimble, quicker. The example of Predator is an excellent example. Being able to have Predator feeds in the cockpit of the combat aircraft, those are all things that we are working toward. We have the tools. It is not a funding issue. It is just getting on with the program. And I think speed is where we need to concentrate on.
Mr. SAXTON. Could you both say a word about, before I turn it to my colleagues, could you both say a word about our human intelligence capabilities, how useful it was? Are there any weaknesses?
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General BEDARD. Sir, I don't have any comment to make on that, because I am not familiar with the human aspect of it.
Admiral KROL. I agree with General Bedard. I don't—I mean, we are used to exercising direct combat power. That is not in our lane.
Mr. SAXTON. But you rely on information that is gathered by people on the ground; do you not?
Admiral KROL. Yes, sir. In the context of, for instance, from the Navy pilot, most of the stuff is coming to him is either collected organically by overhead assets or a forward ground controller on the ground is providing data. So that is—there is sort of a direct military link there.
The human intelligence (HUMINT) side is a different side. Of course, you know, there was a lot of HUMINT activity in Afghanistan. It was very useful. But, it doesn't come direct to us in most cases.
General BEDARD. I would take your point. Every Marine on the ground is a collector. But I think you are more focused, if I am correct, with what was going on with the agency or what was going on with the special ops command. I am not aware of those activities.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, General. Mr. Turner.
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Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me follow up a little bit on what you just said, Admiral Krol, about information that doesn't come directly to you. Were you referring to information generated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) doesn't come directly to you?
Admiral KROL. Yes, sir. The HUMINT information is collected by spies. It doesn't—we get the product eventually, but we are not quite sure what the source is. When we get the product, of course, if it is appropriate, we take that data and we mold it into an appropriate military operation. But, we are not 100 percent sure what the source is.
General BEDARD. Sir, can I just provide some clarity from our standpoint? Task Force 58, which was on the ground, which was General Jim Nattas which had control of the both of the Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUS) and the Special Air Service (SAS) from Australia, within his command group he had a CIA representative. So the ability to go out and tap into what was going on and be able to receive direct feeds from the agents that were in the theater was made available to him and his staff, in a fairly timely manner, I might add.
Mr. TURNER. I guess the reason I inquire about that is one of the issues that I often wonder about, in terms of our ability to deal with terrorist activity is whether or not we have moved our military service branches as far as in the direction of transformation as we really need to move them.
My view and my understanding of what we have always talked about when we talk about transformation is that we need to be more mobile and agile and be able to move and to handle smaller problems and hostilities that may be like what we faced in Afghanistan. That we need to be more mobile, be able to move quicker.
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And yet when we realize that the real threat that we apparently will face over the coming years are from terrorists like Al Qaeda who operate, we are told in as many as 60 countries, where we assume they are collected in small groups operating within the civilian population, it causes me to wonder if there is a role that should be—a role that would be one of the military as opposed to solely relying upon the CIA to conduct those operations.
After all, we have a tremendous amount of capability in our Armed Forces. And yet it seems that when it comes down to moving in and trying to strike small terrorist cells, that we are not—we have never really transformed quite that far in terms of what we expect from our military.
And I would be curious, General Bedard, as to what your view is on whether or not that further movement of the role of the military into being able to develop the capabilities to carry out that kind of role is something that we should be moving more aggressively toward, or is that a role that should be just left to the plainclothes folks at the CIA?
General BEDARD. Well, sir, I believe that we have got to be able to operate at both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. And what I think you are referring to is kind of the bottom end of the spectrum, if you will. And we train very hard in the Marine Corps today and equip our unit. Our Marine Corps expeditionary units, special operations capable are about 2,300 Marines, that are trained and certified in 23 missions before they leave and deploy anywhere.
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The capability for our units to go in and strike small targets rapidly and take the targets down are certainly inherent within those forces that we deploy. I think finding the blend of the actionable intelligence, the relationship with other agencies in the military to determine who should strike the target are the kinds of things that we are going to have to continually work.
But I think that we have got to be capable of going in and doing that or being able to support directly or indirectly those kinds of actions. I think that is certainly a capability that our military has, and has got to provide that support. I just think we need to figure out how we do it in amongst the agencies and the United States military.
Mr. TURNER. Would it be appropriate to have small units with that capability assigned to places like our embassies where you have a traditional role of guarding our embassies, where we could have small units that could move within that area very quickly to a target, to a terrorist cell? Is that a realistic expectation of our military, of our Marine forces?
General BEDARD. Sir, I don't know if that would be the best use of our forces to put them there permanently, if you will.
I think more importantly, is the ability, again, as we said, to gather the intelligence and to know where we need to go. But once we do find it, to be able to quickly insert the force, to take the target down.
Mr. TURNER. It just seems to me if we are confronted with terrorist cells in over 60 countries around the world, that we are going to need to have small and capable units deployed throughout the world that are able to strike at those targets on very short notice. And I am not sure that we have that. It seems like, you know, traditionally, we think of our military forces, whenever we get ready to move, everybody in the world knows it, it always takes a considerable amount of time, because we are usually moving a lot of people and a lot of assets to support them.
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To get to the point where we have, you know, very small units of very capable people who represent more of a special operations type force, maybe a cross between the CIA and the FBI, and a SWAT team, and those kinds of people seem to be the warriors in the battle against terrorists.
And I wonder if we are moving rapidly enough in the direction of training and deploying those type of people to be able to deal with the threat we really face.
