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i 

20–796 2017

[H.A.S.C. No. 114–129] 

AVIATION READINESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

JULY 6, 2016 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia, Chairman 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

(Vacancy) 

MARGARET DEAN, Professional Staff Member 

VICKIE PLUNKETT, Professional Staff Member 

JODI BRIGNOLA, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Bordallo, Hon. Madeleine Z., a Delegate from Guam, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Readiness ...................................................................................... 2 

Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness ...................................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Davis, LtGen Jon M., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Aviation, U.S. Marine 

Corps ..................................................................................................................... 3 

Manazir, RADM Michael C., USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for 

Warfare Systems, U.S. Navy ............................................................................... 8 

Mangum, LTG Kevin W., USA, Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army 

Training and Doctrine Command, U.S. Army ................................................... 5 

West, Maj Gen Scott D., USAF, Director of Current Operations, U.S. Air 

Force ...................................................................................................................... 6 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Davis, LtGen Jon M. ........................................................................................ 45 

Manazir, RADM Michael C. ............................................................................ 75 

Mangum, LTG Kevin W. .................................................................................. 56 

West, Maj Gen Scott D. .................................................................................... 65 

Wittman, Hon. Robert J. .................................................................................. 43 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Mrs. Hartzler .................................................................................................... 85 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Peters ......................................................................................................... 89 

Ms. Tsongas ...................................................................................................... 89 

(1) 

AVIATION READINESS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS, Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 6, 2016. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert J. Wittman 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON READINESS 

Mr. WITTMAN. I am going to call to order the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Readiness. 

I wish everybody a good morning, and thank you for being here 

today to discuss a topic that is instrumental to the success of our 

military operations, and that is aviation readiness. 

Over the last several months, we have heard testimony from 

each of the service branches about what needs to be done to overcome our significant readiness challenges. A critical part of that 

testimony has dealt with the negative impacts that aircraft shortages, maintenance, and lack of adequate hangar space continue to 

have, not only on our overall readiness levels, but also on our military aviators. 

In separate hearings about naval infrastructure readiness, both 

Admiral Mary Jackson and General Azzano testified about aircraft 

hangar fire suppression systems that were unusable and inadvertently activated. 

At the Air Force hangar at Eglin Air Force Base, the instability 

of these systems ultimately rendered the entire hangar unusable 

for nearly 3 months. The impacted portion of the hangar, 17 percent of that hangar’s airspace, remains today unusable. 

The Marine Corps and the Army face similar facility challenges. 

The service branches also face real obstacles when it comes to the 

retention and training of flight and maintenance crews. Aging aircraft and prolonged maintenance times, not to mention the operational demands associated with the fight against terrorism, means 

that aviators and other personnel are dealing with more danger 

and fewer training opportunities. 

Regrettably, the rash of recent military aircraft crashes have 

highlighted the human and other cost of dwindling aviation readiness. We owe our warfighters every protection and precaution 

available and I look forward today to hearing from each of our 

service branches about aviation readiness, readiness recovery, im-
2 

pacts to safety, and where we can continue to take risks and what 

risks are acceptable and those which are not. 

With that, I welcome all of you, our members of our distinguished panel and senior aviators before us today. We have with 

us Lieutenant General Jon M. Davis, United States Marine Corps, 

Deputy Commandant for Aviation; Lieutenant General Kevin 

Mangum, U.S. Army, Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army 

Training and Doctrine Command [TRADOC]; Major General Scott 

D. West, United States Air Force, Director of Current Operations; 

and Rear Admiral Michael C. Manazir, United States Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems. 

Gentlemen, thank you for your presence and your testimony 

today. I look forward to hearing your insights about the readiness 

challenges to military aviation. 

I would now like to turn to our ranking member, Madeleine 

Bordallo, for any remarks that she may have. 

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

STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A DELEGATE 

FROM GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good 

morning to all our witnesses. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing about some of the challenges and the solutions 

that we are facing with regard to aviation readiness across the 

services. We know that readiness shortfalls exist, from degraded 

maintenance capabilities to reduced training hours, and we need to 

address them. 

Just as it will take time to build back readiness, these issues, of 

course, did not arise overnight. What the services are experiencing 

now and what we are working to remedy in the fiscal year 2017 

NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] are the consequences 

of years’ worth of high operational tempo experienced by fewer aircraft with fewer experienced operators and skilled military and civilian personnel to sustain them. 

The services have responded to falling material readiness conditions by identifying deficits and prioritizing training and maintenance needs, but these efforts are hampered by the continuing impacts of sequestration and unstable and unpredictable funding. 

When coupled with reductions in skilled personnel at aviation depots, severe challenges in obtaining spare parts for legacy systems, 

late and unpredictable funding due to multiple continuing resolutions [CRs] and the unrelenting operational tempo required by today’s complex security environment, it is not surprising that we are 

dealing with what some are calling a readiness crisis. 

Just as these readiness issues did not arise overnight, they cannot be resolved in a single fiscal year’s defense bill. More aircraft 

would bring some relief to the stress of high operational tempo, but 

these aircraft need more trained, more ready personnel to operate 

and sustain them and improved base infrastructure to support 

them. 
3 

So, we also cannot just throw money at the problem though, and 

it has become clear that consistency in funding are more helpful 

than increased budgets. 

I welcome this opportunity today to hear from our witnesses 

about the challenges they are facing in their services to achieve 

and sustain aviation readiness. And I also encourage my colleagues 

to listen to some of the underlying causes of our current situation 

and also to think about the long-term financial commitments we 

are making in the fiscal year 2017 NDAA. 

And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo. 

Gentlemen, I have been told that each of you will make an opening statement. And please proceed. And as a reminder, your written testimony has already been made available to the members and 

will be part of the official record. 

So, General Davis, we will begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF LTGEN JON M. DAVIS, USMC, DEPUTY 

COMMANDANT FOR AVIATION, U.S. MARINE CORPS 

General DAVIS. Chairman Wittman, Chairman Thornberry, 

Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the House 

Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Readiness, and other 

distinguished members, thank you for your continued support. We 

appreciate the opportunity to testify on the current state of Marine 

aviation readiness. 

The Marine Corps’ title 10 responsibilities are to be the Nation’s 

force in readiness. We are charged and expected to always be the 

most ready when the Nation is least ready. This responsibility is 

the very core of our identity as Marines, your ‘‘fight tonight’’ force. 

The last time I testified, we were only able to fly on any given 

day about one-third of our aircraft. Today, we have improved and 

can launch 42 percent, 443 aircraft, of our required 1,065 flight-line 

inventory, a 9 percent improvement. We could not make this 

progress without your support. Thank you very much. However, we 

are still far short of what we need to be the force of readiness. 

Forty-two percent is not good enough; it is not good at all. 

We are constantly transferring aircraft to fill out our deploying 

squadrons. Deployment success is at the cost of our non-deploying 

squadrons. We balance F–18, Harrier, E–6, and CH–53 squadrons 

by reducing the number of aircraft per squadron because of a lack 

of aircraft inventory. 

So, yes, while I can tell you we are improving, I would characterize our current state of recovery as fragile. We are in a deep hole 

and have a ways to go to climb out. Continued progress in our race 

to recovery depends on consistent, reliable, and targeted readiness 

and procurement funding. Our risk is bought down through fixing 

old and procuring new. 

The CH–53K recently lifted more than any helicopter in history. 

It is doing great in tests and is on track for replacing our CH–53 

Echo. Just last week, we stood up our second operational F–35B 

squadron, VMFA–211 in Arizona. 

Today, we have five lieutenants, brand new guys, training to fly 

the F–35B in South Carolina. The F–35B procurement ramp is approaching 20 per year, enabling the transition from our legacy 
4 

strike force to an aircraft that can protect marines and any threat 

as a fifth generation strike fighter, and then, at a time and place 

of our choosing, transition to a fourth generation bomb truck. 

We need the F–35s and 53Ks as quick as we can get them to replace our proven but worn-out and wearing out F–18s, Harriers, 

EA–6Bs, and CH–53 Echos. The combination of fixing aircraft 

while recapitalizing with new gear are both critical to Marine aviation and the Marine air-ground task force [MAGTF]. 

I measure our recovery not only in terms of ready basic aircraft, 

but also on how many hours our crew fly. The ultimate readiness 

metric is aircrew flying hours per month per crew. The last time 

I testified, Marine pilots averaged between 6 and 9 hours per 

month. That is not good, either. Today, our non-deployed aircrews 

average between 7 to 11 hours per month. This is an improvement, 

but still 6 hours per month shy of what a trained and ready force 

requires. 

The lack of ready aircraft in flight line is a reason for the shortfall, but more concerning is the loss of experience this generation 

of Marine aviators has preparing for the future. Marine aviation 

has a history replete with being exceptional in the air and able to 

provide unmatched aviation fire support to our ground forces. 

Every hour not flown today by our forces today means that they 

will have less of an experience base for our future. 

Our enlisted marines are the highest quality ever. They work 

hard to sustain our aircraft and maximize every flight opportunity. 

They do get frustrated at the lack of parts available for fixing aircraft. They do work hours—long hours and weekends just before 

deploying to get that last aircraft up to make that on deployment 

or to complete a transfer to make sure their deployment numbers 

are whole. 

Our deployment-to-dwell is not an ideal 1:3. It is a sustained 1:2; 

technically a state of surge. We are answering the combatant commanders’ demand for incredible capabilities our MAGTFs offer, but 

doing it with aging aircraft, not enough of those aircraft, and our 

marines are stretched thin. They are doing their level-best to make 

themselves ready to be that potent and formidable combat-capable 

force, ready to take on any threat, any place, any time across a 

range of military operations. 

In summary, Marine aviation readiness remains in jeopardy in 

this fiscally constrained environment. We have a plan to recover. 

The plan includes aircraft recapitalization, legacy aircraft recovery 

and reset, and that plan is showing positive results. But success requires continued funding stability, our production ramps in new 

aircraft to stay whole and the resources for our marines, sailors, civilians, and industry partners to recover the readiness of our aging 

legacy aircraft. 

Thank you for your time today. I look forward to answering your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of General Davis can be found in the 

Appendix on page 45.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Lieutenant General Davis. 

We will now go to Lieutenant General Mangum. 
5 

STATEMENT OF LTG KEVIN W. MANGUM, USA, DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL, U.S. ARMY TRAINING AND DOCTRINE 

COMMAND, U.S. ARMY 

General MANGUM. Chairman Wittman, Chairman Thornberry, 

Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the Readiness Subcommittee and other distinguished members, thanks for 

the opportunity to appear before you today to address Army aviation readiness. 

As a career Army aviator, I am proud to represent all the terrific 

soldiers of our total Army aviation force who serve our Nation 

faithfully every day. I can also definitively say that the total Army 

aviation units across all our formations and components have performed magnificently over the last 15 years of sustained combat 

and operations in various threat environments. 

I say this knowing full well that Army aviation faces the same 

and similar challenges and concerns as the rest of our Army in this 

budget-constrained environment. 

Our aviation modernization and procurement accounts have 

slowed to a snail’s pace in order to build readiness for the current 

fight. We have had seven serious manned mishaps, or Class A accidents, and eight unmanned accidents thus far this fiscal year. 

Flight training hours are our only resource to achieve platoon-level 

readiness, proficiency. 

And our aviation maintenance soldiers and our combat aviation 

brigades are not deploying with their aircraft and aircrews, which 

is causing an atrophy of critical skills that will be needed for expeditionary operations in combat zones that do not allow for contract 

maintenance. 

While we have resourced our deploying aviation units to a level 

of proficiency sufficient for the current and recent fights in Iraq 

and Afghanistan, we see peer and near-peer competitors and know 

that we will require resourcing our units to higher levels of proficiency in order to train for combined arms maneuver fights that 

will likely come. 

We also know that with the prospect of sequestration in fiscal 

year 2018 and continued unpredictable budgets, these areas of concern may get worse before they get better as we prepare for the future threat environment. 

