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i 

97–822 2016

[H.A.S.C. No. 114–71] 

EFFECTS OF REDUCED INFRASTRUCTURE 

AND BASE OPERATING SUPPORT 

INVESTMENTS ON ARMY AND MARINE 

CORPS READINESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

DECEMBER 3, 2015 
(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 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

MICHAEL MILLER, Professional Staff Member 

BRIAN GARRETT, Professional Staff Member 

KATHERINE REMBER, 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 

Halverson, LTG David D., USA, Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation 

Management; accompanied by MG Robert P. White, USA, Deputy Chief 

of Staff, G3 (Operations), U.S. Army Forces Command; and COL Andrew 

Cole, Jr., USA, Garrison Commander, Fort Riley ............................................. 3 

Hudson, MajGen Charles L., USMC, Commander, Marine Corps Installations 

Command, Assistant Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics; accompanied by MajGen Brian D. Beaudreault, USMC, Commanding General, 

2nd Marine Division, and Col Chris Pappas, Jr., USMC, Commanding 

Officer, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point ............................................... 22 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Halverson, LTG David D., joint with MG Robert P. White and COL 

Andrew Cole, Jr. ........................................................................................... 37 

Hudson, MajGen Charles L., joint with MajGen Brian D. Beaudreault 

and Col Chris Pappas, Jr. ............................................................................ 48 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Ms. Duckworth .................................................................................................. 62 

Mrs. Hartzler .................................................................................................... 61 

Mr. O’Rourke .................................................................................................... 61 

Mr. Scott ............................................................................................................ 61 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. O’Rourke .................................................................................................... 70 

Mr. Wittman ..................................................................................................... 65 

(1) 

1The official title of this hearing was amended to read ‘‘Effects of Reduced Infrastructure and 

Base Operating Support Investments on Army and Marine Corps Readiness.’’ 

EFFECTS OF REDUCED INFRASTRUCTURE AND BASE 

OPERATING SUPPORT INVESTMENTS ON ARMY AND 

MARINE CORPS READINESS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS, 

Washington, DC, Thursday, December 3, 2015. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 8:04 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 call to order the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. I am going to wish everybody a good 

morning and thank our panelists for joining us. Today’s hearing is 

on the ‘‘Effects of Reduced Infrastructure and Base Operating Support Investments on Readiness.’’ 1 For this hearing, we will have 

two separate panels, one with the Army and one with the Marine 

Corps. 

I would like to first welcome our distinguished panels of experts 

from the Army. This morning, we will have with us Lieutenant 

General David D. Halverson, USA [U.S. Army], Assistant Chief of 

Staff for Installation Management; Major General Robert P. White, 

U.S. Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G–3, -5, and -7; and Colonel Andrew Cole, U.S. Army, Garrison Commander, Fort Riley, Kansas. 

Overall, operational readiness recovery has been the focus of 

much of the Readiness Subcommittee’s information gathering, legislation, and oversight since the drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has 

consistently taken risk in infrastructure investments and reduced 

mission support services by redirecting funds from installation programs to other operational and training budget priorities. 

This risk has been exacerbated by uncertain funding level stemming from repeated continuing resolutions and sequestration. 

These infrastructure and installation support risks pose a challenge to the recovery of military readiness. The purpose of this 

hearing is to clarify the Army and Marine Corps’ risk choices for 

infrastructure and installation services, also to address funding priorities and mitigation strategies, and to gather more detail on the 
2 

current and future impact of these decisions on operation and 

training from a commander’s perspective. 

As the witnesses testify today, I would ask that you address existing risks in the infrastructure and installation support program 

and impacts to readiness, and also how the recent 2-year budget 

reshape will affect those risks and impacts, and what will be the 

level of risk and impacts over the next 10 years if budget levels remain constant. 

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

Bordallo, for any remarks that she may have. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A DELEGATE 

FROM GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

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

you for arranging this hearing on our infrastructure and its effect 

on readiness. 

And gentlemen, thank you all for being here today. Often, in 

Congress, it is the topics that intersect multiple areas of interest 

or jurisdiction that fall through the cracks, or they struggle to get 

the attention they deserve. I have personally experienced the challenge of working on several issues that cross the lines of work 

being performed by the Armed Services Committee and the Natural Resources Committee. 

We are lucky that this intersectional topic, that of infrastructure 

and readiness, happens to fall almost completely within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. Over the years, this committee has 

held hearings on the state of our military infrastructure and the 

impact that budget decisions have had on the Department’s [Department of Defense] ability to maintain that infrastructure. 

Similarly, this subcommittee has closely examined issues impacting the state of our military’s readiness and the devastating impacts that sequestration have had. However, I do believe this is the 

first time we have held a subcommittee hearing where we look at 

the intersection and attempt to understand the impact that budget 

decisions on military infrastructure and installation support are 

having and will have on training and readiness in the future. 

We have heard evidence from several military installations that 

are indicative of adverse impacts to training and operations due to 

degraded infrastructure and installation support. So if this is the 

case, the subcommittee needs to understand what those impacts 

are and what needs to be done to address the situation. 

Already our full spectrum readiness recovery timelines extend 

beyond 2020, and even that is only with stable funding. Maintenance can only be deferred for so long before consequences have the 

potential to be catastrophic, and we need to ensure that we don’t 

get to that point by protecting our infrastructure because there is 

no question that without it, we are incapable of generating readiness. 

So, again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you, and I look forward to 

hearing from our witnesses this morning. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Madeleine. 

General Halverson, we will begin with you. I would ask that you 

limit your comments to 5 minutes or less. Your written testimony 
3 

has been made available to the members and is entered into the 

official record, so I will now turn the floor to you. 

STATEMENT OF LTG DAVID D. HALVERSON, USA, ASSISTANT 

CHIEF OF STAFF FOR INSTALLATION MANAGEMENT; ACCOMPANIED BY MG ROBERT P. WHITE, USA, DEPUTY CHIEF 

OF STAFF, G3 (OPERATIONS), U.S. ARMY FORCES COMMAND, 

AND COL ANDREW COLE, JR., USA, GARRISON COMMANDER, 

FORT RILEY 

General HALVERSON. I thank you, Chairman Wittman and Ranking Member Bordallo, and the distinguished members of the committee for allowing us the opportunity to discuss the effects of this 

reduced infrastructure and base operating investments on Army 

readiness. Joining me today, obviously, are General White, the 

Forces Command operations officer, and you know, Andrew Cole, 

the garrison commander at Fort Riley, which will give you a good 

perspective of the one who is in charge of readiness, like Pat [General White], and tracking its readiness and with the impact and 

where they want to go, to someone who has to execute it at the 

day-to-day level of trying to provide that support to the commander 

as they build that readiness, especially for decisive operations. 

I also want to thank you for your support in the recently passed 

Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense [Authorization] Act. We really 

appreciate your all’s work and to make sure that we do have the 

funds available to make sure that we can and do train our force. 

The Army is at a critical point in installation readiness. Budget 

constraints are affecting the Army’s ability to provide facilities that 

our All-Volunteer Force and their families depend upon to sustain 

readiness. Our installations truly are our Army’s home, and the 

availability of the quality ranges, maneuver areas, airfields, classrooms are essential to a unit’s and the institutional Army’s ability 

to train. 

As we say, installations serve as the readiness platforms for our 

Army and its training. Our Chief of Staff, General Milley, clearly 

stated that his number one priority in this complex environment is 

readiness and there is no other number one, so for that reason, it 

is important and vital that we focus our efforts to provide that realistic training environment so our soldiers have the ability to fight 

and win. 

Over the past year and a half, I have visited many installations 

throughout the globe and met our men and women that provide 

that care to our installations and the soldiers and the families that 

then live on those posts. These men and women operate and maintain the training areas, the airfields, the maintenance, ensure that 

the sewers, the lights go on, all these type of things that provide 

that capability to set the environment so therefore our soldiers can 

have that realistic aspect of what they need to be able to do, to 

have the overmatch and the capability and the confidence they 

need to be able to win. 

And we are working hard to mitigate, as you said, the reduced 

funding brought on by the Budget Control Act of 2011 [BCA]. Even 

with their efforts, the persistent funding constraints and the cumulative rising costs of the personnel, of energy, construction, water, 
4 

and engineering services have forced the Army to take risk in installations to maintain a ready force. 

The reduced buying power due to these rising costs drove significant personnel and service reductions. The cumulative effect of 

these reductions impact the throughput of our soldiers and the 

training and the number of rotations we can support. The direct effect of these reductions in the garrisons being that many of the 

areas were at the razor’s edge of manning to provide those enablers 

that the units need. 

Even with BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] 2005 improvements in infrastructure and reposturing, the fiscal realities are 

showing the decline in our facilities, and are affecting our future 

readiness. As the chairman says, how we are going to be postured 

for the future and what we need to be doing? You have to invest 

now. So those long-term challenges are there. 

The Army’s installations are the power-projection platforms, enabling the readiness and ensuring deployable combat forces, but 

what we are seeing, as I visited, the personnel tempo and the operational tempo is increasing because of our decreasing number of 

soldiers that we do have as we go to 490 [thousand] and then to 

450 [thousand], and so, therefore, the Army is very concerned 

about the risk of the installation funding and its effect on the total 

Army. 

I am just very pleased to be able to answer your questions and 

then hear what the panel—because this is, like you have mentioned, the first time people are starting to understand that your 

installations and your investments equate to enabling our ability to 

train our forces that we need now and in the future. So I look forward to the questions that you may have. Thank you. 

[The joint prepared statement of General Halverson, General 

White, and Colonel Cole can be found in the Appendix on page 37.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, General Halverson. We appreciate the 

opportunity to get a little further understanding about how installation capacity and the current budget situation affects Army capability, and we appreciate your perspective on that. 

As you had spoken of, there are a number of challenges, I think, 

that all of our service branches face but especially our Army and 

our Marine Corps. If you can give us a perspective on what categories of facilities and the types of installation services are most 

important in raising and sustaining levels of Army readiness, and 

given the consecutive years of funding where funding has been reduced, the things that you have had to do to try to sustain that, 

where do you believe you need to go to recapture or to recapitalize 

in these areas? 

General HALVERSON. Chairman, that is a great question. I say 

the biggest things that we have to be able to provide enablers, for 

General White and his forces and the senior commanders, are our 

ability to have the ranges available. As we sit there and we have 

gone through the last 13-plus years of war, what we found out, we 

were doing a lot of asymmetric things where things were fairly 

static, where we had FOB [forward operating base] base structures 

and then, before, we had to be able to train. 

As we now have gone to decisive operations, what we found out 

that we did not have the targetry or the other aspects that we 
5 

needed to facilitate our home station training that we need to then 

optimize our decisive operations that we have at our combat training centers. That is one aspect, so, therefore, we really have to look 

at our training support systems and our other systems that we 

have in our ranges to be able to facilitate these requirements that 

we do. 

The same thing is—so, therefore, folks like range control, air 

traffic control folks, all these types of things are areas that we have 

to invest. What we found out is that, because of the rotational 

model, we never had the full force at home stationed at the same 

time as they are there, so, therefore, the scheduling of ranges, the 

optimizations. Usually we used to go to a model of a 6-week lockin. What we are finding now in many of our installations that we 

have to go a lot further because of the availability of the ranges 

that we do have. 

A place like Fort Huachuca may have only five of the nine ranges 

available to it because of a manning shortage for our ability, so we 

have to plan out farther. We have to leverage these things. 

The second thing we have to really start investing on from an investment perspective are things like live, virtual, and constructive 

aspects of how do we optimize time. So we need simulators to be 

able to facilitate those things so we can integrate those types of 

things. I think General White can just kind of say what he would 

need as he sees these mission control aspects and home station 

training control approaches or capabilities that he needs at his 

home station. Pat. 

General WHITE. Thank you, sir, and Chairman. 

So there are four things you need to generate readiness. You 

need airspace. You need land. You need IT [information technology] 

infrastructure so you can push through the pipes. And you need 

personnel—well, really five, and time. We have taken risk as an 

Army over the past 10 years by pushing our resources into the direct readiness generator, which happens to be OPTEMPO, operations tempo, and taken risk on infrastructure at facilities. I will 

give you an example, one vignette, to how this has affected this 

Army taking risk. 

So we are programmed to finish a company gunnery on a range 

in 12 days. That is what is programmed. That is what our strategy 

says. That is how we are resourced for ammunition, fuel, and time. 

Because of some of the issues that General Halverson mentioned, 

it now takes us 14 to 16 days to complete what should be done in 

10 to 12 days. 

So there is more time spent on the range. That is due to many 

factors. One is manning of range control personnel, 16 hours, 5 

days a week, vice 24 hours, 7 days a week. There is the currency 

of the targetry. As many of you have visited our installations and 

our ranges, we have digital multipurpose ranges at some installation. We have what you call multipurpose ranges at other installations, and so that affects our timeline as well because the digital 

is very complex. Soldiers can’t put their hands on it, not allowed 

to; it is contracted out. And they are contracted for 16/5 [hours/days 

per week]. 

