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i 

67–394 2011

[H.A.S.C. No. 112–46] 

EFFICACY OF THE DOD’S 30–YEAR 

SHIPBUILDING AND AVIATION PLANS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND INVESTIGATIONS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

JUNE 1, 2011 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia, Chairman 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TODD YOUNG, Indiana 

TOM ROONEY, Florida 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

MICHELE PEARCE, Professional Staff Member 

PAUL LEWIS, Professional Staff Member 

FAMID SINHA, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2011 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Efficacy of the DOD’s 30-Year Shipbuilding and 

Aviation Plans ...................................................................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 ........................................................................................ 41 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2011 

EFFICACY OF THE DOD’S 30–YEAR SHIPBUILDING AND AVIATION 

PLANS 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Cooper, Hon. Jim, a Representative from Tennessee, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations ...................................................... 2 

Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee 

on Oversight and Investigations ......................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Blake, VADM John T. ‘‘Terry,’’ USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, 

Integration of Capabilities and Resources (N8) ................................................. 3 

Eaglen, Mackenzie, Research Fellow for National Security Studies, The Heritage Foundation ..................................................................................................... 26 

Flynn, Lt. Gen. George, USMC, Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration ........................................................................................... 3 

Johnston, Maj. Gen. Richard C., USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic 

Plans and Programs, U.S. Air Force .................................................................. 5 

Labs, Dr. Eric, National Security Division, Congressional Budget Office .......... 24 

O’Rourke, Ronald, Defense Policy and Arms Control Section, Congressional 

Research Service .................................................................................................. 22 

Stanley, VADM P. Stephen, USN, Principal Deputy Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, Office of the Secretary of Defense ................. 4 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Eaglen, Mackenzie ............................................................................................ 77 

Labs, Dr. Eric .................................................................................................... 68 

O’Rourke, Ronald .............................................................................................. 58 

Stanley, VADM P. Stephen, joint with Maj. Gen. Richard C. Johnston; 

VADM John T. ‘‘Terry’’ Blake; and Lt. Gen. George Flynn ....................... 47 

Wittman, Hon. Rob ........................................................................................... 45 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Mr. Wittman ..................................................................................................... 95 
Page

IV 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Ms. Hanabusa ................................................................................................... 101 

Mr. Wittman ..................................................................................................... 99 
(1) 

EFFICACY OF THE DOD’S 30–YEAR SHIPBUILDING AND 

AVIATION PLANS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 1, 2011. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:00 a.m. in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Rob Wittman (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS 

Mr. WITTMAN. Good morning. I want to call to order the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Armed 

Services Committee. I want to welcome you folks to the hearing 

this morning. I appreciate your taking your time to join us. I think 

today’s efforts will be worth your time and worth all of our attention. 

I want to welcome everybody to the Oversight Investigations 

Subcommittee’s hearing on the efficacy of DOD’s [the Department 

of Defense’s] shipbuilding and aviation plans. The main purpose 

supporting the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans requirement is to ensure effective congressional oversight of DOD plans by 

giving Congress the information we need to make decisions on 

issues that are not consistently available in the 5-year data of the 

Future Years Defense Plan better known as the FYDP. 

In my view, we tend to spend too much time arguing about tactics when we are discussing these plans and not enough time focused on long-term strategy. We are constantly reacting to events 

rather than planning for them, resulting in a system that is burdened with waste and inefficiency. 

We cannot afford to do this any longer. The stakes are too high, 

and we owe it to the American taxpayer to insist on well thoughtout, fiscally sound, long-term policy decisions that shape our national defense strategy, and emphasize long-term objectives. 

It is critical for us to make sure we have that long-term perspective to understand where we need to go and the best way to get 

there. The central question put in simple terms is, are we doing the 

best job we can when we develop and implement our 30-year plans 

to meet or Nation’s current and future threats? 

To illustrate this point, I want to highlight just a few examples 

of what I am talking about. And these are general examples: The 

decision not to build submarines in the 1990s, which has created 

a shortfall in the attack submarine force structure that we won’t 
2 

be able to fix in the foreseeable future; decisions to cut or efforts 

to kill a number of programs, including the F–22 fifth-generation 

fighter, the C–17 cargo aircraft and the Air Force’s combat searchand-rescue helicopter, all of which arguably place American air supremacy at risk or at least at question; and ending purchases of 

the next generation of DDG–1000 destroyers and killing the MPF– 

A large-deck aviation ship, reducing our Navy to the smallest it 

has been since 1916. 

While arguments can be made to support the reasoning behind 

these decisions, no on can argue about the number of growing 

threats we face from both state and non-state actors, each with 

ever expending capabilities, ready to challenge their own. 

Between force reductions, a dramatic slowing of new starts and 

closures of production lines, America’s domestic industrial strategy 

is slowly being whittled away, emphasizing the need for smart 

long-term strategic planning. 

I look forward to hearing your views on this important subject 

and discussing how we can ensure that as we make difficult policy 

decisions on long-term procurement, we don’t inadvertently place 

our national security at risk. 

Before introducing our witnesses, I want to turn to our ranking 

member, Mr. Cooper, for opening remarks. 

Mr. Cooper. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 45.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. JIM COOPER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 

TENNESSEE, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your calling 

this hearing. 

I know that there are a lot of issues involved in the 30-year shipbuilding plans. I hope that we can keep this hearing away from 

personal and the parochial and focus on the strength of America. 

Some issues that I am interested in are industrial agility. On a 

recent visit to China, we were able to visit a shipbuilding yard 

there in which they said they can build any super tanker in the 

world in 6 months, a feat that would be apparently impossible in 

this country. 

Also developments in technology, things such as supercavitation, 

have changed the nature of surface warfare. And that was a largely 

unanticipated development in the science, that has changed things 

probably beyond ability of any 30-year plan to foresee. So thank 

you for calling this hearing. I will look forward to hearing from our 

expert witnesses. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Cooper. 

As we get started, I would like to ask unanimous consent that 

nonsubcommittee members, if any, be allowed to participate in today’s hearing after all subcommittee members have had an opportunity to ask questions. Is there any objection? 

Without objection, nonsubcommittee members will be recognized 

at the appropriate time for 5 minutes. 

And we will hear from two panels today, witnesses from our first 

panel are Major General Richard Johnston, Deputy Chief of Stra-
3 

tegic Plans and Programs, U.S. Air Force; Vice Admiral P. Stephen 

Stanley, Principal Deputy Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Vice Admiral 

John Terry Blake, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Integration 

of Capabilities and Resources; and Lieutenant General George 

Flynn, Deputy Commandant of Combat Development and Integration. 

Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today, and we will 

begin with General Flynn. 

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. GEORGE FLYNN, USMC, DEPUTY 

COMMANDANT FOR COMBAT DEVELOPMENT AND INTEGRATION 

General FLYNN. Chairman Wittman, Representative Cooper and 

members of the subcommittee, it is good to be here with you today. 

The Marine Corps’ ability to serve as our Nation’s principal crisis 

response force is due in large part to your continued strong support. Our Marines thank you very much for that support. 

I am here today to address your questions regarding the Marine 

Corps’ role in defining the operational needs and identifying the required enabling capabilities necessary to support the Nation’s expeditionary force and readiness, a force that must be able today to 

respond to today’s crisis. 

The Marine Corps is partnered with the United States Navy in 

defining requirements and advocating for the necessary resources 

to meet our operational needs. Our goals are to have stability in 

amphibious maritime prepositioning and support base capabilities 

vessel development, as well as associated ship funding production 

and delivery schedules supported in the program and budgeting 

process, so we can achieve the fleet inventory necessary to support 

our forward presence engagement and crisis response capability. 

Clearly there are challenges in meeting operational requirements 

in today’s highly dynamic security environment. Finite resources, 

ship supply, and maintenance requirements, and the resulting ship 

operational availability for predeployment operations and training 

can collectively impact our ability to accomplish our assigned missions. 

In partnership with the Navy, the Marine Corps looks forward 

to working with you to address these issues so that we are best 

postured to continue serving our Nation as its force in readiness. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to be here and I look forward 

to answering your questions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, General Flynn. Admiral Blake. 

STATEMENT OF VADM JOHN T. ‘‘TERRY’’ BLAKE, USN, DEPUTY 

CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS, INTEGRATION OF CAPABILITIES AND RESOURCES (N8) 

Admiral BLAKE. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Cooper 

and distinguished members of the subcommittee. 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to address the efficacy of the Department of Defense’s 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans. 

The Department of the Navy is committed to building an affordable ship and aircraft fleet that supports the National Defense 
4 

Strategy, the Maritime Strategy and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense 

Review. 

The development of the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans 

enable this effort, providing valuable insight into future investments and challenges. In addition, these long-range plans promote 

stability in the defense industry and support decisions, making for 

long-term capital investment and workforce planning. 

The Department of the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan is built 

around three basic precepts. First, the plan projects what platforms 

the Navy will need to accomplish its assigned missions over the 

three decades. Second, the plan balances needs against expected resources and assesses the risk associated with the Department’s balancing efforts. Finally, the plan aims to maintain the shipbuilding 

design and industrial base necessary to build and maintain tomorrow’s Navy. 

To accurately support these precepts, the general context of the 

plan is spelled out in three distinct 10-year periods. In the first 10- 

year period, cost estimates are judged to be most accurate due to 

the known ship capability and quantity requirements. In the second 10-year period, cost estimates for the force structure are less 

accurate as the threat becomes less clear, industrial base issues become more uncertain and technologies continue to evolve and 

change requirements. 

Finally, in the last 10-year period, cost estimates are the most 

notional, since these estimates are largely based on the recapitalization of today’s legacy ships and ships procured at the beginning 

of the near term of reporting. 

The Navy also provides input to the Department of Defense’s 30- 

year aviation plan. These shipbuilding and aviation plans provide 

our best efforts to address a very difficult planning challenge. The 

Navy supports the requirement for the submission of the longrange shipbuilding aviation plans, as they provide important for 

Congress, the Department of Defense, and industry to make critical 

investment decisions. 

Thank you all for all you do to support the United States Navy 

and for all you do for the men and women in uniform serving 

around the globe. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Admiral Blake. Admiral Stanley. 

STATEMENT OF VADM P. STEPHEN STANLEY, USN, PRINCIPAL 

DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF COST ASSESSMENT AND PROGRAM 

EVALUATION, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE 

Admiral STANLEY. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Cooper 

and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

appear before you to discuss the Department’s 30-year aviation and 

shipbuilding plans. 

