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i 

87–865 2014

[H.A.S.C. No. 113–102] 

THE 2014 QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE 

REVIEW 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

APRIL 3, 2014 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California, Chairman 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada 

JON RUNYAN, New Jersey 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

RON BARBER, Arizona 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois 

PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

KARI BINGEN, Professional Staff Member 

MICHAEL CASEY, Professional Staff Member 

AARON FALK, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2014 

Page 

HEARING: 

Thursday, April 3, 2014, The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review ....................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Thursday, April 3, 2014 .......................................................................................... 37 

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014 

THE 2014 QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck,’’ a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services .................................................................. 1 

Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Armed Services ............................................................................ 2 

WITNESSES 

Winnefeld, ADM James A. ‘‘Sandy,’’ Jr., USN, Vice Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense ..................................................... 5 

Wormuth, Christine E., Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, 

Plans and Force Development, U.S. Department of Defense ........................... 4 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ .................................................................... 41 

Smith, Hon. Adam ............................................................................................ 43 

Wormuth, Christine E., joint with ADM James A. ‘‘Sandy’’ Winnefeld, 

Jr. ................................................................................................................... 45 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Mr. Gibson ......................................................................................................... 57 

Mr. McKeon ....................................................................................................... 57 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Langevin ..................................................................................................... 61 

(1) 

THE 2014 QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Thursday, April 3, 2014. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ 

McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, 

A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. 

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before we begin, I want to 

express my condolences to the victims and families of the Fort 

Hood shooter. Though we do not yet know the motivation behind 

this horrific attack, it is a grim reminder that danger persists even 

when our troops come home. 

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families 

from the Fort Hood community, and I would like to ask each of you 

if you would join me in a moment of silence for those families. 

Thank you. 

The committee meets today to receive testimony on the 2014 

Quadrennial Defense Review [QDR]. Joining us today are Admiral 

Sandy Winnefeld, Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ms. 

Christine Wormuth, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Force Development. 

Thank you both very much for being here today. 

I have called the Department to rewrite and resubmit the QDR 

report, and I intend to include a provision in the upcoming NDAA 

[National Defense Authorization Act] to that effect. 

I appreciate the work that has gone into this year’s product, and 

I understand that past QDRs were less than perfect. However, I 

am concerned that these reports have grown less compliant with 

the law, and strayed further from the intent of Congress. 

The QDR is meant to be a useful tool for Congress to understand 

the longer-term strategic challenges and opportunities facing the 

Department. It is meant to inform a thoughtful debate on our defense strategy and the resources needed to fulfill it. 

We recognize that the QDR also drives a valuable internal process for the Department. But if it only leads to a justification of programs in the budget, then both the Department and Congress have 

lost a major opportunity to bring together key national security 

stakeholders and strategic thinkers to discuss and debate how we 

shape the longer-term direction of our forces, their missions, and 

their capabilities. 
2 

Instead, what we have before us this year is, in essence, a 5-year 

outlook of validation of a force structure that the services admit is 

driven by budget constraints, and a strategy that assumes increased risk to the force. 

Moreover, we have before us a strategy that has not changed 

since the last one was issued in 2012. At the time, General 

Dempsey testified that if the military had to absorb more cuts, and 

I quote—‘‘we have to adjust our strategy.’’ Since then, the military 

has absorbed an additional $330 billion in cuts, not including sequestration that returns in fiscal year 2016. Yet, the strategy before us remains unchanged. It asks our men and women in uniform 

to fulfill all the same missions and requirements, but with a smaller force, less capabilities, and ultimately, increased risk to those 

who would go into harm’s way. 

The strategy sizes the force to simultaneously defeat one regional 

adversary, and deny another. However, in testimony we received 

from the combatant commanders and service chiefs, our military 

under the funding profile for defense currently in law can barely 

muster enough forces to execute even one major contingency operation. 

While the QDR recognizes the world is growing more volatile, 

and in some cases, more threatening to the United States, it makes 

no adjustments to reflect that change. For example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its longer-term intentions should cause us to 

rethink the current QDR tenet that suggests cooperation and nuclear reductions will make us safer. 

Strong U.S. leadership and influence must be matched by a 

strong military. This was a missed opportunity to communicate the 

linkage between strategy and resources, and the inflection point at 

which the United States finds itself. 

I look forward to your testimony with regard to this issue. 

Mr. Smith. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the Appendix on page 41.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 

WASHINGTON, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I join the chairman in acknowledging and wishing the best 

for the victims of the shooting in Fort Hood. Our thoughts and 

prayers are with them and their families, as regrettably another 

child—another tragedy strikes that base. And this committee will 

work hard to try understand it better and figure out what we can 

do to prevent these in the future. 

So, I thank you for the recognition of that and the moment of silence. And I thank our witnesses for being here today to talk about 

the QDR and to talk about our strategy. 

And I think, you know, the largest problem with QDR—and I 

don’t disagree with many of the chairman’s comments about the 

fact that it is not as informative as it could be. But one of the biggest problems is, just in general with all QDRs, is the unpredictability of, gosh, 2, 3 years in the future, much less 15 or 20. 
3 

As the chairman and many others have pointed out, when it 

comes to predicting future national security threats and where we 

are going to have to go to war, we do not have a very good record. 

And I think the reason for that is, the world is unpredictable. 

Things change. Looking that far out into the future, the variables 

significantly outweigh the constants, and that makes it difficult to 

accurately predict. 

I think this time, however, the QDR face the even greater challenge of the uncertain budget future. It would be one thing if we 

knew for certain that we were going to have 8 years of sequestration—that this was the budget, this was the number, and we had 

to take a step back and look at, okay, what are we going to do? 

I will tell you that that picture would be very, very scary in terms 

of the blow it would make to our national security, to our industrial 

base, and all manner of different pieces that are incredibly important to this committee. But we can’t be certain. 

We were—you know, we had sequestration until we didn’t for 

2015—for 2014 and 2015. So, if you are putting together a QDR, 

you are being asked to, you know, understand what the resources 

are, and you don’t know what those resources are, that makes it 

a very, very difficult process. 

And, of course, we have what seems like one of the more uncertain threat environments that we have had in a long time—with 

Iran and North Korea, you know, the metastasization of Al Qaeda 

and their ideology, with what Russia is doing in Eastern Europe. 

And it is a very uncertain time and it makes it very, very difficult 

to predict. So, for the most part, I think any limitations that the 

QDR face is simply because of the uncertainty of all of those factors 

making it difficult to make those predictions. 

I will say that the one thing that I have always found unfortunate about the QDR is, it does not prioritize very well. It does a 

fairly decent job of weighing out what the threats are, and lists a 

whole lot of different things that we ought to be concerned about. 

But I have always felt, if you have 20 top priorities, then you have 

none. We have to be able to choose from among all of those things. 

And one of the things we look for from the QDR is to give us their 

best expert assumption as to out of these multiple different possible threats that we face, what are the ones we ought to be most 

worried about, and how should we respond? 

We are not going to hold the folks who put the QDR to that, and 

say that you have to be right. We obviously will adjust as we go 

forward. But the QDR process would be incredibly useful if they 

would take it and say, ‘‘We are going to give you our best assumption, based on the facts we have, as to how you should prioritize,’’ 

not just say, ‘‘Here is everything you ought to be worried about. Go 

ahead and worry.’’ It is better if we can prioritize and figure out 

how to manage risk, which, as, you know, all the folks over at the 

Pentagon always tell us, is essentially their job. 

You are not going to eliminate risk. You simply have to try figure 

out what it is and manage it as best as possible. And that is more 

easily done if we make some choices about how to prioritize the 

threats and concerns that we face. 
4 

With that, I look forward to the testimony. I welcome Admiral 

Winnefeld and Mrs. Wormuth here. I look forward to your expertise and to the questions and answers as we go forward. 

I yield back, and I thank the chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 43.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Who is going first? 

Madam Secretary. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTINE E. WORMUTH, DEPUTY UNDER 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR STRATEGY, PLANS AND 

FORCE DEVELOPMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Ms. WORMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Representative Smith and members of the committee. It is my pleasure to talk with you this morning about the 

Department’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review. And I will try to 

keep my opening statement pretty brief so we can get to questions. 

The 2014 QDR is an evolution of our strategy. The updated defense strategy builds on the DSG [Defense Strategic Guidance] that 

the administration put out in 2012, and outlines what our joint 

force needs to be able to accomplish in the next 10 to 20 years. 

We have tried to lay out our plan to responsibly rebalance the 

military, given changes in the security environment and the fiscal 

environment. We also tried to explain how the Department intends 

to rebalance internally to be more efficient to get greater buying 

power for our dollar and to control cost growth into the future. 

The QDR is based on our assessment of the future security environment, and it is strategy-driven, as a result. We looked out 20 

years, considering potential challenges, threats on the horizon, and 

for areas where we can work together with allies and partners to 

address common security issues. 

We also believe we will continue to face a complex and uncertain 

world, one that presents opportunities, but also one that poses 

many threats to our interests, our forces, and our friends and allies 

around the world. 

Based on our assessment of that security environment, the 2014 

QDR builds on the priorities articulated in the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and incorporates them into a broader strategic 

framework. 

The Department’s updated strategy emphasizes three pillars: 

protecting the homeland, building security globally, and projecting 

power and winning decisively. These three pillars are interrelated 

and interdependent. We need all three of them to be able to successfully protect and advance our national interests. 

To execute the strategy effectively, the joint force must be capable of conducting a broad range of activities at any given time. It 

is not enough to be capable of defeating an adversary and denying 

the objectives of another aggressor if deterrence fails. Our forces 

must also be able to protect the homeland, to assure and deter 

around the world in multiple regions, and conduct persistent 

counterterrorism operations. Our updated force planning construct 

in the QDR reflects the full breadth of these demands. 
5 

To ensure that we can execute our QDR strategy and the force 

planning construct, we are rebalancing the force, making tradeoffs 

among capability, capacity, and readiness. 

Because of the readiness challenges we have had in the last few 

years, the Department has had to make especially tough choices 

balancing between capacity and capabilities. 

Key decisions in the President’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal 

include reducing capacity in ground forces, reducing or eliminating 

capacity in single-mission aviation platforms, and undertaking 

some temporary ship layups. We are also protecting key investments, particularly in the areas of cyber capability, space, and special operations forces, to name a few. 

Overall, the QDR puts forth an updated national defense strategy that we believe is right for the country. At the President’s 

budget level, which does ask for more resources than if sequestration were to continue, we believe we can execute the strategy, although with increased risk in certain areas. 

These risks would grow significantly, however, if we return to sequestration-level cuts in fiscal year 2016, if proposed reforms in the 

area of compensation, for example, are not accepted, or if uncertainty about budget levels continues. And the QDR report, as you 

know, outlines these potential risks in some detail. 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you—Representative Smith—for the opportunity to talk with you today, and for the continued leadership 

of this committee. I look forward to your questions. 

[The joint prepared statement of Ms. Wormuth and Admiral 

Winnefeld can be found in the Appendix on page 45.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Admiral. 

