a sketch of the unexpected that's why we need the full spectrum of capability and that's what we ask you to testify today for our committee we will take a lunch break around twelve fifteen probably along with a few votes we'll have a time and we will reconvene after forty five minutes in the hearing will continue till three o'clock this afternoon so with that want to thank you for your support of the men and women of the united states military these many years these troops are part of an extraordinary generation of young americans who have asked answered their country's call they have fought our wars protected our interests and allies around the globe as we have seen recently in haiti they have also demonstrated compassion and decency in the face of uncomprehensible loss i have a brief opening statement to provide an overview of the budget requests my submitted statement includes many more details that i know are of interest of the committee the budget requests being presented today include five hundred forty nine billion dollars for a base budget that's three point four percent increase after over last year or one point eight percent real increase after adjusting for inflation reflecting the administration's commitment to modest steady and stuff sustainable real growth in defense spending we're also requesting a hundred fifty nine billion dollars in f y two thousand and eleven to support overseas contingency operations primarily in afghanistan and iraq plus thirty three billion dollars for the remainder of this fiscal year to support the added financial costs of the president's new approach in afghanistan the base budget request reflects these major institutional priorities first reaffirming and strengthening the nation's commitment to care for the all volunteer force our greatest strategic asset second rebalancing america's defense posture by emphasizing capabilities needed to prevail in current conflicts while enhancing capabilities that may be needed in the future and third continuing the department's continuing commitment to reform how we do business especially in the area of acquisitions finally the commitments made in the programs funded in the oco and supplemental requests demonstrate the administration's determination to support our troops and commanders in combat so they can accomplish their critical missions and come home safely the budget continues the department's policy of shifting money to the base budget for rendering programs that directly support our war fighters and their families whether on the battlefield recovering from wounds or on the home front to ensure they have steady long term funding and institutional support the base budget request was accompanied by and informed by the two thousand and ten quadrennial defense review which establishes strategic priorities and identifies key areas for needed investment the two thousand two thousand and ten q t r and f y two thousand and eleven budget build upon the substantial changes president made in the f y ten budget request to allocate defense dollars more wisely and reform the department's processes f y ten budget proposals cut curtailed or ended a number of programs that were either performing poorly or in excess of real world needs conversely future oriented programs where the u s was relatively under invested were accelerated or receive more funding f y eleven budget submissions and q t r suffused with two major themes the first is continued reform fundamentally changing the way this department does business the priorities we set the programs we fund the weapons we buy and how we buy them building on the reforms of last year's budget the f y eleven request took additional steps aimed at programs that were excess or performing poorly they include terminating the navy e p excellent teligent aircraft ending the third generation and for red surveillance program canceling the next generation c g x cruiser terminating the net enabled command and control program ending the defense integrated military human resources system due to cost overruns and performance concerns completing  seventeen program and closing the production line as multiple studies in recent years show that the air force already has more of these aircraft than it needs and ending the alternate engine for the f thirty five joint strike fighter as whatever benefits may accrue are more than offset by excess os complexity and associated risks i am fully aware of the political pressure to continue building the c seventeen and proceed with an alternate engine for the f thirty five let me be very clear i will strongly recommend that the president veto any legislation that sustains the unnecessary continuation of these two programs the budget and reviews are also shaped by a bracing dose of realism realism with regard to risk realism with regard to resources we have in a club or a sober and clear eyed way assess risk set priorities made tradeoffs and identified requirements based on plausible real world threats scenarios and potential adversaries just one example for years u s defense planning and requirements were based on preparing to fight two major conventional wars at the same time a fo sizing construct that persisted long after it was overtaken by events the department's leadership now recognizes that we must prepare for a much broader range of security challenges on the horizon they range from the use of sophisticated new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea air space and cyberspace to the threat posed by non state groups delivering more cunning and destructive means to attack and terrorize scenarios that transcend the familiar contingencies that dominated us planning after the cold war we have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight apropos of the chairman's  conflicts since the mid seventy's that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we planned as a result the united states needs a broad portfolio of military capabilities with maximum versatility across the widest possible spectrum of conflict the strategic reality shaped the q t r as an ally and subsequent conclusions which directly inform the program decisions contained in the budget before closing i would like to offer two thoughts to consider when assessing the u s investment in national defense first the request submitted this week total more than seven hundred billion dollars a massive number to be sure but at four point seven percent of gross national product it represents a significantly smaller portion of national wealth going to defense than was spent during most of america's previous major wars and the base budget represents three point five percent of g d p second as you recently read the president recently exempted the defense budget from spending freeze is being applied to other parts of the government it is important to remember however that as i mentioned earlier this department undertook a painstaking review of our priorities last year and as a result cutter curtailed a number of major programs these programs had they been pursued to completion would have cost the american taxpayer about three hundred thirty billion dollars in closing mr chairman my thanks to you and members of this committee again for all that you have done to support our troops and their families in light of the unprecedented demands that have been placed on them i believe the choices made in the priorities set in these budget requests reflect america's commitment to see that our forces have the tools they need to prevail in the wars we are in while making the investments necessary to prepare for threats on our beyond the horizon thank you mr secretary thank you have a  this committee thank you for the chance to appear before you and discuss the state of our military as well as the president's fiscal year eleven defense budget submission i also thank you for all the extraordinary support you provide each and every day to our men and women in uniform as well as their family that they are well equipped well trained well paid and enjoy the finest medical care anywhere in the world is a testament in no small part to your dedication and stewardship i've seen many of you in the war zone in hospitals and at bases all over this country so have our troops they know you care just as critically they know their fellow citizens care all they want right now is guidance on the mission before them and the tools to accomplish it that's why i'm here today to speak on their behalf about the guidance they are getting from this department and to secure your continued support for the tools we want to give them has already walked you through the major components of the quadrennial defense review and the president's fiscal year eleven defense budget submission both of which when combined with the new ballistic missile defense review and our overseas contingency operations fund request build upon the reform effort of last year and represent as comprehensive a look at the state of our military as i have seen in my more than forty years of service i will not endeavor to repeat his  you to accept without further comment my endorsement of the findings contained in each of these documents let me leave you rather with three overarching things to consider as you prepare to discuss these issues today and as you prepare to debate the budget this budget request in the near future first there is a real sense of urgency we have well over two hundred thousand troops deployed in harm's way right now and that number includes only those in operations iraqi freedom and enduring freedom another hundred fifty thousand or so are meeting our security commitments elsewhere around the globe and many of those missions are no less dangerous and certainly no less significant i'm sure you have stated rest of our relief efforts in haiti where more than twenty thousand of your soldiers sailors airmen marines and coast guardsmen are pitching in feverish really to help alleviate the suffering of the haitian people it's truly an interagency and international mission and these troops are blending  beautifully doing what is required where and when it is required to support the government of haiti usa id and the united nations mission there we also continue to do what is required to win the wars we fight and the one that needs fighting the most right now is in afghanistan you've seen the reports and you know the situation the taliban have a growing influence in most of the afghanistan afghanistan's provinces and the border area between that country and pakistan remains the epicenter of global terrorism you no doubt followed with great interest the development of the president's strategy to deal with this threat a strategy in my view rightly makes the afghan people the center of gravity and the defeat of al  primary goal we have already moved nearly forty five hundred troops to afghanistan and expect that about eighteen thousand of the president's december first commitment will be there by late spring the remainder of the thirty thousand will arrive as rapidly as possible over the summer and early fall making a major contribution to reversing taliban momentum in two thousand and ten indeed by the middle of this year afghanistan will surpass iraq for the first time since two thousand and three as a location with the most deployed american forces right now the taliban believe their winning eighteen months from now if we've executed our strategy will know that they aren't and they will know that they can get in there will demand discipline and hard work it will require ever more cooperation with pakistan and it will most assuredly demand more sacrifice and more bloodshed but the stakes are far too high for failure that's why we're asking you to fully fund our fiscal year ten supplemental and the fiscal there eleven overseas contingency operations requests that's why we want six percent a six percent increase for special operations command and it's why we need your support to develop and a next generation ground combat vehicle to allow us to grow to more army combat aviation brigade and to continue rotary wing production including nearly three billion dollars for the v twenty two osprey program in keeping with the secretary strong emphasis on i f r and emphasis more than justified by our long experience in iraq and afghanistan were asking for more capability in unmanned aircraft and ground based collection systems including nearly three billion dollars to security environment for decades to come i'm very comfortable that we can and will finish well in iraq remaining on taste despite a spate of recent violence to draw down american forces to roughly fifty thousand ending our combat mission there and transitioning to an advise and assist role but without your continued support we will not be able to show the meaningful progress in afghanistan that the that the commander in chief has ordered the american people expect and the afghan people so desperately need this is no mission of mercy this is a place from which we were attacked in two thousand and one the place from which al qaeda still plots and plans the security of a great nation ours  theirs rest not on sentiment or good intentions but on what ought to be a cold and unfeeling appraisal of self interest and an equally called an unfeeling pursuit of the tools to protect that interest ours and there that leads me to the second thing i'd like you to consider proper balance winning our current wars means in vestment in our hard won a regular warfare expertise a core competency that should be institutionalized and supported  coming years and we are certainly moving in that direction but we must also maintain conventional advantages we still face traditional threats from regional powers who possess robust regular and in some cases nuclear capabilities these cannot be ignored the freedom to conduct operations in support of joint allied and coalition efforts assuring access and projecting combat power can only be preserved through enduring war fighting competencies in the air of this means sufficient strike aircraft and munitions capable of assuring air superiority at sea it means having enough ships and enough sailors to stay engaged globally and keep the sea lanes open on the ground it means accelerating the modernization of our combat brigades and regiments on the whole it means never having to fight a fair fight thus the president's budget request will be another forty two  thirty five it will maintain a healthy bomber industrial base and it will fund development of a prompt global strike system as well as efforts to upgrade our be twos and b fifty two for shipping struction spending plan total some sixteen billion dollars for curing ten new ships in two thousand and eleven include including two our labor destroyers two virginia class submarines two little combat ships and a brand new m b assault ship puts the navy on track to maintain aircraft carrier production on a five year build cycle resulting in a long term force structure of ten carriers by two thousand and forty our budget request also seeks ten billion dollars for ballistic missile defense programs including eight point four billion for the missile defense agency and it devotes ample resources to improving our cyber defense capabilities again it's about balance it's about deterring and winning the big and the small wars the conventional and the unconventional two challenges one military but where balance is probably most needed is in the programs and policies concerning our most important resource our people and that is my final point this budget builds upon to perve support you and this department have provided our troops and their families for much of the last eight years stretch and strained by nearly constant combat many of them on their fifth sixth and sat and even seventh deployments our men and women are without question and almost inexplicably the most resilient and battle ready for us in our history on the one hand we keep turning away potential recruits so good as our retention and so attractive our career opportunities on the other hand we keep seeing an alarming rise in suicides marital problems prescription drug addictions and mental health problems