A place that has an MPRC [Multi-Purpose Range Complex], you 

can put soldiers, touch targets, touch target lifters, and help with 
6 

the range. So long way around of saying, because of the risk that 

we take, and we are now starting to see the effects of how much 

time it takes to generate readiness at our tactical levels, and I am 

sure we will cover more on the subject of airspace, which is crucial 

to our readiness as well. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. 

Colonel Cole, I want to get your perspective. If you would let us 

know, how does corporate Army infrastructure and installation 

support decisions and guidance impact your ability to provide mission support for operations there at Fort Riley? 

Colonel COLE. Good morning, Chairman. I appreciate that question. It, in some instances, can be a little bit of a challenge. So, 

from this perspective, as we talk about ranges, to kind of continue 

that thread of discussion, one of the things that has impacted us 

at the local level is a thing called contractor de-scope. So those contract support services that we have out on the ranges that help us 

maintain and help us operate those ranges have been going 

through a review on, what should the size of that contract be? And, 

ultimately, at the end of that string down at the installation level, 

it challenges us with being able to provide the appropriate support 

and meet the senior commander’s training requirements. 

So with this full nest concept, kind of as we have discussed earlier, with more forces home—and you can even add an additional 

piece to that, which is Reserve and National Guard units that come 

to an RCTC [Reserve Components Training Center]. So Fort Riley 

is one of those locations; we have to factor them into what we call 

our gun line. And so it becomes to put a stress on your ability to 

fit all the units that are home, to turn that range maintenance so 

that it is reset for another unit to come in. 

So that is just an example of how it can be challenging down at 

the local level. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

General White, you gave us a good perspective on how the current impacts installation support is affecting readiness. Give us 

your perspective on how this new 2-year budget window now affects that ability. What does it do to either allow you or not to 

allow you to regenerate certain elements of readiness through installation infrastructure and support? 

General WHITE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The analysis that we have done to this point, based on what we 

know, is we will decrement our operations tempo because we have 

taken so much risk in the past 10 years on our infrastructure, so 

although the Chief’s priority is readiness and it is generated 

through the installation platforms and with operations tempo, it 

looks as if what we will decide to do in the future if we continue 

to take decrements is to go after the operations tempo of units, 

which means less time on ranges, which means it takes longer to 

generate readiness. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Got you. Very good. 

Ms. Bordallo. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have a couple of questions here. I think, General Halverson, 

you or any of the others may be able to answer. 
7 

At what level are the connections made between the training requirements of a unit and the ability of an installation to support 

those training requirements, and how often are they reevaluated? 

In other words, at what level are the decisions impacting military 

infrastructure and installation support being coordinated with 

those in charge of training and operation requirements? 

General. 

General HALVERSON. Ma’am, that is a great question because it 

is very complex. Obviously, we have our processes where we sit 

there and build our requirements of what they need, how many soldiers will be there, what is the availability of the ranges, and all 

those types of things, so we have a good process from a corporate 

perspective from us to be able to take those requirements, vet those 

requirements, and to be able to, like Pat was saying, how do you 

go then from what is your priorities, and then prioritize these as 

what we need from a funding perspective. 

What we try to do—and it is really a bottom-up—you know, it 

is a top-down but a bottom-up refinement of it that we try to identify with these requirements because we want the senior commander who is responsible for that organization to have the impact 

that he needs to do this. 

This is where the challenge like with Andrew [COL Cole] has because I have a certain amount of funding level that then impacts 

my ability to say how much I can do. It is going to be very, very 

hard for him to then be able to execute it. 

So like what Andrew is saying, I have had to be able to take risk 

because personnel costs are high, are a high cost driver for things, 

so that is a place that we have to look at: How can you be more 

efficient or more effective with less people? At times, it becomes a 

tension point to him when the senior commander then says, I will 

give him, you know, like he was saying, 16 hours, 5 days a week, 

but he really needs 16 hours, 7 days a week, for him to execute the 

extra time he needs. 

So we then start going with overtime or other issues that then 

at the end of the day, when you rebalance yourself, it is all from 

one pot, and that is what the challenge is from us, from a corporate. So we have a good process of doing that, but we push down 

that then to him to integrate that at the local level to ensure that 

he meets the senior commander’s objectives. 

He then has that perspective of—and then this is where some of 

the risk comes in, as you well know. That he, because he will need 

to be able to push money somewhere, will then defer other maintenance he has to do in some of his other infrastructure stuff, which 

could be barracks for the housing for our soldiers or for his ability 

to do some restoration or modernization. That is the challenge, I 

think, Andrew has, and he can probably, you know, articulate that 

at little bit better at the local level. 

Andrew. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Colonel. 

Colonel COLE. Yes, ma’am. The other challenge that we often 

face is as budgets are passed down and we receive what our local 

discretionary authorization is for what we call our sustainment, 

our restoration and modernization budgets, oftentimes we are having to take risk between where can we accept a greater risk in 
8 

doing standard maintenance of facilities versus our restoration and 

modernization, which we have to use to program to do significant 

repair of facilities. 

So with that being said, over the last number of years, we have 

received a lesser percentage of what we believe to be our requirements are for facilities maintenance plans. So when you compound 

that effect, one of the challenges today is, how do we take what we 

really need 90 percent of our funding for but yet we have only received, for example, 65 percent, where do we accept that 15 percent 

of risk? 

And so we make choices, and we make some decisions, and ultimately, if there is a catastrophic failure, then we have to end up 

allocating our funding against that. And we don’t have the space, 

we don’t have the flexibility to treat our normal maintenance plan. 

So, as an example, one of our headquarters buildings was located 

in a historical facility at Fort Riley. Because of the constraint in 

funding for maintenance, we weren’t able to do some of the preventative checks on that building. Ultimately, we had what we call 

a glycol hose leak, so the HVAC [heating, ventilating, and air conditioning] system failed over a long weekend. 

With that being said, we had, for lack of a better word, coolant 

leak over about three different floors, which did significant damage 

to the building. When you go back and try to repair those tiles, you 

now have pulled back asbestos tiles, so now you have not only run 

into a repair issue, you have now run into an asbestos abatement 

issue. So could we, if we had had the appropriate funding to do the 

sustainment of that building, maybe what could have cost us then 

thousands of dollars would not now cost us multimillion dollars in 

repair? 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

And it is certainly a challenge. I have one other question. 

How have base operation support programs been impacted by repeated reliance on continuing resolutions rather than an annual 

appropriation and the attendant lack of predictability in the timing 

and the amount of allocation of funding? Can you give specific examples of how this impacts training and readiness? General. 

General HALVERSON. Ma’am, the bottom line, yes, because with 

a continuing resolution, you have less buying power for what you 

need. So the predictability like we have had with at least a budget, 

we can then make good fiscal decisions on how we can then write 

our contracts to get more capability for less price. 

So when you have the continuing resolutions for month per 

month or quarter by quarter, it causes us to spend more because 

of the workforce aspect of it. 

The second thing is, also, it is just a strain on the workforce to 

be able to manage that because now you are having to touch it a 

few times every year and not being able to have some comfort levels where you are monitoring the contract instead of just sitting 

there, you know, doing it. So what we are finding from the workforce stress is that there is also workforce stress for them to be 

able to monitor it. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Right. 

General HALVERSON. So getting away from continuing resolutions and getting more predictability will greatly affect our readi-
9 

ness because we will be able to buy more capability for less dollars. 

That is the predictability that we need within the installations. 

What happens is that we get caught up into the day-by-day aspect of not knowing the unknown, which then causes chaos, I 

think, and not being as predictive as we need to. And it gets really 

down into like what Andrew was saying, is that when you are only 

doing sustainment at a certain level, which really means you are 

not doing your oil checks, right, and so, therefore, you are not 

checking that stuff, you are not putting your eyes on those things 

to make sure that you are doing it. You are waiting for the life, 

safety, and health issues that go on. 

And in a lot of locations where we are, we just have a challenge 

with that because, you know, if you don’t have HVACs working, 

you are going to have mold and you are going to have a health 

issue. And that is where the garrison commanders and their team 

and their senior commanders are putting forth some of their effort 

so, but—— 

Ms. BORDALLO. Well, I can understand—— 

General HALVERSON [continuing]. And we appreciate that to try 

to get away from CR [continuing resolutions]. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Yes, I can understand the challenges. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo. 

Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen. It is great to see you, and I look forward 

to getting to visit with you, Colonel, at our sister installation there 

across the Kansas line, but we in western Missouri certainly appreciate all you do at Fort Riley, and Fort Leonard Wood, certainly 

very, very important mission there. 

I have some general questions about the topic, but I wanted to 

start more specifically about something that happened at Ford 

Leonard Wood that deals with installations in general and safety 

of our soldiers. About 5 days before I was sworn into office in January 2011, you remember, there was a tornado on New Year’s Day 

that went through Fort Leonard Wood and destroyed several 

homes, as well as part of—impacted some other infrastructure 

there. I believe the sewer plant, et cetera. And, thankfully, no one 

was hurt seriously or killed, and it was just the perfect day if you 

were going to have something that happened, a lot of the soldiers 

were gone. 

But looking back on it, it raised a lot of concerns about safety. 

The homes didn’t have basements. They didn’t have places for the 

families to go. And it went through the—as you remember—a lot 

of the training grounds. And the thought was, if, on a normal day, 

there would be thousands of soldiers out there, and there was no 

place to go in the event of a tornado. 

And since that time, I know they have installed some facilities 

where soldiers can do that. But when you live in Tornado Alley— 

and I know Colonel Cole probably appreciates this. I am just wondering, because at that time, General Quantock was the commander there, did a wonderful job, and thankfully we had the engineering school there with all the equipment, able to quickly help 

clean things up and get going. 
10 

But I followed this for a while, and I haven’t asked the question 

lately. What are we learning from this, and what lessons have been 

learned installation-wide to putting facilities in place for soldiers in 

the event of a tornado? And has there been any changes made to 

Fort Riley as a result of the tornado or any vulnerabilities that we 

discovered may be needed to be addressed? 

General HALVERSON. Ma’am, good question. I commanded Fort 

Sill, which is Oklahoma, which is Tornado Alley, too. And one of 

things that we have done, just like you said, is as we have looked 

at our housing, how do you exercise and how do you have evacuation places that do have, like you are saying, tornado. We are not 

at the level that we need to be, you know what I mean, and we 

are looking at, holistically, at the effects of some of those. 

But, once again, the challenge we have is as I look at that and 

as we are looking very firmly at those, the ability to put those in 

when you have other driving costs, so it is a fiscal—when you have 

fiscal constraints, and from a priorities, how do you get these, as 

you know, safe houses and stuff like that. So within Fort Sill, we 

did put in some of those and maintain those and then have to 

make sure that the people are aware. 

They are not at the numbers that they need to be because it was 

not integrated in the original plans, but I think that is one I will 

take for the record and give you the pure thing from a policy perspective of where we are. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 61.] 

Mrs. HARTZLER. And, again, I know the housing that was rebuilt, 

they put a safe room in. 

General HALVERSON. Right. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. But there is still a lot of housing that is old and 

maybe doesn’t have that, but, you know, I just think that is a practical thing that can happen, and then dealing with installations, we 

need to make sure that our soldiers are safe, whether it be on the 

training ground or their families and their housing, so—— 

General HALVERSON. I agree totally, ma’am. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Sure. Regarding maintenance, another question 

that comes from home. 

Hard to see you. There we go. There you go. Dr. Wenstrup, thank 

you. 

Dealing with maintenance. I have heard from local people both 

sides of it. Some have argued that we need to be using the Active 

Duty soldiers more in doing maintenance on the bases, that they 

have the capabilities. Why aren’t they asphalting? Why aren’t they 

doing groundskeeping? Why aren’t they doing some of these other 

basic things that could be carried out? And the argument is that 

that would be most cost-effective, plus they could use their skills. 

Then I have heard from other people to say: Well, we need to 

contract out more to private entities and that it would be more 

cost-effective. 

So as we are looking at limited dollars here, installation, maintenance cost, what is your matrix to determining if you ask the soldiers to do the work around the base or versus you go private, and 

which is more cost-effective? 
11 

General HALVERSON. That is a good question. The issue here is 

it is really called borrowed military manpower that we do. So some 

places, like Forces Command, where you have a large TO&E [Table 

of Organization and Equipment], you have a lot more capability 

and flexibility to be able to do that, so things like force protection, 

gate access and stuff, where it is a skill set that we use when we 

go to FOBs or if we get deployed, you may have to do it, has a oneto-one correlations. 

There are other issues, as you know, from a soldier’s perspective, 

what, you know, is—it is part of life. So you have to have the capability. For a TRADOC [Training and Doctrine Command] post, they 

have very little capabilities, like what Fort Leonard Wood is, because you basically have your drill sergeants or you have a schoolhouse that then has very minimal capability to have soldiers because they are either in the classroom or they are teaching or instructing young engineers, chemical, and the capabilities you have 

like at Leonard Wood. 

So what we are seeing is that TRADOC posts have very little capability and you have—where we can do it, like a FORSCOM [U.S. 

Army Forces Command] post, we will have them manage that internally of what they have to provide services for that capability. 