As a result of these operational, strategic, and budgetary challenges, General Milley, our Army Chief of Staff, asked me to lead 

a holistic assessment of Army aviation with the mission to conduct 

a comprehensive assessment of all things Army aviation. I was 

supported by a superstar team of Army aviation subject matter experts who I would like to thank publicly today for their incredible 

effort to complete our initial work. 

I have briefed General Milley on our initial findings and have received his guidance to finalize our report, which we will do very 

soon. And I am confident that those recommendations will set us 

on a path to get after some of the readiness challenges and opportunities that lay in front of us. 

I often describe aviation as a fragile ecosystem. In order to keep 

this ecosystem healthy and thriving all the requisite parts must be 

nourished routinely. If any get out of balance for long, the whole 

system can begin to fray and collapse, putting soldiers at risk. 
6 

For army aviation and our readiness, this includes our personnel, 

pilots, crews, maintainers and all those who work the numerous 

support roles, our manned and unmanned aircraft systems, our installations and training ranges and facilities, and the resources and 

time necessary to meet battalion-level collective proficiency with 

modernized equipment. 

While we can and have continued to assume risk in some areas 

of the ecosystem, in order to build the readiness needed to meet 

global aviation commitments, we do risk getting out of balance, 

which of course has consequences. 

In order to meet the challenges of emerging and future threats, 

we must provide realistic training, resource with time and dollars 

and couple this with exceptional leader development. In doing so, 

we set the best possible conditions for success to provide a trained 

and ready aviation force whenever needed in support of combatant 

commanders to meet any threat or contingency. 

That said, what we cannot do is resource our aviation units to 

platoon- or company-level readiness, yet expect that these same 

units—these same units to operate in environments that require 

battalion-level proficiency and flight skills. If there is something 

that keeps me awake at night, this is it. Additionally, if we do not 

address the issue of time and dollars and the demand signal for 

aviation forces continues to increase, we will consume readiness 

faster than we can rebuild it. 

In a nutshell, we need to resource Army aviation units to train 

to battalion-level proficiency to keep the ecosystem in balance. This 

will allow our units to become proficient in those collective tasks 

required to operate at higher threat levels against peer or nearpeer adversaries. This also means that our pilots and crews will get 

more repetitions to master their craft, and more is better. 

The same is true for our soldiers who maintain our aircraft. They 

will get more opportunities to fix, repair, and maintain, which is 

critical to skill proficiency. 

Last, and certainly not least, is that training to battalion-level 

collective proficiency allows for more robust leader development to 

ensure our leaders can operate against complex hybrid threats in 

the future. 

Notwithstanding the challenges and concerns, the United States 

Army retains the largest, most modern, and best trained aviation 

force of its kind in the world. One that has been tested in a variety 

of operational environments and whose soldiers met and are meeting today, the tasks at hand no matter how difficult the danger. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today, we appreciate your support and I look forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of General Mangum can be found in the 

Appendix on page 56.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Lieutenant General Mangum, thank you. Major 

General West, we will now go to you. 

STATEMENT OF MAJ GEN SCOTT D. WEST, USAF, DIRECTOR OF 

CURRENT OPERATIONS, U.S. AIR FORCE 

General WEST. Chairman Wittman, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the House Armed 

Service Subcommittee on Readiness, thank you for conducting this 
7 

hearing today and allowing me to join Army, Navy, and Marine 

counterparts in testimony on our service readiness. 

Today’s national security challenges come from a combination of 

strong states that are challenging world order, weak states that 

cannot preserve order, and poorly governed spaces that provide 

sanctuary to terrorists. 

The Nation needs a strong joint force and that force depends 

upon Air Force capabilities at the beginning, middle, and end of 

every operation. The Air Force must be able to disrupt, degrade, or 

destroy any target in the world quickly and precisely with conventional or nuclear weapons to deter and win our Nation’s wars. 

Whether in support of counterterrorism operations or near-peer deterrence, your Air Force remains constantly committed, as we have 

for 25 years. 

However two and a half decades of continuous combat operations 

and reductions to our total force, coupled with budget instability 

and lower-than-planned funding levels, have contributed to the creation of one of the smallest, oldest, and least ready forces in our 

history. While the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 provides some 

space to recover readiness and continue modernization efforts, the 

Air Force needs permanent relief from the Budget Control Act, 

flexible funding, increased manpower, and time to recover. 

Today less than 50 percent of the conventional Air Force is ready 

to conduct the full spectrum of combat operations. While we are 

able to conduct nuclear deterrent operations and support counterterrorism efforts, operations against a near-peer competitor would 

require a significant amount of training. If called upon to fight 

state-to-state, an associated training delay would pose a significant 

risk to mission. Conversely, deploying airmen in their current 

readiness state to fight along soldiers, sailors, and marines, would 

significantly increase the risk to success of the joint fight. 

Accordingly, we will address readiness shortfalls in five areas: 

critical personnel skills, weapons systems sustainment, training resources, flying hours, and operations tempo. All five must be synchronized and balanced. Since development of human capital takes 

the longest to complete, we must first address personnel shortfalls 

in critical skills. 

We will also need to stabilize weapon system sustainment and 

improve our training infrastructure. 

Finally, we need to increase our training hours and reduce operations tempo to provide the time our airmen need to prepare for 

full-spectrum operations. 

Mr. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the subcommittee, I look forward to answering 

your questions as we work to resolve our readiness challenges. 

[The prepared statement of General West can be found in the 

Appendix on page 65.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. General West thank you so much. We will now go 

to Rear Admiral Manazir. 
8 

STATEMENT OF RADM MICHAEL C. MANAZIR, USN, DEPUTY 

CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR WARFARE SYSTEMS, U.S. 

NAVY 

Admiral MANAZIR. Chairman Thornberry, Chairman Wittman, 

Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished members, I am proud to 

be here with my brothers in arms. Thank you for the opportunity 

to testify on the state of aviation readiness in the Navy. 

For the first time in 25 years, the Nation and your Navy are facing the challenges of a return to great power competition at sea. 

Provocations from state and non-state actors continue to cause instability in almost every region of the world and pose a significant 

threat to U.S. interests, our allies, and the homeland. 

But our Nation continues to answer the call. Today the Navy has 

four carrier strike groups forward deployed: John C. Stennis, Ronald Reagan in the Pacific; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman 

in the Mediterranean and Arabian Gulf. We also remain vigilant 

with rotational presence of land-based aviation forces such as EA– 

18G Growler, P–8 Poseidon, and the P–3 [Orion] in the Middle 

East and the Western Pacific. These missions not only demonstrate 

our Navy’s responsiveness and warfighting power, but also maintain our sailor combat proficiency, readiness bought only with time 

at sea. 

This required level of readiness is fragile and can be squandered. 

As we reset in stride following 15 years of combat stress to the 

force, we continue to face challenges associated with balancing 

readiness for today and modernization for tomorrow’s fight. More 

of our force is being demanded, deployed longer than planned; intended replacements are not keeping pace with attrition. Fiscal 

constraints continue to force difficult trades in capacity and readiness for long-term capability improvements. 

Achieving full-spectrum aviation readiness requires us to restore 

capacity and throughput at our aviation depots primarily through 

workforce development changes and process improvement. Through 

a concerted hiring effort with the support of congressional budgetary increases, the recovery and maintenance capacity is underway and continues to progress. 

Fleet Readiness Center hiring is on pace, and training continues 

so that we may ensure the depots can meet the looming workload 

demand. We have increased capacity at field sites, and are swarming repairs of aircraft on the flight line. 

So far in fiscal year 2016, we have completed 50 percent more 

depot-level repairs on the flight line than we did in fiscal year 

2015. We have also partnered with industry to incorporate additional engineering, maintenance, and depot capacity to accomplish 

inspections and repairs outside of government depot facilities. As 

a result of process improvement implemented in 2014, we saw a 44 

percent increase in fiscal year 2015 F/A–18 A through D depot production when compared to the prior year. 

We are recovering from a readiness deficit that started to accrue 

in 2009, and was exacerbated by sequestration effects. With the 

submission of the fiscal year 2016 omnibus request yesterday, and 

with a fiscal year 2017 President’s budget request, we have invested to provide the maximum predictable and sustainable presence under the Optimized Fleet Response Plan. 
9 

The budget request harmonizes our readiness accounts to improve aircraft availability, the leading factor in our readiness challenge. Harmonization means that with the 2017 President’s budget 

request, we realigned funds from the flight hour program, which is 

constrained by aircraft availability, to readiness enabler accounts 

such as depot maintenance, aviation support, aircraft spares, and 

aviation logistics. Each of these vital programs underpins the flying 

hour account, but has been critically underfunded in previous 

years. 

Specifically, programs like the Aviation Support Program funds 

engineers and logisticians, who help diagnose and develop repairs 

for failed components discovered by fleet maintainers. In this approach to readiness harmonization, the budget for aviation support 

is broken into individual program elements tied to specific platforms. 

In this manner we can track platform targeted investments, 

which over time will yield improved aircraft availability. While we 

are seeing signs of recovery, and our processes need time to mature, we need funding stability to support our plan. The bipartisan 

budget agreement of 2015 gave us the stability to make target investments in the near term, but the threat of continuing resolutions and the prospect of return to sequestration would undo this 

progress, and further hamper our fragile recovery plan. 

Ladies and gentlemen, your Navy aviation arm is the world’s 

premier sea-based airpower. That advantage could be lost if we do 

not achieve stable budgets and make deliberate investments in future readiness, while ensuring the force can fight tonight. Mr. 

Chairman, distinguished committee members, we welcome your 

continued support as we work together to overcome these challenges, build and sustain the preeminent force of the future. Thank 

you for your commitment to naval aviation, I look forward to your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Admiral Manazir can be found in the 

Appendix on page 75.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Admiral Manazir, thank you. 

I wanted to thank our other panelists here, and now I want to 

go to the chairman of our committee, Chairman Thornberry, for his 

comments and questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to 

take a moment to thank you and Ms. Bordallo for holding this 

hearing, and for all the members of the subcommittee and your 

staff for your deep dive into this important issue. I think it is very 

important that we and the American people understand what is 

happening, and I really admire the witnesses today and their efforts to make the best of a difficult situation. 

So first and foremost, I want to thank you, and as well as our 

witnesses, for dealing with this. I want to take just a moment and 

clarify one issue with General Mangum, if I may. You testified sir, 

that starting in fiscal year 2015, a combat aviation brigade was deployed to Afghanistan—it was supposed to have 2,800 soldiers, it 

only sent 800, right? 

General MANGUM. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. And one of the ways you got from 2,800 to 800 

was to leave most of the maintainers behind, right? 
10 

General MANGUM. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. And so what do those maintainers do when they 

are left here in the states, when their aircraft and their pilots are 

in Afghanistan? 

General MANGUM. Sir, they are not doing a whole lot of aviation 

maintenance. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, and I think that your point, as I understand it, is that does not help readiness when you have important 

maintainers without aircraft to work on. 

General MANGUM. No sir, we are building a deficit of experience 

and expertise in our formations as a result. 

The CHAIRMAN. And then my second question was, as I understand it, what is happening in Afghanistan is that we have contractors who are taking care of those helicopters, right? 

General MANGUM. That is correct, yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. And does that cost more or less than if the maintainers had been there with them? 

General MANGUM. It costs more. 

The CHAIRMAN. To have contractors? 

General MANGUM. To have contractors there, we are paying around $100 million this year for contractors in Afghanistan. 

The CHAIRMAN. And that practice that started in fiscal year 2015 

continues today? 

General MANGUM. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Chairman, I just think it is important for 

members to understand this point. I understand that there may 

shortly be an announcement on troop caps for Afghanistan, and one 

of the ways the troop caps are reached is like this. 

And it costs more, and yet where does that money come from? 

