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i 

86–969 2014

[H.A.S.C. No. 113–79] 

HEARING 

ON

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FOR FISCAL YEAR 2015 

AND

OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED 

PROGRAMS 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

FULL COMMITTEE HEARING 

ON

THE POSTURE OF THE U.S. NORTHERN 

COMMAND AND U.S. SOUTHERN 

COMMAND 

HEARING HELD 

FEBRUARY 26, 2014 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

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

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada 

JON RUNYAN, New Jersey 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

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

COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

RON BARBER, Arizona 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois 

PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

CATHERINE SENDAK, Professional Staff Member 

MARK LEWIS, Professional Staff Member 

MIKE AMATO, Professional Staff Member 

AARON FALK, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2014 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, February 26, 2014, The Posture of the U.S. Northern Command 

and U.S. Southern Command ............................................................................. 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, February 26, 2014 .............................................................................. 43 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2014 

THE POSTURE OF THE U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND AND U.S. 

SOUTHERN COMMAND 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

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

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

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

WITNESSES 

Jacoby, GEN Charles H., Jr., USA, Commander, U.S. Northern Command 

and North American Aerospace Defense Command ......................................... 3 

Kelly, Gen John F., USMC, Commander, U.S. Southern Command ................... 5 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Jacoby, GEN Charles H., Jr. ........................................................................... 51 

Kelly, Gen John F. ............................................................................................ 76 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ .................................................................... 47 

Smith, Hon. Adam ............................................................................................ 49 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Garamendi ................................................................................................. 130 

Mr. Langevin ..................................................................................................... 126 

Mr. Rogers ......................................................................................................... 128 

Mr. Smith .......................................................................................................... 125 

Ms. Tsongas ...................................................................................................... 129 

(1) 

THE POSTURE OF THE U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND AND 

U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, February 26, 2014. 

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

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

McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

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

A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. 

Good morning. 

The committee meets today to receive testimony on the posture 

of Northern Command and Southern Command. I am pleased to 

welcome General Charles Jacoby, commander of NORTHCOM 

[U.S. Northern Command] and NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command], and General John Kelly, commander of 

SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command]. 

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your service to this nation 

and for being here with us today. 

This is the committee’s first posture hearing on the fiscal year 

2015 defense authorization cycle. 

However, with the delayed release of the President’s budget request, we are at a disadvantage in assessing whether your priorities and requirements are addressed in the budget and the Quadrennial Defense Review. To this end, I have requested a list of unfunded requirements from each of your commands. 

It is clear that continued cuts to defense are driving cuts in personnel, readiness, and modernization. These have real consequences in your areas of responsibility, and I hope you will discuss that here with us today. 

As the Department continues to face tight budgets and reallocation of resources, we must be diligent in keeping our hemisphere 

safe. There is anticipation that homeland defense will continue to 

receive priority in the upcoming budget request and important missions such as missile defense will receive increased resources. 

I am concerned, however, that certain NORTHCOM and 

SOUTHCOM exercises and training priorities have been cut in past 

years due to budget shortfalls. I hope you will both discuss what 

you have been able to put back into place and what gaps still remain following the conclusion of the budget deal last December. 

General Jacoby, looking to our own border, we are witnessing a 

surge of self-defense vigilante forces in Mexico, as citizens don’t 
2 

trust state and military police forces to address internal security 

threats. 

I look forward to your thoughts about whether legitimizing these 

forces is the correct path for Mexican security and what the implications are for U.S.-Mexico defense cooperation. 

General Kelly, I had the great pleasure of visiting several countries in your area of responsibility last week. I was struck by Colombia’s progress from an almost failed state to a nation of continued stability and economic growth. 

In contrast, Venezuela’s violent unrest and unstable economic 

situation make it a dangerous place. 

It was kind of a paradox. I traveled to some of these same countries about 16 to 18 years ago, with Chairman Spence. And in that 

time, we went to Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Panama. 

This time, we couldn’t go to Argentina or Venezuela, but we were 

able to go to Colombia because of their huge turnaround. That was 

a real positive. 

And then the other ones have caused some unrest and some 

problems. 

But it was good to see that Brazil and Chile keep moving a little 

bit better up the ladder. 

I hope that you can discuss with us your lessons that your command has learned about combating illicit networking that poses a 

threat to our national security interests, while also encouraging 

Latin American countries to build the capacities to tackle their own 

internal threats. 

Gentlemen, I look forward to your testimonies today, and I thank 

you again for being here with us. 

Mr. Smith. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the Appendix on page 47.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 

WASHINGTON, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And welcome. General Jacoby, it is good to see you again. Fond 

memories of your time commanding out at Fort Lewis. 

And, General Kelly, fond memories of traveling with you when 

you were with the Marine Corps’ Liaison’s Office, and seeing you 

in Iraq after that. 

So it is good to see both of you. Really appreciate your leadership 

throughout your careers and in your current position. 

I think the chairman identified, you know, the top issue for all 

of us in dealing with the budget. And, you know, it is sort of like 

from bad to worse. 

I mean, it is bad enough dealing with the budget environment we 

have now. You know, we did sort of the soft opening for the defense 

budget a couple days ago, and, you know, we are alarmed at some 

of the cuts that were contained in it, which is understandable. 

But that is for the next 2 years, where we have relative stability, 

at least by congressional standards. We passed a budget. We have 

an idea of what the appropriations levels are going to be. 
3 

And remind the committee that there are still on the books now, 

8 years of sequestration after that. And if you are alarmed about 

what the numbers looked like that we saw 2 days ago, and then 

we really need to step up and do something about sequestration, 

sooner rather than later, to, number one, take away the uncertainty that that gives to our, you know, planning apparatus over 

at DOD [Department of Defense], but, number two, to stop those 

bad things from happening. And you know, the longer we wait, the 

worse it is. 

So I am curious, to the extent you know how those budgets will 

affect your two commands. 

On NORTHCOM, you know, your first and chief mission is to 

protect the homeland. We met yesterday, talked a little bit about 

that. Missile defense is a key part of that, so I am curious on your 

update on the status of that, on our national missile defense system. 

Also very interested in our ongoing relationship with Mexico. As 

the chairman mentioned, it continues to be a troublesome area. But 

it is evolving and changing. And I know we have worked fairly 

closely with our Mexican partners in a way that is helpful. Because, obviously, that is a threat to our homeland as well, being 

right across the border. 

Leading into that, SOUTHCOM leads into Mexico. And obviously 

one of the foremost challenges in SOUTHCOM is dealing with the 

drug trade and all the different points of entry that it comes from. 

So curious to get an update on how that is going and in particular the interagency piece, because, obviously, I think as much 

as any of our combatant commanders, General Kelly, you work 

with other agencies to combat the drug problems that come out of 

Latin America. So curious about that. 

And also, of course, curious to get an update on Guantanamo, on 

the cost issues, the health issues for the prisoners down there, how 

it is going and what you see the future of our presence in Guantanamo and the inmates who are there. 

Obviously, there are a ton of other issues, but we will get to 

them in the questions and answering. 

It is great to see both of you. Appreciate your leadership. Look 

forward to your testimony. 

I yield back. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 49.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

General Jacoby. 

STATEMENT OF GEN CHARLES H. JACOBY, JR., USA, COMMANDER, U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND AND NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND 

General JACOBY. Chairman McKeon, Congressman Smith, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity 

to appear before you today. 

It is a pleasure to be here once again with my friend and fellow 

combatant commander, General John Kelly of the U.S. Southern 

Command. 
4 

On behalf of the men and women of U.S. Northern Command 

and North American Aerospace Defense Command, I appreciate 

this committee’s continuing support of our unique and important 

missions. 

As the world grows increasingly volatile and complex, threats to 

our national security are becoming more diffuse and less attributable, while a crisis originating elsewhere in the world can rapidly 

manifest themselves here at home. 

This evolution combined with fiscal constraints demands continuous innovation and transformation within the Armed Forces, the 

national security architecture, and in our two commands. 

And while we must deal realistically with limited budgets, the 

homeland must be appropriately resourced. Security of our citizens 

cannot be compromised. 

We must continue to enhance international partnerships, provide 

defense support to civil authorities, and ensure the defense of the 

Nation and North America. 

USNORTHCOM and NORAD, as the operational commands in 

North America, are critical components of a layered defense of the 

homeland, deterring and responding to threats before they reach 

our shores, threats ranging from aircraft, ballistic missiles, terrorism, transnational criminal organizations, advance submarine 

technologies, and cyber-attacks on our critical infrastructure and 

all the time being prepared to respond in support of our citizens 

in times of their greatest need. 

In the performance of our aerospace missions, including Operation Noble Eagle, NORAD, a unique and proven binational command of Canada and the United States, defends North American 

airspace and safeguards national key terrain by employing a variety of capabilities. 

Now, over the last year, NORAD’s ability to execute its primary 

missions have been subject to increased risk, given the degradation 

of U.S. combat Air Force readiness. 

Now, with vigilance and the support of the Air Force, we have 

been able to sustain our effective day-to-day posture but we remain 

concerned about mid- and long-term readiness challenges. 

With regards to missile defense, tangible evidence of North Korean and Iranian ambitions confirms that the limited ballistic missile threat to the homeland has matured from a theoretical to a 

practical consideration. 

Moreover, we are concerned about the potential for these lethal 

technologies to proliferate to other actors. We are also working 

with the Missile Defense Agency to invest in tailored solution to 

address the challenges that advancing missile technologies impose 

on our current ballistic missile defense system architecture. 

With the decreasing seasonal ice, the Arctic is evolving into a 

true strategic approach to the homeland. As such, we work with 

our premier partner, Canada, and other stakeholders to develop 

our communications, domain awareness, infrastructure, and presence in order to protect economic interest, maritime safety, and our 

freedom of action. 

Defending the homeland in depth requires partnerships with our 

neighbors, Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas. Our futures are in-
5 

extricably bound together and this needs to be a good thing in the 

security context. 

The stronger and safer they are, the stronger our partnerships, 

the safer we all are collectively. And this creates our common competitive security advantage for North America. 

For civil support, USNORTHCOM stands ready to respond to national security events and provides support as a DOD core task to 

lead Federal agencies for manmade or natural disasters and our 

challenge remains to not be late to need. 

Men and women of the USNORTHCOM and NORAD proudly remain vigilant and ready as we stand watch over North America 

and adapt to the uncertainty of the global security environment 

and fiscal realities. 

I am honored to serve as their commander and thank this committee for your support of our important missions. I look forward 

to your questions. 

Thank you. 

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

Appendix on page 51.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. General Kelly. 

STATEMENT OF GEN JOHN F. KELLY, USMC, COMMANDER, 

U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND 

General KELLY. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Smith, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear here 

today and speak to you—— 

The CHAIRMAN. General, can you get that mic right up to you? 

General KELLY. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you 

today and talk about the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines of 

SOUTHCOM but also included in that is a tremendous civilian 

work force that I have there, and that includes contractors. 

I am pleased to be here, of course, with Chuck Jacoby again. I 

want to assure you, as Chuck just did, that there are no seams between NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM. We talk all the time, we coordinate all the time, we have exchanged liaison officers. There is 

no seam. And I know that tends to be a concern sometimes here 

on the Hill. 

I consider myself very, very fortunate, Mr. Chairman, to work in 

this part of the world. Latin America and the Caribbean are some 

of our staunchest allies and willing partners across a broad range 

of issues. 

Most of the countries in Latin America want to work with us, 

they want to be our partners, they want our friendship, they want 

our support, they want to work with us. They want to engage to 

address a broad range of shared concerns. 

For more than 50 years the U.S. Southern Command has done 

exactly that, and that is engage with our partners across the region. We have helped build strong capable military and security 

forces that respect human rights and contribute to regional security. 

We have worked with the interagency and international community to secure the southern approaches of the United States. We 

have accomplished a lot even with minimal and limited resources. 
6 

But severe budget cuts are now reversing this project, I believe, 

and forcing us to accept significant risk. 

Last year we had to cancel more than 200 engagement activities 

and numerous multilateral exercises in Latin America. Because of 

asset shortfalls we are unable to get after 74 percent of suspected 

maritime drug trafficking contacts. 

And because of service cuts, we won’t be able to immediately respond to humanitarian crises or disasters in the region without significant time lost in augmentation required. 

Ultimately, the cumulative effect impact of our reduced engagement won’t be measured in the number of canceled activities and 

reduced deployments, it will be measured in terms of U.S. influence, leadership, relationships in a part of the world where our engagement has made a real and lasting difference over the decades. 

And in the maritime domain, drug traffickers, criminal networks, 

and other actors unburdened by budget cuts or any canceled activities or any employee furloughs will have the opportunity to exploit 

the partnership vacuum left by reduced U.S. military engagement. 

Mr. Chairman, members, I look forward to discussing these and 

many other issues with you this morning. Thank you. 

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

Appendix on page 76.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

On Monday, Secretary Hagel and Chairman Dempsey announced 

the updated defense strategy that builds on the QDR [Quadrennial 

Defense Review] that we will be receiving and the new budget. 

I recognize that you are not at liberty yet to discuss the details 

on that. But it is my expectation that combatant commanders 

should be active participants in the QDR and the budget process. 

With that in mind, what I would like is if you could relate to us 

how you think the new strategy will affect your particular commands? 

General JACOBY. Thank you Chairman. You saw in the Secretary’s soft rollout, he went through some of his critical priorities 

and I was happy to see, as I am sure everybody was, that homeland defenses is articulated as the top priority. 

I think, specifically during the last 4 or 5 months working together as a team with the Secretary, the chairman and their staffs, 

the homeland has been recognized and has received a high priority 

in the evolution of our strategic thinking now. 

And so, that phrase, ‘‘The homeland is defended’’ is critical and 

so, you know, I think we should all be heartened by that. 

I have felt that priority during this very difficult budget years 

where the services have turned themselves inside out to provide 

ready forces for NORAD and for NORTHCOM, but I am mindful 

that that comes at the expense of readiness of other formations 

well into the depth of the service capacities and capabilities. 

So to put it more succinctly, Air Combat Command that provides 

the fighter planes for my Noble Eagle has done its best to give me 

top readiness for those capabilities, but it has come at the expense 

of increased unreadiness across over 50 percent of our combat aircraft fleets. 

So the homeland has received priority. But this is a zero-sum 

game in readiness capabilities. 
7 

The Army has done the same thing. They have paid particular 

attention to our chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear response capability. But again, that has come at the expense of other 

formations that—they are not on the patch chart to finish up the 

work in Afghanistan, their readiness has plummeted. 

So, this has been a tough year for the services. They have tried 

very hard to meet this combatant commander’s requirements. But 

I know it is a tremendous challenge for them. 

We appreciate the bipartisan budget agreement in terms of providing tactical relief, particularly in the readiness categories. But 

that is still inadequate to remove the shadow of sequestration 

which starts back up again and proceeds for another 8 years if 

something is not done. And that will make it near impossible to 

make the quality strategic decisions that will be required for the 

future. 

