good morning ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us for our first hearing of the one hundred twelfth congress i can't think of a more and propre it subject to begin our oversight than a discussion of the department of defense is top line budget expectations the manner in which secretary gates is bringing fiscal discipline to the department and his proposals for finding efficiencies to reinvest in much needed modernization and operations before we get started like take the opportunity to introduce our new leadership team in adopting the committee rules last week the committee reorganized jurisdictions of the subcommittees to align with military missions rather than individual military departments our new subcommittees and leadership teams are emerging threats and capabilities chairman mack born barry ranking member james langan from military personnel chairman joe wilson ranking member susan davis for oversight and investigations chairman rob whitman ranking member jim cooper for readiness chairman randy forbes and ranking member matalin bordello for sea power and projection forces chairman todd akin ranking member mike mcintyre for strategic forces chairman mike turner and ranking member loretta sanchez last but not least for tactical air and land forces chairman roscoe bartlett and ranking member sylvester reyes i couldn't be more pleased about the selection of these members for our leadership team for the hundred twelfth congress and appreciate the great depth and breadth of experience that they each bring to the table i'm confident they will have a productive and purposeful year and i look forward to working with each of them as we get this new session started there are a few administrative issues that i'd like to reiterate first questioning will occur in regular order by seniority of those present before the ga and then by order in which members arrive that's how we will proceed today there will be some hearings where we will vary from that will explain it is as we go through second there will be strict enforcement of the five minute rule finally to minimize obstruction of the walkways only members and committee staff are permitted on the dyess during the hearing thank you for your cooperation let's get started in september we held a preliminary hearing on the department efficiencies initiative at that time i expressed concern about the lack of information that we've been provided i remain dismayed despite repeated assurances from the department about an interest to work together on these issues that we've seen little change in the department's willingness to share information and let me be clear on this i agree with secretary gates that we must scrutinize defense programs to ensure that we're getting the most bang for our buck and concentrating our limited resources on the highest priority programs i support initiatives focused on reducing waste streamlining operations and eliminating redundancies across all enterprises however i will not support initiatives that will leave our military less capable and less ready to fight and make no mistake about it we stand at a critical juncture in the wars in afghanistan and iraq as we draw down in one a o r and build up in another the decisions that we make today will directly impact the level of success of these efforts i cannot say it strongly enough i will not support any measures that stress our forces and jeopardize the safety of our men and women in uniform i will oppose also any plans that have the potential to damage or endanger our national security most concerning ship or the plans to reduce the army and marine corps and strength and to implement even deeper cuts beyond the initial hundred billion dollar goal the reduction of an additional seventy eight billion from the department funding top line caught this committee by surprise and we intend to pursue the impact of this decision by the administration we've asked much of our men and women in uniform over the years they bravely fought and sacrificed for all of us each and every one of us in this room and i cannot in good conscience ask them to do more with less now i'd like to turn to our ranking member adam smith from washington for his opening great working relationship and i very much look forward to that so thank you buck and congratulations again and i think this hearing is perfectly appropriate it is always the number one duty of this committee to make sure that our national security is provided for to make sure that our troops and those who are fighting to protect us have the resources that they need to do the job that we on the civilian side asked them to do everybody on this committee has done an outstanding job of making sure that priority stays right at the top of our list and i think we've done an admiral job of that through the years and i'm sure that we will continue to do so but if we go for or we have to be mindful of the fact that just spending money doesn't necessarily make us safer and i think anybody who spends just a few minutes looking at the pentagon budget including the gentleman before us today who are going to testify will readily agree that there are savings inefficiencies to be found within the department of defense budget is absolutely no question about it we have wrestled over the years with a variety of different programs that were funded that turned out not to do what we wanted them to do and we wound up wasting a lot of money quite frankly i know this committee in particular in the last couple of years has been very focused on acquisition reform mr andrews has been a leader on that as well as others on both sides of the outs try to figure out how to get more for what we spend and i want to emphasize that point wasting money anywhere in our budget even than the department of defense does not make us safer does not protect our troops and does not enhance our national security in fact it does just the opposite so this committee and you gentlemen as well as everyone at the pentagon have an obligation not just to spend the money but to make sure we're spending it efficiently and effectively and i really want to applaud secretary gates and the others at the d for stepping up to that very difficult challenge to looking at our budget and saying where can we save money because there's no place where you're going to save money where somebody isn't going to complain about the quote always goes one one person's waste is another person's income  it's not going to be easy no matter how you do it but i believe you gentleman and secretary gates have stepped up and begun a very very important process to find those savings i applaud that effort we look forward to learning more about the details and also i'd be remiss if i didn't put this into the broader framework of our budget deficit in our budget there is a growing consensus in this country that the deficit is too high the debt is too high and we are out of balance now that consensus falls apart when you begin to talk about where you're going to cut or how you're going to raise the revenue to make up for that standard lee so because these are difficult decisions but the math here is unrelenting and we shouldn't forget about that twenty ten we took in three point we spent three point five trillion dollars and took in about two point three trillion in revenue that's a one point two trillion dollar difference that's about thirty three percent of everything we spend so if you you started just from a logical standpoint you would say to get us back to balance we need to cut thirty three percent out of every thing that we spend if you want to take twenty percent of the budget which defense is off the table then down to about two point eight trillion that you have to cut one point two trillion out of and that means that you have to cut somewhere in the neighborhood of forty five percent out of every thing and that social security medicare medicaid homeland security infrastructure education on down the line i of that to make sure that we are mindful of the difficult challenge that we face and also to remind everybody that our national security is also dependent upon having a strong economy if we wind up putting our country in a fiscal hole that we can't get out of collapsing our economy making it difficult for us industries to prosper and thrive they're not going to be in a position to provide the valuable help that they do to our national security apparatus so we have a tough job ahead of us but savings inefficiencies are going to have to be found and i for my part i'm absolutely convinced that we continue to can continue to provide the best national security possible give our support to the troops that they deserve and still find savings within the pentagon budget and then this hearing is the first start in that process i know the gentleman front of us have worked very very hard on this problem i look forward to hearing their testimony and i look forward to working with the chairman and with the pentagon and all members of this committee to find those savings and make sure that we continue to provide national security in every sense chairman thank you now i'd like to introduce our witnesses this morning we have the honorable william j lynn the third the deputy secretary of defense from the defense department general peter love vice chief of staff u s air force thank you gentlemen the secretary thank you very much and good morning mr chairman members of the committee thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you today and discuss our efficiency efforts at the department of defense before i start i'd like to extend my thoughts and support to one of the members of your committee who's not here today representative gabrielle gifford as well as her husband navy captain mark kelly and the others affected by the events in tucson gabby and mark are part of the military family and we are very much cheering gabby on as she begins a rehabilitation today i'm pleased to be joined by the vice chief of staff of the army navy air force as well as the assistant commandant of the marine corps i'll have a brief statement and then we'll turn to your to your questions for the bulk of the hearing the leadership of the department is well aware that the nation is dealing with significant fiscal pressures we owe it to the taxpayers to make the most of every dollar entrusted to us indeed we could all benefit from following the direction of president eisenhower who believe we should spend whatever is necessary for national defense but not one penny more to that end the department sought in both the fiscal year two thousand and ten the fiscal year two thousand and eleven budgets to to curtail or eliminate programs that were either too troubled to continue or the provided capabilities that were to narrow to justify their costs we identified more than twenty program in those categories that would have cost more than three hundred billion dollars of pursued to their completion we've also initiated a comprehensive search for greater efficiencies in our business operations our personnel system and our headquarters structure specifically secretary gates laid out three objectives that i will describe today the services first were directed  one hundred billion dollars in efficiencies over the five year future year defense plan second the services could retain and invest those efficiency savings in enhancements of high priority warfighting programs and third the department developed additional efficiencies and other changes to accommodate a seventy eight billion dollars reduction in our top line that contributed to the administration's deficit reduction efforts over the past six months the military services of undertaking a comprehensive examination of their overhead accounts to achieve the hundred billion dollars savings subject of the secretary issued them the savings come from numerous sources  portion are generated by a re organizations that reassigned personnel and reduce layering in the department for example the army will consolidate six installation management command regions into four and close the evaluation task force the navy will eliminate selected squadron staffs and disestablish the second fleet in norfolk the air force will consolidate four air operations centers and three numbered air force sta the services will also achieve savings through implementing better business practices for example the army will leverage efforts of other organization to reduce the number of data centers and the navy will ship six thousand billets from shore based installations to increase shipboard manning finally the air force will implement better business practices and satellite procurement establishing more stability in the development process and utilizing block by in in addition to these business practice efficiencies the services garnered savings to reductions in programs that either cost too much or provided too little capability the army will terminate procurement of the slam ramp surface to air missile and the not non line of sight launch system the marine corps will terminate the expeditionary fighting vehicle as directed by the secretary all savings realized by a military department will be retained and reinvested in that department approximately twenty eight billion of the total savings will be used over the next five years to deal with higher than expected operating expenses the remaining savings seventy billion dollars will be used enhanced high priority military capabilities the air force will begin development acquisition of a new long range bomber and maintain maximum procurement levels of reaper u a b the army will invest more heavily in modernization of the army's battle fleet of abrams tanks bradley fighting vehicles and stryker wheeled vehicles the navy plans to use its savings to buy more ship by six more ships there were in last year's plan including an additional will permit improvement in war fighting capabilities in ways that would not have been fiscally possible in the absence of the efficiency campaign however as congressman smith indicated the strength of our national defen ultimately depends on a strong economy as well so as part of the administration's broader effort to address the deficit the department reduced its topline budget for f y twelve through f y two thousand and sixteen this reduction which totaled seventy eight billion dollars compared with last year's plan will still result in a defense base budget request of five hundred fifty three billion dollars in fiscal year two thousand and twelve and modest real growth in the near years of the future years defense plan we accommodated this topline reduction through additional efficiencies and other changes outside the warfighting accounts for instance secretary gates has imposed a freeze on civilian personnel levels in the department through f y two thousand and thirteen allowing limited exceptions to accommodate growth in the acquisition workforce and a few other essential areas the secretary also mandated a reduction of ten percent per year for three years in the number of contractors who augment government staffs we have sought to address the enormous growth in our medical costs