SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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??–???
2002
[H.A.S.C. No. 107–28]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2003—H.R.
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
FULL COMMITTEE HEARINGS
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ON
AUTHORIZATION AND OVERSIGHT
HEARINGS HELD
FEBRUARY 28, 2002
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Seventh Congress
BOB STUMP, Arizona, Chairman
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
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HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
BOB RILEY, Alabama
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
KEN CALVERT, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida
MARK STEVEN KIRK, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JEFF MILLER, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
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JOHN SPRATT, Jr., South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
TOM ALLEN, Maine
VICTOR F. SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO RODRIGUEZ, Texas
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT BRADY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
MIKE THOMPSON, California
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
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JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
RICK LARSEN, Washington
Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
Christian Zur, Professional Staff Member
Jarrod Tisdell, Research Assistant
Alexis Lasselle, Staff Assistant
Daniel Hilton, Staff Assistant
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2002
HEARINGS:
Thursday, February 28, 2002, Fiscal Year 2002 National Defense Authorization Act—Secretary of the Army; Army Chief of Staff
APPENDIXES:
Thursday, February 28, 2002
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2002
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FISCAL YEAR 2002 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—SECRETARY OF THE ARMY; ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services
Stump, Hon. Bob, a Representative from Arizona, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services
WITNESSES
Shinseki, Gen. Eric, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army
White, Secretary Thomas, Secretary of the Army, (USA)
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
Forbes, Hon. Randy J.
Skelton, Hon. Ike.
Stump, Hon. Bob
White, Hon. Thomas E.
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
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[There were no Documents submitted for the Record.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
Mr. Skelton
Mr. Stump
FISCAL YEAR 2003 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—SECRETARY OF THE ARMY; ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, February 28, 2002.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:32 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bob Stump (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB STUMP, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARIZONA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The CHAIRMAN. [Presiding.] The committee will please come to order.
Today, the committee will consider the fiscal year 2003 budget request of the Department of the Army.
I am pleased to welcome back Secretary Tom White and General Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, to assist the committee in understanding the details and implications of the Army's budget request.
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In considering the overall defense budget request, the committee continues to hear that the significant increases in defense spending for the year 2003 will at best fund current programs and operations rather than provide for significant increases in equipment and people.
Contrary to press accounts of a Defense Department awash in spending, the military budgets are replete with hard choices and tradeoffs. A careful review of the proposed budget reveals that the military services are still struggling to meet their modernization needs, keep their best and brightest people in uniform, and properly support a crumbling infrastructure.
Thus, the budget increase should be viewed as a down payment—and probably a good one at that. However, the military services will be requiring budget increases and sound management if they are to truly recover from a decade's worth of underfunding.
The Army budget request for fiscal year 2003 is $91 billion, almost $10 billion more than the fiscal year 2002 appropriated amount. However, even with the increase, this budget request contains major cuts in military construction and research and development accounts.
The committee is very interested to hear how the Army plans to manage the continuing mismatch between operations and force structure within the proposed levels of resources.
In spite of the $10 billion increase, it is clear that the Army has made and will continue to make difficult choices to keep it firmly on the path towards the future. We look forward to today's testimony to help us better understand how the Army leadership plans to navigate this difficult path.
The chair recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Skelton, for any remarks he may wish to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Stump can be found in Appendix on page ?.]
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STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
And, Secretary White, General Shinseki, we thank you for joining us to discuss the details of the Army's fiscal year budget request.
Now, before we begin, let me commend both of you on the tremendous leadership that you are showing during this current war. The success of the Army special operations forces in working with Afghan units and in guiding precision weapons to their target, of course, has been well documented.
The other Army units serving the Central Command area in the 10th Mountain Division, the 101st Airborne Division, the 3rd Infantry Division have all made tremendous contributions, and we know that our soldiers follow your leadership of showing courage and determination and resourcefulness.
We thank you for being such role models.
Now, in turning to the budget, let me tell you I am pleased to see an increase in the $10 billion in the Army top line of the—over the fiscal year 2002. This request goes a long way toward addressing critical personnel, readiness, modernization issues. It provides also for military pay increase. These investments, I think, are crucial to ensuring that our troops know how much we value their continued service.
The budget devotes funds to achieving readiness goals. It budgets realistically for depot and costs as it funds tank training miles at a higher rate than last year, and it supports heightened operational tempo requirements. These efforts will ensure our troops can fight at their best.
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And, finally, I am pleased to see continued investments in the interim and objective forces, and I know this is near and dear to General Shinseki's heart, and I hope we will hear from both of you regarding that.
The Army seems to be on track in fielding the six interim brigade combat teams, and I hope you will address how you plan to meet the Secretary's stated goals in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) of having an interim brigade combat team stationed in the European theater. The budget makes procurement investments in systems that will support the alternate objective force.
Now these are all positive achievements, but I have some concerns I might mention as well. Chief among these are the size and force structures of our current Army. This is nothing new in a discussion between the two of you and me.
Less than a year ago, both of you testified before this committee that the operational tempo demands placed on the Army are high. General Shinseki went so far as to state that 40,000 additional troops were about the right range for increasing Army strength, and my recollection is Secretary White did exactly the same.
In the eight months since then, we have become embroiled in a major war. The total Army, including Reserve and National Guard units, is being asked not only to support our efforts in Afghanistan, but now in the Philippines, perhaps Georgia, perhaps Yemen, and also to undertake important homeland security defenses, including U.S. airports, to sustain peacekeeping operations globally, and maintain critical engagement activities that deter future adversaries.
The Quadrennial Defense Review says our forces should be able to do all these things and still be able to fight and defeat decisively a major adversary. This contention may be put to the test, as we find ourselves in a major ground combat in Iraq or elsewhere.
Given these new demands placed on the outstanding Army soldiers who voluntarily serve, I do not see how we can keep end strength at current levels and hope you will both address this issue directly.
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Beyond end strength, I am disturbed to see overall military construction levels declining by some $700 million, even with the $10-billion increase in the Army top line. In a briefing to our staff, Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim indicated that the services had made the choice of which military construction priorities to fund. I am going to ask the other services and I am going to ask you to address how these decisions were made.
Let me thank both of you for testifying today and thank you both for your tremendous service to our nation, and we look forward to hearing your testimony and the answers to the various questions that we will put to you later.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Gentlemen, your statements will be—your prepared statements will be printed in the record, and if you care to summarize, we would appreciate it.
Mr. Secretary, the floor is yours.
STATEMENTS OF HON. THOMAS E. WHITE, SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, AND GENERAL ERIC K. SHINSEKI, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF
STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS E. WHITE, SECRETARY OF THE ARMY
Secretary WHITE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Skelton, distinguished members of the committee. Good morning.
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General Shinseki and I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you representing the great young men and women of our Army.
And as you just said, I would ask that we have our joint written statement included in the record. Thank you.
I would like to begin this morning by highlighting three critical tasks that the Army must accomplish if we are to succeed in the joint service task for providing for the Nation's defense.
First, we must help win the global war on terrorism. Second, we must transform to meet the challenges of future conflicts. And, third, we must secure the resources needed to pursue both the war on terrorism and Army transformation.
Our first task is to help win the war on terrorism. Today, more than 14,000 soldiers are deployed in the U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility, supporting Operation Enduring Freedom from Egypt to Pakistan, from Kenya to Kazakhstan.
As the war evolves, requirements for Army forces are growing, from assuring regional stability in Central Asia to stability and support operations in Afghanistan to securing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to training counterterrorism forces in the Philippines.
At the same time, the Army continues to deter potential adversaries in Southwest Asia and Korea, while upholding U.S. security commitments in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, the Sinai, and elsewhere. In fact, the Army has over 183,000 soldiers and 38,000 civilians deployed or forward stationed in 120 countries.
At home, the Army continues its long tradition of supporting homeland security, mobilizing over 25,000 Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers for federal service here and overseas. Another 11,000 Army National Guard soldiers are deployed on state-controlled homeland security missions.
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In addition to mobilizing reservists, we have also implemented a stop-loss program that suspended the voluntary separation of 12,000 active and Reserve soldiers. Despite the disruption, our soldiers and their families and their employers are responding magnificently.
But these are not long-term solutions, and additional wartime manning requirements with no adjustment in our global posture or offset in end strength will further strain the force. The strain may manifest itself in future retention shortfalls, beginning in the reserve components and extending into the active Army.
Our second challenge is to transform the Army to meet the challenges of the next conflict. America's future depends on it, since transformation is at the heart of our competitive advantage as a nation.
We believe that transformation is a process, not an end state. To the extent we do not transform, we are at risk. To reduce risk, we are accelerating our transformation of the future Army to the full-spectrum network-centric objective force.
Next week, we will select the lead systems integrator for the Army's family of future combat systems, the foundation of the objective force. This is not business as usual.
The lead systems integrator will be charged with achieving the milestones for fielding a threshold capability this decade by incorporating best-of-breed designs within the U.S. and maximum competition for value procurement. Selection of a lead systems integrator represents a major step forward in our journey to transform the Army.
We are presently fielding an interim force, six interim brigade combat teams, to close the capabilities gap between our heavy and light forces. The interim force also provides a bridge to the objective force through leader development and experimentation.
We are selectively modernizing and recapitalizing key systems in our legacy force as a hedge against near-term risk to facilitate efficient fielding of the objective force. This approach will both enhance readiness and provide an affordable means to transform.
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Our third task is to secure the resources needed to pursue both the war on terrorism and Army transformation. The 2003 budget addresses all of our priorities. However, we continue to assume risk in our legacy force and longstanding shortfalls remain in installation sustainment, restoration, and modernization.
As good stewards, we are doing our part to free up resources for reinvestment in high priority programming. We have made tough tradeoffs. We have terminated 29 programs in the last three years, restructured another 12, reduced recapitalization from 21 to 17 systems, and accelerated the retirement of 1,000 Vietnam-era helicopters.
We also are striving to manage the Army more efficiently, starting at the top by restructuring the Army headquarters into a leaner, more integrated organization. This initiative allows us to meet the congressionally mandated 15-percent reduction in headquarters staff and reinvest manpower saved back into the operational Army, thereby increasing our tooth-to-tail ratio.
We are also leveraging e-business concepts and technologies in our Army knowledge management initiative. This initiative involves managing our information infrastructure more like an integrated enterprise.
For example, by July, we will conduct the majority of our internal business via the web through Army Knowledge Online. And by October, we will have pared down the network servers in our personnel system from 4,500 to one super-server database, reducing errors, saving millions in cost avoidance and staff hours. Even greater economies of scale will be achieved as we continue to flatten our operational structure and eliminate unnecessary systems.
We are also achieving efficiencies to three other important initiatives—centralized installation management, utilities systems privatization, and our residential communities initiative. In the interest of time, I will defer comment on these, and I am sure that we will get into it in our questions and answers.
