Hearing of the Senate Armed Forces Committee - ICYMI: Inhofe Maps Out National Security Priorities at SASC Hearing on Global Security Challenges and Strategy

Hearing

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), today delivered opening remarks at a SASC hearing on global security challenges and strategy.

Witnesses include: Dr. Thomas Wright, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; and LTG H.R. McMaster, USA (Ret.), former United States National Security Advisor.

As Prepared for Delivery:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General McMaster, thank you for your distinguished service to our country, and thanks to both of you for your testimony on the critical national security challenges facing our nation.

To be clear, the United States faces the most dangerous set of security challenges in my lifetime: China and Russia are using military power to achieve political aims; rogue regimes are aggressively expanding their ability to threaten neighbors; and global terrorist groups remain determined to attack Americans.

We look to both of you for informed advice on how to best use our nation's military to address all these national security threats. In short: What elements of the 2018 National Defense Strategy must remain intact, and what would you recommend revising, and why? In implementing the NDS, what has worked, what has not worked, and what should be the priorities of the Department of Defense going forward?

The primary mission of our military is to secure the nation against foreign external threats -- or as the Constitution puts it, "to provide for the common defense."

This committee has used the 2018 NDS as a roadmap for defending America, and the NDS Commission report has been the blueprint for implementing that strategy.

If we divert the military's attention away from the threats prioritized by the 2018 National Defense Strategy, we risk falling further behind our strategic competitors.

I used to be able to say our military had the best of everything. But in certain areas that is no longer true. China and Russia jumped ahead of us in developing key technologies, like hypersonics, microelectronics, and artificial intelligence. The balance of power in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific continues to go in the wrong direction -- our forward forces are outnumbered and outgunned. China and Russia are rapidly modernizing and expanding their nuclear forces. China will soon complete its triad and double its nuclear arsenal by 2030. We know that China lies, including about their military spending. In 2019, we saw them parade new hypersonic weapons in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Additionally, if the administration reenters the failed Iran deal, and gives Iran sanctions relief without addressing its terrorist networks, Iranian aggression will worsen. This will keep U.S. attention stuck on the dangers of the Middle East at the expense of focusing on Russian and Chinese threats.

DOD's bandwidth and resources are not unlimited. These challenges require a laser focus on increasing combat capability and capacity through new investments, new operational concepts, and new ways of doing business. We must modernize or replace legacy systems, such as our aging nuclear enterprise. Diluting focus and directing military resources toward missions that are clearly not core functions of the military could have dangerous results.

Under the Obama administration and sequestration, we've seen what happens when the military doesn't have adequate resources -- and we've spent the last four years trying to recover from the devastating effects. And in addition to air, land and sea -- cyber and space have become highly contested military domains and are rightly competing for DOD resources.

Ensuring real growth of the topline defense budget and correctly prioritizing missions are more important than ever. This is the time for a down payment on decades of strategic competition. It's not a luxury -- it's a necessity.

That's why it is concerning that we're starting to hear administration officials talking about using the military to fight climate change and social and domestic issues.

DOD is already doing good work on installation and energy resilience to ensure our service members can accomplish their mission. It is already pursuing aggressive operational energy initiatives to improve our contested logistics posture.

What DOD should be focused on is preparing our troops for lethal combat and deterring military threats to our national security.

I look forward to your advice on how we can stay centered on the core missions of the Department of Defense so we can most effectively "provide for the common defense."

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