through management efficien while continuing to improve high quality military health care we believe though it is time to lift the fifteen year freeze on tri care and roman for working age retirees we believe it is time to phase out subsidies that d o t currently provides to a small number of nonmilitary hospitals and we are making adjustments in pharmacy co pays that will both we think improve the benefit as well as develop cost efficiencies finally we're taking steps to streamline our organizational structure as the secretary announced last august we are disestablishing the joint forces command in the business transformation agency and we're eliminating the position of assistant secretary for networks and information integration in addition with we will pursue fish in season intelligence operations and in our information technology investments mr chairman the proposals we are describing today the result of a detailed comprehensive budgeting program will review led by secretary gates and involving the senior military and civilian leadership of the department i know that some will argue that our proposals cut defense too much others will argue that we have not cut enough we believe this budget strikes the right balance for these difficult times and secretary gates own words this budget proposal represents a reasonable responsible and sustainable level of defense spending for the next five years i want to end my statement by thanking the chairman and the committee for your strong support of the department and particularly for your strong support of the men and women who bear the burdens of our national defense thank you and i look forward to your questions  seventy eight billion topline reduction was a surprise to us when we went in to the briefing with the secretary we thought we were going to be talking and getting more detail on the hundred billion and we also found out about the seventy eight billion what guidance was provided by the administration to the department with regard to the top line budget reductions across the future years defense programs and when was this guidance received chairman the top line as this past year is it has is that all you i think in every year with every administration was developed in a discussion between the white house led in particular by the office of management budget and the defense department we had a interest in or a discussion that included the president we settled on the seventy eight billion dollar number is a number that we thought we could achieve through efficiencies that did not undermine any of our  war fighting capabilities and as to the timing the final numbers were developed in december and other departments received similar instructions yes yes they have but i wouldn't be able to give you the exact numbers of those other departments but the similar process was done with all of the departments similar percentages of cuts i'm not in a position to  thousand and eleven funding priorities continuing resolution and we're awaiting a congressional action so the challenge in fiscal year zero levon is how to operate either under a continuing resolution or ultimately a mid year appropriation that was a challenge in preparing the program it's a challenge in executing the budget but i don't think the the development of the twelve to sixteen program will affect execution of fiscal eleven the secretary stated on january sixth that this plan and i quote represents in my view the minimum level of defense spending that's necessary given the complex and unpredictable array of security challenges united states faces around the globe  then he went on to explain why further cuts to force structure would be calamitous however the secretary also indicated just last year that two to three percent real growth was necessary beyond twenty fifteen to prevent cuts to force structure how will you maintain this level of modernization that the secretary believes is necessary to protect our national security in the face of zero percent percent real growth in the coming years enhanced means that you do need a two to three percent real growth with the constant force structure for that reason when we are going to have a proposed flat budget in fiscal fifteen and sixteen we believe that you do need some force  force reductions and we have put planning in there for twenty reduction of twenty seven thousand in the army and strengthen fifteen to twenty thousand in the marine corps and strength that reduction will take place after we think we will have drawn down substantially in both afghanistan and iraq and so that our international commitments should not be at today's levels thank you very much  numbers they've gone up significantly and with our commitments in iraq and afghanistan but you have just a little bit of the numbers of how much we've actually increased the budget in the last seven or eight years partly to defense and try to include than they were when secretary gates took office and that was really the high point of the iraqi conflict in terms of the oco budget that is about one hundred and sixty billion dollars this year obviously in two thousand going back to two thousand and one before the conflict before nine eleven before the conflict in afghanistan that essentially would have been zero  if we add it up over the six or seven years that we've had supplementals it's somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars in addition to that doubling of the defense budget that it's happened that's correct there and you come across in that specific programs the f thirty five most expensive program we've got going has experienced some troubles can you give us a little bit of an indication of our efforts to try to get those costs under control and get us an actual product for a reasonable price yes congressman the the f thirty five is a is certainly a critical program for the department it's the it's the fifth generation fighter that we think that we need to have in the in the decade following this the development program frankly has not gone as smoothly as we'd hoped the costs have risen we have taken additional steps this year to frankly present the committee with a more conservative program in three fundamental ways one the most  difficult aspect of the program has been the the development of the soul of all version of the f thirty five which is the most complicated version we have decoupled the development of that aircraft from the  carrier based in the in the air force versions which are proceeding a bit better so that they will not be held back and we put it on what the secretary's called a two year probation we're going to we're going to continue the program we're going to try and work through the development  issues and we're going to decide at the end of two years whether to go forward with the program in the in the strong hope that we will have solve those problems at the end of that two years the second thing we're doing is we are slowing the ramp procurement will be flat from fiscal levon to twelve in the ramp will be slower by over one hundred aircraft in the plan than we had in the five year plan that we had planned last year this is this is reducing  concurrency and getting further in development before we invest more and in production it is a more conservative approach and then finally third to address any operational gaps that we have by slowing that  have added about forty f eighteen s to the to the line so that we we are able to fill out the the fleet in the in the interim period and that obviously is a major challenge the tens of billions of dollars more than was expected they're being spent on that critical piece of our national security presents some of the challenges for the budget going forward just one final question general crowley can you walk us through a little bit the early infantry brigade combat team update sort of as i like to refer to it son of future combat systems if you will our effort to date those programs information warfare in the in the battle field space for our brigade teams has not gone terribly smoothly as you know in terms of the testing and i know you've been working hard to update that make sure we get the equipment we need get rid of what doesn't work and keep what does can just walk us through a little bit in light of the most recent testing where we're at on that and how you're planning on going forward what we're very very pleased with where we are with  network right now and we are very pleased with the suggs which is the little robot that goes around some of the others have created some challenges for us and we'll be we'll be looking before too long once the r and d is completed to make some decisions on some of the other systems ok thank you thank you mr bartlett thank you very much whatever our top line is we need to be as efficient as we can in using the monies are three areas that i know we all have concerns about and see where you are going with trying to solve these problems i'm a huge supporter of of research and early r and d you never know if you don't try what will come of it so i don't want my concern here to be in any way reflect on indicate that i'm not a big supporter of research in r and d i think we need to do more of that not less of that i think we spend too little money there but i'm very much concerned that we have too many programs that continue to the late r d stage there is no way we could possibly cure all of them and so we have to find a mechanism for boarding these things earlier rather than later because it just no way that we could cure all of the all of the end items that the number of programs that we now have and later on the how are we going to address that problem a second problem is when a program is not going well it has to really really be more abundant before we aborted two recent programs or future combat systems and expeditionary fighting vehicle you know and after years and years and billions of dollars they finally said hey that's not a good idea i think there were a number of people along the way who said way or earlier that the that was not a good idea that we shouldn't be doing that how do we address that problem so you don't come to the point where we have the sunk cost of billions of dollars in voiding a program where parts are made participated in many many districts across the country so it gets like congressional support and the third problem is there's always some new technology we can add i've been here eighteen years now we never have finished the program on time and on budget and we are partly responsible for that because we keep saying gee could it be a little better less at this new technology how do we determine it's good enough and we stop there we have an open architecture that we can add these improvements later because many times we're going to live with these things for the next forty years so we wanted to be as good as it can be how are we addressing these problems there are huge potential savings in these areas how do we get there corn that you're rightly concerned about with regard to decisions on programs i guess that's not a criticism i think secretary gates has suffered from he has made i think some some tough tough decisions whether it's on the presidential helicopter or the f twenty two earlier the future combat system that you mentioned which he terminated and expeditionary fighting vehicle this year  i think the thrust of your question is right the the department needs to make hard decisions early and we're we're endeavoring to do that i think you're right it's it's challenging both in terms of the support programs build up as well as it is it is always difficult to know when you've reached the point of do you have enough knowledge to make the decision or is it is it going to get better just around the next corner which tends to be the  have a budget and schedule be equally important as performance you have to balance between all three i think we have often balanced in favor of performance for for often good reasons but  budget and schedule suffers we are trying to in our acquisition reform efforts balance better and you will see for example in the program we're presenting next month that we've as the secretaries announced we are going to pursue a new bomber program as part of a family's systems approach to long range strike an important element of that new bomber program will be a firm view of what the cost of what the unit cost of that bomber ought to be and that we ought to develop the best possible technology but at that price thank you thank you mr chairman i yield back thank you  some of its savings in the in the efficiency account in the abrams bradleys and stryker vehicle doing upgrades for for those three could you provide us with more details on those upgrades and also how much additional funding was the army able to allocate to modernize these particular vehicles and how will it provide better capability for the for the soldiers those are three systems that we currently have been able to put some money in for more efficiency along with many others in stryker i think you know we're moving  d with a double v all we have been completing some some testing and that testing has come out very very satisfactory we're very very pleased with it and are moving at that to provide additional protection for the entire crew of the stryker above what we have right now with the flat bottom hole with some of the add on armor kits it's a great improvement we will be making increases changes improvements to both the striker and the bradley and i'll have to get you the exact dollars on that at a later time sir and i will get those to you ok the other area like to ask is in the area of  the patriot missile grades and also the counter rocket artillery mortar systems what are the what is the army intending to do with  protect our soldiers in the field will sort of those movements grew out of our portfolio reviews where we took like type systems and looked at the entire portfolio and compared systems that came out of a portfolio we call air and missile defense and when we looked at that portfolio we saw we had some broken programs one of the programs that we had concern with was slam ramp the cost of the that missile for slam rand had grown from three hundred thousand to i'm tol over a million dollars a copy now in palm ten fifteen we were only buying a hundred of those missiles and quite frankly the we saw changes in the threat from the time that that program had been could see we were able to take the savings from that particular program and apply them against patriot and against counter rocket and counter mortar because quite frankly counter rock encounter mortar are the threats that are affecting our troops downrange today so with over a billion dollars in slam ram savings we were able to reinvest that encounter rock encounter mortar and also in upgrading statement and as i'm sure you remember from your previous time a primary reason that the command was created was to have a major command that looks forward to a future command and to have joint experimentation come together so that you have a person at the table who is not just worried about what's happening today but looking