General KELLY. Sir, of the six combatant commanders, 

SOUTHCOM for at least a couple of decades has really been the 

economy of force combatant command, that is to say it has received 

the least in terms of budget in available assets and things like 

that. 

And frankly, that is okay in the sense that what goes a long way 

in South America, Latin America, the Caribbean, is a little bit. The 

problem with that, however, is if you only get a little bit, and that 

is a lot in terms of what I do, but if you only get a little bit and 

you lose even a little bit of that, it really does severely impact you, 

and I think if all of the combatant commanders, all of us, our responsibility is to protect the homeland—ultimately to protect the 

homeland, I think the last place you want to do that is where 

Chuck Jacoby lives, on the borders. 

Chuck oftentimes talks of winning the away game and we do 

that very, very well. The U.S. military, the interagency I think has 

won the away game consistently in the last 10 or 12 years. 

But in my part of the world, because it is the economy of force 

effort, and as we pivot to other parts of the world that are deemed 

more important to the defense of the United States, as I lose a little, I really do lose a lot. 

Hopefully that answers your question, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. General Kelly, when you talk about losing a little 

bit of a little bit, one of the big concerns I have is the amount of 

drugs that you have been able to interdict with a little bit. And 

then when you take away some of that capacity, what do you see 

ahead of us if—I know the percentage of drugs that you have been 

able to interdict versus what law enforcement that spends a whole 

lot more money within our borders is able to interdict, that is a pittance compared to how much you have been able to stop before it 

gets to our shores or across our borders. 

If you lose the ability to interdict there, don’t we see a flood of 

drugs coming into this nation? 

General KELLY. You know, the short answer to that, yes sir, we 

do, we will. The drug effort in—the vast majority of all drugs that 

are imported into the United States come up through Latin America and—or are produced in Latin American and then flow into 

Mexico and across the border somewhere along the line. 
8 

The key is, we have tremendous intelligence in terms of the production and the flow of drugs. I will use cocaine, as an example, 

of cocaine out of Colombia. And they do—the Colombians, heroic 

amounts of work in taking cocaine off of the market or eradicating 

the growth of cocoa, arresting criminals. Tremendous work. I can’t 

give them enough credit. 

Panama, very similar. But we have very, very good clarity on the 

movement when it leaves continental Latin America and as it flows 

up the isthmus, which is the traffic pattern of choice. 

But if you don’t have airborne ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and 

reconnaissance] to pick it up as it is moving across the ocean, and 

if you then don’t have legal enforcement—police enforcement, law 

enforcement to do the end game thing, you simply don’t get it. 

So the example I would give you, in 2011 we got 172 metric tons 

of cocaine, tons of cocaine, before it ever reached shore in Honduras 

or in Latin America. Last year, 2012, because of a lack of assets, 

152 tons. That is 20 tons that got by us—20 more tons. This year 

they just finished 132 tons. It is all about ships, ISR—and not 

many ships. 

Typically, today we have on station four ships. One of which is 

a British oiler. A key point that can fly a helicopter. That British 

oiler, in 6 months, will get 20 tons or 30 tons of cocaine that is 

flowing into the United States. But, sir it is almost a scientific 

equation: Less ships, less cocaine off the market. 

By the way, when I get it, I get it—and it is an interagency process, DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], DOJ [Department of 

Justice], I mean, it is just not DOD doing this. In fact, we are to 

a large degree in support of the effort. But, at the end of the day, 

we get all of this tonnage, we spend 1.5 percent of the counternarcotics budget we get—again this year or last year we got 132 

metric tons, zero violence, we get them 2 to 5 tons at a time. 

Once it is ashore and on its way up through Mexico, it is virtually in the United States, and no matter how hard our very, very 

heroic border patrol and law enforcement people in the United 

States work, best case, they will get 30 tons in the course of a year 

with unbelievable violence—as you well know—done against our 

country, our citizens. 

And, at the end of the day—the end of the year, year after year, 

40,000 Americans die from these drugs, every year. It costs America $26 billion a year to go after these drugs from a law enforcement point of view. It costs America $200 billion in primarily 

healthcare costs—for a fraction of that, in fact, for 1.6 percent of 

that, I can get the vast majority of drugs—cocaine, to use the example, flowing up from Latin America. 

General JACOBY. Mr. Chairman, if John doesn’t get it—if he 

doesn’t catch it in the transit zone, and we know that the transit 

zone is not the only place to work, it is just a place to work—but 

he gets it in bulk. If it hits the shore in Mexico or into the upper 

portions of Central America and then crosses into Mexico it is broken into very small loads and it is almost impossible to do effective 

interdiction. 

Nonetheless, our partners on the border have intercepted—interdicted 39 percent more drugs over the last 3 years. So they are 

doing their job, it is just an incredibly difficult job. And that is why 
9 

so much of our effort now together is thinking about, how do we 

put pressure on the networks, how do we put pressure on the organization and the men and women that are trafficking these materials, as well as the interdictive effect. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, both, for the efforts you are making, 

and I want to make sure the committee as we go through the process really focuses in on this and makes sure that all we can do to 

make sure that the resources are there to cut this as close to the 

source and as far from our borders as we can. 

So just one other thing that I want to mention. I know there has 

been a lot of focus since the Secretary and General Dempsey did 

this rollout and there has been a lot of focus on the Army end 

strength of 440,000 and people have been very, very concerned 

about that, because the feeling that it is the smallest Army since 

just before World War II. 

I want to just make one thing very clear, that 440,000 is a number if sequestration goes away. And I don’t know any way that that 

is going to happen. But, what we are really looking it is 420,000 

when sequestration comes back in at the end of the budget agreement that was just worked out. 

So thank you very much. 

Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Jacoby, can you tell us a little more about what is going 

on with the Mexican drug war. We just had a high-profile capture 

of Joaquin Guzman as a positive success. I think you mentioned 

there has been a significant increase in vigilante groups, you know, 

trying to combat the drug trade, you know, I guess a relatively new 

government in Mexico. 

What is the update on how that is going in your view? And then, 

specifically the cooperation between your folks and the Mexican authorities? 

General JACOBY. Thank you, sir. 

I think the Chapo capture really illustrates the commitment this 

administration—this Mexican administration to continuing the 

fight against the cartels themselves. And so this is very important. 

We talked about—just now talked about the difficulties of doing 

this by interdiction alone. We have got to find ways to put pressure 

on these networks. As the President rightly said in July of 2011, 

you know, this is a national security threat to us, and it is exceeding the capacity of all of our partner law enforcement agencies. 

And that is why you see so many militaries in the region—to include the Mexican militaries—committed to this fight. 

To that end, the Pen ̃ a Nieto administration has been able to take 

Chapo off the street, the Sinaloa Gulf Cartel leader or the Gulf 

Cartel leader and the Zeta Cartel leader. So that is—the top three 

organizations have lost their top leadership over the last year. 

That is significant, and it is necessary. It is not sufficient though. 

We have to continue to pressure the rest of the networks, because 

they have a resilience and a depth to those organizations that 

allow the next-leader-up capacity within them. 

But I am heartened and applaud their efforts and the contributions that the Mexican military has made in this important fight. 
10 

Our relationship with the Mexican military has continued to improve. They have asked for—we have worked with them and provided training, all kinds of partnering, things that we do together 

that really are as broad and rich as any of our strategic security 

partners. 

So we have trained with over 5,000 Mexican soldiers and marines in the last year, and over the last 3 years it has been almost 

a 500 percent increase in the number of things that we do together 

that they have asked for us to do with them. 

And it is a rich exchange and we are benefiting from it as much 

as they are. So there is a lot of work to be done. The threat is 

adaptable. It is empowered by its wealth and the violence that they 

are willing to commit on their own people. And so this is a long 

tough fight, and in the end it is a law enforcement solution at the 

very end of this effort. 

And so we are going to continue partnering with them. These are 

common security concerns. But, I think the Chapo capture just 

highlights the continued commitment—that is the important part— 

the continued commitment to a very, very tough fight and a very 

expensive fight. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

And, General Kelly, on Guantanamo. Do you have an estimate 

right now what the per prisoner cost is maintaining the Guantanamo prison facility? 

General KELLY. Yes sir, based on what I spend down there— about $130 million a year, that comes out to—we got 155 detainees 

now. That is probably $750,000 a year. There is another figure out 

there that is bigger than what I spend that takes in every single 

kind of penny that is spent at Guantanamo, but that is more of a— 

I won’t speak to that figure. It is larger, it is about $400 million. 

But, in terms of what I spend down there to detain 155 prisoners 

right now and take care of them medically and all of that, it is 

about $750,000 a piece. 

Mr. SMITH. And as that population ages, can you talk a little 

more about the medical challenges? 

Now, as I understand it, you provide the best care you can within, you know, what is available in Guantanamo, which is quite a 

bit, but there is still limitation given where it is at, but to bring 

in outside specialists—you can’t take any of the prisoners off of the 

base, so you would have to bring them in. 

So, as the population is aging, how are the costs being affected? 

And how do you handle some of those medical challenges in dealing 

with the inmates’ medical needs? 

General KELLY. Sir, any medical care that is not available on the 

island—we have done this now since we have had detention operations down there—we bring in medical folks—military medical 

folks, typically from Norfolk or Charleston, fly them down there, 

and we do it routinely. 

If, as time goes by, these men start having some of the—you 

know, the typical things associated with getting older and they are 

more chronic, we would do the same thing, but it does take a while 

to get them down there. So as time goes on I am not so sure the 

medical care will increase, but the medical care beyond what is on 

the island would not be available to them. 
11 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, more problematic. 

Okay, thank you, that is all I have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Thornberry. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you both for being here. 

I would like to get y’all’s views on two issues during the limited 

time I have. 

First is, Secretary Hagel and Chairman McKeon have both announced efforts to reduce bureaucracy and overhead both at the 

Pentagon and at combatant commands. And so I would be interested in y’all’s view about what should guide us as we look at having more efficiency, more agility, lower costs at all of the combatant 

commands, from your perspective? 

General JACOBY. Thanks, Congressman. 

That was really the opening round of ways to make savings in 

order to be in compliance with the law. And so first thing out of 

the chute, it was a stretch goal and we were directed to reduce— 

over 5 years—20 percent in our combatant commands. And so we 

understood that, that was our share of the load and we have proceeded on that path. We have all submitted plans on how we are 

going to do that, and we are committed to making those reductions 

and those efficiencies. 

Now, I want to say, sir, that, you know, it was a very difficult 

year for us, it was a difficult year especially for our civilians who 

we furloughed and then who bore the brunt of the government 

shutdown. And, you know, we have worked tirelessly for decades 

to build an effective team with our civilians. And so they had a 

tough year. 

And so this first year or so we are committed to not removing 

civilians from the workforce any more than attrition and not filling 

positions that have remained empty. And that is our commitment 

to them and we are going to try to keep that commitment. 

We have done some minor reorganizations in the command. To 

a large extent, we have passed missions and requirements to components. But I will tell you that our components also took drastic 

cuts. 

So there is quite a bit of work being done to gain efficiencies, to 

do it logically, to do it in a manner that allows us to continue accomplishing our missions. Because for a combatant commander, 

our guiding light is what is our mission, what are we expected to 

accomplish, and how do we continue to accomplish those missions 

in the best way possible. 

One of the things I do is I write plans. I write major plans that 

are directed by the President and by the Secretary of Defense and 

that takes staff work. And that takes manpower. And so, you know, 

this is—you don’t do, you know, more with less. You do less. And 

you do it slower and you don’t get it done on time. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, sir. 

General Kelly, do you have something to add? And I want to get 

to the other issues. 

General KELLY. I just want to echo Chuck’s comments about the 

workforce and what, you know, the knothole we pulled them 

through last year. No one deserves to go through that and I pray 
12 

that we don’t ever do that again. They are hardworking people. I 

don’t have a lot of extra people working at SOUTHCOM. They 

come early. They stay late. They do a lot of great work. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Okay. Thank you. 

General Kelly, let me start with you on the second issue. There 

was a change in the appropriations bill on human rights vetting for 

the current year, which basically expands it from just those retrained to those who retrain, equip, or provide other assistance. 

There is concern that there is not enough people at the State Department to vet these people; that it is all going to get balled up. 

The default position is going to be to deny. 

I would be interested in your thoughts, if your folks have had a 

chance to look at the effect of this change on your ability to help 

train, equip, assist our partners in your region. 

General KELLY. Let me start, Congressman, by saying this, that 

the human rights record, and I meet with human rights groups 

here in Washington frequently and every time I go into a Latin 

American country, in almost every case I will meet with human 

rights groups. Some of them are very hostile; some of them less 

hostile, if you will. So I have got an open door to human rights. 

Generally speaking, what they tell me is today the people we 

work with are generally following the human rights rule. And I 

would tell you, a lot of people talk about human rights in the 

world. The U.S. military does human rights. We will not work with 

someone who violates human rights in Latin America. And I think 

that goes around the world. So that is the first point. 

The second point is we are already very, very restricted in who 

we work with. I look to human rights all of the time, but I will tell 

you the reason why the human rights record is getting better and 

better and better in Latin American countries, and in some cases 

very, very good, is because of the effect the U.S. military has had 

in working with them over the last few decades. 

To your point about the new legislation, we don’t know what it 

means yet. We are literally standing by to let the lawyers then tell 

us what it means. So, I have got to think it was written to be more 

restrictive, so I am assuming it will be more restrictive for us, but 

we are waiting for the general counsel in the Department of Defense, I am sure are working with the Congress, to figure out what 

exactly the words mean and what we can do in the future. 

General JACOBY. Mr. Chairman—I am sorry, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Gallego. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

There is a time in the life of every problem where it is already 

big enough to see, but it is still small enough to solve. And it seems 

to me that what I understood you all to say is that an investment 

early-on, closer to the source in South America, before any of the 

drugs or before they hit Mexico in particular, is the best investment of our money. 

Is there some data that you all can share with the committee 

that would back that up? 

General JACOBY. Thank you, sir. 

Particularly in the distribution part of the enterprise, I think 

that is exactly the case. But there is more than the distribution 
13 

side of the drug problem. There is the production side, but there 

is also the finance side and the leadership side and the consumption side. And so I think that our point, one of our larger points 

to make on this is that this is a series of threat networks that are 

dealing in illicit activity. And the primary money winner for them 

right now is drugs. But when you put pressure on the drug piece, 

they go into kidnapping and extortion and the transit of illegals. 

And so these are powerful and rich organizations, which I think 

we need to make a concerted effort across those networks. But on 

the distribution side, it is very much better to work the distribution 

portion of the criminal enterprise early in the chain. But I think 

it is a larger issue than that, sir. 

Mr. GALLEGO. General Kelly. 