General BEDARD. I think one of the greatest advantages—I totally agree with what you are saying. But I think one of the tremendous advantages that we have of our Naval forces, is the fact that we are forward deployed in many areas and are out there. That is key, I believe. Now once you receive the target or the intelligence, the ability to further deploy that force to the target area, we can do that in many areas of the world right now, as can the special operations command. But again, it is finding the target and then receiving the permission to go in and take the target down.
Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. General, we are going to go to Mr. Snyder next. But let me just try to draw some emphasis to the first subject that Mr. Turner touched on. And let me just put it in this context. As a Member of Congress, I interface with the American people every day, and with my colleagues here almost every day, and with military leaders on a very frequent basis, as well.
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And I see something—I think I see something occurring in our society that is kind of a unique kind of a situation. For example, since I have been here in Congress, we have built the C–17, we are trying to make the V–22 operational. We are trying to develop a new warship that we call now the DDX, and yesterday we had a long hearing with General Kadish on ballistic missile defense. These are all issues that we have dealt with—these are the kinds of issues that we have dealt with over decades.
Another example, conventional issues kind of that we have dealt with. I don't know whether you call ballistic missile defense conventional or not, but it is something that we have dealt with over a long period of time.
When I go out and interface with the American people it is my impression that the American people are just dying for things to get back to normal naturally. And that is what we want to have happen too. We want to get back to normal. But I think because we deal with these issues like you do, we don't think we are going to get back to normal very quickly.
Not long ago, on the military side I had a briefing, doesn't matter where or who, and the briefer, the military briefer laid a stack of slides in front of me. And it said, Congressman Saxton briefing on terrorism.
Sir, I leafed through these slides with him. It was the same briefing I saw 2 years ago. What worries us, what worries Mr. Turner and me, and I know it is on your mind too, this is not in any way to be critical, but our society is having a terrible time, and our military too I think is having a very difficult time coming to grips with the fact that we have to do things significantly different than we have in the past.
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And that is why I think—that we haven't talked about this, but I think that is why Mr. Turner was asking about how we figure out where our targets are in this new environment and how we find a way to better reconstruct our mode of dealing with it on the intelligence side. Watching from here, it seems to me that we had a hard time finding targets in the early stages of the Afghanistan War, and maybe we still do. And that is why we are so concerned, and I suspect you are equally concerned, I know you are, about how we can better do these intelligence activities.
And I think Mr. Turner has, you know, a very good observation or question that may be we need to do things in terms of intelligence differently. Let me make another example, something I have been thinking about, I haven't had a chance to talk to my colleagues about this.
Domestic intelligence in the country. We have a program called Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). And the COPS program is to use Federal dollars to hire more police officers. The COPS program puts uniformed police officers on the street to do conventional kinds of police work and maybe some other things too.
But I have been thinking about maybe we ought to amend our COPS program so that some percentage, say 20 percentage goes to intelligence officers. So that if the chief of police or a superintendent of the state police can have a core of police officers that he can send into a suspected neighborhood, a neighborhood where suspected bad guys are, to develop that new capability, and that is the concept that I think Mr. Turner was talking about on the military side, to have a core of people who we can rely on to do a special job, that I don't think we did real well in the early stages of the Afghanistan War. Would you respond to those general thoughts, or maybe they are not so general?
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General BEDARD. I would, first of all, comment on the intelligence base. I couldn't agree with you more. And Congressman Turner talked about intelligence and the way we do things. We have taken down—the national human intelligence over the last 15 years, for example, has decreased dramatically. And trying to build up that HUMINT side to be able to get in and penetrate organizations and to be able to get inside, because that is where the intelligences needs to come from, in many cases, I think, is absolutely critical to the global war on terrorism.
And as to are we doing things the same as we did them prior to 9/11? I would say absolutely not. The way we are deploying forces, the configuration of forces to be able to operate. In the Marines Corps in October, we stood up the fourth marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) antiterrorism, about a 5,000, 5,500 man unit focused on antiterrorism to be made up of our folks that serve inside the embassies, our fleet antisupport support teams, encompassing the chemical biological incident response force and adding an antiterrorism response to that unit, with a world-wide mission.
And two months after being organized, they deployed forces to Kabul to take over the embassy there and to be able to provide a capability that we did not have before. So I take the point of continually looking at the organization, and I will tell you from a Marine Corps standpoint, when we talk about transformation, we are talking about organizational and conceptual changes as well as what we are bringing on in terms of capabilities of technology. And I think those all adapt and go together. And that is where our transformation roadmap is taking us.
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Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Snyder.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Here I think we are focusing on lessons learned from what occurred September 11th in a lot of different areas. One of the areas that the chairman and I have talked about and have been concerned about is embassy security. I think in your written statement, General Bedard, you talk about homeland defense doesn't begin at the shores, it begins somewhere overseas. I think that translates into embassy—when you start talking about protecting Americans, we consider embassies to be sovereigns of the United States.
And yet, I am not sure that as a Congress and as a people, we have learned lessons very well about embassy security. We had the 1998 bombings, very destructive to both Americans and local hired personnel. Commitments were made to really beef up and rebuild a lot of the embassies. But, other needs came along. We had September 11th. And while we have had a substantial commitment to the funding for the military, in fact, the infrastructure line item in the President's budget was essentially a flat line.