From a cost-effectiveness—the model is various things. Much of 

the things that we are talking about, it could be ground maintenance or whatever, is not cost-effective because what you are doing 

is you are taking a soldier away from his collective or individual 

training time, and what we are seeing is that you need repetitions, 

just like in the weight room, to be an infantryman, to be an engineer, and you need to spend time in your squad or those aspects 

that you do. 

So it is a very, very fine line that commanders have to articulate 

and balance that readiness equation. 

But you know, Pat, you may have something on that, but that 

is really where the concern is. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you. 

Colonel COLE. Ma’am, if I can just add real quick—and I think 

we do—at the local level, we really do try to do our best, and then 

giving you an example. For example, for engineering work. So at 

a FORSCOM installation, where we have a number of differing disciplines, when we come across those projects that may be able to 

be done by some of our military engineers, we do do the crosswalk. 

So in those instances where you can meet both the requirements 

of the installation and also count that as appropriate training in 

the military occupational specialty of that soldier, then we do seek 

those instances out. So there are some engineering projects that we 

are asking our engineer brigade to do because they have the talent, 

they have the skills, and it counts for training because they would 

do that potentially on a mission someplace. 

So in those instances where we compare them and line them up, 

we do attempt to do that and, again, be cost-effective. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mr. O’Rourke. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
12 

The 18 percent excess infrastructure that the Army has, what 

force size is that based on, or is it directly correlated? 

General HALVERSON. Congressman, obviously, when we talk 

about the excess capacity and the things that we talked, 18 percent, that is for a force size of Active Duty of a 490 [thousand] 

force, in which we are at now, you know, I mean, and obviously, 

we are going to 450 [thousand] in the near term. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. And how elastic are those perimeters? So if we 

went down to 420 [thousand], does the percentage increase if we 

went to 550 [thousand]? Does the percentage decrease, or is that 

18 percent cover a band of, you know, 50,000, 60,000. 

General HALVERSON. Obviously, that is our best guess right now. 

We have an order out for all of our garrison and our senior commanders to be able to look at their excess capacity, so it is our best 

estimate. Obviously, you know, we would need more guidance from 

Congress to be able to look in detail what we think our excess capacity is, but our best—— 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Are you saying without a BRAC process, you cannot get that detail? 

General HALVERSON. Without a BRAC process where we could 

actually look at what our capacity is for this. The bottom line is 

that we have the same amount of posts, 155 installations for a 

force that we had of 460 [thousand] in the Active, now going down 

to 450 [thousand]. So it is a huge gap that we have, and the challenge we have is that we can’t optimize our investments or optimize if we don’t have some authority to study like a BRAC and 

how we can move forward. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Got you. Yeah. And so understanding that a 

BRAC would give you more detail, where you are now, what is the 

estimate on what it costs you to maintain that 18 percent? 

General HALVERSON. Sir, right now, the rough estimates as we know, it is about $480 million a year that we spend on the excess 

capacity that we do have because you need to keep those buildings 

going; you need to have water and all those types of things. So it 

is about $480 million a year that we have because of excess capacity. Our initial estimates with 450 [thousand] is like 21 percent, so 

it goes up to almost $470 million of the—$570 million that you 

need—— 

Mr. O’ROURKE. So somewhere around half a billion dollars. How 

much readiness annually would that buy you? 

General HALVERSON. That would buy a lot of readiness, and it 

would also focus our efforts that we would need for investment purposes to get the quality ranges and the manpower and the human 

capital that we need to ensure the top quality. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Beyond the dollar amount, is there a way to 

quantify or qualify or illustrate that readiness that we would be 

able to purchase? 

General HALVERSON. We do that—— 

Mr. O’ROURKE. What are we not doing now that we would be 

able to do going forward? 

General HALVERSON. I could take that for the record, but you are 

right, we could—obviously, Pat knows, the money he gets in his 

OMA [Operations and Maintenance, Army] account a year in the 

multibillions, that $500 is a—you know, is a good chunk of change 
13 

that he could buy flying hours; he could buy other issues that he 

would need to be able to sustain his force. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 61.] 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Yeah. And it would be, and perhaps this is pending a BRAC process, but I would like to know the band of force size 

that we would have with that reduction in excess capacity. 

For example, you know, given all the threats that we encounter 

today from, you know, Central Asia to the Middle East to potential 

future threats in the South China Sea, I think we want to have the 

ability to ramp up, and I don’t think anybody wants to get down 

to the sequester level of 420 [thousand]. 

So I just want to make sure that we wouldn’t be necessarily cutting anything that would prevent us from increasing force size, but 

if readiness is the single greatest priority, as you said earlier, and 

if it is going to determine the success and perhaps even survival 

of our service members overseas, I want to make sure that we are 

investing in that sufficiently. And if this is a way to get there, 

then, you know, I want to find a way to do that. 

I do have a follow-up question to one that Ms. Hartzler asked. 

We were recently in Afghanistan and meeting with one of the commanders at one of the installations there, one of the bases. They 

essentially talked about transferring responsibilities from service 

members to contractors as we drew down our force size there and 

perhaps creating or seeing some efficiencies. You, in answer to her 

question, mentioned why contractors make sense to allow service 

members to focus on their responsibilities. Do you see any costs or 

negative consequences of our reliance on contractors? 

General HALVERSON. It is a triad balance between our military, 

our DA [Department of the Army] civilian, and our contractor. I 

think that triad is good. If you are overreliant on one of them, you 

are out of balance, and at times, we are out of balance because you 

have to be very firm on your contracting approaches that you do 

have. 

So we are at that razor’s edge, like I said, for myself personally 

because when you come down like in forces, we were saying the 

490 [thousand] to 450 [thousand], we have done a RAND study 

here where it is not a one to one. Some people think it is a one 

to one. You take a soldier out; you can take a DA civilian out to 

run an installation. Our workload is really over how many square 

foot of buildings you have, how many square miles that we have 

to be able to maintain. 

So when you have an infrastructure of 155 installations we have, 

I mean, that infrastructure portfolio is valued over $300 billion, 

you know what I mean, and really, when you talk about the percentages that we are putting in for sustainment, we are only putting in 1 to 3 percent of those in sustainment for infrastructure we 

have. 

So, from that perspective, that is why we have to optimize all 

this stuff, and so I appreciate your questioning. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. O’Rourke. 
14 

And there is language in this year’s NDAA [National Defense 

Authorization Act] to direct all the individual service branches to 

do a capacity analysis, and so that we get a modern one. The other 

one is just a projection from the 2005 analysis, just projecting it 

forward. We have asked them to do a detailed analysis so we can 

truly look at what the capacity is, whether over capacity on a service-branch-by-service-branch basis, so we should have that information for next year. Very good. 

Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Colonel Cole, I am one of the few people that has actually gone 

to Riley County, Kansas, from time to time voluntarily. I hunt in 

that Tuttle Creek area from time to time. But one of the stories 

I have heard out there—and I have been hunting out there for 

years—is that the Army was forced to put in skylights at a big 

tank facility because of an energy mandate that Congress had 

passed down and that when they got the skylights in, the contractor didn’t unhook the electric lights. And so there was a tremendous amount of money spent but no reduction in the amount 

of energy used. 

Are you familiar with that story? Can you tell me if that is true 

or not? 

Colonel COLE. Sir, thanks for that question. I am going to ask 

if I can take it for the record to check that. I am not familiar with 

that specific story. And while I track our energy, our energy consumption, and where we are at on reducing that, I am not familiar 

with that one, sir. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 62.] 

Mr. SCOTT. General, you were shaking your head ‘‘yes,’’ that 

maybe you had heard about that? 

General HALVERSON. No, I have not, but, you know, nothing surprises me being in the military 36 years, whatever, so we are really 

working, you know, sir, on the renewable energies and to be able 

to get within our perspectives. That is one of the, obviously, the net 

zero and other issues that we are really trying to work toward—— 

Mr. SCOTT [continuing]. And we all know this, but if you put skylights in and then you don’t unhook any of the fluorescent lights, 

then there is no net energy savings. There is just a cost of putting 

the skylights in. 

General HALVERSON. I agree totally. 

Mr. SCOTT. And that is one of the things that, you know, as I 

am traveling around, we all get kind of ribbed a little bit about 

how, you know, the military says they are broke and look how 

much money they waste on these things, and it is somewhat friendly ribbing, if you will, from friends, but it is also a concern of mine 

because that money can be—we don’t have the money to waste, and 

certainly I am concerned about the environment and think we 

should do our part, but we also need to be smart about what—you 

know, doing something for the sake of saying that we did it—— 

General HALVERSON. Right. 

Mr. SCOTT [continuing]. Is different than doing something and 

accomplishing something, and I would just—— 
15 

General HALVERSON. So I think that is really important because 

that is one of the things we have seen with our energy conservation 

because you have to really—everyone is involved in energy conservation like you are seeing soldiers in that, so half the campaign 

is working with, you know, our leaders and stuff to make sure that 

we are driving down usage and stuff and doing the smart things 

like you said, and that is why—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Let me—if I could, and I apologize. I mean no disrespect. I only have 5 minutes. But the other thing I would tell you 

as somebody from Georgia—and I have a lot of friends who have 

done work on the bases—Davis-Bacon, the same person that I pay 

$45 or $50 an hour to someone who is in a business to work on 

my house or a building or something, when they are working on 

a military facility, because of Davis-Bacon, the military is being 

billed twice that. I mean, even the contractors complain about it. 

Can you speak to that issue? Do we know how much Davis-Bacon 

is costing us? 

General HALVERSON. Sir, I will take that for the record, the aspect of what we do for small business and disadvantaged business 

and stuff. To let—— 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 61.] 

Mr. SCOTT. I am talking about—well, some of them are minorityowned, but some of them aren’t. 

General HALVERSON. Right. No, I agree. But one of the things I 

would tell you is that is an area that we are looking at greatly because of what you said. You have to be able to get your best value 

for the dollar you have in constrained fiscally tough things. So my 

new operations director I brought into the ACSIM [Assistant Chief 

of Staff for Installation Management] used to be the contracting 

commander that we had at Huntsville. His number one issue was 

to look at our buying power and where we have these cost drivers 

that really need to be looked at because of the fair value that we 

do need to gain, yeah. 

Mr. SCOTT. Point being, the same contractor is charging the military significantly more for the exact same work because of other 

laws that are on the books that are forcing—that are changing the 

cost of the bid, and that is—this has already been mentioned. The 

military is quick to give us a dollar figure of what the excess capacity is costing us. 

If you can give us the dollar figure on what it is costing us, then 

you absolutely have to be able to tell us where that is coming from. 

I don’t believe that you can calculate it without knowing where it 

is coming from, and then if you could speak briefly to enhanceduse leases and whether or not you think that is an efficient way 

for us to spend dollars. 

General HALVERSON. Let me take that one for the record, the advanced-use lease and stuff like that, you know, Congressman, okay. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 62.] 

Mr. SCOTT. That is fine. 

General HALVERSON. I appreciate that. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Scott. 
16 

We now go to Ms. Duckworth. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Just to touch on Davis-Bacon, I mean, General, I would assume 

that you would not want to be responsible for avoiding DavisBacon, to try to get around Davis-Bacon, and if you were to use a 

contractor that did not pay the wages according to Davis-Bacon, 

you are more likely to use someone who is exploiting undocumented workers, someone who is perhaps participating in wage 

theft, so there is a reason that Davis-Bacon is there, and that is 

to protect the workers. 

So I want to return to the conversation on readiness levels. To 

what extent do your reporting for readiness levels reflect the conditions of your facilities? For example, are there data points that you 

are reporting, metrics that you are reporting that say, you know, 

my readiness level would be, you know, I would be a green, but I 

am an amber because I have these particular facilities that I am 

being forced to maintain? 

General HALVERSON. I will give you the macro aspect. 

And then, Andrew, you can talk to your own installation. 

We have a very detailed what we call installation status report 

that our commanders then—those have all the metrics we have, be 

it from the facilities to the range control to airfields and all those 

things. And we view these aspects of what we do have from there. 

So a Q1 and Q2 are good facilities and ones that we have—or the 

Q3 and the Q4, Q4 being the worst, are the ones that are not. 

What we have seen is that with BRAC 2005, we had an increase 

where we were from 19 percent up to 30—60 percent, and now we 

are seeing a degradation of our readiness because of sustained 

funding, so we are seeing a dip in our Q [quality] ratings in our 

facilities because of decreased funding or ability to do the sustainment and the restoration and modernization that we do need in 

some of the facilities. 

But, Andrew, you can probably talk to Fort Riley. 

Colonel COLE. Congresswoman, yes, so we have those local challenges. And we do, again, our best because it is—part of it is predictability of where do we anticipate that we need to, based on our 

ratings that we input into the what we call our Web RPLANS [Real 

Property Planning and Analysis System], which has then enterprise-level visibility, where do we go and allocate resources against 

improving something from a Q3, for example, or an F3, facilities 

code 3 rating, to a 2 or a 1. 