deborah knight meet regularly with young troops and their spouses and they'll proud of the difference they know they are making they too are tired quite frankly many of them are worried about their futures their livelihood their children and so you will see in this budget nearly nine billion dollars for family support and advocacy program you will see child care and youth programs increased by eighty seven million dollars over last year and you will see a boost in warfare and family services to include counseling to the tune of thirty seven million dollars military spouse employment will get a two million dollar plus app and we will increase the budget to two point two billion dollars for wounded and injured members in fact the health care funding level for fiscal year eleven is projected to provide high quality care for nine point five million eligible bout beneficiaries lastly we are pushing to dramatically increase the number of mental health professionals on staff in advance are researching traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress we know the strain of frequent deployments causes many problems but we don't know yet nor understand how to what extent so even as we work hard to increase dwell time time at home aided in part by the additional temporary approved last year for the army we will work equally hard to decrease the stress of modern military service i believe over time when these wars are behind us we will need to look closely at the competing pressures that will dominate discussions of proper end strength and weapons systems of force well suited for long term challenges and not necessarily married to any current force planning construct will be vital to our national security mr chairman members of this committee thank you again for your time and for the long standing support of this committee the men and women of the united states armed forces they  families are the best i have ever seen on their behalf i stand ready to answer your questions and will thank you so very much at the when this table undersecretary bob hale the  military operations and almost none of them do we see coming both you have emphasized that we must win today's war and of course we must but we must also be prepared for the unexpected contingencies that sure as god made little green apples will come to pass how does your strategy as embodied by the  as well as your budget prepare the department to do both of these things mr secretary first of all i would say that we clearly  are improving the capabilities and resources that we have for the kind of fights we have been and sense since the vietnam war a broad arra acquire the the greatest the most versatile possible set of capabilities for the broadest possible range of conflict because i believe one of the lessons of desert one and of the invasion of iraq in two thousand and three is that it is unlikely for a another power to combat us head on they will come at us asymmetrically coming at us where we are vulnerable not where we are strong but we have put into this budget capabilities such as the growth and capabilities of the special operations command and forces is now in the base but we are moving that into the base budget out of the supplementals and the overseas contingency operations funds helicopters are the full range of capabilities that are needed to deal with the kind of fight we're in today the kind of fights we've been in for the last thirty five years and i believe the most likely kind of fights that we're going to face in the future but by the same token i would take the strongest possible issue with those who say we are neglecting the potential future fight or the capabilities needed to take on high end adversaries the reality is in this budget half of the procurement budget is going for systems that are purely associated with modernization of conventional capabilities about seven percent for if you will the fights where in and about forty three percent for dual purpose capabilities see seventeen's and and other capabilities that will be used no matter what kind of fire we're in but just let me run through the list in about thirty seconds here of what we have in this budget in terms of conventional modernization capabilities we have a lot initiative for long range strike an initiative for conventional prompt global strike a nuke a new generation bomber a new s s b end the f thirty five the m q nine ballistic missile defense the virginia class attacks marines new army ground combat vehicle upgrades to the b two and the b fifty two and a number of initiatives on cyber and i would just use one statistic before turning the microphone over t mullen and that is even with the restructured f thirty five program in twenty twenty the united states will have twenty times more fifth generation aircraft than the chinese and about thirteen to fifteen times more than the russians and the gap only gets bigger after that so i think there's a is a broad balance in this budget and it takes into account what i think is a underlying premise which is most versatile possible array of capabilities for the widest possible range of conflict thank you and i strongly share those sentiments and let me just talk to a couple of aspects of that in both the q t r and in the budget the emphasis is on winning today's wars but that doesn't mean it is just what we have for today that will be it will only be used today i think significant amount of  our investment which is as the secretary has laid out will be well placed for the future that kind of i f r capabilities that we have the rotary wing capabilities vestment and special forces will play significant significantly in the future and if you just lay out the twelve kinds of expected conflicts as you did earlier chairman those kinds of capabilities there's a versatility in those that many of these capabilities would play very strongly in the future secondly we have been working in the pentagon a long time and there is  there are thoughts that we have somehow moved out of the conventional world is just not the case as indicated by the investment profile and this is a hard place to move the pendulum and we continue to move it to get the right balance by no means is the pendulum swung too far at this point and then the third point i would make is the most important investment we can make to assure and ensure our security from a future standpoint is in our people they are our and their families they are our most critical strategic asset and in the uncertainty that you have described and we have seen just in these last eight years they are the ones that will truly make a difference for the that is not an unbounded pot there is a significant amount of money invested in our military families and civilians in this budget it's roughly fifty percent of the budget and we have to make sure we have that right for the future that's what will make a difference now and will clearly make a difference in the future mckeon german sectarian admiral i mentioned in my opening statement don't ask don't tell and with respect to don't ask don't tell first i would like to echo the concerns raised by my counter point on the senate armed services committee yesterday you made clear in your testimony that the military stands ready to implement a repeal of don't ask don't tell yet this position in support of repeal comes before your service chiefs have had the opportunity to conduct an in depth review of the impact a repeal would have on military readiness it seems that your path places the cart before the horse on that point i wrote to both of you outlining a series of issues and questions that must be answered before any objective decision can be made by the president the department of defense in this congress about repealing or amending the current law i ask that that letter and the attachment which set out a major major shortcomings in the one nine hundred ninety three rand study should be entered in the record without i'd also ask when this committee should expect a response from the department to that letter let me check into it and we'll get back we will get back to you with an answer to that question tomorrow thank you very much from this from istanbul i'm sorry thank you the transfer of the get mo detainees given the rising recidivism rate around twenty percent of former get mo detainees returning to the fight are you revalue waving the defense department transfer policy while the president has made the decision to close guantanamo as as you know but at the same time recognizing reality and and and while there while his decision has not changed we are clearly looking at the next steps as you indicated in the in the opening statement we have money in the budget for detainee for that prison and that that clearly is is the intent of the president at this point one hundred fifty million when we had the briefing before the holiday break they added up several costs and i think it was more like five hundred million that's just our part mr mccann there is a justice department element in the homeland security piece and that too do you agree with the policy the prohibits transfer of get most detainees to countries that are one on the state sponsored terrorism list to have active al qaeda cells within their borders and three have confirmed cases of former gitmo detainees that have returned to the fight well i would i would say that i certainly would have a problem returning them to countries that are on the terrorism watch list if you take countries where there's been a receipt of this problem that would include both saudi arabia and afghanistan and i'm not i don't think i'm prepared to draw that kind of of a limit and and we after all  we don't even know if we have an else al qaida cell here in the united states so you know somalia yemen for sure and north africa and different places so i think that i frankly think that's probably too restrictive having a cell doesn't mean that the government isn't concerned about terrorists and isn't acting aggressively against those terrorists we find ourselves in that same position last week mayor bloomberg made it clear that he was opposed to holding the trial to prosecute the september eleventh mastermind khalid shaikh muhammad in a manhattan courthouse do you believe that c salmon the nine eleven coconspirators should be tried in a federal criminal court rather than a military commission i am comfortable deferring to the attorney general in terms of the proper jurisdiction for those who have engaged in terrorist acts i think it's important that we have available to us both the civilian courts and the military commissions i remind you we had we had a lot of problems with terrorism in the one nine hundred seventy s and one nine hundred eighty s in this country and they all went when we would catch a terrorist they all went through the federal courts we had no alternative at that time we're actually in a more robust position at this point we did do a lot of work on the in the last reauthorization improving the the military commissions why would this choice of trial forum that's  the civil courts given that you're the chief civilian authority for military commissions why would you not prefer to have them done in the military commission while the attorney general did consult with me about the five nine eleven bombers and the where he was headed with his decision and as i indicated a minute ago i deferred to him on the judgment where he thought that prosecution was best carried out you consult with you before the f b i interrogated the christmas day bomber and before they were given their miranda rights what impact did giving the miranda rights have well i think that i don't know because i haven't read the interrogation reports i mean i have been told that valuable information was obtained from him prior to that time i think we have protocols in place now for high level interrogation group that is comprised of experienced f b i and intelligence community interrogation  deemed a threat to the national there is the authority in the law to delay mirandizing so that a full interrogation can take place i think the concern that i've heard expressed by many is that  when he was caught and was being questioned during that first fifty minutes as on the nine eleven attacks there could have been other planes in the air with other with other people trying to blow them up at the same time and and i don't know that fifty minutes i'm not an expert but i've heard from experts that maybe fifty minutes wasn't quite enough to get all the information that could have been very necessary at that time and i would just i would just say that  you know the president asked for a review of several aspects of this and and and i think it's fair to say that that there were some and useful lessons learned from that experience so in your personal opinion should al the authorities that are available in existing law and this high level interrogation group that has been assembled should be brought to bear with that individual and  that gives them the flexibility not to mirandize as long as they believe they can get useful intelligence about impending attacks was abdulmutallab can considered to be al  there let me ask you something that may seem a bit monday but it is important to getting the budget to reflect reality as well as possible and that is the practice of putting a plug in there is likely the call is understand answer to your question is that i don't think fifty billion dollars plug for the next couple of years reflects reality either that's basically the direction that we've been given by o m b but clearly as we have done with  both f y ten and f y eleven through the preparation of the overseas contingency operations budget we can closer to the time when combat is taking place and we know how many troops will be available or will be in the theater and so on we can give a realistic estimate while while i believe for example for f y twelve fifty billion dollars is too low by the same token i could not give you a figure today or put a figure in the budget that that i would have confidence would come close to being what the real number will be that that is closer so knowledge that the fifty was too optimistic in their estimates the reality is the program has not experienced problems unlike those with developmental combat aircraft in the past the reality is it's a good airplane it's it's meeting the performance parameters we clearly have part of the restructuring program is to put more money into test aircraft and and greater investment in software to limit the slip to about thirteen months for the program this means we'll also be buying fewer aircraft in advance of testing but we think that we we have a good program as the chairman indicated its opening statement the funding now we have funded this plane in recent years based on the estimates of the joint program office partly due to the law that was passed here in the congress but partly due to our own under secretary ash carter we now have funded this program on the basis of the joint estimating team the independent estimate of what the funding will be so we believe that the funding that we have in this budget in the out years is a much more about undersecretary carter personally invested about two weeks of time full time going into every aspect of of the j s f program and getting into the contracts getting into conversations with the contractor program office and various others and and it was basically his decision to restructure this program or to recommend the restructuring of the program and and that decision was really only made within the last two or three weeks and i think it was the right decision and i obviously took the personnel action i did i think we have the processes in place now to monitor the performance of this program and frankly one of the reasons why we're getting a new program manager is to make sure that those kinds of things don't happen again but for most thank the gentleman mr bartlett thank you both for you selfless service mr secretary you mentioned that they were going to come at us where we are vulnerable not strong i would suggest that one of our greatest vulnerabilities our