prompt_front: You are given two reports by the government agency.



Question: Write a one-page summary of the report 1.

Report 1: This report presents background information and issues for Congress concerning the Navy's force structure and shipbuilding plans  The current and planned size and composition of the Navy, the rate of Navy ship procurement, and the prospective affordability of the Navy's shipbuilding plans have been oversight matters for the congressional defense committees for many years  The Navy's proposed FY2020 budget requests funding for the procurement of 12 new ships, including one Gerald R  Ford (CVN-78) class aircraft carrier, three Virginia-class attack submarines, three DDG-51 class Aegis destroyers, one FFG(X) frigate, two John Lewis (TAO-205) class oilers, and two TATS towing, salvage, and rescue ships  The issue for Congress is whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy's proposed FY2020 shipbuilding program and the Navy's longer-term shipbuilding plans  Decisions that Congress makes on this issue can substantially affect Navy capabilities and funding requirements, and the U S  shipbuilding industrial base  Detailed coverage of certain individual Navy shipbuilding programs can be found in the following CRS reports: CRS Report R41129, Navy Columbia (SSBN-826) Class Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report RL32418, Navy Virginia (SSN-774) Class Attack Submarine Procurement: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report RS20643, Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  (This report also covers the issue of the Administration's FY2020 budget proposal, which the Administration withdrew on April 30, to not fund a mid-life refueling overhaul [called a refueling complex overhaul, or RCOH] for the aircraft carrier Harry S  Truman [CVN-75], and to retire CVN-75 around FY2024 ) CRS Report RL32109, Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report R44972, Navy Frigate (FFG[X]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report RL33741, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report R43543, Navy LPD-17 Flight II Amphibious Ship Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  (This report also covers the issue of funding for the procurement of an amphibious assault ship called LHA-9 ) CRS Report R43546, Navy John Lewis (TAO-205) Class Oiler Shipbuilding Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  For a discussion of the strategic and budgetary context in which U S  Navy force structure and shipbuilding plans may be considered, see Appendix A   On December 15, 2016, the Navy released a force-structure goal that calls for achieving and maintaining a fleet of 355 ships of certain types and numbers  The 355-ship force-level goal replaced a 308-ship force-level goal that the Navy released in March 2015  The 355-ship force-level goal is the largest force-level goal that the Navy has released since a 375-ship force-level goal that was in place in 2002-2004  In the years between that 375-ship goal and the 355-ship goal, Navy force-level goals were generally in the low 300s (see Appendix B )  The force level of 355 ships is a goal to be attained in the future; the actual size of the Navy in recent years has generally been between 270 and 290 ships  Table 1 shows the composition of the 355-ship force-level objective  The 355-ship force-level goal is the result of a Force Structure Assessment (FSA) conducted by the Navy in 2016  An FSA is an analysis in which the Navy solicits inputs from U S  regional combatant commanders (CCDRs) regarding the types and amounts of Navy capabilities that CCDRs deem necessary for implementing the Navy's portion of the national military strategy and then translates those CCDR inputs into required numbers of ships, using current and projected Navy ship types  The analysis takes into account Navy capabilities for both warfighting and day-to-day forward-deployed presence  Although the result of the FSA is often reduced for convenience to single number (e g , 355 ships), FSAs take into account a number of factors, including types and capabilities of Navy ships, aircraft, unmanned vehicles, and weapons, as well as ship homeporting arrangements and operational cycles  The Navy conducts a new FSA or an update to the existing FSA every few years, as circumstances require, to determine its force-structure goal  Section 1025 of the FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA ( H R  2810 / P L  115-91 of December 12, 2017), states the following: SEC  1025  Policy of the United States on minimum number of battle force ships  (a) Policy —It shall be the policy of the United States to have available, as soon as practicable, not fewer than 355 battle force ships, comprised of the optimal mix of platforms, with funding subject to the availability of appropriations or other funds  (b) Battle force ships defined —In this section, the term "battle force ship" has the meaning given the term in Secretary of the Navy Instruction 5030 8C  The term battle force ships in the above provision refers to the ships that count toward the quoted size of the Navy in public policy discussions about the Navy  The Navy states that a new FSA is now underway as the successor to the 2016 FSA, and that this new FSA is to be completed by the end of 2019  The new FSA, Navy officials state, will take into account the Trump Administration's December 2017 National Security Strategy document and its January 2018 National Defense Strategy document, both of which put an emphasis on renewed great power competition with China and Russia, as well as updated information on Chinese and Russian naval and other military capabilities and recent developments in new technologies, including those related to unmanned vehicles (UVs)  Navy officials have suggested in their public remarks that this new FSA could change the 355-ship figure, the planned mix of ships, or both  Some observers, viewing statements by Navy officials, believe the new FSA in particular might shift the Navy's surface force to a more distributed architecture that includes a reduced proportion of large surface combatants (i e , cruisers and destroyers), an increased proportion of small surface combatants (i e , frigates and LCSs), and a newly created third tier of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs)  Some observers believe the new FSA might also change the Navy's undersea force to a more distributed architecture that includes, in addition to attack submarines (SSNs) and bottom-based sensors, a new element of extremely large unmanned underwater vehicles (XLUUVs), which might be thought of as unmanned submarines  In presenting its proposed FY2020 budget, the Navy highlighted its plans for developing and procuring USVs and UUVs in coming years  Shifting to a more distributed force architecture, Navy officials have suggested, could be appropriate for implementing the Navy's new overarching operational concept, called Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO)  Observers view DMO as a response to both China's improving maritime anti-access/area denial capabilities (which include advanced weapons for attacking Navy surface ships) and opportunities created by new technologies, including technologies for UVs and for networking Navy ships, aircraft, unmanned vehicles, and sensors into distributed battle networks  Figure 1 shows a Navy briefing slide depicting the Navy's potential new surface force architecture, with each sphere representing a manned ship or a USV  Consistent with Figure 1 , the Navy's 355-ship goal, reflecting the current force architecture, calls for a Navy with twice as many large surface combatants as small surface combatants  Figure 1 suggests that the potential new surface force architecture could lead to the obverse—a planned force mix that calls for twice as many small surface combatants than large surface combatants—along with a new third tier of numerous USVs  Observers believe the new FSA might additionally change the top-level metric used to express the Navy's force-level goal or the method used to count the size of the Navy, or both, to include large USVs and large UUVs  Table 2 shows the Navy's FY2020 five-year (FY2020-FY2024) shipbuilding plan  The table also shows, for reference purposes, the ships funded for procurement in FY2019  The figures in the table reflect a Navy decision to show the aircraft carrier CVN-81 as a ship to be procured in FY2020 rather than a ship that was procured in FY2019  Congress, as part of its action on the Navy's proposed FY2019 budget, authorized the procurement of CVN-81 in FY2019  As shown in Table 2 , the Navy's proposed FY2020 budget requests funding for the procurement of 12 new ships, including one Gerald R  Ford (CVN-78) class aircraft carrier, three Virginia-class attack submarines, three DDG-51 class Aegis destroyers, one FFG(X) frigate, two John Lewis (TAO-205) class oilers, and two TATS towing, salvage, and rescue ships  If the Navy had listed CVN-81 as a ship procured in FY2019 rather than a ship to be procured in FY2020, then the total numbers of ships in FY2019 and FY2020 would be 14 and 11, respectively  As also shown Table 2 , the Navy's FY2020 five-year (FY2020-FY2024) shipbuilding plan includes 55 new ships, or an average of 11 new ships per year  The Navy's FY2019 budget submission also included a total of 55 ships in the period FY2020-FY2024, but the mix of ships making up the total of 55 for these years has been changed under the FY2020 budget submission to include one additional attack submarine, one additional FFG(X) frigate, and two (rather than four) LPD-17 Flight II amphibious ships over the five-year period  The FY2020 submission also makes some changes within the five-year period to annual procurement quantities for DDG-51 destroyers, ESBs, and TAO-205s without changing the five-year totals for these programs  Compared to what was projected for FY2020 itself under the FY2019 budget submission, the FY2020 request accelerates from FY2023 to FY2020 the aircraft carrier CVN-81 (as a result of Congress's action to authorize the ship in FY2019), adds a third attack submarine, accelerates from FY2021 into FY2020 a third DDG-51, defers from FY2020 to FY2021 an LPD-17 Flight II amphibious ship to FY2021, defers from FY2020 to FY2023 an ESB ship, and accelerates from FY2021 to FY2020 a second TAO-205 class oiler  Table 3 shows the Navy's FY2020-FY2049 30-year shipbuilding plan  In devising a 30-year shipbuilding plan to move the Navy toward its ship force-structure goal, key assumptions and planning factors include but are not limited to ship construction times and service lives, estimated ship procurement costs, projected shipbuilding funding levels, and industrial-base considerations  As shown in Table 3 , the Navy's FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan includes 304 new ships, or an average of about 10 per year  Table 4 shows the Navy's projection of ship force levels for FY2020-FY2049 that would result from implementing the FY2020 30-year (FY2020-FY2049) 30-year shipbuilding plan shown in Table 3   As shown in Table 4 , if the FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan is implemented, the Navy projects that it will achieve a total of 355 ships by FY2034  This is about 20 years sooner than projected under the Navy's FY2019 30-year shipbuilding plan  This is not primarily because the FY2020 30-year plan includes more ships than did the FY2019 plan: The total of 304 ships in the FY2020 plan is only three ships higher than the total of 301 ships in the FY2019 plan  Instead, it is primarily due to a decision announced by the Navy in April 2018, after the FY2019 budget was submitted, to increase the service lives of all DDG-51 destroyers—both those existing and those to be built in the future—to 45 years  Prior to this decision, the Navy had planned to keep older DDG-51s (referred to as the Flight I/II DDG-51s) in service for 35 years and newer DDG-51s (the Flight II/III DDG-51s) for 40 years  Figure 2 shows the Navy's projections for the total number of ships in the Navy under the Navy's FY2019 and FY2020 budget submissions  As can be seen in the figure, the Navy projected under the FY2019 plan that the fleet would not reach a total of 355 ships any time during the 30-year period  The projected number of aircraft carriers in Table 4 , the projected total number of all ships in Table 4 , and the line showing the total number of ships under the Navy's FY2020 budget submission in Figure 2 all reflect the Navy's proposal, under its FY2020 budget submission, to not fund the mid-life nuclear refueling overhaul (called a refueling complex overhaul, or RCOH) of the aircraft carrier Harry S  Truman (CVN-75), and to instead retire CVN-75 around FY2024  On April 30, 2019, however, the Administration announced that it was withdrawing this proposal from the Navy's FY2020 budget submission  The Administration now supports funding the CVN-75 RCOH and keeping CVN-75 in service past FY2024  As a result of the withdrawal of its proposal regarding the CVN-75 RCOH, the projected number of aircraft carriers and consequently the projected total number of all ships are now one ship higher for the period FY2022-FY2047 than what is shown in Table 4 , and the line in Figure 2 would be adjusted upward by one ship for those years  (The figures in Table 4 are left unchanged from what is shown in the FY2020 budget submission so as to accurately reflect what is shown in that budget submission ) As shown in Table 4 , although the Navy projects that the fleet will reach a total of 355 ships in FY2034, the Navy in that year and subsequent years will not match the composition called for in the FY2016 FSA  Among other things, the Navy will have more than the required number of large surface combatants (i e , cruisers and destroyers) from FY2030 through FY2040 (a consequence of the decision to extend the service lives of DDG-51s to 45 years), fewer than the required number of aircraft carriers through the end of the 30-year period, fewer than the required number of attack submarines through FY2047, and fewer than the required number of amphibious ships through the end of the 30-year period  The Navy acknowledges that the mix of ships will not match that called for by the 2016 FSA but states that if the Navy is going to have too many ships of a certain kind, DDG-51s are not a bad type of ship to have too many of, because they are very capable multi-mission ships  One issue for Congress is whether the new FSA that the Navy is conducting will change the 355-ship force-level objective established by the 2016 FSA and, if so, in what ways  As discussed earlier, Navy officials have suggested in their public remarks that this new FSA could shift the Navy toward a more distributed force architecture, which could change the 355-ship figure, the planned mix of ships, or both  The issue for Congress is how to assess the appropriateness of the Navy's FY2020 shipbuilding plans when a key measuring stick for conducting that assessment—the Navy's force-level goal and planned force mix—might soon change  Another oversight issue for Congress concerns the prospective affordability of the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan  This issue has been a matter of oversight focus for several years, and particularly since the enactment in 2011 of the Budget Control Act, or BCA ( S  365 / P L  112-25 of August 2, 2011)  Observers have been particularly concerned about the plan's prospective affordability during the decade or so from the mid-2020s through the mid-2030s, when the plan calls for procuring Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines as well as replacements for large numbers of retiring attack submarines, cruisers, and destroyers  Figure 3 shows, in a graphic form, the Navy's estimate of the annual amounts of funding that would be needed to implement the Navy's FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan  The figure shows that during the period from the mid-2020s through the mid-2030s, the Navy estimates that implementing the FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan would require roughly $24 billion per year in shipbuilding funds  As discussed in the CRS report on the Columbia-class program, the Navy since 2013 has identified the Columbia-class program as its top program priority, meaning that it is the Navy's intention to fully fund this program, if necessary at the expense of other Navy programs, including other Navy shipbuilding programs  This led to concerns that in a situation of finite Navy shipbuilding budgets, funding requirements for the Columbia-class program could crowd out funding for procuring other types of Navy ships  These concerns in turn led to the creation by Congress of the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund (NSBDF), a fund in the DOD budget that is intended in part to encourage policymakers to identify funding for the Columbia-class program from sources across the entire DOD budget rather than from inside the Navy's budget alone  Several years ago, when concerns arose about the potential impact of the Columbia-class program on funding available for other Navy shipbuilding programs, the Navy's shipbuilding budget was roughly $14 billion per year, and the roughly $7 billion per year that the Columbia-class program is projected to require from the mid-2020s to the mid-2030s (see Figure 3 ) represented roughly one-half of that total  With the Navy's shipbuilding budget having grown in more recent years to a total of roughly $24 billion per year, the $7 billion per year projected to be required by the Columbia-class program during those years does not loom proportionately as large as it once did in the Navy's shipbuilding budget picture  Even so, some concerns remain regarding the potential impact of the Columbia-class program on funding available for other Navy shipbuilding programs  If one or more Navy ship designs turn out to be more expensive to build than the Navy estimates, then the projected funding levels shown in Figure 3 would not be sufficient to procure all the ships shown in the 30-year shipbuilding plan  As detailed by CBO and GAO, lead ships in Navy shipbuilding programs in many cases have turned out to be more expensive to build than the Navy had estimated  Ship designs that can be viewed as posing a risk of being more expensive to build than the Navy estimates include Gerald R  Ford (CVN-78) class aircraft carriers, Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, Virginia-class attack submarines equipped with the Virginia Payload Module (VPM), Flight III