Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Military Readiness: Implications For Our Strategic Posture

Interview

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REP. DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I want to join you in thanking our witnesses for being here and having to put up with this crazy schedule that left you at the desk here for a long time before we were able to engage with you.

Thanks for the hearing. I think it's very timely. Yesterday, the Committee received testimony from key members of the intelligence community on the current and foreseeable international security environment, including challenges that are increasing in complexity, diversity, and range.

So today, it's against that backdrop that we further examine the relationship between our military's readiness and our nation's strategic posture. And I want to again thank our witnesses for being here.

This topic, the relationship between readiness and strategic decision-making, has been at the crux of robust congressional debate over the last couple of years.

And as my good friend, Chairman Skelton knows, the Committee wrestled hard and long during the last Congress to review the range of war-fighting and other strategic requirements of the national military strategy, to try to determine what future structure and capabilities would be necessary.

Clearly, that exercise highlighted not only the significant equipment, the force structure and capability shortfalls that existed prior to September 11, 2001, but also the challenges facing this nation trying to rebuild, reset, modernize, transform and grow our armed forces while actively engaging in combat.

Our committee members and especially those on the Readiness Subcommittee have engaged regularly in discussions about the impact of ongoing operations on our military personnel and equipment.

Recently, we've begun to analyze the President's Fiscal Year 2009 budget request, and restarted dialogue on the potential advantages of spending 4 percent of GDP, of our gross domestic product on Defense.

All these conversations highlight the relationship between the current readiness of our forces and the big-picture decisions that will shape their future readiness. With that said, I think sometimes we lose sight of two important facts, both of which were highlighted by Secretary of Defense Gates in his testimony last week.

The first is that the Defense Department readiness efforts are focused, at least in the Army, on fighting the wars that we're in in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And the forces that are being sent there are fully trained and are ready when they go.

In fact, some might argue that many of the forces fielded today have the most combat experience of any force in recent memory. They might also argue that it isn't in large part because of this experience that the military surge is succeeding in Iraq and that our special forces and other are excelling in their missions around the world.

Simply put, when compared to other nations and when compared to historical examples, our military men and women today are unrivalled. In fact, Ms. Flournoy, in her written testimony today, observed that while in Iraq earlier this month, she witnessed, and I quote, "A U.S. military that is the most experienced, adaptive, professional and capable force this country has ever fielded." These war-fighters are trained, they're capable, they're accomplishing their missions.

The other fact that Secretary Gates emphasized last week is that current readiness ratings are not just the result of ongoing operations. While Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have clearly highlighted the very real readiness challenges, our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines face, he argued that we need perspective.

He said, and I quote, "In the mid-1990s, readiness was considered differently." For example, on equipment, readiness was considered a 65-percent fill. Units that had 65 percent were considered to be in the green. Those accounting rules were changed, and so now readiness is at the 100-percent level for equipment. And so many of the units are in the red and they are in the red for specific kinds of missions.

So it seems to me that the goalposts were moved and that contrasting the readiness of current forces to the readiness of past forces is not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison.

I wonder how the readiness ratings of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps of the first Gulf War would fare if held up against today's forces. In fact, we looked at that once, I believe, with a unit of the 101st Airborne, with all of the new equipment that we now have, which is now considered to be standard and the lack of which will give you a poor readiness rating.

And looking, as I recall, at one of the units of the 101st Airborne in 2000, it would have, under today's rating system, been very low, although it had enormous combat capability at the time.

Finally, I also wonder how we can best address the unique challenges facing the readiness of each military service and how the recently delivered budget request aims at reducing readiness shortfalls.

For example, it's become clear that the Air Force and Navy readiness suffer from the burden of aging equipment. Isn't this particular challenge due in part to woefully inadequate defense spending in the '90s and what steps are we taking to rectify that shortfall?

And that's of course the old shortfall that the former chief of the Army used to refer to as "the holes in the yard" or the funding holes. Also in recognizing that Army and Marine Corps readiness challenges are primarily personnel-related, I wonder how the Grow the Force initiatives will impact the longer term readiness of those services. What other steps should we take to address these deficiencies? Also, the Army and Marine Corps readiness challenges extend across the personnel, training and equipment areas and are made more difficult to solve by the Grow the Force initiatives.

As I see it we're asking the Army and Marine Corps to tear down and rebuild themselves as fighting forces while at the same time asking them to conduct, at high operations tempo, difficult missions that are in this nation's interest.

Our challenge is to understand best the additional steps we should be taking to address those readiness deficiencies. We must also acknowledge the full cost of achieving readiness.

In 2006, this committee inserted 20 billion (dollars) into the procurement and operations and maintenance accounts to address many shortfalls in our combat forces. We are just today beginning to see gains being made. Long-term procurement items and the cycling of equipment through depots can't occur overnight. We will not see the benefits of Grow the Force overnight, either.

These things take time, and we must remain vigilant to ensure steady progress. At the end of the day, there was a strong bipartisan support to engage in an open, frank dialogue about the personnel, equipment and training challenges that comprise our military's readiness.