And I am not blaming the President, this is a bipartisan problem that we have gotten into, my problem, everyone's problem. We had a hearing here some weeks ago in which Mr. Saxton very eloquently talked about the problem of getting people to listen to the need to be sure we are doing everything we can to protect our personnel in embassies. And I think within about 12 hours, we had the bomb go off across the street from the Peruvian Embassy. Since then, we have had the other bomb in the consulate in Karachi, and I think that we have broken up multiple—our intelligence efforts have uncovered multiple Singapore threats on other embassies.
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And I address this question to you, General Bedard, because of the Marine Corps historic and current role in protecting embassies, plus having personnel attacked in embassies. I am primarily talking about infrastructure. It seems to be, my impression when I go overseas is that we have a fair number of facilities out there, whether they are consulates or embassies, that you almost have to consider indefensible that really the only way to address it is to start over in a better location with the appropriate offsets.
What are your thoughts about this whole area?
General BEDARD. Well, sir, the magnitude of the requirement, as I am sure you are well aware, we are in a—we are in 117 countries today, guarding or protecting either embassies or consulates. And about six or eight months ago, we signed—we renewed an MOU, if you will, with State requiring that any embassy that is opened in the future, and we listed a list of about 17 embassies, where we have requested that the Marine Security Force be moved inside the embassy compound, because in some cases they are living outside, as far as 30, 40 minutes reaction time. So that is the first piece.
And second, in pressing and working with State to ensure that the outer security around our embassies is an item that is continually being worked. I would say one of things looking to Karachi as an example, the ambassador and the security officer along with the Marine security department there realizing the threat and having, as you said, a poor location, there is a four-lane highway that travels right outside of that consulate, they removed everyone from the front offices. They have not been occupying the front offices of that building. Of course, when that bomb went off, with the explosion and the blast and the glass and everything else, there was—no one in those offices really kept the casualties inside the embassy to an absolute minimum.
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But it certainly is a concern. It continues to be a concern. We look at each and every one of them. One of the responsibilities of our commanders that have the detachments (DETs) at these various embassies is to go and do the force protection of those facilities working closely with State. And we certainly have some vulnerabilities in some of those areas. We are trying to curtail them as much as we possibly can. And then working with the host nation, you know, to get the security piece outside of the embassy so you have got some standoff distance. But an effort that is ongoing and we will continually work.
I would make two points. Within about 2 hours of the embassy explosion, we landed a C–130 in Karachi, and put 36 Marines to reinforce that embassy from the forward deployed marine expeditionary unit that was off the coast of Pakistan.
The second point is I talked about, the fourth MEB antiterrorism that we have organized. We have organized it in such a way, that if there is not a forward deployed MEUS in the area, the fleet antiterrorism support teams we would see would be the next level of reinforcement. And then the antiterrorism battalion. So we are looking at that in terms of how we restructure and how do we support forward deployed forces and the missions that we have around the world.
Dr. SNYDER. I know the chairman intends to have a hearing on this whole issue of embassy infrastructure and security and funding. But, as you pointed out, it is—it is a huge challenge out there. And it has got to be—it requires a long-term commitment in terms of finances. We have had some discussions at the committee with Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary Wolfowitz. And I made a point at some of the hearings that I wish that embassy security and infrastructure was in the defense budget rather than in the State Department budget, because I think it would been treated dramatically different by the Congress historically if we had recognized we need to treat this like an overseas military base.
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It can't look—it doesn't have to look like a military base, but it certainly needs to have the appropriate levels of investment.
General Bedard, in your testimony on page 28 you talk about the encroachment issues. And I apologize for having come late. I missed your oral statement. But you have a sentence here right under the map. It says, we are prepared to work with the Secretary of the Navy to exploit all available measures to ensure continued access to our training areas.
One of the confusions I have had about this issue is it seems to me that when we look at the different laws out there that apply to the United States, that there are opportunities for getting waivers from those laws for military training and activities on bases. This statement that you say you are looking to exploit all available measures. Has that been done? Have there been unsuccessful efforts to get waivers? Is that something that you are still in the process of putting together?
I know that some of my colleagues in the Congress are concerned that instead of trying the waiver route, that there is efforts to perhaps do a blanket overturning of certain provisions with regard to military bases. What are your thoughts on that?
General BEDARD. Sir, first of all, I think you are well aware, I mean, we believe we are great stewards of our environment. And there is an ongoing action right now, I think that is on its way over to the Congress relative to encroachment, and asking for a certain set of waivers or leniency on some of the laws that exist right now.
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Dr. SNYDER. What I mean by a waiver is okay, if we are at Little Rock Air Force Base, or Camp Pendleton, California that we have got a problem or we think there is problem. A waiver for a specific site so that you can continue to have the access that you want.
It was my impression that the laws were set up to allow the services to, or the base to say we want to get a waiver for this reason, we are going to do this. But I can't—it seems to me there hasn't been much effort to do that. I was just wondering if that is what you were referring to, to explore all available measures, not future measures, but available measures to resolve this?
General BEDARD. Sir, we are working that in the near term. But I think also we are concerned with the longer term impact of encroachment. And in fact, I will tell you one of the lessons learned that has come back from our units in Afghanistan is young Marines saying out at Camp Pendleton that the first fox hole they dug was in Afghanistan.
Because in the training areas and the training work up at Camp Pendleton, they couldn't dig foxholes in the areas that they were training in. And I think—you know, that is very down at the basic level. But, tremendous impact. And, I mean, it goes on from there as we take a look at some of things that we are seeing from an encroachment standpoint. We are finding out the way our installations have been squeezed by the building that has gone on around them, and outside of the installations, that the encroachment, anything from noise and air space and so on and so forth is only becoming more critical every day.