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Let me conclude by thanking the members of this distinguished committee for your strong support. I look forward to working with you to ensure that our Army remains the best in the world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
General Shinseki?
STATEMENT OF GENERAL ERIC K. SHINSEKI, ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF
General SHINSEKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Skelton, distinguished members of the committee. We are honored, once again, Secretary White and I, to have this opportunity to update you on the posture of the Army and its state of readiness.
First, let me begin by reporting to you that our soldiers and our civilians appreciate much more than I can put into words what you have done for them in this past year, enhancements in pay, enhancements in housing, health care, retirement benefits.
Willingly and without hesitation, they demonstrate their profound and abiding devotion to this nation. On our behalf, they take risks, they go into harm's way, they shed their blood, prepared to give their lives, if necessary—and some have paid that price recently—to preserve peace and freedom and our way of life.
They continue to make incredible contributions and even more incredible sacrifices, but they look to us to demonstrate both the Nation's appreciation and its commitment to them and their families. It is a commitment that you have honored well, and, for that, we are all very grateful.
Nearly three years ago now, the Army took a hard, discriminating look at itself. After examining our capabilities against the emerging strategic environment, we decided we needed to take some risk. We committed ourselves to transforming the way we will fight and win the new wars in this new century.
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This committee elected to underwrite Army transformation at a time when the very term was unfamiliar and a bit unknown. Today, when one considers the magnitude of what we have accomplished with your support, it is truly staggering. With this submission, the Army buys its last heavy tank, confirmation of our sustainable momentum and our move towards the irreversibility that we seek to achieve in transformation.
Your investments are paying dividends. The selective recapitalization and modernization of our legacy systems maintains acceptable readiness to fight and win today through the end of this decade and beyond. But, in August, our interim brigade combat team at Fort Lewis will achieve its initial war-fighting capability. By December, we intend to operationally test two of those battalions, and, by next spring, we will evaluate the entire interim brigade.
Yet again, next month, as the Secretary has pointed out, we anticipate selecting a lead systems integrator for the future combat system, that future force—objective force that comes in at the end of the decade, a new solicitation and acquisition strategy in this lead systems integrator that will accelerate transformation to that objective force by 2010. We are prepared to fight the near-term conflicts, even as we change ourselves to fight the wars of the 21st century.
And the Army has done a lot to help itself in the last two and a half years. We have made our own tough decisions. To fully fund transformation between fiscal year 2003 and 2007, we have restructured or eliminated legacy force modernization systems, here recently 18 of them. We have reduced heavy maneuver and artillery battalions by 25 percent, and we have cut aviation structure by 21 percent.
We have manned our 10 active component divisions and two active cavalry regiments at 101 percent. Since October 2000, the strength of other early-deploying units have grown—has grown from 92 to 99 percent and is projected to reach a hundred percent by the end of this fiscal year, this all with internal personnel adjustments to put our personnel resources in foxholes, in cabs of trucks and in turrets of tanks.
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The ''Army of One'' advertising campaign has been resoundingly successful. In 2001, we achieved our recruiting targets for the second year in a row, and we exceeded our retention goals. We have been changing our stance as an Army, and this President's budget builds on the momentum we have attained over the last two and a half years. But we do need to do more and we do intend to move faster.
The attacks of 11 September validated our vision, and the ensuing war against terrorism has underscored the need to accelerate transformation to better prepare our soldiers for the uncertainties—the uncertain challenges of the 21st century.
All of our troops—all of our troops—are performing superbly—Active, Guard and Reserve—not only the Army, but from all of our services.
In Afghanistan, Army special operators enable the anti-Taliban forces to compel the enemy, the Taliban, to mass so that the significant capabilities of our air-delivered munitions could be brought to bear.
Now these successes are not accidental, and they are not easily won. Victories and battles like Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, Kunduz, Baghram, as well as the successful operations on Objectives Rhino and Gecko and in the region of Tora Bora, represent 10 years of painstakingly hard work, superior training, real-world experiences in places like the Bosnias, the Kosovos, the Nigerias, the Colombias, the Philippines, yes, the Pakistans and the Uzbekistans as well, to name a few.
Mr. Chairman, our investments have borne fruit in a conflict that was difficult to predict six months ago. Our new century is marked by uncertainty. Recognizing and preparing for uncertainty is what the Army vision is all about.
In this new century, strategic success demands strategic responsiveness, seeing the world with an unblinking eye, a lethal, agile, survivable, versatile, and sustainable force, and the infrastructure and lift capabilities to deliver that force anywhere in the world quickly and to win decisively. That force is the Army's objective force, and with the continued support—strong support of the Congress and the Administration, you will see it fielded this decade.
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Thank you. And I look forward to your questions.
[The joint statement of Secretary White and General Shinseki can be found in the Appendix on page ?.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, General.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me ask about this item we call unfunded requirements. My recollection is that two years ago, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter, asked for and received a list of the unfunded requirements from the various services, and, last year, I did the same, though I had to urge them to finally send them to me last year. They totaled some $32 billion.
I made the same request a few weeks ago to each of the services. I received the Navy and Marine Corps lists of unfunded requirements. I have not yet received the Army's.
You were kind enough a few moments ago, both of you, to thank this committee for our help. We really cannot help you unless we know where you are hurting, and a list of unfunded requirements would give us a better view as to where we can be of assistance to the United States Army.
I am sure that someone has worked up that list. Could you get it to me this afternoon? I would certainly appreciate it.
I would like to ask you about end strength. Both of you last year testified and Secretary White in a news conference reiterated the fact that the Army is some 40,000 personnel short, and my recollection is you testified late June, early July regarding that, well before September the 11th.
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So my question of you—I will ask each of you—has your estimation of the Army's end strength needs changed any since the time you so testified?
Mr. Secretary.
Secretary WHITE. I would say no. What has happened since then is we are at a very high mobilization rate of reserve component, as I talked about. We are—our—deployment of our existing force structure has increased with the tempo of the war on terrorism, and no one has let us out of any deployment at this point.
Secretary of Defense has made the point that we have to examine things like the Sinai deployment, but we are still in the Sinai, some—
Mr. SKELTON. But you are only talking about 1,500 troops at most there. It does not amount to much.
Secretary WHITE. But if you take that number and multiply it by four or five, which is what it takes to set up that rotation and have those troops in the Sinai—
Mr. SKELTON. That is a long way from 40,000.
Secretary WHITE. —it is a significant commitment, and so we are hard-pressed at our current end strength as it matches up against our force structure.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.
General Shinseki?
General SHINSEKI. Congressman Skelton, nothing has changed since our testimony last July, as I recall, and, frankly, nothing has changed in the last two and a half years I have testified, that the Army was smaller than the mission profile that it is conducting today and, along with that, under-resourced for that size force.
But let me focus on the end strength piece. Part of the end strength responsibility for the Army is to go and make sure that we have people in the right places and that we have done as much as we can to help ourselves, and I would offer to you that we have done that. So this is not just a numbers issue.
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We fixed recruiting. Ten and a half years ago, we could not recruit. So any discussion about end strength was a bit moot until you can recruit to those numbers. We have gone on out and fixed recruiting. The last two years, we have made our recruiting targets, which are substantial, 180,000 young Americans joining the Army every year. We recruit that number, and we are going to do it again this year. So, in terms of recruiting and then retaining what we recruit, we are making those numbers as well.
We have also looked internal to our personnel accounts and moved people from locations where less priority—not unneeded, but less priorities into our divisions, cavalry, regiments, early-deploying formations that are bearing the brunt of our increases in operational requirements.
That has uncovered some spaces that are not being resourced today. Some of it is in need of attention. I would offer that some of those table of distribution and allowance (TDA) positions occur in the schoolhouses, and we need to do something about that. Others are less clear requirements, and we are in the process of scrubbing those numbers down.
I do not know the relevance of the large number that we talked about last July at a time when we are changing the national military strategy away from, sort of, the clear two multi-theater wars (MTWs), but that will play in all of this. We have done significant work inside the Army to balance our personnel accounts and put our resources where the priorities are.
As the Secretary has indicated, on 11 September, tremendous requirement for soldiers visited on the Army to the tune of 13,000 today in Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Philippines and a variety of other places listed by the Secretary.
Readiness in the Army is people. We are a people-intensive operation. Whatever weapons and tools we provide is to equip the people that get the hard work done. So very much a part of our readiness is tied to our strength.
Whatever the final numbers end up being in the analysis—and those are underway—I can tell you that we are recruiting this year at a rate that will cause us to exceed the 480 end strength cap somewhere—my—our recruiters tell us 484, 485 is what we are on a ramp to achieve, and exceeding the 480 end strength numbers by 4,000 to 5,000 is well within the latitude provided by Congress in terms of a 2-percent allowance.
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And so I think we will be okay. We will have to make—provide those explanations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and I have requested their attention on this matter. So, for this year, the 4,000 to 5,000 number is a more relevant one as we try to develop the final larger number.
Mr. SKELTON. But—thank you, both, for your answers, for your candor. There is not a member on this committee that does not want to be of help, so give us the information in both the unfunded requirements and the personnel accounts, and we will do the best we can.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary WHITE. We will do that. We will do that.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon?
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you both for coming in and testifying.
And, General, thank you for the outstanding work that your soldiers are doing. They are the pride of the country, and we appreciate your leadership. And we fully support your transformation and the tremendous work that you have done in allowing us to have a 21st-century Army to meet our needs.
I do have some concerns about whether or not—even with the plus-up which is being perceived to be much larger than it really is in terms of modernization, to ask you what your unfunded needs are, your unfunded requirements. We just got the Navy's request in last week. It is $8.5 billion approximately.
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So I know the Army also has unfunded. We need to have this as we debate the—not just the defense budget, but, in particular, I am concerned about the $10 billion that the Administration is requesting for this, ''rainy day'' fund or future threat fund, and we may, in fact, want to take some action there.
So what is the Army's unfunded requirements?
General SHINSEKI. I can offer to you that in terms of round numbers, the compelling requirements are similar to the Navy's, up around $9 billion, $9.5 billion.
Mr. WELDON. Will you be getting us a list?
General SHINSEKI. We have been asked—
Mr. WELDON. Will you be getting us a list?
General SHINSEKI. We have agreed to do that, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you.
Mr. Secretary and General, I am very concerned about the Comanche program and the fact that we have had—I think it is five or six significant changes since I have been in Congress, and we all want to get this program in place because of the importance of the program to the Army which, General, you repeatedly told me is a cornerstone of your transformation. So what is the status of the two prototype aircraft and the implementation of the mission-equipment package?