But in those instances, when you have a plan and because of constrained resources, something occurs that you have to re-shift or 

reprogram funds that now inhibits your ability to maybe address 

that red or that lower rating to get it improved because now you 

have had to address a life, health, and safety issue. 

For example, if, at the childcare centers, you lose an HVAC system, that is where your priority is going to be versus going into 

that operations facility for that company and improving a COF 

[Company Operations Facility] or improving another one of your facilities, so it becomes risk acceptance. But we do quarterly report 

these to our higher headquarters and to the Army at the enterprise 

level. 
17 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you. And as you are making these shifts 

and you are moving your resources around, I know we are really 

focused on Active Duty units right now and Active Duty facilities, 

but every one of us have National Guard and Reserve units in our 

districts. How does that affect—you know, how does that cascading 

priorities affect the ability of our National Guard and Reserve units 

to access these facilities, and is it affecting their readiness as well? 

General HALVERSON. Ma’am, the answer is yes in the aspect that 

we track the Guard and Reserve facility modernizations and their 

Q ratings, too, so I work very close with Tim Kadavy and Jeff 

Talley and stuff, and we look holistically, so that helps us with our 

parity of how much we give when we do it from the program that 

I build for the Army and stuff like that. 

So you are exactly right, and I am concerned somewhat for those 

abilities. And so when we lose modernization or we lose restoration 

and modernization, it affects it because it is cascaded, and actually, 

it costs you more when you have to push it in from year to year, 

so that is one of the concerns we have within the Guard and Reserve. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Do you have any estimate costs, just very briefly, on what it would cost, or is there legislation that would help you 

to dispose of unused buildings? You know, I worked at the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] for a while. One of the problems that 

the VA has is they have all these buildings, legacy buildings, that 

have asbestos, that the carrying cost is lower than the disposal 

cost, so they can’t dispose the building in the short term, but then 

they are stuck with these buildings for an infinite amount of time, 

and do you have any of those estimates? Or is there legislation we 

can help you with here in Congress that will help you dispose of 

some of these buildings? 

Are you responsible, for example, for paying the mitigation 

costs—even if you wanted to transfer a building with known asbestos or mold to a civilian entity, you can’t do it because you are now 

responsible for that—is there things that we can do to help you? 

General HALVERSON. Ma’am, yes, in the aspect I think we need 

that support. Right now, in demolition, that is one of the challenges 

we have with demolition and stuff, part of my R&M [restoration 

and modernization]. We try to fence demolition as much as we can 

so we can take down old buildings, but it is just like what Andrew 

kind of said, when we have seen at Fort Gordon, with the Cyber 

Center of Excellence and other things, we are getting into a lot of 

this asbestos that would then drive the cost and the time it takes 

because of our ability to demo [demolish] or refurbish a building 

because of the asbestos issue. 

It is a reality that we are dealing with from the 1960s now that 

we are up now with—in today’s dollars that we are trying to work 

through each of these. But we need to get more into the demolition 

of our capabilities, so that is why we put out an order that we cannot build without taking something down. But right now, with the 

fiscal constraints, we do not have enough to put into demolition 

that I need. We still have, as you know, units with World War II 

woods around our posts that we really need to get rid of. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you. 

I am out of time, Mr. Chairman. 
18 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Duckworth. 

We now go to Ms. Stefanik. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you for your testimony today. I represent Fort Drum, and 

in March, during a subcommittee hearing on this same topic, I 

brought up the World War II era buildings that currently house the 

NCO [non-commissioned officers] academy. And thankfully, in this 

year’s MILCON [military construction], we were able to provide the 

funding for the modernization efforts which are critical for the installation I represent. 

But during that hearing, one of the witnesses mentioned that 24 

percent of the Army’s infrastructure is currently in poor condition. 

Can you walk me through the Army’s prioritization of the facilities 

that you choose to update and modernize and how that decisionmaking process has been affected by the defense sequester? 

General HALVERSON. Thank you, ma’am. The issue, as you know, 

is that the units build projects. They always have 13—we call them 

1391s, which is their engineering designs, and they feed that into 

us, that it becomes a fiscal issue, so they are all racked and 

stacked ready. Now it is a priority issue of what we want to be able 

to do. 

We have gone from a historical low, as you all know, of military 

construction, MILCON, that now is—we used to be $4 billion a 

year. Now we are into the $1 billion a year. With the driving costs, 

what we are seeing is that we have very, very little flexibility to 

give to some of these needed things at the local level because of the 

higher priorities that they need, be it at Cyber Center of Excellence 

or other issues that we have that are going to build capacity for 

the whole Army as a whole. 

We give the garrison commander and his senior commander the 

flexibility—they rack and stack—to be able to do, but the things 

that we have seen is that fiscal constraints that we have had—and 

we are trying to do life, limb, and safety stuff now—does not give 

us much flexibility to do that. And it becomes a movement, so we 

try to be—even sometimes we see the migration of sustainment 

into restoration and modernization, which then causes us, you 

know, the effect that what Andrew was saying is that you are not 

doing your maintenance. Then it becomes a multiyear, multimillion 

dollar issue. So that is the challenge, but we are committed to give 

flexibility to the garrison team to be able to provide him to try to 

take care of it, but what we were finding out was there is just not 

enough money to do the projects that are needed like, at Fort 

Drum, as you know, is indoor type stuff because of the snow and 

all those things for facilities for fitness. They need that just like 

they need it in Alaska because the ability—in that cold weather, 

like your record 184 inches, does not give you the flexibility to do 

physical training you need unless you have the indoor facilities to 

do it. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Absolutely. 

My next question. I wanted to expand upon a comment that two 

of you made during your opening statements regarding the importance of airspace. One of the aspects that makes Fort Drum unique 

is our airspace. We are near the Adirondack Park in upstate New 
19 

York. Can you expand upon why that is so critical for maintenance 

and modernization? 

General HALVERSON. I will have Pat—Pat, do you want to—the 

bottom line is it is a force projection thing, I mean, for us, to be 

able to do it. As you well know, I was amazed at what happened 

at Fort Drum when you just had that big snowstorm, where all the 

things—and the family members of soldiers were coming back, and 

the workforce actually cleared the runway so we could land the 

plane back. It was a 24-hour delay, but what they had to do to 

clear all that stuff was remarkable. 

As you all know, it is not only landing the aircraft but it is also 

all the work to remove the snow causes wear and deterioration, 

and if you don’t have the sustainment dollars you need to fix the 

runways and do those things, it causes us great things. We have 

challenges at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and we have had to put a 

lot of restoration and modernization into the airfield at Fort Bragg. 

But, Pat, if you want to, you know, go on any further. 

General WHITE. Thank you, sir. 

Ma’am, so if I understood your question right, it is about how 

does airspace relate to generating readiness. And so there are a 

couple components to it. 

One is the airspace itself, which the military would need to control at times to fly fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft through that 

airspace. There is the infrastructure that allows the airframes to 

take off and land—the runways, the hangars, and the maintenance 

facilities that are associated with it. There are also the crews that 

are involved in manning the towers that allow you to control the 

airspace and to fix the runways and to provide maintenance for 

those airframes. 

So there are really four components—personnel that are involved, so they have to be available. They have to be available 24/ 

7. In some cases, as with Fort Drum, we don’t have them available 

24/7. We have them available about 5 days a week, sometimes up 

to 16 hours a day, which limits when a unit can train, when it can 

actually take off and fly an aircraft either inside of that airspace 

or through that airspace. 

There is the equipping piece of it. So if we don’t have the facilities that are associated with it to get into that airspace to lift engines out of, you know, the top of Black Hawks, to fix a CH–47 

[Chinook] so that the mountain troopers at Fort Drum can actually 

conduct an exercise—airlift, land, and assault. 

And then the final piece is the parts and pieces that go into fixing those pieces of equipment, the airframes, whether it is fixedwing—we need facilities for that. We need to be able to account for 

them. We need IT infrastructure that allows you to transmit from 

a local database into the Army database that says, I need this particular part, I need this part in 3 days in order to have this aircraft 

be able to fly. 

And that is probably a really longwinded answer to your question, but that is it. 

Ms. STEFANIK. No, that is very helpful. And I think it is one of 

the unique aspects of Drum as an installation, is the airspace, in 

terms of how it aids our readiness and training capabilities. So 

thank you. 
20 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Stefanik. 

We will now go back to Ms. Duckworth. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the good 

things, nice things about working on this committee is how bipartisan it is, and you are being very generous to give me a second 

question. 

This question actually goes to Colonel Cole. 

And you may not have the answer for this, but it has to do with 

the intersection between energy savings and attempts to modernize 

our garrison commands and cybersecurity. 

So I, not too long ago, was visiting a business that had won a 

contract to provide some energy savings in terms of the lights. And 

I went into this business, into a room, and they were very proud 

to show me this technology they had where they promptly were 

able to dim the lights at a major maneuver command headquarters. 

I won’t say which one it is because it is classified. Well, it is not 

classified, but I don’t want folks to know where it is. 

But I watched as they dimmed the lights and turned them on 

and off on a major roadway at a major base of an Army maneuver 

command in the United States. And I said, ooh, that is great. And 

they were showing how they were doing the energy cost savings, 

they were dimming the lights, you know, all of that. And they were 

very proud of this technology. 

And then I asked the question of the gentleman who was operating the computer and said, ‘‘Do you have a security clearance?’’ 

And he said, ‘‘No.’’ And I said, ‘‘Is this room secure?’’ ‘‘No.’’ ‘‘Who 

in this business has a security clearance?’’ Well, the chief engineer 

has a security clearance, but none of the computer programmers, 

none of the other people there did. 

And I let it go, because they were very proud to show me, and 

they were saving a lot of money. It was a great business, what they 

were doing. But I am really deeply concerned that, in attempts to 

do cost savings or modernize, even if it is not that aspect, but we 

are linked into the infrastructure grid for major cosmopolitan, 

major metropolises around this country. And this maneuver command is not out in the middle of nowhere. It is right next to a 

major, major city in the United States. And I am deeply concerned. 

So what are you doing there in terms of your linkages, your tiein to the civilian infrastructure? And what costs are there associated with providing the protection for your installations so that you 

are secure from being able to be hacked through the infrastructure 

network? 

Colonel COLE. Ma’am, thank you for that question. 

At the local level, what I can say is, from my vantage point at 

Fort Riley, we have the benefit of receiving energy at a reduced 

rate. So, from the larger Army’s perspective, Fort Riley is not at 

the top of the priority list for some of these security initiatives. 

With that being said, we certainly have our standard access security parts and pieces in place for securing the locations, et cetera. 

Now, what we are able to do is, as we do find a project that may 

be of appropriate cost savings, we are able to elevate that to the 

enterprise level. Because, ultimately, it is well above the installation that has the approval on it. And I will defer you to General 

Halverson, but we do have the opportunity to elevate that when we 
21 

do have a situation where we can save monies because of those 

types of initiatives. 

So, sir. 

General HALVERSON. Ma’am, great point. And we are, from a 

critical infrastructure perspective, working very closely with our, 

you know, energy partners to be able to ensure that we do have 

mission assurance, just like you were saying, because of the abilities for outside folks in the cyber world to be able to affect this. 

So we are working very closely in those meetings. 

What you will see now with our energy managers that we have 

at each one of our installations, they almost become, you know, 

very much cyber folks, because you need to know the electronics of 

all this kind of stuff. So it is not just the easy things like turning 

on the lights and everything; it is getting very sophisticated. 

But we are working. As a matter of fact, we have met with 

DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and stuff, 

and there are some testings that we are going to be doing to make 

sure that we are more protected. 

The things that we can control is that we are trying to put power 

stations on our installations for their own security so we have uninterrupted power. Because mission assurance, from a force projection perspective, which is readiness, we have to do that. Because 

if we have a catastrophic thing in the United States, we need to 

be able to be mission assured to project power or to sustain that 

capability that we need, working with the communities. 

But I appreciate that question. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. In my remaining 12 seconds, I would like to 

ask if you could get back to us with perhaps a cost estimate of 

what you think the escalating costs are going to be into the future, 

as now, you know, cyber is suddenly part of your operating costs, 

and it would be nice to know what you need. 

General HALVERSON. Yes, ma’am. Thank you. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 62.] 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Okay. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Ms. Duckworth. 

And I would like to thank General Halverson, General White, 

and Colonel Cole. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

And we are going to take a few moments to switch panels and 

ask our Marine Corps contingent to come up. So we will do that 

and begin the next panel in just a few minutes. 

Thank you. 

General HALVERSON. Thank you for your time, sir. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Ladies and gentlemen, from our Marine Corps 

today, we have with us Major General Charles L. Hudson, U.S. 

Marine Corps, Commander, Marine Corps Installation Command, 

and Assistant Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics Department. We also have with us Major General Brian D. Beaudreault, U.S. Marine Corps, Commanding General, 2nd Marine Division; and Colonel Chris Pappas, U.S. Marine Corps, Commander, 

Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, which we recently had an 

opportunity to visit. 

And, General Hudson, I understand you would like to make an 

opening statement, and we would ask that you do that within the 
22 

5-minute realm. And I want you to know that all the panel members have a copy of your remarks, and your remarks are going to 

be entered into the record. 