You add to that the fact that the new weapons systems that we are building and the new platforms that we are building having expanded capabilities, it is really a dichotomy really going in the opposite direction for us.
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Dr. SNYDER. Thank you.
Mr. SAXTON. General, one of the observations that I have since before 9/11 actually is that much of our infrastructure grew up in a relatively low threat environment, maybe even a not threatening environment in terms of the types of threats that we see nowadays, both in the continental United States (CONUS) and outside the continental United States (OCONUS) and embassies. And I don't know what we do about it.
Mr. SAXTON. Just a couple of quick examples. On the CONUS side, I went down to Norfolk not long ago, Admiral, to look at the vulnerabilities that may exist there and found highways, as I think the general pointed out, running through the middle of base and gates without gates, and this is not to be critical. This is just an example, and I am not being critical of the Navy in any way, because this is the way we grew up. And DDGs tied up at piers with the famous intercoastal waterway 150 feet away, and these kind of things afford me a great deal of concern.
Another example—and I know that Mr. Snyder would be interested, because I went to The Hague not long ago because we were on our way, I think, to Russia and went to visit my—one of my best friends who is the ambassador there, and I found an embassy. It sits right out on the street with a snow fence around it for protection. Unbelievable. But that is the way we grew up, with a low-threat environment.
What do you see the role of—how do we deal with these kinds of issues in terms of the threat that we now know exists?
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Admiral KROL. In terms of naval forces, Mr. Chairman, with technology, we have the tools and are developing the tools to provide adequate force protection. We have learned a lot since 9/11, and we have applied a lot of money to it, but I am confident that within the existing framework with some minor modifications, as was pointed out, with some of these embassies, but in the context of naval forces, we have got a lot of experience, pre-9/11, post-Cole, on how we can apply adequate force protection, and so far we have been pretty successful at it.
For example, the fleet commander in Norfolk just conducted Fleet Week in New York Harbor. We have the tools and are developing the tools and have the operations plans to be able to do these type of events and provide a modicum of protection to our ships. And so it is in essence an exercise in sharpening our pencil and developing the technologies that will again make us better at this game. And I think we are on the right track, and we have doubled our funding in this area.
For instance, in the Norfolk area, one of the things we have down there that we have prototyped with the Coast Guard was a harbor—integrated harbor control system that tracks every vessel real-time like an air traffic controller tracks it. We are doing that in Norfolk, and we are putting the final touches on that, and we are trying to decide with the Coast Guard where we ought to export that capability, to what other ports. So I am fairly confident that we are moving in the right direction.
General BEDARD. Mr. Chairman, we have had a standing organization in place in the Marine Corps since the Beirut bombing to look at force protection and critical infrastructure and have since reorganized into a security division within my shop in plans, policies, and operations at the headquarters level which reaches out and has tentacles to all of our bases and stations throughout the continental United States, as well as those overseas.
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We have applied funding to those kinds of things that we think that give us better protection, better warning, better surveillance of our bases and stations, and in addition to that, have enhanced our security forces in terms of their numbers and will continue to look at that aspect.
Also I will tell you that any new facilities and structures that we are building will be done in compliance with blast and explosive and force protection requirements that are standard for anything that we are building on any of our bases and stations throughout the Marine Corps.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Admiral. Tell me what has been done at Norfolk, if anything, to make it more difficult from a boat loaded with explosives traveling down the intercoastal waterway going south, making a right turn and being up alongside of a DDG within 20 seconds.
Admiral KROL. Well, first, the joint harbor operations center that I alluded to is tracking everything real-time. So, we have a good real-time picture of what is moving in the harbor, and how—whether it is big or small.
The second issue that has been put into place is the actual force protection capability on the ground and in the water. The entire harbor area is under continuous patrol from patrol crafts. We are in the process of installing not only in Norfolk but worldwide barriers that prevent a small craft, a small merchant under 3 or 4,000 tons from being able to penetrate the boundary, the safety boundary around the ship.
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Just this month we have shipped a number of those barriers to Europe, and they are starting to go in the water in various places like Italy and Spain that we can use in port visits, and we have had pretty good host nation support for this effort.
And the training of the sailors on the ships, we have had some experience in the last 6 months where we have developed some rules of engagement that put us in a pretty good position. We have had situations develop. We have had situations where we have expended flares, for instance, instead of lethal force, and for the casual jaywalker that comes inside the security zone with their small fishing boat, a flare gets their attention and they back off. We also have anti-swimmer devices that we can monitor the underwater.
All of this technological activity is being put in place in a prototype base, North Island in San Diego, to test and be the test bed for development of all these security capabilities, and I am pretty upbeat about where we are headed and the success we have had so far.
If I could lead to the other side on the intel side, the multiple threat alert center out at Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) has been a great effort on the part of NCIS, and that center, I think you already know, collects all-source intelligence from CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), police departments. Every report of any interest goes in there every day. There is a video teleconference (VTC) every morning that covers—and that covers all those items, and that information is disseminated throughout the Navy chain of command when it is appropriate. A lot of it is just chatter on the circuit and it doesn't make much sense, but we have access to all-source stuff, and that stuff is going out on a daily basis. So the regional and base commander is getting what he needs to monitor his local situation.