It comes out of the readiness of all these folks, and what they are 

trying to do. It is only a subset of the issues you are looking at 

today, but I think it is important for us to understand it. 

Thank you for letting me take a moment to clarify that. I yield 

back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you 

bringing that up. 

I know Lieutenant General Mangum and I had a chance to talk 

about that the other day, and that does get down truly to the element of only platoon-level readiness, and if you don’t have the 

maintainers there and the ability to operate at those higher levels 

of training at the battalion and brigade level, then it creates a 

whole new set of circumstances. 

I would like to ask a question collectively of all of our witnesses. 

In looking at the scenario we had today, each of you spoke about 

where we are today with the President’s budget for 2017, and then 

the NDAA that was passed both by the House and the Senate, and 

the appropriations bills for national defense, one here in the House, 

one soon to be taken up there in the Senate. Those all have us at 

higher overall spending levels. 

We can debate back and forth about how many of those dollars 

are OCO [overseas contingency operations] but how many dollars 

are in the base budget, but overall an increase. And each you all 

spoke to that and how that increase is helpful to you in regenerating readiness. And where we are today is just preparing the 
11 

conditions to reestablish that readiness, so it is not even getting on 

that steep glide slope of rebuilding, it is just setting the conditions. 

Give me your perspective in that element of setting the conditions, of what a CR this year would do to you in getting where we 

need to be, in reestablishing that aviation readiness, and Lieutenant General Davis, I will begin with you. 

General DAVIS. Thank you, sir, for the question. 

We talked about stable funding, and I think the hard work the 

Marines put forth this last year, to recover from what I consider 

to be the lowest ebb of Marine aviation readiness in a long time. 

F–18 pilots on average 8.8 hours a month last year. That is about 

half what they should be flying. 

Now we are about 9.8 for those that aren’t deployed. That is still 

way below where we should be. So we are eking out inch by inch 

a progressive recovery out there. So the recovery, and the budgets, 

while good, we need to make sure they stay whole, sir. Why is 

that? We need to procure the new airplanes that are—a lot of our 

old F–18s and 53 Echos are really old and we are running out of 

service life and it is really hard for those marines to keep them 

going. 

So, buying the new—putting the readiness recovery money into 

the platforms, we have like 53 reset, allows us to extract maximum 

value out of any risk to those funding profiles puts that recovery 

at risk. And I would say we are in a period of risk right now in 

Marine aviation to recover to get back to full warfighting formations to be the force in readiness that this body told us we have 

to be. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Lieutenant General Mangum. 

General MANGUM. Mr. Chairman, the greatest risk for CR to 

Army and Army aviation is in training. We have programmed to 

kickstart our readiness recovery with increased flight hours to get 

us from—to start the journey from platoon-level collective readiness 

to company-level collective readiness. 

We would remain at platoon-level readiness funding under the 

CR, as well as putting further constraints on our modernization 

programs that are already at the floors for multiyear procurement. 

So, it would definitely constrain our ability to start our journey to 

readiness recovery. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Major General West. 

General WEST. Yes, sir. I would echo the same comments, that 

if we are faced with a continuing resolution this year, as has happened in the past, we will be capped at previous spending levels, 

which prevents us from realizing the benefit of having increased 

funding levels in fiscal year 2017 to address readiness. 

When we are capped at previous year’s funding levels, we 

prioritize. Our first priority is to support troops in combat. Second, 

those that are forward deployed to assure our allies, which means 

the bill-payer for training are those that are here in the United 

States. So, it exacerbates the issue not only that we not be able to 

begin to slow the rate of decline, it delays the start of us being able 

to stop the rate of decline of our readiness. 

Mr. WITTMAN. All right. Thank you. 
12 

Rear Admiral Manazir. 

Admiral MANAZIR. Thank you, sir. The neat thing about being 

last is I get to capture all the comments, and agree and summarize. 

You spoke of that increase, and I would like to complement the 

teamwork that we have had in all the services and especially your 

committee on building this case for readiness. You spoke of that increase, so the President’s budget was an increase. The various bills 

are increases. If we go with a CR, all of that increase gets wiped 

out. 

Additionally, each year, as was spoken by Scott West, we program to a set of operations in a year. So, more deployments for 

Navy, different deployments, different length of deployments, different employment of the force. Our request reflected that operations, maintenance, and training for fiscal year 2017. 

It is a deeper request because we have to recover the readiness 

and support those maintenance and support. So therefore, if we 

stay with a CR, it will not reflect the request that we sent over 

from our budget. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you. 

We will now go to Ms. Bordallo. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

General Davis, could you explain the consequences for current 

Marine Corps aviation readiness of not executing a reset program 

to bring all equipment to readiness standards, as the Army did for 

nearly two dozen major units during OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] and OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] instead of waiting 

until now, as the Marine Corps has done? 

General DAVIS. Well, I think the community that was particularly impacted was the CH–53 Echo. And we have—had low numbers of CH–53 Echo. 

The reset is not the only reason for the low readiness. We have 

a—I would say a very debilitating ‘‘not mission capable-supply’’ 

problem in CH–53. But the reset will allow us to basically get our 

aircraft back up to speed, while, you know, in the timeline—an 

ability to order the parts we need to get our supply bins full so we 

can get maximum value out of the airplane. 

But the CH–53 was about one-third of the CH–53s we have in 

the inventory we are able to fly, maybe even a little bit less. Recovering that now, the flight time was very low. A lot of those units 

now, the flight time has about doubled what it was last summer. 

So, we are recovering in CH–53, but the reset is essential to do 

that now. 

So we copied a playbook out of the Army. We had an independent readiness review that looked at what was wrong with the 

CH–53 and why we couldn’t get our readiness out of that aircraft. 

We also did it with Harrier. The Harrier has recovered its readiness. We are generating the numbers we need to out of that airplane. It is serving, again, really great in combat and we are able 

to track the training missions we need to out of that. 

CH–53 is going to take a longer time to recover. It will take us 

until about 2019 to 2020 to get all of our CH–53s back up in the 

battery that they should be and the numbers they should and a 

highly reliable airplane. It is a good airplane now, but it will be 
13 

highly reliable. So, we should have done that before, we didn’t, and 

we are doing it now. 

And also, too, we have to address the not mission capable-supply 

problem, which the low inventory masked how bad that really was. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. Thank you, General. I have another 

question for you and General Mangum. In your opening statements, both of you discussed trends in Class A mishaps, which result in loss of property and/or life. Could you discuss your findings 

and whether you believe there is currently a correlation between 

degraded readiness, whether due to maintenance failures or inadequate training? 

And the other witnesses, I welcome your remarks as well. So, 

begin with you, General. 

General DAVIS. Ma’am, I will tell you that we don’t fly any aircraft that is unsafe. I will say that my pilots across the Marine 

Corps are not getting the flight time they need. With the exception 

of the F–35; we are generating our hours in that new airplane. 

They are not getting the hours they need to be as proficient as they 

should be. 

So, while historically, our Class A mishap rate is higher—is 

high—it is high, but it is actually kind of on par where it has been 

in the past. But I—smaller number of flight hours, every mishap 

makes that bump up a lot. 

What I will tell you is we are seeing a spike, almost double the 

number of Class C mishaps than we had last year and we are trying to look at why the reason for that is. 

What I will tell you is kind of hard to take a look at from today’s 

standpoint, but we are flying less, getting less experience. So my 

flight leads 2, 3, 4 years from now are not going to be guys with 

1,000 hours or 1,500 hours, like I had. And you have got a youngster on your wing that is having a problem, you go, do this or do 

that. The flight leads coming back now, because they are not getting the flight time they need, will have 500 or 600 hours. 

They don’t have that looks at the ball like my compadres talked 

about that will say, this is what you should do. So, I think we could 

see future mishap spikes in the Class A realm because of the low 

flight time and the low experience our guys are getting right now. 

So, while the numbers are steady, they are unacceptable. We 

should be driving those numbers down. And it is something we 

need to work on and I—it is hard to tie the low flight time to a 

Class A mishap rate right now, but we are seeing the high 

OPTEMPO [operations tempo]. The deployment-to-dwell I think 

has an impact for sure on our Class C mishap rate, which impacts 

our readiness to a great degree. If—again, 100 percent increase 

from last year in the Marine Corps in Class C mishap rate. 

Ms. BORDALLO. General. 

General MANGUM. Ma’am, this year, our Class A accident rate for 

manned systems is down, and not to historically low levels, but we 

continue to trend down. So, correlation between the hours and our 

accident rate is a bit tenuous. 

However, more repetitions is better. Practice makes perfect, and 

as we increase our flying hour program to achieve higher levels of 

collective readiness, that gives our flight crews more repetitions, it 

gives our maintainers more repetitions. 
14 

However, as we start to go to higher levels of collective training, 

say at the National Training Center or Joint Readiness Training 

Center, as we ask those crews to do some things they had not been 

doing to the same level, we will face increased risk as we increase 

the flight hours. 

That is a bit counterintuitive but I guess to specifically answer 

your question, ma’am, we don’t see necessarily a correlation based 

on them being isolated events. This year, we have had 1.16 accidents per 100,000 hours which is the military and industry standard to measure those against which is down from last year. 

We are seeing a spike in our unmanned systems and those are 

still under investigation to try to determine what the root cause of 

those are. 

Ms. BORDALLO. General West. 

General WEST. Yes, ma’am. We have not—we analyzed our mishap rates over the last 10 years, which we keep the data for. We 

can’t find that there is a correlation between our trend in mishap 

rates and our readiness levels. 

Our mishap rates still are at the same rate that they have been 

over the past 10 years. I would expect, because of our readiness 

concerns and deployment-to-dwell issues that we might see some 

trends related to human factors. 

Either operators that are complacent when they are back in the 

United States or maintainers that may fail to follow tech order 

guidance in the maintenance of aircraft. But we haven’t seen that 

and I think that is emphasis on professionalism that we don’t sacrifice airworthiness or safety standards to recover readiness. 

Same thing in our depots; the workforce that sustains systems, 

some over 50 years old require more time to be able to complete 

the work in the depots and they take the time necessary to provide 

airworthy and safe systems to be able to operate. 

I think that has contributed to the fact that we have not seen 

an increase in material failures in older systems. However, separating mishaps and the fact that right now we are having the same 

decreasing trend in mishap rates does not mean that we don’t have 

a readiness issue. 

We still have a readiness issue, it is just not manifesting itself 

in our mishap rates. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Admiral. 

Admiral MANAZIR. Ma’am, thank you. We do not see our mishap 

rates manifesting themselves from a lack of readiness. Our Class 

B aviation mishaps are down this year over the last 2 years and 

our Class As are consistent. 

We looked at the Class A mishaps and they were a very smallnumber to see if they were proficiency-based. In other words, not 

enough flight time or aircrew executing operations that they were 

not proficient for. And in fact, that was not the case. 

The aircrew involved—and I won’t go into the causal factors because they are privileged—were well-experienced and they were 

proficient at their trade. The Class C mishaps, we have seen an increase to nearly double what it was since 2008, so similar to General Davis’ testimony. 

We are diving hard with the safety center to see what the causal 

factors would be for an increase in Class C mishaps, ground mis-
15 

haps, were the mistakes made because of inexperience, were there 

procedures that were not followed. 

This might be an indicator at the lower level of our mishap classes of potentially some effects from readiness. But when we asked 

to look at the way that we put causal factors against mishaps there 

were none that stood out as low readiness, low currency, lack of familiarity with procedures for our aircrew or our maintainers. 

But we continue to look at that Class C mishap rate to see if 

there might be a problem. I will endorse the comment made by several of my compadres here that we probably won’t see the effects 

of a critical underfunding of readiness, critical underflying, critical 

lack of experience, for several years. 

As people are now put in leadership positions and they are leading larger flight operations or they are leading squadrons and with 

a lack of experience, that lack of exposure, you might start to see 

some effects on the units that they lead because of the lack of flying several years ago in different positions. 