STATEMENT OF ADM JAMES A. ‘‘SANDY’’ WINNEFELD, JR., USN, 

VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member 

Smith, distinguished members of the committee, thanks also for 

the opportunity to be with you today. I also thank you, sir, for your 

sentiments regarding the tragedy of Fort Hood yesterday afternoon. 

We are working very hard to take care of the victims and the families, and we will ultimately get to the bottom of what went wrong 

at Fort Hood yesterday. But thank you so much for your concern. 

I would like to set the stage by saying that Chairman Dempsey 

and I believe that strategy, including QDR strategy, is mostly 

about balancing ends, ways, and means, and then assessing the resultant risk. We try very hard, the two of us, to keep this balance 

in mind. 

We believe that the most fundamental ‘‘ends’’ of any national defense strategy boil down to our enduring national security interests. The chairman has derived those interests from the President’s 

2010 National Security Strategy. He has articulated them in his 

QDR endorsement. And he has used them as the structure of the 

Chairman’s Risk Assessment. So, they are very useful. 

It is our duty to protect those interests against the threats we 

foresee in the current and future security environment—threats 

that become more opaque as we look deeper into the future, but all 
6 

of which appear to be accelerating their employment of new technology. 

The ‘‘ways’’ of our strategy are how we do our job. They are what 

we believe our force needs to be able to do, and that can be found 

at the macro level in the QDR’s force planning construct. 

Ways are also how we do our job, such as our operational plans 

and concepts, and, in fact, the ways we run the Department. 

Regarding ‘‘means,’’ Bernard Brodie said that strategy wears a 

dollar sign. The means of our strategy are the resources we are 

provided by the United States Congress, and how together, we invest those resources in the capability, capacity, and readiness of 

our forces and the structure that supports those forces. 

Now, every strategy—every balanced combination of ends, ways, 

and means—lives inside a band of risk. Because assessing risk is 

as much art as it is science, it is imprecise, imperfect, and subjective, and is usually articulated in adjectives that are hard to describe. 

A strategy that falls out of balance implies increased risk. If we 

want to retain the same ends, but our means decrease dramatically, then we have to try to restore strategic balance by either 

finding better ways, or trying to obtain more means, or we have to 

accept a bit more risk in our ends. 

I believe all three are exactly what we are doing in this QDR. 

So, a key question is, exactly how much risk are we accepting? I 

would say that risk should be considered to a strategy in two layers. 

The first layer is what I would call ends/ways risk. Whether our 

ends—our enduring national security interests—are adequately 

protected by the ways that we have constructed. 

This QDR’s ways—the what and how of our efforts in both peacetime and wartime—are based on the strategic defense guidance 

published in 2012. And if properly resourced, we believe they will 

protect our national security interest ends within that moderate 

risk band. There is always more we can do, but we believe we have 

this about right. 

The next layer, I would say, is what I would call ways/means 

risk. Whether the ways of our strategy are executable within the 

means we are provided. During the Strategic Choices and Management Review last spring, we found that this strategy’s ways are not 

executable at moderate risk at the Budget Control Act [BCA] level 

of funding. We simply won’t have enough modernized and ready 

stuff in our force to get all the jobs done, both in the near and the 

long term. In short, we will be out of balance. 

So, we had a choice. With reduced means, we could have downscoped the strategy’s ways to align with BCA funding levels, and 

accepted a good deal more risk to our ends. But that really would 

be a purely budget-driven strategy, and none of us want that. 

Instead, we submitted a QDR that says what we need to do and 

what that requires, and a budget request that, if resourced over the 

next 5 years, will provide the additional means we need to execute 

the ways that will protect our national security ends, thus keeping 

the strategy in balance, albeit at higher aggregate risk than the 

President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request. 
7 

Mr. Chairman, as Chairman Dempsey says in his QDR endorsement, ‘‘If our elected leaders reversed the BCA cap soon, and if we 

can execute the promises’’—meaning the ways—‘‘of the QDR, then 

I believe we can deliver security to the nation at moderate risk.’’ 

To be candid, I would describe that higher aggregate ways/means 

risk as pushing very hard on the high edge of the moderate band. 

Certainly higher than in the President’s 2014 budget request. 

Now, just like my kids have an aggregate grade point average, 

but some of their grades are higher or lower than their average, 

QDR risk is low in some areas, and in other areas, it actually exceeds the moderate band. 

There are four relevant points here. First, if the higher areas of 

risk were against a highly ranked national security interest—and 

remember, that is what the ends are—like protecting our homeland 

against catastrophic attacks, then we probably would have assessed the aggregate level of risk as being outside the moderate 

band. Fortunately, that is not the case. And we will soon provide 

our assessment—the chairman’s assessment of risk—against specific national security interests in the classified Chairman’s Risk 

Assessment. 

Second, readiness risk in the near term is higher than moderate, 

because we are still recovering from the effects of the precipitous 

drop in funding we experienced last year, due to sequester, as well 

as the fact that we need to reset from two wars. 

You have probably heard from our combatant commanders on 

this, because the near term is where they live. 

The BBA—Budget—or the Bipartisan Budget Act—is simply not 

enough in fiscal year 2015 to get us back on track as fast as we 

think we should. And the Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative would certainly be helpful in repairing that. But in the QDR 

20-year long term, we believe that we will eventually be able to 

match readiness to the eventual size of our force. 

Third, the future risk level associated with our budget submission depends on Congress approving the combination of capabilities, capacities, and readiness we have requested, as well as the 

important proposals we are making for efficiencies and compensation. This budget is fragile. As more items are changed, the impact 

will ripple through and distort our force, and could quickly push us 

out of the QDR moderate risk band. 

And fourth, our ability to continue to innovate technically, 

tactically, and in our business practices, will be an important factor 

that helps keep us inside the moderate band. This has to occur 

across many different areas deeply and quickly, and will require us 

to be more willing to reward risk-taking and promote creative leadership. 

Finally, I want to mention that one of the most important 

themes that I think distinguishes this QDR from others, as the 

chairman and I see it, is that of rebalance. And I am not just talking about rebalance to the Pacific. This is about rebalance across 

the entire Department in six key areas, including rebalancing the 

wars for which we prepare and how we do that; rebalancing our efforts regionally; rebalancing capability, capacity, and readiness 

within our force, which is out of balance now; rebalancing tooth 
8 

and tail; rebalancing Active and Reserve; and rebalancing compensation. 

We are going to need considerable help from Congress to make 

these rebalance initiatives happy. And I am happy to discuss them 

as need be, either here or in private. 

As always, thank you for your enduring support to the men and 

women we have serving in uniform. And thank you again for the 

opportunity to speak this morning, and I do look forward to your 

questions. 

Thank you, sir. 

[The joint prepared statement of Admiral Winnefeld and Ms. 

Wormuth can be found in the Appendix on page 45.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

One of the things that has been a little perplexing to me is when 

the Secretary and the chairman came up and presented the budget, 

they presented it in a way, I think, that leads to confusion. In other 

words, they said that if sequestration kicks back in—no, they said 

the budget will take us down to 440,000 to 450,000 in the Army, 

and down to 175,000 the Marines—or 184,000 the Marines, unless 

sequestration comes back. And then in that case, it would go down 

to 420,000, 400, and 175,000 for the Marines. 

And to me, I think, you know, we deal with this all the time 

here, so we kind of understand all the nuances and so forth, but 

I don’t think the American public gets it. I think the media ran stories immediately that the Army was going to be taken down to 

440,000 or 450,000. 

No. My understanding is, sequestration is the law. As much as 

I dislike it, it is the law. And it does kick back in again in 2016. 

And unless we face the fact of how dire that will be, there is very 

little chance of changing it. And so, when we say 440,000, 450,000, 

instead of the reality of the 420,000 or the 175,000, and taking 

down a carrier, taking down cruisers—all of this—I think we—I 

don’t understand why we don’t lay out the reality, as dire as it is 

right now, to try to get the American people to understand how serious this is. 

Can you explain to me that strategy? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. No, I think you are on to something. You 

are exactly correct that it is important that the American people 

understand the difference between Budget Control Act levels and 

the levels at which we submitted. They are significant. We intentionally crafted this so that we could point out what that difference 

is. 

I can rattle them off by memory, most of them. The difference between those two levels is 50,000 to 60,000 ground—Army ground 

troops, both Active and Reserve. It is about 7,000 Marines difference. It is a large number of ships that we will not be able to 

purchase. It is an additional F–35 squadron. We have to get rid of 

all the KC–10s in the near term. 

We will lose 10 ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] orbits, which is about 30 platforms, to make up those 10 orbits. We will lose significant amounts of research, development, 

and engineering to promote our future force. We are going to lose 

a bunch of readiness. And that, taken in the aggregate, if removed 
9 

from this submission, will definitely kick us out of the moderate 

risk band that this QDR portrays. 

So, it is stark. It is real. And, Mr. Chairman, the BCA level is 

not enough to execute this strategy. The ways/means risk that I described falls out of the band. 

The CHAIRMAN. It just seemed to me that would have been less 

confusing if that were just—if it were just the budget as it is, because this is something that the House, the Senate, agreed to. We 

actually got back to regular order somewhat, where they had a conference, and they came up with a final solution, signed it. Sent it 

to the President. He signed it. And it is the law going forward. And 

it gave us 2 years, which brought a little—a little certainty, and 

put a little money back into defense from sequestration levels. 

If the budget had just been presented, that this is the way it is, 

and it is going to take us down to 420,000—it is going to take all 

of those reductions that you have mentioned—I think people could 

focus on that. But the way it was presented, it was just kind of 

like, this is the way it will be unless we follow the law. And I just 

don’t think they get those nuances. And I was a little disappointed 

in that, and will continue to try to talk about those differences. 

Building just a little on what Ranking Member Smith talked 

about—if you have 20 priorities, you know—I think your statement 

was, if you have 20, you don’t have any priorities. So, to me, there 

is one overriding issue that really is bothering me. I would like to 

know, as the two of you went through this process—and, Admiral, 

you have been doing this for a long time now. And you look at— 

if you were to say what is the greatest risk in potential loss of life, 

casualties, that confronts us today, where would you say that is in 

the world? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. That is a good question, Mr. Chairman. We 

tend to think in terms, first, of risk to interests. And then specific 

areas of the world that affect those interests. So, clearly, the highest national security interest the chairman and I believe we have 

is the survival of our Nation, followed by prevention of catastrophic 

attacks—read terrorist attacks like 9/11, or a nuclear missile coming from a rogue state, or something like that. 

So, in terms of the highest risk to American people that is out 

there in the world, it would be one of those two high national security interests that would be threatened. But we also feel that the 

capabilities and the capacities we have in place and that we have 

programmed keep that risk very manageable. 

We are working very hard, as you know, on missile defense. We 

have a very strong nuclear deterrent that we are maintaining. We 

have got some work to do there, as some of the members are very 

well familiar with those issues. But I think we are okay there. 

So, you start to work into other areas where we have interests, 

such as secure, confident, reliable allies and partners. There are a 

lot of places in this world where those are threatened—where our 

allies are threatened. We have just seen it happen with our NATO 

[North Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies, who are now nervous 

about what is going on in Eastern Europe. There is the constant 

threat in the Pacific, and the Korean Peninsula and the like. 