And, secondarily, there was a report that was supposed to have been submitted to us on the Comanche. We required that in the conference last year. My understanding is we have not gotten that report back yet. That will help us make the case for the funding and basically stop the hemorrhaging and the slippage of this program. I mean, you know, we are all going to be retired before the program comes into existence, and that is not healthy for the soldiers who need this capability.
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So can you please gives us an update on the Comanche?
Secretary WHITE. Well, number one, I think you summarized it very well. It is a critical program to us. It is the cornerstone of the transformation, and it has been too long in development.
We are—one of the reasons I asked Assistant Secretary Bolton to come in as the Acquisition and Logistics Assistant Secretary was his extensive background in airframe development as an Air Force general officer.
We will produce a report shortly. We are—have reorganized the contractor headquarters into a combined project office, and we will focus the program on block development, with the first block being, of course, the replacement for Kiowa in the armed reconnaissance mode, and then we will do block improvements beyond that.
It is absolutely vital that we get this thing fielded.
Mr. WELDON. And we agree, so we just want to—did you have anything else to add, General, or—
General SHINSEKI. I would just reinforce what the Secretary has already laid out. It is an essential program. It is part of our transformation and the way ahead. It is a quarterback of whatever we see offensively and in terms of deep, armed reconnaissance, armed escorts for ground forces, and I think the decisions that have just been taken by the Secretary reduces—mitigates the risk in terms of cost and scheduling, much of the adjustments that we funded from within the existing Comanche account, so I think all of these decisions are timely and the way ahead is strong.
Mr. WELDON. Two other quick questions. One is there was a commander of Army Materiel Command was quoted along with senior Army officials in ''Inside the Army'' this week that, despite recent funding increases, the Army's ammunition budget is still hundreds of millions of dollars underfunded. I assume that will be in your unfunded priorities list. But what is the critical shortfall for ammunition for Fiscal Year 2003?
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Secondarily, I will be chairing a hearing of the Procurement Subcommittee next week on the issue of crisis response and the procurement that the military has been obtaining to not just help us deal with terrorism but to support our critical defense—our critical homeland security needs. And one of my key concerns is in the area of transforming technology breakthroughs and—where the Army has gone out and come up with cutting-edge technology to protect our soldiers and the need to transfer that for civilian usage at home.
I mean, we are doing things in the Army that are unbelievable in the area of global positioning systems (GPS), in the area of guidance systems for soldiers on the battlefield. They know exactly where they are every hour of every day that they are in combat. We are developing through research with the Army a device that sends back through transmitters the health condition of the soldier on the battlefield.
Well, all of that technology has direct implication for the civilian emergency responder. Yet we do not have a way of transferring that. And so I would like you to think about that because the hearing that I am going to chair next week is going to focus on that.
I mean, we are spending taxpayers' money, and I support it fully—and even more—to protect our soldiers on the battlefield, to give them the best protection they can have, but as we develop that capability, it seems to me logical that same technology ought to be available for the firefighter at the World Trade Center or for the—you know, the wild lands firefighter in the West that is in the middle of a forested area that—we should have the same capability for that person that we provide to our soldiers. I would appreciate your help in that regard as well.
But if—
General SHINSEKI. There is no argument here on that, Congressman.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, General.
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If you could answer the question on the critical shortfall of ammunition, and then I will be finished.
General SHINSEKI. Okay. Let—
Secretary WHITE. On the ammunition front, we have fully funded the training ammunition requirement. The question is on the war reserve side.
As you know, in the QDR last year, the strategy was shifted from two major theater wars to a more diverse set of requirements. We are still analyzing what the ammunition requirement looks like on the QDR side.
The question—the real question is how much money do you want to spend currently on, say, for example, 155 dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (ICM), which is the substitute munition, or wait a couple of years and buy Excalibur, which you will need a lot less of because it is a precision munition.
And what we have tried to do is strike a balance between having adequate war reserves of principally substitutable items in a lot of cases versus fully funding the development of better munitions that we can get our hands on in the next couple of years.
The budget request reflects that balance, and we will give you an unfunded requirements (UFR) number as to what could usefully be spent in addition to what we have budgeted against that kind of strategy.
Mr. WELDON. Will the gentleman yield for just second? Just a real quick second.
General Shinseki testified last year that there was a $3-billion total shortage even using preferred ammo. And, General Shinseki, your letter in December said the shortage has gotten bigger. Is that still accurate?
General SHINSEKI. That is correct, Congressman. The piece on ammunition, which is the balance that the Secretary talks about, has a training piece. Every year, there is a required amount of ammunition we must fire—acquire and shoot and train our people. That is fully funded.
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Each year, our ammunition expenditures are $2.2 billion. $800 million of that is for training fully funded. That takes care of training and readiness.
Every year, another piece of this is to buy down the war reserve requirement, and, in 2003, I think we are spending $1.4 billion against the war reserve requirement. That is not buying the entire war reserve requirement. It is buying it in an increment.
And the reason we buy it in an increment is tied to wanting to have a warm base always operational so that when we go to a crisis, we can surge very quickly. If we buy the whole thing out, it goes cold. We have no surge capability. So some of this is by design.
The other reason we buy the war reserve at an increment is in line with the Secretary's point. That is with the change in strategy, the statement of requirement for war reserves is tied to a two-MTW strategy. That—those are the numbers we have today.
As we begin to look at the change in strategy that moves us away from that two MTW, the requirement for munitions may go up because of precision requirements, as opposed to sort of the dumb munitions that we used to fund in the past, or it may go down, and that is under way in terms of analysis.
The third piece in the ammunition accounts, which is probably the toughest for the Secretary and I to swallow, is called demilitarization. This is what we have to do every year to take ammo stocks and war reserve that have exceeded their shelf life, they are no longer useful to us, and they also represent a danger because of the instability that goes along with it. We have to retrograde that ammunition and literally cut it up, break it apart.
We spend—we will spend in this budget $200 million, as we do every year, to demilitarize ammunition that have then outlasted their useful life. We need to get this a little bit better in balance, and that is the reason—the hesitation for making any larger investments in the war reserve requirement at this time.
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Secretary WHITE. Could I address the second question just for a minute, because I am executive agent for homeland security in the Department.
As you know, the Department has proposed a change in the unified command plan to establish a commander-in-chief, a CINC, for homeland security, Commander-in-Chief, Northern Command (CINCNORTHCOM). And assuming that the President signs off on that, that will give us a focal point in the Department on the operational side that will tie into Governor Ridge's homeland security strategy, a portion of which is the training of first responders locally.
If we combine that with a consolidated effort in the Office of Secretary of Defense for homeland security for resource allocation and research and development and so forth, that should establish the mechanism to flow the technologies that you are talking about into the first responder network. So I am hopeful we can make significant progress.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Ortiz, is recognized.
Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, General, it is good to see both of you, and thank you for being with us today.
Going back to homeland security, you know, there has been a recommendation by the Administration to appoint a commander-in-chief for national defense. Last year, I think that it was authorized and appropriated $22 billion. This year, it is recommended that it be increased to $33 billion.
How are you going to interact or interrelate with homeland security? Because if I understand correctly, in your statement, you said that the active Army, the National Guard, the Army Reserve has over 124,000 soldiers and 38,000 civilians stationed in 110 countries, plus an additional 27,000 soldiers deployed in 60 countries.
God forbid that we have another strike, which will be maybe more organized the one we had. The individual in charge of homeland security—where is he going to get his people to respond? Because I know you all have missions. Now you have to take away 13,000 people to respond to the New York incident.
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How does this interrelate—how—are you going to be able to tap some of this $55 billion that will probably be out there? How is this going to work?
Secretary WHITE. Well, the—assuming that the President appoints a commander-in-chief for homeland security, NORTHCOM, he will be responsible to develop an operations plan, and decisions will have to be made about what forces will be allocated, if any, against that plan, because it is all the same force pool, and, today, as we all know, there are extensive draws on National Guard and reserve components principally to support homeland security efforts, both under state and under federal control.
The question is going to be for the first time to have unity of command on the military side and make the fundamental decisions about how much we are going to apportion to support homeland security.
Mr. ORTIZ. But will this—the necessity to maybe increase your end strength because where are you going to get these additional people to respond to this?
Secretary WHITE. Well, I—we will get them the same place we currently are, out of the same force pool. We have—for example, in airports, we have roughly 7,000 people under state control today, National Guardsmen, who have done a wonderful job securing airports across the country. Now that there is a federal agency that has been spun up to take over that responsibility, we will have to phase down the Guards' commitment there, which will ease the burden on the Guard. But it all comes out of the same force pool.
Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.
And I have another question for General Shinseki. And I know, General, that you are aware of the aging work force, but at the Corpus Christi Army Depot, the average age is 49.4. By the year 2011, half of the work force will be able—eligible to retire.
And I know that, in the past, we have had internships and apprenticeships and other hiring procedures to help obtain new employees, and I think that this last year they have hired 350 new employees.
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Are we still continuing to support this program so that we do have skilled workers to be able to put a product out when it is needed or—and just like the Chairman said and Mr. Skelton, we are trying to find our information so that we can help you.
What—can you answer that a little bit?
General SHINSEKI. I would offer to you, Congressman, that, as you and I know, I have personal knowledge of what a depot means to us. When we had a critical readiness issue for Apaches a little over a year ago, and there were no other options, and—in order to generate sprag clutches. I did not know what a sprag clutch was until then, but I had to get the Apaches back in the air, and the only solution—quick turnaround solution was through one of our depots, the depot in your district, as a matter of fact, and following the great performance of those folks, I went down there to thank them personally. It was that important.
But I do share your concern. I would offer you this. The work force continues to be a great strategic reserve for what we do on a day-to-day basis and, more importantly, when we surge. I am sure we will get around to talking about the decisions the Secretary and I have recently endorsed on realignment in the headquarters, but one of the decisions—or one of the pieces that come out of those decisions is to establish a civilian personnel program, much as we have for the uniform side.
It is recruiting. It is an internship program. It is the development over a lifetime of service as a civilian in the Army that ties education and development jobs to ever-increasing responsibilities. That is the intent, and I think you will see the interest demonstrated by the Secretary and myself to address the problem you raise.
Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you so much. We appreciate the fine work that both of you are doing. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady from Virginia, Mrs. Davis?
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Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS OF VIRGINIA Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Mr. Secretary and General, thank you both for being here today.
I have three areas that I would like to ask questions on, and the one—I think you might have answered it, but I am not real sure I caught it, and that is on the Comanche program. I am looking very much forward to seeing that deployed and completed, and I guess I am not real sure I understand—I heard how important it is to you, so I guess I am not real sure I understand the justification of why it has been delayed the sixth time until fiscal year 2008.
The second thing is, General Shinseki, after watching the Afghanistan campaign develop and seeing—at least I have seen so many of the missions going off the carriers and—I am just wondering does that make it important now that our helicopter pilots are trained and experienced in training over open water, and are we doing anything in that area?