General KELLY. Yes, Congressman. This network that brings 

things to the United States, it is incredibly efficient. It is more efficient than FedEx [Federal Express] could ever hope to be. And anything can travel on it. Most of what travels on it is drugs—heroin, 

methamphetamines, cocaine. But people travel on it, all sorts of 

guns travel on it, money travels on it. It is incredibly effective. It 

is just now drugs are the big money-maker for them. 

As I mentioned a little earlier, I spend 1.5 percent of the 

counternarcotic budget—1.5 percent. I get the vast majority of cocaine with no violence in large amounts. And we capture these traffickers, bring them to the U.S. court system, and they cooperate to 

a man. And we gain a great deal of intelligence from them. 

I can see, when I say ‘‘I,’’ SOUTHCOM and Joint Interagency 

Task Force South in Key West, we can see it with amazing clarity, 

this drug movement. But 74 percent of it, I watch go by. I can’t 

touch it. And when I say I watch it go by, in the maritime domain 

to Honduras primarily, because I don’t have the assets to stop it. 

Mr. GALLEGO. The district that I represent in Texas is a little 

over two-thirds, I think, of the Texas border with Mexico. So this 

is a huge issue for me at home. And I wonder, are you—can you 

tell me, if you were to compare, for example, how many tons of 

drugs were caught by law enforcement in the U.S. side versus how 

much was caught in Mexico versus how much was caught before, 

how would those numbers compare? You know, drugs caught before 

they land in Mexico; drugs caught in Mexico; and drugs caught in 

the U.S., how would those numbers compare? 

General KELLY. I got 132 tons last year. Let me start at the beginning. 

The Colombians, again, just can’t give them enough credit; 200 

tons and eradicated 40,000 acres of coca before it was ever harvested. I got 132 tons in the transit zone before it got to Honduras. 

Almost nothing is taken off the flow between Honduras and the 

Mexican border. You know—a handful of tons. 

Last year, and it is up big-time, but our border officials on both 

sides of the border, we think that about—we got about, all around 

the country, we got about 30 tons. So—— 

Mr. GALLEGO. Their 30 tons all around the country, in comparison to your 132 tons. 

General KELLY. 132 tons. And again, the cost is I get it for 1.6 

percent of the budget; zero violence. And you have to keep thinking 

about the violence, because once it gets ashore, it is—you can use 
14 

Honduras as an example—it is the most dangerous country on the 

planet. Guatemala is almost as dangerous; 70,000 Mexican deaths 

in the last 7 years I think in their drug fight. And then when it 

gets into the United States, just the local violence of distribution, 

dealing this stuff, it is just incredibly violent. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Thank you so much. I want to thank each of you 

for what you do. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Kline. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here, for your testimony. 

I want to pick up a little bit where I think Mr. Smith was. I had 

to step out for a few minutes to talk to some disabled American 

veterans, which we also need to keep in mind, as well as those still 

serving. 

I think probably both of you know, it has been in my mind, and 

I have spoken in hearings before and tried to move some legislation 

looking at ways that we might be able to combine or eliminate 

some of the COCOMs [combatant commands], frankly. 

So let me, with that sort of thinking in mind, let me address both 

of you for just a minute. I look here at NORTHCOM and 

SOUTHCOM particularly. NORTHCOM has responsibility for support for domestic disaster relief efforts; support for counterdrug 

and counterterrorism efforts; support for domestic WMD [weapons 

of mass destruction] incident response, and consequence management support, too; and DOD liaison with law enforcement agencies, 

and support for events of national significance. 

All important, no doubt. None of those are what we would call 

traditional warfighting. 

SOUTHCOM, General, with all respect, there is sort of no potentially state-on-state conflict down there, although we obviously 

watch Venezuela pretty closely. One never knows. But you have got 

countering transnational organized crime, building partner capacity, planning for contingencies—always a good thing I guess—including responding to a natural disaster, mass migration event, attack on the Panama Canal, or evacuating American citizens. 

So, as General Jacoby says, he does a lot of planning. And I assume, General Kelly, that you do as well, and that you are able to 

keep those plans secret. But I am wondering, it does seem to me 

that in these times when we are talking about, as advertised, 

shrinking the Army back to pre-World War II levels. And General 

Kelly, I know you have got your purple suit on, but if I can sort 

of see the green suit through there, you know what is happening 

to the Marine Corps and how it is shrinking in size. That we ought 

to be giving serious consideration to combining or consolidating 

some of these commands. We have two four-stars sitting here. You 

undoubtedly have some two- or three-stars in the organization. You 

have got a lot of SES’s [Senior Executive Service] and all of those 

things that it sure seems to me would make sense to seriously consider combining some COCOMs. 

And so I know neither one of you wants to rat out your COCOM 

here, but why couldn’t we, if not specifically for you, generically do 

some combining of these major commands? And I don’t care—we 

can start with either one of you. 
15 

General JACOBY. Thank you, sir. 

I think we are in an environment where we have to take all of 

these potential efficiencies seriously. This particular idea has been 

examined at least three times in major ways by the GAO [Government Accountability Office] and others, and by the Department of 

Defense since the early 2000s. It was reexamined again. 

But I think that you have to look beyond just the question of how 

can I gain efficiencies. It really has to do with your strategy, and 

how do you execute your strategy. And so it is part of the U.S. 

strategy to continue to engage the world and to defend our interests and deter and address instability around the world with our 

global—our geographic combatant commanders. 

In the homeland, we have looked at this closely. My most important relationships on a day-to-day basis are 50 governors and then 

throw in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. 

And so that is a wide audience and number of folks that we are 

working with across all the defense support, the civil authority 

tasks that we do. 

But I also have a very, very intensive homeland defense task 

which I think is growing because of the growing threats and vulnerability to our countries. And so my responsibilities range all the 

way from nuclear command and control to ICBM [intercontinental 

ballistic missile] missile defense requirements, cruise missile requirements and all those are going up, they are not going down. 

And then there is something different and important about the 

partnerships that we have on the approaches to the homeland. The 

Arctic is going to be more of an approach to the homeland, it is 

going to be a strategic approach to the homeland and is going to 

require the same Defense Department interest and engagement 

and activity that any of the approaches to the homeland have and 

any of the bodies of water in which we want to have a safe, competitive advantage. 

Canada and Mexico are not just partners, they are neighbors and 

they are integral to the defense of our homeland, and I think that 

that makes it a special case and not just another couple of countries for us to engage with. 

So I think that it is important to examine these things. It was 

examined. We are not making a major strategic shift. And so I 

think that that is off the table for now. 

But if sequestration comes, if it continues, we are going to have 

to go back to the well across all of the dimensions of the strategy. 

Thank you sir. 

Mr. KLINE. All right. I see my time has expired. Mr. Chairman, 

sequestration is here so it is important that you added the—if it 

continues and General Kelly you don’t get a chance to defend 

SOUTHCOM, but I assume that you would tell us that it couldn’t 

be consolidated either. 

If that is not right, start shaking your head and I will find a way 

to get back to you. 

Okay. 

General KELLY. I should—I think there should be a 

SOUTHCOM, even if there was only the combatant commander. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. KLINE. I yield back. 
16 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Enyart. 

Mr. ENYART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Kelly, I am sure you are familiar with the great successes of the National Guard State Partnership Program in Central 

Europe and incorporating the former Warsaw Pact nations. Many— 

most of them now into NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] 

and of the great contributions those nations have made in our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

And I know that Colombia now has a State Partnership Program 

and I am wondering what future nations may adopt a State Partnership Program? And how you see the future of that impacting 

your operations in SOUTHCOM? 

General KELLY. State Partnership Programs, I think I have 24 

of them in the region. They are important to me, that is exactly the 

kind of—particularly I think for my part of the world, a little bit 

goes a long, long way. 

So to have some great National Guard folks come down and work 

for a short period of time with one of the—you know, one of the 

host countries in some way. And these are small—as you know, 

these are small contact points. But it really does go a long way to 

tie the United States in general to these countries. 

So they are pretty important to me in—right now that I don’t 

think we have anyone that is expanding. In fact, unfortunately, I 

think it is Kentucky and Ecuador—the Ecuadorians are kind of— 

somewhat cool to our presence right now, so they are not having 

the opportunity to do very much. 

But certainly I would be open to any country in the region wanting to have a relationship with one of our National Guard States. 

Mr. ENYART. Generally, I know we have seen a lot of headlines 

recently about the instability in Venezuela. And I am wondering 

how you view that as impacting the wider relationships in South 

America? 

General KELLY. I mean, I think, you know, as we watch what is 

happening in Venezuela, the economy is, to say the least, in trouble 

and there is obviously discontent there. 

But they are not having an awful lot of political impact, I don’t 

believe, with the countries that surround them. Generally speaking, there are a few countries, the ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for 

the Americas] countries that are somewhat associated with them. 

One of the concerns I do have though is that the Venezuelans traditionally have given a great deal of petroleum, oil to a number of 

countries, Cuba as a example, Nicaragua, some other countries, at 

almost give-away—at literally give-away prices. 

If they can’t continue that and they are already talking about 

perhaps not being able to continue it, these countries could not get 

by with buying fuel, you know, in kind of the global rates. So we 

would see some issues there. And again, a lot of these countries, 

Cuba’s economy is kind of close to the edge. 

If they were to have to start spending a significantly large 

amount of money for fossil fuels, that would have an impact on 

their economy. 

And when countries in Latin America—I think almost in countries anywhere, when the economies start to go south, the migrants 

start to move north, if you will. And that would be my concern. 
17 

Other countries like Haiti that get virtually all of their fuel from 

Venezuela, an economy that is teetering on the edge, they just 

couldn’t afford it. And there are a number of other countries like 

that that depend on the petroleum products that they get from 

Venezuela at, as I say, almost give-away prices. 

So I am concerned about that because the migration piece is part 

of the one of the things I have to think about. 

Mr. ENYART. General Jacoby, I don’t want to give you a free ride. 

So I will drop down and I have some more for General Kelly. 

But General, as the Army draws down from the winding down 

of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, do you believe that it is necessary for the security of NORTHCOM and for the homeland that 

the Army have a rapidly expansible capability, that is that it could 

grow back rapidly in the event that we need to? 

General JACOBY. Thanks, Congressman. 

I think that historically, expansible Army has been part of how 

we have approached defense. I think the requirements today for 

readiness and for deployability are higher than they ever have been 

historically. 

So I think there is a different construct. But I think that having 

the ability to expand the force in times of crisis has been a historical mechanism that we have always sought to have. 

Mr. ENYART. I am sure, General, that the 50 governors that you 

referenced before as well as the governors of Puerto Rico and the 

Virgin Islands would support you in that—support you in maintaining a strong and ready National Guard. 

General JACOBY. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Mr. ENYART. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to point out that we have a former 

chairman in the room, Chairman Hunter, want to really make it 

welcoming for former chairmen around here. 

[Laughter.] 

[Applause.] 

Dr. Heck. 

Dr. HECK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

To General Jacoby, first, thanks for what you are doing at 

NORTHCOM and keeping the homeland safe. I had the great 

honor of being able to serve at NORTHCOM, first under General 

Eberhart and then under Admiral Keating, way back before we actually hit FOC [full operational capability]. 

My question has to do with the dual status commander program. 

Can you give me an update on how well that is working, progress, 

how it is functioning, any obstacles and any cases where it has 

been utilized and whether it was a success or not? 

General JACOBY. Doctor, thanks, thanks for that question. 

You know, the dual status commander was a very, very positive 

step forward that the Council of Governors and the Department 

worked together on and the Congress enabled for us. 

And we have used it over 16 times since I have been in command 

and 4 times over the last year to great effect. 

And what I find so exciting about it actually is how much flexibility and adaptability it gives me and it gives the governors and 

the adjutants general in providing support and are—a vast array 

of civil support tasks from national specialist security events like 
18 

the Super Bowl to an emergent disaster like Colorado flooding and 

wildfires. 

And we have been successful using dual status commanders, who 

have actually this year incorporated title 10 forces right next to 

guardsman and State Active Duty in title 32 to great success. 

So it is a super program. Right now, this year we trained over 

200—we have trained over 200 now, dual status commanders and 

every State has multiple dual status commanders and we have 

begun training some title 10 senior leaders so that we can provide 

title 10 deputies or title 10 dual status commanders tremendous 

flexibility. 

Another thing that we have done is we have instituted training 

update programs for as things evolve and change. So it is a very 

positive program and I think it has built great trust and confidence 

amongst the States and NORTHCOM. 

Dr. HECK. During the time it has been used, have there been 

both title 10 and title 32 commanders, or has it all been title 32 

functioning in dual status? 

General JACOBY. It has all been title 32, except for on a couple 

of occasions we have had a title 10. And historically it has been a 

title 10 for the Boy Scout Jamboree. 

But the vast majority, as is the direction of the statute, is the 

customary and usual way that we command it is with a National 

Guards commander. 

Dr. HECK. Thank you. And General Kelly, likewise, for everything that you are doing in trying to keep illicit drugs from hitting 

our shores. 

You know there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not 

we should start changing our focus from drugs that are being produced in other countries, to more of the prescription drug abuse 

problem that we see here in the United States. 

More people are dying from prescription drugs than they are 

from cocaine and heroin, combined. 

If that argument takes hold, how do you see—I mean, and you 

are doing this at a very small cost to the overall drug control budget. If you start seeing a shifting of focus to perhaps more prescription drug abuse problems, how do you see that impacting your ability to do the work that you are doing? 

General KELLY. You are spot-on with the abuse of prescription 

drugs. But that is actually reversing now because of the various 

regulations and what-not that the government has put in place to 

control the amount of drugs that are prescribed. 

They have done some things to the drugs to make sure that they 

are not injectable, things like that. So we actually see the use of 

prescription drugs going, for a lot of reasons as I say. And it is 

very, very expensive and so what we see replacing prescription 

drugs is heroin. 

Infinitely cheaper. A single OxyContin pill in an upscale neigh- borhood in the United States could cost $80 to $100. In an inner 

city neighborhood, the same pill could cost maybe $60. A bag of cocaine—a bag of heroin, $7 or $8. 

So we are seeing more and more heroin—in fact there is a, I 

think, been a 60 percent increase in the use of heroin in the country in just the last couple of years. So the good news is prescription 
19 

drugs are going down in terms of abuse. The very, very bad news 

is heroin is going up and unlike in the past, upscale neighborhoods—and if you just read recently the kind of deaths we have 

seen, it is really tragic to me that it has to be some high public 

face individual, usually, you know, an actor or something to die— 

I mean, it is tens of thousands of young kids from the cities that 

have been dying from heroin and drugs in general. And no one 

seems to have cared very much. 

So I guess it is good that we have had a couple high publicity 

deaths so that now people are starting to take notice. But all of 

that heroin comes out of Latin America, up through Mexico. The 

poppies are grown in Latin America. We don’t get heroin from overseas anymore; it is all done. 