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General BEDARD. Mr. Chairman, I would just offer a point that the commandant of the Marine Corps is the executive agent for the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directory which serves all of the services, and this—late this summer, we are going to test two capabilities which I think have a direct application to certainly force protection and protection of our people as well as our facilities. One is called an active denial system, which uses a microwave and has been tested. I have seen a test product of it, have been down to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It has a range beyond 800 meters, which is beyond small arms range. It has the capability of heating 164th—under your skin, heating it to as high as 145 degrees in a matter of a second or slightly longer.
I was in the test area four different times, not that I am a slow learner, but that was what was required, and the longest I stayed in the test area was 1.3 seconds. I think this has got some tremendous application for us in the future.
The second aspect that we are working on and we will experiment with is tactical lasers to be used in a nonmateriel mode to be able to take down an engine, to be able to take down a vehicle without actually harming the people within it, which I think also has some great application to us as we are looking at these threats and the capability to defend against them.
Mr. SAXTON. It freezes up internal combustion engine type of thing?
General BEDARD. Yes, sir.
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Mr. SAXTON. Zaps electricity?
General BEDARD. Zaps electricity or even can melt the components of the engine, and this is part of the experiment that we are working on as to how do we control that, what ranges can it be used at, what kind of different platforms do we have the capability to put it in, and I think a tremendous future here in terms of capabilities.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
Mr. Turner, do you have anything, questions?
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I might ask one or two others.
General, I know in my observations of the heavy burden now being placed on the reserves that it often raises the question of whether we need to increase end strength. What is the status—I know it is in your statement. You had a lot to say about the importance of the reserve component. Are we stretching the reserves too far?
General BEDARD. We have—sir, we have called up, I think, at the maximum about 4,400 reserves from the Marine Corps perspective, and I would say that we have not nearly stretched our reserve component at this point. And we have done units that are providing rapid reaction forces to the continental United States, CH–53 helicopter units and KC–130 units because of the demand of the way we are deploying, and so on and so forth.
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The remainder of the force that we have called is to augment our staffs, because our staffs have really gone to in many cases 7 days, 24 hours a day, depending on where you are at and what level you are working at, but I think the 4,400 right now we can certainly handle. I think certainly we are looking at would we request an end strength increase. That is being worked at the headquarters right now, that decision to be taken certainly by the commandant, should he decide to request that. But, I think we are in pretty good shape right now.
We did spend about—we did take about 2,400 Marines or so from within various units to stand up the fourth MAB antiterrorism brigade.
Mr. TURNER. You know, we have heard a lot of stories and a lot of examples shared with us about reservists who, particularly after 9/11, said they were ready to come perform some task or some duty, and many of them did that and did it well. It leads me to another issue that I would be interested in having both of your thoughts on, because both of you obviously are senior members of the military. You have seen a lot. You have been through the ranks. There was an article that was in the Washington Post, I believe, a few weeks ago that referred to a book that a professor had written who is a major, I believe, in the National Guard, and he talked about the need to reform the personnel policy of the military. And as I recall, his general thesis was that we tend to be in the corporate culture of the military in a situation where everybody is, you know, moving from one chair to the other every couple of years, and the way you advance is rather structured. And the way you advance in terms of your earnings is to move into a command position, to move higher up on the ladder, and that that may prevent us from being able to keep talented individuals within the military in positions where we need them and prevent us from having the flexibility that perhaps we often see in the private sector where, if we find somebody that is good at something, we keep them there and we pay them well, and we don't want to see them move up into the higher level of the corporation. We want to see them stay right there where they are doing a great job, and we know it, and they gain institutional expertise over a period of years and it makes them very valuable to us.
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And it strikes me that when we talk about the war on terrorism, that, you know, it is only the CIA that seems to have the ability to have a salary flexibility, to be able to place somebody in a theater and pay them enough to keep them there for a long enough time that they develop the expertise that is needed to know what is going on there. And we all know, as you said earlier, that we have neglected human intelligence, but the issue I raise with you is could we ever get to the point—and I know these kind of things are hard to deal with, hard to change, and the culture runs pretty deep on issues like this, but should we be examining ways to move toward greater flexibility in terms of how we compensate those in the military, how we reward them, so that we perhaps can get to the point where we develop expertise, let's say, in some covert operation in some far-off place in the Middle East or the Far East, where we could pay somebody at a level that would allow them to be there for a longer period of time than is normally the case with the military assignment and develop the kind of expertise and ability to work in that area and in that task and reward them to the point where they wouldn't have to be engaged in the usual musical chairs to be able to advance in their career?
General BEDARD. First of all, sir, I would say from the standpoint of personnel policy in the Marine Corps—and I am not the personnel officer for the Marine Corps, but I would venture into this area—I have been trying to find greater stability for our people and our Marines. It is something that we are certainly working at, and it has changed, I would say, over the last 3 to 5 years, of leaving people longer in billets and longer in assignments, to develop exactly what you are talking about, the expertise, the continuity that you want in commands and so on and so forth.
I think we also have the capability within the services to provide various bonuses, various money for certain skills and levels and so on and so forth. I think the one thing that I would say we have got to caution at just a little bit is making sure that we don't get too many diverse folks with different pay scales within an organization. I think that can have a positive effect, but it also can have an effect that could take us the other way if we are not careful.
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But I take your point about regional expertise and how critical and how important that is, and we are working very hard within the Marine Corps to substantialize folks not only in the billets they are at but with focus on regional areas, although we are a worldwide-deployable force. But I think that is very, very important as we continue the global war, to have people that have expertise in certain areas of the world, and how we develop that, I think, is something that we are working very hard towards in the Marine Corps today.