The third is power projection platforms, and you may have addressed that a little bit, too, but that—I guess I am concerned because I am not sure that we have the capability and people, and I guess I just would like to hear you expound on that, if we have enough capability in terms of power projection.
General SHINSEKI. Okay. Let me take the carrier issue first. You know, we—one of the things about the professional services is we always realize there is some area that we are challenged to go to because the strategic environment that we envision does not always play out exactly the way we had hoped, and so there are adjustments we have to make, such as carrier-based helicopter formations, and Kitty Hawk—I stood on the Kitty Hawk with great sailors but talking to Army aviators on the decks there. Tremendous platform.
And for all of us, although we tend to look at our capabilities as services, we also understand that there is a great requirement for complimentary capabilities, and so we pay attention to what opportunities there are, and when a requirement comes up that does fall out of the normal doctrinal approach to it, we adapt pretty well.
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And I think what that would suggest to you is the great quality of our force, this ability to adapt and figure how to solve a problem that was not anticipated, and, in this case, when you do not have access to ground-based solutions, the carrier force is a, you know, tremendous asset.
Power projection platforms, as I indicated, we are—very much measure our readiness to do our wartime mission by the people in our formations, both in uniform and our civilian work force, and in terms of our continental U.S. installations, the work force there is very much a part of that power projection capability we do have, and they are important to us, and we do look after them.
Our ability to balance all of our requirements and meet every priority we have is challenged by the size of the budget we have, but this is a good budget that we have. It has allowed us to pay better attention than we have in a long time to our people in terms of the benefits that I have described but also in our ability to invest in base operations and our ability to invest in repair and maintenance accounts.
A year ago, we were only able to fund base ops at 80 percent. In this budget, we have raised it to 90 percent. A year ago, we were only able to invest in our repair and maintenance accounts at the 60-percent level. This budget, it is at 90 percent. So, while we have not solved all the problems, we have been able to demonstrate a significant increase in those power projection platforms.
Secretary WHITE. On the Comanche front, just to reiterate, that is a program that has gone on too long. The Kiowas have to be replaced. It has suffered from every known disease—unstable requirements, migrating—or migrating requirements, unstable funding, less than optimum relationship between the two contractors, and Assistant Secretary Bolton and I are spending an enormous amount of time on that. We simply must get it fielded period, and we have fully funded it in the budget request, and you have supported it in the past.
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We will provide the report which shows you the steps we are taking in the program. But if you look at what I would call the Army's big five of Comanche, Crusader, Future Combat Systems (FCS), the interim vehicle, and our digitization, we have to bring all of those along, and the budget supports that.
Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS OF VIRGINIA So it just cannot be done any sooner than fiscal year 2008? Is that the reason it is—
Secretary WHITE. I do not think so. But given where we currently are and the state of technology development, I think—and we will report this in detail to you, but I do not think it can be done faster.
Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS OF VIRGINIA Thank you, Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reyes of Texas is recognized.
Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary and General Shinseki, welcome.
And I share the pride of the work that is being done by our men and women in uniform, and, in particular, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, the great work that the special operations troops are doing in the fight against terrorism.
There are a couple of areas that I would like to focus in on this morning.
The first one, Mr. Secretary, deals with the A-76 program and the studies that have taken place throughout the Department of Defense (DOD) over the past several years. As you know, they are—there have been a number—they have been of great concern to a number of us on this committee, and it is not because we object to the potential savings, nor because we do not want to give industry a chance to complete in our military installations, but because we do not really know what those savings are and what they have been.
And the other concern we have got are the intangibles—institutional knowledge, dedicated employees that are losing their jobs, protection of national interests. Those kinds of issues are vitally important, I think, to our ability to perform as a military. The 10-percent savings that normally take place as a benchmark really in my mind do not mitigate those kinds of losses as we deal with the challenge of the national security.
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So, this morning, can you, Mr. Secretary, quantify how much money the A-76 process has really saved the Army? And, consequently, what happens to our civil service corporate knowledge that is lost when the contractor wins the competition? And is this consistent from your perspective with efficiency and mission accomplishment?
Secretary WHITE. I have to say, Congressman, that I think A-76 is a lousy process for all concerned, regardless of which side of the issue you sit on, because it ultimately is an outsourcing that is limited to just labor only, and that, in my experience, of privatizing non-core functions, both in the business world and now in the Army, is that that is not where you make money. You make money by outsourcing an entire function, like the Residential Communities Initiative (RCI) program and family housing, where we have private developers bringing capital, bringing technical expertise, and the least important part of it is whose bodies are in the family housing office on an installation.
So we are working to broadly outsource functions, particularly capital-intensive functions, and find and propose to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), along with the other services, alternatives to A-76 that make more sense. When you spend four years going back and forth in an A-76 process, it is a wonder that anybody in the in-house work force is still there at the end of that process. They get fed up with it.
So we are looking for other ways to do it, and if you look at the success we are having in RCI and the potential success that we can have in utilities privatization, we ought to be outsourcing functions, not just labor.
Mr. REYES. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. We appreciate that perspective.
Switching to my second question, General Shinseki, in—as you know, in a collaborative effort, the U.S. Army and the Israel Defense Force has successfully developed a rocket-defense system that uses high energy laser. Based on the overwhelming success of the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), which has been tested at White Sands and Fort Bliss, the Army has planned to spend about $117 million over the next five years to make the system mobile.
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Rapid deployment will greatly improve the THEL program, however, thus far, our policy has prevented the system from addressing a broader set of key targets. THEL has proven itself against Katyusha rockets and mortars, but has the potential to go after a much wider portfolio, which includes cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
My question, General Shinseki, is what steps are being taken to expand the envelope of the mobile THEL in order to make this system a more robust and battle-ready capability for the Army?
General SHINSEKI. Congressman, I would just tell you that the reason we put energy and interest into working with other nations who have interest in technologies like this is to understand and leverage the learning that we get out of it and try to understand how we would apply it. And high-energy lasers is something we do look at for the future.
There are some restrictions on how you can use the power of the laser. And so we look at that, as well. But a broad array of targets that you described are things that we are interested in. And so we will continue to study that.
Mr. REYES. Very good.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder?
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
General Shinseki, if I might, I would like to continue a conversation I had yesterday in this room with General Franks. I know you are at some disadvantage since you were not a participant in the conversation. But it was a discussion about media access to ground operations wherever they—media—
General SHINSEKI. Media access—okay.
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Dr. SNYDER. —American press access. And, if I can take a little different attack on this question—I have not seen the movie that is out now—''We Were Soldiers''—but I did read the book when it came out several years ago—''We Were Soldiers Once and Young.''
And I think it is pretty clear from the discussion with General Franks yesterday—as you may recall, there is a scene in the movie where Joe Galloway, the—I think he is a United Press International (UPI) reporter—basically hitchhikes a ride in a helicopter into the area of operations.
I think it is very clear from the rules that you all have now that that would not occur—that the helicopter pilot would not have been authorized to carry that guy—that, in fact, Joe Galloway, under the rules that you all have now, probably would have been nowhere near that area.
And that is a concern to me. I know it is a concern to members of the American press that are covering the event.
Do you agree that that kind of hitchhiking rides that you probably saw in your Vietnam days is no longer available to American media?
General SHINSEKI. My recollection of Vietnam days—Joe Galloway got in because of his determination and his, you know, working it out with that individual helicopter pilot.
Dr. SNYDER. Right.
General SHINSEKI. There were probably rules in place that would have precluded it, even then, I believe. I just do not recall.
Dr. SNYDER. I do not think that is accurate, General.
General SHINSEKI. Oh, is that right?
Dr. SNYDER. But maybe that is—I mean, we have got a helicopter man here who says that is not. I do not think that is accurate at all. But we can sort that out later.
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General SHINSEKI. Okay. I do recall—I mean, being on operation and having the press come and visit. But it was not in the middle of a situation that was an all out survival battle—I just do not recall—about having the press come and visit a fire base or go out on an operation, even a night ambush, with us—that was available. And we did it. I mean, with a little bit of trepidation because you had to ensure that they were ready for the kind of mission you were going to go out on.
But—
Dr. SNYDER. If I might interrupt—whose policy is it? Sitting here right now, could you give the order, ''We are going to go back to the more free-wheeling rules, as long as they have got press badges and we know who they are, basically, we will let them go out on any combat operation accompanying American troops.'' Could you give that order? Or is it coming from—
General SHINSEKI. It would not come from service. It would be a policy established between—my guess would be between the commander-in-chief of the operations—the CINC—and Defense.
Dr. SNYDER. So, is what you are saying—is that if General Franks wanted to, he could issue an order tomorrow that would say, ''Press has access—'' you know, you, obviously, have to give some latitude to your company commanders—people on the ground—but that the basic rule ought to be an open door policy for American press to accompany ground troops on operations that may well involve great danger—may be in the middle of ongoing fire fights? You are saying General Franks could do that?
General SHINSEKI. I am not sure that that is what I am saying. I am saying it is a policy issue and he, certainly, contributes to informing the decision-makers of that policy. He is a participant. He owns the operation. He makes the threat assessments. And if it goes badly, he has the responsibility to protect and safeguard—
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Dr. SNYDER. If I may—protect and safeguard whom?
General SHINSEKI. The members of that formation—it could include unarmed personnel.
So—
Dr. SNYDER. If I might refer to—
General SHINSEKI. —I am not saying that he is the only decision-maker here. I am saying that he has a key part in it. But it is a policy that is established by Defense.
Dr. SNYDER. One of the issues that has come out is that—what you just referred to as protect the press personnel. I mean, these are actually—you know, as you know, they are grown adults—most of them—many of them are older than the troops. There was a letter to the editor in the New York Times—I do not know—February 26—I think that was yesterday or the day before. And if I can just read—it is a very short letter—''One excuse that the American defense—''—it is from Walter Cronkite—''One excuse that the American defense establishment has used in refusing journalists the right to accompany our forces into combat in Afghanistan, the policy in the Persian Gulf War, is that their lives would be endangered. This excuse is invalid. The correspondent volunteers are doing their duty to protect our democracy by defending the people's right to know, even as the soldier volunteers are doing theirs in shouldering the weapons to defend us.'' And he makes a couple more statements. But—
General SHINSEKI. Sure.
Dr. SNYDER. —two points coming out—number one, here is Walter Cronkite, one of the most respected journalists in our history. Underlying this letter is he thinks your policy is journalists do not get to go, essentially, anywhere. And number two is that they should be the ones to make the decision about whether their lives are in danger or not. And that has been the long tradition throughout our history—
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General SHINSEKI. Sure.
Dr. SNYDER. —that American reporters make the decisions about whether they are going to get killed. And many got killed.