These drug networks that we are talking about, and Chuck has 

referenced, are so good at what they do—they are just international 

businessmen, the worst kind though, and they are just—they diversify, they go after whatever they make a profit. 

Dr. HECK. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Jacoby, General Kelly thank you for being here today, 

and for your service to our Nation. And I hope you will express our 

appreciation to all those who are under your command for the work 

that they do every day to keep our country safe. 

General Jacoby, if I could start with you, we are all aware of the 

growing challenges of maintaining security in cyberspace. Which is 

a—obviously a recurring theme that we have been talking about 

quite a bit. 

A 2013 report from the Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation concluded that, and I quote—‘‘Network defenses are insufficient to protect against a determined or well-resourced cyber adversary and war fighter missions should be considered at moderate to 

high risk until they can be demonstrated to be resilient in a contested cyber environment,’’ end quote. 

General, could you share your perspective on the cyber threat to 

domestic security operations and also to elaborate on how the 

NORAD–NORTHCOM Joint Cyber Center is collaborating with civilian and military partners in cyberspace? 

General JACOBY. Thanks, Congressman. I thought Director Clapper’s testimony was really helpful on this in highlighting his concerns about the cyber threat, and those are echoed here in the 

homeland. 

I mean, the cyber nets that are most vulnerable and most important to us are the ones that reside in the homeland. In our case, 

we have our mission nets which are critical for the defense of the 

Nation. So their defense is essential and to address that, we have 

received and are standing up our first Cyber Protect Team, 28 

trained soldiers and airmen with NSA [National Security Agency] 

training, CYBERCOM [U.S. Cyber Command] training. 

And so we also work hard to try to exercise in a cyber-challenged 

environment with specially trained red teams. So it is understanding our own vulnerabilities as well as understanding the 
20 

threat at the same time. We are working hard. There are a lot of 

legacy systems out there that didn’t have the cyber mission assurance that we might have put in today in the past so there is some 

catch-up to do as well. 

And we are busily working on that. 

I would say it is critical in our country that we develop relationships and partnerships that the President has laid out in his recent 

executive order on cybersecurity, to ensure that we understand the 

interdependencies between private, commercial, and government 

systems and we understand how to share information in a way that 

doesn’t disadvantage our civilian—commercial partners. And to 

that end we have a very close working relationship with DHS [Department of Homeland Security], which really has the bulk of our 

cybersecurity partnerships and concerns and also with the FBI 

[Federal Bureau of Investigation] as we have concerns with what 

is illegal activity. 

I think, in the future, we are building structure total force solutions to this in keeping with the blueprint from CYBERCOM on 

what we think the requirements are in the future. I believe that 

we are going to require legislation, policy, and regulations that 

help us understand the mission space and that brighten up the 

lines in the road for the Department of Defense, but we are making 

progress to that end in terms of understanding our vulnerabilities 

and developing our requirements. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you for your focus on this, General. It is 

obviously important. 

The same DOT&E [Director of Operational Test and Evaluation] 

report observed that, and I quote—‘‘Less than one-third of all fielded systems observed in assessments over the past 5 years have had 

a current inter-operability certifications,’’ end quote. 

What has NORTHCOM been doing to improve operability and information sharing about cybersecurity threats and network system 

defenses? 

General JACOBY. We really are looking at ways to improve within 

the command, and then between our partners. 

I will tell you that one of the important challenges is to ensure 

we are interoperable in the NORAD realm with Canada. That relationship with Canada allows us to highlight really the interdependencies and relationships between countries in our networks, between systems in our networks like energy systems and transportation systems. And so, you know, we are doing work as NORAD 

with our Canadian partners to make sure we understand those 

linkages and vulnerabilities. 

Really, the lead agency for the Department is CYBERCOM in 

terms of ensuring the standards in which we secure. And I think 

that they are doing a good job in getting that word out, and by 

helping us stand up our Joint Cyber Center and helping us with 

key subject matter experts we are going to continue to work to 

meet those standards. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Time expired. 

Mr. Conaway. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
21 

Gentlemen, thank you. If you have already answered this question, I apologize, but General Kelly let me get your thoughts on extremist elements within Central America—within South and Central America, particularly Venezuela, and what foothold they might 

or might not be getting. 

Islamic jihadists. 

General KELLY. Yes, there is some activity. 

There is an awful lot of proselytizing and missionary work if you 

will, but Iran has expanded—I think we addressed this last year 

in the hearing—expanding their presence in Latin America. Don’t 

really know what they are up to. Not really well received by many 

governments with the exception of Venezuela. 

So we watch it, but no real threat right now from that vector. 

But, something obviously to watch. 

Mr. CONAWAY. All right. I apologize for not being here. I will replow any new ground, but again thank you very much for both 

your service. 

And I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And General Jacoby and General Kelly, thank you very much for 

your service. 

There has been a lot of talk about interdiction today and I wanted to focus on Secretary of Defense Hagel’s announcement—discussion on Tuesday about the curtailment of the Navy’s planned LCS 

[littoral combat ship] purchases from 52 to 32. 

Obviously, we are not anywhere near that right now, but in light 

of all that we have talked about this morning and the fact that 

South American drug traffickers are increasingly using semisubmersibles to traffic drugs into the U.S.–NORTHCOM area of operations, how do you think that this cutback if you will in terms 

of purchases would effect the effort? 

Is that part of what you are talking about of needing resources 

to fight this? 

General KELLY. Congresswoman, you know, I don’t own a lot of 

forces. Decisions made in the Pentagon as to where, in this case, 

ships would flow—to pivot the Pacific as an example, or to the Persian Gulf—so those decisions made inside the Pentagon. I get what 

I get. And I would just say, you know, more ships are better. Less 

ships are worse. 

I need a platform—I do my best work—the interagency does its 

best work in terms of getting massive amounts of cocaine out of the 

network flowing, I need a helicopter and I need a ship that the helicopter can land on. 

I don’t need an aircraft carrier; in fact, I will take an oiler if it 

has a helipad where a helicopter can operate from or a Coast 

Guard cutter, they do magnificent work and really are the lead 

agency in my part of the world in terms of law enforcement aspect 

of this thing. 

But I need some kind of platforms and the decision is made, it 

has been made now for a number of years, that SOUTHCOM 

doesn’t get what it has asked for. That is a decision I won’t criticize. 
22 

But, if you are asking, could I use more ships and take out more 

product off the network, I would say yes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. But I guess, just generally though, I mean, if there 

are a number of platforms perhaps—are you suggesting that maybe 

the LCS isn’t as critical perhaps or that even the number of 52 

would not have—would be more than or—is there—— 

General KELLY. Again, not to speak about LCS, I need a ship 

that can land a helicopter on it. Right now, one of the things—one 

of the ships in my part of the world that is just doing yeoman work 

is a British oiler; doesn’t have a gun on it, but it has got a helipad 

and the helicopter can refuel there. And it is doing—and that helicopter is doing great work. 

Mrs. DAVIS. All right, thank you. 

General Jacoby, also talking about some of the concerns that we 

have had about expandability. There is a potential reorganization 

of the National Guard’s aviation units and I am wondering how 

you feel that that would effect the ability that you have as the 

USNORTHCOM commander. 

Would it make a difference in your ability to fulfill the defense 

and support of civil authorities—— 

General JACOBY. Yes, I am aware of the initiatives that the Army 

has been forced to take, and I know that these are, you know, tremendously difficult decisions that the chief and the Secretary had 

to make. And I have great respect for the challenge they have had 

trying to navigate that. 

In particular, I think that the—from the NORTHCOM commander perspective, I am a requirements guy, and so I don’t have 

the need for an armed Apache in the homeland, but I will take 

more Black Hawks. And I will take more LUHs [light utility helicopters] and I think the Army plan gives more Black Hawks and 

more LUHs so that supports the homeland. And I don’t need armed 

attack aviation in the homeland. 

But it is not as simple as that. I know that. And so my hat goes 

off to the Army for being able to manage scarce resources in order 

to create the most combat-effective total force. 

But my requirement? I will pick Black Hawks. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Do you feel that your voice is heard in that? 

General JACOBY. Sure. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Okay. 

General JACOBY. Thank you. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, I want to be sure that you are having the input 

and that it is making a difference. 

Thank you. 

General JACOBY. Well, yes, ma’am. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Okay. And also just, General Kelly, there is talk 

about the USS Comfort not deploying this year. How will that affect your priorities and the humanitarian efforts? 

General KELLY. Very briefly. I know we are running out of time. 

But the Comfort is a really, really big engagement deal in Latin 

America. They look forward to it. It has huge impact on the local 

communities that it visits. And it really does—it really is appreciated. And it is a great image of what the United States does for 

the world—a big American flag but no guns. And that is—the 
23 

places it visits, it has huge impact. And to have lost that this year 

was very, very disappointing. 

Mrs. DAVIS. All right. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, both of you made comments about our civilian workforce. I want to thank you for those comments and your commitment to that workforce. I represent Robins Air Force Base and 

Moody Air Force Base. And I can tell you when you talk with that 

workforce that is out there supporting the warfighter, they feel exactly the way your comments—your written comments reflect. And 

we need to make sure that we are taking care of them. So I appreciate your comments in recognizing them, and your commitment to 

them. 

Moody Air Force Base, I can’t go without saying that is home of 

the A–10. I do a few Wounded Warrior hunts a year, and any of 

the men that I have talked about that have been in contact with 

the enemy are very proud of that weapon system and don’t think 

there is another system that has done as much to protect our 

troops in contact as that weapons system has proven to be capable 

of. 

With that said, I want to move to, General Kelly, your comment 

about insufficient maritime surface vessels and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platform impairing your primary mission. 

I traveled with the chairman to Colombia. It is very clear that they 

are capable of handling the ground game there. But it is also very 

clear that we are the country that has to provide the intelligence, 

the ISR platforms to tell them where the mission is. 

The JSTARS [Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System] fly 

out of Robins Air Force Base. It is a battle management platform. 

There have been a lot of proposals to improve that platform. And 

I would just like for both of you to describe the ways in which the 

JSTAR asset has been used in your areas of operation. 

General JACOBY. JSTARS is one of those assets, Congressman, 

that really defines, you know, high-value, low-number asset. And 

so, I have used it my whole career, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, usually along borders; you know, usually to great effect. It 

has been adapted over and over again. It is one of those great 

pieces of kit that has proved its worth over time. 

And we have been able to take advantage of it in support of law 

enforcement when asked for that type of capability. We have been 

occasionally able to get it to support law enforcement around the 

southwest border and they have done a terrific job. 

General KELLY. Congressman, my organization when we are 

going to get a JSTARS, there is glee. It is a game-changer over the 

Caribbean. We only get JSTARS as training missions. So they are 

flying to just simply train. The airplane, of course, doesn’t know 

where it is flying over, so they come down to the Caribbean. We 

put them into the drug fight. We see everything when the JSTARS 

are on station. 

Frankly, we do the same thing on other training missions with 

bombers—B–52 bombers and B–1 bombers, with pods on them. So 
24 

I will take anything I can get, but if I can get a JSTARS, it is a 

game-changer. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, thank you for those comments. And it is a big 

ocean out there and the radar on that JSTAR platform gives you 

the ability to look at an awful lot of it in one pass. 

With that, I will just say thank you. I do think that the mission 

that is going on in getting the drugs, stopping the drugs before 

they ever get to America is an extremely important one, and I am 

glad that your men have been as effective in doing that as they 

have been. 

And with that, I will yield the remainder of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

I just want to point out, on that trip, we were able to see the 

submersibles that they bring a lot of the drugs in. And I remember 

as they were talking to us, they talked about having two frigates 

that were just several hundred meters apart and a submersible in 

between that they couldn’t see. 

So it does take a helicopter or JSTAR, other means coordinated 

with the ships that are there to interdict. So all of these are very 

important items. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Kelly, I want to ask you some additional questions about 

illegal drugs. You know, one of the drugs that oftentimes comes in 

from borders is marijuana. And several States now have taken initiatives to legalize marijuana or decriminalize marijuana. And I 

wanted to know what effect do you think that is going to have on 

the war on drugs? 

General KELLY. Thanks for that question, Congressman. 

I think the first thing you have to take note of is countries that 

have decriminalized or legalized drugs are all now trying to figure 

out ways to turn back the clock. Legal or decriminalized drugs 

bring crime, bring higher addiction rates, bring higher, you know, 

substance abuse problems. And they are all trying to turn back the 

clock. 

As far as Latin America goes, we have been encouraging these 

countries to be in the drug fight for 25 years. The levels of violence 

that our drug problem has caused in many of these countries is 

just astronomical. And so, when we talk about decriminalizing, the 

example I would give you is the two States that voted to decriminalize marijuana, or legalize marijuana. 

Most of the states—countries I deal with were in utter disbelief 

that we would, in their opinion, be going in that direction, particularly after 25 years of encouraging them to fight our drug problem 

in their countries and, you know, in their littorals. 

So that is kind of where they are on it. They are very polite to 

me, but every now and again when they are not so polite, the term 

‘‘hypocrite’’ gets into the discussion. But frankly, the crime rate is 

so high in many of these countries and the fact that they see us 

turning away from the drug fight, that—they are starting to chatter a lot about, ‘‘Well, why don’t we just step back and let it flow.’’ 

We do a lot on the high seas, but Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, they are in—Colombia—they are in this fight big time with 

us. But at the end of the day, it is really our problem. And I think 

it is a false choice on their part, and I tell them this, to step back 
25 

and let it flow will continue to bring you high crime problems. To 

stay in the fight is the way to go. 

But to answer your question, I guess, it is hard for me to look 

them in the eye and tell them ‘‘You really need to, you know, stay 

shoulder to shoulder with us,’’ because they see us in a sense giving in. 

I don’t know if that answers your question, Congressman. 

Mr. VEASEY. Are the cartels that deal with moving marijuana, 

are they starting to look at moving to another product? I mean, to 

shift—move the marijuana into the United States? Are they starting to consider moving to another product or is it just not having 

any effect, as you can tell right now? 

General KELLY. They are already completely diversified. They 

move cocaine, heroin—they make heroin. They make methamphetamines. They make cocaine, and they transport it. They also 

do the same thing with illegal aliens, sex slaves—something to the 

tune of 18,000 sex slaves a year, mostly adolescent young women, 

move through this network into the United States every year. Anything can move on this network. 

They are already diversified. They are now starting to diversify 

into illegal mining, illegal logging for certain types of wood—anything to make a buck. And the profits that come out, just the drug 

profits that come out of the United States is something to the tune 

of $85 billion a year, of which only $1 billion is required to keep 

the drug flow going. The rest of it is just profit. 

Their biggest problem, frankly, in our interagency, the Department of Treasury, FBI, Department of Justice—is getting after 

this. But their biggest problem is taking $85 billion worth of U.S. 

currency and laundering it. 

Mr. VEASEY. So even—just let me get your opinion on this—so 

even if you were to see this trend of legalization or decriminalization here in America take effect, because of this diversification, can 

we not expect to save any money on the war on drugs from the, 

you know, Pentagon’s point of view? 