Mr. TURNER. Admiral, do you have any thoughts on that?
Admiral KROL. Yes, sir. We have to keep in mind that the Navy-Marine Corps team is a rotational force. The combat power that we both alluded to in our opening statements, the ability to have that combat power on the scene in 48 hours dictates worldwide deployments. In the environment that we are in with the all-volunteer force, that dictates to a certain extent this rotational move of people, because you can't expect a young person to be a pilot on a carrier, for instance, and stay on the carrier for 10 years. I mean, these young people, just like we did, have families, and they need to spend the appropriate amount of time concentrating on their personal life and their families. So it is an issue that we in the Navy-Marine Corps team have to keep an eye on.
The other thing we have to keep an eye on is the complexity of delivering combat power, as General Bedard made mention of, projecting power 6 to 700 miles inland, and all the bells and whistles that go with that to do it safely requires a lot of war-fighting experience. And to us that translates to a lot of shipboard experience. To be able to operate in the joint realm puts us in this modus operandi.
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That being said, the comment that you make about the advantages of having long-term stability is certainly an appropriate comment. It is something that we have been wrestling with for sometime, how to have the war fighter have the necessary experience he has, he needs, to be able to exercise combat power worldwide on a rotational basis within the joint construct. That is a huge rub for us. We have solved it in many cases, as General Bedard said, with money, and although we all claim not to be mercenaries, we can be bought. And I am a submariner, and my entire career I was on a nuclear bonus to keep me, you know, a submariner till I made flag and then I lost money. So that was a very sad day.
But at any rate, it is a complex equation, and your thoughts are right on, and it is something we are wrestling with.
General BEDARD. Sir, I would just come back and say there is probably certain specialties where the continuity is more critical than others, like in the intelligence field, for example, as you know. Moving commanders around from geographical areas can be very, very healthy in many cases where you develop the commander to have a broader perspective, or you develop certain specialties to have a broader perspective by operating worldwide or on either coast or whatever the situation might be. That is part of the development process of our future leaders, I believe.
Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. SAXTON. Dr. Snyder.
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Mr. SNYDER. One of the at times fairly dramatic part of the lessons learned thing, I guess, coming out of Afghanistan was the importance of close air support and who may be on the ground, and just the tremendous complexity of communication and all. And I have asked the question 2 years and I am never sure of how—what the information I am getting back about how much joint training is going on, and is it enough? Should there be more? Should it be qualitatively different? It seems like we have a situation now where we may well have nonmilitary intelligence personnel on the ground potentially being the person to point out targets and so on.
Do any of you have any thoughts about the level of joint training? Is it adequate since the events of the last year point to a different way of looking at it or the need for more or better qualitatively different joint training?
General BEDARD. Sir, 2 weeks ago, and it was based on—really we sent a 26-man team to Afghanistan in December to capture lessons learned, to capture requirements that might be there for the forces and so on, and based on some of the things the team brought back, we held a Joint CAS conference 2 weeks ago at Quantico, Virginia.
Dr. SNYDER. I don't know what that CAS is.
General BEDARD. Close air support, yes, sir. It was a Joint CAS (JCAS) conference, and the purpose of that conference was to look at the kind of lessons that we had brought back from Afghanistan, and I would just highlight probably three or four that come to the forefront. It was determined, first of all, that the procedures we have for joint close air support are very solid procedures, the nine-line brief that is used, the information that is exchanged between the controller and the pilot that is delivering the ordnance, but that the critical piece is using the developed doctrine and things that are there and following the procedures; second, commonality of equipment that is used between forward air controllers of any service or any organization and the aircraft that is delivering the ordnance. And, coming to compatibility across the services is a thing that we need to do, and we are using different capabilities right now, and we need to come to a common capability, and that has been agreed that we need to do that across the services.
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Mr. SNYDER. That is not just a training problem. That is a——
General BEDARD. That is an equipment problem as well, yes, sir. I think we all have—I mean, some of the forces right now have the same equipment. Some do not. It does the same function, but it is not a common capability.
The other aspect is when we train with close air support, and in the Marine Corps close air support is an integral part of our organization, that we need to use assets from all services to train our forces. In other words, we need Navy aircraft, Marine aircraft, and Air Force aircraft, dropping ordnance and working with and training up with SOCOM, with the Army units on the ground, with the Marine units, and so on and so forth. And expanding that training at the various places that we do it today. I mean, that is an agreed-upon thing.
I think one of the things that we found out that when you have a battlefield like we had in Afghanistan, there is not a front line, and there is not a rear, but you are in a contiguous battlefield, and when you operate in that environment, the procedures for close air support are very, very critical, and the identification of where friendlies are relative to where you are delivering ordnance, it is always a critical thing, but it is more critical when you are in that environment. And I think we have taken some valuable lessons from that, and they will certainly be integrated into both our training as well as our equipping of the forces and the procedures that we use.
Dr. SNYDER. Just one very brief follow-up. That sounds like you all have really spent some time in trying to take away some helpful thoughts for the future. It does say, though, that perhaps the answers or the comments 2 years ago, 3 years ago, about if somebody assured me, no, we are doing everything we can on the quality of our joint close air support training, I mean, some of those things that you outlined you would think would show up in a good training exercise in 1999 and 2000 when you start talking about commonality equipment. Am I off base on that? It doesn't really matter because——
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General BEDARD. Well, I think we have been working towards the commonality piece.