So, that is sort of the middle strategic interests for us that are 

constantly at risk. 
10 

In terms of American lives, though, we have always prioritized 

defending the homeland. I think we are in a pretty good moderate 

risk band there. I hope that helps. 

The CHAIRMAN. The thing I am most concerned about right now 

is the Korean Peninsula. Because I think—you know, we had the 

briefing this week with General Scaparrotti. And I have been to 

Korea a few times. And I just—I see the unstableness there. Plus, 

how many people, both Koreans and Americans, live very close to 

the DMZ [demilitarized zone], and are under—they are targeted 

right now by all of their artillery, let alone the other tools that they 

have. And if something blew up there, I would think the loss of life 

in hours and days would be so high, compared to any other threat 

that I see around the world right now. That is just something that 

is really bothering me. 

Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple comments 

on, you know, part of the challenge of what you have put together 

there, and, you know, the notion of why didn’t you just budget to 

sequestration. 

Well, two answers to that. First of all, yes, sequestration from 

2016 forward is the law of the land. But sequestration for 2014 and 

2015 was the law of the land, as well, until it wasn’t. So, if you 

budget all that and then you got to reverse back around—so, you 

guys are sort of trying to guess as to what it is that we are going 

to send you in terms of the budget, and I don’t think you are going 

to win either way. Because the other thing that I will point out is 

the thing that I have consistently heard from the other side of the 

aisle in this committee is harsh criticism of you in the Pentagon 

for letting the budget drive your strategy. And, you know, if you 

had come out and said, ‘‘Well, sequestration is the law of the land. 

Therefore, here is what we are going to do,’’ I can only imagine 

that the volume of that criticism would be even greater than it is. 

You know, ‘‘How dare you put out a budget, you know, that does 

not protect our national security,’’ and ‘‘Admit that you did it only 

because that is what the budget required.’’ 

So, you are kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. 

So, I have a little bit of sympathy for you trying to figure out which 

way to go on that front. And, frankly, what you did, I think, is fairly logical. Which is to say that you put out a budget that said, 

‘‘Okay, this is the amount of money we have, and we know that. 

But here is the amount of money that we feel we need to hit our 

strategy.’’ That was reflected both in the $28 billion in additional 

defense spending that was put into fiscal year—well, it was requested for fiscal year 2015 with offsets, and then also in FYDP 

[Future Years Defense Plan]—I think $150 billion—I could be off 

on the number—over 5 years, saying—you basically were saying, 

‘‘Look, we know that the amount of money that Congress is allowing us means that we will not be able to meet our strategy. And 

the budget will drive it. It is not our decision to have the budget 

drive that, it is Congress’ decision. And if you want to give us the 

amount of money to meet our strategy, here it is.’’ 

Why everyone in the media and everyone is so perplexed by that 

is beyond me. I think it is perfectly logical what you did and why 

you did it. And we don’t know what is going to happen. You know, 
11 

the chairman and I and a lot of others are going to fight very hard 

and try to make sure that sequestration doesn’t happen for 2016 

going forward. And you have to be prepared as best as you can for 

those eventualities. And that is part of what has made the last 4 

years so very difficult at the Pentagon, is from one week to the 

next, from one month to the next, you don’t have any idea how 

much money you are going to have. 

So, hopefully, we can get you some consistency on that. But I 

think what has come out has—you know, has made sense in what 

is a chaotic environment. 

The one question I wanted to ask about in terms of the QDR’s 

vision of the future is dealing with the terrorist threat, and specifically with the various offshoots of Al Qaeda. And I think we all, 

you know, the narrative is pretty clear now that the good news is 

Al Qaeda’s senior leadership, some of them are centralized organizations, when we have been able to successfully target and significantly degrade their ability to plan transnational terrorist attacks. 

And I don’t think that should be disputed. The bad news is that 

the ideology that they propose has metastasized in a whole bunch 

of different places. Certainly in North Africa, you know, Mali, and 

Libya is falling apart. We are seeing it in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere. 

And in each one of these areas it is hard to know exactly what 

the threat is. We know that there are groups there that are sympathetic to an ideology that threatens us. We do not in many cases 

know how strong they are. 

Are they locally focused primarily trying to drive that ideology to 

control a given country or a given part of that country, or are they 

transnationally focused? We have seen this come out of Syria. 

There are all kinds of speculation that the Al Qaeda affiliated 

groups or Al Qaeda-like groups in Syria are potentially planning 

transnational threats, but we don’t know. 

How does the QDR reflect what our best strategy is for confronting that? Because I still believe that is the greatest threat 

that we face. I am worried about North Korea. I am worried about 

Iran. I am worried about Russia. 

But right now there is only one group out there that has still actively declared war and declared their intention to bring direct 

harm to U.S. citizens and our interests, and that is Al Qaeda and 

their affiliates. 

So what is our best strategy going forward to confront that metastasizing threat? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congressman, I think we very much share the 

assessment that you just laid out of the terrorist threat and the 

fact that it is spreading and that it is not a one-size-fits-all challenge in different regions. 

We have an approach that has sort of a couple of elements I 

would say. First, we will of course continue to have the capacity, 

the capabilities to conduct direct action where we need to. And that 

is an important part of our strategy. We are continuing to make 

investments to ensure our capability to do that. 

It is one of the reasons why we protected and continue to allow 

some growth in our special operations forces almost up to 70,000. 

But another important piece of that is working with partners in 
12 

places like Yemen, for example, to try to build up their own organic 

capability to do more themselves to fight the terrorist threat in 

their country. 

So part of what we are doing, and it is I think consistent with 

the rebalance theme that the admiral laid out, is to rebalance a little towards putting more emphasis on building partnership capacity than we have in the last 10 years. 

I also would say part of what Admiral McRaven’s vision is, is as 

we draw down out of Afghanistan and bring back some of our special operations forces, we will be able to distribute them around the 

world again very much to focus on being able to again try to draw 

down the threats in places like North Africa for example and build 

partnership capacity with countries. 

So that is an important part of our strategy. And Admiral 

McRaven works very closely with combatant commanders like General Rodriguez in AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command], for example, 

to have sort of a comprehensive strategic approach to that. 

Mr. SMITH. And for my part, I think that building partner capacity is perhaps the most important part of this, is finding allies in 

regions as we have successfully done in the Horn of Africa with 

Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya. They have been very, very helpful to us. 

And having a local face on security is obviously far better than having U.S. presence and is also cost effective for us as well. 

I would say the one piece of that that we really need to emphasize is building a cooperative model in each of these countries between—and I think SOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command] is 

going to be the lead in a lot of this. I think the MLEs [Military Liaison Elements] that they send out there have the potential—they 

have been very effective in some places. 

I think they have the potential to be even more effective. The key 

to that effectiveness is building a meaningful partnership with the 

State Department and with intel. And I have been to a lot—some 

countries like Yemen, perfect. Well, perfect is a strong word. It 

works well. You know, the ambassadors bought in. The chief of stations bought in and they are all working together. 

I have been to other countries where, you know, the chief of mission looks at the MLE and the SOCOM presence like, I don’t know 

who these people are. I don’t know what they are doing in my 

country and I am not happy about it. 

So building a better partnership between those three elements I 

think can give us a very low-cost, light footprint, locally driven way 

to contain this very significant threat. 

Thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Thornberry. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral, I have 

been around for all the QDRs so far and I have become increasingly skeptical that there is any value in this exercise. If we were 

to have a provision that repealed the statutory requirement for 

QDR, what would your advice be about whether that would be a 

good or bad thing? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Obviously it would create a lot less work in 

the Department. But I think, as Chairman McKeon rightly pointed 
13 

out, this is a valuable process for the Department. It is valuable 

I think for any new administration to go through. 

It is a good forcing function for us as a Department to have to 

congeal our thinking, our intellectual power into one place. So I 

would not want to suggest that you just repeal the need for a QDR 

at all. It is a very useful document. And we have found, I think 

as you know, we have a saying in the military. It is not the plan. 

It is the planning. 

The Strategic Choices and Management Review that laid down 

so much of the groundwork for this QDR was an incredibly valuable process. Ash Carter was right and Secretary Hagel was right 

to ask us to do that last spring. So I wouldn’t encourage deleting 

the requirement. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. And you think that planning would not occur 

otherwise? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I think it would, sir. We go through this 

every year in our budget process and that sort of thing. But it does 

force us into a little longer look. It is a little bit more of a joint 

process. So again, we may at the committee’s and certainly on the 

other House of Congress look at ways to improve it. That is a potential project. I don’t have any great thoughts on that, but I do 

think that it is a valuable process to do every 4 years. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. The statute says that the QDR has to identify 

the budget plan to provide sufficient resources to execute the full 

range of missions at a low to moderate level of risk. And you have 

said several times that we barely stay within the moderate range 

of risk. 

I wrote—this phrase was great. Pushing hard on the high edge 

of moderate, you said. How is that not just playing word games to 

fit within a statute? Because pushing hard on the high edge of 

moderate—— 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I think that gets to the definition of risk. 

And one of the things I think we can do better as a team here, Congress and DOD [Department of Defense], is to define what we 

mean by risk. Because as I said earlier in my remark, the words 

we use, the adjectives we use are ill-defined. They are hard to understand and hard to articulate. 

We do have definitions for those terms, and I do believe we are 

at the edge of moderate risk, but we are in moderate risk right 

now. It is not going to take too much. Certainly going down to the 

BCA level of funding would kick us out of that band fairly quickly. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. I think the point about we use the word risk 

a lot and it is kind of a vague term that doesn’t have much meaning is exactly right. Would you say that we took some—what level 

of risk would you say we took as far as Russia returning to a more 

aggressive policy in invading one of its neighbors? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. It is hard to define that. We do have the 

rebalance that we have talked about where we maintain our emphasis in the Middle East and shift a little bit more intellectual 

and force posture emphasis to the Pacific. But remember, we are 

calling that a rebalance, not a pivot. I very pointedly want to make 

sure we call it a rebalance. 

Pivot implies turning your back on your former partner, what 

have you. We have a strong partnership in NATO. It is a good alli-
14 

ance. There is a lot of good military capability in that alliance. We 

are still very much committed to that alliance. And as you I am 

sure know, we have paid very close attention to the situation in 

Ukraine and what it means for all of Europe. 

So yes, I think it fits in the strategy. It was a surprise. It is 

something that has caused us to think hard about this, but we are 

still committed in the long term. Again, a 20-year term that you 

look through a QDR lens at. Russia is relatively weak economically 

and demographically and other ways. There are—you know, China 

on the other hand in the Pacific is rising economically and in other 

ways. And so I think in that long-term lens we are still in the right 

place. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, you may have just answered my last 

question. My question is would you expect that we would have 

written—you all would have written this QDR differently if the 

Russian invasion of Crimea had happened sooner? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I think it would be disingenuous to say 

nothing would have changed in the QDR. I think global current 

events clearly shape the words that we put into a QDR. I would 

not deny that. I don’t know that it would change anything fundamentally in the QDR, but it might change some of the tone. I 

would leave that to one of the principal authors to elaborate on. 