So it could have a lagging effect in the future. We are worried 

about that. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

I have one further question, Mr. Chairman. 

To any of you, though both situations would be ideal, which fiscal 

remedy would help build back readiness most effectively over the 

long term? Increased funding or stable predictable budgets? 

General. 

General DAVIS. Can I say both, ma’am. 

[Laughter.] 

Obviously, stable budgets are key. As you know, we are in recovery so we have a little bit more requirement for that. We have kind 

of held off, we are right now in the heyday of our procurement, our 

recapitalization in the Marine Corps. 

We are only about—we are just starting now our TACAIR [tactical air] recapitalization so all the Harriers and Hornets have to 

be replaced and our 53s have to be replaced. Stable funding is best. 

But also, too, it is if you are funding below the minimum required then—if you are funding below the requirement—you have 

got a requirement—you are going to end up with something that 

is—I am no math major, but that is a recipe for disaster and kind 

of where we are right now. 

Ms. BORDALLO. General. 

General MANGUM. Ma’am, the answer is both. Stable predictable 

funding; we have brought down our modernization counts to the 

floors of our multiyear contract. So we have slowed our modernization to a snail’s pace. 

And if our predictable funding keeps at platoon- or company-level 

collective readiness, we are not on the recovery path that we need 

to be. 

Ms. BORDALLO. General West. 

General WEST. Yes, ma’am the answer is both here, as well. 

Given an—I will give a response for the need for stable predictive 

funding based on the effects on industry. 

If you operate a fleet that is decades old, you have to be able to 

give the business case—make the business case—of why should you 

stay in this business to make a reasonable profit, given that we 
16 

don’t know if we are going to have a predictable level of funding 

to be able to warrant you being in this business. That has an impact on older systems. 

As to the top line for increased funding, that is also important 

because we have to balance the discussion topic here today, which 

I define a little bit separately from modernization, because we will 

have a bow wave of issues of modernized projects to come up in the 

next decade that we will have to address. 

Otherwise, the things that we are readying today will be irrelevant in combat given the gaps that our near-peer competitors are 

closing technologically. 

Ms. BORDALLO. And finally, Admiral, do you agree with your 

compadres? 

Admiral MANAZIR. Ma’am, I say it is stable and predictable budgets but only after you have increased the budget to buy back the 

readiness deficit that we have built. So we have to get back at— 

buying that whole back and then you can probably decline that 

level and get to stable and predictable so that we can stay with the 

readiness capability of our force. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

And I yield back, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo. 

And now I will go to Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thanks for being here and I want to go back to what 

Chairman Thornberry said that is one of my great frustrations is 

that, you know, some political strategist somewhere determines 

that it is going to be popular to say that we have drawn down a 

certain number of troops. 

And so we are sending the pilots and not the maintainers and 

in fact, we are actually paying more for the equipment to be maintained by contractors. And all over something that reaches a political target and has absolutely nothing to do with winning the war. 

With that said, I hear your comments about the continuing resolutions and the other issues. I want to encourage you, as I have in 

private meetings, and I want to do it publicly, to meet with members that are not on the Armed Services Committee. 

The term ‘‘readiness’’ is not something that, if you are not on this 

committee, that you would normally hear. And I think the majority 

of the members of this committee will vote to support you in the 

things that you need. In order for us to win that vote, we have to 

have votes from members that are not on that committee—on this 

committee and I would encourage you to meet with them as well. 

But General Scott, under the Budget Control Act, the funding 

levels—what are the hardest readiness choices you will have to 

make in the Air Force fleet? And what impact do these have on 

your ability to meet mission requirements, national defense strategy, both today and in the future? And I would appreciate it if you 

could be specific on that. 

General WEST. Today your Air Force is able to support nuclear 

deterrent operations. We are growing our cyber capability. We are 

able to conduct space operations. We will have to continue to modernize in space. And we have grown and will continue to grow our 

ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] capability. 
17 

To get to those four areas of operations, we had to make trades 

in people and our conventional air forces. We downsized 252 aircraft, 10 squadrons’ worth of fighter squadrons to—and made people trades that today has resulted in our first readiness issue and 

that is to address critical skills. 

That is mainly in maintenance. We need an increase of 4,000— 

up to 4,000 to be at end strength of 321,000 for the Air Force. And 

that is the first readiness hurdle that we need to be able to have 

support, and I think we do have that to get after our readiness recovery. 

Because that takes up to 7 years to build the maintainer of the 

future we want, which is not just freshly out of high school and 

trained, but has experience on how to trouble-shoot the aircraft, 

particularly those that are older. That timespan means we can 

start later on increasing weapon systems sustainment, improving 

our range infrastructure, adding to the flying hour program, and 

last, working within the Department of Defense to reduce our operations tempo. So our first—the first criteria—first thing we would 

ask for is for a modest increase in end strength. 

I didn’t quite answer your question, sir. Let me go back to where 

our concern is. What our concern is not that we can’t conduct 

counterterrorism operations today, nuclear operations, space, cyber, 

and ISR. We do that. We rotate through the Middle East and we 

support our joint partners. Where we have concern is to have the 

time and the resources available to train when not deployed, for 

full-spectrum combat. That is the concern. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is it accurate to say that the fleet—the Air Force 

fleet is older today on average than it has ever been? 

General WEST. Yes, sir, it is. I had an anecdote that a B–17 that 

flew in World War II, which they were made shortly therefore. If 

it had flown in Desert Storm, the aircraft bombers we are using 

today are older than those B–17s would have been. It is an aged 

fleet. 

Mr. SCOTT. And how many fewer men and women do you have 

today than you had in the first Gulf War? 

General WEST. It is on the order of thousands. I will get you 

that. I will get you the data, but if I could put it in terms of fighter 

squadrons, we had 134 fighter squadrons at the beginning of the 

Gulf War. Today we have 55. 

Mr. SCOTT. One hundred and thirty four at the beginning of the 

Gulf War and today we have 55. 

General WEST. Fifty-five. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. Could you touch briefly—I am down to about 30 seconds—on the status of the Air Force depots and how they contribute to the increased readiness of the Air Force? 

General WEST. It is critical. They find—they weigh—they sustain 

the older systems that are decades old that we use and operate 

today. Our KC–135 mishap—reliability rate is outstanding to me, 

and I think it is on the backs of professionals that work in our depots. 

Mr. SCOTT. Gentlemen, thank you for your service and I look forward to working with you to resolve these issues. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Scott. 

We will now go to Mr. Peters. 
18 

Mr. PETERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. 

General Davis, you may have answered this question in response 

to Ms. Bordallo, but I wanted to sort of explore the mitigation 

strategies that the Marine Corps might have in the event that the 

F–35 squadron transitions take longer than the expected 2 years, 

or if the F–35s continue to experience technical delays. 

General DAVIS. What we are seeing right now, sir, the F–35 is 

exceptional capability. Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 

[VMFA–121] ran their, you know, their kind of an operational 

readiness inspection; knocked it out of the park. We just finished 

the Weapons and Instructor Course [WTI], VMFA–211 stood up. 

And we actually have three airplanes over in the United Kingdom 

[U.K.] right now getting ready to do the Farnborough and Riyadh 

Air Show. 

A lot of excitement over in the U.K. We are very excited about 

the airplane. I can tell you we just ran a transition board for F– 

35 and everybody that can put in to fly the F–35 is—to include my 

oldest son who is getting ready to fly that airplane; youngest one 

would like to do it, too. 

We are not seeing a problem right now. The production line is 

ramping up to full-rate production. What we have to do is keep our 

F–18s and our Harriers going, sustain them properly to make our 

F–35 bridge. Right now, we are seeing no problems with that airplane. What we are seeing is high readiness rates and incredible 

capability. 

We just ran a WTI drill where normal scenario that we would 

have with our legacy aircraft out there. I was a CO [commanding 

officer] at the weapons school. Generally about half the airplanes 

that go into the across the—ROMO [range of military operations], 

the high-end threat, Prowlers, Hornets, Harriers, and generally 

about half to a third of the airplanes don’t make it through. 

The F–35s, 24 to zero kill ratio. It killed all the targets. It is— 

it was like Jurassic Park, watching a Velociraptor. It kills everything. It does really well, so we can’t get that airplane fast enough 

into the fleet, sir. 

Mr. PETERS. Okay, I know we are putting some hangars up at 

Miramar. Hangars are the least of your worries, I think, so. 

General DAVIS. Actually, hangars are essential. A lot of our infrastructure in our bases is World War II-vintage. And so Miramar— 

what we are building is a two-squadron hangar out there at 

Miramar. So we are really happy to get the support on that. 

We are very tightly aligned with the United States Navy on the 

F–35 program. We are going to procure four squadrons of F–35C, 

the tailhook variant of the airplane. And when the first tailhookcapable carrier for F–35C moved from the east coast to the west 

coast, we had planned on standing that squadron up on the east 

coast. Now we have moved it to the west coast. 

A lot of help from you guys; worked inside the Marine Corps on 

green dollar budgets to build a hangar out there at Miramar and 

got that done so we can actually be ready to take that airplane 

when it comes. It is not just the hangar. It is the training facilities 

and everything else that goes with it. So a lot of excitement at 

Miramar to get that airplane out there. 
19 

Mr. PETERS. Okay, terrific. 

One other question about training. You have discussed the hours 

and in terms of experience, and it has been reported in the press, 

General West, that the Air Force Research Laboratory’s secure live 

virtual constructed advance technology environment, advanced 

technology demonstration—that is a simulator. Does that help address the gap? And tell me kind of what advantages that offers? 

And where it leaves you short. 

General WEST. Well, sir, in general there is a right balance between what training we can conduct in simulators versus what 

training we need to conduct and do conduct on live ranges. And the 

balance is this. In simulation, you can train operator or a maintainer to do certain tasks very well. You can integrate operations 

between different operators. 

But what you don’t do in a simulator is assess the entire performance of the system: do the sensors work, because—for example, 

because the sensors are replicated in simulation. 

So you have to have a balance between stressing and training 

the entire system, maintaining, generating the sortie, loading the 

weapons and actually performing against threat replicators in a 

live range to see how the sensors work—do they work as they are 

supposed to do—and crews make decisions on what to do, versus 

what you can replicate in simulation which doesn’t stress the entire 

system but gives you great capacity to train the human being. 

Mr. PETERS. In terms of the simulator part of the budget, do you 

think that we have adequate resources to stay on track and keep 

the program goals? 

General WEST. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PETERS. So that it is after the simulation that you are concerned about the training primarily? 

General WEST. Yes, sir. It is getting the right mix between simulation and supporting the funds necessary to upgrade our ranges 

to replicate what threats airmen are going to face in the future, 

which are closing the gap, if you will, on our technological advantage that we have right now and also sustaining our ability to employ and train and test weapons, and you need live ranges to be 

able to do that. 

Mr. PETERS. Okay. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having the hearing. And I yield 

back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Peters. 

We will now to go Ms. Stefanik. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My first question is for General Mangum. As you mentioned in 

your testimony, the Army aviation community is blessed with agile 

and adaptive leaders. I have seen this firsthand with the 10th 

Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Drum in my district. 

My question is, how will certain force structure reductions combined with such a heavy demand for aviation assets impact overall 

readiness? We know the Army prioritizes operational readiness, 

but where does it assume risk for the future? 

General MANGUM. Ma’am, currently, we have 11 combat aviation 

brigades in the Active Component and 12 aviation brigades in the 

Reserve Component for a total of 23. Twelve of those twenty-three 
20 

brigades have elements deployed overseas today. So the—that fine 

balance between consuming readiness and our ability to rebuild it, 

we are on the edge. 

And again, I think we have all used the word fragile, there is 

some fragility into this system. So we are, again, about at the tipping point. Several years ago, we did a study that determined that 

we needed 15 or 16—between 15 and 16 combat aviation brigades 

in the Active Component. We are on glide slope to go to 10, the National Commission for the Future of the Army recommended maintaining an eleventh. 