My time is up, General. The only thing I would say is please look into it. I think we have talked about these operations are going to go on for some time. And I think that we, as a democracy, will suffer if the people on the ground have a culture or an attitude toward the media that somehow they should not be allowed to go on these operations.
General SHINSEKI. Yeah. Let me just add to the discussion—a recommendation from this service was to embed members of the press much earlier. But policy decision is made—we abide by it.
I was not suggesting—and I would never suggest, in opposition to Mr. Cronkite, that the decision about safety is not the individual reporter's. But I do say that when a casualty occurs out there, and a member of the press is a casualty, we are going to go get them. And that is the burden of, you know, the commander on the ground.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson, is recognized.
Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I would like to congratulate both of you on your service. And I am very proud to be, actually, a member of the Army National Guard and associated with you. And I really wanted to comment on—General, you commended the Guard and Reserve forces for their service and I just want to thank you.
That would be my comment today.
General SHINSEKI. Thank you.
Mr. WILSON. Thanks, Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady from California, Mrs. Tauscher?
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Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary—General Shinseki, I was very privileged to see our troops on the ground in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and Tajikistan and a few other of those places last month. And I was proud to see them because they were doing phenomenal work. And they looked very young, but they were very ready and great patriots. So, thank you for your leadership.
General Shinseki, my sense is that transformation and capabilities-based warfare mean different things to each of the services. Do you feel that the world has changed so radically in the last decade that we need to abandon a threat-based strategy?
And, if so, what does a capabilities-based paradigm mean for the Army in terms of procurement and posture?
General SHINSEKI. This is a tough question. I think you are right. Capabilities-based strategy means different things to different people. And I will try to explain how we arrived at accommodating that discussion.
A threat-based strategy really simplifies things. You have a clearly identified threat. You study that threat both in capabilities and intent. And if capabilities are there, you have to react to that even when you do not know what the intent is. And that forces you into a set of discussions.
But, in studying their capabilities, if they have got a tank that can do a certain thing, then you design—engineering-wise—you design a counter to that. So it simplifies your challenge.
When you do not have a clear singular threat—and I do not mean to do a tutorial here—but it challenges us because you have to look more broadly.
Two years ago when the Army decided that we were wrestling with a Cold War force in a emerging 21st century set of requirements, we looked at where the difficulties were occurring in the world. We looked at the Koreas—some talk of reunification, but a longer time line. We watched the China/Taiwan issue and India—Pakistans—the Iran—the Iraqs—we were in Bosnia and we were watching a pretty good sized army wrestle with Chechnya and having their hands full.
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Well, when you place this on the map, they circumscribe a part of the world that we do not know much about and we never really paid much attention to. And it describes, sort of, a pool table with pockets, if you will, around it. But that tabletop, sort of, focuses on the Caspian.
For the Army, we put our finger in the middle of that large unknown and, for some discussions, ungoverned area, and asked ourselves, ''Could we get there?'' The answer was, ''No.'' Could others get there? And, based on our—the way we looked at the problem, we found everyone challenged.
And so, for us, we, sort of, put that as the center of our discussion in terms of capabilities. If you can get there, then you can solve a good many of the other problems without ever having to do the analysis in each of those cases because this one is so tough.
Then, what are the capabilities that you need to get there? Not that you want to go or you have ever envisioned two years ago having to go there, but what capabilities make it possible for you to get there? You have to be more strategically responsive. You have to have a better deployability footprint than we currently have.
And if you downsize the platform that you are dealing with to make it more deployable, it has to be agile, it has to be versatile—cover a range of missions. It has to be at least as lethal as our heavy platforms are today and, hopefully, better—more survivable and definitely more sustainable.
So these force characteristics became descriptors, if you will, that defined for us the capabilities we needed. And it is after those capabilities that we have invested our money for the last two and a half years.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Well, I want to congratulate you for having the foresight and the vision and the strength of character to move on transformation so early on. And if you had not done that, I really do not know where we would have been in early September. So thank you for doing that.
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Mr. Secretary, if I can continue this discussion on threat-based versus capabilities-based—my concern is that we are wrapping ourselves around the axle because we are—when I go home and talk about the fact that—I work for very smart people in Northern California. And they read everything. And they want to know how come we do not seem to care about threats anymore and that this capabilities thing just comes kind of out of nowhere.
And they want to know, you know, why threats do not seem to matter anymore. And what is this about capabilities? Don't you have to understand the threat in order to understand what your capability is?
They understand that the 21st century is unpredictable. They understand it is about asymmetry. They understand that there is not this state-based face-off between the former Soviet Union and the United States.
And what I worry about is that we are, kind of, talking ourselves to death about changes, when the reality is it is about a threat. We know what that damned threat is. And we have to get ourselves ready for it. And what is so different about what we are doing now except changing the words?
Secretary WHITE. Well, I think in the near term—it is a difference of what timeframe you are talking about. In the near term, it is clear that it is threat-based.
The North Korean army is poised on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in Korea. We can measure it. We know how big it is. And we can measure the capability of the legacy force to deal with that. And we can make decisions on how much risk that we want to take against a near-term threat because we can clearly see it.
In the mid and the long-term, it is more ambiguous. And that is why we said, ''Well, what are the obvious capabilities that we have to have in five years from now—10 years from now that would cover a multitude of options, depending upon where the potential adversaries migrate?
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And so it is clear that in the mid and long term significantly enhanced strategic mobility for the Army is vital. And therefore, FCS is going to fit in the C-130, just like interim armored vehicle (IAV). And that is the capabilities that we would like to bring because we just cannot project what the threat is going to look like that far out in this type of environment. It was a lot easier in the Soviet days.
But in the near term, it clearly is threat-based.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from New York, Mr. McHugh?
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary—Chief—welcome. Thank you so much for your service. And thank you, too, for the amazing job that the Army is doing on behalf of all Americans. It is a really incredible thing to see.
One of the greatest needs that I have perceived is, perhaps, not as important in warfare as others, but is somehow a new public relations (PR) angle for the United States Army because I have seen the amazing job that your young men and women have been doing across this globe, including, of course, Central Asia. And yet, it seems the other services get a little bit more ink. And while the other services are doing a terrific job, I think sometimes as a part of the glory that comes upon them, the Army takes it down a couple of rungs.
But you are doing the job that the American public has asked you to do and doing it incredibly well. And we all thank you.
I just want to make an editorial comment before I get to a couple of personnel-type questions.
As you know, gentlemen, I had a chance to visit the 10th Mountain Division in Bosnia, Kosovo—Uzbekistan. I only had a week, so I was not able to visit them as well in their other deployments in Kuwait, Bukhara and the Sinai and Qatar.
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They are out there doing great work in a whole lot of places. And the reality is, as proud as I am of the job that they do, all the rest of the Army is under that kind of pressure.
I am deeply concerned, as I know you have heard from other members here this morning, about the end strength issue. And this is something that we have been talking about for some time. And I firmly believe the time in which we should have acted has passed.
And I would hope, Mr. Chairman, as we go forward this year and next, we begin to address that issue because it is having an enormous strain not just upon the so-called regular Army.
But as—in Bosnia as, you know, Chief and Mr. Secretary, you have got a National Guard division there in charge—Virginia based—doing incredible work—seamless work and yet, they, too, are symptomatic of a lot of pressure coming upon our Guard and Reserve units.
And I think the system, at some point, either has to be fixed or it is going to break. And I think fixing is a far better path.
And now that having been said, let me put on my personnel hat, here, for a moment. One of the things I did see as I traveled to those deployments was the activity and the amazing support that the Army regulars had—an e-Army University (U). I know that Pricewaterhouse Coopers, your consulting firm in that effort, has sent all of you a letter saying that it would stop work on current projects and not go forward with the two-post expansion unless the Army found the resources to make a commitment to the rest of 2002. I know you two gentlemen understand how enormously popular this is with the deployed troops. And I was just wondering if there has been any progress on finding that funding so that the current program and the expansion could go forward.
General SHINSEKI. I will have to provide you, for the record, an answer as to exactly the funding. But let me just reinforce your support for how important education is to our force. That is the one thing our youngsters, as they join us, suggest to us that they are looking for when they come to us. Part of that is to put money away for college. Part of that is to be able to use on-duty—during the period that they are in the service to avail themselves of our continuing education program.
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And I will get you a better answer on exactly—
Mr. MCHUGH. That is great. I would be—it was more important to raise the issue—
General SHINSEKI. Right.
Mr. MCHUGH. — and to have that on the record. So I appreciate that.
The other—and you may not have the answer to this, as well—but I would put it out there because I think it will become a concern—the boards for corrections of military records—BCMRs—that, in the Army, is under the Army Review Board Agency—has been a very successful effort—one that Congress has made some initiatives to try to fix some of the past problems. And, by my understanding, has worked relatively well in helping the service men and women to air their complaints. And also they receive a just remedy without having to go to private litigation and such.
The concern centers on the recent discussions about cutting back on the agency personnel and headquarters personnel. I think you should be aware that, at least in my perspective, as Chairman, I would hope that those contemplated reductions would not affect the Army Agency Review Board or the corrections boards for military records across your fellow services.
It seems to me that they are operating at peak right now. And any kind of diminishment of their personnel staff would be a very difficult challenge for them while, at the same time, doing this important work for the service men and women.
So, as I said, you may not have an answer or response. But if you could take a look at that, I think we would all appreciate it.
General SHINSEKI. I will provide a response for the record. But I think most of us in uniform, at our age, has availed ourselves of that process at one time or another.
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[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. MCHUGH. Right.
General SHINSEKI. Systems are not perfect, so it has our interest.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thanks, again, for your service.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Hayes?
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank both of you for being there. I want to pay tribute, also, to our soldiers, sailors and airmen. The 10th Mountain is part of the XVIII Airborne Corp at Fort Bragg and they are doing a wonderful job. And I appreciate that.
On the issue of $200 million being spent to destroy outdated ammunition—why is that ammunition not identified ahead of time and used for training? It is kind of a $400 million turnaround—am I missing something?
Secretary WHITE. Well, some of it cannot be used for training. Because in some cases, the ammunition—the nature of the ammunition cannot be fired in training areas. And so that is a part of it.
General SHINSEKI. We are also the DOD agent for demilitarization. So it is more than just Army. But our accounts are in there. Some of the ammunition that—gone bad—it just exceeds our training requirements, even. And where we can, we do shoot that ammunition up, consume it or sell it in foreign military sales.
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But for the most part, the Secretary is right. A good portion of that we are not able to—for safety reasons—use it in on our installations.
Mr. HAYES. It still sounds a little strange. At your leisure and someone has time to check by my office, I would like to get into that more deeply.
Secretary WHITE. Sure.
Mr. HAYES. Another quick statement—Mr. Secretary, you have been very helpful on our combat boot situation.
Secretary WHITE. Right.