But I think we generally have that right, but it was certainly an 

unwelcome event at the time we were publishing this document. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both for being 

here. And Ms. Wormuth, why don’t I let you follow up on that 

quickly in terms of the piece with Russia and the extent to which 

we—we certainly weren’t looking at Europe as an area of crisis as 

much as a link with NATO and other allies. 

Ms. WORMUTH. Thank you, Congresswoman. I would agree with 

Admiral Winnefeld that while we probably would have added some 

additional sentences to talk more pointedly about the situation 

with Russia, fundamentally I don’t think we would have changed 

the strategy. And I would argue that our strategy is cast in a way 

that allows us to be able to deal with the emerging situation in Europe. 

We do talk in the QDR about the importance of the Europeans 

and NATO, the alliance, as one of our fundamental partners in 

global security, and we talk about our bedrock commitment to 

Euro-Atlantic stability. 

And I think, you know, as we monitor the situation and make 

decisions about what steps we may need to take going forward, we 

are able to do that I think within the framework that we have outlined in the QDR. And I think it is very important to underscore 

that we do talk about our strategic approach to Asia as a rebalance 

because we are not taking our eye off the ball. As a global power, 

we can’t afford to focus solely on one area. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. And actually Admiral, I wanted to follow 

up with the rebalance. And I understand that—the difference between that and pivot, but I also think—and if we think about a rebalance to the Pacific, you raise a certain amount of expectations. 
15 

And my sense is that in many ways we may not have been—we 

may not always be able to follow up on what that expectation is. 

And the rebalance itself suggests to those in the region that 

maybe they have to do something different, that we are—so, could 

you talk a little bit more specifically about that? Because sometimes I think we may be signaling without necessarily wanting to 

create a counterpoint. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Sure, there—— 

Mrs. DAVIS. China, obviously thinks so. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. A whole host of thoughts come to mind 

when you ask that very good question. One of the things we hear 

from our ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] friends, 

and I have dinner with their ambassadors on a quarterly basis, 

just because it is kind of a special project, is we really like having 

you there. Just don’t start anything. 

And they really—the whole region really values American presence and integrity, as it were, in the western Pacific, because it 

does bring stability to that region. I even think the Chinese value 

having us there to a certain degree. 

You know, they don’t want us too close, but they—I think they, 

to a certain degree, value having the United States in that region. 

Nothing that I know of in our budget submission is changing our 

commitment to the rebalance to the Pacific. We still have a lot of 

projects going on there, and we are still committed to our allies in 

the region. And that is why Secretary Hagel is in Hawaii right 

now, talking to the ASEAN ministers. The President is traveling 

in the region twice this year. 

So I think that intellectual and posture commitment is still 

there. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Okay. Well, I would encourage sometimes, perhaps— 

I don’t know if there is a another way of talking about that, but 

sometimes it feels like we can be perceived differently if we are not 

able to follow through with our commitments. 

Going back to the QDR for a second, and the cost savings, because we are obviously very concerned about personnel issues here. 

BRAC [Base Closure and Realignment] is important. And I know 

that there are assumptions in the QDR about those issues moving 

forward to some degree, and whatever that may be. 

So where do they really address the deficiencies that you would 

like to see in terms of resources? Can you be more specific about 

how that comes together and where—you know, where does that— 

if those assumptions are not met, where does the risk grow? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congresswoman, I think that is a great question. 

For example, built into the President’s budget over the FYDP, 

over the 5-year period, are about $30 billion in compensation savings, for example. And there is about—while there are upfront 

costs associated with BRAC, if Congress gives us that authority, 

eventually we will save about $2 billion annually with the base closure process. 

So if we are not able to gain support for either the package of 

compensation reforms or to get BRAC authority, we would then 

have to find those savings elsewhere because they are built into the 

budget. 
16 

And essentially that would mean we would either have to go 

back into readiness, which, again, I think is something we are very 

much trying to protect; capacity, further reducing the size of the 

joint force beyond what we have already put forward in the President’s budget; or in terms of our capabilities, our modernization 

programs, our investments to try to counter anti-access/area denial 

to us, for example. 

So we are very concerned. And I think Admiral Winnefeld mentioned that in his opening statement, that this is sort of a delicate 

package we have put together and if we don’t get all of the pieces, 

we will have to go in and start moving things around, which will 

have ripple effects that are negative. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Great. Thank you. 

My time is up. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Forbes. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Madam Secretary, thank you for being here. We know that you 

are one of the principal authors of this QDR and we appreciate 

your insight. 

Help me understand what in the world this document is, because 

the Secretary of Defense, in his letter that he sends to us on this 

says it was to help the military to prepare for the strategic challenges and opportunities we face in the years ahead. 

My question, is that what it is? Or is it to prepare for the strategic challenges and opportunities we face in the years ahead the 

best we can, based on the BCA and sequestration, the current law? 

Or is it to prepare for the strategic challenges and opportunities 

we face in the years ahead the best we can, based on the President’s proposed budget? 

Which of those three is it? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congressman, I would say we were trying to put 

forward in the QDR, first and foremost, a strategy-driven assessment of what we need. And that is—— 

Mr. FORBES [continuing]. Then you were not in the QDR limiting 

it based on either the BCA and sequestration or based on the 

President’s budget? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I would say it was strategy driven, but resource 

informed. 

So what we tried to do was look out, completely—you know, just 

look at the security environment and what we saw there, and then 

look at our national interests and what objectives, what ends we 

are trying to achieve. 

Our assessment was that to meet the strategy that we think is 

appropriate for us as a global leader and a global power, we needed 

to have more resources than what we would have under the BCA. 

And that is why, at the President’s budget level, which is $115 billion above the BCA, we think that at that level we could execute 

the strategy. We—— 

Mr. FORBES. So you feel that the President’s budget would help 

you implement the strategy you think would be best for this country to meet its challenges and the opportunities we face in the 

years ahead? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Yes. 
17 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. 

Now, Admiral, here is my question to you: You read a statement 

from Chairman Dempsey about the QDR, but I know you didn’t 

have time to read the first paragraph. And this is what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says about this QDR. 

He says, it is gonna give us a smaller, less-capable military, 

which makes meeting these obligations more difficult. Most of our 

platforms and equipment will be older. Our advantages in some of 

the domains will have eroded. Our loss of depth across the force 

could reduce our ability to intimidate opponents from escalating 

conflicts. 

Nations and nonstate actors who have become accustomed to our 

presence could begin to act differently, often in harmful ways. 

Many of our most capable allies will lose key capabilities. 

The situation will be exasperated given our current readiness 

concerns, which will worsen over the next 3 to 4 years. 

How in the world, given that assessment by the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, can we say this QDR is the best we can have 

to meet the strategic challenges and opportunities we face as a nation? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. For the—there is a difference between 

ends, ways, and means, as I mentioned earlier, and—— 

Mr. FORBES. Yes, but that is not what the Secretary just said. 

She said that this is supposed to be the document that tells us our 

strategy. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Right. 

Mr. FORBES. If it is constrained simply by the BCA and sequestration, tell us that. If it is constrained by the President, tell us 

that. 

But that is not what she just said. She said this is the document 

that is primarily designed to address the strategic challenges and 

opportunities we face in the years ahead, how to meet it. 

So tell me how we can ever say that is the right QDR, given that 

conclusion by the chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Right. So the QDR strategy, the ends, 

ways, and means,—the ends and ways we talked about—were carefully looked at. We looked at them during the Strategic Choices 

and Management Review last spring. And we came to the very 

clear conclusion that at the BCA level, it wasn’t going to work. 

Mr. FORBES. I understand that. The President had an—he had 

a chalkboard he could write anything he wanted on. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Yes. And so, what happened was, that is 

what really drove that assessment. The QDR strategy is here. The 

ends and ways of the strategy are here—— 

Mr. FORBES. So you are saying—— 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We don’t have enough money to do it. 

Mr. FORBES. So you are saying the BCA and sequestration drove 

this strategy? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I am saying that the strategy actually 

drove the amount of money that we are submitting in this budget. 

Mr. FORBES. Well, if it did that, Admiral, why didn’t the President include the 11th carrier in there? He had an opportunity to 

do that, because he wasn’t restrained on his budget. That is the 
18 

law. Every single contingency operation plan we have calls for that. 

Why didn’t he put a carrier in there? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. The carrier is intended to—we are gonna 

fix that, basically, on the next budget—— 

Mr. FORBES [continuing]. Admiral, how do you fix that—— 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Sir, when we came to this conclusion, it 

was a fairly end-game thing when we said, you know, we are just 

not gonna be able to get this done at the BCA level and we decided—— 

Mr. FORBES. Admiral, I am not talking about the BCA—I am 

talking about the President’s budget. Why didn’t he include it in 

his budget? 

He had no constraints. And he not only didn’t include it, he took 

it out of the FYDP. He took it out of the money that had been allocated and appropriated. And he didn’t even give the materials to 

do it this year. 

Why, when he was unrestrained? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Because it was an end-game problem, and 

moving all that money around in the end-game of all the line items 

it affected, and I would have to go to the Comptroller’s to get you 

the best answer on that, but the bottom line, Congressman, is if 

we are funded to the President’s budget level this year, that carrier 

will be back in in the 2016 budget. 

Mr. FORBES. Admiral, that is not true, because he didn’t include 

it in his budget. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. It will be in the—— 

Mr. FORBES. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Enyart. 

Mr. ENYART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Good morning, Admiral, Madam Secretary. Good to see you all 

this morning. 

You know, we have seen, over the last several decades, a drawdown in our forces in Europe of about 85 percent. I think that was 

a good thing. Saved us a lot of money. And it really reflected a reduction in tensions in Europe and, indeed, worldwide, with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. 

We have seen a reduction and a drawdown of our forces in Korea 

of about 80 percent. And I think it is probably due to greater capability and that sort of thing. 

You know, it is—but what concerns me is that what we—with 

what we have seen in Crimea and the Ukraine over the last several 

months and when I was training the Polish military and worked 

with NATO folks, my mantra was that when there is peace in Central Europe, there is peace in the world. 

So with the drawdown that we have seen, do we currently have 

the capacity, the ability, to rapidly move folks back in and equipment back into Europe if that need would arise? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We do have the capacity to move forces 

back into Europe. The challenge we are facing at the moment is a 

readiness challenge. And that is because of the sequester last year, 

a really precipitous drop in funding. The Army is certainly digging 

out from that right now. It is gonna be a multiyear challenge for 

them to recover that readiness as they also come down in size. 
19 

But, you know, if we had to do it, and we have a pretty good understanding, particularly sharpened by the most recent crisis, of 

what it would take to move our forces, requisite forces, back to Europe if we needed to. 

Mr. ENYART. Well, I think this last crisis brings another 

maxim—I was glad to hear you cite the maxim that it is not the 

plan, it is the planning. And, again, when I was training young officers, when I was training foreign military personnel, they would 

get wrapped up in the plan. And it is really not about the plan, it 

is about the planning. 