While the Department has always done long-range planning, we 

understand that the value of these plans lie more in what we learn 

through the planning process than in the content of the plans 

themselves. This is especially true for planning beyond 5 years. 

The planning process provides a useful opportunity to consider 

and confront out-year implications of our near-term decisions. However, developing this plan requires speculation about the future se-
5 

curity environment, technology, development, operational concept 

and fiscal constraints. 

The speculative nature of projecting beyond the 5-year window of 

the Future Years Defense Plan does not stem from any process and 

organizational failures. It is caused by the inherent uncertainty of 

the future. 

The history of these submissions is relatively short. The first 

submission of the shipbuilding plan was in 2000. And the first 

aviation plan followed 10 years later in 2010. 

The 2011 National Defense Authorization Act changed the reporting requirement for the shipbuilding plan from an annual report to a quadrennial report, while the aviation plan remained an 

annual report. Plans were not submitted with the President’s fiscal 

year 2010 budget, due to uncertainty regarding our defense strategy. During this period, in 2009, a new national security strategy 

and associated defense budget projection were being developed. 

This year, the Department submitted the aviation plan on the 

12th of April, the plan was delayed because internal budget decisions were concluded a month later than usual. Also, this year 

there was more debate than last year on out-year aviation plans. 

Resolving these issues and coordinating the results delayed submission of the plan. 

Both long-range aviation and shipbuilding plans follow a similar 

development process. Individual Services maintain long-range 

plans for these weapon systems as part of their Title X responsibilities. 

However, these plans are based on fiscal, operational and technical assumptions. Once the current year planning and budgeting 

process concludes, the Department has considerable work to do. 

The Services have to develop and refine their projections, reconcile 

these projections with the Selected Acquisition Report, SAR, data 

and ensure the estimates adhere to fiscal constraints. 

For the aviation plan CAPE [the Director of Cost Assessment 

and Program Evaluation] develops the report based on the inputs 

from the Services. Navy drafts shipbuilding plans based on the 

shipbuilding stakeholders’ inputs. CAPE and the Navy develop tables and charts, refine themes, apply quality control to the data, 

and combine inputs to form an integrated view. These plans are 

the Department’s best efforts to address the challenge of the developing highly complex projections over a 30-year period. 

The development of these plans involves a great deal of collaborative analysis throughout the Department in order to work 

through fiscal technical and operational assumptions. These plans 

are not precise procurement blueprints; rather they represent the 

Department’s forecast of what tomorrow’s forces may look like 

given today’s outlook. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Admiral Stanley. General 

Johnston. 

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. RICHARD C. JOHNSTON, USAF, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR STRATEGIC PLANS AND PROGRAMS, U.S. AIR FORCE 

General JOHNSTON. Sure. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member 

Cooper and distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is a 
6 

privilege to have this opportunity to discuss the Air Force contribution to the Department of Defense’s 30-year aircraft procurement 

plan. The United States Air Force remains committed to drafting 

of the aircraft procurement plan and to the development of necessary aviation platforms that provide the Joint Force with global 

vigilance, global reach and global power. In support of the National 

Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, National Military 

Strategy and 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. 

The following statement is a brief summary of how the Air 

Force’s strategic planning process operates to serve the interest of 

national defense and how it informs the 30-year aircraft procurement plan. 

The Air Force benefits from a disciplined strategic planning approach to establish a long-term aviation investment plan. Specifically, future force structure projections are developed and refined 

after each programming milestone. These force projections align 

with the aforementioned national strategy documents. Major milestones include submission of the Air Force program objective 

memorandum and the delivery of the Presidential budget. Informing both planning and programming efforts is the use of periodic 

systematic assessments of the future operating environment. 

The United States Air Force performs a strategic environmental 

assessment biannually to anticipate potential implications of critical trends to operations in air, space and cyberspace domains 20 

years into the future. The Future Force Projection serves as a basis 

for the annual Service Secretary approved 20-year planning and 

programming guidance, the intent of this process is to shape the 

future force by linking programmatic decisions to strategic planning. The sufficiency of the plans for achieving and maintaining 

aircraft force-structured goals are then reported within the annual 

30-year aircraft procurement plan. 

The Air Force strategic planning process directs future force programming through informed strategic planning. Within the Air 

Force, the lead organization responsible for the plan is the Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Programs. It 

is also reviewed by several offices to include acquisitions, legislative liaisons; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaisance; the operations plans and requirements; the studies and analysis assessments and lessons learned; and of course, the Chief of Staff and the 

Secretary of the Air Force. 

The United States Air Force regularly and systematically develops and refines its long-term aircraft investment plan. The Air 

Force’s deliberate process drives the Service to make fiscally responsible choices that are grounded in strategy. Furthermore, the 

Air Force remains committed to the collaborative approach with 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Navy 

in building a sound 30-year aircraft procurement plan for the Department of Defense and Congress that is both useful and timely. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Air Force contribution to the Department of Defense long-range aviation plan and 

your support to the men and women of all the Services. I look forward to your questions. 
7 

[The joint prepared statement of General Flynn, Admiral Blake, 

Admiral Stanley, and General Johnston can be found in the Appendix on page 47.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, General Johnston. And panel members, thank you so much for joining us today and for your thoughtful, insightful opening remarks. And we will proceed now into questioning. 

Admiral Stanley, I will begin with you. The observations that you 

made about the process being important, I think is spot-on. The 

process I think for developing good information and for decisionmaking is absolutely critical. And we do know that these plans are 

speculative in nature. I think you pointed that out, and certainly 

there is some uncertainly with that. Obviously, the longer we go 

out in the future, the less certainty there is. But I think they play 

a very, very important role in providing timely information to the 

House Armed Services Committee and, in a larger sense, to Members of the Congress in understanding the challenges that we face 

as decisionmakers. 

And some of the frustration I think that has been borne in the 

House Armed Services Committee is getting that information in 

the strategic plans in a timely manner in a way that we can use 

it in our decisionmaking. As you know, that frustration has been 

compounded over the last several years because of that lack of coordination in getting information in time for us to have it reflected 

in the decisions that we make. And you spoke of some of the hiccups in this year’s process. 

Let me ask you, rather than retreading how the process took 

place, which I think you did an admirable job of laying out. Let me 

ask you this, how do you believe the process can be changed, fixed 

to make sure the information that comes out of the 30-year shipbuilding plan, the 30-year aviation plans, makes it to the House 

Armed Services Committee members and the committee staff itself 

in a timely way to make sure that we get it so that those pieces 

of information, which I think are very valuable, make their way 

into the planning process? 

Admiral STANLEY. It is a good question. How do you improve it? 

We often struggle with the complexity of the plans, trying to do 

something as complicated as this in projecting it as far into the future as the current legislation requires. It is a very complicated 

task. So I think the simple answer to your question is let’s try to 

focus on the things that you and we value and need most. Okay? 

Now what would that be? I think it is important—a piece of this 

we need to work at together. I think we need to work to answer— 

it is not clear to me exactly what you need, maybe, right? So we 

have to meet that. We are not—we are—we want to meet the needs 

of Congress. So how do we move forward? 

My instinct is, again, the near-years provide the most significant 

input; the longer your projections become less important. Having a 

plan that is tied to the Administration’s current view of strategic 

risk that is reflected in the Quadrennial Defense Report seems to 

make sense to me. Were I to try to shape it, I would say that a 

reasonable balance is to have a plan that is less, maybe less long 

in duration, maybe I will suggest 20 years just to throw an idea 

out. Maybe it is less duration. It is less frequent. Right? Maybe the 
8 

QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] is enough. But in the annual 

submission that is currently required with the shipbuilding plan, 

or the 10-year data table, that is where we focus. So we focus more 

on the things that you need, which is easier for us to provide timely information on, than the complexity of things that are maybe of 

less value. 

So I would propose really three things. I believe the long report 

tied to the Quadrennial Defense, and tying to the Quadrennial Defense Review makes sense. I think limiting the scope of the report, 

potentially to 20 years. I will say, it is not clear to me that the last 

10 years does neither you nor I much good. 

And then the last thing I would suggest is potentially that we 

look at how do we time it? Think about when this Administration 

last changed. The new Administration comes in. It has to develop 

a National Security Strategy. It has to develop its fiscal constraints, how it is going to view the requirements of the Department. That takes time. 

So over the last couple of administrations that changed, then 

that budget and the associated Quadrennial Defense Review has 

come in later. To try to then get a 30-year plan to reflect that new 

direction of new administrations, master security strategy in QDR, 

is very difficult. Potentially, the 30-year plan should be delayed 

until the next budget. So I would suggest maybe we work on those 

types of areas. Again, a quadrennial, lesser scope and potentially 

a year delay after the QDR. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Admiral Stanley. And that 

leads me to the next question, when we talk about the current 

process in terms of planning, is it normal, even under the auspices 

of doing an evaluation leading up to the QDR with a 30-year shipbuilding or 30-year aviation plan, is it normal then for there to be 

an annual evaluation, or is there still an annual update that leads 

up to the QDR with this long-range planning process? And how rigorous is that outside the window of the FYDP? And I think that 

alludes to some of the specifics of what you had talked about regarding reforms. 

Admiral STANLEY. Yes. We update our proposals every year. Normally that is focused on the near-years, the FYDP type of proposals, but things change. You alluded to the idea of who could 

have forecasted what is happening in the Middle East today. Ten 

years ago, we couldn’t have projected the demand for the unmanned air vehicles that we require today on a day-to-day basis 

and saving lives in the theater right now, so things change. Our 

plans need to be flexible enough that we can respond to the needs 

of the warfighter. 

Certainly how you authorize and Congress appropriates also is a 

change that we need to consider every year as we come up with the 

next year’s plan. So, yes, they change. Normally those changes on 

a non-QDR year are more near-term than long-term. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank, you Admiral Stanley. General Flynn, I 

wanted to ask you a question, if you look now at the 30-year procurement plans, the Marine Corps and the Army aren’t specifically 

required to go into those areas, but there have been the questions 

that come up about where the Marine Corps’ needs might be, especially for both the Marine Corps and the Army as it relates to ro-
9 

tary-winged aircraft. And I wanted to get your thoughts and ideas 

about specifically, do you think that should be part of this 30-year 

planning process? And if so, what specifics do you think should be 

incorporated into the aviation plan as it relates to potentially including rotary-winged aircraft? 