ahead so if the command goes away and there's lots of reasons i understand to do that who does that or is it view that you don't need that person who is future oriented with with the joint experimentation capability we agree with you congressman the certainly look into the future and in particular the emphasis on jointness through experiment and experimentation through development of doctrine are critical roles we did not think we at the point we are in in the department  that we needed a command to do that now we are retaining many of the sub organizations about half the rough estimate that we're doing that including the joint experimentation group they will report still the final recommendations are still being developed but the joint staff and the chairman of the vice chairman will play a stronger role in advocating for jointness in advocating for  general dunford i'm not an expert in this area but monder standing was a marine corps has had a requirement that the navy's going to get the marines so close so many miles from shore then they've got to be transferred into we are and continue to be committed to the capability that was represented by the v that is to be a live of of the nation with a short action historically we have planned over the past two decades for marines to be destroyed to twenty five nautical miles  in recent discussions with the navy those figures have in fact changed and we're in a process now refining the requirement and we think it's somewhere in excess of twelve nautical miles but something less than twenty five nautical miles so we are in fact reviewing a requirement right now in the context of both our capabilities and limitations as well as the enemy's capability limitations particularly some newly fielded equipment inside of the part of the navy admirals the navy ok with getting closer to shore and being more at risk of missiles protection ram and some of the other systems that's rolling airframe missile that we have our counter swarm capability we believe and i'm in concurrence with general dunford somewhere around twelve miles maybe a little bit more is acceptable we've we've  modeled this closely we've wargame to closely we're reasonably comfortable there may be situations when as as the maritime component commander we may not have as much time as we assume we will will have to look at the risk factor regarding that that will be the individual operators judgment on that case but overall we're good with that well i appreciate you all as answers i think these are just two examples i picked of where we want to have further discussions with you there has been a sense at least for me from my part that some need it comes down from on high saying cut the budget and you all do the best you can and try to put a rosy face on it and i think the concern that some of us have is is ok what are the implications of eliminating this vehicle emanating this command that we thought through who does it what kind of capability we lose if that happens and there is i personally i think there is concern andrews thank you mr chairman good morning gentleman thank you for your testimony mr secretary thank you for referencing the work the members of this committee did on procurement reform deserves at least equal credit for that to many members and we appreciate the fact you're already starting to implement those reforms thank you i want to come back to the top line discussion where secretary gates on january sixth talk about the seventy eight billion dollars off the top line through the efficiencies that have been outlined that if under the five year plan that you're presently working under defense spending will still be considerably higher five years from today than it is today is that right if i look at the math correctly the difference between the plan that you're presently operating on and what secretary gates has now suggested is instead of the defense budget being seventeen percent higher than it is today it will be about fourteen and a half percent higher than this today is that essentially right i don't have the math in front of me but it sounds right the numbers to be were five hundred sixty seven billion in the base budget in the first year and six sixty three by the fifth year he would take that down by seventy eight billion over five years given that i want to commend you and the secretary for the real choices that you're putting before this committee in the congress the easiest thing to do here has been done for two decades or longer is to say there can be operating efficiencies and overhead savings and we can spend less if we do that in the twenty years since that's been said the budget is probably triple not just double so there really have to be some real decisions and i think you've raised a very interesting one with the the recommendation i know that the had a non mccurdy breach in two thousand and seven and as our expert staff tells mccurdy breach is triggered under the law when a program exceeds its budgeted schedule by twenty five percent or more do you happen to recall the magnitude of the non mccurdy breach for the  that's more than tripled in cost in laypersons language why is that why did it more than triple and cost one critical factor is that at the time in one thousand ninety five we plan on buying one thousand and thirteen vehicles the current program is five buy and other factors really i think probably general dynamics can be better able to explain that my understanding is that we have not yet passed milestone be on this program that we were approaching of a not yet passed cars and we were just about to be acknowledged point  in february and what planning has taken place in the department with respect to an alternative if in fact don't procure these vessels that have been presently planned how would we get marines from the ship to the shore congressman as i mentioned earlier first we are committed to continue to be able to do that and provide assured access for the nation so we're committed to getting a vehicle that moves from ship to shore we believe that the knowledge that we have learned  combined with some new acquisition process these will allow us to get a vehicle that will allow us to meet the operational requirements at significantly less cost is there or is there going to be a gap between when we get to that point and now is there any operating deficiency that the marines would be subjected to we can currently meet our requirements the the use of the assault vehicle which is a legacy program absolutely has an effect on our tactics techniques and procedures so we mitigate the risk of a legacy time will take a look at what the expects petition fighting vehicle really represents is a small part of our overall ground tactical vehicle plan and about two thirds of what we need to come from ship to shore in armored vehicles so we'll take a look also now to dressing what we call the marine personnel carrier which is the balance of our in phoebe's capability thank you very much i appreciate it thank you mr secretary i didn't want to interrupt when you're asking questions but i'd like to have a little understanding when the secretary briefed us on this additional seventy billion what he said was next year's budget would have a one percent increase the following year a half percent and then three years a flat now how does that gr the we don't actually know what the fiscal eleven to twelve growth rate is again because we don't know what the fiscal eleven budget but it will be somewhere between one and a half and three percent real growth on that's on top of inflation which is in the want to have to two percent so you're looking at nominal fifteen and sixteen in other words the budget would still grow but only to keep pace with inflation so that when you net those numbers up by believe you end up with the line that congressman andrews led with ok so so in current dollars it wouldn't grow by those numbers it would be inflated dollars in current dollars it would grow more because of the addition of inflation that right that  one when the secretary said to you one percent a half percent zero he was talking real you have to add inflation to that thank you mr reagan thank you mr chairman i would like to start by making a distinction between two things and i have to say that i don't have so many questions as answers we still get five minutes for answers so i'm going to just give you a little bit of where i'm coming from sitting in this committee the first thing is what you've done the start of the beginning of the year decided we're going to cut defense by seventy eight billion make some big changes in various programs and a whole series of decisions the question is were those all good decisions or not that's one question the second point though is how you did it the u s constitution requires the ambers of this committee to be involved and be part of the decisions for national security the end of last year this committee was approached on the fact that we had an opportunity to get to purchases for ten littoral combat ships which was different than what we had had planned at the last minute we were said this would be a good idea for the navy it saves us some money and it's a good thing to do we took a look at the numbers in a very compressed time frame passed legislation and supported the navy and that decision even though we had no idea that it was coming to a week or so before a couple weeks before when we actually made the legislation and got it done we worked with you as copartners this month we received like a c c on a general press release to the public that we made all of these unilateral decisions and we had no idea a bunch of them are even coming the expeditionary fighting vehicle strikes me as one where the assumptions are very thin it appears that we're almost canceling a capability in order to make a seventy eight billion dollar cut on the surface we'll look into it but my concern is that you are trying to make or you inadvertently made this committee irrelevant because you're not keeping us in the loop informing us of what you're looking at that has gotten progressively worse over ten years to the word is right now and that's unacceptable at least to me as a subcommittee chair and i believe i may speak for a few other members of this committee that we want to be part of the decision making process if you go back two hundred years and look at the history of our national defense you find that it's a partnership between military and civilians and both sides play a role in that and at times as civilians that is this committee has made recommendations in twenty twenty hindsight that turned out to be very good military decisions such as among other things arming predators and i don't like and i don't think this committee will tolerate being left out of the process of decision making so we will have our hearings and we will look into those decisions and the decisions that we think are poor we will not be shy about explaining why we think those report decisions but i just think it's clear in january when we're starting off on a new on a new foot that we will understand each other and i'm going to to try to explain it so that you understood where we're coming from because we don't like to be called at the last minute and say i talked to the secretary of the navy two days ago and i said i'm very concerned about cutting the defense but you sell there's not any cuts to the  ways we had a speech last night that talked about it now to the overall concept i think it is in your best interest to use us as part of your team to help you do your jobs i think is foolish to ignore us because here's what's going on you want take a big look at where we are budget wise in this country you take your entitlements medicare medicaid social security add the other entitlements and then add service on the debt which is like an entitlement because when we sell a u s treasury or something we have to keep paying the interest like a little machine that spits out dollar bills we can not pay that you take all those entitle months together adam up right now those entitlements are equal to the revenue that we take in as a nation so you can cut defense to zero cut discretionary spending to zero and we're still just even you cannot pay for entitlements by cutting defense but you can destroy our country by cutting defense now you want to take a look at some concerning numbers if you take a look at defense spending as a percent of total budget already we are now with these proposed cuts to the same place we were in ninety eight when we hollowed out our forces that's the kind of thing that is our job to be concerned with in our job to go to bat and say to the budget committee wait a minute we really can't take defense we can't take the marines and deny them the capability to go from ship to shore and if you want to put new engines in some vehicles that code date back to the korean era and they can go from four to six not somehow or other i'm not saying that is a very workable solution with all due respect to my good friends from the marine corps i know you're trying to do what you think you've got to do budget wise but some of these decisions need to be run by this committee first and i just want to put a marker down mr chairman if i'm a little too strong correct me but that is that's my strong sense there needs to be issue that involves our people the men and women who serve i know that the department is looking at a number of reforms in the area of military health care and clearly in many ways everything is on the table here but i wonder if you could share with me what concerns the services have raised as it reflects some of the proposals and that you have in health care now i know we're not looking at specifics right now but i'm just wondering  somewhat about that process and about how the services are weighing in and what their concerns are what have they raised well let me let the vice chief speak for themselves let me just give you an opening comment  as you indicated part of the development of this program was an attempt to rein in health care costs which is more than doubled over the past ten years there's some proposals with regard to fees with regard to possible pharmacy benefit and overall efficiency is happy to go into more detail the proper time but the process by which those were developed was a full department wide process led by the secretary he had a series of meetings that included the entire leadership the chiefs the service secretaries the combatant commanders senior o s d leadership i know chairman mullen let at least one i think more than one tank session so this was a very fulsome process but let me turn to the i would just echo what secretary lynn said we were part of that process and agreed with the decisions that have been made i will tell you in my area the area that i'm most concerned about is i don't have enough uniformed health care  made a decision in the army a while ago to cap the number of uniform military health care providers we had at a certain number and i need to find room inside my end strength to add some more it's just not enough we've been able to make up with that through to contract