susceptibility to e m p attack many of our weapons platforms are not hardened at all and those that are hardened may not be hardened enough if indeed the threat is a hundred to two hundred kilovolts per meters as the russian generals told the e m p commission then we may have a little hardening i suspect that after laydown we will have little fighting capability remaining you mentioned the political interest is driving the congressional interest in the joint strike fighter engine if there is an interest in my this guy the honor of representing i don't know of that interest but yet i'm a strong supporter of this alternate energy because i think it's the right thing to do just a couple of servatius that anon an issue that might make it looking at our advanced planning versus a couple of inconsistency we have unmanned planes an unmanned submarine just yet we still have people in ships and tanks and if you look at the mission of the predator in the tank the predator in this gu gets information and the blows up things and that's pretty much what the tank does and one might ask why do we still have people in tanks i know it why we have people in ships it's not because you need them there to drive the ship because there's nothing on a ship you couldn't do ten thousand miles away certainly easier to drive than a predator aircraft we have them there for damage control is because we have too few and too large of platforms you just can't afford to lose one so we put people on for damage control which leads to the  initiate to make another observation and that is that these two large and too few naval assets are real vulnerability indeed i'm not sure we need to have that vulnerability a study that was ship it see is that people on the ships he got have to people off the ship you could buy fifty percent more ships with the same budget that all the people have you could double the amount of money that we do the amount of ships that we have out there and then observation about our deep strike bombers stealth is not invisible it's just smaller and with the chinese ability to take out a satellite one wonders a little about about the survivability of these strike  predators before and predators are an important part but they're not going to win it by themselves nor will other unmanned vehicles and systems do that at least as far as i can see in the future that's just how i see things right now study it was it was very theoretical and if i were going to take the l c s specifically which was supposed to come in at a couple hundred million dollars and is now pushing five or six hundred million per copy i would use it as an example of a relatively that history it's very hard to create some kind of capability which is what where i am in which what the seraph the study didn't support from my perspective so i think we continue to proceed on it on the and i take your point on that we all understand that all of it says to me is we've got to have a balance here and we're not going to go on manned overnight nor should we given the challenges that we have in the risks that are out there thank you thank the gentleman m we read a nice improve for non deployed army units in fiscal year eleven and the reason that i asked this question is because i've had a chance to travel we came back from maidenly and then we went to germany and then we did some local units how much will that improve for non deployed units in the army especially what general casey lays out with with the buildup in afghanistan and the drawdown in iraq it is probably the end of two thousand and eleven before he will be at a time of two to one twice as long at home as i am deployed that's what we look at the marine corps will be there much near the end of two thousand and ten and both the commandant and the chief of staff of the army talk to those that dwell time as a time where they can really start training to the broader spectrum of capability and right now they're still obviously very focused on training to the wars that we were in i don't i haven't seen for a long time any significant degradation in readiness for the units that are being tasked and training getting ready to fight these wars there are still differences on equipment requirements those kinds of things but nothing substantially or nothing major cross the board and that's from my visits in country here as well as they are in discussions with the chiefs so i think it's it's too that roughly about a year from now for the marine corps and a year out before we start to build that but primary for me and that is that the individuals and their families get to reset and get to and build more resilience before the next deployment in addition to the equipping and training piece as chairman has addressed the personnel side of it let me address them they quit not side there is right now for iraq roughly nineteen billion dollars bill for reset that bill will probably be down to about fourteen billion dollars by the end of this fiscal year and about six billion dollars by the end of two thousand and eleven for for we think that the then well we'll take about two more years after that to be complete so the full reset in terms of equipment would be for those forces in iraq roughly two thousand and thirteen the bill for afghanistan for reset is estimated at about fifteen billion dollars and it will remain at fifteen billion dollars until we start drawing down in iraq and afghanistan and then you'll see the same kind of glide certainly is in my view at a time in a major program where there are oftentimes struggles not just in aviation programs as secretary points out but we get to this point when we're moving into testing in production and there's track for the airport the twenty thirteen is on track and the navy in two thousand and fourteen so we're at a point in time in the program that to me this is this is typical and we need to work hard to make sure we stay on focus and capability and that's really been since two thousand and three where we really didn't understand we we we for the most part didn't understand what i asked our requirements we knew what i  i shared it with them out tell them that in the fifteen years i've been in congress i've met many many wonderful men and women in uniform all services and i felt like i had a good a good feel for how they felt i realize that yesterday  clear in the construct secretary gates laid out in terms of going through the review over the better part of this year that i do not know what the impact will be and i do not know what the implementation requirements will be and i need to understand that there's very little objective data on this build as you know with emotion and strongly held opinions a beliefs and and that's the work we have to do over the course of this year and and i also spoke very clearly to the need to understand that in terms of what the senior military leadership principle concern is which is the readiness and military effectiveness of the for i don't speak for the teeth in that regard they will have an opportunity to do that i've discussed this with them at considerable length i would say their view to say that they need to understand that impact as well should this policy change if and when this policy changes which can only change with a lot change which happens certainly i just admiral i would like to on the next round if there is another round i'd like to talk more in depth about the psychiatric needs of our military there are some real serious problems and i know that you have done everything you can to reach out to try to bring more people who are trained as catchers so psychologists but this is an issue that i think i need the five minutes on the next round to pursue with you with that mr there are classified materials that were supposed to come in the q t r will they be forthcoming let me look into that i'm not sure mr chairman we certainly haven't been through something like that my own district it really struck me going back to admiral mullen's talk about the need to get as many of our troopers home for twelve time as they can that i would really hope that you would explore every opportunity to feel that mission with a volunteer from the individual augmentee from the guard and reserve i've got to believe given our nation's economic situation and the willingness of the guardsmen and reservists to serve that you can chairman sprout the opportunity to visit some troops on the eighty second down to kandahar province one of them was on his third deployment not on the second and they both and they struck me as being extremely sincere and really unwilling to tell me just because on one hand they wanted to be good troopers on the other hand they felt like they had to get off their chest they were extremely concerned about the rules of engagement the trooper on his third tour said you know he this is basically the first year of this conflict here and i'm experiencing rules of engagement in my first year of this conflict here that we were in in the fourth year in iraq if things got better in iraq we tightened up the rules that entire clan against you for the rest of their lives but i would hope that you would keep this in mind there has got to be a better way and interestingly enough his suggestion was he had no problem with using the afghan national army search these houses if you had to have an afghan face on that search but he had zero confidence that the afghan national police in that area were doing their job when it came to searching these houses for bomb making materials secondly  we're talking about reset there was recently outside a ballade a amnesty day from home had told people to turn in things that on the on the books no questions asked he had a two mile long of vehicles that showed up outside his gate the next day for amnesty generators fire trucks ambulances s u v s everything under the sun all those things that taxpayers paid for that somehow made their way to iraq i don't have a problem with that but what i really want to see our department make is is every effort to get those things homey to get them back in your inventory or if you deem them something you don't need given the budget constraints of our cities and states and counties get someone in the guard or reserve who used to be in local government let them walk through and see if that generator has value back home if that fire truck is value back home if that s u v has value back home get the word to the state surplus agencies and let them decide whether or not they are willing to pay the cost of transporting back home taxpayers pay for these things we should let him go to waste and above all at the at the end of the if you do it that way if by some chance something shows up in the black market in baghdad then we have at least given the fifty states in the territories an opportunity to purchase it first if they will not pay the cost of getting it home and again the taxpayers paid for it i know in the case of the guard and reserve they've got dollars or shortfalls on equipment and i just think there's a heck of a lot better than than leaving possibly leaving these things behind lastly on your army new new vehicle i would highly recommend somebody who gave this gentleman fits for the past four years general brogan for that task he's done a remarkable job of getting him out resistant vehicles tested fielded in delivered to iraq and afghanistan it's my understanding his his tour with the marines is almost over so whether it's in night with a thirteen year old son and pointed to a hospital ship comfort to save this young man's life in the aftermath of hurricane katrina you sent that ship to pascagoula mississippi thank you very much for doing that unfortunately i'm still sitting here and i've still got the same questions so i'm going to lay out a list of i think what i believe are facts and then i'm drawn to ask these things don't seem to add up here are the facts first of all the navy's estimate of fighter shortfall was two hundred forty three planes the most recent one over five years that would be forty eight planes a year second thing is you're talking about having ten aircraft carriers and i would submit that they work better if you put airplanes on them third point  that you need to keep f eighteen line through twenty thirteen next point j s f is badly behind schedule you've had sixteen of one hundred sixty eight flight tests that were planned for zero nine and i'm not getting into the j s f on the condition of that other than the fact that it is slipping your own statement secretary gates shows you said shoes a seventy five percent solution over the ninety nine percent solution if you've got something that works well and doesn't cost as much let's look at that and then i've just heard that we're talking about reform reform the requisition process and has to be based on real as well regardless of how many aircraft you think we need because that number seems to be about as slippery as an eel if you've got about five years to possibly purchase them we've several times now put multi years in the budget encouraging you to look at that and if you look at what the last number of the shortfall was if you take ten percent to two hundred forty three that's about what you'd save that's twenty four aircraft by taxpayers are going to get twenty four more aircraft by getting that ten percent discount if you buy at the lower rate that you've suggested for this year at thirty four aircraft or whatever it is you've got it still seventeen aircraft is what you make by going multi year so what doesn't add up to me first of all i don't think it i don't have any kind of sense that there is a real number that you're willing to stand up to is exactly what the shortfall is but second of all even that if you're going to buy some why don't get about a ten percent discount that's my question well as you suggest we have analysis that is available to me with multi year funding at the numbers we're looking at the savings is about six and a half percent and and because of the long term financial commitment associated with multi year funding we have a threshold of ten percent and so it's pretty well below the ten percent threshold i would say there been the shortfall in naval aircraft  is a number that has as you suggest accurately has been moving around the last figure that i saw in preparation for these hearings is a shortfall of about one hundred aircraft in  two thousand and eighteen and there are a number of strategies that people have in mind for for mitigating that shortfall so i think that's responsive so the strategies would be we're just not go fly as many hours i suppose cut back on training or something like that i mean don't change the life of an airframe now the of the mitigating strategies involving involve aligning air wing readiness with carrier readiness it involves reducing the size of the marine corps an f eighteen c squadrons that involves using f eighteen asks attrition reserve aircraft so there are a number of things that we have the only thing i'd like t this is the whole the investment in this budget and eighteen growlers is a huge deal and a very positive step because we've been without a national expeditionary deployed ashore future because the marine airplanes are going away here in the next few years and that is a huge investment of part of this department and it's one that's much needed and the multi year piece those typically don't deliver unless you've got them out over over many years and the question obviously i think for the eighteen is when is the line going and part of this is matching up certainly there are international bodies that i'm sure you're aware of that are being sought to try to also strategically match that up as well it's a great airplane it's been a great airplane we know that that is the right answer for the future from a war fighting perspective from my perspective it is particularly good mr secretary gates to see you here today without any sign of visible trauma from an encounter with ice or snow i think the last time you were here you were last time a year ago you had the times you had kind of plants braces from balls and i said i want to bring up a bit of a sore point on january twenty