And so, I think that is what we in Congress need to remember 

is that it is really the process of planning, so that we understand 

that process. But I think particularly what this last crisis has 

shown us is that our opponent gets a vote. And sometimes we have 

to respond very rapidly to contingencies that certainly weren’t in 

the plan. 

Can you tell me, Admiral, or Madam Secretary, to what extent 

and in what ways have our interests or the global strategic environment changed in the last 2 years and to have modified the plan 

or that we need to be looking at? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I will give you a little bit of an opening 

structure, then I am going to turn it over to Under Secretary. We 

think that a lot of the glue has come undone in the last few years. 

You know, this is a transition QDR. The last QDR was our war 

fight. And you know, were in the middle of two tough war fights 

in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a transition QDR. The geopolitical 

environment has changed significantly. The ways wars are fought 

is changing every day, and it is accelerating and the fiscal environment is changing. So everything is different in the ends, ways, and 

means equation for us. But I would turn it over to Christine for 

some more specifics. 

Ms. WORMUTH. Thank you. And I would just say I am not yet 

under secretary—still deputy under secretary. A couple of things I 

would highlight, I think, in terms of changes in the strategic environment. I think, one, obviously, the Arab awakening and the ongoing political transitions in the Middle East are developments that 

are fairly significant in the last couple of years. The fact that we 

are working and getting close to the transition of security responsibility in Afghanistan. 

And then I think on the technology front, there have been some 

significant developments in terms of the growing investments in 

anti-access and area denial capabilities that we see both in the 

Asia-Pacific, but also in the Middle East, and just the sort of continuing implements of the proliferation of advanced technologies 

and the spread of information technologies are some of the things 

that I would highlight that we saw as changing. We also obviously 

were seeing changes in terms of the fiscal environment that were 

significant that the Department had to take a look at. 

Mr. ENYART. I see that my time has expired, and I will yield 

back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Admiral, Secretary, 

thank you very much for being here today and on these very impor-
20 

tant issues. Given the changes in the global security landscape and 

fiscal realities, how would the integration of Active and Reserve 

Components and the balance of roles and responsibilities further 

evolve? For example, the planned changes in aircraft between Active and Guard and Reserve. What are the most important criteria 

in considering the refining of the total force mix, in order to ensure 

that the Active and Reserve Components best complement each 

other in support of the defense strategy? And I, as a former Guard 

member myself, I am really so pleased. And I have seen extraordinary success of where the Guard and Reserve are virtually interchangeable with Active Duty. It has just been very positive. And 

for each of you, if you could respond. 

Ms. WORMUTH. Sure. Congressman, I would say I am very aware 

and have worked for a while on National Guard and Reserve Component issues. And I think, you know, it has been remarkable the 

experience that we have had with the Reserve Component in the 

last decade. And we have just seen the Reserve Component, the 

National Guard and the Reserves, play a very important operational role. And we couldn’t have done what we have done in both 

Iraq and Afghanistan without the contributions of our Reserve 

Component. 

And I think going forward, we continue to see the role of the Reserve Component [RC] as being very important, being a complement to the Active Component, being a source of trained personnel and units that we can draw on to augment the Active forces 

when we need them. There are also obviously very specialized 

skills that we see in both the Guard and Reserves that we can 

make use of. 

And I think particularly for more predictable deployments 

around the world, that is another place where, again, where we can 

predict out and be able to give our civilian soldiers some predictability for their employers and be able to sort of allow them to plan 

for deployments. That is, I think, one of the criteria that we think 

about in terms of how to use the RC. But we see them continuing 

to be an important part of what we are doing. 

And in terms of the—just going to the aviation restructure, you 

know, that has been an opportunity to both gain some efficiency in 

terms of going from five types of helicopters to three. But we see 

the restructure that the Army has proposed as being beneficial, because we will be able to allow more Black Hawks to go into the 

Guard. And those helicopters, in particular, have a very important 

role to play for Governors in terms of supporting civil authorities 

in the event of natural disasters and things like that. We think the 

plan makes sense. 

Mr. WILSON. Admiral. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Sir, I think that when you consider the 

three pillars of the strategy, the Guard and Reserve play an essential—absolutely essential role in each one of them. And I don’t even 

need to talk about homeland defense or homeland security. That is 

obvious. When you look at building security across the globe, I can 

point to the State Partnership Program, for example, as being one 

of the most effective and high-leverage programs that we have in 

the entire government for building those kinds of partnerships. 

And it goes without saying that when we get into winning deci-
21 

sively in combat, that the Reserves play an absolutely essential 

role. 

So that is why, if you go all the way back to pre-9/11 days, the 

amount of decrease that we are going to see across the Active and 

Reserve is about—proportionally about the same. If you go from 

the wartime high of particularly the Army, it is very disproportionate in how much the Active is coming down, compared to the 

Guard, and understandably so. 

But I think what is lost in all those numbers is the tremendous 

help we got from the Congress in bringing the Guard up in its capability and readiness across this last decade, and we want it to 

stay that way. And I think General Odierno and General Welsh, 

in particular, are committed to doing that and that is involved in 

some of this calculus. And I will give you some time back for another question, if that works. 

Mr. WILSON. Well, this is really important. And as a military 

family, I am very grateful. And all the credit to my wife, we have 

had four sons serve, two in Iraq, another in Egypt with Bright 

Star, and then our youngest son just returned from serving in Afghanistan. And so I know the Guard and Reserve members themselves and their families are just so grateful for the privilege and 

opportunity of serving. 

And Admiral, you touched on the problem that we have. The 

QDR states—experience gaps in training and maintenance are a 

problem, in terms of readiness challenge. How is that going to be 

addressed? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. The gaps in training and maintenance? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We are going to recover our readiness 

gradually. And that is as good as it gets right now, with the funding levels that we are seeing. The Army and Marine Corps, in particular, have tremendous work to just absorb the equipment management that they are going to have to do with the end of the war 

in Afghanistan. That is going to take tremendous amount of resources and it is going to take time to resolve. 

We are going to have to continue to recruit, train, and retain the 

best possible people we can from this country, in order to do the 

wrench-turning and the maintenance and getting these forces 

ready for combat. So it is a multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary 

problem, that I have a lot of faith in the leadership in the Army 

and the Marine Corps, in particular, that are mostly affected by 

this, in getting it right. But it is a real challenge for them, under 

the readiness funding that we have got right now. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Kilmer. 

Mr. KILMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first question is for 

Ms. Wormuth. A respected military strategist once wrote, ‘‘no 

major proposal required for war can be worked out of ignorance of 

political factors.’’ I think the QDR briefing that is provided to the 

committee, included a statement that said sequestration-level cuts 

in fiscal year 2016 or beyond would leave us unable to adjust the 

force in the balanced way envisioned in the strategy. I wasn’t here 

for the passage of the Budget Control Act. I think sequestration is 
22 

a Latin word for stupid. But it is the law we have now and it is 

what we have to work with. 

And on top of that, the fiscal year 2015 authorization and appropriations cycle is going to be the last time in the foreseeable future 

that we have money to make strategic investments. So given that, 

given this burden and the fact the Department is already gearing 

up for the fiscal year 2016 POM [program objective memorandum] 

cycle, how are we going to meet that challenge? How is this QDR 

putting us on a glide path that we need to maximize our investments in a realistic way, given our budget situation? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Thank you, Congressman. I think what we are 

trying to do in this QDR is do the best job we can to try to make 

clear why we need those additional resources that we have asked 

for in the President’s budget. I think what we are essentially trying 

to say is if we want to remain a global leader, if we want to do 

what we think we need to do around the world, through our defense strategy and its three pillars, we need to have additional resources. And a lot of what we tried to do in the QDR was to spell 

out in some detail that if we aren’t able to gain those additional 

resources, we are trying to make clear the real effects that would 

have on our ability to execute our strategy and on our ability to do 

what we need to do. So I think we are trying to make our case as 

effectively as possible for what we need and to work with Congress 

to try to gain those resources. 

I think if we don’t do that, we will be looking at a substantial 

amount of risk to our strategy. 

Mr. KILMER. My second question, Admiral, the fiscal year 2014 

QDR highlights the need for innovation and reform and advocates 

for rebalancing the DOD enterprise in order to control internal cost 

growth. Could you help me understand how we simultaneously 

maintain the strength of our All-Volunteer Force, while reducing 

compensation costs? From a budgeting perspective, I understand 

the math. However, I am interested in knowing how the Department studied the potential impact of implementing personnel pay 

and benefit reductions, and what, if any, differences such a study 

demonstrated on both the officer and enlisted populations of both 

the Active and Reserve forces? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Thank you, because we spent a tremendous 

amount of time on this particular question. We really wanted to 

understand with our service leadership, our service and enlisted 

leadership. And some of the considerable expertise that the Department has grown over the years for modeling and understanding the 

challenge of both recruiting, training, and retaining the best possible young men and women this country has to offer. At the same 

time, we get the best value for the American taxpayer in terms of 

capability, capacity, and readiness of our force. 

And so there are a number of models we use. One of the ones 

that we pay attention to that don’t rely exclusively on is the percentile of compensation, the equivalent of a similarly educated, experienced person in the military would receive out in the civilian 

workforce. Previous studies have said we ought to be at the about 

the 70 percentile which would mean every single person in that, 

you know, same ilk in the military would be paid at the 70 percentile of the rest of the workforce in the country. We are actually 
23 

up around 90 right now, 90 percent for some of our—for most of 

our disciplines. That is probably a little too high, but I think 70 is 

a little too low. So, where—we pay attention to that as we design 

this, but it is really, what does it take to train and recruit and retain the best possible people we can? 

We believe that in the 1990s, our force was grossly underpaid, 

and we saw the effects of that in all manner of different metrics 

that you can use. 

Thanks to the Congress and help from this body, we dramatically 

increased the trajectory of that compensation glide slope upward in 

order to correct that redress. And we have done that. And, in fact, 

we probably overshot a little bit in the early years of this century, 

but we were in the middle of a war, so we didn’t mess with that. 

It is probably the time now to lower that trajectory back down, to 

adjust it to what we think is the right sustainable level for the 

military, again, in the interest of getting the best value for the taxpayer. 

So, it is sensible, it is gradual, it is compassionate, and the impact is not that great. And I look forward to being able to discuss 

that with the committee at some point. 

Mr. KILMER. Thank you, Admiral. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Rogers. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I will thank the 

witnesses for being here and their preparation. 

Admiral Winnefeld, in the fiscal year 2014 budget cycle, the Nuclear Weapons Council, including then-acting Administrator Neil 

Miller, agreed to a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar set of efficiencies 

at the NNSA [National Nuclear Security Agency], in order to make 

these savings available for modernization efforts. 

As a member of that council, did you review those proposed efficiencies, and did you support them in the fiscal year 2014 budget 

request and in the out-year plan? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We did review those in close coordination 

on the Nuclear Weapons Council with NNSA. We did support 

them. We did say, as the Nuclear Weapons Council, I think, in our 

certification letter that there was some risk associated with those 

efficiencies as to whether they were executable or not, but we were 

definitely hoping we would get them. 