General KELLY. The more we decriminalize or legalize drugs, 

God forbid, the more we do that, the social price of dealing with 

the additional crime, because there will be additional crime, the additional health care and all of that will go up exponentially. This 

costs a lot of money. It is astounding to me that we are—we have 

just kicked off—the Federal Government has just kicked off a $100 

million program to try to get people to stop smoking tobacco, yet 

we are opening up other areas of substance abuse. It is just astounding to me we are doing this, but—— 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Nugent. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I truly do appreciate both your gentleman’s service to our 

country. It means a lot. 

And when you talk about the drug flow, I will concur with you, 

after 38 years in law enforcement. You know, we would get a small, 

small smidgen of the drugs off the street; cost a lot of money to do 

that. It is much more cost-effective, I would think, to do it the way 

we have been doing it, and particularly out in South America. 
26 

But I wonder, you know, last year, I believe, General Kelly, you 

may have testified to the fact, the amount of dollars that are clearing the profit. Do we have any ideas as to where those dollars are 

going? Obviously, going back to the cartels, but is that money being 

utilized for anything other than furthering their criminal activities 

or others? Do we have any idea? 

General KELLY. It all goes back into some type of criminal activity. As I say, their biggest problem is laundering the money. There 

is so much of it. And they have ways to do that. And as I said, the 

FBI, the DEA, the DOJ, and the Treasury are really working that 

hard and increasing their efforts to do that. 

But as an example, we know some of that money and as it goes 

through the laundering process, we know that elements of some Islamic radical organizations, both Shia and Sunni are involved in 

that, and take, we are estimating tens of millions of dollars into 

their organizations. 

Cocaine that moves into Africa—the vast majority of cocaine that 

is produced, and virtually all of it that is produced in Peru and the 

other two big producers, Peru, number one, Bolivia, number two, 

that cocaine moves through Latin America to Africa and then up 

into Western Europe and the Middle East. 

We know that Al Qaeda affiliate organizations have taken money 

out of that as it moves, kind of as a whole. So it is going into every 

imaginable nefarious kind of activity to include Islamic radicalism. 

I don’t know if that answers it, but—— 

Mr. NUGENT. It does. And my concern is obviously, it seems like 

this is sort of an afterthought in regards to the Pentagon’s decision 

in regards to giving you the assets that you need to have. 

Now, understand it is, you know, in war time, those assets are 

going to be placed in other locations but this is really—and you 

have talked about it, the commitment of our allies in this fight. 

It seems like we have a very small commitment at the end of the 

day where we could have greater returns if we just up that commitment just a—even a small amount, versus trying to wait until it 

gets back in the United States, where once it gets diffused into our 

criminal justice system or what we have to go through to get it, becomes really difficult. 

You know, I would like to see more assets, obviously, provided 

to you within that combat command. But in particular, as it relates 

to just what you talked about, doesn’t have to be, you know, a 

multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier, it can be something as simple 

as refitting some—you know, a ship, a platform to give you the assets, the helicopter assets. And General Jacoby, the question was— 

or a statement was made in reference to, you know, the National 

Guard and the Army’s look at how they are going to refit or take 

away the attack assets of the National Guard. 

And then I understand the National Guard’s reluctance to give 

that up because they are kind of a mirror image of the big Army. 

But I will agree with you from this aspect that it would be more 

important at least from the State aspect to have more Black 

Hawks. 

General JACOBY. Right. So I want to make clear, Congressman, 

thanks for bringing that back up that you know, I am looking at 

it from the NORTHCOM commanders’ requirement. 
27 

Mr. NUGENT. Right. 

General JACOBY. I would love for our governors and our adjutants general to have that kind of capability to meet the needs of 

their people. 

I understand it is a more complicated question that—but I really 

think the Army is being driven to this, you know, by the Budget 

Control Act and by the realities of the fiscal environment and they 

have to manage these shortages in order to put the best total force 

together to meet all of the missions sets of the combatant commanders. 

Mr. NUGENT. One last thing, in reference to the Black Hawks, 

in particular, as it relates to the Army National Guard, but we 

have an Army Reserve out there with a number of Black Hawk assets that really don’t ever get called into play to support the State 

mission. 

General JACOBY. Thanks, and I want to thank Congress for making that possible and NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] 

2012 that allowed us to use title 10 Reserves for the very first time. 

Used to be against the law, now we can use them. 

And so, I am working very closely with General Grass and with 

the directors of the different Reserve forces to ensure that we come 

up with methodologies and mechanisms to get them effectively employed. 

Mr. NUGENT. I thank you for your time. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Bridenstine. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you General 

Jacoby and General Kelly for your testimony today. 

I am a Navy pilot. I have spent a lot of my time deployed to the 

Southern Command, the forward operating locations that we 

have—in El Salvador, Colombia, Curac ̧ao. I have spent many 

months on watch at the Joint Interagency Task Force South. I have 

seen, first hand, how wonderful the intelligence that we get coming 

from SOUTHCOM is. 

I have also been excessively frustrated when we get such great 

intelligence from people who are taking great risk upon themselves, we get phenomenal intelligence and this is not—it doesn’t 

come easy, but it comes. And when it comes, I fly an aircraft called 

an E–2 Hawkeye, it is one of those intelligence surveillance—that 

reconnaissance aircraft that you talked about, General Kelly, that 

we don’t have enough of. 

Interestingly, my squadron has been cut in March of 2013, and 

so it doesn’t exist as an asset or resource in this fight. 

But even when it did exist, we would get the intelligence, we 

would see the target, we would make every effort to track and 

interdict the target, and over, and over, and over again, the endgame assets were not available. 

The Coast Guard cutters that you talked about, the Navy cruisers that could, you know, carry helicopters, put a Coast Guard law 

enforcement detachment on those ships, even though they are DOD 

assets, you can put law enforcement detachments on those assets 

to avoid, you know, the Posse Comitatus challenges. 
28 

The question I have for you, General Kelly, when you think 

about the national security of the United States and this is one of 

the challenges I have, quite frankly, on Capitol Hill. We have a 

real national security threat to the United States of America, that 

SOUTHCOM is specifically designed to deal with. 

And I have just heard today, even, as a matter of fact, people 

talking about combining NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM. SOUTHCOM is already one of the regions in the world that is the most 

disregarded by the United States of America and it needs—that 

needs to change. 

When you talk about the integration of transnational criminal organizations with leftist, totalitarian government, and now the integration of terrorist organizations in the Middle East, this is a real 

national security threat for the United States of America. 

General Kelly, I was wondering if you could take a minute and 

talk about some of these challenges? 

General KELLY. I don’t guess I could say it any better than you 

just said it, Congressman. But specifically on the integration, in 

the end-game piece, you are right. 

We have phenomenally good intelligence we watch come out of 

all over Latin America. The good news is now more and more and 

more, we have partners—and again, I would say Colombia, Panama, and some of the other countries that are in real crisis, by the 

way, in the northern part of Central America that are in the fight 

with us. So they are getting more and more. But the frustrating 

thing is, you are right, I mean, about 75 percent of it that we 

watch, we can’t touch. We only really engage about 25 percent of 

it. 

I keep saying this but it is very, very important—no violence to 

speak of. They stop, we board, we get 5 tons, and we take them 

and arrest them and they go into the U.S. legal justice system. 

When it gets ashore and comes into the United States, the distribution system is just an amazing thing. And these cartels are 

just not, you know, south of the border. They deal—manage the 

distribution within the United States. 

We estimate it is about 1,200 retail outlets, if you will, that these 

cartels control all over the United States. And then of course, it is 

then distributed down. 

So there is not much you can do in spite of all the amazing heroic 

deeds of our law enforcement people at the border and all over 

America. Once it is in it is just part of this distribution network 

that it is almost impossible to touch. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Sorry about that. When you talk about the 

pivot to the Pacific. A lot of us on this committee, we have heard 

a lot of testimony about the pivot to the Pacific. 

And it is pretty clear to me that in many cases, unless we plusup the Navy significantly, the pivot to the Pacific looks very hollow. 

And the threats to America see it that way, quite frankly. I understand the Straits of Malacca, they need to be secured. We have 

got to protect the seas, we have got to protect freedom of movement. We all agree with that. 

But this massive pivot to the Pacific, you were mentioning earlier, economies of force, which is a critical thing that I think Congress needs to understand which is a very small investment in the 
29 

Caribbean, a very small investment in SOUTHCOM, the eastern 

Pacific. 

These investments can yield a tremendous amount of benefit to 

the United States of America from the national security threat that 

is very real coming from Central and South America. 

And yet, you can take this enormous region of the Pacific and do 

a pivot to the Pacific with a small force and it actually hollows us 

out and makes us look weak. 

If you could just share a testimony real quickly, if you had all 

the resources you needed—— 

Mr. CONAWAY [presiding]. Gentleman’s time is expired. We have 

got other folks who want to ask questions, Jim. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Roger that, Chairman. We will talk later. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Now, Mr. Garamendi, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you. I am almost wanting to yield my 

time to Mr. Bridenstine, because he is talking exactly where I 

wanted to go. But I won’t do that. 

Instead I would have a—just one of the sentences in your testimony, General Kelly, ‘‘As the lowest priority, geographic combat 

command, USSOUTHCOM will likely receive little if any trickle 

down of the restored funding.’’ 

And just following on what my colleague was talking about, there 

are threats and then there are immediate threats, and clearly the 

issue we are talking about here of the Caribbean and the drug 

issues are immediate threats. 

I am also the ranking member of the Coast Guard Subcommittee, 

and so the integration of the military with the Coast Guard is critical. Both of them have suffered with the sequestration and with 

attention going elsewhere. 

So this really for my colleagues as well is that we really need to 

pay attention to the funding for these two commands, for the 

SOUTHCOM command as well as for the Coast Guard and the 

interrelationship. 

Specifically, General, the ISR platforms, the unmanned platforms, we covered some of this a moment ago but not the unmanned piece of it. Are they sufficient? What is it going to take? 

What are the best platforms available on the unmanned vehicles? 

General Kelly. 

General KELLY. I mean, the—yes, sir. The unmanned drones, 

ISR, we don’t get—we don’t see that very much where we are. I 

mean, that is one of those assets that is probably in more demand 

than JSTARS. So we don’t see those very much. 

But interesting enough, the Colombians have purchased their 

own, now. We used to provide them some help in this regard. The 

Colombians—they are not armed right now, but they have produced them or bought them from the Israelis. 

They are doing great work over Colombia and in their littorals. 

But we don’t see an awful lot of the unmanned ISR capability, it 

is almost all manned is what we work with. 

And some of this now is contract. I have got some contract airplanes that do great work for us because we simply can’t get access 

to the E–2s and some of the other things we have talked about 

here this morning 
30 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I was in Colombia last week and we visited with 

President Santos on these issues. Also happened to have been in 

Cartagena when the LCS Coronado was there. Talk about a very 

expensive platform, and I was struck by your description of a tanker—an oil tanker—with a platform for a helicopter being very useful, probably 100th of the cost of that LCS, which is quite a ship. 

I think the bottom line here is that we have an immediate 

threat, and we are simply not providing the resources to deal with 

it, either the Coast Guard, the issue of new cutters—offshore cutters and the like. 

I want to just take my last couple of minutes here and really 

shift to the north and the Arctic, again, the interrelationship between the military and the Coast Guard. And General Jacoby, if 

you could just discuss this relationship or the interrelationship of 

them. 

General JACOBY. Thanks, Congressman. 

We have a great relationship with the Coast Guard and, along 

with the Canadians, they are the premier—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let’s talk assets for a moment. You came out 

with a report last fall about the Arctic—the role of the Arctic, and 

if you could just pick that up, what do we need from the military 

side, and from the Coast Guard side in the Arctic? 

General JACOBY. So the question is, what do we need and when 

do we need it? 

You know, the Arctic is a harsh environment, it is melting and 

it is going to become more navigable and there is going to be increased human activity. We just don’t know the pace of it. So it is 

a very difficult question, what do we need and when. 

We are going to need icebreakers. We are going to need ISR. We 

are going to need communications above 60. We are going to need 

better mapping of the littorals in the Arctic. 

So those things are going to be required in the future. The next 

5 years, and in the next 10 years are real challenges. What should 

our investments be for 15 years out when it really is—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I would appreciate more specificity. 

We understand the word, more, around here. But we need specificity—more specificity. 

With regard to the cutter in the Coast Guard reauthorization 

there is money for a cutter, about one-fifth of what would be needed. Where we would find the other money is going to be unknown. 

Revamping, we have got some questions about rebuilding, revamping an existing Coast Guard cutter to serve the purposes in 

the Arctic, but I would appreciate specific information about the assets that are going to be needed for the Arctic, as well as for 

SOUTHCOM. 

Thank you very much. I am out of time. 

I yield back. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Garamendi’s time has expired. 

Mr. Turner, 5 minutes. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Jacoby, thank you for being here today and for all of 

your leadership. 

One of the issues that we struggle with in this committee is the 

issue of missile defense. As you know, the threat is proliferating 
31 

both of weapons of mass destruction and with specific missile technology that can place mainland United States at risk. 

The President has now canceled two missile defense systems that 

were intended to protect mainland United States, both the—what 

was known as the third site, which the Bush administration had 

proposed, and even phase four now of the Phased Adaptive Approach, which was intended to provide that mainland coverage. 

This committee and Congress, through the National Defense Authorization Act, has continued to advance a, what the administration would have called a hedging strategy, but we actually consider 

to be a sound strategy of locating a missile defense site on the East 

Coast that would give us that additional ability that has been lost 

with the third site and with the Phased Adaptive Approach, and 

also would give us greater ability to protect that site with it being 

within our homeland. 

In fiscal year 2014, the NDAA, we included a requirement and 

funding for the Missile Defense Agency to update its plans and required documentation for this potential East Coast missile defense 

site. We are obviously looking for your insight and support for that 

effort. We both authorized and appropriated—which means, Congress had to do a great deal of deliberation in deciding to move forward with the East Coast missile defense site. 

We want to reduce the deployment timeframe when the United 

States decides to deploy the site. Waltwood, a third interceptor site 

on the East Coast of the United States, provide for missile defense 

coverage to the United States. 

Would it be prudent if all the appropriate required documentation was completed to deploy the site sooner than later, and although there are those who have said at times it is not presently 

needed, we know that the future development of threats pose an 

environment in which that would be incredibly helpful. 

We would like your words on that, sir. 

General JACOBY. Congressman, thank you. 

A third site, if you built it, would give us better weapons access, 

it would give us increased inventory and increased battlespace with 

regards to a threat coming from the direction of the Middle East. 

So those are just facts. And that is what it would give to the 

combatant commander—and that is me—the one that is accountable for the defense of the homeland from the ICBM threats. 