seventh two thousand and nine when you testified here i asked about the issue of burrowing and you didn't have a response of that time but you said you would get back to me for the record we did get a response back coincidentally it was exactly one year to the day later january twenty seventh two thousand and ten so it took one full calendar year to get a response so i not by you but by gail mccann the deputy undersecretary of defense for plans performing the duties of the  undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness and i found the response and satisfactory were you aware that it had taken a year for me to get back written response the question and did you see this letter before it was sent last week answer to both questions is no and not getting a response for a year is inexcusable that's what i think too but thank you mr chairman i'd like to have this response attaches made a part of the record of my of a unanimous consent without in little rock and from the recruiter qualified for the purple heart one was killed and one was wounded they were both in uniform of the time on active duty at the recruiting station the conclusion was that they were not that the alleged perpetrator was considered i believe the phrase a lone wolf or something like that i would say which is all we ask is that anyone in any kind of award anywhere in the country or world be evaluated properly i was reminded us yesterday when secretary pan security threat from groups like al qaeda it may be time to evaluate our policy with regard to purple hearts specifically if we in fact think that people can get motivated perpetrator a little walk in fact travel to yemen no indication he had any connections with former formal terrorist groups but it may be that we need to evaluate that policy if in fact we consider part of the al qaida threat to be their ability to motivate the so called loners and i would just leave that as an unanswered question today a point so i want to respond a bit to the ranking members comment about don't ask don't tell that the military somehow can't have a divisive debate somehow the idea that men and women in uniform cannot participate in great public policy debates i remember my time in vietnam we debated war in vietnam whether we thought we should be in vietnam i mean i know for a fact that what this debate went on  three when our troops went into iraq the debate continues but people don't lose their ability to abate policy issues because they're in the military at a time of war so i i think that that is a is a red herring that's an argument that somehow men and  from can't handle tough part four of gentlemen you have unlimited time mr mccain i only have five minutes i'm sure the chairman will give you time at the conclusion here the only point i would want to make and i would extend as an invitation to anyone here republican or democrat who has doubts about changing his policy if you have not sat down with somebody who is currently on active duty i don't mean somebody who's gotten out or been busted out or quit but somebody who's currently on active duty i would be glad to arrange a telephone call to protect them but yesterday secretary at all mullen testified that people have to lie about who they are they don't have to lie about who they are they have to lie about everything in their life they can't come back from a weekend they can't talk about family illness they can't talk about their partner's mother dying without having to choose their words carefully so if you're thinking think about a policy that is bad for morale and device think about the impact on these literally thousands of men and women in your form serving on active duty today that have to choose every word carefully they can't confide in their their brothers and sisters in uniform or what about what's going on in their personal life whether it's about miscarriage a child split up they lie have to lie about everything that is what's divisive about this policy and if anyone would like to take me up on that offer i'd be glad to try to arrange that kind of phone calls so  debate but but i'm more concerned about the chance of something moving forward without a debate that's that's my biggest concern and be happy to talk about i'll be happy to take you up on your offer i'm not afraid of the debate i don't think i want to for the base going to be here so i'm glad to hear that you're not afraid of the debate it needs there is going to be a debate there's going to be a reclaiming reclaiming my god i'm not afraid to debate either what i do what i don't want is certainly i have i have the rare if not unique experience of having led three huge public institutions and american intelligence community the sixth largest university in the country and now the department of defense in each of those i have led and managed change and i've done it smart and i've done it stupid happily i think the stupid was early but stupid was trying to impose a policy from the top without any regard for the views of the people who were going to be affected or the people who would have to effect the policy change one of the purposes of the review that i have under have directed  undertaken by general ham and by j johnson is precisely so we can understand not just the views and concerns of the chiefs but of our military people and their families and the impact on unit cohesion on morale on retention so we understand what these things are so we get some facts into this debate or at least some data that we think is reliable and objective we're going to expand the rand study as you suggested in your letter to cover a broader range of issues than they did in one thousand nine hundred three but the but the role of a leader it seems to me is to set the goal but if you want lasting and effective change you had better bring the people who are going to be affected by it into the discussion and get their views and at a minimum it will help mitigate whatever negative consequences there are that's the purpose of this review that's why we have to do it thoroughly and that's the way you get change in large public institutions where you have long term professionals who care of very great deal about their culture and about what they do and i think that's the purpose of this review that we have underway we have set the goal the decision will be the congress's decision i think that's vitally important in part because it will  able us should the congress change the policy to be able to tell our men and women in uniform this is the view of the elected representatives of the united states of america so i think this review period is absolutely essential in terms of us understanding what we're doing figuring out what the concerns are and the issues are helping us figure out how to mitigate them so that if the congress does vote to change this policy we have an understanding of how to go about implementing in a way that minimizes whatever negative consequences there are i thank you  for thank you mr chairman and thank you gentlemen for being here i want to shift to the bait back to money and economics and admiral some facts that we know we've got about a three billion dollars shortfall in our shipyards  more aware of those needs in the import of that than probably anybody in this room we also know we have a strike fighter shortfall whether that is two hundred forty planes or one hundred planes if you look at two forty we're talking about certification that you submitted as the statute requires a year where that o m b disagrees with you they think that if we continue on the plan with the dollars that we'd be down to more like two hundred seventy ships as opposed to three hundred ships also we know that your ship building report says that we can only expect fifteen point nine billion dollars per year but if you look at the out years of that plan we need about seventeen point cost overruns that raised the price  twenty thirty's is is mainly a fantasy because nobody knows so i would say that and we have told the navy that we probably need to get them to sixteen or seventeen billion dollars a year  in the middle middle years and later years of this decade in order to try and get to where they need to be thank you mr chairman and thank you all for your extraordinary service to this country i wanted to ask one or two personal questions initially as as you stated and i know this is very sincere coming coming from you the most critical strategic asset that we have is our people and over the last eleven years we've made a great effort to increase the military compensation to compete with the with the public's with the private sector and yet this year the president's budget budgets across really moves away from that practice by and by not enhancing th the pay raise with the point five percent that we've experienced that's going to happen is that we're not able to close that gap as as we would really like it's getting there but it still would have about a two point four percent gap we started eleven years ago at about a thirteen point five percent gap so we're so close we have additional high stress on our troops why not continue to move that that gap a lot to close that gap this year let me start and then the chairman i have anything to add the one point four percent is driven by the  cost index so it's basically by law and the reality is every year we come up here and i confess to a tactical error the first year i was in this job we submitted two and a half percent and the congress gave us three percent and so i said ok three percent so i submitted three percent the next year and we got three and a half percent and the reality is this has accumulated fact that is the chairman talked about earlier at a certain point i mean of increases in this budget in terms of housing and various family programs and so on we're starting a renewal of the schools to rebuild those so there's a lot in this budget for our families but the pay increases along with health care frankly are beginning to eat us a lot and frankly if you look at you know i think we have to be realistic about this if you look at the health family that they need some help especially with special needs children in our last authorization had a family support depart setting up a department for special needs children that is chairman thank you for being here thank you for your service i want to start with a brief statement on an issue that we've talked about before and then have a couple questions i've had serious concerns for some time about the fighter gap issue and how it will negatively impact our nation's national and homeland defense particularly as it pertains to the air national guard as you know beginning in two thousand and fifteen eighty percent of the air national guard fighter fleet begins to run out of flying hours without aircraft or national guard will be unable to continue to perform their sovereignty alert mission and unable to support the air force and overseas operations which i think they have been doing magnificently and very cost effectively i might add many units will lose flying missions altogether and may lose highly skilled pilots and technicians which simply cannot be replaced although i am supportive of the f thirty five program given recent developments with the thirty five being at least two years behind schedule and testing projected cost overruns resulting in reduced about thirty five in the early years i'm very concerned that even with a concurrent proportional fielding about thirty five into the air national guard there will simply not be enough aircraft in time national guard fight or flee in last year's defense authorization bill myself and representative giffords requested a study of entering by four point five generation fighters to address the air national guard gap issue although the final report has not been forwarded to our offices yet eleven are indications are that the industrial base could i know that the air guard and the air force are very focused on trying to get this balance right i think it's certainly been an issue affordability i talked about the program before and obviously the transition time that we're in right now to recognize that we just need to come to grips with the reality that it doesn't make any sense to replace legacy aircraft on a one to one basis now some of the guard units are shifting their mission and some of the gaar air guard units are are providing the pilot training in the exercise with the pilot or remotely piloted vehicles and i know there are several guard units that have made this which in mission so as chairman says this is something we're just going to have to work our way through as we're in this transition period but i think just as a matter of principle folks need to understand that there is not a requirement or a need to replace a legacy aircraft on a one to one basis i'll just give you one example if i might  it would take you can do in terms of persistent presence over a twenty four hour period you can do with eight reapers what it would take thirty six f sixteen s to do and they carry the same armament so we need to think in terms of not only the fighters but also the remotely piloted vehicles as we think about the air force in the middle years of the twenty first for five minutes this will take approximately forty five minutes we will use that time to have lunch and at the end of the votes which will be approaching forty five minutes we will resume and hopefully the witnesses can get a bite to eat between now and then we are in no recess until we come back after mr lars mullen with regards to the expeditionary squadrons for the for the growler the probably replacement i understand there's there's some amount of money to recapitalize exist need for security assistance reform and there are some comments in your testimony and chairman says money on it and i think it says it will develop new and innovative approaches to reform and security sector assistance with the budget request doesn't include authority authority provisions such as the section twelve zero six training equipment can you talk a little bit about what you want to see happen with either global train and equip the twelve o six in the total seven programs and whether or not we're going to see a specific legislative proposal that looks at reforming reforming those i don't know the answer to the to the last question twelve zero six we've asked for an increase from three hundred fifty million to five hundred million dollars this is really important money for combatant commanders it's the kind of assistance we've been providing for example to yemen for their counterterrorism training and equipment and so  on we have undertaken an initiative within the executive branch to talk about new ways of doing this work clearly in a new world in terms of trying to figure out how do we get to a place before it becomes a crisis and using both civilian and military capabilities in gage and building building those countries own capabilities how we go about that has has only begun to be discussed by the  by the executive branch i sent paper around that made a made a suggestion about how to do this modeled on the pooled concept that is used in great britain where we and state both would have access to resources is the key here is agility and flexibility and and whatever we do that's what we have to build into into this process going forward so to date we're accelerate that process so twelve zero seven is now in the defense and the state department in the state department but still presuming presumably over the next year we'll be hearing from you all about what reform or reform might look like i certainly hope so ok all right sort of is that if a zero maybe phase minus one sort of as you said before before the bad stuff happens  that will stand in recess approximately forty five minutes for which i'm over here in the white here much in your proposals that i might appreciate you have done i know we have some difference in priorities as we had last year those are honest difference of opinion and to be honest in hindsight we have yet actually to commit to a long range program sustaining minuteman i c b m three through the year two thousand