The reason I bring that up is more and more discussion is taking 

place about the high ops tempo that we are experiencing now. The 

high usage of rotary-winged aircraft, especially in some pretty taxing environmental conditions and then, where do we go down the 

road with planning for the replacement of that fleet. And then how 

do we make sure we are addressing that in a timely way, especially 

as we ramp down. We all know the questions about reset. If there 

is nothing out there in the plan, the question then becomes how do 

we integrate that in with all the other needs that are being identified in both the 30-year shipbuilding and 30-year aviation plans? 

General FLYNN. First of all, in our Department of Aviation, we 

have an aviation campaign plan that lays out our way ahead for 

all our type model series aircraft to include both fixed-wing and 

also rotary-wing. So General Robling, he develops that plan. So 

there is a plan to, for example, how we are going to replace our 

heavy lift helicopters in the future? As to whether that needs to be 

part of a 30-year program, I think in general it does make sense 

in some ways just because of the expensive aircraft in the future. 

But I would like to give you a more detailed response for the record 

if I could. 

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

page 95.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Absolutely, absolutely. And General Johnston, I 

wanted to just touch base with you in looking at the paralleling of 

the planning processes. As you know, in the 30-year shipbuilding 

plan, the Navy projects both ship deliveries and ship retirements, 

which keeps that at least within some frame of number of ships. 

And I was going ask for your thoughts about the aviation plan in 

looking not just at deliveries but also looking at how retirements 

would occur. It doesn’t seem in the aviation plan that the retirement schedule is quite as definitive as far as what we expect with 

our aircraft. 

And I know that we continue to push the life of our aircraft 

sometimes to the point of where it really creates bigger issues for 

us down the road. It seems like to me maybe in the planning process if we could look at further defining or more clearly defining the 

retirement phase for aircraft and not kind of pushing air frames to 

their max, we might be able to be a little more robust in our decisionmaking. I just want to get your reflections on the aviation plan 

and how it reflects aircraft retirements. 

General JOHNSTON. Sir, I think you kind of hit on the challenge, 

trying to anticipate when an aircraft will ‘‘time out’’ if you will. Recently our Chief of Staff of the Air Force approved the extended 

service life profile on trying to figure out how long an aircraft will 

sustain and continue to be part of our Department of Defense and 

part of our Air Force. And we are using that obviously to project 

out, we are looking at ‘‘SLEPing’’ [implementing a Service Life Extension Program], you know our Block 40, Block 52, F–16s [General 

Dynamics Fighting Falcon fighter jets] based on that, but trying to 
10 

figure out exactly when those airplanes will time out, knowing that 

we are trying to get the best value we can out of them for the 

American taxpayer, extend them as far as we can based on the 

mission requirements of that platform. And also tying them into 

new procurements as they come on board, such as obviously the F– 

35 [Lockheed Martin Lightning II fifth-generation fighter jet]. So 

trying to bring that all together, we probably have—I know we 

have a good handle on that, as far as within the 10-year period, 

although those will change. So, year to year, if you were to ask us 

to include retirement of platforms, you would see changes, because 

as you fly the aircraft, it is based on total number of hours when 

you decide to retire them. 

I remember landing a 30,000-hour C–130 [Lockheed Hercules 

transport aircraft] in Kandahar with NVG [night vision] goggles, 

and that was about it, that airplane was going to leave from there 

and go to the boneyard. So when do you anticipate it? It all depends on the operational tempo, if that airplane is involved in 

Southwest Asia—we are in the Middle East. Are you flying it more 

often? Is it back home doing steady state operations where it isn’t 

flying as much? It is very difficult to project that. But I can assure 

you that the Air Force projects that, plans for that and anticipates 

that in how we develop our aviation plans. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Okay. Very good. Thank you, General Johnston. 

Mr. Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is a common 

phrase: The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer. 

I am a little worried that we have asked you gentlemen to do the 

impossible. Any 30-year crystal ball is going to be cloudy. And Lord 

knows we ask plenty of reports from the Pentagon already. There 

hasn’t been a Secretary of Defense in either party that hasn’t complained loudly about the paperwork requirements. 

Now if it enables us to do our constitutional oversight responsibilities, that is one in thing. On the other hand, in context—and 

I appreciate Admiral Stanley putting it in context for us—this is 

a relatively new and unproven method of oversight. 

Meanwhile, some other obvious features of the Pentagon are not 

being tended to: The GAO [Government Accountability Office] has 

complained for many years that the Pentagon is the least auditable 

of all government agencies, and relatively little headway has been 

made to find out where taxpayer dollars go within the puzzle palace. 

So to ask anyone to come up with a 30-year window in the future 

is really a recipe for embarrassment, because no one can anticipate 

the changes on the horizon. As one of the witnesses pointed out, 

just in land warfare alone and the current conflicts we are engaged 

in, requirements for MRAPs [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles] and other things have changed remarkably quickly. 

So, as I said in my opening comments, I am a little more interested in agility and the ability to respond to future threats than 

in locking in programs that may or may not be useful 10, 20, 30 

years hence. 

In the worst-case scenario, I am worried that a 30-year oversight 

plan like this could just be a new type of pork preservative as peo-
11 

ple seek to lock in constituent facilities that may be popular back 

home but may not strengthen America. 

So I think we have to guard against that danger. It is always 

good to have plenty of cushion and reserve, but given the uncertain 

nature of warfare and the constantly changing nature of warfare, 

a 30-year time horizon, which is longer than most careers in military itself, is going to be a difficult task to achieve. 

So I appreciate you gentlemen’s patience in putting up with requirements like this. I personally am doubtful of their usefulness, 

but I appreciate the good humor in which you try to comply with 

the request. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cooper. Mr. Forbes. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And first of all, I want 

to thank you and the ranking member for holding this hearing and 

want to thank all the witnesses and tell you at the outset that you 

are all good men. I know that you have served your country well, 

that you love your country. And I am not going ask you any tough 

questions today. 

And the reason I am not going to ask you those tough questions 

is because you can’t answer me. And that is what concerns me the 

most. 

As the ranking member stated, it is sometimes difficult when we 

look at 30-year plans because we know we won’t hit them, but that 

doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at them. Because the importance 

of the 30-year plan, if we don’t graph it out, we don’t know whether 

our short-term actions are going to get us down the road or not. 

The second thing is it is not just agility that we need to look at; 

it is honesty, because the Congress either needs to play a role in 

this or we need to get out and just say we don’t have a part in it. 

And I think that the thing that concerns us, Admiral Stanley, 

you made a good comment when you said that it is not so much 

the substance of the plan, but it is what you learn in that planning 

process. And yet we, in doing oversight, we have got to pass a National Defense Authorization bill at some point in time that authorizes what you are doing. We never get access to the most important 

part of the planning process, which is what you learn during that 

process. 

This is what bothers me, not from the four of you, but when the 

Secretary of Defense can come out and he can say, as the ranking 

member mentioned, he didn’t want to give us all the information 

because he is concerned that if he does, he may not get what he 

wants. Whether it is parochial reasons or maybe it is not parochial 

reasons at all. Maybe it is because some of us just believe we have 

got to have a strong Navy to defend the United States of America, 

and we want to ask some tough questions about how to get there. 

But when the Secretary of the Navy comes out and issues gag 

orders and says the Pentagon can’t even answer questions for us, 

we question how in the world can we get those core questions that 

you say were part of the process. 

And the Secretary of the Navy just refuses to give us a shipbuilding plan when the statute requires it. It may not be easy. It 

may not be convenient. But the statute says how to do it. We question how do we get at that process. When we hear comments like 
12 

anything outside of 5 years are just fantasy worlds in terms of projections, that concerns us. 

But then when we see numbers like what we see in the reports, 

where we see the shipbuilding plan presented to us, and let’s don’t 

take 30 years out, let’s take the short-term, and we see the projections that are in that shipbuilding plan for the number of ships we 

are going to have and the cost of that. And you have a $15.9 billion 

per year requirement. The CBO [Congressional Budget Office] says 

it would take $19 billion a year to get what you say. That is a huge 

difference for us. And how we cross that divide and get those answers, we really don’t know, especially given the fact that for the 

last 30 years we only had $15 billion put in shipbuilding, and we 

know the Secretary said he is going to come up with $400 billion 

worth of cuts down the road. 

So this is what I don’t understand, and I don’t expect you to answer me today, maybe some time in the hall, you can answer me, 

or maybe some time you can give us the information or maybe the 

next panel can do it. But how do we get at a process where we can 

get closer to the truth, because it is true that things change in administration. Let me tell you what doesn’t change, our risks don’t 

change. The number of ships the Chinese have don’t change. The 

number of ships we are building don’t change. There are some core 

principles that we ought to get at. 

And I will just conclude with this: One of the things that frightens me the most is whether, like the independent panel looking at 

the QDR says, we have gotten a process where we are just kind 

of validating what we are already doing, instead of stepping back 

and looking at the risk that the Nation is facing and saying, how 

are we going to create true plans that get us there? 

Because if we need more ships in our Navy, like the independent 

panel said, like the Navy says that we have, we are just confusing 

the American people and deceiving them when we put out a plan 

that says that we are going have to ramp that up in the next few 

years to get where our goals are, but we know there is no way we 

are going to get at those dollars. And so, at some point in time, I 

hope we can get at this process. 

I hope we can get a process where, Admiral, we can get at the 

things you learn during that analysis and then putting that plan 

together. But also a situation where we can have some forum with 

you guys where you are not in a career ender if you come in here 

and tell us something that is not a part of that plan, where we can 

sit down and say, what do we really need to defend the United 

States of America? And I am afraid we are not there yet, but I 

thank the chairman and ranking member for holding hearings like 

this that maybe will help get us there because our country is depending on it. 

As the ranking member said, the Chinese can build those tankers in 6 months, but Jim, as you know, it didn’t start in the last 

couple of years. They have been able to do that for the last 5 years. 

They are the kinds of things we need to be addressing. 

