Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Opening Statement of Rep. Adam Smith, Hearing on "Assessing the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Request and Acquisition Reform Progress"

Hearing

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I also wish to thank each of the service secretaries for appearing today. Their perspectives on the President's budget request for fiscal year 2019 and on the status of acquisition reform efforts within their respective services are vital to our deliberation of many important issues in the coming legislative cycle.
 
            According to the Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (the NDS Summary), two of its three pillars for achieving strategic objectives rely on building a more powerful joint force and on departmental reforms for effecting improved performance and affordability. The NDS Summary sets specific goals for producing a joint force "that possesses decisive advantages for any likely conflict, while remaining proficient across the entire spectrum of conflict" and for transitioning "to a culture of performance where results and accountability matter." As the military departments are charged with organizing, training and equipping the joint force, service cultures, service performance, and the results produced by service efforts will be essential to securing our country and to advancing strategic goals.
 
            The President's budget request for fiscal year 2019 matches the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 in providing $716 billion for national defense. That is a considerable sum. Approximately $570.2 billion of the request is reserved for the military services to sustain operations, to restore readiness, and to invest in future capabilities. We need to find the right balance in resourcing these needs. Given the current security environment, increases in defense spending are justifiable, but we clearly need to find new ways to realize savings within the defense budget. We must also guard against making adjustments that could compromise military effectiveness.  The modern joint force is a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated body of specialized roles and capabilities. Too much attention to any one element or detail risks the cohesion of the whole. We should consider the preferences of the individual services holistically and with the overriding purpose of optimizing the joint force. We must invest wisely when it comes to national security.
 
I am pleased to see that the budget request significantly increases the Army's procurement and research accounts. While the Army has focused on rebuilding readiness, it also needs to accelerate equipment modernization across the board, and the budget request makes some progress in this area. I am especially pleased with the Army's prudent use of prototyping in several areas to foster competition and to assess actual needs before starting new programs.
           
The Navy recently submitted a 30-year shipbuilding plan that does not support its fleet requirement of 355 ships, which only highlights the difficulty of fulfilling that requirement. It is essential that the Navy utilize all of the unique authorities that Congress has given it, if it hopes to have a realistic chance of building a 355-ship Navy. After 17 years of providing continuous support for land combat operations, the Marine Corps is reestablishing itself as an expeditionary force. I look forward to learning more about how the Marine Corps' budgetary priorities will address the challenge of conducting contested amphibious operations in a denied environment.
           
The budget request provides the Air Force with big increases for aircraft research. While it is good that the Air Force is exploring several new technologies, some of the new initiatives appear to be "inventing-on-a-schedule." Similar innovate-as-you-go efforts have failed in the past. In particular, the Next Generation Air Dominance program and the Advanced Battle Management System appear to be based on very optimistic assumptions about technology development, and they will likely need to be closely overseen. I am also skeptical of some of the Air Force's recapitalization programs. The White House claimed savings of over a billion dollars on the Presidential aircraft replacement program, yet the details are unclear.
 
I am very concerned that the Department is continuing to delay hard choices with respect to nuclear weapons. We are investing billions of dollars each year in unaffordable programs that will cost $1.3 trillion dollars over thirty years to sustain and modernize every segment of the nuclear weapons enterprise in a manner that could exacerbate a nuclear arms race and reduce the threshold for using nuclear weapons. While we need to maintain a strong deterrent, we must understand how the trade-offs will affect investments in much-needed conventional capabilities. We do not need overkill capacity to destroy the world several times over.
 
Lastly, with respect to acquisition reform, Congress recently empowered the Service Acquisition Executives with milestone decision-making authority for more major acquisition programs with the aim of expediting programmatic developments. Congress also changed the procedures for evaluating commercial item pricing. I am interested in learning from our witnesses how the services are embracing these reforms and utilizing new authorities.
 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I look forward to our witnesses' testimony.

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