Mr. HAYES. Want to make sure that we protect our industrial base and deal with those issues using American manufacturers where possible and feasible. And we had a coat liner situation come up—went the other way. Again, not fully informed, but there was apparently a manufacturer in Delaware, which is great. But we have also got one in North Carolina. Make sure we get our competitive juices flowing there internally.
Question on the issue of Army current and future strategy for facilities modernization—number one, how are we doing? And we are scheduled at Bragg 2008, which means soldiers 2010 or 2011. Any chance, in your view, of moving that up? I know it is based on how well we are able to respond to your needs, but just comments that you would on that.
Secretary WHITE. Well, in terms of facilities modernization, our barracks modernization is going to be bought out completely, I think, by 2009. We will have all family housing renovated and modernized by 2007. We are not spending as much money as we would like in the sustainability of our infrastructure. We have taken a risk there, as I think we identified with the budget. But as the Chief has said, we have invested all that we could under the existing budget's limitations to modernize the infrastructure. And we are making significant progress.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, sir.
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You are familiar with the congressional delegation (CODEL) that Congressman Weldon could examine the bases in at Fort Bragg. How are we doing on responding to the things that were discovered there? And, as a part of that, utilities privatization—is that making good progress?
Secretary WHITE. I am a champion of utilities privatization. In more general terms, I am a champion of privatizing any non-core activity of the United States Army so long as we can get the right value proposition from the business world.
And utilities privatization, the Congress authorized this in 1997. And the Department of Defense, shortly thereafter, set a goal of 2003 to have this done. We have over 200 systems at installations that we would like to privatize, but the progress is slow. Since I have been Secretary, we have only been able to privatize six of those 200 plus systems. And so we are taking steps to kick it in the rear end and get it in gear because there is an enormous amount of capital to be saved here. And we have got to get on with it.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, sir.
I am sure that Congress Weldon showed you that so-called water pipe from Bragg—
Secretary WHITE. Right.
Mr. HAYES. — that was made out of four pieces of wood with a wire wrapped around it.
Similar issue—it used to be called Real Property Maintenance. And I think we have got a transformed name—Sustain, Restore, Modernize (SRM)—how are we doing on that issue in funding for 2003? Big shortfall there, apparently.
Secretary WHITE. The SRM account is about flat with what it was in 2002. And so we have sustained it at the level that we budgeted in 2002.
General SHINSEKI. Actually, we increased the—you are asking about SRM, specifically? 2002 I think we funded at 60 percent. In 2003 it is up to 90 percent. So we have put more money—with flexibility to do that, we have put more money against that priority.
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Mr. HAYES. Great. I will help you lobby across the street to do that.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Let me say to the members and the witnesses that we have about eight people left. We have a vote now. We have a potential of one more vote. And the big problem is we have another hearing to begin in this room at 1:00. If I could ask the members to shorten their statements, as well as the witnesses—the answers, as much as possible, we can, perhaps, get through.
The gentlelady from California, Mrs. Davis?
Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And Secretary—General, thank you for being here. And I will try and make this very brief.
You mentioned in your early comments that the Army was choosing a Network Centric system or looking at that choice. And I know that the Navy is investing heavily in what they are calling the Network Centric Warfare. And I had an opportunity, actually, to see that on the USS Coronado in San Diego. And I am wondering to what extent is your choice based on interoperability with the Navy. What are you basing your decision on?
General SHINSEKI. Well, we have been after this since 1992—working on what we call digitization. Today I think the more common term may be Network Centric operations.
I have stood on the Coronado—tremendous capability there. Two T-1 lines worth of processing capability. It is not what we can carry with us as ground forces when we go. So it is impressive.
On the other hand, when we, in the ground forces, have to pass information, the number of things we have to track is significant—1500 icons in our last operation for a brigade out in the desert so we could figure out where our combat systems were.
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Our current system tracks 1,500 icons, which exceeds most other service requirements for processing. We are able to pass that to the Air Force through the Link 16 linkups. And we are not totally interoperable, but we are much better than where we were in 1992. We continue to work with the Navy, especially Admiral Blair, who has made the Coronado a major centerpiece for his requirements. And so we are linked with them.
Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. That is good to know that you can do that.
And very quickly, a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that the DOD tooth-to-tail ratio was 70 to 30—that being 70 percent of the budget is spent on infrastructure Administration—about 30 percent of it reaches the troops—the war fighter.
How would you assess that ratio in the Army? Do you think that that is, you know, is that a similar ratio?
Secretary WHITE. Well, we are all concerned about that. And one of the things I talked about in my opening statement was the realignment and streamlining of headquarters that we have going on because we, simply, out of a fixed budget ceiling have to generate more resources—more people—more spaces into the war fighting end of the Army.
So I agree with that concern that was voiced. And we have a lot of initiatives we are working on.
Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Do you think that is a correct assessment?
Secretary WHITE. Yes. I do not know if that is exactly the right number for the Army, but certainly we are too heavy on the tail end. And if you look at what we are trying to do on the objective force—producing something to replace the legacy force at about 20 percent of the logistic burden, we are hot on the trail of this subject.
Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you.
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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary—General, it is going to be necessary that we recess for about 10 to 15 minutes. This is, however, the last vote of the day. So we, perhaps, will get through. I imagine all our members will come back.
Chair stands to recess about 15 minutes.
[Recess.]
The CHAIRMAN. Meeting please come to order.
Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, gentlemen, thanks for being with us today. And I apologize for not being here for the entire hearing.
Let me just run past one area that I think is critical for you as war fighters and the guys that are going to be out there in theater in places where you could be exposed to chemical—biological attack. A key that, I think, for all of the folks interested in homeland defense is—but similarly is totally applicable to your operations—is early detection of biological agent. And we just came out of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) meeting in which we got the latest and greatest, which is, that, I think, the best stuff we have got now is stuff that can detect biological agent in about 15 minutes. You take your air sample and it takes about 15 to process.
We have this problem of getting stuff into the field, as you have outlined it—and with some frustration over the years. And we have outlined it with some frustration, too. In this area, we cannot afford to have the delays of fielding biological contamination detection capability. We do not have the luxury of fielding that over a long period of time. We have to get it in quickly.
Have you got any mechanism that could move this stuff to very early—first, what kind of capability do we have? Do you think we need more? And have you got a vehicle that could move this stuff to early fielding?
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Secretary WHITE. Thank you very much.
Right now, we only have two biological detection companies that do that—dedicated for a living in the entire structure. One of them is in the active side and one of them is reserve component. And the reason we had those in the structure is not the current homeland security problem, it is the fact that the Soviets had this capability 20 years ago and we put that structure in the force.
We have to evaluate, in light of not only the homeland security requirements, but the forward deployed requirements, as well, whether that structure is adequate or not and do something about it.
The other side of it is, I think, that much like the Special Operations (Ops) Command—Assistant Secretary for Special Ops Low Intensity Conflict brings resource and accelerated development to a lot of things that are peculiar to that line of work, I think the establishment of the CINC for homeland security, along with an assistant secretary dedicated to that task, will bring the same sort of emphasis and acceleration to those things that are unique to that line of work, one of which is going to be biological detection.
And, clearly, it is a major pillar in Governor Ridge's strategy, as well.
Mr. HUNTER. Sure.
Mr. SKELTON. Will the gentleman yield?
Excuse me. To clarify that, did you say an assistant secretary dedicated to that—would that be an additional or an additional duty of an existing assistant—
Secretary WHITE. No, this—Mr. Skelton, this would be a dedicated assistant secretary for homeland security. And we are still working on the details of—the Secretary has mentioned this before—his interest in consolidating what is a fragmented organization in the Department of Defense on this. And I think that will be the final decision and we will get on with this quickly.
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Excuse me for interrupting. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Go right ahead.
Mr. Secretary, on that point, I know we are going to have a person that is dedicated to this and that is going to be an important thing, but we are going to have to have this quick detection capability in the field—
Secretary WHITE. Right.
Mr. HUNTER. —for your folks in theater—very quickly. And, you know, in talking with the DARPA folks and all of our research and development (R&D) folks, we have got this canyon between developing something—R&Ding it—and getting it into the production cycle—into the procurement cycle. And we cannot afford to have that long lag time with respect to this.
So one thing we are going to do in the next couple days—and maybe next couple weeks—and I would like to have your help on this—is we are going to have the DARPA folks get together with us, who—they are going to identify (ID) all the people that make chemical and biological detection equipment (ChemBio). And, as you said, it is a limited community. They are going to ID—basically take a status check on what we have got, how efficient it is, what it costs, where it is at and how fast we could ramp up. We are going to try to have the National Guard leadership there because I would think that, for homeland defense, the appropriate holders of that equipment in each community would probably be the National Guard. So if you have a problem in Washington D.C., the D.C. guard has got the detection capability and they get it out to the various points where you do a sample.
And so we need your help there. And if you could help—if you could have somebody work that meeting, that would be great.
Secretary WHITE. We will do that.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you.
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The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor?
Mr. TAYLOR. Thanks for being here, Mr. Secretary—
Secretary WHITE. Sir.
Mr. TAYLOR. —and General Shinseki.
Mr. Secretary, a couple of minutes ago—and I cannot write as fast as you can talk—but a couple of minutes ago you said something to the effect that you were the champion of privatizing any function—fill in the blank—that the Army did not have to do.
In the President's budget for this year is $98 million for the protection of an oil pipeline owned mostly by Occidental Petroleum through which Columbia National Oil Company oil and Brazilia National Oil Company oil flows through.
In visiting down there last week, it came to my attention after a few questions, that, although this particular pipeline has been attacked over 200 times, there are other pipelines in Columbia that are not attacked that private funds are used to protect. And I have got to tell you, as someone who considers himself a budget hawk and who does have to answer the letter from the little old lady who says $1,500 was misspent, as I did just last night, I have a lot of trouble with explaining to the American taxpayer why we are going to spend $98 million protecting a pipeline that ships oil from a company that had record profits last year—that was in the papers just this week in Columbia. And that task is going to fall to you and your organization, which by—the last time I heard, your special forces are already in 114 countries.
I remain highly skeptical, Mr. Secretary. And I will leave it to that. It is not that I cannot be convinced, but I want to let you know that I am highly skeptical that is something that only the United States Army can do and only the American taxpayer can pay for.
Secretary WHITE. I am totally unfamiliar with the topic. But I will do the research.
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Mr. TAYLOR. It is in the President's budget—
Secretary WHITE. Okay.
Mr. TAYLOR. —Mr. Secretary. And, again, given all of your needs and all of the other services needs, I would much rather be buying you Black Hawks with that money and help you towards your goal of getting rid of the Vietnam-era Hueys and some other things than spending it for that purpose.
The other thing that I would like to hear your comments on—again, I apologize for not only walking in late today, but walking in late on your presentation a couple weeks ago—tell me what you think the future holds for the Crusader and what you would like to see this Congress do along those lines.