And gentlemen, thanks for all you have done in your career, and 

if you have any insight on that you can get back to us off the 

record some time, we would love to hear it. Mr. Chairman, thank 

you. 
13 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Forbes. Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding 

this hearing. Last April I was over in the U.K. with a briefing with 

ministry of defense officials there. And although I share a lot of the 

ranking member’s questions about the value of some of these reports, it was interesting getting their perspective because when the 

new government, conservative government, came into power, because they don’t have any kind of regular statutory-driven review 

process—it really is almost at the whim of the government that 

happens to be there at the day in question—they engaged in the 

context of, obviously, a huge fiscal crisis of the equivalent of a defense review. And what they found was that the projected acquisition programs that they had along with sort of budget projections, 

there was probably close to a 20-percent shortfall in terms of 

whether or not the British government was going to be capable of 

funding those needs. And that drove a lot of the budget design of 

the first budget that was passed. 

So, obviously, that has value in terms of just sort of having at 

some point a planning process where you can sort of see where you 

are flying here, as opposed to flying in the dark. Of course, the 

irony of it was that one of the reductions that they proposed was 

in fixed-wing aircraft and shipbuilding. And within months, they 

were engaged in Libya requiring the use of those very platforms 

that really were going to be subject to some of the budget constraints, which shows, again, the ranking member’s point that trying to evaluate risk, even in the matter of the short-term, let alone 

the long-term, is just really hard to do. 

I guess maybe coming from Connecticut, where we are the land 

of actuaries, where people sit around and project 50-year storms, 

100-year storms, 500-year storms, to some degree, it is an equivalent sort of challenge. I don’t envy you in terms of doing that. 

One question I guess I would ask, Admiral Stanley, is just in 

terms of evaluating risk, you know, as you said, it is very complex, 

there are a lot of factors that you have to build into it. One of them 

is whether or not we will have an industrial base which will be capable of dealing with sudden change in challenges that our country 

faces. Is that one of the priorities in terms of, again, trying to 

structure out a plan either short-term or long-term? 

Admiral STANLEY. The simple answer is, yes, we do consider the 

industrial base. I like your parallel to what the British review did. 

And I think a lot of those strategic issues about what does the Nation need for defense, how do we look at the risk against our Nation in the future, sorts out and we have that discussion as part 

of putting together the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy and Quadrennial Defense Review. 

So that is the place where I think that strategic debate should 

be. And whatever shipbuilding or aviation plans that we have that 

look forward—and it does look forward into a dimly lit future— 

those plans as they come together reflect that risk in that direction. 

In these plans is not where we should be debating, do we need 

400-ship Navy or 300-ship Navy; what is the size of the F–22 

[Lockheed Martin/Boeing Raptor fifth-generation stealth fighter 

aircraft] force that is required. That should come out of the strategic reviews would be my input. 
14 

Considering the industrial base and the importance of the industrial base is a part of these plans. I have established some sort of 

strategy for the Nation. I am now implementing that in the procurement profiles of the ships and aircraft that the Nation needs. 

And as part of that, we make sure it is executable by getting our 

people from acquisition technology and logistics, industrial base, to 

come in and evaluate to make sure that we can actually sustain 

that. So, yes, I think it plays, but I think it plays there. And I 

think there is a division between a strategic review and what the 

Nation needs for the long-term and the number of platforms that 

is required to execute. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Courtney. Mr. Palazzo. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you 

all for being here and thank you to for your service to our country. 

I appreciate that. Some of my questions may have already been 

asked and answered, so if it is duplicative, I apologize. 

In this time of high government spending and debt, many in 

Congress are looking at ways to rein in our out-of-control spending, 

and they are starting to look at big-ticket items from the DOD 

budget. 

Just last week, a colleague of mine introduced an amendment aimed at cutting $150 million from the LHA–7 [large-deck amphibious assault ship] program. Cuts like the one suggested last week 

strengthen to me the possibility of further delays in the ship’s construction, which I feel like will also push back other ship construction as well. 

Given that so many shipbuilding programs are connected both financially and in terms of planning, how do you think cuts or delays 

in the current shipbuilding plan affect the overall capabilities of 

the force in the future and our ability to meet or force-level requirements? 

Admiral BLAKE. I think you bring up an excellent point. I think 

one of the key ingredients, if you will, that we have to apply when 

we are going through this process is flexibility. 

You bring up the case of delay in a shipbuilding contract. I will 

tell you, when we have delays in deliveries of hulls, we have to 

then go back in and evaluate, can we accept that risk or not? 

If we determine that we cannot accept that risk, then we have 

to look at things to do extensions on the service lives of other ships 

in order to be able to fill that COCOM [combatant command] requirement. So I would tell you that basic approach would be as you 

got these perturbations within the industrial base. I think the 

Navy has to go back, look at what they have done and then see if 

they have to modify their plans. 

I will tell you, the Department is very supportive of the planning 

process that goes on. We also recognize that this is an open and 

collaborative process, and it must be flexible. And so when an issue 

like that comes up, the first thing we would do is, we would sit 

down and say, all right, what are the risks involved, where do we 

need to go, and how do we get there? 

Mr. PALAZZO. So it does delay our shipbuilding plans for our force 

for the future; it just keeps pushing things out to the right. 

Admiral BLAKE. Well, I think what you have to look at is you 

have to look at the tradeoffs. For example, if a ship is being de-
15 

layed in its delivery, then you have to determine, all right, then I 

am going to have to keep another asset around, but if I keep that 

other asset around that was originally going to go out of service, 

there is, if you will, a bill to be paid. You have to keep those personnel available. You have to look at what maintenance has to be 

done on that ship in order to extend its service life. And then you 

have to factor all of those in, in order to ascertain, where am I 

going to take the money from in order to put it toward this particular issue? 

So I would tell you, one of the examples I could give you is we 

have a large-deck amphib which is currently going to be about 16 

months behind on schedule. We are going have to extend one of 

other large-deck amphibs in order to meet that gap. So we have to 

lay the decommissioning from a vessel from 1 year to another. And 

the associated costs go with that, because we have the personnel 

cost; we have the maintenance cost; we have the operations cost. 

It is one of the ways we handle the risk. 

Mr. PALAZZO. With China’s military build-up expected to continue, particularly that of the Chinese navy, do you feel that these 

delays and shortfalls in our own shipbuilding programs put us at 

risk? 

Admiral BLAKE. I think you have to look across the entire portfolio. You can’t just look at a single issue in isolation. You must, 

if you will, look across the entire shipbuilding plan and the aviation plan in order to determine where you can afford to take risk, 

and then you have to apply it across the entire portfolio. You can’t 

take a single item, go to a single data point and come up with a 

single solution. 

If you go down that path, what you end up with is, in isolation, 

any single issue is solvable, but when taken across the entire portfolio, what you have to do then is you have to balance your risk 

and recognize you have fiscal limitations. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Palazzo. Ms. Hanabusa. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Flynn, Admiral Blake, and Admiral Stanley, in reading your resumes, I notice 

you all graduated the same year from the Naval Academy. So, 

given that, and I don’t mean to embarrass you, it is about—what 

is it—36 years ago, it sort of falls within this 30-year plan that we 

are talking about. So give me a very practical approach, and my 

practical question to the three of you—and I haven’t forgotten you; 

you kind of don’t fit—the rest of you, we are talking about a 30- 

year plan. You have been around 36 years. Would you be able to— 

of course, you wouldn’t have the positions you have, but given that, 

you can answer in terms of what major changes you have seen that 

you would have been able to predict and not predict in that 36-year 

period? And given that, I am just trying to get a good feel for sort 

of what Ranking Member Cooper was saying. How impossible is 

this? Would you back then have been able to look forward and predict where we are today? And what would you say about—we are 

looking at shipbuilding, so would you be able to say in that period 

of time that we are where we should be in terms of ships today? 

And would you have had the magic wand and would you have been 

able to do that? 
16 

I think it is just interesting that you all graduated the same 

year, so there is nobody that can say, well, 10 years ago, it 

wouldn’t have been the same. So given all your experiences and 

your common background, can you answer my question? I don’t 

care what order you do it. 

General FLYNN. As the one who had their first choice of service 

selection—and for the record, I am the youngest of the three. 

Ms. HANABUSA. I am not asking what rank you graduated, okay, 

just—— 

General FLYNN. Ma’am, I think the first part is, I have been listening today, and I do agree with Admiral Stanley. I think the key 

part of this is you have to have a strategic basis for what your plan 

is. And there was an Army general who once said, we are never 

going to get the future 100-percent right; but we can’t afford to be 

100-percent wrong. 

So there is a value to doing a long-range plan, as to whether that 

is 20 or 30 years, I tend to agree with Admiral Stanley that 20 

years is about right. 

But then what you also have to be able to do is when you build 

the execution plan to get there in 20 years, you are searching for 

consistency and stability. And I think that means on a yearly basis, 

then, you need to take a look at what assumptions you have based 

your plan on and whether they are going to play out. 

For example, if you have a ship delay in construction, what does 

that do to the rest of the plan? And you need to take a look at that 

every year. If there is a maintenance issue, are you right? I think 

that if you focus on the 5 years of the program, when we do a defense program, that is really where the focus is, but that should 

underpin, I think, a 20-year effort that is based on some strategic 

context. 

Admiral BLAKE. Ma’am, for the record, as the best-looking of the 

three, as you go back and you look, I think you have significant 

events that take place almost on a 10-year basis. I will give you 

the best example, no one I think could have predicted the Vietnam 

drawdown. We were all midshipmen at the Naval Academy when 

that started. No one could have predicted the Reagan buildup when 

it started in the 1980s. No one could have predicted the peace dividend with the Cold War coming to an end in the 1990s. No one, 

I think, would have predicted in 2000 that we were only a short 

time away from an event such as 9/11 and that we would be involved in two wars today. 

So I think your point is absolutely accurate in that no one of us 

can predict, if you will, what the future will hold. I do however believe that planning is indispensable. And I think you have to have 

a corroborative process that gets you there. You have to have—and 

I look at the current shipbuilding plan. I think if we hadn’t had a 

look at the long range, whether it is 10 years or 20 years, we 

wouldn’t necessarily have focused on the fact that we have a significant challenge with the SSBN(X) [next-generation ballistic missile submarine] program. We wouldn’t necessarily see that our surface force combatants, our cruisers and destroyers, are going to go 

away in large numbers in the 20s. We wouldn’t necessarily have 

been able to project the fact that our submarine numbers are going 

to go down and that we have to address that. 
17 

You know, one of our goals, which we have accomplished in recent times, is we are now able to build two submarines a year, 

which is no small accomplishment given the fiscal constraints we 

operate under. So I would say, as you look across that, there is significant value in the planning process. I would go to the point, as 

I mentioned in my opening remarks, when you go out to 30 years, 

that last 10 years is notional; it is a one-for-one replacement. 