health care in certain areas but when it comes to areas like behavioral health care i've got a real problem there as the nation has a real problem there because we just don't have enough so i find myself competing with the nation to get that really really important asset that the united states army needs at this particular time a great example i'll give you a second and third order effects is i need alcohol and substance abuse counselors but many of them have their degrees necessary to lead up to become behavioral health specialists at a increased salary so what i find myself doing as hard as i try to hire alcohol and drug abuse counselors i bring in five to four campbell kentucky and i lose five as  regarding uniformed health care providers our concern was as we reviewed and there were more an issue than what is in the budget and some were removed our concern was to ensure that our active duty members and their families receive proper care and world class care that they deserve and we're comfortable with that make sure that the availability of care outside the service when need to consols that that was that capacity was still there and we're comfortable that and that pharmacy any changes to the pharmacy that we could retain that service and make it available again we were comfortable ma'am i'd say it was a collaborative process so you're saying it particularly on the pharmacy benefit that you didn't see any drawbacks to that that would affect the men and women that's correct the congresswoman like the other our primary concern was ensuring that our marines that are for deployed have world class medical care we're also concerned making sure that our marines when they come home and their families have world class medical care we were unaware of any initiatives in the proposals that would that would degrade that health care and so we have very much been part of that process and looked at the other initiatives where they don't affect the active duty force and  we remain focused on the downrange care of our troops involved in the conflict but we recently finished the year of the family in the air force and we focused on the after care as our troops come home and also taking care of those families when their troops are downrange and we continue to remain focused on that and we don't see any detriment to that in well i appreciate that because i think there have been some concerns that there hasn't been the kind of involvement of the different services in that decision so i want to be sure that we're balancing the need to find some savings but at the same time clearly those benefits are expected and people deserve those benefits want to be sure that we're doing that in the proper way thank you mr chairman mr forbes thank you mr chairman specter is great to see you and as you know we've got a limited amount of time so i'll be concise and i hope you will be as well in your statement you said we owe it to the taxpayers to make the most of every dollar entrusted to us and then you go on to say one of the ways we're going to do that is the services will achieve savings there are implementing better business practices at looked at many of our fortune five hundred companies to core business practice that is appearing to all of the others is to make sure they know where their money's going by having audited financial statement in fact congress feels so strongly about that we required them by a lot to do the same now in the department of finance we are giving to you what would essentially be the twenty second largest economy in the world if you are a country so over seven hundred billion dollars last year and as you know we require our agency heads to submit to us audited financial statements each year so that we know where the money's going now twenty one different agencies have complied with that clearly the statute came back and said the department defense needed to do that and in your statement you on to say proposals we're describing today are the result of a detailed comprehensive budget and program review by secretary gates and involving the entire senior military and civilian leadership of the department so must start to my question for you first one today is what percentage of the seven hundred billion dollars budget of the department of finance did secretary gates file the audited financial statement required by law in two thousand and seven forbes the department does not have inaudible financial statement or none were filed in two thousand and seven i think one or two agencies but it's a very small part of the budget first of all you're the chief management officer of the department of defense is it your testimony today that you do not know how many were filed or you testifying that two agencies did file on the department i'm going to have to provide the exact i'll tell you it was none how about in two thousand and  saying do you know how what percentage of these seven hundred billion dollars budget in the department of defense will be an audit ready posture for two thousand and eleven that is that we could even be capable of doing i don't think any of the president last night told us that in making decisions in our country he said quote it will be harder because we will argue about everything the cost the details so letter of every law of course some countries don't have this problem if the central government wants a railroad they build a railroad no matter how many homes get bulldozed if they don't want to bad store in the newspaper it doesn't get written but we all believe in the rights and try and in our constitution mr secretary i believe that to develop the philosophy of bulldozing when you make a decision you make the decision congressman akin said you don't even include us you don't need to give us the information and then you bulldoze ahead without doing the tough work of trying to work it through us you know when we ask you to bring to us individuals who can testify give us your analysis give us your documentation of these cuts or anything else you refused to do it so then we ask you to do the report so that we can get the information and we can reach an analysis and the secretary does press conference to point reports to congress and that's just too tough it's too hard we're not going to do a report so then we put it in the law and we say you've got to comply with it because this is the law of the land but when we did that for shipbuilding plant the secretary just said i'm not going give it to you when we put it in aviation plan the secretary said we're just not going to give it to you and we require audited financial statements so we can just know we're a money's gone when they're just not going to do it and the question we ought to be asking ourselves is above the law what do we have to do to get you to comply with the law and how can we even begin to talk about savings and efficiencies when we cannot verify a single dollar of where defense budget is mr chairman are close by just saying this shame on us if we continue to give the department of defense billions of dollars without doing the most basic of all good business practices by simply knowing where that money is we've developed a plan to do that the plan is is quite aggressive it would it's going to be difficult to achieve and we have focused on the budgetary resources for the reasons that you gave but that is the most important responsibility of the department be able to tell the congress and the taxpayers how we dollars spent so the secretary very much agrees that we to comply with this we have a plan to do that with regard to the ship building in the aviation plans i think that was a disagreement with the committees as we did provide those when we had when the committee was asking for it was in the first couple of months where the administration had taken office and they simply didn't exist as soon as they existed we did provide them to the department a chairman i don't want to take more of my time but just to respond to the secretary mr secretary it wasn't the committees that requested it it was the law that requested when you had to file it and it told you what to do if you didn't have a plan and secondly if any of these fortune five hundred companies came up and said we just can't comply with the law because it's too hard what we did is up and you know i think it's a priority that we ought to merits congressman forbes is absolutely right about what the law says and it was very frustrating over the last two years that we didn't get that shipbuilding plan but as you said we did get it last year and i'd like to actually focus for a minute admiral greenert on  e testimony regarding the impact of these changes to the navy and ship acquisition again the testimony we received is that the savings will be directed  towards again reinvestment in the navy and that six ships are going to be added to the navy's fleet as a result of this and will i guess the first question i have is that going to change the ship building plan that was submitted last year  yes sir it will from from the perspective of they'll be an additional six ships to that ship building plan we've been able to move ahead in some of our required shipbuilding for example euler's we need to get double me that's a priority mccartney i could just interrupt just for a second we have been told with the new schedule this year that we will be interrupted with votes that will start the week of the fourteenth we have just been interrupted by a vote and the votes are going to be shorter than in the past we can't wait till it's almost over so you will be the last question but anybody else that wants to leave now to vote there will be two votes committee in particular the power committee has been struggling with for years which is despite the massive increase in the pentagon we have steadily seen the fleet size fall below what the navy has told us repeatedly is necessary a three hundred  certainly not weakening our defense it's actually accelerating the path to get to the goal that we all want the sort of a story that i think a cautionary tale that i think we  this committee have to keep aware of particular in the context of shipbuilding is what happened with the d t g one thousand where again you know anything goes in terms of the way that was put together and it crashed and collapse of its own weight because of the high cost and last year of the shipbuilding plan that was sent over projected out a huge boulder that was going to be caused by the s s b n price tag seven billion per copy it's my understanding that again the pentagon has really worked hard to try and bring that price down so that we don't find ourselves in a somewhat like situation five ten years from now and i was wondering if you could maybe talk that cost savings measure and then the progress that the navy's achieved thank you for the question sir yes we had a we have a very collaborative process i believe on the ohio replacement program a little bit to mr bartlett's question or comment earlier how is it that we can interject if you will cost as a key performance parameter and so we have a cost threshold and objective on the high replacement program point here is as we develop this as we are into the early phases of design we have to address cost again and again and again as a function and balance it against the capabilities we haven't been very good at doing that in the early phases it's been all about capability and then we deal with the bill later so we're very focused on that as you know sir because of your background in your area of ship building this is a fairly well defined capability that we're building and so this is a good program to get started in this  allow cost to consume every other aspect of the navy's budget and frankly put pressure on the rest of the pentagon secretary lynn in your opening comments you talked about the end strength changes post two thousand and fifteen again when i first came to congress and seven that was one of secretary gates his first initiatives was just to expand the end strength for the army and the marines you alluded to the fact that we would still end up at a net position stronger than we were in two thousand and seven but you don't really sort of flesh out the numbers as one of maybe if you could describe that in a little more detail i'll be asleep we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where the guard and reserves are really forced to do something that they never were done had to be done in the past and pick up the which are not part of the decrease in reality will be thirty eight plus another nine which is forty seven higher than we were when secretary gates became secretary of defense and then the record in the congress and we've been given a window of fifteen to twenty thousand but we still have an opportunity to go back to the secretary defense and provide him with the results of our recent force structure review group sort of comments taking a look at the comprehensive capabilities and capacities that we will need and he feels confident he'll have a chance to talk to the secretary about the specific instrument that the rink will have in a future thank you we'll now take about a fifteen minute break we'll get back as quickly as we can thanks very much well we were told it was two votes it was only one so we got back some of us a little sooner let's begin where we left off with mr wilson thank you mr chairman and thank you for your leadership  the new chairman bair a committee and gentlemen thank you for being here today it's been inspiring to me to know of your service and to be here with a joint service hearing from a joint service family with immediate the proposed cuts in the army of twenty seven thousand another twenty two thousand cutting the marine corps fifteen thousand to twenty thousand a question that i have for general career corella internal dunford has these proposals are done only in the context of cutting the budget or has there been a military understanding of the challenges of our country an ongoing war  war with qaida islamic extremists that we have today potentially a conventional war in the future and so i'd like to know from both of you what has been the driving force and what can be  at all the capabilities and capacities we need to deal with the future challenges so there are there have been no specific numbers identified for us to draw down at this time that's a window that the secretary's given on the seventh of february general amos will have an opportunity to sit down with secretary defense in walk through what he believes the marine corps ought to be in the future and so we feel we feel comfortable that the outcome will be based on the common its recommendations for capabilities and capacities and not just a fiscal drill congressman the you know the twenty two thousand that you talked about was temporary and strength and courage to secretary gates provided the united states army as we moved off a stop loss it was absolutely critical and we have always plan in thirteen we would in fact bring the force back down to five forty seven for the army supports the plan to reduce the size of its active force by twenty seven thousand in f y fifteen and sixteen