versions of the DDG-51 destroyer, FFG(X) frigates, LPD-17 Flight II amphibious ships, and John Lewis (TAO-205) class oilers, as well as other new classes of ships that the Navy wants to begin procuring years from now  The statute that requires the Navy to submit a 30-year shipbuilding plan each year (10 U S C  231) also requires CBO to submit its own independent analysis of the potential cost of the 30-year plan (10 U S C  231[d])  CBO is now preparing its estimate of the cost of the Navy's FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan  In the meantime, Figure 4 shows, in a graphic form, CBO's estimate of the annual amounts of funding that would be needed to implement the Navy's FY2019 30-year shipbuilding plan  This figure might be compared to the Navy's estimate of its FY2020 30-year plan as shown in Figure 3 , although doing so poses some apples-vs -oranges issues, as the Navy's FY2019 and FY2020 30-year plans do not cover exactly the same 30-year periods, and for the years they do have in common, there are some differences in types and numbers of ships to be procured in certain years  CBO analyses of past Navy 30-year shipbuilding plans have generally estimated the cost of implementing those plans to be higher than what the Navy estimated  Consistent with that past pattern, as shown in Table 5 , CBO's estimate of the cost to implement the Navy's FY2019 30-year (FY2019-FY2048) shipbuilding plan is about 27% higher than the Navy's estimated cost for the FY2019 plan  ( Table 5 does not pose an apples-vs -oranges issue, because both the Navy and CBO estimates in this table are for the Navy's FY2019 30-year plan ) More specifically, as shown in the table, CBO estimated that the cost of the first 10 years of the FY2019 30-year plan would be about 2% higher than the Navy's estimate; that the cost of the middle 10 years of the plan would be about 13% higher than the Navy's estimate; and that the cost of the final 10 years of the plan would be about 27% higher than the Navy's estimate  The growing divergence between CBO's estimate and the Navy's estimate as one moves from the first 10 years of the 30-year plan to the final 10 years of the plan is due in part to a technical difference between CBO and the Navy regarding the treatment of inflation  This difference compounds over time, making it increasingly important as a factor in the difference between CBO's estimates and the Navy's estimates the further one goes into the 30-year period  In other words, other things held equal, this factor tends to push the CBO and Navy estimates further apart as one proceeds from the earlier years of the plan to the later years of the plan  The growing divergence between CBO's estimate and the Navy's estimate as one moves from the first 10 years of the 30-year plan to the final 10 years of the plan is also due to differences between CBO and the Navy about the costs of certain ship classes, particularly classes that are projected to be procured starting years from now  The designs of these future ship classes are not yet determined, creating more potential for CBO and the Navy to come to differing conclusions regarding their potential cost  For the FY2019 30-year plan, the largest source of difference between CBO and the Navy regarding the costs of individual ship classes was a new class of SSNs that the Navy wants to begin procuring in FY2034 as the successor to the Virginia-class SSN design  This new class of SSN, CBO says, accounted for 42% of the difference between the CBO and Navy estimates for the FY2019 30-year plan, in part because there were a substantial number of these SSNs in the plan, and because those ships occur in the latter years of the plan, where the effects of the technical difference between CBO and the Navy regarding the treatment of inflation show more strongly  The second-largest source of difference between CBO and the Navy regarding the costs of individual ship classes was a new class of large surface combatant (i e , cruiser or destroyer) that the Navy wants to begin procuring in the future, which accounted for 20% of the difference, for reasons that are similar to those mentioned above for the new class of SSNs  The third-largest source of difference was the new class of frigates (FFG[X]s) that the Navy wants to begin procuring in FY2020, which accounts for 9% of the difference  The remaining 29% of difference between the CBO and Navy estimates was accounted for collectively by several other shipbuilding programs, each of which individually accounts for between 1% and 4% of the difference  The Columbia-class program, which accounted for 4%, is one of the programs in this final group  Detailed coverage of legislative activity on certain Navy shipbuilding programs (including funding levels, legislative provisions, and report language) can be found in the following CRS reports: CRS Report R41129, Navy Columbia (SSBN-826) Class Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report RL32418, Navy Virginia (SSN-774) Class Attack Submarine Procurement: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report RS20643, Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  (This report also covers the issue of the Administration's FY2020 budget proposal, which the Administration withdrew on April 30, to not fund a mid-life refueling overhaul [called a refueling complex overhaul, or RCOH] for the aircraft carrier Harry S  Truman [CVN-75], and to retire CVN-75 around FY2024 ) CRS Report RL32109, Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report R44972, Navy Frigate (FFG[X]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report RL33741, Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  CRS Report R43543, Navy LPD-17 Flight II Amphibious Ship Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  (This report also covers the issue of funding for the procurement of an amphibious assault ship called LHA-9 ) CRS Report R43546, Navy John Lewis (TAO-205) Class Oiler Shipbuilding Program: Background and Issues for Congress , by Ronald O'Rourke  Legislative activity on individual Navy shipbuilding programs that are not covered in detail in the above reports is covered below  The Navy's proposed FY2020 budget requests funding for the procurement of 12 new ships: 1 Gerald R  Ford (CVN-78) class aircraft carrier; 3 Virginia-class attack submarines; 3 DDG-51 class Aegis destroyers; 1 FFG(X) frigate; 2 John Lewis (TAO-205) class oilers; and 2 TATS towing, salvage, and rescue ships  As noted earlier, the above list of 12 ships reflects a Navy decision to show the aircraft carrier CVN-81 as a ship to be procured in FY2020 rather than a ship that was procured in FY2019  Congress, as part of its action on the Navy's proposed FY2019 budget, authorized the procurement of CVN-81 in FY2019  The Navy's proposed FY2020 shipbuilding budget also requests funding for ships that have been procured in prior fiscal years, and ships that are to be procured in future fiscal years, as well as funding for activities other than the building of new Navy ships  Table 6 summarizes congressional action on the Navy's FY2020 funding request for Navy shipbuilding  The table shows the amounts requested and congressional changes to those requested amounts  A blank cell in a filled-in column showing congressional changes to requested amounts indicates no change from the requested amount  Appendix A  Strategic and Budgetary Context This appendix presents some brief comments on elements of the strategic and budgetary context in which U S  Navy force structure and shipbuilding plans may be considered  Shift in International Security Environment World events have led some observers, starting in late 2013, to conclude that the international security environment has undergone a shift over the past several years from the familiar post-Cold War era of the past 20-25 years, also sometimes known as the unipolar moment (with the United States as the unipolar power), to a new and different strategic situation that features, among other things, renewed great power competition with China and Russia, and challenges to elements of the U S -led international order that has operated since World War II  This situation is discussed further in another CRS report  World Geography and U S  Grand Strategy Discussion of the above-mentioned shift in the international security environment has led to a renewed emphasis in discussions of U S  security and foreign policy on grand strategy and geopolitics  From a U S  perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world's people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia  In response to this basic feature of world geography, U S  policymakers for the past several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U S  national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another, on the grounds that such a hegemon could represent a concentration of power strong enough to threaten core U S  interests by, for example, denying the United States access to some of the other hemisphere's resources and economic activity  Although U S  policymakers have not often stated this key national strategic goal explicitly in public, U S  military (and diplomatic) operations in recent decades—both wartime operations and day-to-day operations—can be viewed as having been carried out in no small part in support of this key goal  U S  Grand Strategy and U S  Naval Forces As noted above, in response to basic world geography, U S  policymakers for the past several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U S  national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another  The traditional U S  goal of preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another has been a major reason why the U S  military is structured with force elements that enable it to cross broad expanses of ocean and air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival  Force elements associated with this goal include, among other things, an Air Force with significant numbers of long-range bombers, long-range surveillance aircraft, long-range airlift aircraft, and aerial refueling tankers, and a Navy with significant numbers of aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered attack submarines, large surface combatants, large amphibious ships, and underway replenishment ships  The United States is the only country in the world that has designed its military to cross broad expanses of ocean and air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival  The other countries in the Western Hemisphere do not design their forces to do this because they cannot afford to, and because the United States has been, in effect, doing it for them  Countries in the other hemisphere do not design their forces to do this for the very basic reason that they are already in the other hemisphere, and consequently instead spend their defense money on forces that are tailored largely for influencing events in their own local region  The fact that the United States has designed its military to do something that other countries do not design their forces to do—cross broad expanses of ocean and air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival—can be important to keep in mind when comparing the U S  military to the militaries of other nations  For example, in observing that the U S  Navy has 11 aircraft carriers while other countries have no more than one or two, it can be noted other countries do not need a significant number of aircraft carriers because, unlike the United States, they are not designing their forces to cross broad expanses of ocean and air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival  As another example, it is sometimes noted, in assessing the adequacy of U S  naval forces, that U S  naval forces are equal in tonnage to the next dozen or more navies combined, and that most of those next dozen or more navies are the navies of U S  allies  Those other fleets, however, are mostly of Eurasian countries, which do not design their forces to cross to the other side of the world and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival  The fact that the U S  Navy is much bigger than allied navies does not necessarily prove that U S  naval forces are either sufficient or excessive; it simply reflects the differing and generally more limited needs that U S  allies have for naval forces  (It might also reflect an underinvestment by some of those allies to meet even their more limited naval needs ) Countries have differing needs for naval and other military forces  The United States, as a country located in the Western Hemisphere that has adopted a goal of preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another, has defined a need for naval and other military forces that is quite different from the needs of allies that are located in Eurasia  The sufficiency of U S  naval and other military forces consequently is best assessed not through comparison to the militaries of other countries, but against U S  strategic goals  More generally, from a geopolitical perspective, it can be noted that that U S  naval forces, while not inexpensive, give the United States the ability to convert the world's oceans—a global commons that covers more than two-thirds of the planet's surface—into a medium of maneuver and operations for projecting U S  power ashore and otherwise defending U S  interests around the world  The ability to use the world's oceans in this manner—and to deny other countries the use of the world's oceans for taking actions against U S  interests—constitutes an immense asymmetric advantage for the United States  This point would be less important if less of the world were covered by water, or if the oceans were carved into territorial blocks, like the land  Most of the world, however, is covered by water, and most of those waters are international waters, where naval forces can operate freely  The point, consequently, is not that U S  naval forces are intrinsically special or privileged—it is that they have a certain value simply as a consequence of the physical and legal organization of the planet  Uncertainty Regarding Future U S  Role in the World The overall U S  role in the world since the end of World War II in 1945 (i e , over the past 70 years) is generally described as one of global leadership and significant engagement in international affairs  A key aim of that role has been to promote and defend the open international order that the United States, with the support of its allies, created in the years after World War II  In addition to promoting and defending the open international order, the overall U S  role is generally described as having been one of promoting freedom, democracy, and human rights, while criticizing and resisting authoritarianism where possible, and opposing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia or a spheres-of-influence world  Certain statements and actions from the Trump Administration have led to uncertainty about the Administration's intentions regarding the U S  role in the world  Based on those statements and actions, some observers have speculated that the Trump Administration may want to change the U S  role in one or more ways  A change in the overall U S  role could have profound implications for DOD strategy, budgets, plans, and programs, including the planned size and structure of the Navy  Declining U S  Technological and Qualitative Edge DOD officials have expressed concern that the technological and qualitative edge that U S  military forces have had relative to the military forces of other countries is being narrowed by improving military capabilities in other countries  China's improving military capabilities are a primary contributor to that concern  Russia's rejuvenated military capabilities are an additional contributor  DOD in recent years has taken a number of actions to arrest and reverse the decline in the U S  technological and qualitative edge  Challenge to U S  Sea Control and U S  Position in Western Pacific Observers of Chinese and U S  military forces view China's improving naval capabilities as posing a potential challenge in the Western Pacific to the U S  Navy's ability to achieve and maintain control of blue-water ocean areas in wartime—the first such challenge the U S  Navy has faced since the end of the Cold War  More broadly, these observers view China's naval capabilities as a key element of an emerging broader Chinese military challenge to the long-standing status of the United States as the leading military power in the Western Pacific  Longer Ship Deployments U S  Navy officials have testified that fully meeting requests from U S  regional combatant commanders (CCDRs) for forward-deployed U S  naval forces would require a Navy much larger than today's fleet  For example, Navy officials testified in March 2014 that a Navy of 450 ships would be required to fully meet CCDR requests for forward-deployed Navy forces  CCDR requests for forward-deployed U S  Navy forces are adjudicated by DOD through a process called the Global Force Management Allocation Plan  The process essentially makes choices about how best to apportion a finite number forward-deployed U S  Navy ships among competing CCDR requests for those ships  Even with this process, the Navy has lengthened the deployments of some ships in an attempt to meet policymaker demands for forward-deployed U S  Navy ships  Although Navy officials are aiming to limit ship deployments to seven months, Navy ships in recent years have frequently been deployed for periods of eight months or more  Limits on Defense Spending in Budget Control Act of 2011 as Amended Limits on the "base" portion of the U S  defense budget established by Budget Control Act of 2011, or BCA ( S  365 / P L  112-25 of August 2, 2011), as amended, combined with some of the considerations above, have led to discussions among observers about how to balance competing demands for finite U S  defense funds, and about whether programs for responding to China's military modernization effort can be adequately funded while also adequately funding other defense-spending priorities, such as initiatives for responding to Russia's actions in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe and U S  operations for countering the Islamic State organization in the Middle East  Appendix B  Earlier Navy Force-Structure Goals Dating Back to 2001 The table below shows earlier Navy force-structure goals dating back to 2001  The 308-ship force-level goal of March 2015, shown in the first column of the table, is the goal that was replaced by the 355-ship force-level goal released in December 2016  