If you were to ask me what would I look at, I think we do need 

to focus on that 20-year period, because we cannot project those 

events like the peace dividend or Reagan buildup or whatever 

event it happens to be, so it is important that we have that. I guarantee you, in 2000, none of us were looking at the use of the UAVs 

[unmanned aerial vehicles] that we currently have in inventory 

back in 2000. No one, I don’t think, projected that by 2011, we 

would have the number of assets available for the purposes they 

are now being used. I definitely agree with you that you have to 

do that from that perspective. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you. Mr. Chair, can I ask that the remaining admiral and general respond in writing? 

Mr. WITTMAN. Yes. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you very much. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you so much. We appreciate that. Ms. Pingree. 

Ms. PINGREE. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for allowing 

me to sit in on your committee. It is an interesting conversation, 

and I don’t have a lot of questions to ask. I really was looking forward to hearing a little bit of your projections out into the future. 

And I think this is useful, particularly a useful hearing in some of 

the challenges that come up when you try to project 30 years out, 

which my colleagues have been discussing. And you all have mentioned that it is very hard to tell what technology will be available 

to us, where we will be at risk. And I applaud you for attempting 

to do that. 

I will just add, from my perspective, and I do have a similar parochial lens for this because I do have a shipyard in my district, 

so we think a lot about our relationship with building ships, with 

what our industrial capacity is, with our inability sometimes to negotiate contracts. And from our perspective, the lack of sufficient 

ships projected out into the future. So if you want to make any 

comments on that. I see from a very short-term lens that we are 

not meeting the need of building sufficient ships to power our 

Navy. 

And that I see every day the diminishment of the industrial base, 

particularly of an aging workforce. We, of course, believe that we 

build the best ships in the world in the State of Maine. And we 

worry about what happens when we don’t have future generations 

that are trained to do that. 

As some of my colleagues have mentioned, all you have to do is 

take one look at China and think, what are we letting go of in this 

country when we may easily find ourselves in the short run and 

certainly in the long run facing a much more powerful Navy without the capacity to deal with it? 

So, to a certain extent, I look at it and say, it is good we are 

thinking 30 years out, but I am really worried about the next 10 
18 

years. It doesn’t seem that we’re on track to do what we need to 

do in the short term. So if you want to make a comment on that, 

that would be useful to me. 

Admiral BLAKE. Ma’am, I will tell you, in our deliberations, as 

we are building plans, one of the key considerations is the fragility 

of the industrial base, the fact that the industrial base over the 

past several years has shrunk in size and the fact that we recognize that that database is a national asset and that it is not easily 

recoverable. 

And so when we put plans together, one of the key factors is the 

health of continuing to support the database, and that is no small 

issue when we are doing that as we build the plan. 

I can tell you when we look at, whether it is your yard up in 

Bath or the yards down in the Gulf or it is the yards on the West 

Coast or the ones in Virginia, we absolutely look at every one of 

those. We also look at, not only the tier-1 yards but the tier-2 

yards, because we recognize that whatever decision is made, it is 

going to have an affect on both of those, on the work at those yards 

and how we are going to be able to maintain that industrial base 

into the future. 

Ms. PINGREE. Thanks. I would just comment, it doesn’t seem 

from my perspective, and I know many of my colleagues have highperformance yards in their district as well, but it doesn’t seem like 

at this rate we are keeping up with maintaining the industrial 

base, training the individuals that we need in the future, and we 

are certainly not building ships fast enough to meet our capacity 

or our need. 

Thanks. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Pingree. Mr. Conaway. 

Mr. CONAWAY. I will pass. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you 

for your testimony today and your service to our country. My question, I appreciate the discussion here today about the challenges we 

face in the shipbuilding budgets. I wanted to focus, if I could, on 

the submarines, which I think I have worked on for maybe 11 

years now on the committee. Now the Navy projects the attack 

boats and the shortfalls are going to bottom out at about 39 boats 

in 2030 versus a requirement for having a total of 48 submarines. 

That is a peak shortfall of nine attack boats or 19 percent of the 

requirement. 

More to the point, the Navy is going to be at least 10 percent 

short in attack submarines for an 8-year period of time in 2027 and 

remain low through 2055 and to the end of the 30-year period. Can 

you tell me, how is the Navy going to be able to perform its mission 

adequately with that kind of a shortfall, particularly the Naval 

modernization effort and demands on our attack boats performing 

missions of various other types? 

Admiral BLAKE. Sir, let me begin by saying, first of all, I think 

one of the key factors that occurred is that we were able to get to 

building two boats a year. As you know, there have been several 

years where we were only able to build one. So that was the first 

start of the process we were able to get to build a second SSN [attack submarine]. 
19 

As to the long-term effect and how we are going to deal with 

that, I think there are several approaches we need to look at and 

consider, and those deliberations will be going on over a period of 

time. As you know, we currently have 55 boats in the inventory. 

You are absolutely correct. We are going to go down to a low of 39 

boats in the inventory. And I think we are going to have to look 

at such things as looking at the current inventory and seeing, if 

you will, what the best of breed is and then seeing if we can do 

service life extensions on some of those boats that are currently in 

the inventory. 

Another way we can look at fulfilling COCOM demand is to look 

at deployment extensions, if in fact that—and those are just two 

options out there. 

I think, as I mentioned earlier, I agree, when you look at any single issue in isolation, I think—and I view it as—or we are talking 

about the attack issue right here, I would agree with you that we 

should be able to address that in some way. But then when you 

have to look across the entire portfolio and balance all the requirements that we have across the entire portfolio, that is where it gets 

to be a real challenge, because it is not just a submarine issue; 

there is an amphibious issue. As I mentioned earlier, there is a 

surface combatant issue. So as we look at each one of those, we 

can’t take each one of those in isolation. We have to delve into each 

one of those across the entire portfolio. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How does the shortfall—clearly, the requirement 

says we need to have 48 boats, and I know that we are only meeting about 60 percent of the request of the combatant commanders 

right now with respect to the mission submarines to fulfill. How 

does that compromise us? How do we close that gap? 

Admiral BLAKE. Well, that one is not in my lane, per se, but I 

would tell you in general what you have is you have the combatant 

commanders and the fleet commanders get together, and if you 

will, they do a risk assessment to see what they have in their inventories, and then they fill their global requirements based on 

what they have in the inventory. And you can’t address the issue 

overnight. But I think for any deeper than that, sir, I would have 

to take it for the record. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Well, let me try a different but related question. 

Admiral, I understand that the Navy is trying to find a way to 

put an additional attack boat into the shipbuilding plan for fiscal 

year 2018 column to bring the fiscal year 2018 figure to two boats, 

and that is fine. But it is only one additional ship. You are still 

going to need to put another five to six boats into the plan to avoid 

dropping below the 90 percent, 95 percent of your requirement. If 

the Navy isn’t planning to refuel older boats, attack boats, and it 

is not planning to put an additional six or seven new attack boats 

into the shipbuilding plan, then can you please tell me what the 

Navy does plan to do to substantially mitigate the projected shortfalls in attack submarines? 

Admiral BLAKE. Thank you, sir. First, you are absolutely correct. 

In the current mix, there is a single boat to be delivered in 2018. 

That will be at the earliest a POM–14 [Program Objective Memorandum for Fiscal Year 2014] issue because that would be at the 
20 

end of the FYDP. And I am sure there will be significant deliberations between now and then just to address that single issue. 

With respect to how we would address the overall shortfall as 

you go to the out-years, I would go back to, I think we are going 

to have to look at the viability of looking at service life extensions 

if in fact that is viable whether, and then we will have to determine if it is, or if we have to go to deployment extensions. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Langevin. Mr. Coffman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Vice Admiral 

Stanley, it seems like we’ve become fixated rightfully, so, on the 

number of ships in the United States Navy. And so, I think the 

current projection is we are trying to get to a 313-ship Navy. But 

I think my concern is, in getting there, are we, and focusing on the 

number, are we too focused on building the least costly ships 

versus the more capital, the larger capital ships. So we seem to be 

focused on the littoral combat ship and the joint high-speed vessel 

in terms of getting those numbers. But my concern is that there 

doesn’t seem to be the focus on the next-generation ballistic missile 

submarine. And I wonder if you can comment on that from a longterm budget point of view. 

Admiral STANLEY. So, first, on the SSBN(X), it is funded. It is 

being developed in consonance with our British counterparts. We 

are doing what we need to do to deliver that capability now. It remains funded. I don’t think that the requirements at all are in 

jeopardy. But your larger question is the number of ships. Is that 

an appropriate focus? Quantity has a capability importance all its 

own. So it is important. But to say that 313 is precisely the right 

number is, I think, shortsighted. The number of ships varies. 

In this plan, this 30-year plan, it varies significantly from the 

280 some that we are at today. I think it pegs out around 225 or 

325, something in that ball park, comes back down. So you have 

got a bunch of sine curves in this plan that all gets added up, and 

you know, we say that the requirement is about 300, is what the 

Department said. You quoted the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations], 

who says that 313, you know, is his floor. It is important. I don’t 

want to take away from that. But I also recognize that it is not a 

single point. It is not, a precise number is not always right, okay? 

So it is much more important to get at what capability that force 

has. The way Secretary Gates thinks about it is we have got to 

focus on the flexibility of our force, make sure that we have a force 

available that is adaptable to this future, which is hard to foresee. 

We want to make sure that the ships that we are buying—use LCS 

[littoral combat ship] as the example, quite honestly, it is basically 

a new concept. That mission module and the ability to change that 

mission module will allow the Navy to send the right capability forward that they need. So that is important. And having that in 

some quantities I think makes some sense. How many of the more 

expensive types of ships do we need? It gets at sort of what we are 

talking about over here, where, what is China going to do? And 

what kind of capabilities do we need to provide the right opposing 

force to the Chinese capabilities? 
21 

And that is a discussion that we have. I think the plan that we 

have right now is a good balance of capability and capacity that the 

Nation needs. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Anybody can answer this, probably certainly General Flynn. The needs of the United States Marine Corps in terms 

of the amphibious capability and shipping, I think it is a minimum, 

I understand there are 33 ships in order to deploy two marine expeditionary brigades, and I think the commandant and the prior 

commandant have stated that that is a minimum, that they need 

that as a—force projection capability is a minimum. General Flynn, 

I wonder if you can comment on that and where we are in this 

whole process of reaching. Are we at 28 right now and reaching the 

33? 