we support that point the chief personally talked to the secretary of defense last summer and asked him to preserve our an strength at five forty seven four through fourteen  and he has with this plan and most importantly the secretary has put on the table three critical assumptions that must be met first that we're out of iraq we see the drawdown in afghanistan taking place and we do not see the of land forces in any other theater we feel this is important for our force that we have the planning time to do this this is reversible planning that could be reversed if conditions change military and military families that conditions based in regard to dwell time the goal has been three to one fact of components five to one for reserve components is this going to be affected by the potential of a drawdown i can't tell you that right now because i don't know what demand is going to be but we feel it one of the reasons we would go back to the secretary's if we couldn't guarantee our force a minimum dwell time of one to two when these draw downs began and one to two is critical for us one to four for commitments are reduced we're now approaching a one to two deployment the dwell across across the marine corps and the expectation is that we would not draw down again unless our requirements are adjusted to be able to maintain at least one to two deployments as well thank you very bipartisan legislation with good legislation how is the implementation of that legislation going what savings how do we see yet perhaps how will that play into the savings we're looking for in any of the savings that we estimated would come from that legislation including what we're talking about here thanks for the question mr the thrust i think the legislation in the thrust of our acquisition reform efforts are one to establish stability requirements not to continually change the requirements but stablish baseline and move forward on that spiral in additional capabilities later if necessary second maintain adherence to cost and schedule not not have an unbalanced approach where you're only looking for more performance and then third to use independent costing is as a brake on the system we're implementing all three of those i think we're quite far along on all three in terms of savings i think it's it's too early to say because it takes a while to push these all the way through all of the programs and where you will see savings is hopefully what you would see is that instead of having cost over runs  schedule delays we would hit the program milestones as they were laid out it in many ways it's less cost savings and more cost avoidance you wouldn't have the case that we've had in the past where you have on average twenty to thirty percent cost overruns after milestone decisions that we haven't had very many milestone decisions since we put in place the legislation that you took place so i think we're going to have to measure that and come back to you in the over the course of the next couple of years thank you sir and i think it is important in that communication that we've been talking about and several of my colleagues today i'm not going to restate that but it is a concern to a lot of us that we do communicate in some of the decisions that are being made as we perhaps might need to revisit those because of a change in whatever we need that communication in a way other than just hearing about it from from program that we could be talking about here where something may be running into trouble just wondering what the thoughts are on that program how we're going forward with it perhaps while we're going forward with it if it does have these issues congressman thank you for that question in the ability to clean up what i think may have been some early and not exactly correct information that that program is called gorgon stair it is a program which allows  our forces to look at a larger portion of the battlefield and to be able to bring information to our soldiers and marines on the ground that they need about a much bigger piece of their battle space our current systems as you  know we like to talk about them as having a very narrow field of view and it makes it tougher to support the ground troops with some of those this particular wide area surveillance system early in its development because it was a pretty good leap forward in technology was having some trouble with keeping the coordinates and the positions that we wanted to watch it was having some troubles with those and a leaked early report talked about those troubles three in the program that needed to be fixed all three of those are very close to fix or fixed now and the program is quite frankly performing better and we expect and hope to field it soon early in the summer maybe into the theater in order to bring that capability to our soldiers and marines on the ground thank you sir because it's so important to keep that capacity thank you mr chairman thank you mr kline thank mr chairman thank you gentleman for your service in your testimony are many things i would like to like to cover in our very limited time but i know that the chairman is going to be insistent on keep his to five minutes i want to sort of identify myself with the comments of my colleagues mr aiken mr forbes and the frustration of not getting information and not being consulted not being part of the process of shaping our mean equipping recruiting retaining the armed forces as we're charged do by the constitution and i have grave concerns about some of the some of the cots general dunford and i've had conversations about the expeditionary fighting vehicle i have great concerns that we've got a program here where the requirements been identified for many many many years going back to where i was much younger had hair was brown and i was in uniform and we started putting what we then called the aaa into the into the fit into the palm and this is back in the eighty's and so now we have this cancellation and i like many of my colleagues and i expect to hear from my marine colleagues here about their concern over that but in my remaining three minutes and forty seven seconds i want to talk about and and their teams that we should not be looking at reducing the end strength of the marine corps in the army i've been a member of this panel now for going on nine years and i watched the debate in the struggle as we took the size of the army in the marine corps and year by year work to build out in strength as we were putting enormous pressure enormous pressure on the reserve component in ways that had never been in vision the minnesota national guard has been called up again and again  the red bulls serve the longest combat tour of any unit in the armed forces continuously in iraq they're back again and back again and i am horrified at the prospect of drawing down that in strength and and assume the force structure that goes with it and i'm afraid that we're doing that as a cost saving measure and i assume that the assumption is if you have fewer marines and soldiers you need fewer less equipment and therefore less cost i think that's a poor strategy i'm very very concerned about that but if you are going to draw down then by golly we need to know in some detail what that force structure is going to be and how you're going to quit that fo this process is a little bit unwieldy as you know and drawing down and building up in strength particularly in building up if we if we accelerated drawdown and i'm not sure when exactly that start i've heard part of that question then we're going to be in a position where we've got in strength that's back slightly above but close to where we started i think we're looking at in strength for the marines in this proposal of around one hundred eighty some thousand we were about one hundred seventy five thousand when this started we're kind of back where we started army a little bit bigger than when we started with the fighting in iraq but considerably smaller than where it is today and you gentlemen know how hard it is to to build back to build that back up and get the force structure goes with it so i guess i'm looking for some reassurance that somehow you now in a way we haven't had maybe ever but not in decades some sense of what the requirements going to be for saharan africa a threat has not gone away i assume you agree with that that we're still at war with islam is extremist jihadist how how in thirty seconds anybody how in the world can you tell me you think we don't need this size of an active army or marine corps anybody congressman i can tell you in a case in a marine corps that we actually began our force structure you group back in august so it predated the efficienc in in our case we're taking a hard look at actual operational requirements this was not a drill to draw down the marine corps it was a drill to examine what we believe to be future marine corps requirements to ensure we had balance capability across the marina ground task force so we want to make sure we had a balance between the numbers of people that we had across the neck to half as well as you pointed out as well as how to properly equip them and i can assure you that the recommendations that general amos will make to secretary defense are made based on the capabilities he believes the marine corps needs to have in his best assessment of what the organizational construct of the marine corps to future ought to be ok i'm out of time and so i'm going to yield back excepts i will be looking at very closely because i'm fully ready to challenge that have been identified and it's one of the things that popped out it says money many of the efficiency savings announced are from consolidation of i t systems but in your testimony you said that the assistant secretary for network and information integration has been eliminated now is that two separate jobs or does this assistant secretary not have purview over the i t consolidation of i t systems i'm just trying to figure out how that works a good question congressman the assistant secretary position has been eliminated the chief information officer however has not and that that individual used to be dual hatted and the problem we found with that is that it diffused their responsibility diffuse their focus they were in the in the old job they were focused on buying radios commanding control a whole series of things we have moved  acquisition functions to where they belong we think which is the undersecretary for acquisition we're asking the c e o now to focus on information technology focus on how do we  subject that's been talked about a little bit here at the e s b vehicle and we've been talking about i guess the minimum distance since being talked about from my shore is going to be about twelve nautical miles and on a good day the a v goes what maybe eight eight knots so how long does that mean that once the marines drop in the water it's going to take them to get to shore i don't know how to do the math here congressman to take a little over an hour now is there is there  water before you hit the shore we do congressman we think that much more than an hour significantly degrade the marines capability to fight so we still do have a need for the v and we've sunk about what is it three and a half billion into research development going into this and and what the secretary is telling this committee is that well we're just going to move on we're going to upgrade the a v to meet the current needs until we figure out what to do next is that correct we're really going to do two things we are going to upgrade the current a v with a service life extension but we're going to very quickly seek to get a new and phoebe's vehicle in and we believe we can significantly exceed the normal perturbing timelines to show she with a new vehicle the acquisition process has that have been used to support and arrange for deploy in iraq and afghanistan the last several years the m wrap is a good example from an acquisition process perspective of something that was fielded very quickly so we very much we've had that that didn't seem to make sense so i know that the contractors come up with sort of a pastry to put on the bottom once they hit the shore which a little bit surprised if you can do that in a hostile environment but the a v also has a flat bottom is that correct that's correct to i have one minute left but i want to go back to our what mr forbes was asking and the defense department has identified about seventy eight million dollars in savings off the top line i'm curious of how much of that savings is going to be plugged back in so that the defense department can then start providing this this this committee the audits that have been required by law or the audible  reports i'm curious because that allows us to do our job and and what mr forbes was saying what you've heard from this committee is we're the ally we're not the enemy and we want to be helpful but we need to know what we're looking to do and how we can be helpful so has any of that savings been targeted to help provide this committee the information that we need the overall efficiencies effort was developed a hundred and seventy eight billion dollars in billion was provided for deficit reduction to accomplish a broader administration goal we still our committed to improving our audit readiness and ultimately getting to audi financial statements that's not because we're a commercial organization and it's necessary for things like shareholders the importance for us of audited financial statements is it improves our management information systems it improves our ability to track budgetary resources in particular and so our focus is on doing that and we do have an upgrade plan to to develop that capability i would only add congressman armey and i think the other services to our are moving toward that we publish a common operating environment to make sure that our e r v s can talk and databases can talk and we can get to a point where we are inaudible organization and we're moving out on that as quickly i think as we can thank you mr franks well thank you mr chairman mr chairman i always want to thank those who wear the uniform of this country for their commitment to stand between the  malevolent and the the free people of the world and i'm grateful to all of you mr chairman just as it happens there's one particular member of this panel this morning is it is is a dear friend of mine who was a commander of luke air force base in arizona and it seems like every time we hear about him he has gained another star or some other promotion in fact the air force seems to be run out of stars where mr jenner real love is concerned and made him by chief the air force and  guess i say that partly because i'm very grateful to the man he took me up in an f sixteen some years ago and we didn't have a three hundred sixty degree loop and i was i have always been grateful that he was at the controls and not me but i appreciate all of you for being here i guess with that my first question would be to the general that for saying nice things now we've got to put him on the spot general i'm concerned that we have failed to modernize our nuclear arsenal or at least i