Appendix C  Comparing Past Ship Force Levels to Current or Potential Future Ship Force Levels In assessing the appropriateness of the current or potential future number of ships in the Navy, observers sometimes compare that number to historical figures for total Navy fleet size  Historical figures for total fleet size, however, can be a problematic yardstick for assessing the appropriateness of the current or potential future number of ships in the Navy, particularly if the historical figures are more than a few years old, because the missions to be performed by the Navy, the mix of ships that make up the Navy, and the technologies that are available to Navy ships for performing missions all change over time; and the number of ships in the fleet in an earlier year might itself have been inappropriate (i e , not enough or more than enough) for meeting the Navy's mission requirements in that year  Regarding the first bullet point above, the Navy, for example, reached a late-Cold War peak of 568 battle force ships at the end of FY1987, and as of May 7, 2019, included a total of 289 battle force ships  The FY1987 fleet, however, was intended to meet a set of mission requirements that focused on countering Soviet naval forces at sea during a potential multitheater NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict, while the May 2019 fleet is intended to meet a considerably different set of mission requirements centered on influencing events ashore by countering both land- and sea-based military forces of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, as well as nonstate terrorist organizations  In addition, the Navy of FY1987 differed substantially from the May 2019 fleet in areas such as profusion of precision-guided air-delivered weapons, numbers of Tomahawk-capable ships, and the sophistication of C4ISR systems and networking capabilities  In coming years, Navy missions may shift again, and the capabilities of Navy ships will likely have changed further by that time due to developments such as more comprehensive implementation of networking technology, increased use of ship-based unmanned vehicles, and the potential fielding of new types of weapons such as lasers or electromagnetic rail guns  The 568-ship fleet of FY1987 may or may not have been capable of performing its stated missions; the 289-ship fleet of May 2019 may or may not be capable of performing its stated missions; and a fleet years from now with a certain number of ships may or may not be capable of performing its stated missions  Given changes over time in mission requirements, ship mixes, and technologies, however, these three issues are to a substantial degree independent of one another  For similar reasons, trends over time in the total number of ships in the Navy are not necessarily a reliable indicator of the direction of change in the fleet's ability to perform its stated missions  An increasing number of ships in the fleet might not necessarily mean that the fleet's ability to perform its stated missions is increasing, because the fleet's mission requirements might be increasing more rapidly than ship numbers and average ship capability  Similarly, a decreasing number of ships in the fleet might not necessarily mean that the fleet's ability to perform stated missions is decreasing, because the fleet's mission requirements might be declining more rapidly than numbers of ships, or because average ship capability and the percentage of time that ships are in deployed locations might be increasing quickly enough to more than offset reductions in total ship numbers  Regarding the second of the two bullet points above, it can be noted that comparisons of the size of the fleet today with the size of the fleet in earlier years rarely appear to consider whether the fleet was appropriately sized in those earlier years (and therefore potentially suitable as a yardstick of comparison), even though it is quite possible that the fleet in those earlier years might not have been appropriately sized, and even though there might have been differences of opinion among observers at that time regarding that question  Just as it might not be prudent for observers years from now to tacitly assume that the 286-ship Navy of September 2018 was appropriately sized for meeting the mission requirements of 2018, even though there were differences of opinion among observers on that question, simply because a figure of 286 ships appears in the historical records for 2016, so, too, might it not be prudent for observers today to tacitly assume that the number of ships of the Navy in an earlier year was appropriate for meeting the Navy's mission requirements that year, even though there might have been differences of opinion among observers at that time regarding that question, simply because the size of the Navy in that year appears in a table like Table H-1   Previous Navy force structure plans, such as those shown in Table B-1 , might provide some insight into the potential adequacy of a proposed new force-structure plan, but changes over time in mission requirements, technologies available to ships for performing missions, and other force-planning factors, as well as the possibility that earlier force-structure plans might not have been appropriate for meeting the mission demands of their times, suggest that some caution should be applied in using past force structure plans for this purpose, particularly if those past force structure plans are more than a few years old  The Reagan-era goal for a 600-ship Navy, for example, was designed for a Cold War set of missions focusing on countering Soviet naval forces at sea, which is not an appropriate basis for planning the Navy today, and there was considerable debate during those years as to the appropriateness of the 600-ship goal  Appendix D  Industrial Base Ability for, and Employment Impact of, Additional Shipbuilding Work This appendix presents background information on the ability of the industrial base to take on the additional shipbuilding work associated with achieving and maintaining the Navy's 355-ship force-level goal and on the employment impact of additional shipbuilding work  Industrial Base Ability The U S  shipbuilding industrial base has some unused capacity to take on increased Navy shipbuilding work, particularly for certain kinds of surface ships, and its capacity could be increased further over time to support higher Navy shipbuilding rates  Navy shipbuilding rates could not be increased steeply across the board overnight—time (and investment) would be needed to hire and train additional workers and increase production facilities at shipyards and supplier firms, particularly for supporting higher rates of submarine production  Depending on their specialties, newly hired workers could be initially less productive per unit of time worked than more experienced workers  Some parts of the shipbuilding industrial base, such as the submarine construction industrial base, could face more challenges than others in ramping up to the higher production rates required to build the various parts of the 355-ship fleet  Over a period of a few to several years, with investment and management attention, Navy shipbuilding could ramp up to higher rates for achieving a 355-ship fleet over a period of 20-30 years  An April 2017 CBO report stated that all seven shipyards [currently involved in building the Navy's major ships] would need to increase their workforces and several would need to make improvements to their infrastructure in order to build ships at a faster rate  However, certain sectors face greater obstacles in constructing ships at faster rates than others: Building more submarines to meet the goals of the 2016 force structure assessment would pose the greatest challenge to the shipbuilding industry  Increasing the number of aircraft carriers and surface combatants would pose a small to moderate challenge to builders of those vessels  Finally, building more amphibious ships and combat logistics and support ships would be the least problematic for the shipyards  The workforces across those yards would need to increase by about 40 percent over the next 5 to 10 years  Managing the growth and training of those new workforces while maintaining the current standard of quality and efficiency would represent the most significant industrywide challenge  In addition, industry and Navy sources indicate that as much as $4 billion would need to be invested in the physical infrastructure of the shipyards to achieve the higher production rates required under the [notional] 15-year and 20-year [buildup scenarios examined by CBO]  Less investment would be needed for the [notional] 25-year or 30-year [buildup scenarios examined by CBO]  A January 13, 2017, press report states the following: The Navy's production lines are hot and the work to prepare them for the possibility of building out a much larger fleet would be manageable, the service's head of acquisition said Thursday  From a logistics perspective, building the fleet from its current 274 ships to 355, as recommended in the Navy's newest force structure assessment in December, would be straightforward, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Sean Stackley told reporters at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium  "By virtue of maintaining these hot production lines, frankly, over the last eight years, our facilities are in pretty good shape," Stackley said  "In fact, if you talked to industry, they would say we're underutilizing the facilities that we have " The areas where the Navy would likely have to adjust "tooling" to answer demand for a larger fleet would likely be in Virginia-class attack submarines and large surface combatants, the DDG-51 guided missile destroyers—two ship classes likely to surge if the Navy gets funding to build to 355 ships, he said  "Industry's going to have to go out and procure special tooling associated with going from current production rates to a higher rate, but I would say that's easily done," he said  Another key, Stackley said, is maintaining skilled workers—both the builders in the yards and the critical supply-chain vendors who provide major equipment needed for ship construction  And, he suggested, it would help to avoid budget cuts and other events that would force workforce layoffs  "We're already prepared to ramp up," he said  "In certain cases, that means not laying off the skilled workforce we want to retain " A January 17, 2017, press report states the following: Building stable designs with active production lines is central to the Navy's plan to grow to 355 ships  "if you look at the 355-ship number, and you study the ship classes (desired), the big surge is in attack submarines and large surface combatants, which today are DDG-51 (destroyers)," the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Sean Stackley, told reporters at last week's Surface Navy Association conference  Those programs have proven themselves reliable performers both at sea and in the shipyards  From today's fleet of 274 ships, "we're on an irreversible path to 308 by 2021  Those ships are already in construction," said Stackley  "To go from there to 355, virtually all those ships are currently in production, with some exceptions: Ohio Replacement, (we) just got done the Milestone B there (to move from R&D into detailed design); and then upgrades to existing platforms  So we have hot production lines that will take us to that 355-ship Navy " A January 24, 2017, press report states the following: Navy officials say a recently determined plan to increase its fleet size by adding more new submarines, carriers and destroyers is "executable" and that early conceptual work toward this end is already underway     Although various benchmarks will need to be reached in order for this new plan to come to fruition, such as Congressional budget allocations, Navy officials do tell Scout Warrior that the service is already working—at least in concept—on plans to vastly enlarge the fleet  Findings from this study are expected to inform an upcoming 2018 Navy Shipbuilding Plan, service officials said  A January 12, 2017, press report states the following: Brian Cuccias, president of Ingalls Shipbuilding [a shipyard owned by Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) that builds Navy destroyers and amphibious ships as well as Coast Guard cutters], said Ingalls, which is currently building 10 ships for four Navy and Coast Guard programs at its 800-acre facility in Pascagoula, Miss , could build more because it is using only 70 to 75 percent of its capacity  A March 2017 press report states the following: As the Navy calls for a larger fleet, shipbuilders are looking toward new contracts and ramping up their yards to full capacity     The Navy is confident that U S  shipbuilders will be able to meet an increased demand, said Ray Mabus, then-secretary of the Navy, during a speech at the Surface Navy Association's annual conference in Arlington, Virginia  They have the capacity to "get there because of the ships we are building today," Mabus said  "I don't think we could have seven years ago " Shipbuilders around the United States have "hot" production lines and are manufacturing vessels on multi-year or block buy contracts, he added  The yards have made investments in infrastructure and in the training of their workers  "We now have the basis     [to] get to that much larger fleet," he said     Shipbuilders have said they are prepared for more work  At Ingalls Shipbuilding—a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries—10 ships are under construction at its Pascagoula, Mississippi, yard, but it is under capacity, said Brian Cuccias, the company's president  The shipbuilder is currently constructing five guided-missile destroyers, the latest San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, and two national security cutters for the Coast Guard  "Ingalls is a very successful production line right now, but it has the ability to actually produce a lot more in the future," he said during a briefing with reporters in January  The company's facility is currently operating at 75 percent capacity, he noted     Austal USA—the builder of the Independence-variant of the littoral combat ship and the expeditionary fast transport vessel—is also ready to increase its capacity should the Navy require it, said Craig Perciavalle, the company's president  The latest discussions are "certainly something that a shipbuilder wants to hear," he said  "We do have the capability of increasing throughput if the need and demand were to arise, and then we also have the ability with the present workforce and facility to meet a different mix that could arise as well " Austal could build fewer expeditionary fast transport vessels and more littoral combat ships, or vice versa, he added  "The key thing for us is to keep the manufacturing lines hot and really leverage the momentum that we've gained on both of the programs," he said  The company—which has a 164-acre yard in Mobile, Alabama—is focused on the extension of the LCS and expeditionary fast transport ship program, but Perciavalle noted that it could look into manufacturing other types of vessels  "We do have excess capacity to even build smaller vessels … if that opportunity were to arise and we're pursuing that," he said  Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D C -based think tank, said shipbuilders are on average running between 70 and 80 percent capacity  While they may be ready to meet an increased demand for ships, it would take time to ramp up their workforces  However, the bigger challenge is the supplier industrial base, he said  "Shipyards may be able to build ships but the supplier base that builds the pumps … and the radars and the radios and all those other things, they don't necessarily have that ability to ramp up," he said  "You would need to put some money into building up their capacity " That has to happen now, he added  Rear Adm  William Gallinis, program manager for program executive office ships, said what the Navy must be "mindful of is probably our vendor base that support the shipyards " Smaller companies that supply power electronics and switchboards could be challenged, he said  "Do we need to re-sequence some of the funding to provide some of the facility improvements for some of the vendors that may be challenged? My sense is that the industrial base will size to the demand signal  We just need to be mindful of how we transition to that increased demand signal," he said  The acquisition workforce may also see an increased amount of stress, Gallinis noted  "It takes a fair amount of experience and training to get a good contracting officer to the point to be [able to] manage contracts or procure contracts " "But I don't see anything that is insurmountable," he added  At a May 24, 2017, hearing before the Seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the industrial-base aspects of the Navy's 355-ship goal, John P  Casey, executive vice president–marine systems, General Dynamics Corporation (one of the country's two principal builders of Navy ships) stated the following: It is our belief that the Nation's shipbuilding industrial base can scale-up hot production lines for existing ships and mobilize additional resources to accomplish the significant challenge of achieving the 355-ship Navy as quickly as possible     Supporting a plan to achieve a 355-ship Navy will be the most challenging for the nuclear submarine enterprise  Much of the shipyard and industrial base capacity was eliminated following the steep drop-off in submarine production that occurred with the cancellation of the Seawolf Program in 1992  The entire submarine industrial base at all levels of the supply chain will likely need to recapitalize some portion of its facilities, workforce, and supply chain just to support the current plan to build the Columbia Class SSBN program, while concurrently building Virginia Class SSNs  Additional SSN procurement will require industry to expand its plans and associated investment beyond the level today     Shipyard labor resources include the skilled trades needed to fabricate, build and outfit major modules, perform assembly, test and launch of submarines, and associated support organizations that include planning, material procurement, inspection, quality assurance, and ship certification  Since there is no commercial equivalency for Naval nuclear submarine shipbuilding, these trade resources cannot be easily acquired in large numbers from other industries  Rather, these shipyard resources must be acquired and developed