General FLYNN. Sir, first of all, it is not just the two brigade requirement. And it is not just focusing on the large threat. It is how 

many ships do you need to do what we are actually doing today 

around the world, and we believe that the requirement was 38. Accept risk down to 33 because of fiscal reality, and you can do both. 

You can do your two brigade requirement and you can meet the demands that we are seeing today. Right now, we have an inventory 

of about 30 amphibious ships. We will go to 29 this year. So you 

have assumed additional risk, not only in your larger requirement 

but also in your day-to-day operations. And where you see that 

manifest itself is not meeting the deployment because we always 

figure out a way how to meet the deployment and the commitment. 

Where you see it is in the ability to do maintenance and the ability to train the force. This summer, we are likely to deploy a marine expeditionary unit and amphibious ready group that for the 

first time that all three ships will be together is when they deploy. 

And that just shows you that that is when you accept risk in the 

inventory. It is not just the large enemy out there or potential 

enemy; it is also the day-to-day demands on the thing where you 

see the stressing and manifestation comes first in maintenance and 

in training at the same time. 

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

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Coffman. Panel members, thank 

you so much for joining us today. We appreciate your insights. I 

would ask this. 

Ms. Hanabusa had a request for some written responses. If you 

will provide that to her. 

And if you will do this as a formal request from the committee, 

and that is, we would like to have your written reflections on what 

we can do to improve the planning process. And I know that you 

all had stated some of your thoughts today, but we want to make 

sure that we give you the opportunity to give us a more detailed 

list of things that you think can be done to improve this particular 

planning process. And again, with the focus of making sure that we 

get as highly robust information as possible in a timely manner 

back to the House Armed Services Committee. And we appreciate 

your reflections and thoughts on that and thank you so much for 

joining us today. 

We are going to break for about 3 minutes and let the next panel 

be seated, and then we will begin questioning them. 
22 

We will now begin with our next group of panelists, and they include Mr. Ron O’Rourke, Defense Policy and Arms Control Section, 

Congressional Research Service; Mr. Eric Labs, from the National 

Security Division, Congressional Budget Office; and Ms. Mackenzie 

Eaglen, Research Fellow for the National Security Studies, the 

Heritage Foundation. 

I want to thank you all so much for joining us today and appreciate you taking the time to provide your insights on this, what I 

believe is a critical planning process, in understanding what we 

can do to push the issue forward. And I want to welcome all of you 

and again, thank you for your participation. 

As we previously arranged, opening statements will be limited to 

5 minutes due to time constraints. I am going to allow one exception, and that is Mr. O’Rourke. He has asked to provide some additional comments, so we will allow that particular time. 

Additionally, written testimony, absent objection, will be made 

part of the record, and we look forward to hearing from all of you 

in discussing the oversight issues we have been concerned about 

here in Congress. And I also remind my colleagues that we will use 

our customary 5-minute rule today for questioning, proceeding by 

seniority and arrival time. 

So, with that, we will begin our testimony with Mr. O’Rourke. 

STATEMENT OF RONALD O’ROURKE, DEFENSE POLICY AND 

ARMS CONTROL SECTION, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH 

SERVICE 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Cooper, 

distinguished members of the subcommittee, thanks for the chance 

to speak today on the 30-year shipbuilding plan. 

The main purpose of the 30-year plan is to support effective congressional oversight of Navy shipbuilding by giving Congress information that is important to performing this oversight function but 

not available in the 5-year data of the FYDP. The plan enables 

Congress to assess whether the Navy intends to procure enough 

ships to achieve and maintain its stated force level goals. 

In particular, it makes visible to Congress projected ship inventory shortfalls that are either not visible or not fully visible in the 

5-year data of the FYDP. Given the long construction time of ships, 

as well as financial and industrial-based limits on ship procurement rates, mitigating shortfalls that appear to be far in the future 

can sometimes involve making adjustments to ship procurement 

rates beginning in the near term within the FYDP. 

The Navy’s addition of a second DDG–51 [Arleigh Burke-class 

guided missile destroyer] to the fiscal year 2014 column can be 

viewed as a possible case in point. By providing Congress advance 

warning of projected inventory shortfalls, the 30-year plan gives 

Congress an opportunity to consider whether to address these 

shortfalls before it might become too late to do much about them. 

The value of the 30-year plan might be likened to the value of 

headlights for a truck driver traveling on a country road at night. 

The driver can’t make abrupt changes in the truck’s speed and direction, and consequently gets a critical benefit from the advanced 

warning the headlights provide of approaching curves or obstructions in the road. 
23 

The 30-year plan can help Congress assess whether there is a 

fundamental imbalance between Navy program goals and resources, whether ship procurement plans are likely to be affordable 

within future Defense budgets, whether Navy planning is reasonable in terms of assumed service lines for existing ships and estimated procurement costs for new ships, and what the potential industrial and base implications of the Navy’s intentions for ship procurement might be, as well as whether the Navy’s planning is reasonable in terms of assumed service lives for existing ships and, as 

I said, estimated procurement costs for new ships. 

Right now, the 30-year plan is helping inform Congress on how 

addressing the projected shortfalls in cruisers and destroyers and 

in attack submarines might need to take into account the funding 

demands of the Ohio replacement program. For example, Congress 

might decide that it would be easier to put additional destroyers 

and attack submarines into the shipbuilding plan before procurement of Ohio replacement boats begins, meaning between now and 

fiscal year 2019. 

I understand there are uncertainties associated with assembling 

the last 10 years of a 30-year plan. But the Navy isn’t exactly helpless in this regard. For one thing, the Navy can project which ships 

are scheduled for retirement in those years. And since the average 

life of a ship looking across the fleet is about 35 years, those last 

10 years will capture most of the retirements that aren’t projected 

for the first 10 or 20. Seeing the retirements projected for those 

final 10 years can help Congress assess whether those retirement 

dates are consistent with real world ship operating tempos and 

maintenance practices. 

Even though there will be ships in the strategic environment between now and the final 10 years of the plan, Navy planners can 

nevertheless project that the Navy will likely need to have certain 

capabilities associated with the broad and enduring roles of the 

Navy. Indeed, one of the strengths of our multimission Naval forces 

is that, although they are designed and built in a certain strategic 

environment with certain specifics missions in mind, they usually 

wind up being used many years later very successfully in different 

strategic environments for different missions. The Navy’s aircraft 

carriers, cruisers and destroyers and attack submarines are all 

cases in point. 

Although there are uncertainties concerning the last 10 years of 

the 30-year plan, that doesn’t mean those last 10 years aren’t of 

value for Congress to see. They can help show, for example, whether a projected shortfall is temporary in nature or more open-ended 

and long-lasting. That is important because mitigating a temporary 

shortfall might only require SLEPing some existing ships, while 

mitigating a more open-ended shortfall, like the cruiser destroyer 

shortfall, might need to involve putting additional ships into the 

shipbuilding plan. 

The last 10 years of the 30-year plan provide Congress with a 

baseline against which to examine the possible implications of potential longer-term changes in technology, budgets, or the strategic 

environment. The final 10 years currently show that the Navy has 

not yet identified a strategy for fully closing the cruiser destroyer 
24 

and attack submarine shortfalls, even after procurement of the 

Ohio replacements boats is finished. 

That is potentially important for Congress to see because it can 

inform congressional consideration of options for procuring additional destroyers and attack submarines between now and then, or 

for funding research and development work on new ship technologies or new shipbuilding methods that might alter the shipbuilding affordability equation for those final 10 years. 

In summary, the Navy is a long-run proposition because of the 

timelines involved, building, maintaining, reshaping and ultimately 

replacing a fleet isn’t done over a period of 10 or 20 years but over 

a period of 30 years or more. The 30-year shipbuilding plan responds to this fundamental aspect of the responsibility for providing and maintaining a Navy. 

As the CRS [Congressional Research Service] Specialist for Naval 

Affairs, a key part of my job is to support congressional oversight 

of DOD activities by identifying potential oversight issues for Congress relating to the Navy, and except for the annual DOD budget 

submission itself, no document is more useful to me in performing 

this role for Congress than the 30-year shipbuilding plan. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. Thank you again for 

the chance to speak on this issue, and I will be pleased to respond 

to any questions you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. O’Rourke can be found in the Appendix on page 58.] 

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

Dr. Labs. 

STATEMENT OF DR. ERIC LABS, NATIONAL SECURITY 

DIVISION, CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE 

Dr. LABS. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cooper, members of 

the subcommittee, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss with you the value of the Department of Defense’s 

annual 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plan for the Congress’ 

oversight responsibility. 

Every year Congress is asked to approve the procurement of a 

year’s worth of expensive items, such as ships and aircraft. Wellconstructed 30-year acquisition plans for major weapons system 

can provide information about the long-term implications of those 

decisions. 

The 30-year ship and aircraft plans benefit Congressional oversight in at least three different ways: First, DOD’s 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans enable the Congress to assess the longterm effects of the incremental decisions that are made each year 

in the annual authorization and appropriation process. Ships and 

aircraft take decades to develop and procure, and often remain in 

the inventory for decades more. In the absence of a 30-year plan, 

the cumulative effects of those annual decisions may not be well 

understood. With the previous panel, you discussed the issue of the 

submarines in the 1990s versus the effect of having a long-term 

shortfall. That would be an example I would cite here as well. 

Second, the 30-year plans may reveal whether an imbalance exists between the inventory goals for ships or aircraft and the resources the military Services are projected to receive. If such an 
25 

imbalance was indicated, the Congress might want to more closely 

review the defense strategy that was the basis for the DOD’s inventory goals, the amount of money the Department would receive, or 

how those resources would be spent. For example, the Navy’s 2011 

shipbuilding plan revealed definitively that the Service would face 

a substantial budgetary challenge in the 2020s and the early 2030s 

when it expects to purchase 12 replacements for the Ohio-class 

SSBNs and still pay for other ship programs. That in turn over the 

past year has led the Congress and the Navy to focus more early 

attention on reducing the costs of those ships. 