think that's been a sort of a continuing failure i don't want to put it on any one administration but this administration in particular seems focused on maintaining our present military nuclear arsenal rather mar modernizing it and there's been some saving spoken of and i understand that the air force is planning to develop a new long range bombers part of the family of long range strike platforms and i'm just wondering if you think that that bomber will be or could be used as a modernization platform for our nuclear arsenal congressman thank you for your kind remarks and in the opportunity to talk to both of these i'd like to offer that we are upgrading all three of the bombers in our current fleet the b one has done a magnificent job supporting our ground forces in afghanistan due to upgrades that we have made to that fleet the b fifty two are currently investing  integrating communications gear and other pieces that will make it even more viable into the future and much the same with the b two we have an on great ongoing upgrade program for the b two so i'll be happy to have our folks com details on those upgrade programs for the existing fleet for the for the new aircraft yes sir in the long run we intend for it to start out conventional but grow into a nuclear capability and it will  about seventy billion will any of that be dedicated to modernizing our nuclear arsenal what it what are your what is your perspective there is it is are we to assume that the administration will continue to focus only on maintaining or can we look to to see some of the indications that they've made on modernizing our nuclear forces to be kept and to be focused upon we indeed do have plans to modernize all pieces of our nuclear force the the one that the one where new resources have been provided is the one you asked general breedlove about which is the bomber we have we did shift some of the savings that we developed over the course of the past few months into increasing funding for that bomber it was as general breedlove indicated initial focus would be on the conventional mission but we intend to build in the ability to do the nuclear mission so that we can transition to that role if that's the decision made down the road the other piece i would add for use outside of this department is in the department of energy it's one of the critical pieces of modernization is we need to modernize the nuclear infrastructure in the department of energy and  part of the debate over the start treaty included an administration commitment to undertake that modernization and the president has moved resources and we've been working with the department of energy on that many ways that's actually the near term  requirement and as i said it's in the department of energy but it's a fill in one of our requirements so we're working very closely with them on that well thank you that's very encouraging to me and i certainly recognize the president's commitment on that and i appreciate your following through and thank  thank you ms thank you mr chairman for holding today's hearing as a new member of the committee my first opportunity to participate and i appreciate gentlemen your testimony the topic today is integral to our committee's work as is clearly evident by the questions the proposed budget reductions and efficiency initiatives have the potential to eliminate wasteful spending and allow us for the reinvestment in those critical areas where we need our priorities to be and i do applaud the secretary secretary gates and all those who worked over the last few months to try to achieve a start at this undertaking and there's no question that difficult decisions have and will need to be made however i think my concerns and the concerns of those in a while who i have the privilege to represent are that appropriate decisions are made so in discussing military spending we have to assess how each proposed change impacts our national security our military personnel and our economy including jobs and our manufacturing base and i'm interested to hear from today's witnesses a little bit more about how these proposals impact these important priorities you've certainly given us a good start on on those issues in the coming weeks and months i'm also interested in working with the o d and the office of corrosion policy and oversight of secretary lynn you just mentioned the modern to modernize our nuclear infrastructure corrosion has an issue to play is an issue there oversight to address  corrosion and the impact that it has on our military assets and our strength and the significant cost savings that it offers us if we address it upfront as demonstrated by the  corrosion policy and oversight is not a glamorous topic but i think it's one that is worth our time and attention especially given the potential savings if we address that in a smart and appropriate way so as we move forward my hope is that we will take a balanced and coordinated approach to evaluate cost reduction and military spending levels without sacrificing our core priorities and if i could secretary lynn i'd like to just direct a couple of questions to you  proposed reductions and efficiencies include as we've heard here reduction of the permanent end strength of the active army and marine corps and one of the concerns i have and one that i have worked on in the past a introduce legislation to address is the issue of the stop loss policy where the length of our service members the tours of duty have been involuntarily extended i just ask you know we've been able to make some gains and and making sure that our soldiers are getting fair compensation for that extended time fighting our wars but what is the status of the use of stop loss currently and what assurances can you give that these proposed reductions won't result in a return to the utilization of stop loss for our soldiers on the on the the first part of the question we have been aggressively pursuing the members of the service and former members of the service who would be subject to additional compensation based on the legislation that granted them some benefits for having been held up in the stop loss program on the second piece is general karoly indicated  secretary was absolute in his direction to the army to eliminate the stop loss program of the army is equally resolute in you know in committing themselves to eliminate that  immediate impact was the increase of the twenty two thousand temporary and crease in the army end strength to allow the army a transition period and we think we are going to last comment a second but we think we are going to be able to eliminate it  in that time in that timeframe and then phase those twenty two thousand out but i don't think secretary gates or the army leadership has any intention to return to that policy i think as you know we have not stopped loss for the last year and our last soldier held up on stop loss if my memory serves me correctly will come off and in march of this year we have no desire to go back to stop loss and our army force generation model has personal aim points that we are implementing and will continue to implement that will allow us to allow us to ensure that we avoid getting ourselves in a situation where we would have to do stop stop loss again it provides us some aim points throughout the year for both bringing on soldiers and bringing them off duty that ensures we maximize maximize their time in the army thank you thank you mister thank you mr chairman gentlemen thank you so much for joining us and i want to thank you so much for your service to our nation as you heard a little bit earlier the concerns i think among committee members go to a very basic level and that is we have to make decisions about budgeting and make decisions about strategic needs of this nation and the strategic analysis and information needs to come to us first so that we can make those decisions the disappointment has been is that information has not been forthcoming in many times not in a timely fashion so that this committee can make decisions and as you know we have a constitutional responsibility to make those decisions we would rather it be done in partnership the free flow of information from the service branches from the secretary's office when that doesn't happen it creates a tremendous difficulty for us to make those tough decisions we need to understand what the strategic needs are and then say here's the finite amount of resources we have to get that job done and then make those priority decisions so i would encourage you that when we request information that we're able to get that in a timely manner it's absolutely unacceptable to get a thirty year shipping plan or a thirty year a a v a plan after the point where this body makes decisions so that absolutely has to happen it's going to be tough going forward to make those choices and i know you all  been thoughtful about putting your proposals out there and how we achieve the efficiencies all of us agree the efficiencies need to be there the concern too is lack of detail about that seventy eight billion dollars in where that will go we want to make sure again that we're meeting the needs it's great to have one hundred billion dollars in savings and have those rolled back into the department of defense but the question is if you're going to take seventy billion out where exactly where is it coming from and where is it going then and i think that's obviously a big broader issue that we can address at the higher levels here in congress but i do want to get to some of the proposals that you put forward as far as initiatives and general dunford i want to go first to you about the i have some some very basic concerns as you know the requirements they are we have a very aged a a v as you know at the very edge of capability we see and seen seen some problems with it and i know you've spoken a little bit about the plan but  concern here is what is the plan going forward we've spent three billion dollars in a purse and a process through twenty years of development on the e f e and now are saying well let's change course it's too expensive we can't afford it we can't afford the operation and maintenance and then the question is the details how is the a v going to get us to that next generation of their b s vehicles and how are you going to manage the acquisition process are going to compress it is going to be expeditious the key is is going to have a thorough test and evaluation period what's the timeliness and the bottom line is this if you're going to use the a v as a bridge to that next generation vehicle the question is when is that next generation of vehicle going to be in the water carrying marines to shore when they have to make an entity it's landing south start start their cars with thanks first i'd like to provide the context within which general amos made his recommendation to the secretary when we look at all of our recent costs coming out of the current war and we look at all of our future requirements and we look at the period of time twenty eighteen to twenty twenty five we found that the  requirements carries a temperature betimes we've got thirty six but times twenty seven in the active force and nine in the reserve forces we have an overall requirement for twelve times to be lifted by some type of armored vehicle in order to meet our war plans for those vehicles now we're looking towards what we call a marine personnel carrier which would be a new vehicle to address that particular requirement what we would like to do is look at the totality of our requirement over the next couple years to look at a service life extension v to look at moving the marine personnel carrier earlier in the in the in the palm so that we get that out there and to meet some of those requirements that we have right now today and to be able to leverage the e f e program the knowledge that we've gained from the program as well as analogy with the learning and development of other programs to get the new and vehicle there in a much shorter period of time i can't tell you this afternoon how soon that will be as i mentioned earlier the normal acquisition timelines  somewhere between eight and ten years we're very confident sitting down with our actually acquisition experts and also taking a look at what's available out there in terms of what industry can produce we're very confident that we can exceed that normal eight to ten year acquisition process we have been working for two years on the details of a service life extension program for the assault in phoebe's vehicle unrelated to this decision and so we'll have an opportunity to leverage the dialogue with head with industry about that particular program as well we're going to roll all this up into a portfolio approach the new if you abuse vehicle the service life extension program for the a v and the and the marine personnel carrier the difference that we will we will see as we move forward though as we're going to use cost as an independent variable as we get the new vehicle we know in the aggregate how much we can spend on the totality of our ground vehicle fleet will share that with industry and so we need all these three programs together in conjunction with the other requirements we have across the marine air ground task force to be within what we project to be the resources that will have allocate in the future so that's that's the general approach that were taken congressman thank you very much  canceling these programs certain programs cutting down other programs leads us to it's it's within a what admiral mullen called the risk in below the acceptable risk in below tell me what do you think if you got r basis for calculating that acceptable risk is for situations and we're unable to respond to because we lack a certain type of equipment and why that's ok is a question makes sense why is it ok to have that acceptable risk of not being able to respond to with certain a certain threat or do a certain thing just one problem mr secretary you for sure have how do you calculate that risk i think from the start of his tenure secretary gates has talked about balancing the force between the near term threats that we face in the conflicts we're engaged in and the longer term threats that we might face five ten fifteen years from now and i don't think it's too far to say he thought that the program that he inherited was out of balance and was more focused on longer term threats developing what he called exquisite thrust of our efforts has been to maintain acceptable risk in those longer term scenarios but frankly reduce the risk in near term so to shift money to the m raps to shift money to if i now the literal areas within twenty miles of any any shoreline the marine corps i think their last and devious move to shore from ship was in lebanon in two thousand and six it was a more because of the type of threats that we face yet we don't need another vehicle that would do the same thing that is not a conventional warfare type vehicle if russia invaded yesterday tomorrow and parachuted in it was like the movie red dawn you wouldn't have the be running around right but you would use e s b if you had to get a shoreline and you