over time to ensure the unique knowledge and know-how associated with nuclear submarine shipbuilding is passed on to the next generation of shipbuilders  The mechanisms of knowledge transfer require sufficient lead time to create the proficient, skilled craftsmen in each key trade including welding, electrical, machining, shipfitting, pipe welding, painting, and carpentry, which are among the largest trades that would need to grow to support increased demand  These trades will need to be hired in the numbers required to support the increased workload  Both shipyards have scalable processes in place to acquire, train, and develop the skilled workforce they need to build nuclear ships  These processes and associated training facilities need to be expanded to support the increased demand  As with the shipyards, the same limiting factors associated with facilities, workforce, and supply chain also limit the submarine unique first tier suppliers and sub-tiers in the industrial base for which there is no commercial equivalency     The supply base is the third resource that will need to be expanded to meet the increased demand over the next 20 years  During the OHIO, 688 and SEAWOLF construction programs, there were over 17,000 suppliers supporting submarine construction programs  That resource base was "rationalized" during submarine low rate production over the last 20 years  The current submarine industrial base reflects about 5,000 suppliers, of which about 3,000 are currently active (i e , orders placed within the last 5 years), 80% of which are single or sole source (based on $)  It will take roughly 20 years to build the 12 Columbia Class submarines that starts construction in FY21  The shipyards are expanding strategic sourcing of appropriate non-core products (e g , decks, tanks, etc ) in order to focus on core work at each shipyard facility (e g , module outfitting and assembly)  Strategic sourcing will move demand into the supply base where capacity may exist or where it can be developed more easily  This approach could offer the potential for cost savings by competition or shifting work to lower cost work centers throughout the country  Each shipyard has a process to assess their current supply base capacity and capability and to determine where it would be most advantageous to perform work in the supply base     Achieving the increased rate of production and reducing the cost of submarines will require the Shipbuilders to rely on the supply base for more non-core products such as structural fabrication, sheet metal, machining, electrical, and standard parts  The supply base must be made ready to execute work with submarine-specific requirements at a rate and volume that they are not currently prepared to perform  Preparing the supply base to execute increased demand requires early non-recurring funding to support cross-program construction readiness and EOQ funding to procure material in a manner that does not hold up existing ship construction schedules should problems arise in supplier qualification programs  This requires longer lead times (estimates of three years to create a new qualified, critical supplier) than the current funding profile supports     We need to rely on market principles to allow suppliers, the shipyards and GFE material providers to sort through the complicated demand equation across the multiple ship programs  Supplier development funding previously mentioned would support non-recurring efforts which are needed to place increased orders for material in multiple market spaces  Examples would include valves, build-to-print fabrication work, commodities, specialty material, engineering components, etc  We are engaging our marine industry associations to help foster innovative approaches that could reduce costs and gain efficiency for this increased volume     Supporting the 355-ship Navy will require Industry to add capability and capacity across the entire Navy Shipbuilding value chain  Industry will need to make investment decisions for additional capital spend starting now in order to meet a step change in demand that would begin in FY19 or FY20  For the submarine enterprise, the step change was already envisioned and investment plans that embraced a growth trajectory were already being formulated  Increasing demand by adding additional submarines will require scaling facility and workforce development plans to operate at a higher rate of production  The nuclear shipyards would also look to increase material procurement proportionally to the increased demand  In some cases, the shipyard facilities may be constrained with existing capacity and may look to source additional work in the supply base where capacity exists or where there are competitive business advantages to be realized  Creating additional capacity in the supply base will require non-recurring investment in supplier qualification, facilities, capital equipment and workforce training and development  Industry is more likely to increase investment in new capability and capacity if there is certainty that the Navy will proceed with a stable shipbuilding plan  Positive signals of commitment from the Government must go beyond a published 30-year Navy Shipbuilding Plan and line items in the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) and should include: Multi-year contracting for Block procurement which provides stability in the industrial base and encourages investment in facilities and workforce development Funding for supplier development to support training, qualification, and facilitization efforts—Electric Boat and Newport News have recommended to the Navy funding of $400M over a three-year period starting in 2018 to support supplier development for the Submarine Industrial Base as part of an Integrated Enterprise Plan Extended Enterprise initiative Acceleration of Advance Procurement and/or Economic Order Quantities (EOQ) procurement from FY19 to FY18 for Virginia Block V Government incentives for construction readiness and facilities / special tooling for shipyard and supplier facilities, which help cash flow capital investment ahead of construction contract awards Procurement of additional production back-up (PBU) material to help ensure a ready supply of material to mitigate construction schedule risk     So far, this testimony has focused on the Submarine Industrial Base, but the General Dynamics Marine Systems portfolio also includes surface ship construction  Unlike Electric Boat, Bath Iron Works and NASSCO are able to support increased demand without a significant increase in resources      Bath Iron Works is well positioned to support the Administration's announced goal of increasing the size of the Navy fleet to 355 ships  For BIW that would mean increasing the total current procurement rate of two DDG 51s per year to as many as four DDGs per year, allocated equally between BIW and HII  This is the same rate that the surface combatant industrial base sustained over the first decade of full rate production of the DDG 51 Class (1989-1999)     No significant capital investment in new facilities is required to accommodate delivering two DDGs per year  However, additional funding will be required to train future shipbuilders and maintain equipment  Current hiring and training processes support the projected need, and have proven to be successful in the recent past  BIW has invested significantly in its training programs since 2014 with the restart of the DDG 51 program and given these investments and the current market in Maine, there is little concern of meeting the increase in resources required under the projected plans  A predictable and sustainable Navy workload is essential to justify expanding hiring/training programs  BIW would need the Navy's commitment that the Navy's plan will not change before it would proceed with additional hiring and training to support increased production  BIW's supply chain is prepared to support a procurement rate increase of up to four DDG 51s per year for the DDG 51 Program  BIW has long-term purchasing agreements in place for all major equipment and material for the DDG 51 Program  These agreements provide for material lead time and pricing, and are not constrained by the number of ships ordered in a year  BIW confirmed with all of its critical suppliers that they can support this increased procurement rate     The Navy's Force Structure Assessment calls for three additional ESBs  Additionally, NASSCO has been asked by the Navy and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to evaluate its ability to increase the production rate of T-AOs to two ships per year  NASSCO has the capacity to build three more ESBs at a rate of one ship per year while building two T-AOs per year  The most cost effective funding profile requires funding ESB 6 in FY18 and the following ships in subsequent fiscal years to avoid increased cost resulting from a break in the production line  The most cost effective funding profile to enable a production rate of two T-AO ships per year requires funding an additional long lead time equipment set beginning in FY19 and an additional ship each year beginning in FY20  NASSCO must now reduce its employment levels due to completion of a series of commercial programs which resulted in the delivery of six ships in 2016  The proposed increase in Navy shipbuilding stabilizes NASSCO's workload and workforce to levels that were readily demonstrated over the last several years  Some moderate investment in the NASSCO shipyard will be needed to reach this level of production  The recent CBO report on the costs of building a 355-ship Navy accurately summarized NASSCO's ability to reach the above production rate stating, "building more … combat logistics and support ships would be the least problematic for the shipyards " At the same hearing, Brian Cuccias, president, Ingalls Shipbuilding, Huntington Ingalls Industries (the country's other principal builder of Navy ships) stated the following: Qualifying to be a supplier is a difficult process  Depending on the commodity, it may take up to 36 months  That is a big burden on some of these small businesses  This is why creating sufficient volume and exercising early contractual authorization and advance procurement funding is necessary to grow the supplier base, and not just for traditional long-lead time components; that effort needs to expand to critical components and commodities that today are controlling the build rate of submarines and carriers alike  Many of our suppliers are small businesses and can only make decisions to invest in people, plant and tooling when they are awarded a purchase order  We need to consider how we can make commitments to suppliers early enough to ensure material readiness and availability when construction schedules demand it  With questions about the industry's ability to support an increase in shipbuilding, both Newport News and Ingalls have undertaken an extensive inventory of our suppliers and assessed their ability to ramp up their capacity  We have engaged many of our key suppliers to assess their ability to respond to an increase in production  The fortunes of related industries also impact our suppliers, and an increase in demand from the oil and gas industry may stretch our supply base  Although some low to moderate risk remains, I am convinced that our suppliers will be able to meet the forecasted Navy demand     I strongly believe that the fastest results can come from leveraging successful platforms on current hot production lines  We commend the Navy's decision in 2014 to use the existing LPD 17 hull form for the LX(R), which will replace the LSD-class amphibious dock landing ships scheduled to retire in the coming years  However, we also recommend that the concept of commonality be taken even further to best optimize efficiency, affordability and capability  Specifically, rather than continuing with a new design for LX(R) within the "walls" of the LPD hull, we can leverage our hot production line and supply chain and offer the Navy a variant of the existing LPD design that satisfies the aggressive cost targets of the LX(R) program while delivering more capability and survivability to the fleet at a significantly faster pace than the current program  As much as 10-15 percent material savings can be realized across the LX(R) program by purchasing respective blocks of at least five ships each under a multi-year procurement (MYP) approach  In the aggregate, continuing production with LPD 30 in FY18, coupled with successive MYP contracts for the balance of ships, may yield savings greater than $1 billion across an 11-ship LX(R) program  Additionally, we can deliver five LX(R)s to the Navy and Marine Corps in the same timeframe that the current plan would deliver two, helping to reduce the shortfall in amphibious warships against the stated force requirement of 38 ships  Multi-ship procurements, whether a formal MYP or a block-buy, are a proven way to reduce the price of ships  The Navy took advantage of these tools on both Virginia-class submarines and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers  In addition to the LX(R) program mentioned above, expanding multi-ship procurements to other ship classes makes sense     The most efficient approach to lower the cost of the Ford class and meet the goal of an increased CVN fleet size is also to employ a multi-ship procurement strategy and construct these ships at three-year intervals  This approach would maximize the material procurement savings benefit through economic order quantities procurement and provide labor efficiencies to enable rapid acquisition of a 12-ship CVN fleet  This three-ship approach would save at least $1 5 billion, not including additional savings that could be achieved from government-furnished equipment  As part of its Integrated Enterprise Plan, we commend the Navy's efforts to explore the prospect of material economic order quantity purchasing across carrier and submarine programs  At the same hearing, Matthew O  Paxton, president, Shipbuilders Council of America (SCA)—a trade association representing shipbuilders, suppliers, and associated firms—stated the following: To increase the Navy's Fleet to 355 ships, a substantial and sustained investment is required in both procurement and readiness  However, let me be clear: building and sustaining the larger required Fleet is achievable and our industry stands ready to help achieve that important national security objective  To meet the demand for increased vessel construction while sustaining the vessels we currently have will require U S  shipyards to expand their work forces and improve their infrastructure in varying degrees depending on ship type and ship mix – a requirement our Nation's shipyards are eager to meet  But first, in order to build these ships in as timely and affordable manner as possible, stable and robust funding is necessary to sustain those industrial capabilities which support Navy shipbuilding and ship maintenance and modernization     Beyond providing for the building of a 355-ship Navy, there must also be provision to fund the "tail," the maintenance of the current and new ships entering the fleet  Target fleet size cannot be reached if existing ships are not maintained to their full service lives, while building those new ships  Maintenance has been deferred in the last few years because of across-the-board budget cuts     The domestic shipyard industry certainly has the capability and know-how to build and maintain a 355-ship Navy  The Maritime Administration determined in a recent study on the Economic Benefits of the U S  Shipyard Industry that there are nearly 110,000 skilled men and women in the Nation's private shipyards building, repairing and maintaining America's military and commercial fleets 1 The report found the U S  shipbuilding industry supports nearly 400,000 jobs across the country and generates $25 1 billion in income and $37 3 billion worth of goods and services each year  In fact, the MARAD report found that the shipyard industry creates direct and induced employment in every State and Congressional District and each job in the private shipbuilding and repairing industry supports another 2 6 jobs nationally  This data confirms the significant economic impact of this manufacturing sector, but also that the skilled workforce and industrial base exists domestically to build these ships  Long-term, there needs to be a workforce expansion and some shipyards will need to reconfigure or expand production lines  This can and will be done as required to meet the need if adequate, stable budgets and procurement plans are established and sustained for the long-term  Funding predictability and sustainability will allow industry to invest in facilities and more effectively grow its skilled workforce  The development of that critical workforce will take time and a concerted effort in a partnership between industry and the federal government  U S  shipyards pride themselves on implementing state of the art training and apprenticeship programs to develop skilled men and women that can cut, weld, and bend steel and aluminum and who can design, build and maintain the best Navy in the world  However, the shipbuilding industry, like so many other manufacturing sectors, faces an aging workforce  Attracting and retaining the next generation shipyard worker for an industry career is critical  Working together with the Navy, and local and state resources, our association is committed to building a robust training and development pipeline for skilled shipyard workers  In addition to repealing sequestration and stabilizing funding the continued development of a skilled workforce also needs to be included in our national maritime strategy     In conclusion, the U S  shipyard industry is certainly up to the task of building a 355-ship Navy and has the expertise, the capability, the critical capacity and the unmatched skilled workforce to build these national assets  Meeting the Navy's goal of a 355-ship fleet and securing America's naval dominance for the decades ahead will require sustained investment by Congress and Navy's partnership with a defense industrial base that can further attract and retain a highly-skilled workforce with critical skill sets  Again, I would like to thank this Subcommittee for inviting me to testify alongside such distinguished witnesses  As a representative of our nation's private shipyards, I can say, with confidence and certainty, that our domestic shipyards and skilled workers are ready, willing and able to build and maintain the Navy's 355-ship Fleet  Employment Impact Building the