So we are—again, we are at the tipping point. The National 

Commission for the Future of the Army recommendations are— 

Secretary Fanning and General Milley will consult with Secretary 

Carter here soon, but all of those recommendations come with no 

resources. 

Ms. STEFANIK. My next question is for Admiral Manazir. 

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to embark on the USS 

Harry Truman with my colleague Mr. Peters. How will the recent 

30-day extension of the USS Harry Truman’s deployment impact 

future carrier deployments? And is there a concern that future deployments could be extended? And what is the impact on the carrier air wing? 

Admiral MANAZIR. Yes, ma’am. First of all, thank you for going 

out to Harry S. Truman and seeing what our great Americans do 

on that flight deck and around the carrier strike group. 

The Harry S. Truman, as you read from the press and saw the 

reports—maybe on a classified level—had a superb deployment, 

both in the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea and demonstrated the power of mobile sea-based aviation. 

We build into our Optimized Fleet Response Plan the capability 

to continue to deploy or to extend the deployments of our carriers 

once they go on deployment. The model is 7 months for the deployment, but we build in some surge capability on the carrier when 

the Nation calls, as in this case, they did. 

The particular impact is—required more readiness dollars to 

keep the carrier strike group out there for an additional month. So 

we had to pay for that. That caused some impacts to the training— 

the forces in training down the road. But it didn’t impact the Truman strike group, particularly because we had already planned for 

that, both the air wing, the ship, and the accompanying ships. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you very much. 

I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Stefanik. 

We will now go to Mr. Ashford. 

Mr. ASHFORD. Thank you. 

Just a comment—a question to General West. First of all, General, thank you for and thank the Air Force for moving forward on 

the restoration of the runway at Offutt. I think it is a great improvement for the 55th and I appreciate that. 

I have a couple questions related to the ISR mission, specifically 

the 55th, that is the mission that I am most familiar with. I have 

visited in Qatar and just recently at Mildenhall and several visits 

at Offutt. The nature of that mission is obviously an ISR mission, 

a highly—high-tech mission. The vast majority of the military per-
21 

sonnel on those airplanes are not pilots, they are actually back in 

the back working on the computers and intercepting the information that they are getting. 

The concern that I always get from them, and you have really 

talked to it, not specifically on this issue, but is the training. And 

I know during the time prior to 2015, there was a great deal of concern about training in language proficiency and—which is a major 

part of the mission. How do you see that improving? And I know 

there are some languages where there—we need more proficiency. 

At Mildenhall, I was able to visit the training center there where 

they are doing great work and getting people up to proficiency and 

continuing to move forward into their testing regimens and so 

forth. But how do you see that evolving? And what impact would 

it have if we were to go back prior to 2015, specifically on the language issue as it relates to the 55th and other related missions? 

General WEST. Thank you, sir. I am not familiar with the language issue to which you refer. 

Mr. ASHFORD. Just the proficiency in the various languages, 

which is the—you know, the central core of that 55th mission. 

General WEST. Yes, sir. 

Well, I would say this. The 55th has capabilities that are absolutely necessary if we had to go to combat versus a near-peer, 

state-to-state combat. The training that the 55th and operations 

that the 55th conducts now down range, as they did for me in Afghanistan and others in other places, doesn’t place the demand signal on proficiency that training would for other scenarios. 

So providing not only just the maintainers that we need, which 

is mainly for—not for the big wing ISR at Offutt but other platforms, but providing the weapons system sustainment, these are 

older platforms. 

Mr. ASHFORD. Right. 

General WEST. The training range infrastructure that includes 

simulation that we can upgrade to replicate what is now not only 

possessed, but being exported by near-peer competitors, and working with our Joint Staff partners on deploy-to-dwell issues so we 

have got more time to be able to train with the flying hour program. 

All of those have to be synchronized in order to start to recover 

readiness. It is not just one individually can work it. 

Mr. ASHFORD. Right. 

And I—my point, I guess, is to—is that I was—it is very impressive to see what has been achieved in the last year and a half in 

upgrading the training and getting more people trained in specific 

line language, and obviously, the maintainer issue is always—is 

also a big issue. 

But the gaps that existed prior to 2015, to a great extent, have 

started to be extinguished on the training side on language specifically. But I just—the comments that you have made regarding 

readiness generally and training generally and maintainers generally applies, I think, to the language sector as well. And I just 

applaud the Air Force for moving quickly to fill those gaps. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Ashford. 

We will now go to Mr. Cook. 
22 

Mr. COOK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

A couple of my questions—a little bit different. I want to talk 

about the—maybe the F–35. And airspace, particularly on the west 

coast and particularly in California and—training time, I think, is 

essential. And we have some issues that I think everybody, all four 

services, are impacted by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], and I am talking about the corridor that goes into the Los 

Angeles area. 

I am a ground guy, so I can’t even spell air. But the problems 

that we are going to have with the F–35 in the envelope and they 

even effect ground weapons, such as the HIMARS [High Mobility 

Artillery Rocket] system at Fort Irwin. And some of the paths that 

they have to take affects Mugu, it affects the Air Force base that— 

all the ranges are basically in my district, and most of them in San 

Bernardino. China Lake, I don’t have the headquarters, but I got 

all the ranges. 

I have got obviously Fort Irwin, and the—some of the restrictions 

that are coming out would have a major impact on the training of 

all four services. And if you could address that or how concerned 

you are about this because I just think it is going to get worse and 

worse and worse. This is not the old aircraft, and that is—but the 

F–35 is—operates in a different area and some of these newer 

weapon systems. 

So if you could comment on that, please. 

General DAVIS. Sir, I will take that question to start. We are 

very concerned about it. And as you know, I am a guy who joined 

the Marine Corps not knowing they had airplanes. So, rifleman 

first, aviator second always. Hoorah. 

Mr. COOK. Thank you. 

General DAVIS. That should probably scare you a little bit, that 

I am running Marine aviation right now. 

But bottom line is the F–35 is a qualitatively different airplane, 

both in capabilities and also watching the way the Marines are flying it. They fly Twentynine Palms, Yuma, out there. They are 

using a lot more airspace to extract maximum value out of that airplane. And I can’t talk about all the numbers because they are 

classified, but it is more and it is different. I think those ranges 

are national assets and we have to do our level best to protect 

them. 

The Marine Corps, like the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, 

are all trained to fight not today’s fight, but also tomorrow’s fight. 

And it is a very high-end fight and at the end of the day, we cannot 

be caught short because we didn’t have this much altitude or this 

much range space to bring these qualitative advantages that you 

are providing for us and our marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen 

are fighting and flying with. 

We need airspace. You need to spread out, train against the 

near-peer competitor. It is not what we have been doing for the last 

15 years in the aggregate. It is very different. And all of us need 

to train and be able to do that, and we need the space to move out 

and train. 

We are seeing that with the Air Force out there at Nellis and the 

Navy up at Fallon and even at the National Training Center and 

our ground forces. Long-range rockets that—we need the ability to 
23 

fight at range, see at range and dominate at range and kick anybody’s butt that is out there at range. And we need the airspace 

and the ground space to do that, sir. 

Mr. COOK. Thank you. 

Anyone else? 

Admiral MANAZIR. Sir, OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] has an office inside of the Director of Air Warfare that 

works directly with the FAA on encroachment issues. I would echo 

what General Davis said. Our ranges are crown jewels in our ability to train. 

We have worked with the FAA on airspace corridors. There are 

limited places to go supersonic, especially in the West. There are 

small corridors. It is—the airspace is very dear. Connecting the 

ranges between Nellis and Fallon, Point Mugu, the sea ranges over 

to China Lake is something that we already do. 

But encroachment is a gigantic issue. So, not only the airspace, 

but encroachment on the ground towards our training ranges for 

peaceful issues like wind farms and the partnership with wind 

farms all the way to nefarious threat countries who would try to 

buy property in close so they can monitor what we are doing. 

The F–35 is different. I would offer to you that our networked 

way of warfare, the way we are going to do warfare with fifth generation would take up about three quarters of the United States if 

we could have it. And so that goes to the value of what General 

West talked about, which is this live virtual constructive training. 

So, when we have to go to the high-end fight using fifth generation and full, full capabilities, it is not just the geography of the 

airspace which is getting limiting for F–35, but also our ability to 

practice how we are going to really fight. And so we have to tailor 

what we do in the air. 

Mr. COOK. I appreciate that comment. I am not always sure that 

the FAA is on the mindset of a lot people in this room here in 

terms of readiness, readiness, readiness, combat readiness. And 

they might have other priorities that are not the same. And obviously, I think this is a battle that is going to be a bureaucratic battle just like you fight about the budget and everything else. 

Just one last question I have, and that is on tempo of ops, and 

it has always been my concern that we overload that box. The planners, we are going do this, this, this, this, this. You can only do 

so much. And I think, yes, but the big wars and everything like 

that, but you are going to see more and more come-as-you-are parties. And maybe that is a bad phrase. But you never know what 

is going to—and you have got to be ready to go when the balloon 

goes up. 

And any comments on being overloaded with tempo of ops, which 

I think are always going to be there? 

General DAVIS. If I could, sir. The demand from the combatant 

commanders is strong. Again, we go back, I think the demand is 

reasonable and if you got the assets that you need to go do the job 

right. Right now, we are shy on the number of platforms we have. 

So, the Marines are working really hard to make ends meet. 

So, I think the dep [deployment] tempo of 1:2 is manifested or 

made more deep, and the fact that they just don’t have enough of 
24 

the assets to go around so they are working harder to make ends 

meet. 

Right now, the world is a pretty dangerous place and we have 

got marines forward deployed at sea and at shore, and all of them 

are very gainfully employed. So we are doing our level best to try 

to pull some of that—try to do a little bit better with a little less 

to reduce the number of assets we have forward deployed, but it 

has met with not a lot of positive effects from our combatant commanders right now. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cook. 

We will now go to Mr. Veasey. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. 

I wanted to ask Admiral Manazir a question about training and 

transitioning from F–18s to F–35s, including the training and retraining of pilots and the maintenance personnel. How will this 

transition affect the availability of units for deployments? 

Admiral MANAZIR. Sir, we are going to initial operational capability the F–35C in August of 2018. There is some risk to that date, 

but we are planning to that date and on path working with the 

Joint Program Office to do that. 

The first squadron will be ready for deployment shortly after 

that initial operational capability. We will then go through a heelto-toe transition of units from generally the F–18C, but some F– 

18Es and F units will transition through a process that we have 

mapped out already. And they will do that at Naval Air Station 

Lemoore in California. 

The transition takes about a year to do it. We have that planned 

into our master aviation plan, which is laid out to support all the 

deployments necessary to support the combatant commander. So, 

the simple answer to your question, sir, is that the transition to the 

F–35C will not affect our ability to provide the combatant commander with the forces that he needs as we go forward to source 

the global force management plan. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you very much. 

And wanted to ask Lieutenant General Davis a question also 

about the F–35. I was just curious, what is the plan to follow on 

development of modernization for F–35s to ensure that the aircraft 

continues to have the upgrades necessary to maintain a capability 

advantage over threats through the life of the aircraft? 

And—the same thing, I wanted to also—if you could just touch 

on just the transitioning, as well, as you move from the F–18s and 

the AV–8s and how that is going? 

General DAVIS. It is F–18s, AV–8s, and EA–6Bs; we have two 

Prowler pilots flying the airplane very successfully right now. One, 

in fact, is an instructor in VMFAT–501 [Marine Fighter Attack 

Training Squadron 501] and we picked four EA–6B pilots this last 

board to transition out of the 16s. So, a quarter of the guys we 

picked are Prowler pilots to basically make maximum use of the 

electronic warfare capability of that airplane. 