Currently, we know that, in the Middle East, Iran continues to— 

while we are doing the ‘‘Five plus One,’’ and we are all hopeful that 

‘‘Five plus One’’ contributes to safety and security in the Middle 

East and our own country. They have not stopped aspirational 

goals towards ICBM technologies. They have successfully put a 

missile—space vehicle into orbit, and that demonstrates the types 

of technologies that you need to develop an ICBM. 

So we are watching closely. 

I think it was very prudent to direct us—or the Missile Defense 

Agency—to do a site selection. There were four sites that were determined. We were close partners with Admiral Syring every step 

of the way, to include final say on what were going to be the top 

four sites, and what were the characteristics and criteria used for 

selecting. 
32 

Those have been selected and according to the directions we received, we are moving forward on the EIS [Environmental Impact 

Statement] for all four sites, which should put us in a position to 

have those completed in the next 2 years. 

So I think we are on the right path to provide options in continuing development for a third site and the ability to outpace a 

threat from the Middle East. 

Mr. TURNER. Well, sir I want to thank you for those comments, 

because I have always said that everyone who questions this site 

is just three classified briefings away from being a real great fan 

of it. And everyone not having access to those briefings and everyone not availing themselves of that, your statements of support in 

this hearing of support of that third site are certainly important, 

because it shows in your judgment, the importance of our making 

certain that we rise to the threat. 

So I appreciate those—— 

General JACOBY. Congressman, I want to clarify that, I think it 

is going to put us in a position to make a good decision in a timely 

fashion. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, General. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Ms. Speier, 5 minutes. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, gentlemen, for being here. 

I have just returned from a week in Colombia, where there was 

a lot of good news in terms of the civility there and the rule of law. 

We met with the President. 

It appears though that Venezuela is a powder keg. And we heard 

also that Central America is in grave condition and I recognize in 

your statement, General Kelly, that you pointed to the fact that 

Latin America remains the most unequal and insecure region in 

the world, and I would probably suggest Honduras has got to be 

at the core of that. 

What more should we be doing? 

It seems like we move into one area, it becomes secure, and the 

trafficking just moves to other areas within Latin America. 

General KELLY. You know, it is really a whole-of-government— 

whole-of-world approach. You are right. If we—recently we have 

had great successes—declining success, but great successes interdicting the drugs as it moves up into Central America. 

And we have seen drug traffickers start to move product now— 

up to 14 percent of it now we think is moving back to the old network up the Antilles into the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico 

or directly into the United States. 

So they are pretty adaptive people. 

So to deal with this drug problem, obviously, starts kind of in 

kindergartens and in grade schools and all of those kind of—those 

programs to keep kids off drugs. And then, to fund properly law enforcement inside the United States. And then to pick up as much 

of this stuff as it moves along the so-called transit zone into these 

Latin American countries. And then, the source zones, that is to 

say who produces it, Colombia and countries like that. And they 

are doing as I say a tremendous job. 

So it is really a whole-of-government—whole-of-the-world— 

whole-of-world approach. There is not one single answer to it. At 
33 

the end of the day, in my part of the world, more engagement— 

not necessarily money, but more opportunity to advise these countries and to help these countries help themselves. 

So I am not asking for, you know, heavy brigades and Apache 

helicopters and Marine amphibious forces. I am asking for the ability to deal with countries that I am somewhat restricted in dealing 

with right now, small engagements to teach human rights, to teach 

how you interact and get at these problems. 

So that would be my answer to you. 

Ms. SPEIER. All right, thank you. 

It is my understanding that we have not had a missile defense 

test succeed since 2008, in that, we have had three back-to-back 

test failures. So my question is are you confident that we can test 

accurately and safely without failure. 

General JACOBY. Thanks for the question. 

I have now confidence that we are going to test. That is the most 

important thing. And so there is budgeted money now for a good 

steady test cadence that will allow us to understand problems that 

might exist with the various systems, to fix them, to develop new 

capabilities. I mean, I think that is critical. 

And so Admiral Syring and the Department have committed to 

a very firm and robust testing schedule. We did have a successful 

CE2 [Commander’s Exercise Engagement] flight last year. It wasn’t 

an intercept flight, but it was a successful flight. But I think it is 

really important when you are making upwards of dozens of modifications on boosters and EKVs [exoatmospheric kill vehicles] that 

we test. 

There are countries that don’t test. We are not one of them. We 

test and make sure that what we have is a real system, a credible 

system. 

Ms. SPEIER. But, General, our tests have been test failures, 

so—— 

General JACOBY. Well, in part. Yes, ma’am, I think we have had 

a number of intercept failures. But if you look—it was a 5-year gap 

in the last intercept test. 

So I think it is important to get back on a testing regime and 

make sure that we determine and achieve reliability in the system. 

Those challenges are accounted for in our shot doctrine. They are 

accounted for in our battle management. And the fact is, that right 

now, the threat is a very limited threat. 

But you bring up a great point. And as the combatant commander, I insist that we continue testing and make the modifications and make the improvement in the systems that not just give 

us reliable—or a sense of confidence in the current system, but also 

in the ability of the system to adapt and become more effective over 

time, as we pace the threat. 

Mr. CONAWAY. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Jacoby, General Kelly, thank you so much for joining us 

today, and thank you for your service. 

General Kelly, I want to begin with you. Can you give me an indication—I noted last year there were a number of Navy ship deployments in your AOR [area of responsibility] that were canceled. 
34 

Can you tell me about the impact of that, and what you did to mitigate those canceled ship deployments? 

General KELLY. Yes, sir. 

First, we didn’t have—we weren’t going to get that many ships, 

so we didn’t, you know, lose much. 

But in my AO [area of operations], not—you know, losing a little 

is losing a lot. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Yes. 

General KELLY. How we mitigated it. Just more work with our 

partners, providing intelligence. One of the—kind of a breakthrough we had last year is we found a way legally to share information with our partners, not tell them how we get the information, but to share information with our partners. 

And I can’t say enough about the interagency aspect of this fight. 

I mean, at many of our embassies, we have FBI, we have DEA, we 

have DEA FAST [Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Team] 

teams. These are really heroic men and women that work with 

some of our partners, Honduras, Guatemala, people like that. 

Amazingly effective people. 

So we really started to work closer with our allies. And, as I say, 

the breakthrough, the ability to start what we call spot-on-the-map 

information, where we can tell them, ‘‘If you go here,’’ you know, 

‘‘you will find something worth finding.’’ 

And, again, we don’t tell them how. And it is protected. And then 

we have liaison officers out of my headquarters in—or my JIATF 

[Joint Interagency Task Force] South headquarters in Key West in 

which we have law enforcement liaisons in many of the production 

countries we are talking about, or the countries that do the most 

with us to go after this drug flow. 

So that is how we have mitigated it. Because we have just—I 

think we had on station last year one Navy ship. As a requirement, 

it is for, well, a lot more than that. I won’t go into it. 

A couple—two or three Coast Guard cutters. I mean, to the gentleman’s comments a few minutes ago, I mean, the lion’s share of 

the effort really is done by Coast Guard cutters and DEA and FBI. 

Just really, really good people. 

And, for that matter, Customs and Border Patrol, Border Protection folks. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

Let me ask an—other element of concern within the 

SOUTHCOM AOR. As you heard alluded to earlier, an increased 

Iranian influence in the area, more Islamic extremism, efforts 

being projected in that particular area, can you tell me, what are 

you doing in response to that, especially as it relates to our embassies? 

Can you kind of give us your overview about that? 

General KELLY. We are keeping an eye on it. You know, we don’t 

know what they are up to. Generally, I would offer that the Iranians need to be watched pretty closely. They—no revelation here. 

They don’t like us. No—you know, in terms of what is in Latin 

America for the Iranians, I mean there are two entirely different 

cultures, ways of looking at life, ways of looking at God and everything else. So why are they so active? 
35 

They are active in a couple countries that receive them. But, for 

the most part, what they have done is opened up a number of embassies; certainly their right to do it. I think they have opened 11 

additional embassies in Latin America. 

They have also opened what they call cultural centers, 33 of 

them, I think, throughout the area. These can be used for a lot of 

different reasons, and we are just keeping an eye on that. 

But they are fairly active, again. 

Mr. WITTMAN. I would like to ask both you gentlemen the concerns and challenges that you see as far as military readiness going 

forward. One of the areas that we have defined as I think the biggest challenge going forward is how do we make sure in this resource-challenged environment that we keep a steady and consistent effort on maintaining readiness. 

And, as you know, sequester made that extraordinarily hard. In 

fact, I would argue, in some areas, it actually took away readiness 

from the military. 

So I would like to get your perspective. 

General Jacoby, I will begin with you. 

General JACOBY. Thank you, Congressman. 

We consume service readiness. We are combatant commanders; 

we consume service readiness. 

The homeland has received a good healthy support as a priority, 

so we are consuming readiness. 

Now, I will tell you, that in the homeland, I don’t have the same 

readiness requirements as others do, because it is not a deployment, an overseas deployment. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Right. 

General JACOBY. John Kelly is not getting that priority. And he 

requires a little bit different kind of readiness in order to get folks 

deployed. 

And so, you know, the bipartisan budget agreement, it bought us 

some time, bought us some breathing space. But every force that 

is made ready for current use is just contributing to a bathtub effect that will be accelerated if we continue on with the law and sequestration numbers start up again in 2016. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Okay. 

General Kelly. 

General KELLY. I can’t add anything to that, but I would like to 

add something, and that is the readiness of our people. 

And, generally speaking, those of us in uniform get credit for 

serving the Nation. Those of us in uniform are pretty well taken 

care of. 

But, frankly, there is a big aspect to our readiness in terms of 

personnel, and that is our civilian workforce. And that includes, in 

my opinion, contractors. 

These are very, very dedicated men and women who we haven’t 

really been very nice to in the last year or so. It is amazing to me 

that the morale I have in SOUTHCOM, in my headquarters and 

throughout the region, in terms of my civilian morale, is as high 

as it is. 

They have a lot of confidence in me. We do the best we can to 

share the good news and the bad news with them. 
36 

But our civilian workforce across the Federal Government is just 

as important to us as those of us in uniform. So we need to keep 

an eye on their morale and take care of them as well. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CONAWAY. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

Mr. Smith, 5 minutes? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to echo that last point on, you know, the importance 

of the civilian workforce. The furloughs, the uncertainty, it has 

been devastating. 

And, you know, that is moving. It also makes it more difficult to 

get the people that we need into that—you know, that line of work. 

They have other options, and it makes it more and more difficult. 

I follow up on the missile defense issue. And this is something 

you and I talked about last night. 

Mr. Chairman makes the point about, you know, the importance 

of an East Coast missile defense system. And, by and large, he is 

right. You know, the more missile defense we have to protect the 

homeland, the more we can discourage potential threats, you know. 

And that is not even really classified. I mean, we hit North Korea, 

we have hit Iran, we hit a whole bunch of other places, and what 

could potentially happen out there. 

The concern that I have is sort of following up on Ms. Speier’s 

point, and that is that the system that we have right now isn’t 

working particularly well. 

I want to spend money on missile defense. I think it is critically 

important. 

But to spend money on developing a new site so we can put mis- siles and radars and sensors and spend $4 billion on a system that 

can’t hit a target in a test strikes me as unintelligent would be the 

polite way to put it. 

I would rather spend that money on what you just said, test the 

existing system; get it to work. Get us to that point. 

I am worried about even deploying more missiles, you know, in 

our two existing sites, when they can’t hit a target. 

Why don’t we spend money on radars and sensors and tests to 

get to the point where we actually have a system that works? 

Now, I suppose we could—of course, public hearings like this undermine what I am about to say here—I suppose we could just 

bluff. You know, we could convince our adversaries, oh, we have got 

these missiles. They could work. 

But unfortunately we are in an open society, so we can’t do that 

very successfully. They know even before I, you know, said this, 

that those tests failed, because it is a matter of public record. 

So shouldn’t we be wiser about how we spend that money, to 

spend it on getting our missile defense system to the point where 

it actually works, instead of just feeling good about having it deployed? 

General JACOBY. Congressman, I think we all want the same 

thing. We want—— 

Mr. SMITH. That is not entirely true. 

If you sat here on the nights when we do the NDAA and we 

argue about this stuff on this committee, I can assure you, we do 

not all want the same thing. 
37 

But go ahead. 

General JACOBY. Well, based on our conversation last night, I 

think you and I want the same thing, which is—— 

Mr. SMITH. That I will agree with. 

General JACOBY [continuing]. Effective missile defense for the 

people of the United States. And they deserve it. And they have 

spent a lot of money and we have made a lot of effort. 

You know, I believe that a lot of this has been theoretical—a theoretical threat and a theoretical capability, that the threat—the 

pace of the threat has become real. And the threat is real, and it 

is practical. And we have got some work to do to continue making 

sure that we have a practical system in place. 

But we are infinitely better off with the system that we have, 

and I believe it does have the capability. It gives me confidence 

against the current limited threat. 

The question is, what is the right path to improve that system, 

to outpace the threats, both from North Korea and any others that 

could now a highly sought and proliferated technology out there 

around the world. 

Mr. SMITH. And I would submit, just for the record, that the 

wisest way to do that is not to spend money developing a new site 

until we set the system that we need to rely on working. Spend the 

money on that. 

General JACOBY. Congressman, I hope that in my answer to that 

question, I tried to indicate that I believe that it was important 

that we do things simultaneously. 

And so, there are things that we can do to be prepared to make 

a decision on whether we need a third site or not in the future. 

But if you start everything from scratch on the day that you decide you need something, then we are always behind. 

And so, I think that we have taken—we have been directed to 

take prudent steps. I don’t think we are at a decision point for a 

third site, but I think we have set ourselves up to make a decision 

in a timely fashion. And I think that is smart to do. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General JACOBY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Gentleman yields back. 

Back to Mr. Lamborn for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you both for your service. 

And, General Jacoby, I want to thank you in particular for the 

great things that your team has done, helping our homeland and 

helping locally in Colorado Springs for some of the wildfires that 

we had. The assistance that your people gave was tremendous. So 

thank you for that. 

We have had some discussion about missile defense. And I have 

to point out that there have been some budget cuts in the last few 

years, last 4 or 5 years, that I don’t think were helpful. 

The purpose of testing is to find out what is wrong and to isolate 

those flaws and make improvements and—so that there is success 

afterwards. 

So, I am glad to see that we are finally, with this administration, 

getting some further funding to reverse some of that. 
38 

Do you feel confident that we have a good system in place, not 

that it can’t do better at testing and not that we can’t continue to 

make improvements, which I believe we are, but are you confident 

that we have a good system right now? 

General JACOBY. I am confident that the system in place right 

now can handle the threat that exists right now. I think that what 

we have learned now is that there has to be continued smart investment that outpaces the threat. 

And Congressman, one of the things we haven’t talked about yet. 