additional ships that would be needed to achieve and maintain the 355-ship fleet could create many additional manufacturing and other jobs at shipyards, associated supplier firms, and elsewhere in the U S  economy  A 2015 Maritime Administration (MARAD) report states, Considering the indirect and induced impacts, each direct job in the shipbuilding and repairing industry is associated with another 2 6 jobs in other parts of the US economy; each dollar of direct labor income and GDP in the shipbuilding and repairing industry is associated with another $1 74 in labor income and $2 49 in GDP, respectively, in other parts of the US economy  A March 2017 press report states, "Based on a 2015 economic impact study, the Shipbuilders Council of America [a trade association for U S  shipbuilders and associated supplier firms] believes that a 355-ship Navy could add more than 50,000 jobs nationwide " The 2015 economic impact study referred to in that quote might be the 2015 MARAD study discussed in the previous paragraph  An estimate of more than 50,000 additional jobs nationwide might be viewed as a higher-end estimate; other estimates might be lower  A June 14, 2017, press report states the following: "The shipbuilding industry will need to add between 18,000 and 25,000 jobs to build to a 350-ship Navy, according to Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, a trade association representing the shipbuilding industrial base  Including indirect jobs like suppliers, the ramp-up may require a boost of 50,000 workers " Appendix E  A Summary of Some Acquisition Lessons Learned for Navy Shipbuilding This appendix presents a general summary of lessons learned in Navy shipbuilding, reflecting comments made repeatedly by various sources over the years  These lessons learned include the following: At the outset, get the operational requirements for the program right  Properly identify the program's operational requirements at the outset  Manage risk by not trying to do too much in terms of the program's operational requirements, and perhaps seek a so-called 70%-to-80% solution (i e , a design that is intended to provide 70%-80% of desired or ideal capabilities)  Achieve a realistic balance up front between operational requirements, risks, and estimated costs  Impose cost discipline up front  Use realistic price estimates, and consider not only development and procurement costs, but life-cycle operation and support (O&S) costs  Employ competition where possible in the awarding of design and construction contracts  Use a contract type that is appropriate for the amount of risk involved , and structure its terms to align incentives with desired outcomes  Minimize design/construction concurrency by developing the design to a high level of completion before starting construction and by resisting changes in requirements (and consequent design changes) during construction  Properly supervise construction work  Maintain an adequate number of properly trained Supervisor of Shipbuilding (SUPSHIP) personnel  Provide stability for industry , in part by using, where possible, multiyear procurement (MYP) or block buy contracting  Maintain a capable government acquisition workforce that understands what it is buying, as well as the above points  Identifying these lessons is arguably not the hard part—most if not all these points have been cited for years  The hard part, arguably, is living up to them without letting circumstances lead program-execution efforts away from these guidelines  Appendix F  Some Considerations Relating to Warranties in Shipbuilding and Other Defense Acquisition This appendix presents some considerations relating to warranties in shipbuilding and other defense acquisition  In discussions of Navy (and also Coast Guard) shipbuilding, one question that sometimes arises is whether including a warranty in a shipbuilding contract is preferable to not including one  The question can arise, for example, in connection with a GAO finding that "the Navy structures shipbuilding contracts so that it pays shipbuilders to build ships as part of the construction process and then pays the same shipbuilders a second time to repair the ship when construction defects are discovered " Including a warranty in a shipbuilding contract (or a contract for building some other kind of defense end item), while potentially valuable, might not always be preferable to not including one—it depends on the circumstances of the acquisition, and it is not necessarily a valid criticism of an acquisition program to state that it is using a contract that does not include a warranty (or a weaker form of a warranty rather than a stronger one)  Including a warranty generally shifts to the contractor the risk of having to pay for fixing problems with earlier work  Although that in itself could be deemed desirable from the government's standpoint, a contractor negotiating a contract that will have a warranty will incorporate that risk into its price, and depending on how much the contractor might charge for doing that, it is possible that the government could wind up paying more in total for acquiring the item (including fixing problems with earlier work on that item) than it would have under a contract without a warranty  When a warranty is not included in the contract and the government pays later on to fix problems with earlier work, those payments can be very visible, which can invite critical comments from observers  But that does not mean that including a warranty in the contract somehow frees the government from paying to fix problems with earlier work  In a contract that includes a warranty, the government will indeed pay something to fix problems with earlier work—but it will make the payment in the less-visible (but still very real) form of the up-front charge for including the warranty, and that charge might be more than what it would have cost the government, under a contract without a warranty, to pay later on for fixing those problems  From a cost standpoint, including a warranty in the contract might or might not be preferable, depending on the risk that there will be problems with earlier work that need fixing, the potential cost of fixing such problems, and the cost of including the warranty in the contract  The point is that the goal of avoiding highly visible payments for fixing problems with earlier work and the goal of minimizing the cost to the government of fixing problems with earlier work are separate and different goals, and that pursuing the first goal can sometimes work against achieving the second goal  The Department of Defense's guide on the use of warranties states the following: Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 46 7 states that "the use of warranties is not mandatory " However, if the benefits to be derived from the warranty are commensurate with the cost of the warranty, the CO [contracting officer] should consider placing it in the contract  In determining whether a warranty is appropriate for a specific acquisition, FAR Subpart 46 703 requires the CO to consider the nature and use of the supplies and services, the cost, the administration and enforcement, trade practices, and reduced requirements  The rationale for using a warranty should be documented in the contract file     In determining the value of a warranty, a CBA [cost-benefit analysis] is used to measure the life cycle costs of the system with and without the warranty  A CBA is required to determine if the warranty will be cost beneficial  CBA is an economic analysis, which basically compares the Life Cycle Costs (LCC) of the system with and without the warranty to determine if warranty coverage will improve the LCCs  In general, five key factors will drive the results of the CBA: cost of the warranty + cost of warranty administration + compatibility with total program efforts + cost of overlap with Contractor support + intangible savings  Effective warranties integrate reliability, maintainability, supportability, availability, and life-cycle costs  Decision factors that must be evaluated include the state of the weapon system technology, the size of the warranted population, the likelihood that field performance requirements can be achieved, and the warranty period of performance  Appendix G  Some Considerations Relating to Avoiding Procurement Cost Growth vs  Minimizing Procurement Costs This appendix presents some considerations relating to avoiding procurement cost growth vs  minimizing procurement costs in shipbuilding and other defense acquisition  The affordability challenge posed by the Navy's shipbuilding plans can reinforce the strong oversight focus on preventing or minimizing procurement cost growth in Navy shipbuilding programs, which is one expression of a strong oversight focus on preventing or minimizing cost growth in DOD acquisition programs in general  This oversight focus may reflect in part an assumption that avoiding or minimizing procurement cost growth is always synonymous with minimizing procurement cost  It is important to note, however, that as paradoxical as it may seem, avoiding or minimizing procurement cost growth is not always synonymous with minimizing procurement cost, and that a sustained, singular focus on avoiding or minimizing procurement cost growth might sometimes lead to higher procurement costs for the government  How could this be? Consider the example of a design for the lead ship of a new class of Navy ships  The construction cost of this new design is uncertain, but is estimated to be likely somewhere between Point A (a minimum possible figure) and Point D (a maximum possible figure)  (Point D, in other words, would represent a cost estimate with a 100% confidence factor, meaning there is a 100% chance that the cost would come in at or below that level ) If the Navy wanted to avoid cost growth on this ship, it could simply set the ship's procurement cost at Point D  Industry would likely be happy with this arrangement, and there likely would be no cost growth on the ship  The alternative strategy open to the Navy is to set the ship's target procurement cost at some figure between Points A and D—call it Point B—and then use that more challenging target cost to place pressure on industry to sharpen its pencils so as to find ways to produce the ship at that lower cost  (Navy officials sometimes refer to this as "pressurizing" industry ) In this example, it might turn out that industry efforts to reduce production costs are not successful enough to build the ship at the Point B cost  As a result, the ship experiences one or more rounds of procurement cost growth, and the ship's procurement cost rises over time from Point B to some higher figure—call it Point C  Here is the rub: Point C, in spite of incorporating one or more rounds of cost growth, might nevertheless turn out to be lower than Point D, because Point C reflected efforts by the shipbuilder to find ways to reduce production costs that the shipbuilder might have put less energy into pursuing if the Navy had simply set the ship's procurement cost initially at Point D  Setting the ship's cost at Point D, in other words, may eliminate the risk of cost growth on the ship, but does so at the expense of creating a risk of the government paying more for the ship than was actually necessary  DOD could avoid cost growth on new procurement programs starting tomorrow by simply setting costs for those programs at each program's equivalent of Point D  But as a result of this strategy, DOD could well wind up leaving money on the table in some instances—of not, in other words, minimizing procurement costs  DOD does not have to set a cost precisely at Point D to create a potential risk in this regard  A risk of leaving money on the table, for example, is a possible downside of requiring DOD to budget for its acquisition programs at something like an 80% confidence factor—an approach that some observers have recommended—because a cost at the 80% confidence factor is a cost that is likely fairly close to Point D  Procurement cost growth is often embarrassing for DOD and industry, and can damage their credibility in connection with future procurement efforts  Procurement cost growth can also disrupt congressional budgeting by requiring additional appropriations to pay for something Congress thought it had fully funded in a prior year  For this reason, there is a legitimate public policy value to pursuing a goal of having less rather than more procurement cost growth  Procurement cost growth, however, can sometimes be in part the result of DOD efforts to use lower initial cost targets as a means of pressuring industry to reduce production costs—efforts that, notwithstanding the cost growth, might be partially successful  A sustained, singular focus on avoiding or minimizing cost growth, and of punishing DOD for all instances of cost growth, could discourage DOD from using lower initial cost targets as a means of pressurizing industry, which could deprive DOD of a tool for controlling procurement costs  The point here is not to excuse away cost growth, because cost growth can occur in a program for reasons other than DOD's attempt to pressurize industry  Nor is the point to abandon the goal of seeking lower rather than higher procurement cost growth, because, as noted above, there is a legitimate public policy value in pursuing this goal  The point, rather, is to recognize that this goal is not always synonymous with minimizing procurement cost, and that a possibility of some amount of cost growth might be expected as part of an optimal government strategy for minimizing procurement cost  Recognizing that the goals of seeking lower rather than higher cost growth and of minimizing procurement cost can sometimes be in tension with one another can lead to an approach that takes both goals into consideration  In contrast, an approach that is instead characterized by a sustained, singular focus on avoiding and minimizing cost growth may appear virtuous, but in the end may wind up costing the government more  Appendix H  Size of the Navy and Navy Shipbuilding Rate Size of the Navy Table H-1 shows the size of the Navy in terms of total number of ships since FY1948; the numbers shown in the table reflect changes over time in the rules specifying which ships count toward the total  Differing counting rules result in differing totals, and for certain years, figures reflecting more than one set of counting rules are available  Figures in the table for FY1978 and subsequent years reflect the battle force ships counting method, which is the set of counting rules established in the early 1980s for public policy discussions of the size of the Navy  As shown in the table, the total number of battle force ships in the Navy reached a late-Cold War peak of 568 at the end of FY1987 and began declining thereafter  The Navy fell below 300 battle force ships in August 2003 and as of April 26, 2019, included 289 battle force ships  As discussed in Appendix C , historical figures for total fleet size might not be a reliable yardstick for assessing the appropriateness of proposals for the future size and structure of the Navy, particularly if the historical figures are more than a few years old, because the missions to be performed by the Navy, the mix of ships that make up the Navy, and the technologies that are available to Navy ships for performing missions all change over time, and because the number of ships in the fleet in an earlier year might itself have been inappropriate (i e , not enough or more than enough) for meeting the Navy's mission requirements in that year  For similar reasons, trends over time in the total number of ships in the Navy are not necessarily a reliable indicator of the direction of change in the fleet's ability to perform its stated missions  An increasing number of ships in the fleet might not necessarily mean that the fleet's ability to perform its stated missions is increasing, because the fleet's mission requirements might be increasing more rapidly than ship numbers and average ship capability  Similarly, a decreasing number of ships in the fleet might not necessarily mean that the fleet's ability to perform stated missions is decreasing, because the fleet's mission requirements might be declining more rapidly than numbers of ships, or because average ship capability and the percentage of time that ships are in deployed locations might be increasing quickly enough to more than offset reductions in total ship numbers  Shipbuilding Rate Table H-2 shows past (FY1982-FY2019) and requested or programmed (FY2020-FY2024) rates of Navy ship procurement 