So, General Hudson, to you. 

STATEMENT OF MAJGEN CHARLES L. HUDSON, USMC, COMMANDER, MARINE CORPS INSTALLATIONS COMMAND, ASSISTANT DEPUTY COMMANDANT, INSTALLATIONS AND LOGISTICS; ACCOMPANIED BY MAJGEN BRIAN D. BEAUDREAULT, USMC, COMMANDING GENERAL, 2ND MARINE DIVISION, AND COL CHRIS PAPPAS, JR., USMC, COMMANDING 

OFFICER, MARINE CORPS AIR STATION CHERRY POINT 

General HUDSON. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bordallo, and 

other distinguished members of the committee, on behalf of the 

Commandant, General Neller, and the thousands of marines, sailors, our dedicated civilian workforce, and our family members, 

thank you for your continued support to the defense of our Nation 

and to the United States Marine Corps. 

As you have indicated, sir, I have General Brian Beaudreault 

with me this morning, Colonel Chris Pappas. And, although not sitting at this panel, sir, I would like to introduce my sergeant major, 

my senior enlisted leader, Sergeant Major Tony Cruz is with us 

here today, as well, sir. 

The Marine Corps is the Nation’s expeditionary force in readiness. To that end, Marines serve forward to shape events, manage 

instability, project influence, respond to crises, and, when necessary, serve as the Nation’s initial response force. Our role as 

America’s 911 force informs how we man, train, and equip our 

force. It also drives how we prioritize and allocate the resources 

provided by Congress. 

Within the Marine Corps, we look at readiness through five pillars: high-quality people, unit readiness, the capacity to meet combatant commanders’ requirements, infrastructure sustainment, and 

equipment modernization. These pillars represent the operational 

and foundation components of readiness across the Marine Corps. 

Marine Corps bases and air stations provide a platform from 

which to deploy and, in the case of several of our installations in 

the Pacific, directly employ for either combat operations or humanitarian assistance disaster relief operations. These bases and air 

stations also serve as platforms from which marines conduct realistic and relevant training that is necessary for them to accomplish 

assigned missions and then return home safely to their families. 

And, finally, our bases and air stations provide a critical support 

system to our families when those marines and our sailors are deployed forward. 

General Dunford, as the Commandant, has previously testified 

that the Marine Corps’ first priority is to reinforce the near-term 

readiness capabilities needed by our marines who are currently deployed or about to deploy. To accomplish that priority, the Marine 

Corps will accept risk in our infrastructure accounts. 

Hard decisions, difficult decisions will be required to be made. 

We will be required to prioritize the maintenance of nearly 15,000 

buildings, range complexes, barracks, and airfields to ensure near- 
23 

term readiness. Robust investments to repair, replace, or consolidate poor facilities will need to be deferred. 

Long-term underfunding of facilities and sustainment requirements will result in a gradual degradation of our infrastructure 

and create a bow wave of increased long-term costs to return these 

assets to proper conditions. 

With an eye on the future and the support of Congress, we have 

been able to expand the physical size of our largest and most capable training range at Twentynine Palms, California. This expansion 

will allow the Marine Corps to exercise a three-maneuver battalion, 

Marine expeditionary brigade, and a live-fire training environment. 

Also, with your support, we are presently expanding the Townsend Bombing Range in Georgia, giving us the ability to train with 

precision-guided munitions here on the East Coast, which is of extreme importance as we field the F–35. 

However, in recognition of the currently constrained fiscal climate, the Marine Corps has been required to sacrifice further 

range modernization for the sustainment and recapitalization of existing capacities and capabilities. This means that we are unable 

to adequately address the required training enhancements associated with new and emerging operational requirements. 

Your marines are the Nation’s expeditionary force in readiness. 

We focus our resources on maintaining the readiness of our forward-deployed marines and those about to deploy. Although our investment in future modernization and our infrastructure are less 

than what we believe is required, we will remain diligent stewards 

of the assets provided to us. 

Thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak on behalf 

of the marines and sailors and our family members and civilian 

employees. I look forward to your questions. 

[The joint prepared statement of General Hudson, General 

Beaudreault, and Colonel Pappas can be found in the Appendix on 

page 48.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. General Hudson, thank you so much. 

Thanks for that great overview, and we appreciate deeply what the 

Marine Corps does for our Nation, for what your marines do in accomplishing the mission in the Marine Corps. 

In looking at the total scope of what we are dealing with in the 

past several years, you have seen consecutive-year reductions in 

funding that is below the targeted infrastructure investment goals 

and also reductions to your base operations support accounts. 

In that realm, how have you prioritized funding in terms of your 

facility investments and services supported within the Marine 

Corps? And then what categories within the facilities—categories 

or the elements within that and the types of installation services 

are most important to the Marine Corps? 

So kind of give us your prioritization, give us the realm of what 

you have had to do to make those priority decisions within the scenario we have seen in the last couple years in reduction of dollars 

to go to those areas. 

General HUDSON. Sir, clearly, in order to maintain the readiness 

required to meet our day-to-day commitments, we have accepted 

risk in our infrastructure accounts, sustainment accounts, and the 
24 

like. And, clearly, it is something that we will need to address in 

the future. 

Currently, our institution’s focus is on supporting the focus to the 

Pacific initiative and actions related to our aviation campaign plan 

actions, introduction of new weapons platforms, the F–35, and MV– 

22 capabilities around the globe. So, within our military construction budgets, those are our main efforts. 

Within our sustainment accounts, we have had to defer many, 

many requirements, many capabilities, either within FSRM [Facilities, Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization] or within 

MILCON. But the primary focus, of course, is to prepare for our 

forces to deploy, now or tomorrow, and we made an institutional 

decision to first defer sustainment requirements till later on. 

Of course, that will result in a gradual degradation of our capability, and, over the long term, that will cause the costs to increase 

dramatically. We expect that, as this goes to the right, as the requirements continue to push to the right, as I said in my statement, we will see a bow wave. And, within our sustainment dollars, 

we are projecting within about the next 5 years, we are projecting 

about a $1 billion bow wave of requirements that we are not able 

to meet today—— 

Mr. WITTMAN. Yeah. 

General HUDSON [continuing]. Based upon pressure on the top 

line or reduced funding levels writ large. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, General Hudson. 

Colonel Pappas, give us your perspective on how corporate Marine Corps infrastructure and installation support decisions and 

the guidance affect your ability to provide mission support for operations and training there at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry 

Point. 

Colonel PAPPAS. Thank you, Chairman. That is a phenomenal 

question here. 

We right now focus our efforts, as an air station commander, on 

the air station itself, the airfield itself, on air traffic control facilities, on our range facilities, to make sure that we provide a capability for all of our operating forces. 

The challenge that we face is, when you look at an air station 

like Cherry Point that has been around since 1942, I still have facilities around from when the airfield opened in 1942, coming close 

to 75 years old at this point. And so, when we look in terms of 

across the airfield, there is a great number of facilities that are getting old and are in need of repair that don’t meet the cut line currently for both modernization and for recapitalization across current military construction. And so we live with those types of facilities. 

And those are just the challenges that we have to face as the Marine Corps looks to prioritize its very scarce resources. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. 

General Beaudreault, there are obviously risks that are associated with infrastructure and installation support reductions, and, 

obviously, there are impacts. Give us your perspective on how those 

impacts affect your ability to maintain full-spectrum readiness 

across your different units. And how does the recent 2-year budget 

deal affect that? Give us that perspective. 
25 

And then if you would also look out 10 years into the future, assuming that under the best-case scenario we would be level-funded 

past the end of this 2-year budget deal, which averages the defense 

budget at about $610 billion, give us your projection there. 

And also a scenario where, if at the end of this 2 years we drop 

back to a sequester mode, if you would kind of give me your perspective there about what you see with that and what happens 

with your infrastructure and installation support dollars as they 

have occurred recently and where that is with full-spectrum readiness. 

General BEAUDREAULT. Thank you, Chairman. 

I can address that question, sir, from really two standpoints— 

first, training readiness to meet our three standing global deployment requirements, as General Hudson referred to. 

Our number-one priority is to meet the demands of the forwarddeployed forces. I have three requirements I need to meet each and 

every day. And that is to send marines, trained and ready, to Okinawa on unit deployment; our special purpose Marine air-ground 

task force [MAGTF] that is in Moro ́n, Spain, and throughout Europe; and, thirdly, our Marine expeditionary units [MEUs]. We provide the battalion landing teams for those forward-deployed MEUs. 

I also have two domestic requirements that we stand each and 

every day. We have a CONUS [contiguous United States]-based 

alert force, and I also have forces on stand-by intermittently between the West Coast and the East Coast, shares the responsibility 

of having forces ready to go in the SOUTHCOM [Southern Command] AOR [area of responsibility] if we need to forward-deploy 

from here. 

So we can’t accept risk in meeting any of our combatant commander requirements. We have to go out ready to fight and operate 

across the full range of military operations. Pressure on the top 

line for that budget impacts our ability to train locally at Camp 

Lejeune, so that requires me to often go off installation, places like 

Twentynine Palms, places likes Fort Stewart, Fort Bragg, [Fort] 

A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett, where I can ensure that the force that I am 

deploying forward can meet every one of its demands. 

So we have an area for range maintenance, much like General 

Halverson and General White talked about. We need to maintain 

the targetry. We need to keep the ranges, the berms, the roads, the 

firebreaks. There is a cost to do business just for the ranges as they 

exist. There is pressure on modernization of current ranges to instrument those ranges, if need be. 

And then there is the future of range development, things that 

don’t exist today that we need—live-fire combat towns. We have 

shooting houses, but we don’t have a town where we can put a 

large-scale unit in and prepare to fight in places like we have done 

in the past in Fallujah and others. We recognize the urbanization 

that is occurring in the future operating environment, and we need 

to have the money in place to build a facility that allows us to get 

after that challenge locally. We can do it on the West Coast. They 

have done some out at Twentynine Palms, and we thank you for 

the money that allowed us to do that. 
26 

Secondly, the way that I can look at it is the quality-of-life and 

retention issues that go with barracks that become dilapidated over 

time. 

I have 68 barracks in the 2nd Marine Division that my marines 

live in, 28 of which have been renovated or were newly constructed. 

And, again, thank you for the new construction on that. 

Forty of those remain. Under the current funding line, it will 

take until 2034 to renovate the remainder of those barracks. Any 

further pressure on the top line and any delay to that just continues to deteriorate and gets to the end result that General Hudson talked about 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, General. 

Ms. Bordallo. 

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

I would like to also welcome General Hudson, General Beaudreault, and Colonel Pappas. 

Before I begin my questions, I just have to take this opportunity 

to say that Guam is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the marines 

from Okinawa. And, as the people of Guam say, you liberated us 

during World War II, so this will be a homecoming. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions here. 

First, in your written testimony, you noted that, due to the BCA, 

you have, and I quote, ‘‘had to make some difficult decisions to 

defer modernizing some of our training facilities to ensure that we 

could sustain the capabilities we have already fielded,’’ unquote. 

Now, can you please describe some of those, and I quote again, 

‘‘difficult decisions’’ and what impacts they have or have had on 

training and readiness? 

I guess General Hudson. 

General HUDSON. Ma’am, if I may start on that, and then I can 

certainly turn to Colonel Pappas to talk about aviation range capabilities, aviation training venues, and General Beaudreault, as 

well, on ground side, as well. 

But, again, clearly, based upon the requirements that we have to 

prepare trained, combat-ready marines to deploy at a moment’s notice, the requirement for training venues, not just ranges but 

venues, to include simulation centers and emerging combat trainers, emerging infantry trainers, is a valid requirement to ensure 

those marines are prepared to go into harm’s way. 

Oftentimes, when you talk about the repair of those type facilities versus a barracks—and I just visited one of General Beaudreault’s barracks about a month ago down at Camp Lejeune, 

North Carolina—that there is no way I would put my son or 

daughter to live into a barracks in that condition. As a matter of 

fact, that battalion commander made the decision that he wasn’t 

going to put any of his marines in there. 

So it is a balance of competing requirements. It is a balance between ensuring that the marine who is going to get on a ship or 

get on an aircraft to deploy forward into harm’s way is ready to go 

or to ensure that they have an adequate facility to live in or to 

work out of or, for that matter, an adequate chow hall that is sufficient to meet their daily requirements. 

So it is, again, very, very competing requirements, and so those 

are the difficult decisions. It is the right balance about combat- 
27 

readiness versus some of those life support, life, health, and safetytype issues and challenges and requirements that we need to meet 

just in order to set the foundational conditions for them to go train 

and be prepared to deploy. 

Ms. BORDALLO. I understand. 

Are there any further comments? 

I have another question. I asked this of the Army, but I would 

like to hear your reply on this, as well. 

At what level are the connections between the training requirements of a unit and the ability of an installation to support those 

training requirements? And how often are they reevaluated? In 

other words, at what level are the decisions impacting military infrastructure and installation support being coordinated with those 

in charge of training and operational requirements? 

Whoever would like—— 

General HUDSON. Ma’am, if I may, I will start with that. 