Indeed, the very process of the Navy’s efforts to put out its 30- 

year shipbuilding plans over the past 5 years showed many yearto-year changes. Those individual changes were not so important in 

themselves but as a whole, greatly illuminated for Congress the 

Navy’s challenge of developing a program that meets inventory 

goals and is affordable. 

I agree with Mr. O’Rourke. In fact, aside from the budget and accompanying justification materials, the Navy’s 30-year ship procurement plan is the most important document I use in the work 

I perform in support of the Congress. 

Third, the 30-year plans also provide Congress with information 

about the relationship between DOD’s long-term inventory objectives and its assumptions about service lives of ships and aircraft. 

The 30-year plans make those assumptions more transparent so 

that Congress has the opportunity to examine the realism of those 

assumptions and to judge whether it is investing enough resources 

to maintain the fleet. 

For example, the Navy’s plan assumes 40 years for new destroyers, but the Navy has virtually no experience in keeping surface 

combatants longer than 30 years. There is, of course, as was mentioned earlier, considerable uncertainty in any 30-year ship or aircraft procurement plan. The Navy’s 2011 plan highlighted some of 

the difficulties in both developing such a plan and in estimating its 

costs, particularly for ships to be purchased in the 2030s. 

Although such uncertainties limit the utility of 30-year plans as 

predictive tools, the documents can nevertheless help inform the 

Congress of changes in plans and circumstances that are likely to 

arise. For example, the Congress is frequently faced with events 

and decisions about military aircraft inventories and acquisition 

budgets that have long-term implications. Recent events include 

the structural failure of an F–15 Eagle that could have portended 

the need to retire those fighters many years earlier than expected, 

delays in the development of the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter that 

will probably compel the Services to retain older aircraft longer 

than planned, and the decision to begin developing a new longrange bomber that will require substantial funding in the years 

well beyond DOD’s FYDP. 

In much the same way, the CBO’s budget baseline provides a reference trajectory for Federal spending under current law, a well 

documented 30-year aviation or shipbuilding plan can provide a 

picture of how forces may evolve over time and what investments 

will be needed if current plans and assumptions remain unchanged. The value of that picture lies not in its accuracy as a 

blueprint of the future, but serves as a basis for Congress to evalu-
26 

ate the long-term implications of changes to today’s plans and circumstances. 

The Congress’ oversight of Navy shipbuilding programs could be 

improved if the Navy included in its report the accompanying tables, listing by class and types of ship that would be procured, delivered, retired and serving in the fleet each year over the 30-year 

period. Similarly, long-term aircraft acquisition plans would be 

more informative if they displayed respective inventories of each 

type of aircraft over the span covered to include the schedule over 

which consisting aircraft are phased in and phased out as well as 

the underlying assumptions. 

Although DOD has not produced 30-year plans for ground combat vehicles, rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft and trucks, such plans 

would be useful for oversight of the Army’s and Marine Corps’ acquisition plans, particularly if they provided information about the 

size and age of current inventory, inventory goals and plans to replace or modernize vehicle and aircraft fleets, and the projected 

cost of doing so. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would be happy 

to answer any questions that you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Labs can be found in the Appendix on page 68.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Dr. Labs. 

Mrs. Eaglen. 

STATEMENT OF MACKENZIE EAGLEN, RESEARCH FELLOW 

FOR NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION 

Ms. EAGLEN. Thank you, Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member 

Cooper. It is a pleasure to be here. It is also good to see Chairman 

Forbes as well earlier. 

I agree with my colleagues that the purpose of the 30-year plans 

is critical, not as a document to predict the future with precision; 

it is really about forcing an examination on the back-end to offer 

clarity on the front-end. And I know that the DOD witnesses testified to the clarity within the FYDP, but it is the 5- to the 20-year 

period that I think that really matters. And I don’t think you can 

get that 20-year clarity unless you go even slightly beyond that into 

the 30-year. 

Ron highlighted a point I would like to make. Identifying broad 

trends and shortfalls is really where the pressure points are in 

terms of fleet size and composition. Cost goals and planning shortfalls is really where the utility of these plans come in for Congress. 

So, for example, Admiral Blake referenced the SSBN(X) as something, and Eric just did as well, as a program and a pressure point 

in terms of budgetary resources available and a potential plan resource mismatch, something that Congress needs to begin to start 

working on right now with the Department to help alleviate that 

strain, coming up with creative solutions. 

The two aviation plans that have been submitted so far to Congress have highlighted the exact same thing for the U.S. Air Force 

and this ‘‘bow wave’’ of spending that is going to be required, beginning right in 2020 and throughout that decade, as the Joint Strike 

Fighter enters full-rate production at 70 to 80 per year, as well as 

the tanker, which will be fully on line, and then, of course, the 
27 

bomber will be just entering or hopefully near full-rate production. 

This is in addition to all of the other things the Air Force will be 

doing during that decade. And so that is the equivalent to me of 

the SSBN(X) and the elephant in the room in terms of budgetary 

resources in terms of aviation. And that being just roughly 7 fiscal 

years from now; 2020 sounds far away, but the building is already 

working on POM 13, and you can see how quickly this arrives. 

Something my colleagues have referenced and I agree with is 

that this, and the previous panel said, the process was important. 

It may not necessarily be what is on the document, but the learning curving of the process. Part of what I believe this means is culling and highlighting the various assumptions. In fact, the witnesses previously said, those may often change. And they change 

annually, if not more so. And when assumptions change, what we 

found is build rates and new procurement and the service life extension and retirement plans of ships and aircraft are not mutually 

exclusive. Tinkering with one, even if it is a brand new program 

ripples through the entire fleet, the legacy fleet and the new one 

coming on line. 

So, for example, the previous panel said that retirement of ships 

and aircraft changes vary, based on war-time usage rates, base on 

op tempo and a variety of other things. That then affects the service life extension needs of other programs, but you can’t look at 

service life extension needs without looking at the new procurement and build schedules of what is coming on line. But that is 

also linked to the maintenance plans or delays of everything. So 

you see that we have a circular argument here. 

So I don’t want to just talk about the value of the plans. I actually want to offer some new ideas and solutions to you as well, particularly as the DOD faces the deficit reduction efforts. The Navy, 

for example, has correctly concluded the U.S. needs a larger fleet, 

not just ships and aircraft but network capability, longer-range and 

increased persistence. We are losing our monopolies on guided 

weapons and the ability to project power. 

Precision munitions and battle networks are proliferating, while 

advances in radar and electro-optical technology are increasingly 

rendering stealth ineffective. I think Congress should look at the 

possibility of a long-range technology road map, which would include a science and technology plan and an R&D, a research and 

development, plan for the Department of the Navy and the Air 

Force. This would call for greater clarity to the need for next-generation surface combatant for the Navy, a new air superiority fighter jet for the Navy and the Air Force, and what low observable capabilities beyond stealth may be required. 

This would also highlight some of the things Ms. Pingree talked 

about as well in the need in the technology space for more capable 

anti-ship, land attack and air-to-air missiles, next-generation rotary-winged aircraft, satellite recapitalization, directed energy and 

electromagnetic weapons, nanotechnology, solid state and fiber lasers, and biotechnology as well. 

This road map would look at what our global allies and partners 

are doing and the potential emergence of new players. It would also 

consider capabilities and domains, including undersea, cyber and 

space. 
28 

And lastly, I would conclude with something that I would like 

Dr. Labs to weigh in on. Congress may want to consider universal 

cost estimates among the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the 

Department of the Navy, and the Congressional Budget Office, to 

use a set of consistent costs and methods to reduce the wide 

variances among new shipbuilding plans, the defense budgets, the 

CBO estimates and external analyses. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Eaglen can be found in the Appendix on page 77.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Eaglen. We will now begin with 

our round of questions. I understand we might have some votes 

coming up, so we will try to integrate our questioning amongst the 

vote schedules. 

Mr. O’Rourke and Dr. Labs, I appreciate your insight into the 

process, and you both indicated how valuable this document is to 

you in decisionmaking and the efforts that you have to put forward. 

Let me ask this: You had heard in the previous testimony about 

some suggestions about the length of the entire scope of the planning process, 20 years versus 30 years. I want to get your perspective, a little more specificity on your perspective on 20 versus 30 

years and what that 10-year period of time creates as far as value 

in the planning process. 

And then give me a perspective, too, on the current regime, 

which is, we are providing a 30-year aviation and shipbuilding plan 

in relation to the QDR, which is on a 3-year cycle, versus the proposal, which is to go to a 1-year cycle. Can you—I want you to 

speak a little bit to the utility of doing an update on an annual 

basis versus in concert with the QDR, and then 20 years versus 30 

years as far as the scope of the plan. Mr. O’Rourke. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. In terms of 20 versus 30, I think it is very important to note that the two major shortfalls that I have highlighted 

in my testimony, the one for cruisers, destroyers and the one for 

attack submarines, the majority of the years of those shortfalls are 

revealed in the final 10 years of the 30-year plan. If you didn’t see 

those final 10 years, you might assume that those shortfalls might 

be closed up on their own over time through natural build rates. 

It is only because we saw the final 10 years in that 30-year plan 

that we see that in fact those shortfalls are open-ended. 

And as I mentioned in my opening statement, that can have a 

big difference in terms of the kinds of options you might want to 

entertain for how to address those shortfalls. If you thought this 

was just going to be a dip that was going to close up on its own 

accord over the long run, you might then simply look at SLEPing 

some of your existing ships to fill in that valley. But if you see that 

it is more of an open-ended shortfall, then you might want to give 

more consideration to actually putting extra ships into the shipbuilding budgets. That is the signal you get from seeing the final 

10 years of the 30-year plan. You wouldn’t get that signal if the 

final 10 years weren’t there. 

And because the middle years of that 30-year plan have the Ohio 

replacement program in it, that might give rise to consideration for 

putting any extra ships in the shipbuilding plan into the first 10 

years of the 30-year plan, the period we are looking at right now. 
29 

That is how the significance of the final 10 years can actually reverberate into the present time. 

Moreover, as I mentioned in my opening statement, those final 

10 years show you the projected retirement dates of the ships 

whose projected retirement dates do not show in the first 10 or 20 

years, and because the average life of a Navy ship, when you look 

across all the classes on a weighted basis, is about 35 years, it completes your understanding of the assumptions that the Navy is 

making about expected service lives for its ships because the vast 

majority of those expected retirements will now be within that 30- 

year period. They would not be in there on an only 20-year basis. 