Report 2: Historically located between empires, various Georgian kingdoms and principalities were incorporated into the Russian Empire beginning in the early 19 th century  Georgia enjoyed a brief period of independence from 1918 until its forcible incorporation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union) in 1921-1922  Georgia gained independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union  Georgia is located in the South Caucasus, a region between the Black and Caspian Seas and separated from Russia by the Greater Caucasus mountain range  The South Caucasus also borders Iran and Turkey (see Figure 1 )  Georgia's South Caucasus neighbors, Armenia and Azerbaijan, have been locked in territorial conflict for almost three decades over the predominantly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, formally part of Azerbaijan  Georgia has its own unresolved conflicts with two Russian-supported regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia  These regions, in addition to being settled by ethnic Georgians, are home to ethnic groups that more closely identify with ethnic kin in Russia's North Caucasus, located across the Caucasus mountain range  After a short war with Georgia in 2008, Russia unilaterally recognized the independence of these breakaway regions and stationed military forces on their territory  Georgians speak and write their own distinct Caucasian language, with a written literary form that emerged at least as early as the fifth century  The Georgian Orthodox Church, to which most Georgians belong, is autocephalous (independent), with roots that date back to the fourth century  Today, many observers consider Georgia to be one of the most democratic states among the USSR's successor states  The U S -based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Freedom House considers Georgia to be the freest post-Soviet state (not including the Baltic states), followed by Ukraine, Moldova, and Armenia  Georgia has a parliamentary system of governance, resulting from constitutional reforms that came into effect in 2013 and 2018  The prime minister is the country's most powerful executive  Georgia's president is commander in chief of the armed forces and has the power to veto legislation and dissolve parliament under certain circumstances  Georgia's prime minister, Mamuka Bakhtadze (aged 36), assumed office in June 2018  Bakhtadze was Georgia's minister of finance from November 2017 to June 2018; he previously served as the head of Georgian Railways and the Georgian International Energy Corporation  Georgia's president, elected in November 2018, is Salome Zurabishvili (aged 67), a former member of parliament (2016-2018) and minister of foreign affairs (2004-2005) who was previously a French national and diplomat  The parliamentary chairman is Irakli Kobakhidze (aged 40), a former professor of law and politics  Georgia has a unicameral legislature with 150 members elected for four-year terms by two methods: 77 by party list and 73 by majoritarian district  The most recent parliamentary elections in 2016 resulted in a sizeable win for Georgia's center-left ruling party, Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia (GD), which initially led a ruling coalition after coming to power in 2012 and now governs alone  GD won 49% of the party list vote and nearly all majoritarian races, leading to control of more than 75% of parliamentary seats (116 of 150 deputies)  Before losing this supermajority in February 2019 (see " Ruling Party Tensions " below), GD had enough votes to unilaterally enact changes to Georgia's constitution  This led many observers and opposition supporters to express concern that there were insufficient checks and balances against the ruling party  GD's main competitor in 2016 was the center-right United National Movement (UNM), the former ruling party previously led by ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili  The UNM received 27% of the party vote and 27 seats (18%)  After months of infighting, the UNM fragmented in 2017, and most of its deputies, including much of the party's senior leadership, formed a new opposition party called European Georgia-Movement for Liberty  A third electoral bloc, the nationalist-conservative Alliance of Patriots of Georgia-United Opposition, cleared the 5% threshold to enter parliament with six seats  Georgia's most recent local elections were in 2017  They provided a similar picture of ruling party dominance across the country  In the party-list portion of the vote to local councils, GD won in all 73 districts, with a total of 56% of the vote  The UNM and European Georgia won 27% of the vote (17% and 10%, respectively)  The nationalist-conservative Alliance of Patriots won 7%  GD won more than 92% of majoritarian seats, giving it a total of 77% of seats in local councils nationwide  GD also won mayoral elections in all but two districts  The most recent presidential elections were held in two rounds in October and November 2018  The victor, Salome Zurabishvili, won 60% of the vote in the second round  Zurabishvili ran as an independent candidate, although she was supported by GD  UNM candidate Grigol Vashadze, like Zurabishvili an ex-foreign minister, received 40%  The first round of the election was a closer race (39% to 38%), but Zurabishvili appeared to benefit from greater turnout in the runoff (56%, compared to 46% in the first round)  Domestic and international observers considered the election to be competitive but flawed  Observers noted instances of official pressure against state employees to support Zurabishvili, as well as incidents of ballot box stuffing  They also expressed concern about allegations of mass vote-buying, related to Prime Minister Bakhtadze's pre-runoff announcement that a philanthropic foundation associated with GD founder and chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili had agreed to purchase and forgive the small private debts of more than 600,000 individuals  The U S  Department of State said it shared the concerns of observers and indicated "these actions are not consistent with Georgia's commitment to fully fair and transparent elections " Since 2018, GD has exhibited signs of internal tension  Many observers believe that GD founder Ivanishvili continued to maintain an influential behind-the-scenes role in government after stepping down as prime minister in 2013  Ivanishvili formally returned to politics as GD's party chairman in 2018, reportedly due to frustration with the party's growing internal divides  Then-Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili resigned less than two months later, citing "disagreements" with Ivanishvili  Kvirikashvili's resignation also followed a series of anti-government demonstrations against what protestors perceived to be heavy-handed police raids and judicial bias  Prime Minister Bakhtadze succeeded Kvirikashvili in June 2018  More recently, GD suffered parliamentary defections in February 2019, as a result of a dispute concerning judicial appointments (see " Dispute over Judicial Reforms " below)  By the end of March 2019, eight members of parliament, led by Eka Beselia, former chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on legal affairs, had left GD  Beselia and most of the defecting MPs were expected to establish a new faction, while two MPs joined the Patriots of Georgia faction  The GD government also has had tense relations with the presidency  Ex-President Giorgi Margvelashvili, who was elected in 2013, initially was allied to GD  He subsequently adopted a more independent stance and fell out of favor with then-Prime Minister Ivanishvili  Margvelashvili frequently criticized the government and vetoed legislation several times, although parliament usually overrode his veto  Margvelashvili chose not to run for reelection in 2018  For the 2018 election, GD did not nominate its own presidential candidate  This possibly reflected a belief within the party leadership that the powers of the presidency were too limited to warrant fielding a candidate for the position  After some deliberation, however, GD decided to support Zurabishvili, an independent candidate  Before making this decision, government officials had criticized Zurabishvili for comments she made on the 10 th anniversary of the August 2008 war that appeared to blame Georgia's ex-leadership for the war  One of the government's internal disputes concerns judicial reform  A series of reforms from 2013 to 2017 restructured Georgia's judicial institutions  A High Council of Justice oversees the appointment and dismissal of judges  The council has 15 members, a majority of whom are selected by the Conference of Judges, the judiciary's self-governing body  In December 2018, several GD members of parliament criticized the High Council's decision to nominate several judges to Georgia's 28-seat Supreme Court whom they considered tainted by association with the UNM  The dispute sparked an intensive debate within the ruling party, as well as with some NGOs who sided with the dissenting GD members out of a concern that the nominated judges could be susceptible to corruption  Ultimately, the Supreme Court nominees withdrew their candidacies  GD's leadership agreed to further debate the rules of appointment and blamed the dispute on the opposition  Appointments to a nine-member Constitutional Court are divided between the parliament, president, and the Supreme Court  In recent years, the Constitutional Court has been the focus of various disputes concerning possible bias (sometimes against the government, other times against the opposition)  In July 2018, the Constitutional Court received international attention for ruling that marijuana use was not a criminal offense, a decision government officials and church representatives heavily criticized  In response, parliament passed legislation imposing strict limitations on marijuana use  After GD won a supermajority in 2016, Georgia's parliament convened a State Constitutional Commission to draft additional reforms to the constitution intended to consolidate Georgia's transition to a parliamentary system of governance  Parliament passed the reforms in September 2017 by a vote of 117-2  Opposition parties, who opposed certain measures that appeared to strengthen the ruling party, refused to participate in the vote; civil society organizations also registered opposition  Then-President Margvelashvili vetoed the amendments and proposed alternative reforms  Parliament overrode his veto, and the president signed the amendments into law  The constitutional reforms entered into force after the 2018 presidential election  The reforms affect Georgia's parliamentary system in several ways  One of the main changes is the abolition of Georgia's directly elected presidency beginning in 2023  Instead, the president is to be indirectly elected by a college of electors made up of parliamentary deputies and local government representatives  Another major change is that parliamentary elections are to be held entirely on the basis of party lists, eliminating single-member districts  In theory, this change is expected to lead to greater opposition representation in parliament, as in Georgia parties that win the party-list vote tend to overwhelmingly win single-member districts  Although this change was to take effect in 2020, parliament voted to push back its implementation to 2024, a move many observers interpreted as an attempt to prolong the ruling party's dominance  In January 2019, several opposition parties launched a petition to pressure the government to implement the shift to a fully proportional system in advance of the 2020 parliamentary elections  In the course of adopting constitutional reforms, parliament considered several recommendations of the Council of Europe's Venice Commission, a legal and democratic advisory body  In the end, the commission provided a "positive assessment" of the reforms, although it noted "the postponement of the entry into force of the proportional election system to October 2024 is highly regrettable and a major obstacle to reaching consensus " The Venice Commission said the reform "completes the evolution of Georgia's political system towards a parliamentary system and constitutes a positive step towards the consolidation and improvement of the country's constitutional order, based on the principles of democracy, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights " For more than two decades, Georgia has been recovering from the severe economic decline it experienced after the Soviet Union collapsed  It remains a relatively poor country  In 2018, Georgia's GDP was around $16 7 billion (approximately 16 times less than that of Connecticut, a U S  state with a similar population size)  Its per capita GDP ($4,506) is midsized in comparison to Russia and other post-Soviet states  In 2017-2018, Georgia's economy appeared to enter a period of relatively strong growth  After average GDP growth of around 3% a year from 2013 to 2016, Georgia's GDP grew at 4 8% a year in 2017 and 2018  Increased economic growth has been based on strengthening domestic consumption and external demand, as well as "generally strong policy efforts," according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)  The IMF forecasts a sustained rate of GDP growth of around 4 9% annually from 2019 to 2021  In February 2019, the IMF commended Georgian authorities "for advancing structural reforms [but] stressed the need for continued efforts to promote inclusive growth and higher economic resilience to external shocks " Poverty has declined in recent years, although it is still relatively high  According to official data, 22% of the population lived in poverty in 2017 (down from 39% a decade before)  In recent years, recorded unemployment has been around 14%; some surveys suggest a higher rate of unemployment  More than 40% of Georgian laborers work in agriculture, a sector of the economy that accounts for less than 10% of GDP  Georgia's economy depends in part on remittances from labor migration  From 2013 to 2017, remittances made up around 11% of Georgia's GDP  In 2017, Russia was estimated to be the source of almost 60% of Georgian remittances, followed by Ukraine (8%), Greece (5%), and Armenia (4%)  In 2017, the IMF approved a three-year Extended Fund Facility arrangement to provide Georgia with around $285 million in loans to support economic reforms focusing, among other things, on financial stability and infrastructure investment  The IMF noted the need for Georgia to increase its agricultural productivity, improve its business environment, and reform its education system  Georgia has suffered in the past from energy shortages and gas cutoffs, but it has improved its energy security in recent years  Georgia has rehabilitated hydropower plants and constructed new ones  Nearly all its natural gas supplies come from neighboring Azerbaijan  In 2018, Georgia's three largest merchandise trading partners were Turkey ($1 7 billion, or 14% of Georgia's trade), Russia ($1 4 billion, 11%), Azerbaijan ($1 1 billion, 9%), and China ($1 0 billion, 8%)  Trade with the European Union (EU), as a whole Georgia's largest trading partner, made up around 27% of total trade ($3 4 billion)  More than half of Georgia's merchandise exports (51%) went to five countries: Azerbaijan, Russia, Armenia, Bulgaria, and Turkey  Its main exports were copper ores, beverages (wine, water, and spirits), motor vehicles, and iron and steel  Free trade agreements with the EU (signed in 2014) and China (signed in 2017) may improve Georgia's prospects for export-led growth  Georgia is also exploring a trade agreement with India  However, Georgia's manufacturing sector is small, and its top exports include used foreign cars and scrap metal, which provide low added value  The IMF indicates that Georgia could further diversify its agricultural exports but notes the need to improve quality and standards  Tourism to Georgia has increased in recent years and annual tourism-related income has more than quadrupled since 2010  In 2018, the number of international visitors who stayed in the country overnight was around 4 8 million, a 345% increase since 2010  Most tourists are from neighboring countries: Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Armenia  In recent years, foreign direct investment (FDI) appears to have exceeded the high levels Georgia enjoyed in 2006 to 2008, before the global financial crisis, when FDI averaged $1 5 billion a year  From 2014 to 2018, FDI averaged $1 64 billion a year  More than 60% of the total amount came from Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Turkey  During this period, most FDI was in transport and communications (28%); other leading sectors were finance (13%), construction (13%), and energy (10%)  In 2017, the IMF noted that attracting FDI to sectors with high export potential, including tourism and agriculture, is "crucial to ensure growth in foreign markets " Georgia aspires to be a key transit hub for the growing East-West overland trade route between China and Europe  In pursuit of this goal, a U S -Georgian consortium is constructing a major new deepwater port and free industrial zone in Anaklia, which is located on Georgia's Black Sea coast and abuts the Russian-occupied region of Abkhazia  The port, scheduled to begin operations in 2021, is considered Georgia's largest-ever infrastructure investment and is to be accompanied by major government investments in Georgia's road and rail infrastructure  The Georgian government has long made closer integration with the EU and NATO a priority  According to recent polls, over 80% of the Georgian population supports membership in the EU and over 75% supports membership in NATO  In 2014, Georgia concluded an association agreement with the EU that included a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) and encouraged harmonization with EU laws and regulations  The EU granted Georgia visa-free travel in 2017  The EU also is a major provider of foreign aid to Georgia, providing on average over €120 million (around $135 million) a year in 2017 and 2018  As of 2018, the benefits of the EU free-trade agreement for Georgia remain unclear  In 2018, the total value of Georgian exports to the EU was 17% greater than in 2014  Exports to the EU as a share of Georgia's total exports, however, were the same in 2018 as they were in 2014 (22%)  The EU asserts that Georgia is "reaping the benefits of economic integration" with the EU but notes that "further efforts are needed to stimulate exports and improve the trade balance " Georgia has close relations with NATO, which considers Georgia one of its "closest operational partners " A NATO-Georgia Commission, established in 2008, provides the framework for cooperation  At its 2014 Wales Summit, NATO leaders established a "Substantial NATO-Georgia Package" to help Georgia bolster its defense capabilities, including capacity-building, training, exercises, and enhanced interoperability  In 2015, Georgia joined the NATO Response Force, a rapid reaction force  Georgia is one of the top troop contributors (and the top non-NATO contributor) in the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan  At its height, Georgia's deployment to NATO's previous International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) reached over 1,500 troops, who served with no operational caveats  As of December 2018, Georgia is the fifth-largest contributor to the Resolute Support Mission, with 870 troops  Georgia also contributed more than 2,250 troops to the NATO-led Kosovo Force, or KFOR, between 1999 and 2008  In 2015, NATO opened a Joint Training and Evaluation Center in Georgia to provide training, evaluation, and certification opportunities to enhance interoperability and operational readiness  The center hosted its second joint NATO-Georgia exercise in March 2019 (the first one was held in 2016)  Some NATO member states also participate in two sets of annual U S -Georgia military exercises: Agile Spirit and Noble Partner (see " Security Assistance Since the August 2008 War ," below)  NATO also has established a Defense Institution Building School for professional development and training  Many observers consider that closer integration with the EU and NATO has not enabled Georgia to improve its near-term prospects for membership in these organizations  The EU is unlikely to consider Georgia a candidate for membership soon, given the EU's internal challenges and a lack of support for enlargement among many members  In 2008, NATO members agreed that Georgia and Ukraine would become members of NATO, but Georgia has not been granted a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) or other clear path to membership  Many observers attribute Georgia's lack of a clear path to NATO membership to some members' concerns that Georgia's membership could lead to a heightened risk of war with Russia, which currently occupies around 18% of Georgia's territory  Many believe that NATO will not move forward with membership as long as Russia occupies Georgian territory and the conflict remains unresolved  Georgia's secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s, during and after Georgia's pursuit of independence from the USSR  Since then, Georgia's relations with Russia have been difficult, as Tbilisi has blamed Moscow for obstructing Georgia's Western leanings  Many observers believe that Moscow supports Abkhazia and South Ossetia to prevent Georgia from joining NATO  Georgia's relations with Russia worsened after ex-President Saakashvili came to power in 2003 and sought to accelerate Georgia's integration with the West  After clashes increased between Georgian and secessionist forces, Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008 to prevent Georgia from reestablishing control over South Ossetia  Russia subsequently recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states  Over the last decade, Russia has tightened control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia  It has constructed border fencing and imposed transit restrictions across the administrative boundary lines dividing the two regions from the rest of Georgia  Russia has established military bases that reportedly house around 3,500 personnel each, and it also stations border guards in the two regions  In 2016, Russia finalized an agreement with the de facto authorities of Abkhazia, establishing a combined group of military forces