Dr. SNYDER. It just really brought it home.
General BEDARD. This brought it much closer to the forefront, sir, if you will.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Let me, if I may, just for a minute back up to Mr. Turner's line of questioning relative to changes that might be put in our personnel structure in order to keep our personnel and pay structure and promotion structure, if you will, to keep people in jobs that they may do very well. But let me just ask a couple of questions relating that to the intelligence piece.
Can you explain to us how battlefield intelligence worked prior to 9/11 and if any changes have been made since 9/11?
General BEDARD. I think I would start off, sir, by saying that battlefield intelligence, of course, starts with the preparation of the battlefield and what the commander's intelligence requirements are relative to the mission that he has. I mean, that has not changed. It has not changed prior to 9/11. It has not changed now.
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I think the aspect that we all strive for is how you fuse the intelligence that is coming in to you from the various sources to paint the picture as clearly as you can to make those timely decisions that commanders have to make. I would say since 9/11 what we have found out is that the criticality of the intelligence and the timeliness of it is the thing that we are all striving for.
And plus I would think the other aspect is a number of varied sensors on the battlefield has changed the fusion requirement and probably made it more dynamic and a tougher nut to crack. Receiving so much from so many sources and how you clearly try to determine what the picture is that that intelligence gives you, I think, is very difficult for commanders today. And that is the thing that I think that 9/11 has pointed out to us, is that when you are dealing with small targets, which in many cases you are, the actionable intelligence is so critical and the timeliness is so critical if you are going to take the target down, because in many cases the targets are fleeting, and they are not there for very long. So the ability of receiving it and being able to react to it and closing on that time line is, I think, the critical thing we are working from 9/11. Plus, as Admiral Krol pointed out, intelligence that may come from another theater can impact on what you are doing in the theater of operations that you are working on—working in, just because of the dynamics and the infrastructure, if you will, of terrorist organizations.
Mr. SAXTON. Is there a place in the military or not for permanent intelligence folks who get to know neighborhoods, ''neighborhood'' meaning region, the people in it, assimilate themselves over a period of time into the population so that military commanders have direct access to neighborhood information?
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General BEDARD. I don't know if that is a role that necessarily the military would take on, to be quite honest with you.
Mr. SAXTON. Let's talk about bin Laden for a minute. We still don't have him, and he has apparently scurried around from place to place, and we couldn't ever figure out where he was, and I will bet there were people that knew, had to be, not our people but indigenous people, if you will, or their people. They weren't indigenous. They weren't Afghans. They were, I guess, most of al Qaeda's—of the al Qaeda units that were there, they were Arab, I guess. But we were unable to have intelligence information that enabled us to know where he was so that we could effectively capture him or kill him or his leadership group, and it seems to me that that is an issue that we should identify as a weakness that we at least had in Afghanistan and begin to look for ways to come to grips with it, because this enemy in respect to their ability to evade us, at least the leadership was able to evade us, I see as a problem. What are your thoughts and how can we fix that?
General BEDARD. I wouldn't disagree with you, sir, and you are exactly right. I think we have got national agencies and national organizations that have that as a mission, and what their ability is to carry out that mission, you know, is not in great clarity to me, but we have got organizations today that have got that mission.
Mr. SAXTON. Does the military commander interface on a real-time basis with the folks that are carrying out that mission?
General BEDARD. Yes, sir.
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Admiral KROL. Yes, sir.
General BEDARD. In fact, they will normally, upon arrival in the theater or preparing to work a mission, provide a direct liaison to your command. So the link is there. There is the capability there to do what needs to be done.
Admiral KROL. One thing, Mr. Chairman, that we should have some optimism about is that if you go back to 9/10 and you look at the focus of our robust intelligence capability around the world, it wasn't focused on Afghanistan, and where we went from 9/11 to December 1st or today is quite an accomplishment. Certainly, General Bedard and I would agree that the HUMINT capability that he made mention to has not maintained a robust profile over the last 10 or 15 years, and that is an issue. But the tools, even though in many cases they are legacy tools, the capability to tie it together and provide actionable intelligence that can be acted upon, you know, all that capability was brought to bear and provided us quite a good way ahead when you consider that they were all gone by December 1st, I mean gone in that they had been forced into the hills and into Pakistan or wherever. So it is a pretty good capability, I would propose, other than a HUMINT angle.
Mr. SAXTON. Can you give us some specific ideas about—well, let me ask this question first. We have an infrastructure in the Congress, we have an Intelligence Committee, and we have a variety of other committees that deal with certain part of these kinds of issues, Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Is there a role—have you seen something that the military needs that we can provide that helps to fix the military side of this problem?
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General BEDARD. I think the biggest concern that we have is the continued fusion of intelligence from all sources and the rapid dissemination. Sir, I think that is the biggest objective or the largest objective that would be helpful to us, as well as to the agencies that work it, is how we fuse it rapidly and how we disseminate it.
Mr. SAXTON. That has to do with communications technologies and individual capabilities to understand what we are looking at and then make sense out of it and then send out the—send the information out to the field?
General BEDARD. To those that are going to react to it and those that need it, yes, sir.
Admiral KROL. The distribution networks, in essence, are in existence. It is putting speed on the circuit and more real-time. So that is the thing that we—that is the biggest lesson the Navy has learned from this.
Mr. SAXTON. The Army trains mid-grade officers in its foreign area officer program to be regional cultural experts. Do the Navy and Marine Corps have a similar program?