Secretary WHITE. Thank you very much for the Crusader question. As long as the Chief of Staff and I have been associated with the United States Army, we have been under gunned, from an artillery perspective. There was a serious match-up problem with the Soviets. It would be a challenge with any of the three countries that the President talked about recently—Iran, Iraq, North Korea.
Crusader—and we have mandated the existing system, the last of which is called Paladin—the M109A6—about as far as we can stretch that rubber band. We need Crusader for long-range fire support for the United States Army and we have fully funded in our request. It provides a critical capability and we intend to field it on schedule and would ask for your support.
The development is doing great. It shoots well. It has got the rate of fire of a tank, as an artillery piece. It is robotic. It has got a small crew—it has got extended range and it is fast.
I went to the National Training Center (NTC) last week and watched the Paladin battery unable to keep up with M-1s and Bradleys in the attack. That will only get worse as we field more highly mobile systems, both in our interim brigades and in future combat systems.
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So Crusader is critical to the transformation of the Army.
Mr. TAYLOR. Are we at the stage where we actually can, ''cure the weapon?'' Because one of the frustrations that a lot of us share is we are spending so much money on the developing of weapons that never come to fruition. And, to a very large extent, suspect that some of our defense contractors are just milking us because they make more money off of the development of the weapon than building the weapon.
Secretary WHITE. We are pushing it hard. We have, finally, a prototype at Yuma. And it is in engineering developing and we are bringing it along as rapidly as we can. And the development is going very well.
Mr. TAYLOR. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary WHITE. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin?
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Mr. Secretary—
Secretary WHITE. Good morning.
Mr. LANGEVIN. —and General Shinseki.
General SHINSEKI. Good morning.
Mr. LANGEVIN. It is an honor to have you before the Committee today. And I know I join my many colleagues in saying how proud we are of the work that you are doing and that of the men and women of the armed forces. We are so proud and I hope you will carry that message back to them.
General SHINSEKI. I will.
Mr. LANGEVIN. I also just want to take a minute to commend the Army, in particular, in acknowledging the valuable partnership of the active Reserve and civilian components in total force structure. I know that many of those components right now are stretched to the limit. And I certainly look forward to working with you to remedy those problems. And that is an issue we will deal with on another day.
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If I could, right now, I would just like to turn our attention to the National Guard. I have two questions in that respect. First, as you are well aware, the National Guard is playing an integral role in our counter-drug efforts. And I have particular knowledge of that with my National Guard units back home in Rhode Island.
Our National Guard is playing a supporting role with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA); Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the United States Marshal Service; State Police; and many others.
What I am concerned about, though, is the Army proposes no funding for the National Guard counter-drug program in 2003. And I would ask if you could explain why we are not funding a successful drug interdiction program at a time when the President, in particular, has identified the direct link between illegal drugs and terrorism.
My second question—I know that the Army wants to buy over 2,000 Humvees. And I understand that they are very much in—well, it is very severe shortages of these vehicles in the Guard and could limit their value in total force capabilities.
Can you tell me how many of these Humvees are intended for the Guard?
Secretary WHITE. You want me to do the first one?
General SHINSEKI. Okay.
Secretary WHITE. Counter-drug—first of all, the National Guard, as you clearly pointed out, sir, plays an enormous role in the performance of the Army today—everything from the stabilization force in Bosnia to airports under state control. So they are enormously important to the Army and to the country. And they do a great job.
The counter-drug is funded separately as it comes into the Department of Defense. And, therefore, the money to support that activity for resources in the Department engaged in that largely comes from that channel, as opposed to us budgeting for counter drug activities internal to the Department.
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And I am not expert enough to say whether that is an adequate level of funding or whether more would be required or not. I can research that for you if you would like.
Mr. LANGEVIN. I would very much like you to.
Secretary WHITE. Okay. I will do that.
General SHINSEKI. Just to add to that, most of the funding that goes to the Guard comes out of these accounts. And so, to the degree that we are able to provide capabilities, it is reimbursable.
On the Humvees, I do know that we have investments there. I will get you a more specific answer with regard, I think, to the Rhode Island Guard that you are looking at. And I would like to provide that for the record.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, gentlemen.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Texas, Mr. Thornberry, is recognized.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Shinseki, I am among those who admire your foresight and courage in recognizing the Army had to change. And certainly the events of the past year have only shown how right you have been.
The one area where the Army continues to get particular flack for not changing enough—one weapon system is, certainly, Crusader. And I want to take another run there and invite you both, if appropriate, to answer two criticisms that I have heard on Crusader.
Number one is that we do not need it anymore. Afghanistan shows that if we are going to bomb something, it is going to be smart weapons from an airplane or it is going to be weapons from a UAV. You do not need the kind of elaborate artillery system for which Crusader was designed.
The second argument is that what matters, increasingly, in the future is the munition, and not the platform. And so, in Crusader's case, this—I think it is called Excalibur—can be used in the older Paladin system or even in an artillery system the Germans have developed. And that can be as effective as we need it to be, rather than developing a whole new platform. And the analogy is smart weapons from a B-52 is working pretty well. We can use smarter weapons in existing platforms.
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So let me give you a chance to take a crack at both of those.
General SHINSEKI. Okay. Let me begin by just going back and doing a little history here. Artillery, as the Secretary has already pointed out, has been something that we have been fire short for a good portion of our professional relationship in the military.
When you are in a Cold War situation in which you begin on the defense and your initial battle plan is to fall back on successive battle positions—artillery systems like the M109 and Paladin have utility because you are going short distances and the approaching adversary continues to march into your arch of fire. So there is some mechanics there that are different than when you are now into a situation where our war fighting prowess is about offensive operations. And, as described by the Secretary, you have ground maneuver forces that outrun their artillery. When it is advantageous to make this deep strike with the ground forces, you have to slow your operations down. Or, in some cases, you have to stop for the artillery to close because of the speed with which they are able to operate.
At the end of the Desert Storm experience, we took 25 percent of our inadequate artillery systems and retired it. So we took risk here—reinvested those funds for the opportunity to have something that would better meet our needs. That investment is Crusader. We are already invested with a 25 percent risk in less fires capability. And fires capability that we decided was not very good. Without Crusader, we take a significant increase in that risk.
Excalibur is going to, I think, turn out to be a pretty capable round when it is fielded. But it does not arrive until the 2008—2009 timeframe. One of the systems it is designed to be fired out of is Crusader.
And so Crusader's agility to keep up with our ground maneuver forces—it is longer range—it is high rate of fire—it is precision—and, with the addition of Excalibur, would bring the potential of a precision weapon both with the platform and the munition being brought together, would be a significant increase to the potential shortage of fires that we have today.
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Excalibur, itself, will not solve the problem. And Crusader is very much a part of our requirement.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Are you familiar with this German system—apparently they have developed? And how does it—
General SHINSEKI. We are. It does not have the kind of agility and operational capability in terms of rate of fire and movement that Crusader offers. It would be in a class with our own M109s.
Secretary WHITE. Yes. I would also say, just in addition to that, the situation early in the campaign in Afghanistan, I think, is fairly unique and that is that we have complete freedom to fly wherever we want to as long as we want to because there is a primitive air defense environment. I do not think that will be the case if it is North Korea or anywhere else. And, consequently, we are going to have to be able to provide our own long-range fires in addition to what we can get from the Air Force or the Navy Air.
General SHINSEKI. If I could just add to that—and it is a good point that the Secretary brings up. The real advantage of Crusader was to win the counter-fires fight that—for which were outgunned for, you know, much of the Cold War.
Now we have a weapon system that has the range, the accuracy and the rate of fire that out-duels our adversaries.
You did not have that situation in Afghanistan because of a lack of real field artillery out there. And the Crusader's real contributions would have been realized.
Mr. THORNBERRY. If I could ask, just real briefly, I am particularly interested in your statement about your training and leader development panels to work on looking at how the Army develops leaders all the way up. What is the timeframe for that? And are those things that you may be able to share with us? And maybe there are things that we can do to help whatever conclusions you reach.
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General SHINSEKI. No, certainly. I would be more than happy to provide a more complete answer. But we decided—the Army decided to take on training and leader development several years ago. And we have taken this on in phases. The first phase was for the look at the officer leadership; second phase just completed—non-commissioned officer; underway right now, warrant officers; and the last phase will be our civilian work force leader development.
We believe every day the Army has to do two things. It is got to train it is soldiers today on their tasks today. The second thing we have to do is grow those soldiers into future leaders for the force. We do not hire out. And so our ability to grow competent leadership out of today's formations—very much a part of our responsibility. And that is why we took on the training and leader development survey work that we have been after for the last two years.
I would offer to you that the Sergeant Major of the Army in the year 2025 was inducted into the force last year. We want to make sure we train him right.
The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Florida, Mr. Miller?
Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As the newest member on the Committee, I am the one everybody hates to hear from because I am the last one and always have a question. But I do want a very—I have some questions that I want to pose through the Committee. They are in writing, in lieu of the timeframe.
Thank you for your patience today.
Mr. Secretary, I want to say thank you for your candor in regards to A76. I agree with many of the comments that you made—and other members on this committee have.
General, I also would like to have an opportunity to visit with you further. My colleague, Ms. Davis, was talking about the transition with the helos and the open water situation. And you had talked about the challenges that are there and the opportunities that you may look at. And I would like to have an opportunity to, maybe, to visit with you further—
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General SHINSEKI. Sure.
Mr. MILLER. —about what you think those opportunities are.
And, with that—that is all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thanks.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie?
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, Mr. Secretary, on page 12 of your testimony, this is under Installations and Funding—your testimony says, ''Exacerbating this situation is the fact that the Army has more facilities infrastructure than we need. The realignment or closure of excess facilities will free funds for installations and bring recapitalization, et cetera.''
I noticed that you now have cut the funding, even though I recall Undersecretary DuBois indicating last year—and I am quoting—''Our fiscal year 2002 budget initiates an aggressive program to renew our facilities.'' I presume that that was going to be carried over to 2003.
Now, I know that you were disappointed with the base re-alignment and closure (BRAC) discussions last year, but surely the Administration is not cutting back the installations and military construction (MILCON) budget because of the BRAC argument.
So how do you account for that—that the money being put forward by the Administration is several billion dollars less than last year?
Secretary WHITE. Well, I can only speak for the Army's portion, Mr. Abercrombie. But in our world, our MILCON for 2003 is $1.6 billion. A year previous to that, it was $2.3 billion, because we got a tremendous plus-up in that. But $1.6 billion is consistent with the ramping up of it, compared to years prior to 2002. Our SRM funding at about $2.3 billion—that is about what it was last year.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Time out, then. Excuse me, Mr. Secretary, are you telling me, then, or telling the Chairman and telling Mr. Saxton, in effect, as the chairman of the MILCON Committee, that the Army will now testify that its funding for military construction, housing, et cetera, is adequate—
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Secretary WHITE. No, I did not say that.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. —for this year?