and thirty but specially when you're talking about the g m t program he said not a forever decision which i took to mean that there may be some time in the future where the department cites go ahead and produce additional ground based interceptors in response to the ever changing threat picture that goes on that is unless we have an industrial and technical capability to do that in some port and future and  honest there is in my mind some serious doubts especially with some drastic changes the taken place in recent days the administration's silly decision to terminate the constellation program without any kind of alternative program in a rationale that i look at i more a vendetta than common sense does not only put us in a second rate station but it condemns thousands of jobs good jobs that are dealing with math and engineering and to be honest this truly is about rocket scientists in some particular way out mr secretary you have some good people working under you and one of your assistant secretaries did write back in september that i feel the industrial base issues are completely legitimate because having the best defense industrial and technological base in the world is not a birthright it's not about jobs it's about certain kinds of jobs very rare kinds of skills that are not easily replicated in the commercial world and if allowed to road would be difficult to rebuild  am concerned because i think recent decisions that have been made especially dealing with solid rocket motors have are putting us on the verge of having the experience that we need in the future walking out the doors in search of other employment or simply filing unemployment benefits because we simply cannot turn the spigot on and off and if in the in the future we need to increase that we have to have the capability and may not have the luxury of time to reconstitute this capability so the question i have for you is in the decision that was made did not or an o m be a i understand you can say anything you want to about somebody that's negative as long as you say bless their heart attached to it so m b bless their heart did any of those consult with you or the department of stance on the potential impact for defense industrial bases with nasa's terminations the constellation program in the aries rockets program not that i recall but i would i would just say and in response to a comment you made early on i said these decisions on the g b eyes are at and on fort greely are forever and in fact we are going to complete the two thousand and six by forty seven g b eyes we've this budget contains five more over the next several years and we will complete the second missile field second i appreciate that but i my concern is is we need to have an industrial base and sometimes especially with sub contractors there's a very limited amount of that base the decision that nasa has made dealing with nasa is going for the future does have impacts on what you can do in the department of  so i i would hope you would agree that this could be potentially a very serious problem a concern if you no longer have the industrial base to create the motors that are necessary for these programs and i hope you would see i hope you admit that there is some kind of interact and don't you think you should have been consulted in some way as to the impact this will have on the department of defense well the department may have been canceled in this mission i wasn't and i will find out if we were consulted by hope you'd agree that this is this is a significant issue that of those to come up ten thousand was not a cost benefit analysis that was equitable do you have funding in this program budget to cough cover extensions for the f fifteen s sixteen f eighteen for their service life extension programs i'm sorry i ran out of time and if you proposed budget elimination of eventually by twenty fifteen elimination altogether disabled veterans tax referred to by some as concurrent and we've got to find offsets for five point one billion dollars worth of costs associated with that and chairman i certainly hope that we're going to work closely with ways and means in the administration seems to me we ought to be able to find five point one billion dollars over over a ten year period of time as large as our mandatory spending is we ought to be able to  offset from mandatory funds and consequently we were at a loss and that was quite concerning of the members of the committee were to so urged the administration to send this over  so we can be honest with these folks well mr chairman i applaud the efforts that you made last year to find the offsets we needed to do right by all these folks who've been treated so badly for so long this is a tax it is a tax on disabled veterans and it's inexcusable frankly given priorities that we have the administration just needs to to somehow find help us find offsets with all the mandatory spending we're going to do over a ten year period of time we can find five bases that might wind up receiving them when i put a plug in for fort stewart or at least for keeping in mind one one factor in trying to make that decision should be the impact on the local community that has partnered with the o t and the army to prepare for the receipt if it's new york city that's a drop in the bucket they're going to be able to absorb whatever investment that they've made and that investment will be  will be useful to them the kind of investment that a small rural community makes to to receive ten or fifteen thousand people is relatively extraordinary and that seems to me to be a factor that should weigh very heavily in favor of a place like fort stewart where the local community weapon is one reason we should be interested in this if these are hardened facilities that produce power then perhaps we can get power out quickly after an e m p strike final thing i'd like to just ask some questions about there's a real disconnect mr secretary between you and the committee with regard to the second engine you already know that you announced in your own statement that you would recommend that the president veto any bill that contemplates inclusion of the second engine here we are wondering where's that coming from we haven't seen a fiscal analysis that would support such a strong statement from you about how wasteful this is in fact in two thousand and seven d o t itself produced something that concluded that you really couldn't tell you know on the on the pure cost question you couldn't really tell whether this was going to be more expensive or less expensive and people widely concede that it does lessen risk having to available engines and that that the operational benefit associated with lessen the risk of something that's fairly significant that's what we're hearing here and we don't you know we have a new secretary in the sector simply announces that this is wasteful but we don't really see it from what we receive and what we're getting from staff if you could help us with that sure and this will be the second year in a row that the administration has taken this position and i would just say you know from our standpoint congress has added one point eight billion dollars for this program we see it costing us another two point nine billion over the next five years and and this is the only place in the world where competition ends up in everybody winning at the end the reality is the most optimistic analyses and models that we have run show that there is little advantage to the to the taxpayer of having a second engine the truth is almost none of the customers will buy two engines if there's a european engine or a rolls royce g e engine the europeans are probably going to buy our european partners are probably going to buy that one marine corps in the navy a boat said they're only going to take one airplane because of the limited logistics space available on ships so the only piece of this that could be competed would be the air force part of it and so you end up having two engines for the air force like the key it is getting the getting the f one thirty five engine program it's doing well it's completed thirteen thousand hours of out of fourteen thousand seven hundred thirty six has completed fifty hours of testing there's no reason to believe that the second engine won't encounter the same development problems first one has to go on but we can give you the analysis and provide you details on why i think we can demonstrate we keep getting cited to the two seven to two thousand and seven analysis by a cost analysis improvement group which suggested that there really wasn't a cost difference between the two and secretary the first relates to your earlier statement you said nobody cares more about our troops than we do and i believe that you mean that there are at times disputes as to what does it mean to care for them and this issue that i'm going to raise is one of those unbelievably throughout our country there are family law court that are taking custody away from our service members based upon their deployment with our chairman support and three committees of the house this house has passed four times unanimously legislation which would protect those custody rights says simply that a family law court cannot take custody away from a service member based solely upon their service i sent you a letter signed by unbelievably every member of this committee when i raised this issue with you last year and the fact that he has been opposed to this legislation you told me at that time that you were unaware of d o d s opposition you committed that your staff would work with me as the national defense authorization act was a so that perhaps we could come up with a compromise legislation your staff met with me and these are basically the responses they said first it doesn't really happen i gave them a number of news accounts explaining that of course it does happen secondly they said that custody historically a matter of federal law provided them with a copy of the sixty five pages in the federal code that relate to indian tribes and the instructions to state courts on how to deal with custody with respect to indian tribes sixty five they said then it was state rights you do not have one state that is objecting to our legislation and of course i pointed out that the service members civil relief act is in itself each element a violation of state rights because it relates to state court matters your staff offered no text changes and when i inquired as to whether there were any dire consequences to the troops kids or if it was unfair to the no information was provided to us of any dire consequences to anyone at this legislation would pass or we have a national military for that we need a national standard our legislation only applies limited to the issue of custody based upon the service deployment and the threat of deployment now i wrote you on july twenty second august twenty sixth asking to meet with you about this to talk about your opposition you responded on september twenty fifth with one of the items saying i plan to personally contact the governors of each of the states that have yet to pass legislation addressing the special consideration of  my first question for you today sir as i would believe that you're a very busy man but certainly a secretary that has time to contact every governor in this matter ought to have thirty minutes to sit down for you and i have a conversation about this my first question is will you meet with me discuss the issue of the threat to the concerning nato strategic concept later this spring former secretary of state madeline albright will provide recommendations for a nato strategic concept to the nato secretary general and next fall the secretary general provide his recommendations to nato member states for consideration at the lisbon summit searcher gates do you believe that nato should be made should be maintained as a nucular alliance based upon your assessment your dialogue with the nato defense ministers to our nucular deterren capabilities in europe still constitute reassurance to our allies i believe they do i does a great deal of discussion that is going on as to whether or not that present should remain so i take it that your answer to my first for the question is that you believe it should be we repeal don't ask don't tell and i'm skeptical that imitation review need to take one year when we pass in the congress don't ask don't tell now back in one thousand ninety three ninety days for it to be implemented and i just want to make sure that you know review can't be an excuse for delay i also understand it's a two track process basically it's in the congress doing our job to overturn a law that we passed seven almost seventeen years ago and secondly the other track is this fact that the experts the military leadership needs to figure out a way to implement this nondiscriminatory policy if we do  the vehicle that we talk about the national defense authorization act i've only been in congress for three years but i understand every fiscal year when we pass it it usually takes about eight months so they can start school year nine we ten so why we in congress do our job you know you'll have ample time at least my opinion to figure out how we should implement this to make sure they were being careful i think you would agree that that's ample was that that i expected our work to be done before the end of the calendar year and the reality is there are a lot of a lot of assertions associated with this about what people believe and what they don't believe and what attitudes are and what they aren't and as the chairman said yesterday we just don't know the facts and so it's for us it's a dual purpose review one is to get the to have a dialogue with our people in them and uniform and their families about this change identify problems and issues associated with its implementation and figure out ways to mitigate those concerns these these kinds of major changes frankly if done too quickly  have counterproductive consequences and we need in the apartment of defense is the biggest most complex organization in the world our military culture is one of our greatest strengths but it's also a strong culture and so we need to work with people we need to get their input into how to go on how to go about this and i just this is not an excuse for delay this is in fact a way to do this right and a way that it works and i talked about earlier today and yesterday about the issue of military packages and readiness and that's a huge concern i would hope that there would be responsible leadership on both sides of this issue and that we not do what we actually from my perspective having  been in the fleet did in one thousand in the earlier debate which is put the military in the middle of this because we can't afford that now because of the stress two wars and all those things that have been laid out that doesn't mean it can't be accommodated if it's  not known right now in terms of it'll take a month or two for somebody to figure that out so we haven't done this kind of review before we don't know the impact on the force and that's what we've got to that's really what we have to do over the course of this year  and i think that in the congress we want to make sure that we're partnering with you to implement this the right way so that we're taking care of our war fighters and we also obviously believe in the principles you know that our country stands for and i do appreciate your testimony yesterday and again department one mr secretary we've been talking to your staff about the issue of post deployment mobilization respite absence i don't know who thinks these things up for names but p d m r a is an important program put in place back in january two thousand and seven to address those units who are were mobilized for periods beyond what they were supposed to be for example the minnesota national guard was mobilized and sent to iraq they were there for sixteen months total of the twenty two month mobilization period nationally there's over twenty three thousand national guard members over ten percent i'm from minnesota who qualify for the speedy m r e payment in some cases it's thousands