had to help some people out or you had some terrorist threat that you hadn't had to hit hit quickly how do you marry those two i'm not in a understand it i understand your point relatively small number the ickle that a very high cost that consumed the marine corps tactical the vehicle budget for longer than a decade and absorb acceptable risk to not have a in answer to that core capability that there are that core requirement it's acceptable risk because it's too expensive is out is it too expensive to have the ability to hit a shore  with an e s b type vehicle but i don't think it's too expensive to have that capability and we're committed to that capability in our case we have finite resources and i think the expectation is that the marine corps be relevant across the range of military operations and so what we were confronted with is in need to balance our investment portfolio across the marine air ground task force for operations across a range of military operations most specifically focused as a crisis response force readiness so we  view ourselves as taking a different approach to meeting that capability requirement the vehicle that we were talking about the simply took too much money away and frankly incurred a significant amount of risk in the rest of our portfolio and so we were out of balance as a marine air ground task force from the marine corps perspective the situation are in and that's what drove the decision to walk away from the v and then go back after a new and vehicle that meets the capability that i absolutely share your concern with and i think nation should not incur the risk of not having the ability to assure access joint the joint force from ship to shore we remain committed to that we just believe we can meet that requirement at less and less cost in the program thank you of seventy eight billion dollars from the defense budget growth through twenty sixteen and challenging the services to make better use of their money this committee and the congress must however play complete our withdrawal from iraq and begin to drawdown in afghanistan the pentagon will have to share the burden of getting the fiscal house in order no doubt and it's refreshing to see the defense department leadership coming to grips with this new reality and proposing steps if only baby steps to adapt to this new reality secretary lin defense funding accounted for about fifteen percent of federal we will be able to meaningfully reduce defense spending while maintaining our capacity to respond to threats project power and ensure the security of the united states congressman i think that the proposal that we're bringing to the committee formally next month is part of the budget process which involves real growth in the initial few years of the plan while we still expect to be engaged in conflicts particularly in afghanistan and then flattens out in the outer years when we're hope we have a substantially reduced commitment in afghanistan as well as iraq is a responsible balance between the need to reduce federal spending to bring the deficit down and the need to maintain absolutely the highest defense capabilities to protect the national security interests of the nation thank you sir general dunford the marine corps and the the department has no specific proposal to replace the v a and we've spent what three billion dollars thus far in research and development and we're at the point now where we can start production of these vessels at a cost that exceeds that which was anticipated many years ago its performance so we would essentially be throwing three billion dollars away and starting out with  twenty first century fighting vehicle it just seems that we go this far and then we make a decision to yank a program despite the cost is almost nonsensical i know it's costing money but we need these and these vessels for you to complete your  job can you tell how much money the department of defense would save by canceling the v a and developing an alternative and also when do you plan to present a this project general maybe you could get that information to him on the record player thanks karen absolutely we will get the information in terms of how much  avoidance aspect of the e f e most here to details that information that money is again what we hope to reinvest to address or other are there other requirements but i would just respond to congress and say we do absolutely share the commitment to a sea based force military capability we share the commitment to get a new insidious vehicle as quickly as possible in the manner that i described earlier and we'll come back over and we will share with you the details of that we're just going out now to begin to discuss with industry what's in the or the possible well thank you mr chairman and good afternoon gentleman as the gentleman who's spent a summer becoming a marine a parris island as did my son and my dad who served it would seem it's really a great honor to serve on this admiral greenert given the operational tempo of our navy and really i think the collision of how we're running our troops on our ships with these budgetary concerns that are coming in  the idea of spending what could be a billion dollars to move the carrier to mayport seems to me to be a severely misplaced priority and given the othe demands other things that are lacking it certainly seems to me that it would be critical and much wiser to invest to reinvest that that money and more pressing matters particularly those that affect readiness so could you concisely give us the committee an update on exactly where we are with the prospect of moving a carrier from norfolk to thank you very much for the question and we considered that proposal as we considered everything in this budget preparation and we are convinced that the value the strategic value of having our carriers dispersed  exceeds any risk if you will so she added to the budget where we stand by the numbers it's about five hundred eighty million dollars cost we're very comfortable with that number the cost to move to mayport some of the dredging some of the early projects well really the dredging has gotten started so we looked again as i said before and and we stand by that the risk when you talk about what are we concerned about and readiness frankly more near term we're concerned about a continuing resolution because of the risk that that places on our readiness ships four and a half billion dollars alone to our readiness accounts this year admiral what steps did you did the navy take if any  examine what could be done in norfolk to mitigate those risk i'm convinced as are some other retired flag officers who i seek counsel from and others that the practical steps could be taken to mitigate that risk and keep the carrier in norfolk allowing us to use those funds to for more pressing matters the the issue is not necessarily it isn't as a risk in norfolk it's the consequences is that we're talking about to have the consequences of having all  not having an alternate port in the east coast as we have in the west coast as we have for weeks and west because for all of our other ship types of consequences is what is the main issue here not the risk if you will of of an event my time is short mr secretary would you address for us what are there any other cuts that you are contemplating with respect to jeff congress when we're in the in the annele stages of developing the implementation plan the we expect that the overall cut will be as the secretary said in the fifty percent  range i don't think it's going to vary from that and we'll provide the detail to use soon as we've completed that evaluation you know the the chairman i think rightly pointed out the the the pattern of lack of transparency and i would certainly appreciate and i think reasonably expect as with other committee members that there would be a proactive effort on the department to communicate with the leadership within the communities and i would certainly appreciate that going forward now finally with respect to tri care and the prospect of increasing those deductibles you know it is widely understood when you and list in the armed services that you're going to get lifetime health benefits and i think to raise those premiums or to raise the deductible i think is a breach of trust with those who have served our country and if we want to change it going forward that's an entirely nother that's a different subject and i think we should do better disclosure to those who are considering a military career to fully explain to them going forward that your benefits might be changed but i know every person who has enlisted in the military they did so and they served believing they would get lifetime care and i would ask the department to re examine that and to set that aside as a possible option to address our fiscal problems thank you mr chairman thank you chairman if i could just address that last point briefly please the we're not congressman moving away from the commitment to lifetime care for retirees the tri care proposal simply would lift the freeze which i don't think was part of the promise that they would  have fees frozen at the one thousand ninety five level we think the fees should essentially rise with inflation so that you should maintain a constant benefit but that you shouldn't if you don't rise with inflation essentially the benefit improves every year that we don't think that was part of the commitment so we're trying to put in place some kind of reasonable inflation measure on those these and just that is just for working age retirees it would not affect the active duty force at all full disclosure from the recruiters please thank you so much mr chairman thank you mr gibson thank you chairman and i want to thank the distinguish panelists here today for their service for their leadership and for appearing before this committee i like to express my support and admiration for all our servicemen and women and for their families serving us so courageous ly and selflessly forward in a time of war multiple deployments and has recognized make my pledge for a solemn commitment to protect this cherished way of life i haven't said that hate what's been said today the testimony you know the candor the effort to find saves this deficit that we have threatens our very way of life and everything needs to be on the table as we go forward and i'm interested in learning more about the intellectual underpinnings for some of the rationale for the cuts particularly in relation to vision for our country strategy to fully develop strategy events ways and means and how that impacts policy decisions programming and budgeting and in particular my question today is for for mr lynn and it has to do with joint forces command i'm interested in understanding in relation to  strategy and in fact the purpose for the original charter for the joint force command what's changed over time and the rationale for why th congressman this goes back to the goldwater nichols legislation which i'm sure you're familiar with which shifted the balance of the military and put put more emphasis on joint warfighting capabilities by strengthening the combatant commanders by putting in place an emphasis on joint doctrine and joint training by strengthening the role of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and having the the joint staff report to him rather than the chiefs as a body all those measures were intended to strengthen jointness one of those measures was after the goldwater nichols era but a decade later the department set up the joint forces command to help implement those those purposes we think that the combination of the goldwater nichols efforts as well as the work of the joint forces command has accomplished a lot and we think that the combat commands are in a much stronger place than they were two decades ago and we think the services have a much more joint focus than they did fifteen years ago and in that context we think that we can pursue jointness without the billion dollar expense of a four star command we are going to retain a port portion of that as responded to wriggle we think about half of those functions will be retained there but the overhead of a four star command all of the supporting elements we think we can save those and we think the leadership can be done by the chairman and vice chairman in the joint staff but we still think we'll continue down that path of jointness i thank the gentleman i just want to philly myself at the remarks that we can restructure our command control headquarters we can achieve consolidation i think this is really the time to think big to take a look at the way we lay down forces to take a look at the way we structure our commanding control i think there may be some other alternatives that we can look at and as we go forward mr chairman i would tell you that i'm willing to be part of that effort if the committee was interested in looking at ways for the twenty first century how we can have a look at full spectrum command control across all the regional combatant commands and taking a look at the joint forces command and figuring out what's the best way that we can protect this cherished way of life and in a manner that's consistent with the republic and you back thank you thank you thank you and you'll be given that opportunity mr mr west  thank you mr chairman and secretary of land and the singers members of the panel i just want to say it is an absolute honor to be here serving on this committee truly is the culmination of the american dream when i consider the fact that my father was a soldier in world war two that my mother served twenty five years of ilion service with the six marine corps district headquarters in atlanta an older brother who served as a marine in vietnam the twenty two years that i had on active duty service and now my young nephew who is serving as an assignment officer will fill artillery branch in c so as i bring that experience to bear i want to echo some of the comments that we have talked about the military personnel side and those reductions because i recall a time when the soviet union collapsed and i was still there and active duty and and end up being a brigade operations officer and having to go out and not being able to qualify some of our soldiers except for the weapon near that simulation system or not having the repair parts to be able to keep our howitzer systems up and operational so as we look go forward i want to make sure that as we talk about this military personnel that we don't go back and do what we did at that time when the soviet union collapse where we saw the military as a bill payer for some of the other budgetary programs that we want to do because i think one of the most important things we have to realize that the world right now is a lot more machiavellian than it is a peaceful world and we must be able to provide the national security to our to our people here the thing that i look at is what are the second and third order effects we talk about the effects on the national guard we talked about the facts on the reserve forces you know we look and see that now we're starting to see a lot of stress on our men