Secretary WHITE. What I said was this was what we could afford. And, in addition to the MILCON, we, of course, are attracting private capital through RCI.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I understand that. They were just in Hawaii last week. I tried to facilitate that out there.
Secretary WHITE. Right.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But, you know, I do not—we are the ones, in the Congress, who have to answer up for this, now. You know, you—and I am not trying to trap you in anything here, but I want to know. When we have our hearings, then, in MILCON, you are going to say that this is what you can afford—what the United States can afford and, therefore, that is going to be adequate to the Army's needs?
Secretary WHITE. This is what we could afford within the constraints we were confronted with and with the other priorities for the budget.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If that is the case, then—and I do not think this is unfair at this stage, but I am going to ask you—if we are exacerbating a situation about aging facilities and the Army has more facilities infrastructure than we need, can you name me three facilities that should be closed or realigned right now?
Secretary WHITE. Well, I would be reluctant to do that—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay.
Secretary WHITE. —because—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Fair enough. But, you know, it is irritating, at best, for us, having to make these decisions, to have it thrust at us as if we did something wrong—as if we are not stepping up to the plate—when we cannot get out of this Administration, or for that matter, out of the previous Administration, a single base or a single suggestion with respect to what you say is excess facilities. And then we want to turn it over to some committee.
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I am perfectly willing to make these votes. But I will—maybe not everybody is, I understand that—but, apparently the Armed Services are not willing to make a statement either about what it is.
Secretary WHITE. Oh, I think we are quite willing to do it, within the context of a process that will lead us to closures. And that is what we asked for to be in the legislation for 2003, last year. And what was passed was that we could do it in 2005. So we fully intend to progress this along the time lines that, so far, have—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay.
Secretary WHITE. —been authorized.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I just find it passing strange that everybody talks about excess facilities and I am still waiting for somebody to stand up and name facility number one. I still have never heard it.
Secretary WHITE. So we will name it as a part of what is currently authorized, which is BRAC in 2005. And we will name it consistent with that time line.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. That is fine. Then I hope there is not going to be any objections when the Congress goes and makes its own decisions for three, four and up to number five.
Now, you do not have to answer this more fully right now, but I came in—I was another one who was tardy getting here. You were speaking about the A76 when I came in at some time ago. Now, I took from the partial comments that I heard that you are not very favorable towards this process, as it has been worked so far. Can I extrapolate from that that you are now halting the A76, pending some kind of other resolution of the issue? Or is that going to keep on going until we do something else?
Secretary WHITE. I think it is fair to say that we will continue the ones that are currently in progress. But all of us—all the service secretaries are looking for something better than A76—
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Right.
Secretary WHITE. —to achieve privatization.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I would like to help you with that. But can I take it that—you say the ones that are underway you are going to proceed with, but can we say that no new ones will be initiated, pending some other approach—
Secretary WHITE. That would be my—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. —at least for the Army?
Secretary WHITE. —that would be my view. Now, of course, we operate within the Department of Defense and we have to discuss this with the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary. But I think the—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Should I direct my inquiries to the Secretary and the Deputy—
Secretary WHITE. No, address them to me—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. —Secretary of Defense.
Secretary WHITE. —as you have. Address them to me and I will discuss where we stand on each of the A76s with you and what we intend to do about it as we develop the new scheme.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. I would appreciate that.
Can you make clear for me, please, I have heard that somebody wants to put in a new CINC for North America or something? And then, if I heard you correct today, you were talking about an assistant secretary—is that in competition with the CINC?
Secretary WHITE. No. Precisely, we are talking about is in the area of homeland security—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes.
Secretary WHITE. —and changes that are being proposed to the Unified command Plan that the Secretary has stated that they will propose and have proposed a commander-in-chief who will focus on homeland security—called CINC NORTHCOM. The President has not signed off on it yet. It is still in coordination.
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His counterpart in the Department at OSD level would be an assistant secretary who brings together—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Jesus.
Secretary WHITE. —the homeland security issues from a policy planning and resource perspective.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Jesus. What a nightmare.
I hope the President just shelves this whole deal because on page five of your testimony—I want to tell you, I think that the—you have got the Guard and you have got the Reserves right now. They are already connected up with the Civil Defense areas and the weapons of mass destruction civil support teams and all the rest of it. Why don't we take what we already have—an excellent service—you have already got the best integration in history between the Guard and Reserves and the active duty Army and so on. What the hell do we need another CINC for or somebody else coordinating in the DOD when you guys are already doing a good job and are already connected up with the civilian fire, police, et cetera—civil defense? And you have got your Guard and Reserves already doing a terrific job.
Secretary WHITE. Well, I think the point is that the integration for the land component of this—Army National Guard—state emergency providers and so forth—has been there for a long time. The point of the CINC would be to integrate the Air Defense part of it—the air component of it and the maritime component of it as well.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Go to the Air Guard. Jesus.
Secretary WHITE. Well, you are talking about a North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) responsibility now that is broader than the Air Guard.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But you guys can connect up with that already. You are doing this already in the thing. You have got terrific people there.
Secretary WHITE. Every place else on the face of the earth that we apply military resources, we exercise unity of command. My view is that the North American continent should not be any different.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. But I am telling you, you are setting yourself up for a nightmare. This is not going to work. And you have already got people that are doing a great job. I hope the President just turns around and says, ''We can handle all this and we are going to handle it internally with the people we already have and the duties that they are already exercising.''
Because the principle thing here is training. In fact, I suggested to the Department of Transportation—to Mr. Mineta—that they use the Guard and Reserves right now to do their training of their screeners and all the rest of it. You know, you do not have to go outside and hire all these people to reinvent the wheel. And so, instead of having people standing around with guns in the airport who would only have to shoot masses of people, anyway, if some jerk starts running down a concourse somewhere, you should be training the screeners and all the rest of it with the people that already exist in the Reserves and the Guard. They can do all that.
Secretary WHITE. I would contend that that is not, in the long term, an appropriate principle activity for the Guard and Reserve. That they are a part of one Army that is interested in the security challenges of the country and that airport security is, typically, a civilian activity. And as the new federal agency spins up, it should and it will revert to them.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am talking about training.
Maybe I have more confidence in the ability of these folks than some of the better brains—
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Abercrombie, let me go to Mr. Bartlett. Then if you want to pursue this, we will come back.
Gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett?
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
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Thank you, gentlemen, for your patience. And thank you very much for your service.
I have, here, an article from yesterday's Washington Times—''Rumsfeld Takes Dim View of U.S. Peacekeeping Role.'' And I would like to quote a couple of his comments. ''I think if we organize, train and equip and recruit for people to come in and serve in the military and military functions and to the extent that we can have as few people in uniform doing non-military functions, I think we would better serve ourselves, our country and our personnel. We also have a whole lot of military people doing a lot of things that are not military jobs.''
About a year ago, I asked the General Accounting Office (GAO)—and I have, here, their report—I asked them to look at the amount of money that we had spent on United Nations peacekeeping activities just recently. I think the years were 1996 through 2001. I have, here, a copy of that report. And they said that during those years we contributed an estimated $3.45 billion to support United Nations peacekeeping activities. But those are the direct costs. They have indirect costs of $24.2 billion. And, of those $24.2 billion, $21.8 billion were spent by our military. And what they say is, ''The largest indirect contribution stemmed from U.S. military operations and services that help to provide a secure environment for United Nations operations.''
I am having some trouble deciding when it is an indirect cost and a direct cost because if you cannot do the United Nations operation without security, then it would appear to me that the security costs are a part of the direct costs.
The point I am making—I have been waging a near alone battle here on the Hill to require some accounting of the monies that we have spent on legitimate United Nations peacekeeping activities before we send them another billion dollars or so in dues. Because I think that in these—our expenditures on legitimate United Nations peacekeeping activities have paid many times over any dues we could possibly owe the United Nations.
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The question I would like to ask you, but I know that you do not determine policy, is how and when are we going to drastically reduce our participation in these extremely costly, never-ending United Nations peacekeeping missions? I think that is, kind of, the question that Rumsfeld was asking.
I guess that the best that we can do today is to illicit your help in helping us to determine what are our legitimate peacekeeping activities costs. GAO says it is $3.45 billion, which is a lot of money, by the way, in just those five years. That is a lot of money. But they also add from our military alone, $21.8 billion in what they said were indirect costs. But the way they define indirect costs, I would think they were direct costs because you cannot do the United Nations peacekeeping until you have security. Then I would think the costs for security are a legitimate charge to the United Nations peacekeeping.
I would like your comments, please.
General SHINSEKI. I would offer, Mr. Bartlett, we—even where we are deployed—we look at the formations and I think, over time, if you were to go to a place like Bosnia, you would see there has been a downsizing of our U.S. footprint there. All the other nations, as well. But—
Mr. BARTLETT. But these are still the dollars that have been spent. With all the downsizing, these are still the dollars.
General SHINSEKI. I understand. But whether we remain there and when we come out and what configuration is really a policy issue.
I do believe, like the Secretary's, you know, statement there suggests, that this is a war-fighting force and that is primarily what we recruit and train for. And in those occasions where short of a war-fight, there is a crisis declared and we are asked to go in, I think we can handle those jobs. But each and every day, our focus is on how to keep ourselves focused or prepared for that war fighting mission. That is where we put our energy and our training dollars.
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I am not familiar with the amount of money that is being described here, which is pretty significant in terms of that set of numbers you cited. But having spent a little bit of time in a place—Bosnia—myself, at the time that we went in, I do not think we ever expected we were going to be there as long as we have. And at the time we went in, it seemed to be the right thing to do to try to provide stability for this country's interest, as well. And I would think, at this point what is important is to decide—the answer to your question—how and when to reduce the—
Mr. BARTLETT. Yes. I understand it is a policy question that is not your pay grade or my pay grade.
Mr. Secretary, could you help us in trying to determine how much of these roughly $27.5 billion that have been spent are legitimately categorized as direct costs and how many of them is indirect costs? Because when they define indirect costs, it seems to me if you have to have security in order to do the mission that the cost of security is legitimately a part of the cost of the mission.
Secretary WHITE. No, I would agree. And we will give you more detail on this for the record. I would be happy to engage in that discussion.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page ?.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you both for your service.
General SHINSEKI. Thank you, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Are there any other questions?
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Well, if not, the gentlemen have any closing statements?
General SHINSEKI. No, sir.
Secretary WHITE. No, sir. Thank you very much for your support of the—
General SHINSEKI. Thank you for this—
Secretary WHITE. —of America's Army.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for being with us.
General SHINSEKI. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:57 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]