My first dollar would go to intel. So that, you know, if your measure of effectiveness is that you are outpacing threat, you need to 

know a lot about the threat. And so we need to do more in understanding everything there is to know about North Korean missile 

capabilities; everything there is to know about Iranian programs, 

to make sure that we can make threat-informed decisions, not just 

resource-informed decisions. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you. I appreciate that perspective. And you 

did mention North Korea, and I think Iran would be in that same 

list. 

On a slightly different list, cruise missiles. What nations now 

have the ability to send strategic ballistic cruise missiles to the 

U.S. from great distances? 

General JACOBY. Thanks, Congressman. 

Cruise missiles are proliferating as well. But the nation that has 

the highest level of sophistication and can pose the greatest threat 

to North America is Russia. And they continue to make very, very 

important advances in both conventional and nuclear cruise missiles, both aerial-delivered and submarine-delivered. The first of 

the 12 projected Severodvinsk cruise missile-firing submarines—nuclear submarines is at sea and being worked up. And the missile 

that it uses has already demonstrated its effectiveness. 

So, this is a capabilities question. And we have always believed 

that having a capability and an intention to defend the country 

against aerospace threats is a capabilities issue, not just an intent 

issue. And so, we have been directed by the Secretary to ensure 

that we are also looking at how to provide effective defense against 

cruise missiles in a way that outpaces any threats, to include Russians. 

Mr. LAMBORN. And what do you believe, General, should be the 

way forward on that? 

General JACOBY. Well, we have a way forward right now, Congressman, and that is a three-phased approach that has been approved by the Pentagon. And it starts with getting the National 

Capital Region right. And right now, we are going through a test 

phase where two things have been added or are being added to the 

National Capital Region—the Stateside Affordable Radar, in conjunction with a joint elevated net sensor, the JLENS [Joint Land 

Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System] balloons. 

And what they are trying to accomplish is integrating that into 

an overall defensive plan that allows us to see, detect, track, warn, 

and in the future hopefully engage cruise missiles that could pose 

a threat to the National Capital Region. 
39 

Then the issue will be if the cruise missile threat continues to 

evolve, how do we then take and export that capability where we 

think we might need it to defend other strategically or critical infrastructure locations in the United States and Canada. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Okay. Thank you very much. 

And lastly, funding for an improved kill vehicle. That is something that we did include in the fiscal year 2014 National Defense 

Authorization Act. I think it is valuable. What is your perspective 

on that? 

General JACOBY. The budget hasn’t been released and missile defense wasn’t addressed in the rollout that the Secretary made earlier in the week. I would be very happy to have funding against an 

improved kill vehicle and I am hopeful that we will see the ability 

to do that sometime in the future. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. CONAWAY. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Bridenstine for one more round? 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to ask, General Kelly, when you think about economies 

of force and the asset layout that we currently have, obviously the 

more hardware you get, there is diminishing marginal return for 

every additional piece of hardware. But clearly, we are not anywhere near diminishing marginal returns at this point, given your 

lack of resources. 

If you could have the order of battle that you most desired to be 

as effective as possible, can you share what that might look like? 

And let’s just pretend for a second that we had maybe a 2-year period of time when we were going to do a surge operation in the 

eastern Pacific and into the Caribbean. 

What would that order of battle look like, in your best judgment? 

General KELLY. Yes, sir. Our best estimates are if we had 16 helicopter-capable platforms—again, they don’t have to be warships 

necessarily—but 16 helicopter-capable vessels of some kind, to include Coast Guard cutters, and sufficient ISR. And as you know, 

actually you pointed it out before, intel is very, very good. The 

tracking across the oceans, it is hit or miss because our—of the 

isthmus in particular—is hit or miss just because of the lack of 

ISR. But we need more ISR. 

But at the end of the day, a vessel with a helicopter on it, our 

requirement is for 16, but you can see by some of the things we 

have talked about, when I had 5 or 6, we were taking huge 

amounts of cocaine out of the flow. But 16 is the number. 

And I have to say—I have to mention our—in addition to our 

Latin American partners that work so closely with us, the Dutch 

out of Curac ̧ao, they oftentimes will have a vessel in the Caribbean. 

The Brits have one there now. The French will oftentimes have 

one. And the Canadians have one. And they are as valuable to me 

as a U.S. vessel. 

In fact, last year, 67 percent of the seizures, they were involved 

in. So you could make the argument in 67 percent of the cases, we 

may not have gotten the drugs. That translates, by the way, to 80 

tons of cocaine. A helicopter flying off of a Dutch buoy tender or 

oiler, or a French small boat—you know, frigate-type thing, or a 
40 

Canadian frigate, is just as valuable to me as an American ship or 

Coast Guard cutter. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. The squadron I used to fly in, we—on average, 

on an annual basis, we would bust about $2 billion worth of cocaine. We were involved in that operation. And, of course, the 

squadron has been eliminated, which means a lot of that cocaine— 

I am not saying that we can’t get some of it at certain steps along 

the process—but a lot of it will be coming into the United States. 

And of course, that is devastating for our country and the children 

in this country. 

General KELLY. One of the—yes, sir. One of the—maybe the 

Congresslady made the point. You know, the consumption of cocaine actually in the United States is down. The war on drugs, if 

you will, if you look at the last 30 years, some people declare surrender here in DC [District of Columbia], but the fact is there is 

a lot more—there is a lot fewer kids starting drugs. So there has 

been great success in the so-called war on drugs. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Right. 

General KELLY. Well, I will point out that we have tried to fight 

it in exactly the wrong place. And that is, in the United States. It 

is just not cost effective to do it here. But the use of cocaine is 

down, but guess what is up? Methamphetamines. The use of prescription drugs is down, but what is up is heroin. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Right. 

General KELLY. So, we are not addressing it, in my opinion, nearly as much here in the States in the same way that we are trying 

to address, say, the reduction of tobacco use. So it would start here 

as much an education for particularly young kids, but it starts with 

education. There is a medical aspect to this. There is a law enforcement aspect to this. 

But just like in any war, the worst place to fight it is in the 

homeland. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Right. We have got about 45 seconds left. I 

will ask a question; answer it the best you can. If you don’t finish, 

then maybe we can get it on record in the future. 

Which is Venezuela—obviously, we have a very leftist government. We are seeing that the more power is centralized in these 

governments in Central and South America, the people ultimately 

rebel and it creates tremendous instability. 

As a nation, maybe you could provide for the record what we can 

do as a country to ensure that these efforts that are destabilizing 

the region, of course, a region that we need stability in for our own 

national security, what we can do as a nation to prevent this kind 

of thing in the future. 

General KELLY. Very briefly, Mr. Chairman, just engagement, 

more engagement is better. And some level of understanding for 

many of the countries that are struggling so terribly with internal 

violence and crime brought on to a large degree by our drug problem; a little bit of understanding as we work with them to clean 

up things like human rights; to get their police cleaned up—not 

cleaned up, but improved so that the police can go back to being 

policemen and the military can go back to defending the borders. 

So just a little bit more understanding. 
41 

Venezuela is Venezuela. We watch it closely. Who knows what 

will happen. But there are others down there that are struggling 

mightily, that look to us for just a little understanding and a little 

bit of assistance. And I am not talking a lot of money. Frankly, in 

some cases, I am not talking money at all—just some advice and 

some training tips, if you will. 

Mr. CONAWAY. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

General Jacoby and General Kelly, thank you both for your long, 

distinguished service. And we appreciate your attention. And thank 

you very much for coming today. 

The hearing is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 12:11 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

FEBRUARY 26, 2014 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

FEBRUARY 26, 2014 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SMITH 

Mr. SMITH. General Kelly, in your testimony, you stated, ‘‘To adequately address 

the complex medical issues of the aging detainee population, we expanded and emphasized detailed reporting within our comprehensive system to monitor the health, 

nutrition, and wellness of every detainee.’’ You also stated, ‘‘Although Naval Station 

Guantanamo and detainee hospitals are capable of providing adequate care for most 

detainee conditions, we lack certain specialty medical capabilities necessary to treat 

potentially complex emergencies and various chronic diseases. In the event a detainee is in need of emergency medical treatment that exceeds on-island capacity, 

I cannot evacuate him to the United States, as I would a service member.’’ Would 

you please provide the committee with a detailed list of those complex medical 

issues? In doing so, would you please describe: each medical issue; any necessary 

treatment associated with the issue; the number of detainees affected by the issue; 

any medical capability shortfalls associated with the issue; and the estimated cost 

of treating the issue on site, if such treatment or treatments would require the import of medical capabilities that exceed on-island capacities? 

General KELLY. Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s Joint Medical Group (JMG) offers 

excellent primary care medical, dental, and mental health capabilities. U.S. Naval 

Hospital GTMO provides the referral consultative services in general surgery, orthopedic surgery, optometry, clinical nutrition, and physical therapy. This facility currently operates at the level of a small community hospital. Further subspecialty 

teams are sent from military treatment facilities in the U.S. when needed. These 

teams diagnose and treat the more complex health care issues. At present there are 

no detainees who have consented to, demonstrated requisite compliance for, or have 

medical conditions that would require care not available on GTMO. 82% of the detainee population is in good health and cooperates with healthcare providers who 

care for their medical issues. However, sudden deterioration of existing conditions 

could create situations in which medical needs exceed current capabilities. The Joint 

Task Force is charged with providing detainees medical care to the extent practicable, similar to standards applied to personnel of the U.S. Armed Forces. There 

are several foreseeable and potentially unforeseen medical conditions for which provision of on-island care to this standard could not be achieved with current capabilities. 

There are a number of detainees that have worsening chronic illnesses that will 

potentially exceed in-place and deployable medical capabilities. There are twelve 

(12) detainees with hypertension. They are offered appropriate medical therapy and 

clinical nutrition services to maintain a healthy weight. Four (4) refuse care. There 

are nine (9) detainees with diabetes. They are offered appropriate medical therapy 

and clinical nutrition services. Six (6) refuse care or inconsistently comply with offered care plans. There are six (6) detainees with Hepatitis. Five (5) have inactive 

hepatitis, while one (1) has chronic active hepatitis with resulting significant liver 

injury. State-of-the-art anti-viral therapy has been made available and has been refused. There are several detainees that refuse recommended medical care on a regular basis which negatively impacts their health. 

Cardiovascular Disease (collectively heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes): 

Detainees with cardiovascular disease represent our greatest, most likely and most 

immediate potential need for capabilities not currently available at GTMO. There 

are four (4) detainees with heart disease. They are offered appropriate medical therapy and see a cardiologist routinely. All have a history of care refusal with variable 

current compliance with medical recommendations. Routine current medical management strategy of optimized management of blood pressure and use of medications to prevent episodes of chest pain, along with dietary therapy and weight management comprise clinically sound approaches to these detainees’ conditions. Advance cardiovascular procedures, including manpower and portable facilities, would 

cost an estimated $1M per episode and take up to 30 days to execute while significantly impacting beneficiary care at military treatment facilities in the U.S. If there 

is an emergency cardiovascular event (heart attack or stroke), emergency medical 

care will be taken to treat the detainee. 
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Malnutrition (from voluntary fasting): There are a small number of detainees at 

serious health risk related to their voluntary long term non-religious fasting and resulting malnutrition. They are appropriately managed medically and see an internal 

medicine physician routinely. All are offered clinical nutrition services to maintain 

an appropriate weight. No additional medical capabilities are required. 

Liver Disease: One (1) detainee’s chronic active hepatitis with liver injury (cirrhosis) is expected to worsen but at an unknown rate, potentially yielding end-stage 

liver failure. There are temporary treatment options including surgical procedures 

requiring a high level of post-operative intensive care that are not available at 

GTMO. Definitive therapy would be a liver transplantation. It is conceivable that 

one (1) or more detainees would eventually meet clinical criteria for organ transplantation; however, it is not clear if detainees would be eligible to participate in 

an organ recipient registry. The cost to construct an organ transplant center would 

likely measure in the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Kidney Disease: One (1) detainee has chronic kidney disease. It is conceivable that 

his condition could deteriorate to the extent that the detainee will require kidney 

dialysis. There is no dialysis capability at GTMO. Dialysis machines are available 

for purchase for less than $5K. Dialysis requires near permanent access to the blood 

stream through a blood vessel shunt in order to perform the filtering of the blood. 

This shunt would be suboptimal for the detention environment. A full time dialysis 

team with frequent kidney subspecialty medical care supervision would be required. 

Nurses who specialize in dialysis are usually not active duty military and the addition of this capability would thus require at least two civilian contracted positions 

at an estimated $200K each. 

Cancer: Although not an immediate concern, one (1) detainee death has been attributed to colon cancer. As all detainees are men, it is a statistical likelihood that 

there will be prostate cancer in the detainee population. Another detainee has a thyroid nodule being investigated for cancer. He is scheduled for a diagnostic biopsy. 

If biopsy results indicate cancer, then surgical removal of the tumor with a subsequent long course of chemotherapy and radiation will be required if the detainee 

chooses such therapy. No oncology services are available; no capability to prepare 

chemotherapy exists on GTMO nor is there radiation therapy. While the specifics 

of required resources and cost for treatment may vary significantly depending on 

the type of cancer any given detainee has, this detainee’s case points out the significant medical capability shortfalls in cancer treatment available at GTMO. Radiation 

therapy capability would cost an estimated $10M to purchase or $3M per year to 

rent. 

Mental Health: Behavioral health providers have recognized detainee hopelessness and previous detainees have demonstrated psychosis. Currently 47 detainees 

are followed as active patients. Diagnoses currently managed are depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and delusional disorder. They are appropriately managed 

by a dedicated behavioral health team and have access to a psychiatrist routinely. 

Care refusal is widely variable in this population. Currently no mental health diagnoses exceed JMG care capabilities. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN 

Mr. LANGEVIN. General Jacoby, how satisfied are you with the current state of 

the responsibility chain for weapons of mass destruction? Hypothetically, a weapon 

could be the responsibility of numerous agencies as it was designed, created, packaged, and transported to the country’s borders and onto U.S. soil. Are you satisfied 

with the status quo, and if not, what more should be done? 

General JACOBY. I am satisfied with the current process and delineated responsibilities; however, we always look to refine and improve existing processes and procedures for dealing with this no-fail mission. For example, the newly established 

Special Operations Command North, under operational control of USNORTHCOM, 

now provides a focal point for lead federal agencies (DHS, DOJ, FBI) to request specialized active duty support to interagency operations. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. General Kelly, your statement included comments on your command’s efforts to ensure security of Department of Defense networks and communications infrastructure in your area of responsibility. In your view, what are the 

top U.S. network vulnerabilities in the region and what are the top cyber or network 

threats to our regional infrastructure in SOUTHCOM? 