ground_truth: The current and planned size and composition of the Navy, the rate of Navy ship procurement, and the prospective affordability of the Navy's shipbuilding plans have been oversight matters for the congressional defense committees for many years. On December 15, 2016, the Navy released a force-structure goal that calls for achieving and maintaining a fleet of 355 ships of certain types and numbers. The 355-ship force-level goal is the result of a Force Structure Assessment (FSA) conducted by the Navy in 2016. The Navy states that a new FSA is now underway as the successor to the 2016 FSA. This new FSA, Navy officials state, is to be completed by the end of 2019. Navy officials have suggested in their public remarks that this new FSA could change the 355-ship figure, the planned mix of ships, or both. The Navy's proposed FY2020 budget requests funding for the procurement of 12 new ships, including one Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) class aircraft carrier, three Virginia-class attack submarines, three DDG-51 class Aegis destroyers, one FFG(X) frigate, two John Lewis (TAO-205) class oilers, and two TATS towing, salvage, and rescue ships. The Navy's FY2020 five-year (FY2020-FY2024) shipbuilding plan includes 55 new ships, or an average of 11 new ships per year. The Navy's FY2020 30-year (FY2020-FY2049) shipbuilding plan includes 304 ships, or an average of about 10 per year. If the FY2020 30-year shipbuilding plan is implemented, the Navy projects that it will achieve a total of 355 ships by FY2034. This is about 20 years sooner than projected under the Navy's FY2019 30-year shipbuilding plan—an acceleration primarily due to a decision announced by the Navy in April 2018, after the FY2019 plan was submitted, to increase the service lives of all DDG-51 destroyers to 45 years. Although the Navy projects that the fleet will reach a total of 355 ships in FY2034, the Navy in that year and subsequent years will not match the composition called for in the FY2016 FSA. One issue for Congress is whether the new FSA that the Navy is conducting will change the 355-ship force-level objective established by the 2016 FSA and, if so, in what ways. Another oversight issue for Congress concerns the prospective affordability of the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan. Decisions that Congress makes regarding Navy force structure and shipbuilding plans can substantially affect Navy capabilities and funding requirements and the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base.

prompt_front: You are given two reports by the government agency.



Question: Write a one-page summary of the report 2.



Report 2:  In 2017, Russia concluded an agreement with South Ossetia to integrate the breakaway region's military forces with its own  Since coming to power in 2012, the GD government has sought to improve relations with Russia, particularly economic ties  In 2013, Moscow lifted an embargo on popular Georgian exports (including wine and mineral water) that had been in place since 2006  As a result, Russia again became one of Georgia's main trading partners  The share of Georgia's merchandise exports to Russia as a percentage of its total exports rose from 2% in 2012 to 13% in 2018  Improved economic relations with Russia have not led to progress in resolving the conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia  The EU leads an unarmed civilian Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) that monitors compliance with the cease-fire agreements that ended the August 2008 war  Although the EUMM's mandate covers all of Georgia, local and Russian authorities do not permit it to operate in Abkhazia and South Ossetia; EUMM representatives have been allowed to cross the boundary line on a few occasions to address specific issues  All parties to the conflict, together with the United States, the EU, the United Nations (U N ), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), participate in the Geneva International Discussions, convened quarterly to address issues related to the conflict  They also participate in joint Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms (IPRM), together with the U N  and OSCE, designed to address local security issues and build confidence  Abkhaz and South Ossetian representatives periodically have suspended their participation in the IPRM, however; the IPRM for Abkhazia did not convene at all from 2012 to 2016  In general, efforts to rebuild ties across conflict lines or return internally displaced persons have made little progress  In 2018, the Georgian government unveiled a peace initiative and enacted related legislative amendments to facilitate greater engagement with Abkhazia and South Ossetia in trade and educational affairs  The United States and the EU have expressed support for this initiative  Whether Russia and the two regions will accept any of the initiative's elements remains to be seen  Improved relations with Russia do not appear to have led to greater public support in Georgia for closer integration with Russia  Several overtly pro-Russian parties performed poorly in the 2016 parliamentary elections  One electoral bloc critical of Georgia's European integration, the nationalist-conservative Alliance of Patriots, cleared the 5% threshold to enter parliament, but even this bloc's leadership did not campaign for membership in the Russia-led Eurasian Union  In a 2018 survey, less than 30% of respondents expressed support for joining the Eurasian Union  Georgia is one of the United States' closest partners among the post-Soviet states  With a history of strong economic aid and security cooperation, the United States and Georgia have deepened their strategic partnership since Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 invasion of Ukraine  A U S -Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, signed in 2009, provides the framework for much of the two countries' bilateral engagement  A Strategic Partnership Commission convenes annual plenary sessions and working groups to address political, economic, security, and people-to-people issues  Before the 2008 war, the United States supported granting Georgia a NATO Membership Action Plan and backed NATO's April 2008 pledge that Georgia eventually would become a member of NATO  In August 2017, U S  Vice President Michael Pence said in Tbilisi that the Trump Administration "stand[s] by the 2008 NATO Bucharest statement, which made it clear that Georgia will one day become a member of NATO " At a press conference after the July 2018 NATO summit in Brussels, President Trump said that "at a certain point [Georgia will] have a chance" to join NATO, if "not right now " U S  policy expressly supports Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity  In a visit to Tbilisi in August 2017, Vice President Michael Pence said the United States "strongly condemns Russia's occupation on Georgia's soil " In January 2018, the State Department indicated that "the United States' position on Abkhazia and South Ossetia is unwavering: The United States fully supports Georgia's territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders " The United States supports a resolution to the conflict within these parameters  The United States calls on Russia to comply with the terms of the 2008 cease-fire agreement, including withdrawal of its forces to prewar positions, and to reverse its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states  The U S  government has expressed support for Georgia's "commitment to dialogue and a peaceful resolution to the conflict," and in 2018 the State Department welcomed the new peace initiative that the government of Georgia unveiled  The State Department regularly participates in the Geneva International Discussions  Congress also has expressed firm support for Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity  The Countering Russian Influence in Europe and Eurasia Act of 2017 ( P L  115-44 , Title II, §253) states that the United States "supports the policy known as the 'Stimson Doctrine' and thus does not recognize territorial changes effected by force, including the illegal invasions and occupations" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and other territories occupied by Russia  As with previous appropriations, FY2019 foreign operations appropriations prohibit foreign assistance to governments that recognize Abkhazia or South Ossetia and restrict funds from supporting Russia's occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia ( P L  116-6 , §7047(c))  The 2014 Ukraine Freedom Support Act ( P L  113-272 ) provides for sanctions against Russian entities that transfer weapons to Georgian territory  In February 2019, the Georgia Support Act ( H R  598 ) was reintroduced in the House  The act originally passed the House by unanimous consent in December 2018, during the 115 th Congress  The act would express support for Georgia's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, as well as for its democratic development, Euro-Atlantic and European integration, and peaceful conflict resolution  The act would require the Secretary of State to submit to Congress reports on U S  security assistance to Georgia, U S -Georgia cybersecurity cooperation, and a strategy to enhance Georgia's capabilities to combat Russian disinformation and propaganda  The act also would require the President to impose sanctions on those responsible for serious human rights abuses in Abkhazia and South Ossetia  Many Members of Congress have expressed their support for Georgia in House and Senate resolutions  In September 2016, during the 114 th Congress, the House of Representatives passed H Res  660, which expressed support for Georgia's territorial integrity, in a 410-6 vote  The resolution condemned Russia's military intervention and occupation, called upon Russia to withdraw its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, and urged the U S  government to declare unequivocally that the United States will not recognize Russia's de jure or de facto sovereignty over any part of Georgia under any circumstances  In January 2019, a resolution (H Res  93) was reintroduced in the House supporting Georgia's territorial integrity and condemning a decision by the Syrian government to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states  The Senate and House have passed other resolutions in support of Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity: in 2011-2012 ( S Res  175 , H Res  526), in September 2008 ( S Res  690 ), and, before the conflict, in May-June 2008 (H Res  1166, S Res  550 ) and December 2007 ( S Res  391 )  Georgia has long been a leading recipient of U S  foreign and military aid in Europe and Eurasia  In the 1990s (FY1992-FY2000), the U S  government provided over $860 million in total aid to Georgia ($96 million a year on average)  In the later part of the decade, the United States began to provide Georgia with increased amounts of aid to improve border and maritime security and to combat transnational crime, including through the development of Georgia's Coast Guard  In the 2000s, Georgia became the largest per capita recipient of U S  aid in Europe and Eurasia  From FY2001 to FY2007, total aid to Georgia amounted to over $945 million ($135 million a year, on average)  In 2005, Georgia also was awarded an initial five-year (2006-2011) $295 million grant from the U S  Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) for road, pipeline, and municipal infrastructure rehabilitation, as well as for agribusiness development  The United States gave increased amounts of military aid to Georgia after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001  At the time, the George W  Bush Administration considered Georgia part of a "second stage" in the "war on terror," together with Yemen and the Philippines, and supported Georgia with a two-year Train and Equip Program  This program was followed by a Sustainment and Stability Operations Program through 2007 that supported a Georgian troop deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom  After Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008, the United States substantially increased its assistance to Georgia  The U S  government immediately provided over $38 million in humanitarian aid and emergency relief, using U S  aircraft and naval and coast guard ships  In September 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a total aid package worth at least $1 billion  Total U S  assistance to Georgia for FY2008-FY2009 amounted to $1 04 billion, which included $250 million in direct budgetary support and an additional $100 million in MCC funds (taking the total amount of Georgia's initial MCC grant to $395 million)  Since the 2008 war, Georgia has continued to be a major recipient of U S  foreign aid in the Europe and Eurasia region  Nonmilitary aid totaled $60 million a year on average from FY2010 to FY2017  In addition, Georgia was awarded a second five-year (2014-2019) MCC grant of $140 million to support educational infrastructure and training, and to improve the study of science and technology  In FY2018, U S  nonmilitary aid to Georgia totaled $70 8 million  For FY2019, Congress appropriated $89 8 million in nonmilitary aid  The president's FY2020 nonmilitary aid request for Georgia is $42 4 million  After the 2008 war, Georgia continued to receive U S  military assistance, including around $144 million in postwar security and stabilization assistance in FY2008-FY2009  Since FY2010, Georgia has received further military assistance, primarily through Foreign Military Financing (FMF) aid, Coalition Support Funds, and Train and Equip and other capacity-building programs  These funds have been used to support Georgia's deployments to Afghanistan in ISAF and the follow-on Resolute Support Mission, as well as for Georgian border security, counterterrorism, and defense readiness  U S  military assistance to Georgia in FY2010-FY2017 is estimated to have been around $74 million a year on average  For FY2018, military aid to Georgia is estimated to have totaled $40 4 million  This includes $35 million in FMF assistance, $2 million in International Military Education and Training (IMET), and $3 4 million for counter-weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capacity-building assistance  For FY2019, Congress again appropriated $35 million in FMF and $2 million in IMET funds  Additional defense funding includes $4 3 million in maritime capacity-building assistance and $2 5 million in counter-WMD capacity-building assistance  Outside of Afghanistan, the United States has gradually deepened its postwar defense cooperation with Georgia  The Obama Administration refrained from approving defensive (anti-tank and antiaircraft) arms sales to Georgia  Observers considered various reasons for this hesitation, including doubts regarding the deterrent effect of such weapons, concerns about encouraging potential Georgian offensives to retake territory, and a desire to avoid worsening relations with Russia as the Administration embarked on a new "reset" policy with Moscow  In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a year after Russia's invasion, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow characterized U S  defense cooperation with Georgia as "a methodical, yet patient, strategic approach … [focused] on building defense institutions, assisting defense sector reform, and building the strategic and educational foundations" for training and reform  He said the United States was "carefully examining each step [of its military assistance program] to ensure it would not be counterproductive to our goals of promoting peace and stability in the region " U S -Georgia defense cooperation deepened over time  In a 2012 visit to Georgia, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that increased cooperation would help improve Georgia's self-defense capabilities, promote defense reform and modernization, and provide training and equipment to support Georgia's ISAF deployment and NATO interoperability  U S -Georgia security cooperation expanded further in 2016  In July 2016, then-U S  Secretary of State John Kerry and then-Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili signed a Memorandum on Deepening the Defense and Security Relationship between the United States and Georgia  In December 2016, the two countries concluded a three-year framework agreement on security cooperation that would focus on "improving Georgia's defense capabilities, establishing [an] effective and sustainable system of defense, enhancing interoperability of the Georgian Armed Forces with NATO, and ensuring effective military management " The framework agreement led to the launching in February 2017 of a three-year, $35 million training initiative, the Georgia Defense Readiness Program  This initiative seeks to build the capacity of Georgia's armed forces "to generate, train and sustain forces in preparation for all national missions " Unlike the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration approved the provision of major defensive lethal weaponry to Georgia  In November 2017, the U S  State Department approved a Foreign Military Sale of over 400 Javelin portable anti-tank missiles, as well as launchers, associated equipment, and training, at a total estimated cost of $75 million  The Georgian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the "first stage" of two sales was complete as of January 2018  In June 2018, then-U S  Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell said the United States seeks to "check Russian aggression," including by "building up the means of self-defense for those states most directly threatened by Russia militarily: Ukraine and Georgia " The United States and Georgia have held annual joint military exercises in Georgia since 2011  Initial exercises, dubbed Agile Spirit, began as a counterinsurgency and peacekeeping operations training exercise and shifted to a "conventional warfare focus" in 2015, the year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine  That year, Agile Spirit began to include other NATO partners  A second bilateral exercise, Noble Partner, was launched in 2015; the Department of Defense characterized it as the "most robust" U S -Georgia exercise ever, designed to support Georgia's integration into the NATO Response Force  In 2018, the United States was Georgia's seventh-largest source of merchandise imports and eighth-largest destination for exports  The value of Georgia's merchandise imports from the United States—mainly vehicles, industrial machinery, and meat—was $360 million in 2018  The value of merchandise exports to the United States—mainly iron and steel and inorganic chemicals—was $160 million in 2018  Since 2012, the United States and Georgia periodically have discussed the possibility of a free-trade agreement  The two countries have signed a bilateral investment treaty and a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement  They also have established a High-Level Dialogue on Trade and Investment  During Vice President Michael Pence's August 2017 visit to Georgia, he expressed the United States' "keen interest in expanding our trade and investment relationship with Georgia "