of dollars nobody's received a dime not a single dime and so the question is when can the soldiers expect to receive these p to take them off the record ok please do and please get back to us quickly i will tell you that this is a gigantic issue in minnesota because we have such a large guard they've been deployed multiple times some are the just now coming back to read bowls from iraq right now in the process and some of them are expecting to be deployed against two thousand and eleven and they've been told now for years that they have this money coming to him and nothing is nothing know incredibly proud of what they've done and they really have been magnificent well thank you rick nash is one of my heroes as are those men and women in the in the guard not just minnesota guard but as you know the red bulls stretches beyond that but really this issue needs to be addressed prepared and let us and so far there is no charter and the question is do you know what the status of that is and when we might expect to see such a thing that's a major organization with responsibilities and  army and so on and particularly at the provincial and provincial level really empowering the tribal elders and so on the worry that everybody shares and the source of caution is the last thing we wan do is recreate or re m power warlords and so if there is a reservation on the ground it is the worry that in one place or another the risk of doing that is high well do may be that the way to approach this is on a case by case basis in terms of whether whether the local governance is strong enough to have one of these community defense organizations without running the risk of warlordism but you do think it's possible to do that because we know that the central government weak to be kind about it and we also know that this is part of our whole overall  right down to the local level so that it is being integrated into operations as we speak and it's also informing the government kabul which certainly has a lot of work to do well now they does seem to be chairman and i'd like to say i've never been more proud of the chairman of this committee than i was in december of last year when lynne spoke to us about guantanamo bay and the chairman opened up the hearing by telling him this in this congress is not going to give you a penny to buy a prison in illinois to bring detainees to this country and i can tell you he was speaking for all of us when he said that so that one hundred fifty million that you got a new budget as far as i'm concerned you can go ahead and strike it  want you to know i think that this is asinine to talk about bringing one hundred one hundred counties to this country and spending five hundred million dollars to do it when we're in a time of incredible deficits ten percent unemployment is just reckless spending that we can't afford so i hope you'll take that lead from the chairman of this committee and go ahead strike that of my out i did want to speak a little bit you sold mr mckeon that you felt the the arrest of the christmas day bomber and turning them over to the private criminal authority but probably the criminal authorities you believe that is the judgment as to whether or not that was a good decision to the secretary of attorney general holder is that correct yes  with your background as cia director and leading the defense department very competently in both jobs do you really believe in fifty minutes we got the information we needed with britain's day bomber well as i said earlier i think that there have been some lessons learned i know we got some in from you know we got a lot of information during that period i believe that going forward we now have the protocols in place and the kind of multi agency interrogation experienced interrogation team that also knows that if there is a national security threat they can delay mirandizing somebody i think we now have got the protocols in place that going forward we'll be able to fully exploit anybody who gets caught like that again my question though is after fifteen minutes he was turned over to the criminal prosecution and was given a lawyer and i'm a recovering attorney his lawyer is not going to let him talk any more so do you believe that we've got all the information we needed to get from him in fifteen minutes no sir thank you i want to ask you about the twelve thirty report measuring the progress in afghanistan that we do last september when we see that been shared with the committee they had been worked in the inner agency and so i'll find out what happened that frankly i thought they were already up here i'd like to get that and then in finally gentle mcchrystal as i understand it ask for a little seventeen months is he going to have the flexibility to get those democrats haven't worked as well as we all do it through the strategy and the overall approach is satisfied with the resources that have been made available to him and he's a nato commander so it's not just u s right understand that there are forty three countries contributing over there which is significant in terms of commitment and we're hopeful that  there are very few commanders quite frankly that i've ever met myself included that don't want more well and i think now we match that i would just also add that in his decisions the president gave me the certainly an indication as the secretary said earlier that we are not standing still in terms of our weapons procurement in the future in the shipbuilding plan and it actually had some language that was  stride it's going to take up a lot of space in terms of the ship building budget we had a hearing at our subcommittee a couple weeks ago where there were some experts who were actually suggesting that because it is such an essential part of our nuclear deterrence that  it will take up so much space in the shipbuilding program that consideration ought to be given to sort of funding it in a separate account similar to weight the way missile defense is presently got its own place it is an extraordinary percentage of the shipbuilding budget and it is just funding one line so i think there overtime mccauley will be competition for those dollars so isolating them as per suggested certainly is one solution but it goes back to our earlier discussion about the budget or something like that which calls for i think that's got to grow over time in a pretty tough environment i would just say there is a longer term issue here for the period during from now until two thousand and fifteen i believe that we can live within the numbers that we have been given and that are for cast for us without sacrificing for structure but beyond that time the defense department cannot sustain the current force structure without real growth on an annual basis of somewhere between two and three percent and another important  a design and then build process where we're not sort of mixing up the two at the same time which is wasteful and i would just say that the investment that this budget has in terms of making sure that we as you said get this thing done right so that when the time comes us today and thank you for your service to our nation secretary as you know i've been working with my virginia colleagues to ensure that key strategic decisions are answered in that we're really spending our resources properly specifically with regard to move in a carrier to make and we bask repeatedly from your department about issues and information related to cost and strategic necessity given that information back according to an article yesterday in the jacksonville press senator nelson is quoted as saying the secretary of defense looked me in the eyes two and a half months ago and said you don't have anything to worry about furthermore the lead copy of the q t r we saw in december didn't yesterday and can you give us an idea about why there was a last minute change in the content of the q t r well first of all i don't remember those exact words but i have known for some period of time since we're early into the budget process the priority that the navy attaches to the strategic disperse and dispersion and and their continued priority that they attach to having  a carrier at mayport and i pressed them very hard in the meetings you know you have limited resources is this how you want to spend your money do you think this is more important than other things other navy needs and own assessment of their priorities i was unaware that that the draft of the q t r on that issue had changed between an earlier draft in december and the final draft admiral mullen spoke capability total portfolio and it's part of the strategic view of where we have to where i believe we have to place our assets and for lots of reasons i think is important has been  go see what work has been done and see where the where we are where we could be and often times the risk assessments that i get involved in strategically there is a judgment  there and it goes back to what we talked about earlier which is predictability or unpredictability about the future and all those kinds of things and i am one rarely thought that we should put all our eggs in one basket and that's a risk factor for deployed to europe or elsewhere so there is and then just specifically it adds a battery of ground components it adds sixty seventh add interceptors it delivers the bad batteries number two and three hand thirty two interceptors for those so this is an area where where we have i think significantly plussed up the budget and as i commented earlier at the same time we have over we have a billion three  in this budget to continue the further development of the ground based interceptors as well including both a two stage and three stage in finishing the second missile field fort greely i'm sorry with the first part of the question first question was the president phased adaptive approach to missile defense has significant for structure implications and have these yet been quantified i don't know that they've been quantified clearly  also think we need to upgrade the ships that we have to this capability before which is a lot less expensive than buying you know many more ships and i think the debate that we're going through right now and it obviously  depends on our concept of operations as to what the force structure implications of air would be as well as on the on the ground side and where we would need them where we would want to have them either forward based or be able to  move them based on some kind of conflict we have funding for conversion of twenty three ships capability and this budget adds three more first things that he identified in his threat assessment was the fact that it is probably one of the number one threats facing the nation right now the let me ask you what system should the government view as respond to cyber command the navy and the air force have stood up their own versions of a cyber command the army is in the process of doing that we are and we are i think makes very clear that we regard the cyber problem in cyberspace as a huge priority we going forward and hand there are substantial resources year right now for stryker brigade and appreciate that you do as well as his wife and two little girls and his unborn son here that they will have always been in the army appreciate everything you do and mr secretary thank you sir for everything that you do  the thing that concerns me and i'm going to touch on this to preface this statement is the senate armed services committee has now had a full hour hearing with full committee on don't ask don't t in in in this committee here or in that senate committee we have yet to have a full committee hearing on the number one cause of death and casualties over in iraq and afghanistan last year we had three hundred twenty two killed because of roadside bombs one thousand eight hundred eighteen maimed and wounded this year just in january thirty two and one hundred thirty seven wounded  understand there's a lot of budget issues there's a lot of social issues that you have to work through but i would like to make it so that our priority isn't the social issues in the military the budget issues are important but i think when you have when you have eighteen nineteen year olds and my little brother and my friends and in family and many of us here have the exact same out there fighting i think our priority should be with winning  joy defeat organization has gotten over seventeen point two billion dollars since its inception it's got a staff of forty eight hundred people and what i would like to know mr secretary and admiral is is do you think that they are living up to the standards that we set for them when they were created and do you think that they're doing what they should be doing and i commend you mr secretary you have the eye as our task force general i e d task force on that with  carter general paxton they've been very helpful and i know this is one of your number one priorities so what are we doing right now because mr secretary you're in that chain of command coming down from president obama to where you can mobilize the industrial base and you can mobilize our military technology people and our military and you can give orders to say we're going to stop by and here's how we're going to do it we're going to have twenty four hour surveillance we're going to have persistent surveillance so that's that is my question is is jiah to living up to what it should be doing to the amount of money that it's been given and what more that can we do to protect our men and women that are out there fighting every day i think is doing  what they've been asked to do and i think they're doing a good job of it but not the answer to the problem alone and as you've suggested our capabilities are very important we have basically maxed  out the production capability we are pushing everything we can into that area i met with dr carter and general paxton last week there are a portfolio of capabilities that i told them to proceed with buying coverage in the vicinity of our forward operating bases and and so on and i have told them not to worry about the money and not to worry about the numbers but to just get them out there as fast as possible and they are proceeding to do that there are a lot of other aspects of this one is the unlike iraq the primary substance for i e d zan afghanistan is ammonium nitrate it's illegal in afghanistan so we are now forming that task forces general mcchrystal is forming a task forces to try and break the smuggling networks for ammonium nitrate one of our m wraps that was blown in half it was fifteen hundred pounds of this stuff and so that's that's another thread we need to get more labs into afghanistan we had a lot of labs to deal with the the forensics and in iraq and we've not been quick enough to get those labs up and running  in afghanistan and so the purpose of pointing back to carter and general paxton to look at this is that there are a number of different elements of the pentagon who are working the effort and i think each of them in their own way is doing a good job the trouble is i don't think that effort has been sufficiently integrated across all of these different lines of effort and one of the things that i have asked them to do is when when their task force stands down what do we do to make sure there is somebody applying a blowtorch to this issue in the ring to make sure that these different parts are talking to each other and that the equipment is flowing to mcchrystal as quickly as possible the other concept that they've come up with that i think has a lot of merit is basically a warehouse approach to counter i e d equipment at the battalion level so that a whole array of mr secretary on don't ask don't tell thank you for the effort you and haven't looked on i have a question and i very i'd like your explanation of how to change an institution as far as and massive change comes about at the same time i thought the chairman said very well the other day this is a matter of integrity you're asking someone to live a lie as well as an institution is words to that effect we were able to turn on a dime and fix protocols right away as you just mentioned because we didn't do them