Mr. ROGERS. And why is that? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. It was going to help NNSA manage its resources to help us both with the life extension programs [LEPs] for 

our nuclear weapons, and also for some vital work on their infrastructure. 

Mr. ROGERS. What is the status of those efficiencies? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Most of those efficiencies were not realized. 

We are still working with NNSA to see if we can’t gain some of 

those efficiencies back. 

Mr. ROGERS. Why do you think they weren’t realized? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Again, part of them were higher-risk efficiencies that the NNSA just did not feel comfortable implementing. 

So, I would have to defer to the actual Energy Department in 

terms of a precise answer of why they did not actually implement 
24 

them. We were a little disappointed. And we will continue to work 

with the NNSA to try to get as much efficiency in there because 

we are a stakeholder here. 

As you know, DOD provides money each year on top of the 

NNSA program to take care of our LEPs and the like, so we do 

have an interest in this. 

Mr. ROGERS. Well, my perspective is, they didn’t try. I don’t 

think they were really motivated. And they need some help in that 

department. But that is just my opinion. 

Ms. Wormuth, in the QDR, it states, quote—‘‘We, the U.S., will 

pursue further negotiated reductions with Russia.’’ Given Russia’s 

illegal annexation of Crimea, and the massing forces on the 

Ukrainian borders, do you support today new negotiations with 

Russia to reduce nuclear forces? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Oh, pardon me. 

Congressman, I would say Russia has not, frankly, indicated interest in pursuing further reductions in the last couple of years, so 

I think at this point, we are not actively in discussion with them, 

and don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future. 

Mr. ROGERS. So, this language was in there—just put in months 

ago, and nobody just bothered to take it out? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congressman, I don’t have the language at my 

fingertips, but I think what we were saying was that we would like 

to, at some point, be able to pursue further reductions, and we 

would do that only in concert with Russia. However, they have not 

demonstrated interest in it, so—— 

Mr. ROGERS. In fact, to the contrary, they have said flatly they 

have no interest in doing anything beyond New START [Strategic 

Arms Reduction Treaty]. Vladimir Putin’s words exactly. So, I don’t 

think we ought to even be considering it. 

It is also in public knowledge that State Department has confronted Russia about likely violations of the INF [Intermediate 

Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty. This morning, the New York Times 

reports that General Breedlove described Russia’s violation as, 

quote—‘‘a military significant development,’’ close quote. And the 

media reports indicate the U.S. has known about the likely violations for years, and didn’t even tell our NATO allies. Did this factor 

into these statements in the QDR about negotiations with Russia’s—for treaties with Russia? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I think, Congressman, if the Russians were interested in pursuing further reductions, we would look at that because 

we think that it would be in, potentially, in our national interest 

to have lower levels of nuclear weapons in both parties. We are 

aware of the potential violation of the INF Treaty and are very concerned about it, and have made that concern very plain to the Russians, and continue to address that with them. 

Mr. ROGERS. Okay. Do you believe that they should be in complete confirmable compliance with all existing treaties before we 

negotiate any further reductions? 

Ms. WORMUTH. We would like to see them be in compliance—— 

Mr. ROGERS. That is a yes or no question—— 

Ms. WORMUTH [continuing]. With the INF Treaty. 

Mr. ROGERS [continuing]. Whether they should be in compliance 

or not. I think anybody—a reasonable person would agree that be-
25 

fore we agree to negotiate further reductions, the party should be 

in compliance with existing treaties. 

Ms. WORMUTH. I think we would look very seriously at that, if 

we were actively considering further reductions. 

Mr. ROGERS. That is a lawyerly response. 

With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our 

witnesses for your testimony today. 

And, Admiral Winnefeld, I will start with you. And first of all, 

I want to thank you for the attention that you paid to cyber. You 

and I have had the opportunity to talk about this issue in the past. 

And on that point, the QDR notes that deterrence in cyberspace requires a strong coalition across the whole-of-government and the 

private sector. But the very concept of deterrence in cyberspace is 

tenuous at best, even if you assume a nation-state aggressor, and 

even more so when defense is dependent on a network of actors 

who may or may not even have authorities to act. 

So, there are any number of variables at play, most of which I 

would say are outside of DOD’s control. So, my question is, do we 

have a clear enough, articulable enough vision of what deterrence 

looks like in cyberspace? And does that even matter for the Department’s purposes? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. That is a very, very good lead-in. I think 

we do have a good sense for deterrence. If you look at deterrence 

in classical terms, one where you are trying to deny an adversary’s 

objectives, another where you would impose costs on them for potential aggressive action, and the third where you make yourself as 

resilient as possible—it is almost a mirror image of nuclear deterrence in cyberspace. 

So, we are working very hard to be able to—for the latter—to be 

as resilient as we can possibly be in our networks if something untoward happens to them. To certainly deny an adversary’s objectives is a principal function of what CYBERCOM [U.S. Cyber Command] is about, is to deny an adversary’s ability to penetrate, exploit our own DOD networks, and to assist civil authorities in the 

same for civil networks. 

And then, of course, we retain the ability to impose costs on an 

adversary, whether it be in cyberspace, or some other method, for 

something that they might—that adversary might do to us. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Do you feel our adversaries, at this point, understand what those red lines are? Have we, as a country yet, done 

a sufficient job of conveying to potential adversaries what those red 

lines would be, and what our response would look like? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I think they have a general understanding, 

if not a fear, of what they feel we can do to both prevent and potentially impose costs for an untoward action in cyberspace. Is it clear? 

Is it very, very clear to them what would happen? I would say 

probably not. And I think there may be some benefit in ambiguity 

in terms—in an adversary’s mind as to exactly what you would do 

to retaliate. But as long as they know we have the capability to do 

some major work either in cyberspace or outside cyberspace, I 

think that would serve as a deterrent. 
26 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. Thank you. 

On another subject, Admiral, the QDR highlights the importance 

of a safe and secure deterrent. And I have been disturbed to read 

press reports that the Department may not comply with provisions 

in the omnibus spending bill and the fiscal year 2014 NDAA that 

allow the Department to use funds and the bill to—and I quote— 

‘‘prepare for such reductions needed to implement the New START 

Arms Reduction Treaty.’’ In this case, the environmental assessment to assess the cost and feasibility of reducing the number of 

ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] silos. 

I, for one, would feel much better knowing that decisions made 

regarding what constitutes a safe, secure, and effective deterrent 

triad is informed by the best judgment of our uniformed leaders 

about how to balance a deterrent, rather than shaping the Nation’s 

nuclear force based on parochial interests. 

So, my question is, what would your recommendation be on what 

reductions should be made to comply with the New START Treaty 

and maintain an optimal nuclear deterrent, including maintaining 

the survivability and flexibility you need? And can you describe for 

us the follow-on effects of any restrictions on your ability to assess 

options for reductions to one leg of the triad versus another? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We have looked at this problem very, very 

hard over the last year, Congressman. It is a vexing challenge to 

look at all of the factors involved and the relative advantages and 

disadvantages of decreasing ICBM silos and decreasing SLBM 

[submarine-launched ballistic missile] tubes on submarines. 

We are close, as a Department, to providing our recommendation 

on the new START force structure. I am not able to reveal that in 

this hearing, unfortunately, today. It has been a spirited discussion. We would like to have been able to conduct environmental assessments on the ICBM silos, if not for this decision, for future decisions, just so that we have the information in hand. But we may 

not be able to do that because of the law. 

But in any case, I believe the Secretary will very soon be making 

a recommendation to the President on what the New START force 

structure would look like. And I would look forward to that becoming available to the committee as soon as possible thereafter. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral Winnefeld, 

Ms. Wormuth, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you 

for your service to our Nation. 

Admiral Winnefeld, in looking at the QDR, it identifies, as you 

pointed out, a near-term budget constraint force structure. And the 

QDR defines the planned end strength in force structure through 

2019. The law, though, says that QDR should define force structure 

and end strength for a 20-year period of time. 

Can you tell us what the projection is past 2019, and maybe why 

it was left out of the QDR? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I don’t—in terms of why it was left out of 

the QDR, it may be a matter of language in there. Most of—as we 

said, you are looking through a glass darkly 20 years out. We have 

no idea what the budget environment is going to be like or the geopolitical environment. 
27 

But my sense is that in the force structure that we would have 

at the end of a 10-year period is essentially—would essentially remain constant across the following 10-year period. 

Now, we know that is not going to be completely true. There are 

going to be changes in technologies and threats, and even our operational plans, that would—you know, new ideas come up, that sort 

of thing, where we would change that force structure. 

But, knowing what we know right now, this year, the following 

10 years would look a lot like what we see out at the end of that 

first 10-year period. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Secretary Wormuth. 

Ms. WORMUTH. I would just add and say I think the QDR process 

allows us to be more precise in the near- to mid-term. And certainly, as you know, the Department programs—plans and programs for a 5-year period to have the most precision in terms of 

how we are able to see our force structure at the end of the FYDP. 

We do in the QDR, however, look out 20 years, both in terms of 

the security environment, but also in terms of trying to think about 

what kinds of capabilities, what kinds of investments we need for 

that 20-year period. 

And I think in terms of those broad capabilities and the broad 

directions, we try to look out 20 years. And I think it acknowledged 

that some of the capabilities that may go onto—the platforms may 

still be in place, but some of the capabilities may be new. 

And we talk about certainly in terms of things like unmanned 

undersea vehicles, for example, or other technologies of that sort. 

I think we try to point to those, but the far term is more aspirational, and, hence doesn’t have the same level—— 

Mr. WITTMAN. No, remember my comment was specifically about 

end-strength and force structures. So that is where I was really focusing. 

Admiral Winnefeld, let me go back to you. 

And in the QDR risk assessment, Chairman Dempsey stated that 

‘‘the chiefs and I are working with the Secretary of Defense to refine and prioritize U.S. military objectives to align with the size 

and capabilities of our programmed force.’’ 

Can you tell me, how are U.S. military objectives currently misaligned and as it relates to our current size and capabilities of the 

programmed force in the QDR? 

So that alludes to there being a misalignment. Can you define 

what that is? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I can give you an example, because it is a 

really good question. 

The current force as we have it is sized and shaped to fight a 

counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan and, you know, not too 

long ago, it was Iraq and Afghanistan. 

That causes the Army to grow considerably in size. And, in fact, 

a lot of that force structure growth was in OCO, in overseas contingency operations funding, because we knew it was going to be temporary. 

And so, realigning that force back into a shape that is in adherence with the strategic precepts of the QDR is, I think, what they 

are really talking about in that statement. 
28 

So what is the kind of force that we need to have configured to 

fight all fights that we can’t see yet, but that we can anticipate, 

as opposed to the one that we have been in for the last 10 years. 

Mr. WITTMAN. One of my concerns is that if we are talking about 

a misalignment and trying to bring it back to what we project as 

the threats may be, just as you pointed out, that is a very dynamic 

environment. 

The concern is, if you are doing a realignment, is you realign too 

conservatively and then cut our force structure back to where you 

don’t have the ability to respond to a major contingency operation, 

if one were to break out. 

So I have a deep concern about that. 