General KELLY. The integrated nature of cyberspace makes DOD networks an attractive target for a broad range of worldwide actors. USSOUTHCOM networks in 

the AOR are no exception. DOD computers, networks, and communications infrastructure in the USSOUTHCOM AOR are threatened by both regional and global 
127 

actors (1) who may directly or indirectly threaten our systems or the regional infrastructure (2) upon which we rely. State-sponsored actors are increasingly able to 

launch sophisticated attacks against the networks that control critical Department 

of Defense networks and infrastructure. We also do not discount concerns regarding 

the potential impact of insider threats either as a result of free will or coercion.(3) 

We have multiple communications infrastructures supporting our Security Cooperation Offices, Joint Task Forces, and Headquarters locations—all are susceptible to these threats. The number of different networks with independent and duplicate vulnerabilities in the current theater architecture requires us to replicate security tools, as well as situational awareness, and defensive processes. From a technical perspective, we are aligned with and developing plans to migrate to the DOD 

Joint Information Environment (JIE) in accordance with DOD Chief Information Officer directives by the FY18–19 time frame. JIE has several components that mitigate and reduce security related vulnerabilities, the greatest of which is to reduce 

duplicate networks and applications, as well as to integrate security tools and processes. JIE also offers some means to reduce threats associated with the insider 

threat. 

Much work has been done by USCYBERCOM, with the COCOMs and Services, 

in the areas of resources, training, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to deal 

with the threats and vulnerabilities of the cyber domain. Unilateral operations in 

this domain are by far easier—but the reality is that in our AOR, we operate in 

bilateral and multinational modes for the majority of our operations. Our partner 

nations have significant variations in resources, training, and TTPs to mitigate 

vulnerabilities or address threats as compared to how DOD operates and our policies limit what we can share or how we can assist them. 

(1) External threat actors include nation states, as well as non-state actors. (2) 

The term infrastructure here is not limited to regional commercial telecommunications networks. The cyber threat also threatens regional power grids, supply 

chains, transportation networks and financial systems of nations in the AOR which 

would not only impact the USSOUTHCOM mission, but could cause economic and 

other disruptions for affected countries. (3) Malicious insiders may exploit their access at the behest of foreign governments, terrorist groups, criminal elements, unscrupulous associates, or on their own initiative. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. General Kelly: what advanced technologies, now in the research 

and development phase, do you foresee would be most beneficial to our mission in 

the SOUTHCOM AOR? 

General KELLY. My specific priorities for advanced technologies in the Research 

& Development phase that are most beneficial to our mission include: advanced 

radio and laser detection and ranging (RADAR/LIDAR) concepts to help our forces 

and our partners deny the enemy the camouflage, concealment and deception afforded by the dense jungles in the SOUTHCOM AOR; innovative technologies to enable the Afloat Forward Staging Base for use by our interagency and partner nation 

forces; and technologies that strengthen our operational capabilities in the cyber domain. 

My general priorities lie in technology areas that would mitigate our limitations 

in capacity and resources. These include: persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and 

Reconnaissance (ISR) technologies that enable innovative uses of new platforms to 

improve wide area detection and monitoring, as well as ISR systems that target the 

vast littorals and extensive riverine basins in theater; non-lethal technologies that 

enable more effective interdiction of targets such as go-fast boats, Self-Propelled 

Semi-Submersibles (SPSSs), and Fully Submersible Vessels (FSVs); operational energy initiatives that increase efficiency and decrease logistical burdens for remote 

locations; information sharing technologies that enable us to more effectively operate with our partners, both international and interagency; and technologies to 

counter the ever-evolving and growing use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) 

in the region, as experienced by Colombia, which has the second highest rate of IED 

incidents in the world. 

We also actively participate in a broad array of technology development projects, 

primarily from OSD’s Joint Capability Technology Demonstrations (JCTDs), one of 

the few formal programs designed to directly support COCOM capability gaps. Additionally, we maintain close ties with defense agencies such as DARPA and DTRA, 

as well as with the National Laboratories, to continually assess the current state 

of technology, and provide operator insight into future development. While it is important to maintain a technical edge across the full spectrum of military operations, 

we must be cognizant of the technology gap that exists when working with our partners, both at home and abroad. Building our partners’ capacity to improve regional 

security is a critical aspect of our technology development goals. 
128 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ROGERS 

Mr. ROGERS. Please describe your plans for cruise missile defense of the United 

States. Why is this threat getting your attention now? 

General JACOBY. [The information referred to is classified and is retained in the 

committee files.] 

Mr. ROGERS. Can you describe which states have cruise missiles capable of ranging the United States? 

General JACOBY. Cruise missile technology has continued to advance at a high 

pace as a lower-cost alternative to manned strike platforms. Today, Russia is the 

only nation-state assessed to possess cruise missiles capable of ranging the United 

States, and is a known proliferator of cruise missile capability. China likely has the 

technical expertise to develop this capability in the future, but to date we have not 

seen a Chinese intent to do so. 

Mr. ROGERS. Are we developing a cruise missile defense capable of defending the 

national capital region from Russian cruise missiles? 

General JACOBY. Yes, we have a three-phased approach to cruise missile defense 

that Department has fully endorsed. The first phase looks at our existing structure 

in the National Capital Region and adds new surveillance and fire control systems. 

From there we plan to move to a second phase—our objective Defense Design— 

which provides a steady-state integrated air defense system capable of protecting 

our nation’s capital from threats, such as emerging Russian cruise missile programs. 

As our newer systems mature and are integrated into our existing force structure, 

my goal is to outpace the threat by leveraging improved sensors, command and control networks, and adaptable deployable capabilities to expand beyond the National 

Capital Region. 

Mr. ROGERS. In the FY14 NDAA, we included a provision and funding for the Missile Defense Agency to develop and deploy a next-generation kill vehicle. Why is 

that important to you? 

Do you support that provision? Why? We have, as you know, a large and capable 

radar originally developed for deployment in the Czech Republic. What are the pros 

and cons of deploying that radar as an additional long-range discriminating radar? 

General JACOBY. I strongly support the provision to redesign the Exo-Atmospheric 

Kill Vehicle. From a warfighter perspective, this redesign will significantly improve 

system reliability by taking advantage of new and proven technologies, such as Iron 

Dome, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and the Navy’s standard 

missile system. 

I believe the Missile Defense Agency is best-suited to answer your additional longrange discriminating radar question due to the technical nature of the pros and 

cons. 

Mr. ROGERS. Why is Cobra Dane important to you as the NORTHCOM commander? Are you comfortable that there is a plan to ensure its long-term availability to you? 

General JACOBY. [The information referred to is classified and is retained in the 

committee files.] 

Mr. ROGERS. Have you examined whether Cobra Judy is an attractive option for 

additional missile defense radar capability? 

General JACOBY. [The information referred to is classified and is retained in the 

committee files.] 

Mr. ROGERS. How closely have you examined the suitability of SBIRS and other 

on-orbit space assets for providing additional missile defense capability? 

General JACOBY. We are supporting USSTRATCOM in their efforts to prepare the 

FY14 NDAA-directed evaluation of options to improve ballistic missile defense capabilities. This evaluation will consider current Federal Government capabilities, as 

well as future systems, including a full review of on-orbit assets, such as the SpaceBased Infrared System (SBIRS). 

Mr. ROGERS. The President’s EPAA originally supported forward-based homeland 

missile defense capability in Europe, as did the previous administration. Can you 

tell me what did a forward-based missile defense capability provide for the security 

of the United States? What defensive capability are we still missing now that those 

sites are no longer in the program of record? 

General JACOBY. The purpose of the forward-based homeland missile defense capability was to add to the protection of the U.S. homeland, which is defended by 

our current Ground-based Interceptors (GBIs) against missile threats from the Middle East. By shifting resources from the European Phased Adaptive Approach 

(EPAA) capability, DOD was able to fund an additional 14 GBIs being deployed to 

Fort Greely, AK, as well as advanced-kill vehicle technology that will improve the 

performance of our GBIs against threats from the Middle East faster than could 
129 

have been achieved by EPAA Phase IV. I believe these improvements will provide 

better capability than previous forward-based capabilities. 

Mr. ROGERS. In the FY14 NDAA, we included a requirement and funding for 

MDA to update its plans and required documentation to a potential East Coast missile defense site. Do you support this effort which we authorized and appropriated 

funding for to reduce the deployment timeframe when the United States decides to 

deploy this site? 

a. What would a third interceptor site on the East Coast of the U.S. provide for 

missile defense coverage of the United States? 

b. Would it be prudent, in your opinion, if all of the appropriate required documentation was completed, to deploy this site sooner rather than later? 

General JACOBY. I believe planning for a third site is prudent and places us in 

a position to make an informed deployment decision in a timely fashion. If built, 

a third site would give us better weapons access, increased inventory, and increased 

battlespace for threats coming from the direction of the Middle East. However, even 

after the Environmental Impact Statement process is completed, any future deployment decision to build a third site should still be based upon known and anticipated 

threats. 

Mr. ROGERS. Please describe the Iranian ballistic missile threat. Have you seen 

it abate in any way over the past year? 

General JACOBY. Iran possesses a substantial force of short- and medium-range 

ballistic missiles capable of striking targets throughout the Middle East and parts 

of Europe. To date, Iran has not demonstrated a ballistic missile capable of reaching 

intercontinental distances. However, it has an organic engineering capability that 

may result in a more sophisticated ICBM threat, to include more advanced decoys 

and countermeasures technology. Thus, while the Iranian missile program has experienced some setbacks in recent years, Iranian engineers continue their efforts to 

improve the country’s ballistic missile capabilities and are on track to flight test an 

ICBM range capability as early as 2015. Iran will not likely remain a simple, unsophisticated threat in the future, and we will need to keep pace with them. 

Mr. ROGERS. The 2012 Iran military power report of the DOD stated Iran may 

be technically capable of testing an ICBM by 2015, which is next year. Do you have 

any reason to believe that that estimate is incorrect? 

a. Have you seen evidence of Iran flight testing space launch vehicles in the recent years? 

b. Is space launch technology applicable to Iran’s ballistic missile program? 

c. Are Iran and North Korea rekindling their past ballistic missile and nuclear 

weapon cooperation? 

d. Can you explain the significance of North Korea assisting Iran with ballistic 

missile development? 

General JACOBY. We continue to assess that Iran may be technically capable of 

testing an ICBM by 2015, though we do not know if Tehran has the intent to do 

so. Iran continues its attempts to place satellites into orbit using boosters that incorporate ballistic missile technologies. 

The current extent of the North Korean-Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear cooperation is unclear. However, following North Korea’s successful demonstration of 

long-range missile technologies during the country’s December 2012 satellite launch, 

there may be the potential for North Korean engineers sharing lessons learned with 

their Iranian counterparts as they have done in the past—we are watching this 

closely. 

Mr. ROGERS. It has been reported in the press and publicly proclaimed by the Chinese themselves that they are deploying a new submarine-based ballistic missile capability. Are you comfortable that you are well-postured today to deal with an unauthorized launch by a Chinese ballistic missile submarine? 

For that matter, are you well-postured to appropriately defend against an unauthorized launch from either China or Russia? 

General JACOBY. [The information referred to is classified and is retained in the 

committee files.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. TSONGAS 

Ms. TSONGAS. How is the operational effectiveness and efficiency of the National 

Capital Defense structure expected to be improved with the integration of JLENS? 

Are there criteria for mission impact parameters such as improvement of response 

time for decision making and management of available assets for response? 

General JACOBY. [The information referred to is classified and is retained in the 

committee files.] 
130 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GARAMENDI 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Please provide specific details that your command’s need regarding ISR support and Coast Guard assets. Your testimonies highlighted that your 

AORs require additional resources to support drug interdiction and that more Coast 

Guard and ISR capability would be needed as we further develop Arctic strategy. 

General JACOBY. For drug interdiction: USNORTHCOM has validated ISR requirements to support interdiction by our law enforcement partners, to include the 

U.S. Coast Guard. The capabilities we require include full motion video, forwardlooking infrared and moving target indicator at the medium to high-altitude range. 

These requirements may be met by manned and unmanned platforms. I view our 

required and authorized support of law enforcement partners to find and fix illicit 

traffickers entering the United States or its territorial waters as also having Homeland Defense dimensions because of the threat to national security posed by illicit 

traffickers. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Please provide specific details that your command’s need regarding ISR support and Coast Guard assets. Your testimonies highlighted that your 

AORs require additional resources to support drug interdiction and that more Coast 

Guard and ISR capability would be needed as we further develop Arctic strategy. 

General KELLY. Historically, SOUTHCOM has been undersourced on DOD naval 

surface asset allocation and that allocation has continued to decline due to budget 

cuts being borne by the Services. In order to remain effective at countering illicit 

traffic (CIT) we require additional surface assets, either DOD or USCG, and DOD 

ISR systems to respectively (1) partially fill the naval surface force gap and (2) increase the effectiveness of allocated resources. 

For FY15, SOUTHCOM has been allocated 24% of its total drug interdiction surface force out of a 22 total ship presence requirement. This total surface force allocation is well below that required to either achieve the national illicit traffic interdiction goal of 40% or put effective pressure on transnational criminal networks. But 

successful and efficient interdiction of illicit narco-traffic in the maritime domain is 

not only predicated upon surface force allocation; ideally it requires a complementary package that includes flight-deck equipped surface assets with embarked Airborne Use of Force (AUF)-capable rotary wing air asset(s), robust intel capability, 

persistent Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA), and a high speed Over the Horizon 

(OTH) smallboat with an embarked Coast Guard boarding team. 

USSOUTHCOM’s airborne ISR requirements have historically been sourced at 

5%, which represents a fraction of the total DOD globally allocated airborne ISR assets. This limited airborne ISR allocation does not provide USSOUTHCOM with sufficient ISR capacity to support partner nation efforts to disrupt threat networks in 

Central America while maintaining our enduring support to Colombia. Persistent 

ISR capabilities are critical to boost our surface asset efficiency—our historical data 

shows that a ship alone has a 9% detection rate, but when we add a rotary element 

and ISR (MPA) to the mix we increase that detection rate to 70% thus increasing 

that ship’s overall effectiveness within the Interdiction Continuum. In FY2013, 

whenever this ship-helo-MPA package detected an illicit event that event ended in 

disruption 86 percent of the time—an impressive probability of interdiction approaching 90 percent. Although it will not eliminate the gap, any ISR efficiency 

boost can help us deal with lower than required surface presence in our 42 million 

square mile Joint Operating Area. This could include deploying systems such as the 

Navy’s P–3 or follow-on P–8, and the Air Force’s E–8, E–3, or MQ–9. 

We rely heavily on the USCG allocation to provide the majority of our assets, and 

therefore look to the Department of Homeland Security to help us meet our CIT 

mission by increasing its allocation of USCG surface assets. To date, the Coast 

Guard has been extremely proactive and flexible in their efforts to help in this fight, 

which includes their deploying Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) 

helicopters aboard surface assets other than their service’s cutters. Any resource action that directs more flight-deck equipped cutters (USCG) and surface combatants 

(USN, Allied) to the AOR with embarked AUF helicopters, exponentially increases 

opportunities for successful Interdiction and Apprehension (I&A). 

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