well for that terrorist on that aircraft so i wondered if this is a matter of principle equality can we turn more rapidly rather than wait a year to have to do a study on implementing if not would you support the president issuing an executive order under stop what they call a stop loss so that we don't have these individuals that will soon be permitted to  pushed out well first of all congress passed a stop loss law decade before it passed don't ask don't tell and that's the view of the general counsel the department of defense that the president would not have the authority to do that under stop loss under stop loss that he would deliver i said we would complete this review before the end of the calendar year i don't know how long it's going to take all i know is i want to be  and i want to have the opportunity to have that kind of dialogue with our men and women in uniform and their families to us sas the facts in this situation we are going to redo the rand study of one thousand nine hundred three with wasn't trying to insinuate that he was delaying it just we tend to have a military very ready to do things and it just seemed to be and i really thought you spoke well of it is a matter of integrity if i could just because you only have a moment my second question has to do with general pace testified here that he may have been alongside you sir that we could not meet or work your commitments with the army for like fifty twenty seven itself but the air force and the navy's and the others could back that up and with acceptable risk and i think you even may have testified that way as chairman with the drawdown in iraq and with the amount that were put in that ghana and which i support when we would be able to meet that and other commitments that we once did prior to the conflict of iraq beginning so that we do have an army that is able to meet its other commitments in terms of readiness to do so without asking the other units services to fill in let me respond then quickly the chairman i think what we have what we have testified to including general pace was that we could not get the army units required for south korea into south korea on that timeline required by the plan that's not to say they wouldn't get there it's just that they wouldn't get there and as quickly because of the commitments that we have in iraq and afghanistan and so it certainly initially we would be specially depended on the navy and and the air force and i would only add that  spectrum training but you're on record as having been doing i have not been doing that so it's fair to say a number of years ideally probably a year or two before we're well into that to be able to do it on something that on a timeline we don't always get that one last question it seems to but right now time the pakistan you mentioned the benchmarks but i thought had come over and i think we got a draft of them actually in september with these i honestly feel the increase in troops has almost more to do with pakistan and it's really the lynchpin of success for us over there not more so than afghanistan and whether al qaida is eradicated by them with our assistance or the benchmark also which i didn't see in the draft that came across pakistan and the success that we can measure or the failure of the cost for that and that's so critical part of it also let me check and get to an answer for the going concerned about the defense industrial base particularly in shipbuilding in space of course i share those concerns i'm concerned that the ship requirements haven't changed since two thousand and six and while there's been significant growth in the demand an emphasis for aegis ships to support to be in the mission in fact the q t r doesn't reflect an increase in navy ships to reflect the increased mission requirements the ballistic missile defense review acknowledges a range of ballistic missile threats with growing capabilities  inventory so there's obviously a need for the e u and the us to invest in robust missile defenses but the budget doesn't seem to indicate that and i'm just wondering in terms of investing in our architecture to support b m d are you concerned that we're over burdening the aegis ships with the addition of b m d missions without providing any additional resources or infrastructure to support the growing mission and with the addition of the b m d missions added to the aegis ships how many more ships do you think might be needed as i said i think i said earlier that i think it's important we upgrade the ships that we have i think we have eighty four ships i may get that wrong by a number or two but making as many of them to mrs missile defense capable as possible at the level that we're upgrading the twenty three going to three more is a key piece and that's the fleet that we have right now i think it's to be determined how big the fleet should be with respect to we need to certainly incorporate that into our thinking as to how we invest because without a decent industrial base we can't move forward on the systems that we need i think we'll know a lot more about the missile defense piece in particular somewhat pleasantly surprised that there wasn't a crease in the missile defense budget and i'm glad to see that mr secretary cording the wall street journal an article published yesterday the u s and russia have reached an agreement in principle on start the delivery systems would fall sharply to between seven and eight hundred each however today the u s deploys about eight hundred eighty launchers when ghoster phantom systems are taken off the books and this is a pretty significant reduction to our current nuclear deterrence where will these ten to twenty five percent cuts in the in the current nuclear triad be made let me just open and then ask the chairman to respond to the  first of all the agreement there is not a concluded agreement yet there are still several areas not yet agreed the agreement is still has not been finished mr mr secretary before i let you be glad to hear admiral mullen's response but before i let you go can you provide this committee with an assurance that the administration will not seek a side agreement with russia outside of start that would limit our missile defense capabilities  there will be no agreement of any kind that limits our missile defense capabilities good enough thank you sir i would only ask our only add that in the negotiations in which i participated and worked very consideration and we're not we're not entirely through this but where we recognize the significance and the importance of the triad needing needing to sustain that well mr chairman i guess i'll just throw one more question you know russia now relies on its over well in the tory of tactical nuclear weapons the strategic commission estimates russia has approximately thirty eight hundred tactical nuclear weapons while the us has a prop probably less than five hundred while the us reduces both its strategic and tactical nuclear forces it seems that russia continues to have the carte blanche to increase its inventory of tactical nuclear weapons how does the administration and the pentagon plan to address this issue and i'll  opens the door to additional opportunities specifically with russia and why as was asked earlier asked about earlier in europe and i would hope that concluding that then  appreciate your dedication to our country's national security the q t r is a twenty year a long term forward looking planning document following up on mr whitman's questions regarding the home porting question  and i agree with mr whitman's assessment that it appears that the q t r sent the one single sentence in the q t r that has to do with home court home east coast carriers was added in a very very late  draft just noting that mr secretary you said today that in your discussions with the secretary of the navy and the scieno they had told you that that project was a priority for them even when you asked them to compare it with some other things can you tell us what other things did you ask them to compare it to that they would rank lower than this in priority now i didn't ask them to specify i just said compared to your other priorities where does this ok noting that there there is a sentence in the q t r identifying this is a project of interest to the navy can you help me understand why there's no request for the two thousand and eleven budget for for milk onto for the project there's two hundred thirty nine million dollars of milk and if it up and i believe planning money two million in fiscal eleven design funding and it is the figures i've got my take on that is that's been a part of this overall decision if you will in terms of when this would be done what budget would be a set or navy has been working this for years and that the money now is allocated against a plan to do this the only other thing out at about the change from the draft document to the final document best of my knowledge of kind of walk my way from north to south there's only one other port on the east coast of this country that could accommodate another carrier so i don't necessarily see that the change in the document is that significant because mayport has been it and is it just identifies it so in the final weeks of the q t r was when it was being coordinated with the services and the combatant commanders we wanted their input very much and so that may have reflected the service and put in the coordination process i guess my question is along these lines if it's a priority as you've said mr secretary i'm having a hard time understanding why the process has been allowed to continue to slide as it has and why there's no more why no request for can to go ahead with no con this year we have got a plan it before you can build it and i just want to follow up actually on a comment that you had made to mr whitman as well and i just want to make sure i understand what you meant and just to clarify you said that judgment is a factor an individual judgment of course a factor and you risk assessment i just want to make sure you didn't mean by that to suggest that it would replace an analytical study of risk you know i think i've spent a lot of time on how we sas risk and there are analytics which can support it and it's not individual judgment it's professional judgment and oftentimes the result of a lot of very senior people with experience in this business that make the judgment but it's not going to come out to a specific number and again that is i think an analytical study is something that we have been asking for for some time to help us judge as the congress we've got to make some decisions about how we're going to spend defense dollars in conjunction with with your recommendations but we're talking about approximately a billion dollars in investment and that's a lot of money specially considering the situation that our country faces right now and just one last follow up album on can you just help me understand why and individuals judgment could of course be applied to any risk analysis why wouldn't that as a military leader and have and do here as well as do other also exploded in cost we've asked to do a lot of the requirements and it has certainly come under visibility many times in terms of whether we should keep it as we make this certainly warfare capability in terms of an imposed landing a concern of mine in terms of p t s d and that is going to subject and that is that it seems to me that with the proper treatment i think a lot of it is really attached a very high priority to this as did his predecessor we have i think roughly a billion dollars in the budget specifically allocated to p t s d and traumatic brain injury i think we all take this very seriously we still i would say that the two problems we face are not enough mental health care providers and it's not for lack of trying to hire them we are out there scouring the country we have a national shortage if you will and we're looking at ways to improve that and then the other problem that we have is still the issue of stigma despite the leadership of the services and service leaders and and i would say commanders at all levels and the fact that the leadership of the army and the marine corps in particular get this but there is still this strong culture and and getting these young men and women to acknowledge they have a problem and seek treatment is still an obstacle in front of this huge problem we're on our way but we've got a long way to go and it actually extends well we've seen it extended families  like to figure out a way where that can be addressed a whole lot earlier fact of the matter is the sooner you address it the less likely the longer term impacts are out there to occur so that's that's been the real problem but the  service and your willingness to make some really tough this year as you know our military involvement in places like iraq and afghanistan has placed a premium on close air support missions and i wanted to  think we're talking about the same thing here we really are talking about aircraft which better match up with some of our coalition partners specifically interesting i was in a car had a conversation the other day  reviewed by an awful lot of countries not just here inside the department or on the on capitol hill but other countries look united states about where it's going in and and there are discussions and i won't name a country but a discussion in that country about how it moves ahead and how can it compliment what we're doing as opposed to compete with us or match capability capability and this is an ally this is not this is not an enemy or potential enemy capability or not can you talk a little bit about what determinations have been made at this point and where we're going with that capability i have to get an answer for the record but my my impression and maybe the chairman  balance of my time family meals but mr platts from pennsylvania thank you mr chairman i certainly want to thank all three witnesses for your great leadership and service to our nation we're blessed by what you're doing and then when the uniform certainly are by your leadership a couple quick comments first i want to associate myself with the comments of mr rogers from alabama on the issue of get now given the financial strains facing our  country the thought of spending four hundred five hundred million dollars on the stablish a new prison when we have one that the military is operating with great efficiency and security just seems pretty illogical to me and back home out is just common sense test doesn't get passed with that proposal so i hope that money will be available to some of the other needs that you've outlined in your budget i just returned last night from pakistan afghanistan  bipartisan team very insightful comeback as always this is my sixth trip to afghanistan inspired by what our men and women in uniform are doing and we got down to spin boldak and nineteen year old a rmy soldier driving the striker that i was in as we got out to shaman gate to see the logistics challenge there all the materials you can't can't be anything but inspired and so grateful for these roque observation one is came back with great confidence in our team we have there are time with investor i can vary his insights have been a commander on the ground there are now in the diplomatic side just exceptional and that we didn't the crystal who wasn't in theater but general bill caldwell and if there's something that came crystal clear of our success in afghanistan it's the efforts of general caldwell and the training of the afghan security forces and delighted to have somebody of his great caliber in that role i think that's one of the linchpins to the success that we're going to achieve is what he's doing the one thing i want to mention is acquisition is a reform is a big part of what you talked about in both your testimonies and how we need to do a lot better and i think think that sometimes on the ground we learn what works and then translate it to a bigger picture and general major general macdonald who we met with in this organization they put together for acquisitions and how they are truly troubleshooting and getting what the military needs