General BEDARD. Yes, sir, we do.
Admiral KROL. Yes, sir.
General BEDARD. We are trained both culturally, trained in the language and then assigned to that country, normally to the embassy in that country to serve, and that provides some of the regional expertise that we are talking about in the various countries. And then we keep—through a specialty that we apply to those individuals, we keep track of them throughout their career of where they are at and what they are doing, and as a crisis occurs in a particular area or a particular region, we will bring those people normally back into the commands because of the expertise that they have.
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Mr. SAXTON. Is the process of collecting and disseminating intelligence information in the military a subject that would be an interesting one for us to hold a hearing on, just to focus on that aspect of your job?
General BEDARD. Sir, I think it would.
Mr. SAXTON. Would we discover strengths as well as weaknesses in the process of doing that?
General BEDARD. I believe you would, yes, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. I will suggest to Mr. Turner that we might want to look at doing just that.
Do you have any further questions, Mr. Turner?
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I will just follow up on the line of question you are pursuing.
I gather, General, what you are saying to us is this problem of dissemination of intelligence, you referred to it, I think, as the infusion of intelligence, and we are talking primarily about the relationship not only between the various intelligence-gathering capabilities within the Department of Defense, but I suppose you are primarily also referring to information that would flow from the CIA, the FBI, and other sources.
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General BEDARD. Yes, sir.
Mr. TURNER. And you don't see that fusion there.
You know, it seems like the question that maybe we haven't really even addressed as a Congress or as a Nation is this issue of how are we going to fight this war on terrorism with regard to the utilization of our military forces. I mean, we passed a resolution after 9/11, basically giving the President the authority to go after the terrorists wherever he can find them, and I would assume that if our intelligence sources indicate that there is an al Qaeda cell in Denmark and they are about to launch some operation that—other than the fact there are diplomatic problems with the movements, that there is the authority through the resolution we passed to go in there and stop it. It is in our national interest.
Now, obviously those kind of movements involve a whole lot of considerations, and the diplomatic relationships to do that are obviously very sensitive, but I guess what I am sensing in listening to my chairman, and I certainly feel it, and that is that the full power and capability of the military force of the United States have got to be available for immediate deployment to go after terrorists wherever they are, and I think our President, when he annunciated just a few weeks ago his willingness to preemptively strike wherever may be necessary, was a clear signal that that is the direction that the administration wants us to go, and I think the Congress is supportive of that. Because, you know, I don't think any of us look forward to decades of being under the threat of terrorist attack. And we are spending millions and billions of dollars on homeland security which we wouldn't have to spend if we knew how to aggressively get out there and to get the terrorists where they are today.
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Now, that requires a dramatic change in the role of our foreign policy, and I think the President took one step in that direction of change when he started referring to preemptive strike, but it seems to me that even though we in the Congress hate to ever have to think of the prospect of being what is often referred to as the policemen of the world, there are also some very legitimate reasons to have a healthy debate on whether or not we might have to just face up to that role in the 21st century, because spending billions on homeland security and all the while knowing that we don't feel secure is not a prospect that any of us, I don't think, look forward to for the longer term. And we also look at Israel and what happens there daily and wonder if that is what it is going to be like for us, but even worse, with more serious weapons of mass destruction being used in the process.
And so I guess the hearing that the Chairman suggested seems to me to be a very appropriate one and, you know, when I heard you say a minute ago, General, that—you talked about intelligence-gathering, that you said there are organizations that have that responsibility. It almost sounded like we have the same problem with relationship to our intelligence agencies and the military as we have already talked a lot about in the Congress of the lack of coordination between the intelligence agencies in terms of coordinating information. So not only are we—do we need to coordinate the information better and have that fusion of intelligence you are talking about, but we need to address this issue of once we get it, are we prepared to use it and to use it in short order and an immediate way, and do we have the forces, special operations, small units, the expertise necessary to do the job and do it right and do it quickly.
So I certainly hope, Mr. Chairman, we can have the hearing that you discussed, because I think it would be very beneficial to us.
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General BEDARD. I think if I could just make a comment, there are some very, very positive things that have occurred with the fusion and sharing of intelligence since the 11th of September. It is a huge challenge as we look at all of the apparatus that is out there and how you bring it together, but a lot of positive steps, I think, are being taken to get our arms around that challenge, both from the military side and certainly the agency side or the various agencies that are involved.
The other comment, sir, that I would make, in my opening statement today I said there are two battlefields, the deep battle which is being fought around the world, and the close battle which is here in our own country. And it is certainly our preference to fight the deep battle, but I think the important aspect as well is we can't fight that deep battle alone, and what has to happen in many of these countries is they have to join us in getting after the terrorism in their country and be able to support us if we come in to do it, and we have to be able to do that rapidly if we are going to get after this threat that is out there and deal with the threat in the deep battle. And I think many efforts are ongoing to try to do that right now as we speak.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much. You know, we have had a whole series of hearings, but I have got to say that this one has been among the very most insightful in terms of helping us to gain insight into some of the issues that you face, and we want to thank you very much for being with us. And unless Mr. Turner has something further, at this point I just want to thank you for being here and thank you for the information that you have shared with us. And you have, I think, been a great deal of help, both of you officers, been a great help this morning in helping us to understand at least one direction that we need to go in order to be helpful to you in doing your job and we thank you for that. We look forward to working with you in the future and the hearing is adjourned.
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[Whereupon, at 10:15 a.m., the panel was adjourned.]