Clearly, we report readiness across all units within the Marine 

Corps, regardless of what unit. And so my installations support 

their readiness based upon mission-essential tasks that they have 

to execute, whether it is an actual Marine Corps base, a ground 

base, or whether it is a Marine Corps air station who is being required to support aviation operations. 

And so, on a quarterly basis, those commanders inform me, my 

commanders inform me via our readiness reporting system of their 

red, green, or yellow capability to support the members of the Marine expeditionary forces [MEF] they are supporting. And we are 

in a supporting relationship with our MEF commanders, with our 

division commanders, with our Marine air-ground commanders. 

And so, on a quarterly basis, through the formal readiness reporting system, we are able to determine how well we are supporting 

them. 

I had the opportunity to spend 2 years at Marine Corps Installations Pacific in Okinawa, headquartered in Okinawa, had the opportunity to span installations from Hawaii west. And so, very frequently, I would sit down with my supportive MEF commander, 

saying, ‘‘Sir, here is what my commanders are telling me that they 

are able to do for your marines, for your commanders. Does that 

synchronize with what you are seeing, with what you are hearing?’’ 

And then, based upon that, then you are able to allocate resources, either manpower or fiscal, to weight the main effort at 

that particular point in time. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

Anybody else who would like to comment? 

Yes, General. 

General BEAUDREAULT. Ma’am, the only thing I would add to 

that is that, in October, unbeknownst that this hearing would 

occur, I sat down with my commanders, and we looked at our training gaps, what are the major training gaps that we have in the 2nd 

Marine Division. And the number-one thing that came out had to 

do with range modernization, range development. 

So Marine Corps Installations East Brigadier General Tom 

Weidley and I sat down shortly thereafter and were trying to work 

out a plan of how we can get there, understanding the gaps we 

have, the resources available in getting those hard choices on the 
28 

table for General Neller to have to make on how we allocate that 

dwindling amount of money. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

And Colonel. 

Colonel PAPPAS. Thank you, Congresswoman. 

I am fortunate enough that I am actually collocated with my 

major support command in the same facility. So we have a very 

close relationship and understanding of what the mission priorities 

and training priorities are on a regular basis. 

Across the Marine Corps and aviation, we have training and 

readiness manuals that dictate what our standards are. And we report against those—an operational commander report on a monthly 

basis. And I understand where their concerns are from frequent 

meetings. We report on a quarterly basis, as General Hudson mentioned. 

And what I would like to comment on is that most of this is on 

a very near-term focus for current readiness. One of our challenges 

now in regard to range modernization in our airspace is new platforms bring a great deal of new capabilities. And, quite frankly, 

they are stressing our capability of our ranges to meet those requirements. 

For example, with the MV–22, we now fly twice as far and twice 

as fast as the legacy helicopters. The Joint Strike Fighter is going 

to have new weapons systems that are going to dwarf the capabilities—that currently dwarf the capabilities of legacy aircraft today. 

And they are putting a great deal of pressure upon our range space 

that were perfectly acceptable in legacy airframes, and how we are 

going to deal with that in the future. 

So that is a bigger challenge that I think we are going to have 

to look at to meet future training challenges. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Colonel. 

And thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for giving 

me extra time. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Absolutely. Absolutely, Ms. Bordallo. 

I do have one final question, and I will direct it to all of our 

panel members. 

A couple of things. We have seen, leading up to where we are 

today, a sequence of continuing resolutions. And, obviously, as you 

all are doing infrastructure planning, trying to set a course to meet 

those needs, I want to get your perspective on how continuing resolutions affect your ability to get to where you need to be. 

And then, secondly, on your plan to restore full-spectrum readiness, how will the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 affect that? And 

we all know that our service branches are all faced with getting 

full-spectrum readiness back, unfortunately, a number of years in 

the future. Will the Marine Corps’ plan be able to stay on track 

with the current budget deal that has been reached for the next 2 

years? 

So I will open it up for any of you all to give me your perspective. 

General HUDSON. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I will start, and I will 

start with a response relative to the continuing resolutions. 

Clearly, the instability and the unpredictability of a budget 

causes challenges across the board. And it is not only challenges 

relative to the execution of military construction projects—no new 
29 

starts—or the ability to execute the sustainment and restoration 

and modernization programs. 

We have gone to great lengths over the last 3 years inside the 

Marine Corps, working with Naval Facilities Engineering Command, to shift what has historically been most of our projects in 

the fourth quarter to where there is the 25 percent in the first 

quarter, 50 percent in the second quarter, 25 percent in the third 

quarter, where we have them designed and ready to execute. The 

challenge, of course, is that, based upon when the receipt of funds 

occurs, it could be at any time during the course of the fiscal year. 

So, both from a design work—although designs are primarily 

done—from an execution perspective, it makes it extremely difficult 

for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command to actually execute 

the contracts to actually, you know, start horizontal/vertical construction. So that is a challenge, as well. 

Not to mention the fact of the uncertainty on our workforce. And 

it is not just marines in uniform. It is our civilian employees, and 

it is our contracted workforce, as well, because we have contracting 

capabilities. Many of them work in chow halls or dining facilities 

day in and day out. But it is also the family members, as well. Extremely concerned about what is going to happen. If you are a civilian employee, am I going to have to go home? Am I not going to 

get a paycheck? And, to a lesser extent, to the Active Component 

uniformed personnel, as well. 

So, as you take a look at infrastructure development, master 

plan development, and as you take a concerted effort to plan the 

future of a base or an air station, it takes a couple years to get the 

master plan right. And so you have the vision for what you want 

to occur, and you have an associated timeline with that, a campaign plan to actually execute the vision. A hiccup in the stability 

of the receipt of funds causes challenges and obviously defers the 

program, as well. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Gentlemen, any other perspectives on how CRs affect you? 

Colonel Pappas. 

Colonel PAPPAS. Thank you, Chairman. I would offer another 

piece, is that one thing it does for us also, it buys us lost time. So 

even if I get the money later on in the year, what I have lost is 

the time to execute my mission, and I can’t get the time back. And 

that is one of the biggest concerns that I have as an installation 

commander. 

For me, for having a base master plan, it requires both the plan, 

it requires sustainable funding. It also requires the people and the 

trained workforce to be able to execute it. And with the top-line 

budget pressures, all of those have been challenged. When we don’t 

gain the military construction funds, it further pressurizes our 

modernization and sustainment accounts. If we don’t get those, 

then it also, for me personally, impacts my local repair accounts. 

And just as an example, Mr. Chairman, over the past 2 years, 

due to our budget pressures, we now have a 4-year backlog on routine maintenance. None of this is life-and-limb, it is all very mundane stuff, but it just gives you the challenge of what the workforce 

is going through on a weekly basis to prioritize very routine maintenance actions that we are deferring. 
30 

2T–1 refers to the SORTS [Status of Resources and Training System] value meaning fully 

trained for mission requirements. 

And to echo some of the comments from the Army earlier, what 

it is going to do is it basically makes me, instead of being proactive 

and having a solid plan, it makes me very much reactive in terms 

of how I am doing my job on a day-to-day basis. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you. 

General Hudson, let me just get you to elaborate on the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015. Will that allow the Marine Corps 

to stay on track with restoring full-spectrum readiness? 

I know all the service branches have a plan as to how they will 

restore that. Obviously, more years out in the future than we 

would like to have. But will the Marine Corps be able to stay on 

track or even move things to the left in that timeframe with this 

new budget agreement that gives you certainty, at least over the 

next couple of years? 

General HUDSON. Mr. Chairman, it will certainly assist with the 

stability of our infrastructure capabilities. And, as previously indicated, of course, the focus of readiness is to ensure our marines are 

able to get out, and rightly so. And so our infrastructure accounts 

have kind of taken a backseat to that. But we have a solid game 

plan to execute the requirements as funds are available. 

And so the challenge, of course, up to this point, is we have had 

to continue to push projects, both military construction and 

sustainment requirements, continually to the right. But we have 

those teed up, ready to go. In most situations, the designs for 

projects are ready, they are on the shelf. So it is a matter of, when 

the funds are received, we can take them off and we can execute 

them. 

So, certainly, it will go a long ways towards alleviating some of 

the pressures that we see both at the enterprise level, at the institutional level, but also at the local level, as well. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you. 

Any other comments, gentlemen? 

General Beaudreault. 

General BEAUDREAULT. Sir, down at the division level, it is really 

second- and third-order impacts of decisions that are made by Programs and Resources and the Commandant and others. 

But I will say that our near-term readiness, I remain optimistic 

that we will be adequately funded to generate T–1 forces going forward in support of the combatant commander requirements.2

What we see are maybe some indirect effects when there is a cutback to installations and I have to send, say, 147 marines to augment the base MPs [military police] that aren’t out training with 

the rifle companies getting ready to go forward. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Got you. 

General BEAUDREAULT. Again, like General Halverson mentioned, less simulator time because of contractor cutbacks. And now 

we are not 24/7 on our simulation systems. 

So those are kind of the second-order effects we see, but—— 

Mr. WITTMAN. Sure. 

General BEAUDREAULT [continuing]. Near-term readiness, I feel 

confident we will continue to generate what the Nation needs. 
31 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Well, gentlemen, thank you. 

Ms. Bordallo, any other question? 

Ms. BORDALLO. I have nothing. 

Mr. WITTMAN. All right. Very good. 

Well, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for 

your perspective on what we need to do to continue to help you to 

restore readiness and make sure that our installation support and 

infrastructure is on track to where it needs to be. 

We appreciate the great job that you do with the dollars that we 

give you. We know the Marines are very austere in many different 

ways and take a dollar and stretch it to the maximum extent possible. But, as General Amos once said, he said, ‘‘We are at a point 

where we are going to do less with less.’’ And we don’t want to put 

you in that particular position. You all have done a great job in 

doing more with less, but I do think, with what we have asked you 

to do and extend things out, we don’t want to be in a position 

where you can’t do the things that you need to do for our marines. 

So, again, thank you all for your service. Please give our best to 

our marines that are there in your units and forward-deployed. 

Thank them for the great job that they do for our Nation. And we 

look forward to seeing them as we all get around to visit those Marine Corps facilities across CONUS and OCONUS [outside the contiguous United States] too. So thanks again. 

And we are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 9:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

DECEMBER 3, 2015 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

DECEMBER 3, 2015 

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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

DECEMBER 3, 2015 

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RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. HARTZLER 

General HALVERSON. Many sheltering and notification improvements occurred at 

Fort Riley since the November 2005 tornado. These include the installation of 2,289 

storm shelters in on-post housing. Corvias, our privatized housing partner, constructs storm rated shelters in all new housing units and retrofits units being renovated. Currently, 76.7% of all housing units have shelters (or basements). We relocated exterior concrete storm shelters from demolished relocatable buildings sites to 

twenty-one selected higher-use Range/Training Area facilities and Fort Riley access 

control points. There are now interior storm rated shelters in all Child Development 

Centers and hardened gyms in the new Fort Riley Middle School and two new Elementary Schools. Our Soldier Readiness Processing Center is a historic facility with 

hardened restrooms for shelter. Seven 24/7 community shelter facilities with signage 

direct pedestrians and motorists to these facilities if needed. 

Fort Riley improved the ability to notify Soldiers, Families, Civilians, and visitors 

with the installation of two additional tornado sirens addressing the outdoor recreational coverage gaps. This provides a total of nineteen tornado sirens. We also 

installed thirty-one additional Giant Voice towers for a total of forty-eight which 

provide robust coverage to the entire cantonment and housing area footprint. Upgrades to our network-based desktop alert system (AtHoc Connect) increased our 

coverage from 3,400 to 22,670 accounts. We added text message alert, e-mail and 

telephonic notification capabilities with over 7,350 subscribers. Finally, Fort Riley 

informs new Soldiers and Family members on how to plan for and deal with emergencies with a robust tornado/severe weather awareness campaign in coordination 

with Public Affairs Office, local media and the National Weather Service. [See 

page 10.] 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. O’ROURKE 

General HALVERSON. Over the past several years, the Army’s Total Obligation Authority, was insufficient to allow the Army to fully fund its training strategy to 

achieve desired Decisive Action proficiency and strategic depth. Overall, the Army 

only funded approximately 85% of the total requirement. Interestingly, the leading 

indicator of an underfunded training strategy is not an initial drop in training readiness, but rather it first manifests itself in terms of diminished equipment readiness. 

Commanders continue to apply their limited resources to executing key training 

events while conserving funding by deferring maintenance on equipment. 

FORSCOM is clearly seeing this with over $300M in deferred maintenance and repair parts orders. 

Should the Army be able to recoup the approximately $500M currently spent on 

excess infrastructure capacity and reapply all of it to readiness, it could, as an example, help eliminate the existing gap between current funding levels and our 

Training Strategy. This would allow Commanders to plan and execute training 

without deferring maintenance on their equipment to generate funds for future 

training events. Further, the $500M could, as an example, help the Army to address 

Reserve Component pay and allowance shortfalls that impede their ability to 

achieve the training readiness we desire in those Components. [See page 13.] 

RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SCOTT 

General HALVERSON. The Army does not have empirical data to assess the impact 

of the Davis-Bacon Act on military construction. There is speculation that the absence of the Act could lead to cost savings through lower wage and benefit payments 

and administrative costs. One of many unknowns is whether, in the absence of 

Davis-Bacon Act requirements, the Government would see lower-cost, equally-qualified tradesmen, or less-qualified tradesmen, being hired for projects due to wages 

lower than the prevailing rate. 

In 2010, the GAO examined the effect of applying the Davis-Bacon Act to a number of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funded Federal programs, 
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including some not previously subject to the Davis-Bacon Act. The findings of the 

study vary. For example, the study suggested that Davis-Bacon requirements impact wages and administrative costs for small construction projects in rural areas 

more than major construction projects in large metropolitan areas. [See page 15.] 

General HALVERSON. Enhanced-use lease is a term that commonly refers to longterm leasing of government land for private sector development and use. The military departments’ authority to lease real and personal property is codified at Section 

2667 of Title 10 United States Code. Leasing is one of many useful tools for managing the Army real property portfolio. If there is no current or anticipated military 

requirement for a certain property, it is processed for disposal as excess property 

rather than leased. However, when property is not excess but is not needed for a 

period of time, leasing can be an efficient and economic means of managing that 

real property asset. It can provide valuable revenue, defray Army costs to maintain 

the property, and can enable private sector uses of the property that complement 

Army missions. Revenue from leasing is generally available for construction and 

maintenance of Army facilities and similar expenses. However, leasing property is 

not appropriate or prudent in every case. In some cases, especially with property 

of relatively low market value, costs associated with planning and implementing a 

lease may not be recovered. Sometimes private sector uses of leased property might 

be incompatible with adjacent Army activities, or could preclude potential government use of the subject property. The Army takes these and other factors into consideration when deciding whether leasing is a prudent course of action in any given 

case. [See page 15.] 

Colonel COLE. Fort Riley installed skylights in building 8100, our Logistics Readiness Center’s Maintenance Facility. Safety issues on cloudy days mandated that mechanically-controlled lights remain. Fort Riley installed photo cells in addition to 

motion sensors to control the mechanical lights. When the skylights provide adequate lighting, the mechanical lights are off. [See page 14.] 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. DUCKWORTH 

General HALVERSON. The Army is focused on addressing cybersecurity for industrial control systems related to real property. Processes are in place to properly authorize systems to operate on the Army network. We are developing a new holistic 

program to assess and identify the threats to ensure appropriate protective measures are in place for systems. 

As the program develops, we expect to see some increases in operating costs to 

maintain the assessment and authorization process for these systems. The costs associated with this program are undetermined at this time. [See page 21.] 
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

DECEMBER 3, 2015 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN 

Mr. WITTMAN. What specific examples can you provide of facility conditions affecting the readiness of installations to carry out their assigned missions? To what extent have any reported issues been addressed? How quickly were any issues able 

to be addressed? 

General HALVERSON. Current budget caps forced the Army to focus its scarce resources on training and modernization, and assume more risk at its installations. 

The result is a limited pool of available funds to execute critical construction and 

restoration and modernization projects. 

An example of facility conditions affecting the readiness of installations is modernizing delays to Fort Hood’s Tactical Equipment Maintenance Facilities. Fort 

Hood’s motor pools were ‘‘state of the art’’ in the mid-1980s. Currently, the day-today impact on readiness is visible as Soldiers perform maintenance outdoors that 

should be performed inside a building because the facility doors are not wide enough 

to accommodate the Stryker. Further, the overhead lifts are not sufficient to safely 

handle the heavy powertrain components. 

A second example of inadequate Restoration and Modernization funding is the deteriorating condition of the Libby Army Airfield and related taxiways at Fort 

Huachuca, Arizona. Repair and replacement costs are projected at $20 million. Reduced manpower for airfield operations negatively impacts TRADOC Unmanned 

Aerial Systems (Grey Eagle) Training, wildland fire support operations, Military Intelligence Battalion Special Electronics Mission Aircraft training, and other supported aviation missions. Other agencies that use the Libby Army Airfield include 

the U.S. Forestry Service, Department of Homeland Security Customs & Border 

Protection, and U.S. Air Force. 

Readiness-related facility condition issues are addressed immediately at the local 

level when resources are available. If resources are not readily available, the requirements are addressed through the respective reporting, planning and programming venues. Critical funding issues, validated by HQDA, were generally resolved 

within 60–90 days. 

Mr. WITTMAN. To what extent do the reported readiness levels of installations 

take into consideration the condition of their facilities? Are there other metrics or 

data points used to assess the effect of facility condition on readiness? How have 

the services attempted to quantify the risks they are taking by perennially reducing 

their investments in base support services and infrastructure, if at all? 

General HALVERSON. Facility condition is a principal factor for installation readiness. The Army uses its Installation Status Report—Infrastructure, or ISR–I program, to provide a comprehensive statement of a reporting location’s facilities and 

infrastructure status. It does this by determining the quality of facilities compared 

to existing Army standards in nine Facility Classes. The Quality, or Q-Rating, indicates the physical condition of assets. The Army Q-ratings are compatible with and 

correspond to prescribed DOD criteria. 

ISR–I also uses Mission Support Functional Capability Ratings, or F-Ratings. The 

F-Rating indicates whether the existing configuration of an asset impairs the tenants’ capability to support their missions. 

Both data points are required to be reported to the Office of the Secretary of Defense on an annual basis as part of the Army’s Real Property Inventory submission. 

For example, facilities with an F2 rating are those facilities that meet the minimum 

functional use, but are not the optimal design or size. Such facilities are still mission capable, but could be modernized to operate more effectively and efficiently. 

This includes operations and training, maintenance and mobility infrastructure. For 

example, a well maintained building with the wrong layout or configuration to support the mission could have a Q1 quality rating but a F3 or F4 functional rating. 

The Army generates these ratings for installations across all components of the 

Army. The ISR–I results are used in a number of readiness reporting platforms such 

as the Defense Readiness Reporting System—Army, the Army Strategic Readiness 

Assessment, and the Strategic Readiness Update, to provide Senior Army Leadership with actionable data as it relates to facility condition and readiness. Risk considerations are integrated in the base support services and infrastructure support 
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assessment and ratings process. Risks are quantified through applied performance, 

facility, and mission support metrics. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What steps, if any, are installations taking to reduce the risk that 

facility conditions will negatively affect their readiness to carry out assigned missions? For example, are installations dedicating more sustainment and recapitalization funding to higher priority facilities and reducing or delaying funding for lower 

priority facilities? How do the installations determine which facilities are higher priority for purposes of funding needed sustainment? How effective have any risk-reduction actions been? What long-term effects, if any, are expected as a result of 

these actions? 

General HALVERSON. Commanders must balance infrastructure readiness against 

risk. Installations prioritize sustainment, restoration and modernization requirements locally based on not only current facility conditions, but also on impacts to 

readiness and training. For example, many installations take risk on horizontal infrastructure, such as roads and utility systems, to preserve capabilities that have 

a more direct impact on their operations. Specific types of facilities vary from installation to installation based on their primary mission. For example, hangers and airfield pavements are a priority at Fort Rucker Alabama as the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence, while classrooms and training ranges are critical at installations 

that conduct Basic Combat Training. 

Determining which facilities receive a higher priority for sustainment funding involves a collaborative, informed approach. The installation’s Garrison and Senior 

Commanders work together to determine local sustainment priorities. The Garrison 

prioritizes routine sustainment based on established preventative maintenance 

tasks necessary to preserve the full life expectancy of facilities. The Garrison 

prioritizes larger sustainment projects based on the facility condition of enduring infrastructure, inspected failing components, and mission impact. 

Our risk-reduction measures are or were partially successful in mitigating impacts to mission by focusing on critical Army requirements. However, reduced 

Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization funding causes long-term impacts. 

Generally, long-term impacts of these actions are increased ‘‘penalty costs,’’ including increased restoration costs due to degradation, or increased MILCON requirements which occur when cost-benefits no longer support restoring or modernizing 

a facility. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What progress has the Army made in implementing the 2013 and 

2014 OSD policy memorandums regarding the standardization of facility condition 

assessments and use of the Facility Sustainment Model? Do you expect to meet the 

timelines laid out in those memorandums? Have your efforts to implement to date 

affected fiscal year 2016 and/or future budgets? 

General HALVERSON. Currently, the Army uses facility condition assessments 

aligned with the OSD policy. The Army fully incorporated and actively uses the Facility Sustainment Model in its sustainment requirements programming. The Army 

manages 90% of its railroads with the RAILER Sustainment Management System 

(SMS) and 60% of its pavement inventory are in the PAVER SMS. The Army will 

fully implement and reconcile the RAILER and PAVER SMS data with the real 

property database by the OSD deadline. The Army is preparing the BUILDER SMS 

evaluations for integration with its existing Installation Status Report (the current 

Facility Condition Index generation system for the Army), the General Fund Enterprise Business System, and the Logistics Management System. We anticipate completion of the BUILDER SMS implementation by fiscal year 2021. OSD policy implementation did not change Army fiscal year 2016 or future year budgets. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What are the services’ plans to mitigate the impact of reduced OCO 

funding on base operating support and facilities sustainment, modernization, and 

restoration? 

General HALVERSON. The Army requires no mitigation plan for CONUS installations because no OCO funding is applied to base operating support of facility SRM 

stateside. However, the Army relies on OCO funding for base operating support and 

facilities SRM for specific initiatives in Europe and CENTCOM. The Army will need 

to prioritize funding for the most critical initiatives, scope facility requirements to 

minimum standards to support mission, and leverage host nation capabilities to 

mitigate reduced OCO funds. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Given consecutive years of funding below the 100% of BOS requirements, how is BOS funding prioritized in terms of which activities and services will 

be supported at a given installation? How have those decisions to reduce services 

or support impacted military readiness and operation or training requirements? 

General HALVERSON. BOS funding distribution is prioritized based on life, health, 

and safety as well as statutory and fiscal obligatory requirements such as: salaries, 

utilities, leases, fire and emergency services, environmental compliance, and essen-
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tial Family programs. As the result of consecutive years of funding below 100% of 

requirements, the Army has taken risk in areas of facility operations in engineering 

and municipal services, and the environment. These funding reductions create challenges across our installations as the Army seeks to provide a sustainable base for 

training and quality of life for our Soldiers, Families, and Civilians. 

Mr. WITTMAN. To what extent has BOS funding been used for other department 

priorities or taken away from other department priorities in recent years? How has 

this affected the services’ ability to provide installation support? 

General HALVERSON. The Army took risk in BOS to support training readiness. 

Taking risk in installation funding affects readiness and negatively impacts the 

ability to proactively manage the installation to ensure adequately sustained facilities and efficient predictable service delivery. Soldier training and power projection 

are dependent on installation facilities and support. Continued risk in installation 

readiness erodes the ability to maintain this vital balance. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Have reductions in civilian- or contract-provided services for utility 

system operations; installation equipment maintenance; engineering services including fire protection, crash rescue, custodial, refuse collection, snow removal, and lease 

of real property; security protection and law enforcement; and motor pool transportation operations impacted availability of facilities that support operations and 

training? 

General HALVERSON. Yes, reductions in civilian/contract provided services have affected the availability of key facilities because many of those services ensured the 

continued access to both facilities and infrastructure. Reduced civilian/contract services create unpredictable support and increase response time to address basic garrison operating functions. Soldier Readiness relies on predictable training, which requires assured access to not only operations and training facilities, but to all the 

underlying infrastructure and utilities on an installation. The reductions in civilian/ 

contract services also include municipal services, feeding our Soldiers in dining facilities, providing readiness enabling logistical services, and operating physical fitness centers. The reduced civilian/contract services erode the capability of an installation to provide training support, adequate facility sustainment or react quickly to 

an infrastructure failure which interrupts the carefully planned training requirements for our units. Current funding requires installations to scale back or cancel 

service contracts and even delay much needed information technology infrastructure 

upgrades. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What impact has the substantial reduction in MILCON spending 

had on the ability of installations to support readiness and serve as power-projection 

platforms? 

General HALVERSON. At current funding levels, the Army can address only its 

most urgent facility needs in support of Army readiness initiatives, range and training modernization and Combatant Commander Global Posture requirements. General infrastructure recapitalization is limited to only those failed facilities that most 

significantly impact unit readiness, unit operations and Soldier and Family quality 

of life. 

Current funding levels are also constraining facility sustainment, causing accelerated facilities deterioration. Taking risk in Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization funding means facilities will cost more to fix later than to sustain now. 

Therefore, the status quo of historically low MILCON funding cannot be maintained 

indefinitely. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What specific examples can you provide of facility conditions affecting the readiness of installations to carry out their assigned missions? To what extent have any reported issues been addressed? How quickly were any issues able 

to be addressed? 

General HUDSON. One example of facility conditions affecting readiness of installations to carry out their assigned missions concerns outlying landing fields (OLFs). 