Let me ask a question about readiness. It is point out in the 

QDR, too, it says we will continue to experience gaps in training 

and maintenance over the near term. Very significantly concerning 

to me. 

What is the Department’s assessment, then, on the longer term? 

If the projection is that we are gonna try to close those readiness 

gaps in the short term, what is the projection in the longer term 

as far as meeting these readiness needs, as far as training and 

maintenance? 

And, as you know, today, there is significant gaps in the short 

term, and we can’t just press the button and get readiness back a 

year from now or 2 years from now. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. And you are exactly correct. 

When you have a very precipitous drop, such as we had in the 

last year or two, you have to grab cash wherever you can. That is 

what Ash Carter said. 

And it is hard to get that cash out of force structure, because we 

just can’t get people out fast enough. There are things we have to 

do in order to shape and to be fair to our young men and women 

and that sort of thing. 

So the place you grab cash quickest is readiness. The second 

place you can grab it quickest is in modernization. Just cancel programs or cut back on the size of programs. 

And readiness is obviously a ripe target there. I have a saying 

that readiness has no constituency. If you have an F–15 squadron 

in your district, you know, it is I want that F–15 squadron, and I 

don’t care if it is flying or not. 

And so, what time allows us to do is to gradually bring the force 

back down to where it needs to be and to gradually recover its 

readiness so that you are taking less of the hit out of the readiness 

money and you are able to more thoughtfully shape the profile of 

capability, capacity, and readiness. 

So that is why we think we will recover readiness over the long 

term, once we get the force size under control. But it is gonna take 

some time. You are exactly correct. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Nugent. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want to thank Madam Secretary and the Admiral for being 

here today. 
29 

You heard Congressman Wilson talk about his family. Obviously, 

we are kind of vested in the same way. I have three sons that currently serve this Nation and are proud to do that. 

But when we talk about the Army, and there has obviously been 

a lot of discussion about the right way to rightsize the Army. And, 

you know, there is one idea floating around, and I would like to get 

your input on it, but it is really about to establish an independent 

commission, similar to what the Air Force recently did, to evaluate 

the needs and mission of the Army and to make recommendations 

on appropriate force structure for all three components. 

Over the span of the QDR, why shouldn’t we take the 9 to 12 

months to conduct a comprehensive study of the proper AC/RC [Active Component/Reserve Component] force mix and how the structure would be best tailored to fulfill the mission requirements that 

are consistent with the available resources that we have? 

I would like to hear from both of you on that. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I don’t necessarily personally believe we 

should do a new commission. I think we have the analytical power 

and wherewithal inside the Department, and then certainly in 

working with the committee, to come up with reasonable answers 

to the problems that we face, in terms of sizing and shaping all of 

the services, including the Army. 

I worry that a commission can be a way of kicking the problem 

down the road a little bit, when we actually have the information 

we need in order to make these decisions. 

So we are not overly supportive, frankly, of a new commission. 

If the legislation is, then we will obey the law, and we will support the commission. But we don’t think we need one right now, 

sir. 

Mr. NUGENT. Okay. 

Madam Secretary. 

Ms. WORMUTH. The only thing I would add is that I think both 

during the Strategic Choices and Management Review and also 

during the QDR process, I was impressed, frankly, with the quality 

and intensity of the dialogue, particularly inside of the Army. 

You know, General Odierno, General Grass, the head of the 

Army Reserve, had very extensive, I think direct and honest discussions. 

And, in addition I think to having a lot of internal analytic capability, I think the professionalism and level of the dialogue has 

been very, very good. And the Army has struggled with some difficult issues and some difficult trade-offs, but I think has done that 

with a lot of integrity. 

Mr. NUGENT. Well, I know that some of the—there were some 

other recommendations made, particularly by the National Guard 

Bureau in regards to how to restructure, as it relates to the National Guard. And I was—it just seems like their recommendations 

were kind of overlooked, I think, as a way to continue to do what 

they need to do and also work within the budgetary considerations 

that are forced on them. 

I worry about, obviously, from the National Guard perspective 

from the State of Florida, you know, we are looking at restructuring the National Guard with the loss of lift capabilities by—we 

don’t have Apaches, but we have—we do have Black Hawks, and 
30 

that we are being told that we are gonna lose some of those Black 

Hawks to—I guess to backfill other areas within this force restructuring. 

That is going to put, you know, Floridians at risk, particularly 

during, you know, a time of emergency, and we do tend to live on 

a peninsula which is exposed to those types of things with hurricanes. 

So I guess, so, you know, from my perspective, I don’t have any 

military bases in my district. I do have some National Guard assets. But end of the day, I worry about the State of Florida and 

having the availability of those lift capabilities that are going to be 

reduced, at least what we are being told in the State of Florida. 

How do we reconcile that? How do we—we are taking resources 

away from a State that is dependent upon that for a recovery. 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congressman, I am not aware of the specific decisions or conversations about which States may be losing or gaining 

helicopters, for example, so I just want to be clear that while I am 

not aware of the specifics, I do know that the Department has been 

working closely with States and the Guard Bureau to try to look 

at force structure on a State-by-State basis in terms of how it relates to the ability of States to meet their civil support needs. 

So I know we have been trying to look at that. We have done 

some studies that have been looking at sort of historical disaster 

patterns and how that relates to the type of structure. 

So I think, as we go forward, to try to evaluate where we may 

be making some adjustments, we will certainly try to inform those 

decisions with that analysis that looks at specifically the kinds of 

natural disaster needs that coastal States, like Florida, have. 

Mr. NUGENT. You know, I am just hearing from our National 

Guard—— 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time expired. 

Mr. NUGENT. I am sorry. I yield back. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Franks. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank all of you for being here. 

Admiral, I always want to make a special statement of gratitude 

to people like you who have worn the uniform for so long and have 

made it more possible to walk in the light of freedom some day. 

And I really am grateful to you. 

And I was especially impressed by the tone and tenor and the 

substance of your opening statement. I think it certainly points out 

the failure on our part related to this sequester. 

And, if it means anything to you, I apologize. I mean, some of 

us didn’t support it, as you know, but it was something that I think 

we have really put the military and those who give everything for 

us in a very bad situation. 

And I know you are doing the best you can. But it is a difficult 

situation. 

So, with that, Ms. Wormuth, thank you for being here as well. 

And, I guess, let me begin by suggesting to you that events in 

the world began to overtake some of our thoughts. And more and 

more we see what looks to be like increasing danger in the world. 
31 

North Korea is not only now able to have a nuclear weapons capability, but their missile technology is advancing in a very ominous way. And with Iran on the potential phase of a breakout, if 

they wanted to be, over time, I think it is a very sobering time. 

With that in mind, the only thing that this administration had 

to really dissuade the Iranians early on was this third site in Poland, as far as devaluing any nuclear weapons program or missile 

program they might have. And they canceled that. 

And, if the QDR recognizes that the top of our three pillars is 

to protect the homeland, and that is certainly fundamental, then 

how did that strategy bring this administration to a budget that 

has the smallest level of missile defense funding since we have 

had—since the Clinton administration? 

How did that happen? 

And I direct the question to you, Ms. Wormuth. 

Ms. WORMUTH. Thank you, Congressman. 

I think we share the concerns that you have about North Korea 

and about Iran, that is part of the reason why we put such an emphasis on protecting the homeland in the strategy, and it is part 

of the reason why we put such an emphasis on making sure that 

we are keeping pace with the missile threats posed by those countries. 

Mr. FRANKS. Forgive me, Ms. Wormuth, I have got to start here 

again. I mean, then how does that translate to the lowest missile 

defense budget since the Clinton administration? 

Ms. WORMUTH. What we have tried to do, Congressman, is to 

make sure that we are applying money to the parts—to our missile 

defense program where it makes sense and where it works. 

So that is why we added the 14 additional GBIs [ground-based 

interceptors], for example. It is why we—— 

Mr. FRANKS. Forgive me—forgive me. You didn’t add them. They 

were taken out, and you put them back at a much higher cost. And 

I mean, I am just trying to—you are in a bad situation, because 

you have to defend, in my judgment, what is an indefensible position. 

Unfortunately, you are the only one in front of me. So there is 

nothing personal here, but the fundamental proof of the administration’s commitment to homeland protection has to be at least a 

strong emphasis on missile defense. 

And the lowest missile defense budget since the Clinton administration? That doesn’t translate. And it really concerns me. It is 

not—I realize it is a partisan election year, but this is something 

that some of us have been raving about since we have been in diapers, and it gets more and more concerning. 

So I am hoping—I know your guy is gonna give you a note here. 

So I will let him give you a chance to—let you, give you a chance 

to reflect what he might say. 

Go ahead. 

Ms. WORMUTH. I would just say, Congressman, we are obviously 

having to make difficult choices inside of the Defense Department 

between capacity, capability, and readiness. 

That said, we are funding the missile defense system in a way 

that we think gives us the protection we need. In addition to, 

again, putting more towards the GBIs, we are also putting money 
32 

and looking at a redesign of the kill vehicle. We are putting more 

money into the sensor system, into the discrimination for the radar 

system. 

So we are making investments to make sure that we have a system that can give us the protection we need. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, fundamentally I have to respectfully disagree 

that the emphasis is as it should be. And Admiral, I will give you 

a chance if you want to try to clean this up for me a little bit. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. One of the things I would like to do is sit 

down and talk, if we can, about the European Phased Adaptive Approach, because my predecessor—— 

Mr. FRANKS. I am very familiar with it. So I know what you are 

saying. And I understand. 

Admiral WINNEFELD [continuing]. He did some good work on 

that. And the other thing I would say is, a good chunk of the 

money that has come out of the budget is in regional missile defense, where we are gonna expect our partners to do more. We are 

gonna expect them to buy systems from us to help themselves 

while we maintain our focus on the homeland with the potential 

East Coast site, sensor improvements, and the like—— 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, we all know that a nuclear missile can ruin 

our whole day, so I hope we keep that in mind. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Gibson. 

Mr. GIBSON. Well, thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank the panelists for being here as well. 

I apologize for being late, coming from the Ag [Agriculture] Committee, but the first question is really just a point of clarification. 

And that is, at one point there was discussion of establishing a 

base in Australia. 

I guess, ostensibly, it was part of the pivot to the Pacific, and 

some kind of counter to China. And I am just looking for clarification, consequent to the QDR, is that still the plan? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Yes, Congressman, we are continuing our plan to 

put Marines at Darwin, eventually building up to 2,500. So we are 

on track to do that and are in discussions right now with Australia 

about some adjustments we would like to make to our access agreement to support that. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. And I would just add, if I could, that we 

aren’t technically calling that a base. We are calling them rotational deployments out of respect for the Australians and their sovereignty concerns. And we have an extremely good relationship, obviously, on the defense side with Australia, but it is a rotational 

presence. 

Mr. GIBSON. In the QDR discussions, did it ever surface or become a point of analysis and discussion that, you know, at the 

same time that we are establishing a new base, that we are gonna 

request authority to reduce the number of bases here in the United 

States and, you know, how from a rationale perspective that could 

be defended. Did that point ever come up? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. I don’t know that we are expending a great 

deal of military construction funding to support a rotational presence. We would probably help the Australians a little bit, and we 

can take that for the record to give you the exact numbers. 
33 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 57.] 