It seems to me that part of the solution should be to provide adequate funding to support efforts to increase force readiness, whether it's the Grow the Force initiatives, key research and development programs or procurement of critical equipment. In my view, we should begin by spending at least 4 percent of GDP on defense, and I ask what more should we be thinking about.

So to our distinguished panel, thanks a lot for being with us today.

And Mr. Chairman, one thing that I think we need to do is this. We've had -- we've had lots of units move into the theater, especially in Iraq, and come back without major pieces of their equipment.

We've had major evolutions of equipment while in Iraq. For example, the changeover from what I call the soft Humvees to MAC- kitted Humvees to up-armored 114s, for example, now to MRAPs. And part of that exercise and that transition has been to have large stables of equipment parked at various areas around Iraq. For example, we discovered some 1,800 MAC-kitted Humvees from the Marine changeover.

From MAC kits to 114s, I believe, at Taqaddum, 1,800 vehicles probably with very low mileage on those vehicles parked there. Also in talking to members of the Guard and Reserve, there are enormous expenditures of domestic platforms like big trucks, big construction equipment presently, in Iraq. And in my estimation, we have a fairly vague accounting for how much we've got. So I think one thing we ought to do is figure out first before we move out and try to figure out exactly what we need for readiness, let's figure what we've got.

And let's find out what we've got. And to my -- I haven't seen a -- what I would consider to be a complete accounting of the major platforms and the sub-platforms, the less important platforms, that are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.

And the last thing -- I think it would be bad for this country if some of these things get lost in the shuffle and we end off -- end up seeing major pieces of U.S. military equipment sold for a dime on the dollar in some type of a foreign military sale, while you have a corresponding inadequacy in that unit that comes back from the theater without that particular equipment.

So let's figure out what we've got, what we need to become ready, and let's all acknowledge that there's no force in the world that's more ready than when it's totally at rest, when it's totally unused. At that point, when it's totally at rest and it's totally in garrison with all of its equipment, we'll all stipulate that at that point it has the highest amount of -- the highest availability of soldiers -- personnel and equipment than it will ever have.

When you move out into the war-fighting theater and you start using -- exercising both the equipment and the personnel, at that point, by definition, your readiness rate and your availability rate goes down.

That doesn't mean that you've lost combat capability. And I would argue that our soldiers and our units, with the combination of personnel and equipment, have never been more combat-capable.

Having said that, I think it's important for us to take an inventory of, by golly, what have we got. What do we have right now parked in theater in Iraq and Afghanistan; let's get a handle on that. And if possible, I think we ought to match up some of that stuff with -- especially, stuff that was taken from the Guard, which now may be parked in depot in theater and may not be in such a rate of utilization that it has to go through full depot maintenance.

If we can, I think we ought to start looking at marrying up some of that equipment that was left by Guard units when they went over and returned to the U.S. without their equipment. Marrying some of that equipment up with units that have a deficiency, and after the dust settles on that exercise, let's see what we need.

So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the hearing. I look forward to the testimony.

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REP. HUNTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and excuse me for having to break out of this very important hearing a couple of times.

Let me ask you how you -- if you folks have any idea on how we get a good handle on precisely what we have in-theater, both the stuff that is -- what you might consider war-fighting equipment and the stuff that is support in nature. I talked to some of our Reserve folks last night and yesterday, and they talked about enormous expenditures purchasing things like freightliner trucks which are now over in theater.

I think we've got lots of dirt-moving equipment. Things that could be used by the Guard and Reserve back here in their domestic capacity when the governor puts his hat on and moves the Guard out to perform homeland missions, domestic missions.

So do you have any -- I think the first thing we got to do is figure out what we got, and do you have any ideas on how we would structure this inventory-taking, if you will? And do you -- first, do you think we should do it?

MS. FLOURNOY: Sir, I actually think it's a very important idea and it's something we should do both to know what we can bring home as part of resetting the force, what it would be better just to leave or -- and what we might want to cascade to the Iraqis as we build the institution of their army and their police forces.

I would be loathe to add that burden to the operational force right now in terms of what they're trying to do, but it might be possible to task the individual services to send teams over to do that assessment for you.

REP. HUNTER: Okay.

MR. KOSIAK: Sir, I absolutely believe that's a great idea and I think that should be done. I think -- I believe, and I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe the Army G4 has undertaken something like this. So I think that would be a starting point to see what exactly they have done to try to get a handle around all the equipment that's not only in theater but back here in the States. But I do think that's an absolutely good thing to do before we go about looking at what we need to buy for the future in terms of equipping the troops not only back here but over in -- for other conflicts.

MR. HUNTER: Well, I sure talked to lots of folks that came back and didn't bring their stuff back and for -- largely because they said, hey, we'll keep it here and other people may need it when they get here.

One of the members of the -- this blue-ribbon panel on the National Guard recommended the -- said, you know, here we've got this domestic system where we barcode everything and you've got these vast inventories that are instantly retrievable in terms of numbers and what you've got.

Do we barcode our equipment in the services and the Guard? Do you know if we have any kind of barcode system?

MR. KOSIAK: There is a unique identifier code but I'm not -- once it goes into the pool of theater-provided equipment I'm not sure exactly how they account for that over there.

MR. HUNTER: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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