and women in uniform with the countless amounts of deployments they're doing four and five deployments i want to make sure that as we go forward and we talk about the end strength of our fighting forces that we really are sitting down and looking at the emerging threats and doing a threat based assessment and analysis so we don't find ourselves as we did going into iraq in two thousand and three where we didn't have the right type of equipment where we didn't have a force that was ready for those long continued operations and so i would ask secretary as we look at these these personnel were doctors that we had the time to bring in some of the combatant commanders to really look at what are the emerging threats and some of these theaters of operation we see what's happening in north korea we understand what's going on somalia and yemen things are not as well as they could be in afghanistan we have a threat there in pakistan if you look south of our border in mexico is starting to look a lot like iraq and afghanistan with beheadings and mass graves and things of that nature roadside bombs so you know the world is still a dangerous place so what manner do we use as an assessment or analysis to come up with these reductions that to the army and to the marine corps because we do need those fighting forces to be viable as they are land combat and  maritime combat force congressman i have eight years of experience in the department building programs and budgets prior to my two years here in those ten years the involvement of the combatant commanders in the building of budget is unique in the i think the way secretary gates has led this he had repeated meetings through the course of the summer and fall to evaluate all of the proposals with all of the leadership and all the pentagon leadership is the normal practice usually that he's in the service secretaries understand o s d representatives around the table the combatant commanders are frankly usually brought in for just a meeting and told what the budget is and they go back out do their jobs in this case they were brought in for repeated meetings repeated discussions they were they were a part of the process so i think the secretary's understanding of the risks is fully informed by their recommendations with regard to the force structure changes i would take you back to i think the phrase that general karoly used that the proposals we have are conditions based they are at frankly at the back end of the planning period and that was intentional both to allow time for planning but also to allow time for the expected reductions in afghanistan and iraq to take place assuming tho we think that this is acceptable risk but as i said conditions based if the conditions are different than that we will have to re evaluate and for just the reasons that you said we do not want to have inadequate force to meet the threats that we might face so in other words we have built  thank you mr chairman thank you gentlemen for being here secretary and then as you know i represent each one of you have services represented in hawaii and we all believe that have was very critical especially in the far east of reno now having said that an integral part of our success in her has been our civilian workforce and in reading secretary gates statement as well as some of yours there are mentions of of cutting in personnel and i assume part of it is meant to be military personnel and part of it is meant to be civilian personnel i'd like to know how you are making the distinction between when you say cuts or freezes and you talk about in terms of savings in tri care for example how is it that you're making the distinction as to which part of this workforce shall be cut and in addition to that somebody is going to have to do that work so i assume that part of this is also looking at outsourcing of that work and i'd like to know how that decision is being made as to how much of it will be kept in terms of a civilian personnel within the military and how much of it you would be outsourcing with regard to outsourcing we actually think we have oversteer in that regard in that there are certainly valid purposes and valid roles in outsourcing but we think in some cases we have gone too far we think in the acquisition workforce we frankly outsource too much of our expertise and we need to bring more of it back in house and we are endeavoring to do that even though as you indicated there we are we have a i guess i call the soft freeze we have made an exception for the acquisition increases we also think in terms of staff support headquarters and other office functions we have relied too so we are still conscious we could not frankly do the nation's business without contractors so this is not at all an attack on contractors but we think as i said we have over steered and we are now trying to correct the rudder a bit so if you can tell me very simply what are the areas you're saying an acquisition areas you're assuming that we would probably bring them back in house versus outsourcing it but what when you when you speak for example of augmentation what exactly are those functions and are they intended to be frozen never filled cut how do you look at that they're intended to be cut and what i mean by those those are people for example who who work for private contractors but come to work every day in the pentagon would be an example of the kind of augmentee we're trying to reduce we're just trying to reduce the size of the overall headquarters as an efficiency measure and in particular we think that the growth over the last decade of private contract support in that particular role has been too great and we're cutting that back how does it impact each state like for example my state how would you when you start to cut or augment whichever way you going to do it in terms of acquisition or whatever how are you going to face that decision in each state is there going to be some kind of a uniform policy well we're not really doing it state by state we're doing it organization by organizations so the heaviest you would feel the impact where you have headquarters so i mean in a y a there are several headquarters they will see some private contract the reductions here force i mentioned the pentagon see some reductions here as well are we ever going to see is there any plans to augment the work force is our ships weren't properly man due to some initiatives we put put out earlier and so we have a lot of destroyers and cruisers we will be increasing manning in our destroyers and cruisers when you take the net effect to the fleet in hawaii there's a net increase of about three hundred military personnel looking at civilian personnel civilian workers if you will governments for their workers for harbor naval shipyard is important to us and we've increased manning there and is in join basing this well thank you mr chairman thank you mr scott thank you mr chairman secretary land of the of the seventy billion in reductions fourteen billion or approximately twenty percent as listed as economic assumptions and other what are those economic assumptions and and what's the breakdown of the other the economic assumptions are changes in inflation rates changes in pay rates that in other words what it essentially means is that when you make those changes in this case there reductions you can buy the same program for fewer dollars those are the economic assumptions what is the other the other is just all the all the proposals that are too small the list will provide those when we provide the budget so we can we can get a detailed breakdown of all of those and the economics absolutely chairman thought could i ask a further question general breedlove and mr franks talked about this a little bit i'd also like the information on the big one the b fifty two and the b two on those upgrades  if you would and and as we talk about this new bomber what capabilities will that bomber have that the upgraded b one b fifty two b two don't have sir thank you for the question we will get on your calendar and bring by the discussion of the three existing bomber aircraft the new aircraft we had vision two to bring up the capabilities to today's standards and in many ways one of the cost saving approaches we have to this bomber is not lean forward into technology that's not proven but bring our aircraft up to the current standards for instance our existing bomber fleet the the  stealth capability in technology is fifteen to eighteen years old we've done a lot of work in the twenty two at the j s f that sells us we can do that better so the new bomber will have better stealth capability but not making leaps forward that we can't count on and i could i could walk through the systems of the airplane the avionics the i f r capabilities it's all the same story we have we have had years of improvement in those capabilities since we built the  twenty two the j s f the b fifty two except for and we will bring this new bomber up to today's standards of capabilities if i may follow up with that if we're going to spend the money to upgrade again to be ones why wouldn't we put that technology not bringing that to that aircraft so the key to the degree that we can bring today's technologies to these existing flat platforms we are doing that and that's part of what we'll bring to your officer and congressman frank's office and discuss with him and one further question on on that what is the anticipated cost of the new bomber that sir is not not fleshed out totally yet we are trying to drive to a number that will allow us to buy a fleet that can address this the numbers and types of threats around the world that we face as you as you know sir that the fleet size the b two has challenged a very dedicated group of aviators and maintainers and our distinct goal in this aircraft is to control the cost so that we can buy a fleet that makes us operationally relevant around the world and around the target set one one final question but my general are represent one robin's robins air force base and there were three read in then i'll try to hit a few of the specific examples we are not taking those savings in people they are in process is what we're trying to do is adopt more processes like our civil  bring leaner what i would call leaner stocking and supply practices that we do not have money tied up in excess stock and supply and those are examples and again be happy to come by prior to me about the department of defense not being responsive to the congress of the united states in terms of inquiries and i want to really second that and i hope you all can do a better job this year and going forward with working with members of congress in terms of providing inquiry information to inquiries first of all i'd love it if somebody could get back to me and to the committee and i'm sure you looked at everything in terms of making reductions and i think we still have  division united states army during the cold war i certainly saw the need for those forces there then of course we had a lot more then and i question the need for them now we can certainly demonstrate our support for nato by doing joint military exercises on a periodic basis so i question having permanent u s bases there in south korea right now i think we're moving from an unaccompanied tour with our twenty eight thousand five hundred personnel that are there to  unaccompanied two or one years or three years samas and building all the infrastructure associated with that for dependents given the tensions on the peninsula right now i question the need for that and i question the cost for that and i would like to know if we suspended that personnel change and we didn't have to build all the schools the housing and everything associated with dependents what is the cost savings associated with that then i want to i certainly want to commend you mr secretary on some of the savings that you've done terms of the department of defense being so top heavy combining  culture of the military has changed from when we started joint forces command in terms of accomplishing that critical mission of being able to work together and we are there now we certainly need to stay on top of that but it is time to to to dismantle that bureaucracy and i want to commend you i think the defense department is unlike any other agency of government that it's easy to establish new commands establish  dismantle anything and so again want to commend you for that and certainly support those cost saving efforts on the exposure of fighting vehicle i'm very concerned having read  of defense's comments on the nunn mccurdy breach about affirming the requirement of the expedition or finding vehicle and listening to the testimony today where it seems like we're trying to massage a  o a service life extension program to the and that you had a lower cost alternative also to the but it seems like we have a gap in terms of our capabilities as to meeting the requirements even if we went out even at twelve well miles was acceptable we don't have that capability now with the a v i'm not sure even with the service life extension program you're going to have that capability there and i think that a lot of the technology a lot of the costs associated with the development of the anyway is go is probably going to be transferred to this supposedly low cost lower cause vehicle where we didn't have all the start of cost in terms of research and development so i think that there's a lot of i think at the end of the day with the question what we will have is a gap in the requirement and look if if a gap in the requirement is acceptable as a cost savings measure then tell us that because really that's at the end of the day what i'm hearing that we will take a risk in not meeting the requirement in order to save money is not all that significant famous term and you'll back thank you mr kopp and thank you for being here today for giving as many as members of the committee who stayed an opportunity to ask their questions just one planning final closing comment i think you probably see sense the frustration of many of the members on the committee for their feeling of  lack of communication i know we have the hearings i know you present things to us from from time to time like you know we had the update on that seventy billion that we hadn't planned on it just seems to me that if if we were closer we do not want to be confrontational we want to be supportive every member of the committee strongly supportive of the armed services but we get the feeling that sometimes decisions are handed to us as a fait accompli and  we're irrelevant and you know we all have big egos up here we wouldn't be here that's not what i'm really mean but but it is important to give us the opportunity to do our job and we want to work together to make that happen so if you carry that message back you're going to hear a lot of it until we feel like we are being brought into the process thank you very much mr chairman if i could just respond very much appreciate what you said i did get the flavor of the comments and the breadth of them i will say i think the department recognizes the not all wisdom is south of the potomac river