The transition is going well. Again, we just stood up our second 

operational squadron. We will stand—the next one will be an F– 

18 squadron that will shut down VMFA–122, will move to Yuma, 

Arizona, and stand up as an F–35B squadron; then VMFA–314, 

which will be the first Charlie squadron, in Miramar in 2019. 
25 

So, the transition is going well. What we are doing is we are 

managing the inventory of our AV–8s and our F–18s. The good 

news, on our readiness recovery, we solved some of the problems 

we had with Harriers. We have actually burned some—built some 

margin in Harrier that can keep the Harrier going a little bit 

longer if we need it to, so we can balance between F–18 and Harrier, which, you know, we sundown next to make those—to make 

our transition. 

Right now, VMFAT–501 in Beaufort, South Carolina, is scheduled to get bigger to handle more students. And so, that is growing. 

And the production line, really sir, and the spare parts that flows 

with that, is getting ready to go up to 20 aircraft a year, which we 

need, just on Bs alone, which we need very desperately. 

So, the transition is going well. We are managing that inside the 

Marine Corps. We are making a little bit of our own luck with better readiness in Harrier, which is good, and then working very 

closely with the Navy to extract maximum value out of the legacy 

F–18. 

And on Block four—I am sorry—Block four, I think is was you 

are talking about the capability modernization development. I 

worked that very closely with Admiral Manazir and my Air Force 

counterparts to make sure we are getting the very best combat capability for the country. 

I think we are close to slapping the table and all that we have 

put into that modernization program out there but it is actually 

very exciting. We compete and push to see what we want to put 

in there in the timeline we get it. We broke it up into four chunks, 

which is smart to go do. 

And bottom line is bring in the great capabilities that the Block 

4 upgrades to the airplane as quickly as we can. 

Mr. VEASEY. Over the last several years, the numbers of the 

squadrons that you have, have dropped from about 70 to 55, or so. 

General DAVIS. Yes, sir. 

Mr. VEASEY. Is that hampering the transition at all, or—— 

General DAVIS. Well, what we are—sir, we—right now, we are at 

20 TACAIR squadrons and we, like the Air Force, came down after 

Desert Storm. I think we are about 28 TACAIR squadrons during 

Desert Storm. And over time we are down to 20. 

And right now I am 19 because one of my Reserve squadrons is 

cadred. So making our own luck with F–18 and the Harrier, keeping them robust will allow us to make that transition. 

But right now, we are executing a transition in stride and we 

will shut down—you know, we have basically worked out a longterm training and deployment plan for the Marine Corps so that 

we can sundown our squadrons and stand up in stride. 

And we just did that with VMFA–211, so VMFA–211 came back 

from combat deployment. There is—the VMFA–121 was a F–35 

squadron in Yuma. It grew to be larger than a normal F–35 squadron and then what we did is when 211 stood up, they split off their 

airplanes they were supposed to have and the maintainers and the 

pilots so they can be a going concern from the beginning. 

We will do that for the rest of the squadrons itself. I will say that 

the ramp for F–35 in the Marine Corps has been very slow. We are 

looking very much forward to getting a faster ramp and be able to 
26 

stand squadrons up faster and still making all of our operational 

commitments. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. 

General DAVIS. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. VEASEY. Chairman, thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good, thank you Mr. Veasey. 

We will now go to Mr. LoBiondo. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General West, I know that you know this but some of the others 

in the room may not, that the 177th Fighter Wing that I represent 

has a state-of-the-art infrastructure including state-of-the-art alert 

hangars that can accommodate the F–35 and we hope will, someday. 

Admiral, if you have or having challenges with the FAA, I would 

appreciate knowing a little more about it. I chair the Aviation Subcommittee which has oversight with the FAA. I certainly would be 

happy to weigh in and get their attention on this if there is something we can do. 

And General Davis, a short while back maybe 4, 6 weeks ago, 

there was a report on one of the cable channels about the cannibalization. Are you familiar with that? 

General DAVIS. Are they talking about the F–18, sir? 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Yes. 

General DAVIS. I am, sir. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. They had to go into a museum and get parts and 

so on and so forth. So is—are we going to see more of that? 

What is the status of that? Is it more than just in the Marine 

Corps? Anybody else or—was pretty disturbing report. 

General DAVIS. What I will tell you, sir, is on that—we were 

looking for a hinge for a nose gear of an old model, A model F–18, 

no longer in production. And a lot of those airplanes were built in 

lots and they are all different. 

So we do, we have done that in the past, go out and look at a— 

for a part. And it just so happened that one of the squadron members was out there looking; said hey, that is as close to the bureau 

number. 

It didn’t match up but the good news to it in that is there was 

no part to be had so we 3D-printed the part and then manufactured the part, Okay? And so they—so the company was able to 

make that part for us. 

You also heard on the news that the Marines are also going into 

the boneyard to get F–18s. We are doing that, sir. We took I think 

23 out of Davis-Monthan. But those are 23 airplanes we had put 

in in 2007 to kind of preserve the life. 

We—they are low flight hour F–18s now we will basically—we 

are bringing them back into service now to go fly them, to go make 

our operational commitments and it goes back to how we manage 

the F–18 life to the end of its service life, extract maximum value. 

We would like to recapitalize faster, that is what we need to do, 

that is what we want to do. By the—until that time, we are going 

to do what we have to do to make our operational commitments 

with our F–18s and our Harriers. 
27 

Right now, my two communities at greatest risk for making their 

flight hour goals and making their readiness goals is CH–53 Echo 

and the legacy F–18. 

Again, 53 Kilo will replace the Echo and is doing great in tests 

and the F–35 is going great in its production and its tests and its 

initial operating capability development out there. 

So replacing our F–18s with F–35s as quickly as we can is our 

strategy. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. LoBiondo. 

We will now go to Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today on this very important hearing dealing with aviation readiness. 

Rear Admiral Manazir, I would like to start the question with 

you. So the committee has heard testimony in prior hearings about 

a strike fighter shortfall and some of the issues you have to manage as a result. 

So how have training hours for Navy and Marine Corps pilots 

been impacted and do you see an impact to pilot readiness due to 

the shortfall now or in the future? 

Admiral MANAZIR. Ma’am, I will let General Davis answer the 

Marine Corps question because the impacts to both services while 

founded in the same challenge are different in how we train. 

Strike fighter shortfall we now term as inventory management, 

so if you have a shortfall that means your supply doesn’t equal 

your demand and so you have to manage that force. 

The proximate cause of the strike fighter inventory challenges 

particularly in the F–18 and the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] is the 

JSF sliding to the right. General Davis testified that he wants to 

see a faster ramp to F–35, to the new, fifth generation fighter. 

We want to make sure that there is no delay to the F–35C arriving. But it has slid several years. That has caused two problems. 

The first one is that we have had to induct more of our F–18 A 

through D legacy force into the depot. 

We didn’t plan to do that maintenance and when we opened 

those airplanes up they had significant corrosion that we did not 

plan for. And so that created a depot load that we had to change 

the process and how we manage that. That created shortfalls on 

the flight line. 

The second effect it had was we were over-flying our F–18s, 

Super Hornets, Es and Fs. We didn’t plan to fly them this much 

nor this early in their life. So it is accelerating the life use on the 

F–18 Es and Fs. 

And in fact, our unfunded priority list—the number one priority 

from the Chief of Naval Operations is 14 Es and Fs to help cover 

the gap that we never foresaw between the F–18 C and the F–35. 

We are taking—as you know, we do what is called tiered readiness, it is phase-based tiered readiness, I explained it a little bit 

in my written statement, where the deployers are full up ready to 

go for any high-end mission. And then the next to go are also 

trained at the intermediate, advanced level. 

Where we see the effects on training, ma’am, are in the early 

training phases leading up to advanced training and then it is 
28 

sustainment when they come home from extended deployment. You 

will see some of the resources having to be moved to the next 

deployer. 

So on either end of that deployed cycle, that is where we see 

those hits. That aircraft availability, just exactly what General 

Davis says, that limited aircraft availability—especially early in 

the phase—doesn’t allow us to train those aviators that are in that 

phase. And we have to steepen the training ramp to get them up 

to speed before they deploy. Those are the effects. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. How many hours short are you, would you say, 

for a normal training? If you have optimal training for all tiers to 

be fully trained, how many hours more are—you need? 

Admiral MANAZIR. So it is a—that is a difficult calculation because we—it is almost area under the curve. There is a certain 

number of hours at the very low maintenance level, its currency 

hours is just 11 hours per pilot per month. 

And then it goes up to the fully deployed to about 27 hours per 

pilot per month in each type model series. The fiscal year 2017 

President’s budget request does give us a readiness level that is 

executable because of the numbers of airplanes. 

Sometimes people will say, hey, you need to fly more hours and 

so we are going to give you more flying hour money. One of the 

causes of why we are where we are today is money went into flying 

hours but the underlying accounts, the enabling accounts, were 

underfunded. 

So the airplanes weren’t available to fly. So I would rather not 

tell you that I need more hours. What I need is the fiscal year 2017 

submission and the bills that the chairman talked about to get that 

readiness level up so that we can increase the flying in those lower 

stages of training. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. As you know, we have got the 14 extra F–18s 

in the NDAA and we are going to try and bring that across the finish line. Is that enough? Would you like more if you could? 

Admiral MANAZIR. In the 2017 budget, that 14 remains the request. CNO Greenert testified earlier in 2015 that we need two to 

three squadrons to fill the gap in our total force with a tiered-readiness model. 

We haven’t quite got to that point of having all of those squadrons and all of those numbers. As we continue to use the airplanes 

that we are using, I think you are going to see repeat requests for 

Super Hornets as we go forward in future year budgets. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Sure. 

Nineteen seconds General Davis—has pilot readiness been impacted? 

General DAVIS. I will tell you exactly, we are 6 hours—about 6 

hours per month per pilot short on the TACAIR fleet, specifically 

F–18. We fixed the Harriers; they are doing better right now. 

We have got one squadron that is in Bahrain that is flying a lot, 

about 800 hour a month for a 10-plane squadron, so those guys are 

doing well. But on average, low. We have asked for two F–35Cs 

and two F–35Bs to help fill our coffers out there. 

Our plan is to put our guys in an 8,000-hour airplane, the F–35B 

and C, and basically take advantage of that full ramp. We have 
29 

been having a lot of help from Boeing Corporation to help fix our 

legacy airplane. 

So four things that F–18s—legacy F–18s are down for. They are 

in the depot. They are—need an in-service repair, which is too 

much maintenance for my marines to fix. They need the special 

permissions to go do that. Not mission capable-supply or -maintenance. A large number of our legacy F–18s were on the flight line, 

needed a minor repair that my marines aren’t able to do it, same 

thing with the sailors. 

So we didn’t have enough depot artisans to do that work so we 

took some depot artisans and put them up at Miramar and that 

has had a palpable and positive impact on my flight line readiness 

for F–18 in Miramar. We basically hired Boeing—Navy blessed 

Boeing Corporation folks to go do that ISR [in-service repair] work. 

It makes sense, they built the airplane, and bottom line is we are 

getting much better readiness out of the Beaufort effort, as well. 

That just started. 

So taking those in-service repair airplanes, a large slug of our 

airplanes, if we could get at that would actually help on my F–18 

readiness as they are doing that now. So hats off to Boeing and 

using the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], not just for 

the F–18 but across the spectrum to help increase our readiness 

wherever we can. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Hats off to all of you for taking a difficult situation and making the best of it. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler. 

We will now go to Mr. Gallego. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

This question is for the Navy-Marine Corps team. Recently, the 

Marine Corps announced plans to rotate another amphibious readiness group [ARG] or Marine expeditionary unit [MEU] in the Pacific by 2019. 

However, when the announcement was made it was acknowledged that sourcing plans had yet not been worked out. While the 

Navy-Marine Corps continued to maintain a forward presence 

through aircraft carriers and MEUs for example additional requirements such as two special purpose MAGTFs and this proposed 

ARG–MEU continued to place additional requirements on the force 

during a time of constrained resources. 

