Remembering Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson

Floor Speech

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Mr. JONES. Mr. President, 1 year ago yesterday, on December 6, 2019, a terrorist attack on the Naval Air Station Pensacola killed three American servicemen.

While it is appropriate and it has been done to honor each of these men, I rise today with a solemn purpose of honoring and commemorating the life, service, and patriotism of one in particular: Navy ENS Joshua Kaleb Watson of Enterprise, AL, whose promising life and career were tragically cut short in the terrorist attack a year and 1 day ago yesterday.

Kaleb was posthumously honored last Friday, receiving the Purple Heart in a ceremony in Pensacola. I really regret that I could not go and that I was unable to join his family, but there was also a wreath- laying ceremony at Building 633 where Kaleb was shot and a candlelight vigil there last night. I know that all were solemn occasions for the Navy, for the family, and for America.

Kaleb was a rising star. A recent graduate of the Naval Academy, Kaleb had dreamed of becoming a Navy pilot and had reported to Pensacola for flight training the week of Veterans Day. Kaleb was described as a natural leader, a person who put others first and strived to bring out the best in them.

At the Naval Academy, Kaleb was a small arms instructor, wrestling coach, and captain of the rifle team. In fact, under his leadership, much to the chagrin of a couple folks in this body, like Senator Reed, the Academy's rifle team beat Army for the first time in a decade.

Ben Watson, Kaleb's father, said to me once that Kaleb's mission was to confront evil, to bring the fight to them wherever it took him. He was willing to risk his life for his country. Kaleb did confront evil that day, and he made the ultimate sacrifice.

Unfortunately, that was not how Kaleb intended to serve his country. It was not what Kaleb's parents expected when he joined the Navy. Kaleb's father put it rather bluntly:

We never thought he would die in Florida.

Kaleb Watson was the officer on deck at the Naval Air Station Pensacola on the morning of December 6, 2019. Consequently, he was one of the first people the shooter encountered. Kaleb was shot at least five times that day. Heavily wounded, he made his way out to flag down first responders, gave them an accurate description of the shooter that ultimately led to the shooter being killed. Unfortunately, later that day, Kaleb died of his wounds while in the hospital.

The Navy conducted an investigation into the incident and concluded the primary cause of the attack was the Saudi shooter's self- radicalization. However, the report also goes on to note numerous deficiencies in many areas, some of which contributed to the attack and others which could have deterred the attack or mitigated the consequences. In other words, things could have been different that day. Things should have been different that day.

We lost two other young men, Airman Mo Haitham from Florida and Airman Apprentice Cameron Walters of Georgia, and 11 more individuals were wounded. That has happened far too many times. Too many Americans have lost their lives to shooters on U.S. bases on U.S. soil.

The Pensacola attack was the second shooting at a military base in 3 days. On December 3, 2019, a shooting at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii left two people dead and a third wounded. There have been several other shootings at U.S. military installations, including a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood in Killeen, TX. That shooting claimed 13 lives and left another 30 injured.

Five years later, another shooting happened at Fort Hood when a gunman went on a shooting spree, killing 3 people and injuring 14 before killing himself. In 2013, 12 workers at the Washington Navy Yard right here in our Nation's Capital were killed by a military contractor, who was later killed by security officials. In 2015, two military installations in Chattanooga, TN, were attacked by a gunman who killed four people before he was shot by police.

There have been investigative reports about all of those shootings, and there have been recommendations in each one of the reports. Everybody shook their head and said: We have got to do better. We can't continue to allow this to happen.

What we see from the Pensacola report we received just recently is that many of those recommendations were never followed, especially with regard to planning, training, and assessment of response plans for situations just like the one that occurred in Pensacola, FL. That is simply inexcusable.

We have young men and women every year, every day, every week, every month that volunteer to put their lives on the line for this country, never dreaming that their life may be put on the line within the security of the confines of a U.S. military base on U.S. soil--not overseas, not as part of some overseas terrorist attack, but right here where they should be most secure.

Ben Watson and his wife Sheila have made it their mission to do everything they can to prevent losing more of our sons and daughters in this way. I think this body ought to do the same.

Every year, we have nominations. We make nominations, and we get the appointments back, sending those young men and women to the academies who will then go to those bases. We have a responsibility for that, as well as our overall responsibility to the men and women in uniform.

This year, I asked for--and the conference committee included in the final version of the NDAA--language requiring the Secretary of Defense to implement, within 90 days, all applicable security and emergency response recommendations to protect our military installations and language requiring the Secretary of Defense to ensure that each installation conducts or develops a plan to conduct live emergency response training with first responders.

At a couple of hearings, including one just last week, I asked Navy leadership at an Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee hearing for their commitment. It is not the first time I had brought it up, but I knew it was going to be the last hearing, and I knew that this NDAA was hopefully going to include this language, but sometimes, the language is just not enough. I asked for their commitment to ensure that these long overdue steps are taken and accomplished. They, of course, gave me those assurances and that commitment.

There are thousands of important provisions in the NDAA that hopefully will come to the floor very soon, but none--none--of those provisions are more important than those that ensure we do everything we can to keep our servicemembers and their families, who live and work on our bases, safe from attacks like these.

As the Navy itself said in the Pensacola report, talking about security manning--and I quote from the report, The ``[Department of the Navy] must abandon minimum manning thresholds designed to protect physical assets and to meet ineffective response times. Instead, installations must be manned to rapidly respond with a preponderance of force at any time to preserve our most precious asset, our personnel. Increased security force manning enables presence, deterrence, assurance, and enhanced response''--our most precious asset, our personnel.

Well, as a father of three and grandfather of two, I understand how precious our children are to our families.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee for the past 2 years, I have seen firsthand how precious our men and women in uniform are to this country, and I have seen this body rise to the occasion to understand our fiduciary responsibilities that we have to those men and women who protect and defend us every day.

I had the privilege of visiting with some of the folks in Afghanistan and Iraq and working with many more here in the United States. Wherever they are serving, we owe them our best because we owe them our freedom.

I want to thank the Watson family--Ben, Sheila, their son Adam--for their patriotism in supporting Kaleb in his dream to become a Navy pilot, and I want to extend again my sincerest condolences for his untimely death.

With the Watsons, however, I want to encourage this body to hold the Navy to the commitments that they made to me last week and to insist that the entire Department of Defense follow its recommendations for protecting our military installations from within--protect them from future attacks from within.

Although I will be leaving this body in a few weeks, I urge all of my colleagues to take up the baton to do our congressional oversight duty like our lives depend on it because there are lives which depend on it, and if their lives depend on it, our lives depend upon on it.

Everyone should take up that mantle. Everyone should do all that they can to preserve and protect the American service men and women who protect us. They are our most precious asset, our personnel.

For their sakes and for their families, let's do this thing. Let's get this NDAA passed and then hold them to it in this next Congress.

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