on the ground and for the best price for american taxpayers all of us came away extremely impressed and that a short diagram of what they're doing and i would just say that back home here at the pentagon we may want to talk to john mcdonnell in the success he's seven in the field coordinating acquisition and applied to the bigger picture throughout are to our military efforts including in afghanistan and broader issues in the european theater the specific issue that we promise to pass on was the issue of the mannion forces who are patrolling highway in afghanistan and a standing request that's working its way through the channels on some of the national and wraps that for what they're doing the highway not the a t v versions of the newer versions for afghanistan but some that we're pulling out of iraq they're looking for doesn't fifteen or so and as we came to understand it appreciate their commitment to this joint effort something that we promised to pass on to the leadership when we returned home from that  that i'm going to announce there is we have taken a look at what more we can do to share what we've learned and our counter capabilities with our partners in afghanistan and i will be telling the other twenty seven defense ministers that that this is important for us and within the framework obviously of the law there is more we can do to help them and we well wonderful  that have given their lives to the widows of the soldiers who gave their lives so they can assure me again thanks for your leadership for our nation thank you gentleman before calling the general aid from guam i don't believe it's been touched on yet let's talk about the d v d one thousand program it was showing canada last year if you recall in free vassals and we received notice yesterday due to the terminations the remain supportive of the overall goals of the military buildup concerned about certain aspects and it's impact on guam's culture and environment i'm working with all of the local leaders to form a consensus on the way forward with the draft d i s and make sure that there is one message from the people of guam now i believe that this consensus will force d o d to look very closely at some of the assumptions in the draft as i have stated and as chairman skelton has reiterated time and time again we must get this buildup done right however the current draft does not accomplish that goal in totality i need to make it clear that i will oppose any effort by the d o d to utilize the power of eminent domain to acquire private or government of one land in fact i would encourage the department to look harder at keeping the military within its existing footprint on guam i also encourage the department to look at other alternatives for the transit carrier berthing in app or harbor to further mitigate critical habitat loss and i understand the department's position on the potential replacement facility has evolved and the us is willing to wait until may for a final decision from the new government in japan i also understand that if alternatives are proposed for the f r f that the us would be willing to make changes to the international agreement to accommodate the government of japan counter proposal so first my question is what has led to this evolution in strategy regarding the government of guam and also are you willing to seriously consider counter proposals that i and other government  officials will propose in our official comments on the draft and act on them if we are willing to give japan extra time i hope that we can give the same courtesy so i guess secretary also for us to take into account the views of the people of guam and so i stand by those comments i would just say that with respect to  that we are willing to be patient we we have a new government in tokyo the security alliance with japan we just observed the fiftieth anniversary a couple of weeks ago so the alliance is important to us but we negotiated a long time on this and we have no counterproposals from japan and so we are willing to  because we're going to be out there for a long time thank you and one other question it's on a separate matter for either secretary gates or admiral mullen as you may be aware congressman fleming and i have established the long range strike caucus to focus valuable for strike missions and i would like to know from you what is the timeline for completing this study and what factors and assumptions are being considered as this study is being conducted i just have that for a family of long range strike initiatives and the things that we are looking at there are some pretty substantial questions should it be should it be standoff or attack should it be manned or remotely piloted so there are some fairly fundamental issues we have money in the budget as we've mentioned earlier for both b two and b on the life of the b fifty two it may be there until twenty one hundred but but you know all kidding aside i think that the key is trying to figure out what the right technologies are for the future we have put money we spend it correctly the only way that's going to happen and there's a lot of books right now this says by twenty seventeen the department of answered all of its a variety of agencies have to be clean audit but that doesn't happen unless we get told from the top  mentioned how we really got to add to all that other things that you've got going on that are important but you can't make good decisions on bad data and the data that you're getting is coming from a myriad of  systems and programs that have been cobbled together over fifty years i've worked at conversations with the folks over at office of business transformation they've got the responsibility to get done and the authority to simply can  like one comment i've got it i've been told and i would confirm this independent been told that the marine corps has said they're going to get it done sooner than later so there are some individual branches and individual entities within the system that are making progress but without your commitment to push on it it will get your thoughts as the former chairman of a number of corporate audit committees i feel pretty strongly about and the fact is that for certainly the last several years there has been a program underway to be able to produce clean audit that my impression has been that there has been steady progress and that there are a growing number of units that are able to do that but let me ask mr hale to give you a thirty second update on where that where that process stands we're going to start by saying that one of the key things which is are we spending the money the way congress tells us have been allotted a bowl and are audibles called appropriations or reviewed it several years ago so i think you can be assured we are spending the money in the manner in which were directed by law what we can't do is the transaction based and various other requirements that are needed if you're going to pass a private sector audit test what i did when i came into this job is realize frankly we were spent a lot of time and money trying to clean up data and a lot of it in areas where the data wasn't very useful to management so we refocused it on the budgetary information which we use every day to manage the department of defense and you're right the marine corps has asserted audit readiness for so called statement of budgetary resources for fiscal ten the waste of resources that cost us to maintain that we will provide you with that information but i will tell you as i told you last year in the year before and the admiral just described a few minutes earlier in this hearing the air force cannot re requirement fighter aircraft by two hundred and sixty airplanes and overall i believe this represents a reduction of five hundred thirty six aircraft from two years ago i'm talking about strike fighters course so we're that number is projected to drop to eight hundred sixty four in two thousand and twenty that's a drop of three hundred seventy seven on the other hand unmanned aircraft such as the reaper will increase from two hundred  now and twenty four hundred twenty four hundred seven two thousand and twenty and it goes back to the point that i made earlier given the increased capabilities of planes like the f twenty two and the f thirty five with advanced sensing and stealth and so on there's really no reason to replace them on a one for one basis and the chairman said earlier and as we just discussed unless the air force can retire some of these third generation and  actually the air force in the united states the largest user of energy the department defense and the department has taken tremendous steps to reduce the amount of energy being used by the department of defense i'm curious about comments on your short term and your long term energy reduction goals also whether or not the energy saving performance contracts are proving to be worthwhile and what congress can do to help streamline some of these projects my frustration is we spend over four hundred billion dollars every year to buy energy from mostly hostile foreign nations and it puts us from a national defense standpoint really in a very precarious situation and congress  installation davis mountain air force base probably double that so it's interesting from a facility standpoint the progress that's been made but from the operational standpoint when you look at biofuel the ability to get not have these long there's a frightening forefront of that and i see some of that reflected in the budget we worked here in the house to nominate to put together a director of operational energy and we're hoping the senate confirms that to be able to help free up your work so thank you i look forward to working with you on that  mcmorris rodgers thank you mr chairman and thank you secretary gates and admiral mullen for being here i know that it's been a long day for you but i just thank you for the generosity of your time in answering our questions as you know i represent for child air force base and the tanker and the replacement of the tankers has been on the forefront of my priority list since i arrived in congress and for one reason or another we've seen a number of delays in the in the process of the k c one thirty five represents a central piece of work plans to support the united states and its allies around the world and now northrop grumman chief operating officer officer has threatened to not bid unless significant changes are made to the tanker requirements and i think i join with others in just sharing a concern about the potential of further delaying the tanker competition and stretching the approach provided a new emphasis on supporting our military families and the department of defense likewise we are seeing the impact of deployments on our military families and  to respond to my concerns about the use of rules of engagement that were raised on my visit to afghanistan and the secretary i have noticed since the publication of the book lone survivor this is something that comes up fairly often as i meet with the moms and dads and loved ones of troops deployed and it's a very serious question i realize where general trying to go but when those two troopers brought it to my attention again their concerns about the afghan police in particular another observation was that they were concerned that we have stopped prohibiting vehicular traffic from transiting along with our convoys that they were very concerned about vehicle borne i e d and so again you know for the you all the secretary of defense and i did ask general mcchrystal i said did you write the rules of engagement yourself or did they come from other places and i think his answer was it was a combination of what his suggestions in washington so again i would ask you to address those concerns both of us will take a crack at this i mean i'm obviously aware this concern on the part of some of our soldiers i heard this directly from a young soldier at walter reed a couple of years a couple of weeks ago who told me that he thought the reason the had been injured was because of the rules of engagement it seems to me that that this is an area where  believe that the commander on the ground has to have the discretion in terms of the rules of engagement for the troops and how the rules of engagement fit with  strategy he is trying to pursue that pack tix that have been used that have been used by us are changing all the time there's been a significant reduction in the use  dogs because they're so offensive to the afghans there's been a significant reduction in night raids can and and frankly there is you know it's  we we had a situation i give you an example of where where you can make a mistake and it actually was with i think one of the predators and they saw a group of people digging a hole and a road and and they were going to target the predator on him because they were convinced they were doing an i e d and and the guy running the predator stopped it at the last minute people were on the ground and it was a bunch of kids and they were just fooling around they weren't planting bombs hitting those kids would have been a huge setback for us in that area so i basically i understand their concern i've heard from parents as well about  it and their worry i understand it but i think that in terms of the the overall health of our force and keeping our kids safe that being successful in this campaign is really  the priority and we're obviously going to do everything we can in the in the course of that to protect our kids but we also have to figure out what the best strategy for success is i would only add that i think your comment n afghan soldier in knots and we're working our way through that and i think everybody chain of command recognizes that my experience along these lines back to who wrote it at least i think i would attribute the initial those who were in iraq and i think i heard you say that as well who had tours in iraq that come to afghanistan for the first time and they see the rules of engagement being so much different we worked our way through that in iraq over time and found we c that as we were learning in this insurgency we know what we need to do and i think we need it and i think we need to do it earlier we didn't know that at that time in iraq we had to work our way through it they have expressed those same concerns about the convoys and and and at the same judicial punishment in afghanistan well violating the rules give us some sort of a benchmark of the size of this problem thank you very much thank you mr  mccann again i join the others and thank you for the time that you've given us here today gentlemen in my opening remarks i talked about three hundred fifty million in the budget for either illinois and that's three hundred fifty as all detainee operations including guantanamo one hundred fifty sectors said from el con there would also be if we opened the thomson facility some start up costs and other objective well i think i think that first of all to give you any kind of comprehensive answer to that question we probably should do it on the record that would  or with a classified response but i think we're looking at a full range of options in the state of the union president stated that if iran pursues a nuclear weapons capability that would be growing consequences can you explain what these growing consequences are with that also have to be now i think in the near term more likely to be severe sanctions imposed partly by the u n security council  and partly by the u s and like minded countries in the i understand that iran military power report section twelve forty five from last year or this year last has missed its deadline and will be delivered late to the congress can you please ensure that we get this report as soon as possible sure these other questions will just cement for the record you've been here a long time thank you very much for all you're doing thank you let me thank you for your appearance today for your i'm not supposed to introduce her days to i won't but it is awfully nice to have her with us to share this moment thank you so much and so to hell we didn't give you too much work out today but we'll save