So my question, very simple: How much more operational stress 

can the Navy and Marine Corps aviation enterprise take within 

what I described? And also, can we continue to extend our presence 

under the current readiness projections? 

General DAVIS. I can answer part of that. The special purpose 

MAGTFs—we have one in Spain and one in the Central Command 

area of responsibility. The reason we did that, 12 V–22s and 4 C– 

130s, is because we didn’t have the amphibious shipping we needed 

to put out there. 

So I could cover down on the requirement with four V–22s if I 

had an amphibious ship to embark those marines on, but they have 

got to fly, a lot of times 2,000 miles. So the beauty of sea-based assets, whether it is on a carrier or an amphibious carrier, is you can 

move that ship around and put it to close proximity of the action 
30 

and get out there without a tanker. It could fly there without a 

tanker. 

So the fact that we don’t have the ships does add to wear and 

tear on airplanes like the V–22 and C–130s. So I would have more 

amphibious ships. I know this is an aviation hearing. I would have 

a—my guys go off the ships and off the expeditionary bases ashore. 

But that helps us get closer to the objective area, so more of that 

would be certainly helpful, sir. 

Admiral MANAZIR. Okay, Mr. Gallego, the Navy works closely 

with the Joint Staff to source a global force management plan. We 

currently are resourced to deploy two amphibious readiness groups 

and two carrier strike groups. It will take us to about the end of 

this Future Year Defense Plan, 2020 to 2022, to be able to resource 

a third deployed amphibious readiness group. So our current capacity is two amphibious readiness groups. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Excellent, thank you. 

General Davis, we spoke a little bit earlier under—from questions from another Member of Congress regarding parts. But you 

have advocated for resizing the spare parts account to increase 

readiness. Such a change would ensure more parts are on hand instead of waiting on the supply chain. Can you describe how much 

additional funding you think it will require in future years, and 

whether this would demand a policy change in how spare parts 

programs are maintained? 

General DAVIS. I can get you the exact number, sir, but that is 

something we are looking at. This year, you can see from our unfunded priorities list that we ask for help on spare parts, specifically F–35. They have been underfunded and that has an impact 

not just in the year of execution, but it is 3 years later when those 

parts are supposed to be there to make sure we get maximum 

value out of that. 

But I think in the aggregate, we could look at how we spare our 

programs in the Department of Defense. I don’t know any airline 

out there that has got a not mission capable-supply target anything 

other than zero percent. So we have these great airplanes, but we 

put a marine out there or a sailor, soldier, airman, and they don’t 

have enough parts. 

If your target is 10 percent non mission capable-supply, I am 

worried about that 10 percent. Where do they get that part? It has 

usually got a bureau number written on it. 

And then airplanes like the CH–53, we had marines for a number of years who would go to an airplane that couldn’t fly and take 

the part off the airplane. These are great maintainers. I worry 

about the pilots and retaining pilots. I worry about my enlisted marines, my enlisted maintainers. Those are the guys if I have got to 

focus on retaining anybody, I am going to retain them; give them 

the tools, not just the tools in the shop, but the pubs, but also the 

parts they need to be—to extract maximum readiness out of the 

platforms we have. 

I will come back to you, sir, and tell you exactly what I think 

they would cost, but it is the cost of low readiness is, I think, something our Nation can’t afford. And if having that airplane, as great 

as the airplanes we are all procuring out here, to not have a part 

for it is kind of crazy. 
31 

Mr. GALLEGO. Thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gallego. 

We now go to Mr. Lamborn. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you. 

We have all known for some time that readiness is a big problem 

and including a recent focus by this committee, under the leadership of Chairman Thornberry and Chairman Wittman. 

So from an Air Force perspective in particular, recently the 

Thunderbird crash in my district, along with the tragic loss of life 

in the Blue Angel crash the very same day, really got people’s attention. 

These tragic events, along with other recent crashes, have caused 

the American people to ask a lot of questions including: Why did 

these crashes happen? And what can we do to prevent this in the 

future? 

The answers to these questions are undoubtedly complex. But 

getting the right answers and taking the right action is vitally important. The very lives of our aviators depend on it. And also how 

well prepared we are to fight a war if necessary. 

So I know it is your job in the military to make the most of what 

you have and to carry on with the mission regardless, but I really 

ask for the maximum frankness and being candid on your part. 

So, General West, what are the trends in Air Force mishaps over 

the past 8 to 10 years? 

General WEST. Thank you, sir. We haven’t seen a correlation between mishap rates and our readiness concerns now over the last 

10 years. 

Mr. LAMBORN. We have or haven’t? 

General WEST. Have not. Our mishap rate is about the same, 

trending down, as it has been over 10 years. That doesn’t mean 

that the goal for mishaps is not zero. We don’t want to lose a single 

airman or lose equipment. But we don’t have a correlation because 

of our readiness issues that would seem to indicate that either 

human factors, largely driven by complacency, operations or maintenance, or material failures of operating systems that are decades 

old, are having—they have an affect on readiness. 

But we haven’t seen that the trend data shows that they have 

had an affect on safety. That doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention 

to safety. In every case, we do conduct two investigations afterward—one safety for the safety privilege reasons; the other for 

legal purposes. And those—the legal one is public knowledge. The 

safety one under privilege is meant to uncover things with privilege 

so that we can take action quickly, if necessary. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Okay, well let’s focus then on readiness in particular now. How many hours did the average pilot fly 10 years ago 

versus today, as far as you know? And is there a difference in either flight hours or maintenance or the age of aircraft 10 years ago 

versus today? How would you summarize that? 

General WEST. Yes, sir. Well the—I don’t mean to be flippant at 

all, sir. They are 10 years older, the aircraft, obviously. And that 

comes with the challenges of when you perform depot work, you 

are going to discover things that weren’t anticipated because the 

original service life wasn’t intended to be this many decades old. 
32 

And we make choices of sustaining legacy systems within a certain 

amount of budget, with modernizing for the future. 

So the longer we sustain systems that are older, then the closer 

we get to where they will no longer be relevant in combat because 

of other systems that are fielded by potential adversaries. So we 

have to make choices. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Now if the replacement rate is equal to the rate 

at which they are being mothballed, there would not be—the average would not be 8 or 10 years older. It would be constant. 

General WEST. Yes, sir. 

Mr. LAMBORN. But you are saying that that is not the case; that 

the average rate is now 10 years older versus 10 years ago, of the 

aircraft? 

General WEST. That is the way it is going to be outside of the 

ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] community, 

which MQ–1s and MQ–9s are a brand new weapon system. But we 

continue to operate A–10s, F–16s, B–52s, B–1s, B–2s, KC–135s, 

KC–10s. It is the same fleet that we have operated successfully for 

years. 

We will have a large modernization effort that will come forward 

in the 2020s, B–21, KC–46, the bulk of the F–35s, et cetera, for a 

long period to come. But right now the fleet is aging. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Now as aircraft reach their expected life, or exceed their expected life, what happens in terms of maintenance or 

flying hours and things like that? 

General WEST. We conduct a service life extension program to extend the life of the aircraft. It varies by aircraft what that entails 

technically. But we extend it by some number of thousands of 

hours, and we work at how long we want to extend the service life 

based on when we expect a replacement to come into play. 

If I could go back to your question about hours. The hours are 

a concern for training, but more important than just the hours that 

crews get, are the intensity of training during those hours. Our 

crews get excellent training to be able to go down range and conduct ISR, strike, airlift, close air support, electronic warfare. 

What we are not able to do with the training hours we get in the 

United States is sufficiently prepare them for combat with that 

near-peer competitor. That is a different level of intensity that requires investments along five different fronts, first starting with 

the maintainers to be able to do it. 

And that is a different dynamic from events when you are training versus just hours. Our crews get a lot of hours down range. But 

that is not the same level of intensity. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Lieutenant General Davis, I wanted to follow up 

on some of the comments that you have made concerning training 

hours. You have talked about making sure that you had maintainers that were capable and that you were short in the amount of 

seat time that pilots had, real flying time, not simulator time, and 

talked about needing to have that ready bench, and that when you 

lack aircraft to train pilots and train maintainers that ready bench 

gets pretty thin, and in some instances non-existent. 

I wanted to, and you spoke earlier about Class A mishaps. I do 

want to try to drill a little bit deeper. We know about a year or 
33 

so ago, there was a tragic CH–53 accident off the coast of Hawaii; 

challenging conditions. But that being said, in talking about those 

shortfalls that you have there in making sure maintainers have 

what they need, making sure pilots have that seat time. And I 

know that the investigation for that accident is coming to its completion. 

Can you maybe talk a little bit specifically about that? Do you 

believe that the elements that you spoke about in the training side, 

both maintainers and pilots, could have had any impact in that 

particular accident? 

And I know we can look at rates, but I want to be able to look 

at specific recent instances, because I think that is what Mr. 

Lamborn had spoken about, what we are hearing from folks about 

the concern about that particular situation. 

And whether it is the tragic accident with the Blue Angels pilot, 

the Thunderbirds pilot, whatever it may be, the question becomes 

as we highlight these shortfalls, what association might that have 

with this? And I want to ask you specifically about that incident 

because I know there are a lot of different conditions there that 

were at question. 

General DAVIS. Yes, sir, thank you for the question. As you know 

that investigation is still underway and I don’t want to do anything 

to get out in front of what they might tell us. 

I am highly confident that that crew was flying good airplanes, 

that both crews were flying good airplanes, they were properly 

maintained, and it is a tragedy. 

I mean this is a real tragedy, all of our losses to include the Blue 

Angels, tragedy. Here is what I worry about the most, if I had to 

kind of step back from this. That crew was safe but that crew could 

have been a lot more proficient at the combat mission that it is on 

task to go execute. So I don’t know how well trained they would 

be to go fight the high-end fight. 

They were doing what was a pretty straightforward mission that 

night. Tragedy though. I worry about my young aviators that aren’t 

getting the number of hours they need to. And so it is the mishap 

that looms on our bow that we don’t see coming just now. 

I remember that as a young guy I had a couple close calls; as 

I young guy I had some close calls. I do not know how I would do 

having the amount of flight time that my youngsters get. And I 

have got two sons that fly Marine airplanes. 

They’re not complainers, but as a dad I worry about it. They’re 

just not getting the looks at the ball that I got. So when that bad 

thing happens to them, or when they’re a flight lead, and they’re 

trying to take somebody out there and a bad thing is happening to 

the youngster that they’re leading, man or woman, will they have 

the experience to keep that bad thing from happening? 

Saying I see this, I know this, I feel this—I know the science of 

aviation but you have me up here, General Neller has me, to 

understand the intuition and the sense of aviation as well. We are 

not where we need to be. So we are proficient but we are not as 

good as we need to be because we don’t get the number of hours 

that we need to get because there is just not enough inventory 

there. 
34 

You know, the old days when I was a lieutenant, it was 75 percent mission capable rates, those were all the numbers we knew. 

I will tell you that in order to get to 75 percent mission capable, 

I would need about another 366 airplanes in the Marine Corps 

that, they are there, they don’t exist, they don’t have parts, they 

are stuck in a depot, or they are on a production line someplace 

coming to us. I think I can—I can’t make a direct line to the Class 

A, but there is risk there by not flying and not building the experience out there. 

It has not been borne out in an investigation. It doesn’t mean 

that a mishap investigation 3 years from now isn’t going to say 

that this person here did not have the experience they needed to 

get as a young captain and now he is a major or she is a lieutenant 

colonel, squadron commander, and she just didn’t see this before 

because she didn’t have the experience. So I would worry about the 

stuff that looms in our bow sir. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you General Davis, and I want to kind of 

tie a string between each of these instances that you all have highlighted today. And we will start there in the Marine Corps. You 

have spoken about the shortfalls that are there with maintainers, 

aircraft to maintain, the ability for that experience with our maintainers and with our pilots all manifesting themselves in different 

ways. 