Report 2:  NASA’s telescope and other science projects will always have inherent technical, design, and integration risks because they are complex, specialized, and often push the state of the art in space technology  But too often, our reports find that management and oversight problems—which can include poor planning, optimistic cost estimating, funding gaps, lax oversight, and poor contractor performance, among other issues—are the real drivers behind cost and schedule growth  To its credit, NASA has taken significant steps, partly in response to our past recommendations, to reduce acquisition risk from both a technical and management standpoint, including actions to enhance cost and schedule estimating, provide adequate levels of reserves to projects, establish better processes and metrics to monitor projects, and expand the use of earned value management to better monitor contractor performance  For example, in November 2012, we found that NASA employee skill sets available to analyze and implement earned value management vary widely from center to center, and we recommended that NASA conduct an earned value management skills gap analysis to identify areas requiring augmented capability across the agency, and, based on the results of the assessment, develop a workforce training plan to address any deficiencies  NASA concurred with this recommendation and developed an earned value management training plan in 2014 based on the results of an earned value management skills gap analysis that was conducted in 2013  Moreover, in recent years, we have found that many of the projects within the agency’s major project portfolio have improved their cost and schedule performance  Nevertheless, the extent to which NASA has adopted some of the following lessons learned within its portfolio of major projects is mixed, and NASA has an opportunity to strengthen its program management of major acquisitions, including its space telescopes, by doing so  Manage Cost and Schedule Performance for Large Projects to Limit Implications for Entire Portfolio  In 2013, following JWST’s cost increases and schedule growth, we found that though cost and schedule growth can occur on any project, increases associated with NASA’s most costly and complex missions can have cascading effects on the rest of the portfolio  For example, we found that the JWST cost growth would have reverberating effects on the portfolio for years to come and required the agency to identify $1 4 billion in additional resources over fiscal years 2012 through 2017, according to Science Mission Directorate officials  NASA identified approximately half of this required funding from the four science divisions within the Science Mission Directorate account  The majority of the cuts were related to future high priority missions, missions in the operations and sustainment phase, and research and analysis  In essence, NASA had to mortgage future high priority missions and research to address JWST’s additional resource needs  Similarly, the National Academy of Sciences has concluded in the past that it is important for NASA to have a clearly articulated and consistently applied method for prioritizing why and how its scarce fiscal resources are apportioned with respect to the science program in general and on a more granular level among component scientific disciplines  The academy noted that failure to do so could result in a loss of capacity, capability, and human resources in a number of scientific disciplines and technological areas that may take a generation or more to reconstitute once eliminated  NASA’s establishment of the WFIRST Independent External Technical/Management/Cost Review that I previously discussed is a step in the right direction to help ensure the Astrophysics Division incorporates this lesson learned  Establish Adequate Cost and Schedule Reserves to Address Risks  Twice in the history of the JWST program, independent reviewers found that the program’s planned cost reserves were inadequate  First, in April 2006, an Independent Review Team confirmed that the project’s technical content was complete and sound, but expressed concern over the project’s reserve funding, reporting that it was too low and phased in too late in the development lifecycle  The review team reported that for a project as complex as JWST, 25 to 30 percent total reserve funding was appropriate  The team cautioned that low reserve funding compromised the project’s ability to resolve issues, address risk areas, and accommodate unknown problems  As I previously mentioned, following additional cost increases and schedule threats, NASA commissioned the Independent Comprehensive Review Panel  In 2010, the panel again concluded JWST was executing well from a technical standpoint, but that the baseline cost estimate did not reflect the most probable cost with adequate reserves in each year of project execution, resulting in an unexecutable project  NASA heeded these lessons when it established a new baseline for JWST in 2011  For example, the revised schedule included more reserves than required by the procedural requirements issued by the NASA center responsible for managing JWST  We have found, however, that NASA has not applied this lesson learned to all of its large projects— most notably with its human spaceflight projects, including the Space Launch System, Orion Crew Capsule, and associated ground systems— and similar outcomes to the JWST project have started to emerge with these projects  We previously reported that all three of these programs were operating with limited cost reserves, which limited each program’s ability to address risks and unforeseen technical challenges  For example, we found in July 2016 that the Orion program planned to maintain very low levels of annual cost reserves until 2018  The lack of available cost reserves in the near term led to the program deferring work to address technical issues to stay within budget, and put the program’s future cost reserves at risk of being overwhelmed by deferred work  In April 2017, we also found that all three programs faced development challenges in completing work, and each had little to no schedule reserve remaining to the launch date—meaning they would have to complete all remaining work with minimal delay during the most challenging stage of development  We found that it was unlikely that the programs would achieve the planned launch readiness date and recommended that NASA reassess the date  NASA agreed with this recommendation and stated that it would establish a new launch readiness date  In November 2017, NASA announced that a review of the possible manufacturing and production schedule risks indicated a launch date of June 2020—a delay of 19 months—but the agency will manage to a December 2019 launch date because, according to NASA, they have put in mitigation strategies for those risks  We will follow-up on those mitigation strategies as part of future work on the human space exploration programs  Regularly and Consistently Update Project JCLs to Provide Realistic Estimates to Decision Makers  In 2009, NASA began requiring that programs and projects with estimated life-cycle costs greater than $250 million develop a JCL prior to project confirmation  This was a positive step for NASA to help ensure that cost and schedule estimates are realistic and projects are thoroughly planning for anticipated risks  This is because a JCL assigns a confidence level, or likelihood, of a project meeting its cost and schedule estimates  Our cost estimating best practices recommend that cost estimates should be updated to reflect changes to a program or be kept current as a program moves through milestones  As new risks emerge on a project, an updated cost and schedule risk analysis can provide realistic estimates to decision-makers, including the Congress  This is especially true for NASA’s largest projects as updated estimates may require the Congress to consider a variety of actions  However, there is no requirement for NASA projects to update their JCLs, and our prior work has found that projects—including JWST—do not regularly update cost risk analyses to take into account newly emerged risks  Our ongoing work indicates that of the 16 major projects currently in NASA’s portfolio that have developed JCL estimates, only 2 have reported updating their JCLs (other than required due to a rebaseline)  For example, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport Project (InSight), a Mars lander, updated its JCL after the project missed its committed launch date  As a result, the project was able to provide additional information to decision makers about the probability that it will meet its revised cost and schedule estimates  As a project reaches the later stages of development, especially integration and testing, the types of risks the project will face may change  An updated project JCL would provide both project and agency management with data on relevant risks that can guide the project decisions  For example, in December 2012, we recommended the JWST project update its JCL  NASA concurred with this recommendation; however, we recently closed the recommendation because NASA had not taken steps to implement it and the amount of time remaining before launch would not have allowed the benefit of implementing the recommendation to be realized  An updated JCL may have portended the current schedule delays, which could have been proactively addressed by the project  Enhance Oversight of Contractors to Improve Project Outcomes  In December 2012, we found that the JWST project had taken steps to enhance communications with and oversight of its contractors  According to project officials, the increased communication allowed them to better identify and manage project risks by having more visibility into contractors’ activities  The project reported that a great deal of communication existed across the project prior to the Independent Comprehensive Review Panel; however, additional improvements were made  For example, the project increased its presence at contractor facilities as necessary to provide assistance; this included assigning two engineers on a recurring basis at a Lockheed Martin facility to assist in solving problems with an instrument  The JWST project also assumed full responsibility for the mission system engineering functions from Northrop Grumman in March 2011  NASA and Northrop Grumman officials both said that NASA is better suited to perform these tasks  We continue to see instances in our ongoing work that highlight the importance of implementing this lesson learned from JWST  For example, we found in 2017 that the Space Network Ground Segment Sustainment project—a project that plans to develop and deliver a new ground system for one Space Network site that provides essential communications tracking services to NASA and non-NASA missions—exceeded its original cost baseline by at least $401 7 million and been delayed by 27 months  The project has attributed some of the cost overruns and schedule delays to the contractor’s incomplete understanding of its requirements, which led to poor contractor plans and late design changes  The project also took steps to assign a new NASA project manager, increase physical presence at the contractor facility, and have more staff focused on validation and verification activities  In summary, NASA continues to make progress developing its space telescopes to help understand the universe and our place in it  But much like other major projects that NASA is developing, there continues to be an opportunity for NASA to learn from JWST and other projects that have suffered from cost overruns and schedule delays  Key project management tools and prior GAO recommendations that I have highlighted here today, could help to better position these large, complex, and technically challenging efforts for a successful outcome  We look forward to continuing to work with NASA and this subcommittee in addressing these issues  Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Bera, and Members of the Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement  I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this time  If you or your staff have any questions about this testimony, please contact Cristina T  Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management at (202) 512-4841 or chaplainc@gao gov  Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement  GAO staff who made key contributions to this statement include Molly Traci, Assistant Director; Richard Cederholm, Assistant Director; Carrie Rogers; Lisa Fisher; Laura Greifner; Erin Kennedy; and Jose Ramos  This is a work of the U S  government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States  The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO  However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately 

ground_truth: Georgia is one of the United States' closest partners among the states that gained their independence after the USSR collapsed in 1991. With a history of strong economic aid and security cooperation, the United States has deepened its strategic partnership with Georgia since Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 invasion of Ukraine. U.S. policy expressly supports Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, and Georgia is a leading recipient of U.S. aid to Europe and Eurasia. Many observers consider Georgia to be one of the most democratic states in the post-Soviet region, even as the country faces ongoing governance challenges. The center-left Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party (GD) has close to a three-fourths supermajority in parliament and governs with limited checks and balances. Although Georgia faces high rates of poverty and underemployment, its economy in 2017 and 2018 appeared to show stronger growth than it had in the previous four years. The GD led a coalition to victory in parliamentary elections in 2012 amid growing dissatisfaction with the former ruling party, Mikheil Saakashvili's center-right United National Movement, which came to power as a result of Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution. In August 2008, Russia went to war with Georgia to prevent Saakashvili's government from reestablishing control over the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s and became informal Russian protectorates. Congress has expressed firm support for Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Countering Russian Influence in Europe and Eurasia Act of 2017 (P.L. 115-44, Title II, §253) states that the United States "does not recognize territorial changes effected by force, including the illegal invasions and occupations" of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and other territories occupied by Russia. In September 2016, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 660, which condemns Russia's military intervention and occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In February 2019, the Georgia Support Act (H.R. 598), which originally passed the House by unanimous consent in the 115th Congress (H.R. 6219), was reintroduced in the 116th Congress. The act would express support for Georgia's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, as well as for its democratic development, Euro-Atlantic integration, and peaceful conflict resolution in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The United States provides substantial foreign and military aid to Georgia each year. Since 2010, U.S. nonmilitary aid to Georgia has totaled around $64 million a year on average, in addition to a five-year Millennium Challenge Corporation grant of $140 million to support education. In FY2019, Congress appropriated almost $90 million in nonmilitary aid to Georgia. Since 2010, U.S. military aid to Georgia has been estimated at around $68 million a year on average. In FY2019, Congress appropriated $35 million in Foreign Military Financing and $2 million in International Military Education and Training funds. Defense assistance also includes a three-year, $35 million training initiative, the Georgia Defense Readiness Program.