Admiral WINNEFELD. But, this was a very high leverage thing for 

us to be able to cooperate with our Australian partners, to have 

Marines further out, away from the United States, closer to potential problems, and the opportunity to train in wonderful training 

space with a tremendous partner. 

So I think it really wasn’t a great consideration that we would 

be—because we are not building a base there. I think there are 

other places in the world where that is more a factor. 

Mr. GIBSON. So the second question has to do with your deliberations and conclusions as relates to anti-access, strategic maneuver, 

and ultimately where we are now in terms of the Global Response 

Force. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. In terms of the status of the Global Response Force? 

Mr. GIBSON. Yes, how it now fits in to how we are gonna proceed 

over the next 10, 20 years. Talk to me in terms of what the analysis was, and where we are now in terms of commitment to the 

Global Response Force, in relation to the challenges. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Sure. We are gonna maintain the Global 

Response Force. It is a very robust force. Currently the 82nd Airborne is the Army element attached to that, but it is a very—you 

know, a lot of different forces that are part of that. And we have 

used it in the past. We used it in Haiti, for example, when we 

needed to deploy a headquarters and some folks on the ground 

there very quickly and they were very responsive and did a great 

job. 

So we have to be agile as a force. So I would argue not only 

should we maintain a Global Response Force, but we need to look 

across our force at ways that we can move more quickly, because 

events unfold more quickly in this world than they ever have before and we have gotta be able to get there fast. 

Mr. GIBSON. Appreciate the comments, Admiral, and agree with 

you on that. I was actually the 82nd Commander for that operation. That was my last deployment before I retired. And I agree, 

I think our service men and women really did a fabulous job. 

I did come away from it and certainly am understanding of the 

larger picture in terms of our commitments to Afghanistan and 

other places, but it was my perception that, you know, the Global 

Response Force in early 2010 was at very high risk in terms of the 

way that we had capabilities that we could—and resources that we 

could bring to bear. 

I am still realistic, to this day, obviously, about what we can do 

at the moment, but one of the suggestions I have is that when it— 

as it relates to the war plans, and as it relates to resourcing and 

the QDR being a piece of this, that my sense is we need to do more 

modeling and simulation to understand not only the vertical task 

list, but then when you turn it horizontal, what that means in 

terms of sequencing forces, where the gaps are in terms of resources are, and that, you know, that is one way of measuring risk. 

And I suspect that we do have pretty high risk, which I am not 

sure that my colleagues fully understand. And I think that we 

could do more on that score because it is a joint requirement and 
34 

everything in terms of jamming, fighter bomber escort, C–17 accompaniment, and the concept of how you do vertical or amphibious envelopment that brings on early arriving forces, campaign 

forces, and behind it, command and control, sustainment, all of this 

and then post-hostilities. 

I don’t sense that we have a full understanding of where we are. 

We don’t see ourselves very well in terms of where we are in terms 

of that CONOP [concept of operations] if you will, and then for my 

colleagues to understand the risk associated with that. 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congressman, I would just add that I think during the QDR process and frankly, sort of just on a regular basis, 

we do try to look at all of those types of issues, we use scenarios, 

we use modeling, to try to get at all of those different types of 

things. We look at a real breadth of scenarios to try to understand 

where we have risks, where we may have gaps, to try to help guide 

our force development efforts in the future. 

So, that is certainly not a perfect process, but we do have a fairly 

robust set of analysis that we conduct in support of reviews like the 

QDR to try to get at that. 

Mr. GIBSON. Well, and my time is up. I am going to have to yield 

back in a second. I certainly look forward to, and I will have my 

staff reach out to you. I would like to learn more about all that 

process. And, you know, we certainly did a lot of on the ground— 

we did actual training, but we would have to complement that with 

modeling and simulation. 

And I yield back. Thank you for your patience, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. There are just a couple 

more things that the force planning construct is used to size the 

force. And the QDR still talks about being able to fight a major 

contingency and then—and hold on another one. I thought we had 

backed off from that, is that where we are right now? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We are not using the term ‘‘hold’’ as a term 

of art anymore. It is a different—— 

The CHAIRMAN. We used to say—— 

Admiral WINNEFELD. ‘‘Win, hold, win,’’ or whatever it was? 

The CHAIRMAN. First two were, fight, then fight. We can do two 

majors. We pulled back from that to where we would fight and 

hold. Now, I think the wording in the QDR is defeat and deny, 

which I guess would be the same as fight and hold. 

Admiral WINNEFELD. We had—there was a seminal meeting we 

had where we were talking about this a couple years ago. And Ash 

Carter and I were sitting at the end of the table, and the discussion 

was about how far apart do you have to pry two big contingencies 

in order to be able to do them? 

And we sort of turned and looked at each other and said, you 

know this is, you know, this is not the right way to look at this 

because the adversary has a vote. 

And you might find yourself doing something simultaneously. 

And so we really need to ask ourselves, What can we do simultaneously? What should we be able to do simultaneously? With the 

understanding that you might be fortunate and that they would be 

spread apart by some amount of time that we don’t control. So we 

decided that—— 
35 

The CHAIRMAN. Without getting too down into the two, because 

there is still two in the QDR, but we have testimony from General 

Odierno, from General Amos, as we finish these posture hearings, 

that they were going to be very hard-pressed to fight one, and that 

is why I wonder why we still have two in the QDR. 

Let me just—you know, in listening to all of the questions and 

all of the testimony, and all of the work that has gone into this, 

all of these models, and all of these people putting in all of this 

time, do you have any idea what—how long it took to put the QDR 

together? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Congressman, this time, this was a shorter QDR 

than past QDRs. We had about 6 months. We really kicked it off 

in September. 

The CHAIRMAN. So, 6 months to do this. 

Ms. WORMUTH. But I would add we build—we had a good, strong 

basis in the work that was done. 

The CHAIRMAN. Any idea of—as to cost? 

Ms. WORMUTH. I don’t have a precise cost figure for you, sir. I 

think we can take that for the record and work on it. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 57.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Within hundreds of thousands or million? 

Ms. WORMUTH. Well, it is primarily—it is really man-hours that 

is the largest cost. 

The CHAIRMAN. But that is cost, right? 

I mean, if they are working on this, they are not working on 

something else. 

Ms. WORMUTH. That is correct. And there are a large number of 

folks in the Pentagon, in OSD, in the—— 

The CHAIRMAN. As I have been listening here, I go back to Mr. 

Thornberry’s question and I am—I know that there is nobody that 

does more planning than the military. 

I know you have plans for every contingency on contingency, and 

this is just to my way of thinking after going through this process 

and seeing it now for a number of years, we have had more discussion about the process or about why you didn’t do this or didn’t do 

this in the planning than what we have actually talked about as 

to what your recommendations or things were, and how it differed 

from what the budget was. 

So, I think this is something we are going to have to look at 

going forward if this is one of the things that we do in setting up 

bureaucracy is put more and more effort on the bureaucracy and 

build up bureaucracy instead of putting that time then, to actually 

getting something done that we probably would get more benefit 

out of. 

Anyway, a lot of work. I appreciate your efforts, appreciate the 

things that you have done. Appreciate you being here today and 

your patience as we have gone through this. 

Thank you very much. 

This committee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

APRIL 3, 2014 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

APRIL 3, 2014 

(41) 
42 
43 
44 
45 
46 
47 
48 
49 
50 
51 
52 
53 
54 
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

APRIL 3, 2014 

(57) 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. MCKEON 

Ms. WORMUTH. Estimating precise costs to complete the 2014 QDR is difficult. 

The Department conducted the 2014 QDR over a shorter time period than prior 

QDRs, roughly from late August 2013 to early March 2014. During this intensive 

Review, OSD, the Joint Staff, Services, and Combatant Commands incurred staffing 

costs and commissioned studies to provide analytical support. In all, our best estimate is that the QDR cost almost $16 million. Approximately 80 percent of this was 

manpower—over 140,000 hours—which is also largely an opportunity cost for the 

Department. Analytic studies comprised less than 20% of the total cost of the 2014 

QDR. The Department also obligated $1.5 million in support of the National Defense Panel. [See page 35.] 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. GIBSON 

Admiral WINNEFELD. The United States is not building bases in Australia. The 

goal remains to establish a USMC and USAF rotational presence in Australia as 

jointly announced by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of 

Australia on November 16, 2011. We are currently involved in negotiations with the 

Government of Australia on a legally binding government-to-government agreement 

that will form the foundation necessary to fully mature these force posture initiatives. The agreement is intended to establish access and use of mutually determined 

facilities, as well as equitable cost-sharing principles. Detailed cost estimates will 

not be made until after negotiations are completed and specific facilities have been 

identified. The Department of State is the lead for negotiations, with support from 

the Department of Defense. [See page 33.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

APRIL 3, 2014 

(61) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN 

Mr. LANGEVIN. General Dempsey states that his ‘‘greatest concern is that we will 

not innovate quickly enough or deeply enough to be prepared for the future, for the 

world we will face two decades from now.’’ I could not agree more. The question for 

you, then, is what more can DOD do to ensure innovation and the acquisition of 

technologies that will provide a decisive advantage in warfare in the 2020s and 

2030s? Do we have enough investment in R&D and are we applying that investment 

properly? 

Admiral WINNEFELD. Given the pace of advances in technology, and in a fiscally 

constrained environment, we have to ensure we focus our investments to maintain 

our battlefield edge. We must seek technologies that enable our forces to be more 

agile and embrace new ways of operating, even if they depart from the familiar. 

The FY 2015 President’s Budget puts us on this path. It provides stability for research and development, maintaining a healthy Science and Technology (S&T) program of $11.5 billion to invest in future technologies, and an overall Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Portfolio of $63.5 billion, an increase of 

$0.7 billion over the FY 2014 enacted levels. The procurement portfolio of $90.4 billion, a decrease of $2.0 billion from FY 2014 enacted levels, reflects the hard choices 

that were necessary in the current fiscal climate but continues to fund the critical 

weapons systems needed to enhance our highest priority warfighting capabilities. 

I am confident that the investment levels and the placement of those investments 

in the FY 2015 President’s Budget are sufficient to meet the needs of our forces. 

However, if sequestration-level funding returns in FY 2016, the risks inherent within the Department’s approach to satisfy our strategy will grow significantly. The reductions would affect all appropriations, including RDT&E, severely curtailing the 

Department’s ability to develop new technologies. Compared to the FY 2015 President’s Budget, investment (Procurement and RDT&E) would grow at a slower rate 

under sequestration-level funding. Moreover, investment would account for nearly 

60 percent of the total reduction at sequestration-level funding, further eroding the 

Department’s ability to modernize and improve our joint force. 

I also believe the Department should be given more latitude, and some associated 

funding, to pursue rapid acquisition of capabilities based on emerging opportunities 

or needs, which tend to not fit conveniently inside our budget cycle. We tend to not 

submit these in our budget because, unfortunately, they are so vulnerable to marks. 

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