General Mangum, you spoke about the same thing. Situation 

where if a helicopter is deployed in Afghanistan, maintainer is back 

home. That creates an atrophy there in that force in that capability 

that not only will we see today, but as you spoke of, we will probably see in years to come. General West you spoke of the same 

thing there. 

A shortage of maintainers in the Air Force. Making sure too, that 

we have the senior NCOs [noncommissioned officers] there in the 

Air Force that are the backbone of training, the new airmen that 

come in to be able to maintain those aircraft. Making sure, too, we 

are transitioning from maintainers that are on an A–10 aircraft to 

the new F–35 aircraft. You know all of that, creating a challenge, 

a deficiency I would say within the realm of what we need to have. 

Admiral Manazir, you spoke of, too, the element there of what 

you are dealing with today, going from a backlog of 12 F–18s to 

now nearly 200, with legacy aircraft and Super Hornets, getting 

them to that depot. 

We have flown those aircraft more than we expected, therefore 

when they get to the depot we are having to do much deeper maintenance, maintenance that really wasn’t originally designed to be 

done at the depot level, but you all are managing to get that done. 

There is a common theme here we see across the realm here, we 

are pushing harder, we have fewer resources, we have fewer of the 

skilled people in the necessary positions to do all the things that 

we need to do to make sure that we are not just rebuilding that 

readiness, but maintaining the current level of readiness. 

To me, that is a very, very deeply concerning issue. I know the 

chairman and myself, as well as members of the committee and the 

ranking member all have a deep level of concern. 

And while it may not show itself directly today in the rate of mishaps, I do believe it exhibits itself in additional risk for the brave 
35 

men and women that serve in our Air Force, our Navy, our Army, 

and our Marine Corps. And to me, that is deeply, deeply disturbing. 

And as you know, that bow wave that happens with that many 

times doesn’t manifest itself until months or sometimes years into 

the future. I think our obligation on this subcommittee, as well as 

the full committee, is to make sure we understand the full scope 

of that, understand the challenges that you all face which you have 

very eloquently stated to us today, but then make sure that we get 

from you what do we need to do? 

Now, we talk about preparing the conditions to restore readiness. 

I mean, that is just building the foundation so you can actually 

begin to build the house, as I put it. You know, this is about building that two-story house. We are just right now building the foundation. We can’t even talk about the materials that we need to actually build the structure of the house. 

That is my concern and we need to understand not only what we 

need to do to continue that effort, but where do we go and where 

do we make sure we get there in the shortest amount of time possible. 

This is also an issue not only of resources, but also of capacity. 

You know, even if we were tomorrow able to write the check, which 

we at this time can’t, but if we were, the issue is of pipeline capacity. Even if we wanted to, there is only so much that you can do 

to get to that particular point. So you know, our thrust from this 

hearing is to make sure we get from you not only where those 

shortfalls are, but what do we need to do to continue on that path 

of creating the conditions to rebuild readiness and then how we expect to get there as quickly as possible because the shorter time it 

takes for us to get there, the less reverberation of effects that we 

will see years down the road. 

And we absolutely want to be able to prevent that with everything that we have and we have to be able to, as Mr. Scott spoke 

about—we have to be able to communicate this with folks that are 

not on the Armed Services Committee. I think most of the folks on 

the Armed Services Committee get it, they understand the concept 

of readiness. 

But other members don’t, so we have to be able to take from you 

the headlines that they read about mishaps or shortfalls in aviation across the spectrum and say okay, what are the things that 

we need to do to be committed as a Congress to get those things 

done? Maintainers, pilots, air time, experience in maintaining, all 

those elements, and I think people intuitively get that as long as 

we can provide them the specifics of that. 

So our challenge is to make sure that we get from you, as an outcome of today’s hearing, in order to be able to do that. And I know 

Mrs. Hartzler has another question that she wants to ask that I 

think is within that realm and I want to make sure that we give 

her that opportunity. 

Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the additional 

time. Well said. The purpose of this hearing and the importance of 

this hearing, not only for our current readiness but also as we look 
36 

to the future and future platforms that are being developed, maybe 

lessons learned and that is where my question is focused. 

The excellent airmen at Whiteman Air Force Base know a little 

bit about readiness, and certainly, they have done an amazing job 

in keeping the B–2 aircraft viable and mission-capable even though 

there are only 20 aircrafts and they have had issues with parts, 

sustainment and now, they are doing the DMS [Defensive Management System] modernization all at the same time. But yet, they 

are doing a great job. 

And I just wonder, as we look to the B–21, this question is for 

General—Major General West—as we look to the B–21 being developed, what lessons learned are you gleaning from the B–2 that can 

be a part of the sustainment plan for the B–21 going forward? 

General WEST. I would say—I am not that closely connected to 

the B–21 program. But we want the systems that we procure in the 

future to the max extent possible to use proven technologies that 

reduce the amount of time it takes to field and reduce the cost as 

efficiently as possible, while at the same time, fielding systems that 

are going to be relevant in combat for years. 

And there is risk with both to be able to do that. We want to 

make them as maintainable as possible. We have made great 

strides in maintaining stealth from the original platforms to F–117 

to F–22. Now, F–35 is much more maintainable; it will be in the 

future. We are going to have to be able to share and fuse information for B–21 crews just the same as we are going to be able to do 

with the F–35. 

And long-term lifecycle costs have to fit within our requirement 

to have to modernize many other systems, KC–46, F–35s, weapons 

associated with platforms to go with it. It all has to fit within a 

certain top line. 

So the lessons—not necessarily from B–2, but just in general is— 

it is the entire life cycle and it has got to be able to perform in combat for decades because it is likely we will operate the B–21 just 

like we have other platforms and they have to be relevant for a 

long time. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Certainly, having an increased number of airplanes manufactured will be a big help. At this point, we are projecting 100, from what I have read. But yet, I have also read that 

that is a little bit short, that other people are saying that we need 

about 174 to 205 B–21s. 

Do you have any insights into that issue? 

General WEST. No, ma’am. I don’t. I will have to take that for 

the record. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 85.] 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Okay. Well, thank you for what you do. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler. 

I want to thank all of our witnesses today, General Davis, General Mangum, General West, Admiral Manazir. Thank you so 

much. 

I also want to thank, too, the officers from your staff that are 

here. I know they are extraordinarily valuable in things that they 
37 

do to provide the information collectively to us today. So I want to 

thank each and every one of you. 

I assume we have some junior officers here today, too, so they 

are certainly seeing and hearing things that they will be dealing 

with in the years to come. 

So we appreciate everyone here. Thanks—thank you so much for 

your leadership and providing us a perspective that we need to 

make sure that we are making the right decisions to support the 

great job that you do. 

Please thank all of your great airmen, marines, soldiers, and 

sailors for the job they do in maintaining our aircraft and the job 

that they do in keeping those aircraft in the air and the job they 

do in piloting those aircraft. We have absolutely the best in the 

world and please thank them on our behalf for that. 

And with that, our subcommittee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

JULY 6, 2016 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

JULY 6, 2016 

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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

JULY 6, 2016 

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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. HARTZLER 

General WEST. The Air Force is currently conducting a congressionally-mandated 

study to determine the appropriate B–21 fleet size. We expect to submit the results 

of this study to Congress in late 2016/early 2017. [See page 36.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

JULY 6, 2016 

(89) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. TSONGAS 

Ms. TSONGAS. Rear Admiral Manazir, during the February 2nd, 2016 Tactical 

Airland Subcommittee hearing on Naval Aviation, you noted that you were focused 

on driving down the rate of physiological incidents experienced by F/A–18 pilots. 

Has that occurred? Has the rate of incidents decreased since we last spoke? 

Admiral MANAZIR. The Department has not yet seen a decline in the rate of reported F/A–18 physiological incidents. We are continuing efforts to educate our aviators about the risks of physiological events, and encouraging them to report even 

minor events which will aid in more accurate tracking of the incident rate and diagnosing the problem. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Rear Admiral Manazir, during the same February 2nd, 2016 

Airland Subcommittee hearing, Rear Admiral Moran noted that addressing the 

physiological incident rate in the F–A/18 fleet was not a question of resources. Do 

you still feel like that is the case? 

Admiral MANAZIR. The F/A–18 Physiological Episode Team does not have any efforts or mitigations that have not been pursued or that have been put on hold due 

to a lack of funding. All reasonable efforts to reduce Physiological incidents are 

being pursued and are currently funded. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Rear Admiral Manazir, during the same February 2nd, 2016 

Airland Subcommittee hearing, Rear Admiral Moran also indicated that the Navy 

was looking into extending the capacity of the backup oxygen system in order for 

pilots to have longer access to pure oxygen in the event of an emergency or if they 

felt the onset of a physiological event. Can you tell me where the Navy is in those 

efforts? 

Admiral MANAZIR. The Navy is in the process of awarding a contract in the fourth 

quarter of Fiscal Year 2016 for the developmental engineering design to increase the 

NACES seat kit emergency oxygen capacity by adding an additional oxygen bottle 

to the seat pan. The Navy will field the solution immediately following successful 

development and testing of the system. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. PETERS 

Mr. PETERS. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will provide 

a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th generation aircraft for 

a 2022 Program of Record. This program is intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested environment combat training and maintain a 

critical technology and training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and 

higher fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an estimate 

of additional program resources to achieve all identified program goals including 

physical cockpit integration and testing, encryption, and 4th and 5th generation 

interoperability. 

General DAVIS. At this time, information regarding additional resource requirements has not been determined due to the immaturity of SLATE ATD. USAF-led 

efforts to test and field SLATE ATD will continue to be monitored with interest and 

no financial burden to the USMC. If the program matures over time and is determined to meet USMC LVC training capability requirements, then efforts to join the 

program may begin. In the meantime, the USMC will continue to research this and 

other LVC training options. 

Mr. PETERS. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will provide 

a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th generation aircraft for 

a 2022 Program of Record. This program is intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested environment combat training and maintain a 

critical technology and training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and 

higher fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an estimate 

of additional program resources to achieve all identified program goals including 

physical cockpit integration and testing, encryption, and 4th and 5th generation 

interoperability. 

General MANGUM. The Secure Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) system is not 
90 

an Army program of record for our aviation assets nor, is it on any transition path 

for any Army training aids, devices, simulations or simulators. 

Mr. PETERS. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will provide 

a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th generation aircraft for 

a 2022 Program of Record. This program is intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested environment combat training and maintain a 

critical technology and training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and 

higher fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an estimate 

of additional program resources to achieve all identified program goals including 

physical cockpit integration and testing, encryption, and 4th and 5th generation 

interoperability. 

General WEST. The SLATE program team has developed and coordinated a set of 

priorities, focus, and a revised timeline for an extension to the SLATE ATD to align 

with the availability of an F–35 aircraft for flight testing. The extension timeline 

would cost $48M and would add 2.5 years to the schedule. In addition to testing 

SLATE components and models on the F–35, the extension expands the capabilities 

of the baseline demonstration with a larger number of sensor models, cyber vulnerability assessments of the SLATE infrastructure, and additional trades on range infrastructure, form factor processors, radios, MILS devices and 4th and 5th gen integration. 

The Air Force considers it essential that the potential for a timely training capability remain the practical imperative of the SLATE ATD program. 

Mr. PETERS. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will provide 

a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th generation aircraft for 

a 2022 Program of Record. This program is intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested environment combat training and maintain a 

critical technology and training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and 

higher fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an estimate 

of additional program resources to achieve all identified program goals including 

physical cockpit integration and testing, encryption, and 4th and 5th generation 

interoperability. 

Admiral MANAZIR. The Department of the Navy (DON) is collaborating with Department of the Air Force as a supplemental contributor to Air Force led Secure 

LVC Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) ATD efforts. DON hopes to gain a 

better understanding, through advanced or experimental waveforms, of how to improve data transfer capabilities driven by future aircraft training requirements. 

However, as a supplemental contributor DON defers specifics of SLATE ATD program goals and resourcing to the lead service. 

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