Deteriorating conditions of OLF runways affect a multitude of a unit’s training 

and readiness events (T&R). The use of existing runways by Fleet Replacement 

Squadrons (FRS) for new pilot generation and operational squadrons for pilot sustainment training becomes limited, forcing the need for additional leased tactical 

landing zones (TLZs) to accommodate training. Units conducting parachute drop 

zone (PDZ) training encounter additional administrative and logistical burdens by 

having to transport back to fixed wing capable runways to reload aircraft. Units 

conducting long range raid packages in support of advance airbase seizure exercises 

have artificially limiting parameters placed on the tactical employment of forces. 

Of the eight OLF runways in the Marine Corps Installations East AOR, only one 

is in a good state of order, one is in fair condition, and six are in poor condition. 

In the last eight years, only one has gone through a restoration program. Under current funding projections, it could many years to repair all of the runways. Delay of 
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repairing leads to further deterioration of the airfield, increasing the ultimate costs 

of making the runways operational again. 

Another example is the severe lack of operations and command and control spaces 

at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Staff directorates are not co-located and 

spread out in various facilities which adversely impacts operational support. Many 

facilities designated for operations and administrative uses are World War II wood 

framed structures or Quonset huts. These facilities lack proper heating and ventilation systems and are no longer meeting life, health, and safety codes. The average 

age of all administrative facilities at Camp Pendleton is 33 years with over onethird of these facilities over 50 years of age. Given current competing priorities, 

major repair or replacement of these facilities are not affordable. 

Mr. WITTMAN. To what extent do the reported readiness levels of installations 

take into consideration the condition of their facilities? Are there other metrics or 

data points used to assess the effect of facility condition on readiness? How have 

the services attempted to quantify the risks they are taking by perennially reducing 

their investments in base support services and infrastructure, if at all? 

General HUDSON. Readiness reporting for installation facilities falls under Mission 

Essential Task (MET)/Marine Corps Task (MCT) 4.9: Provide Base and Station Facilities and Related Infrastructure. Under this MET, installations report on providing, developing, and managing all real property necessary for the effective administration, management, employment, and training of military organizations. This 

includes engineering support; coordination of all real estate agreements; construction management; encroachment control; sustainment, restoration, and modernization of all Class I and II real property to include family and bachelor housing; and 

utility services. 

Installations report on their ability to provide environmental services, housing 

(billeting, transient, and family housing), and utilities (water, electrical, natural gas/ 

compressed gases, sewage and waste) to all supported commands. Additionally, designated installations report on their ability to provide safe haven and COOP during 

times of threat or recovery from destructive weather as well as progress towards 

compliance with CMC alternative energy goals. 

Funding of FSRM below requirement leads to more costly repairs, restoration, and 

new construction in the future, creating increased long-term costs for the American 

public. Once these facilities degrade, there is an increased cost to return these facilities to an acceptable facilities condition to meet mission requirements. Continual 

underfunding will lead to a bow wave of requirements in the out-years just to bring 

our facilities back to their current condition ($1 billion). 

Investments in MILCON will continue to primarily support new warfighting platforms, training for the 21st century Marine Corps, replace poor and failing facilities, 

and improving our security and safety posture. Reduced funding availability in 

MILCON will most likely result in reduced investments in projects that support the 

consolidation of functions or replacement of existing facilities, which would cause 

degradation in the long-term health of existing facilities. Not as many projects 

would be affordable in any given year delaying the positive impact that these 

projects would have on readiness. 

Marine Corps currently funds base operations to the minimum acceptable levels 

necessary to continue operations throughout the fiscal year. At the minimum acceptable level, only mission-essential services are provided and minimum legal and safety requirements are met. At reduced funding levels, the Marine Corps bases and 

stations will be forced to curtail base operations functions during periods of the fiscal year or eliminate lower priority functions that least affect the training and operations of our deploying forces. These actions will result in immediate and noticeable 

reductions in service hours, customer support, and access to training areas and facilities that support routine operations of the Marine Corps and quality of life programs. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What steps, if any, are installations taking to reduce the risk that 

facility conditions will negatively affect their readiness to carry out assigned missions? For example, are installations dedicating more sustainment and recapitalization funding to higher priority facilities and reducing or delaying funding for lower 

priority facilities? How do the installations determine which facilities are higher priority for purposes of funding needed sustainment? How effective have any risk-reduction actions been? What long-term effects, if any, are expected as a result of 

these actions? 

General HUDSON. The Marine Corps has implemented a mission dependency 

index (MDI) that provides the relative value of the mission, tasks and functions performed by a facility. The Commandant has directed that we prioritize our future investments to ensure proper maintenance and repair are allocated to those facilities 

that have a direct mission impact—deemed as mission critical or mission significant. 
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Underfunding of facilities sustainment in the long-term increases the rate of degradation of Marine Corps infrastructure. This leads to more costly repairs, restoration, and new construction in the future—also known as the ‘‘cost of neglect.’’ Once 

these facilities degrade, there is an increased cost to return these facilities to an acceptable facilities condition to meet mission requirements. 

Continual underfunding will lead to a bow wave of requirements in the out-years 

just to bring our facilities back to its current condition. 

We will take significant risk is certain categories of facilities such as administrative facilities, warehouses and some personnel support facilities in the short term. 

However, with over half of our facilities directly tied to readiness (runways, operations and training facilities, utilities) or quality of life (barracks), reduced funding 

over the long term will have an adverse impact on both warfighter readiness and 

quality of life for Marines and their families. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What progress has the Marine Corps made in implementing the 

2013 and 2014 OSD policy memorandums regarding the standardization of facility 

condition assessments and use of the Facility Sustainment Model? Do you expect 

to meet the timelines laid out in those memorandums? Have your efforts to implement to date affected fiscal year 2016 and/or future budgets? 

General HUDSON. The Marine Corps has fully implemented the OSD policy memorandum regarding the standardization of facilities condition assessments. 

The Marine Corps met or exceeded the OSD policy memorandum on Facilities 

Sustainment through FY2014. 

The President’s Budget in FY2015 was the first year the Marine Corps did not 

meet the OSD guidance on Facilities Sustainment (79%). We had to take risk in our 

facilities investment programs to support near term readiness for our Marines. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What are the services’ plans to mitigate the impact of reduced OCO 

funding on base operating support and facilities sustainment, modernization, and 

restoration? 

General HUDSON. The Marine Corps receives very little OCO funding for BOS and 

FSRM. However, a reduction in OCO for the operating forces results in increased 

competition for limited resources in the base budget. 

As the Marine Corps prioritizes near term readiness, there is further migration 

of funds from installations to the operating forces to cover higher priority shortfalls 

due to the lack of OCO funding. For instance, during OIF/OEF, OCO funds typically 

covered all costs associated with both the Personal Effects and Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) storage contracts. Although II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) and 

Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) were the principal users, the installation commanders on the East Coast (home of the deploying forces) are responsible for paying the bill. During peak deployment years, both contracts accounted 

for almost $1M annually. OCO funds have not been available since Fiscal Year 2014 

so both contracts have required a plus up in baseline funding. In accordance with 

the Joint Travel Regulation, both programs are entitlements and, therefore, fully 

funding the requirement is a ‘‘must-pay’’ bill. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Given consecutive years of funding below the 100% of BOS requirements, how is BOS funding prioritized in terms of which activities and services will 

be supported at a given installation? How have those decisions to reduce services 

or support impacted military readiness and operation or training requirements? 

General HUDSON. The Marine Corps prioritizes mission-essential services related 

to life, safety, and health at the bases and stations. Fire protection, emergency response and services, and occupational safety and health and programs fall into this 

category. 

Secondary to this, the Marine Corps prioritizes mandatory and statutory programs, including environmental compliance. 

Finally, the Marine Corps considers utilities and civilian labor as must pay bills 

for the continuance of operations and maintaining the morale of the workforce. 

Mr. WITTMAN. To what extent has BOS funding been used for other department 

priorities or taken away from other department priorities in recent years? How has 

this affected the services’ ability to provide installation support? 

General HUDSON. Marine Corps bases and stations are currently funded at a high 

risk level in most areas of BOS, with funding limited to basic life, safety, health 

and statutory requirements. 

Reductions in BOS to the high risk level have impacted civilian personnel, including reductions in our Law Enforcement Program, delayed replenishment and replacement of furniture and equipment for BEQs and office spaces, reduced Semper 

Fit, Community Support and Family Care programs, and increased risk enterprise 

network infrastructure operations. 

As an example, for Marine Corps Installations East (primarily located in the 

Southeast portion of the United States), the most acute impact of funding cuts is 
70 

felt by the civilian workforce. At Camp Lejeune, before the massive construction 

build up to support the increased Marine Corps force structure, the base had a large 

deficit in bachelor housing, maintenance, warehouse, and administrative facilities. 

The large investment in military construction funding during this build-up addressed many of these requirements. However, the base staff is now in a position 

of supporting a larger facilities footprint with a smaller workforce. The workforce 

may be able to keep up with immediate tasks, but it is extremely challenged to perform the long-term tasks necessary to sustain and operate the additional and more 

complex infrastructure and preserve the capabilities and readiness of Marine Corps 

installations. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Have reductions in civilian- or contract-provided services for utility 

system operations; installation equipment maintenance; engineering services including fire protection, crash rescue, custodial, refuse collection, snow removal, and lease 

of real property; security protection and law enforcement; and motor pool transportation operations impacted availability of facilities that support operations and 

training? 

General HUDSON. While there is limited direct impact on our facilities, there is 

greater impact on our Marines. 

The requirements to execute these functions (facilities maintenance, utility system 

operations, installation equipment maintenance, custodial, refuse collection, etc.) 

continue despite the reduction in civilian and contract provided services. As a result, 

Marines are required to perform some of these ‘‘housekeeping’’ duties which takes 

them away from their mission of training and operations. Instead of conducting predeployment training for our forward deployed mission and MOS specific skill training, Marines are cutting the grass and maintaining the equipment and infrastructure. Shortfalls in security manning for our installations results in the Operating 

Force having to augment installation security. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What impact has the substantial reduction in MILCON spending 

had on the ability of installations to support readiness and serve as power-projection 

platforms? 

General HUDSON. Investments in MILCON will continue to primarily support new 

warfighting platforms, force relocations (Pivot to the Pacific, AVPLAN), training for 

the 21st century Marine Corps, replace poor and failing facilities, and improving our 

security and safety posture. 

Reduced funding availability in MILCON will most likely result in reduced investments in projects that support the consolidation of functions or replacement of existing facilities, which would cause degradation of the long-term health of existing facilities 

With lower budgets, not as many projects would be affordable in any given year, 

delaying the positive impact that these projects would have on readiness. Given our 

focus to support new warfighting platforms and Pivot to the Pacific, reduced funding 

will likely decrease our ability to support other required MILCON efforts such as: 

• ATFP projects to meet standards and security programs 

• Environmental compliance 

• First Responder support 

• Ground maintenance and depot operations 

• Quality of Life 

• Utilities and communications modernization 

In addition to funding challenges associated with MILCON, the Marine Corps will 

also be challenged to support all training needs. Installations must continually 

evaluate emergent training requirements to support the operational forces. These 

requirements are developed from new weapon systems, ammunition, tactics, and 

techniques, and theater specific training requirements. While there is a necessity to 

continually provide innovative relevant training venues and systems to the operating force, constrained funding pits modernization efforts against sustainment and 

recapitalization efforts. This requires a tradeoff between preparing for the future 

while maintaining the baseline necessities to fulfill the training and readiness 

standards for the operating forces. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. O’ROURKE 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Is there a way the Army can translate funding spent on excess 

infrastructure to readiness? For instance, if the Army were able to dispense with 

the 1% of its infrastructure (of which ∼18% is estimated to be excess) how much 

readiness would that produce? What is the best measure? 

General HALVERSON. The associated costs of sustaining and managing excess infrastructure impact readiness, however, the costs do not typically have a one-for-one 
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relationship. Reducing excess infrastructure improves the readiness of our installations and the ability of our installations to support mission requirements. 

The money spent on sustaining excess infrastructure is an opportunity cost. Most 

of the excess infrastructure is in the form of underutilized (not empty) buildings. 

Eliminating 100% excess infrastructure capacity is unrealistic because some underutilized capacity is on high-military value installations. Utilizing this excess capacity may come through a BRAC to reallocate resources. 

The Army’s $500M estimate of excess capacity expenses is conservative. It only 

considers the costs of sustaining 160 to 190 million square feet of excess capacity. 

The cost of providing utilities, security, and running the installations upon which 

these buildings sit, is much more significant. Base Operations Support (BOS) costs 

do not change significantly when an installation loses 10 or 20 percent of its assigned personnel, because installation operational costs are relatively fixed. 

Thus, closing a few lower military value installations through BRAC, and realigning the remaining missions into available excess capacity at the remaining, highermilitary-value installations, is where the Army would produce the vast majority of 

BRAC savings. 

Whether excess capacity is reduced at the margins (i.e., using current law), or reduced significantly through the BRAC, the Army would seek to free up a reoccurring 

source of savings to reinvest and increase our installations’ capacity to support mission or training readiness. 

Æ