In terms of once every 4 years versus once a year, if you do it 

once every 4 years, but then the FYDP comes up every year and 

puts differences into that, you then have to start running two sets 

of books on the issue. And, in fact, I was in that situation earlier 

this year before the Navy submitted their new 30-year shipbuilding 

plan, which they did in late May. Prior to that, I had to try and 

reconcile the FYDP data from this year’s budget with the 30-year 

plan from a year ago, and there were differences between the two, 

and I had to start running two sets of tables to present every situation, which were loaded with a lot of footnotes to explain the discrepancies. And my sense was that this made the situation a lot 

harder for Members and staff to understand. 

And so, when you get a situation where you submit a 30-year 

plan once every 4 years, but the FYDPs nevertheless change every 

year, you run into this complication that I think makes it harder 

for people to understand what they are looking at, and that can 

hinder effective oversight. 

Dr. LABS. Mr. Chairman, I can’t really improve upon what Mr. 

O’Rourke just said, and I would echo each of his points identically. 

I would add just a couple of things to that. 

One is that you see, his first point about sort of the importance 

of it, you see the shortfalls are unveiled in the last 10 years of the 

plan. If you could actually compare the shipbuilding plans, as I sort 

of do on a routine basis as a part of the oversight work that I do, 

the original 313-ship plan that the Navy put out back in the fiscal 

year 2007 plan, around the 2006 time period, showed at that time 

at the end of the planning period a 15-ship shortfall in large surface combatants. You might think that that might have been all it 

was. But as the planning period got extended even under that plan, 

that shortfall was going to grow to 20-plus ships as well, and we 

are still seeing the same thing today. So the value of that longterm perspective, whether the Congress chooses to take that information and act upon it or not seems to me is highly valuable. 

I would also add in terms of there was some discussion in the 

previous panel about sort of the difficulties and complexities of projecting out that last 10-year period. And I guess I would disagree 

that I don’t think it actually is all that difficult or all that complex 

to do, depending on what the Department is trying to achieve with 

that 10-year window. If you are trying to simply give a picture of 

that 10-year window as to what are the numbers of ships that 

might be required based on current requirements and assumptions, 

then it is really not hard to put the ships you need into the plan 

and come up with a notional cost based on historical cost relation-
30 

ships and give that information, give that information to the Congress. And if, as the some members of the previous panel stated, 

that not much changes in that 10-year window, then it is really not 

that difficult then to produce a bill on an annual basis. 

If, on the other hand, as was also indicated in discussion of the 

service lives issue, if op tempo is changing the service lives of ships 

or aircraft on a year-to-year basis because we are using them a lot 

and therefore maybe they don’t serve in the fleet as long as we 

would have expected, we very much would want to see on a yearto-year basis how those changes, how that op tempo is affecting the 

long-term projections of the fleet. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Just one additional point to add to that on the 

4-year versus the 1-year issue. If you run into—if you run a process 

where you submit the 30-year plan once every 4 years and that 30- 

year plan reveals shortfalls or other issues that someone might find 

inconvenient in the executive branch, then that would give them 

the opportunity when that 30-year plan becomes 1 year old or 2 

years old or 3 years old to begin to discount the importance of those 

oversight issues for Congress on the grounds that they are based 

on a plan that might no longer be accurate. And I don’t know if 

Eric wants to add anything to that. 

Dr. LABS. We have actually had that experience in various meetings and briefings over the last 5 years, where certain plans would 

be out of date of certain types, and they would say, well, that is 

old, and things have changed since then. But they were not then 

willing to offer up well what exactly has changed that we would 

have to wait until whenever the next budget submission would be. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Okay. Mrs. Eaglen, I want to the pursue a line of 

questioning with a comment that you made concerning a peak in 

Air Force resource needs, especially when we have a tanker program coming to maturation, the F–35 program coming to maturation at the same time we have the strategic bomber program that 

reaches its height, and the costs that are reflected in that. Do you 

believe that under the current planning process, that that difficulty 

is accurately reflected? And again, I want to look at, are we really 

able to properly project that to make sure that at that time, we are 

now aware of the stresses that that will put on resources in a fairly 

challenging time of resources? I want you to comment on that. 

And then I think you also brought up an interesting perspective 

on one element of this strategic planning process that does seem 

to be lacking, and that is, on the Army side of things, with rotarywinged aircraft and other assets there that should be part of a 

planning process that we put in place that is similar for ships and 

other aircraft, that element of the planning process does seem to 

be lacking, so I want to get your perspective on the scope of what 

we may want to consider as far as the Army’s involvement in the 

process, what they ought to possibly bring to the table as far as 

planning to make sure that we have a proper representation in 

evaluation of what the needs are from top to bottom within DOD. 

Ms. EAGLEN. Absolutely. Thank you. Regarding, you know, do we 

have a good sense of this bow wave, this pressure, particularly on 

Air Force aviation plans in the early 2020s, I would argue, no. And 

the plan lacks the detail that Dr. Labs just identified that is re-
31 

quired. But at least it gives you an avenue to ask these questions. 

You would not be able to ask them without this. 

So, for example, the fiscal year 2011 aviation plan and then you 

compare it with the 2012, the year-over-year assumptions changed 

pretty dramatically in terms of available resources to the Department of Defense. Basically, the 2011 plan called for a 3-percent real 

growth in aviation funding as if there was an aviation pot of 

money, but similar to the SCN [Shipbuilding and Conversion, 

Navy] account. And the 2012 plan just 1 year later suggests zero 

real growth after 2017 and didn’t even address the years between 

now and then. Not sure where specifically that came from, if this 

was just a prediction by the Secretary made 1 year or not or President Obama’s deficit reduction goals. But these are important because what the plan said year over year, it reduced plan spending 

from $268 billion to $259 billion in just this 1-year change. And it 

is unclear where that was effected in the plan. But if you look at 

the total fleet size of the aviation force, while the number stayed 

relatively healthy, even though the costs had decreased—available—the assumption of the costs of the resources available, it was 

at the high-end where we are seeing those shortfalls that manifest 

themselves, so the unmanned systems, for example, stayed very 

healthy in terms of numbers available under the new cost assessment, but the fighter attack fleet, the strategic lift and bomber aircraft all fell year over year. And I believe that is a direct result of 

reduced money available to the Department, but they don’t make 

that connection. This is something that Members are certainly interested in. 

I do believe that, in going to Mr. Cooper’s point earlier, I don’t 

think that these plans need to have every single piece of data in 

them. And we could certainly get into trainer aircraft, for example, 

and other types of unmanned systems that are already alone pretty 

significant. But I think rotary-winged in particular is important because of a couple of reasons. We know that the multiple Services 

need to develop a next-generation rotary-winged aircraft or whatever it is, an attack helicopter or something else. And those plans 

are actually, if the Department had been serious about this, should 

have begun about 5 years ago. So that the R&D would be coming 

online just about now. Heavy lift aircraft and rotary-winged are 

something the last panel brought up as well, and I believe that is 

true in particular for the Navy. Their MH–53E Dragon helicopters 

are the only heavy lift planes that they have in the fleet, and they 

are not going to last forever. And there is no discussion or at least 

clarity in terms of the R&D planning that is required today. If we 

want to put this in the fleet by 2019, we are looking at basically 

2013, next year’s budget, or 2014 at the latest to do that. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Ms. Eaglen. Mr. Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All the witnesses on this 

panel seem to like the requirement that the Pentagon do the 30- 

year shipbuilding report. In fact, for some of you, it is your favorite 

report it seems like. Two of you work for a government agency. 

Does either the Library of Congress or CBO have a 30-year plan? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I am not aware that the Library of Congress has 

a 30-year plan, no. 
32 

Dr. LABS. No, Mr. Cooper, I am not aware that CBO has a 30- 

year plan. 

Mr. COOPER. Have either of you advocated for a 30-year plan for 

your agency? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. It is not my role to advocate policy for the Library of Congress one way or the other. 

Mr. COOPER. Well, just informally, speaking as a citizen, do you 

think it would be a good idea for the Library of Congress or the 

CBO to have such a plan? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. As a general management practice, if an entity 

is involved in the construction of capital assets that have very long 

lifetimes, it might then make sense for that entity to have a planning process in place that encapsulates the lifespan of those assets. 

Mr. COOPER. But bottom line is, neither one of your agencies has 

such a plan and for various reasons, one hasn’t been advocated apparently. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I can’t say that our agency doesn’t have that 

plan, but I am not aware of one. 

Mr. COOPER. You seem to be a very informed person. I think you 

would be aware of one if they had one. Another line of questioning 

is this: It seems to me that core competency for military service is 

preserving warfighting capability, not just during their tenure as 

officers but in their hand-off. It also seems to me that we had quite 

a capable military before this 30-year requirement was put into 

place; 10 years ago or 1 year ago, depending on whether you are 

talking ships or aircraft. 

But now we have layered on this new requirement that almost 

assumes that our general officers are incompetent or 

untrustworthy because otherwise, they can’t be trusted to deliver 

capability in the future that will sustain our great Nation. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I think it is a question, as you put it, about 

whether the requirement implies incompetence on the part of the 

military. Even before the 30-year plans were submitted, the DOD 

was in the regular practice of looking at these years out beyond the 

end of the FYDP anyway in something they called the extended 

planning annex. They still do that today. And so what this does is 

not imply, in my view, incompetence on the part of the military officers. What it does instead is give visibility to Congress of this 

long-range planning data, which can be helpful in congressional 

oversight but which Congress previously did not have visibility 

into. 

Mr. COOPER. Well, we are very good at pretending to be armchair 

generals and admirals. The question is whether we have a stronger 

nation as a result. And as you know, defense bills used to be quite 

short. Now they are incredibly long. They are full of red tape, and 

sometimes we can’t even get out of our own red tape. And this, I 

am worried, is another one of those red-tape requirements that ensures future generations of armchair generals and is very satisfying for oversight but not necessarily helpful to warfighters. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I agree that the burden of preparing a report for 

Congress should be weighed against its value, and I stated that in 

my prepared statement for this hearing. In my view, this is a valuable report for assisting congressional oversight into issues relating 

to the Navy. Ships are central to the Navy. You can’t have a Navy 
33 

without them. It is the thing that they spend the largest ticket 

items on, and so, in my view, there are grounds for people to come 

to that conclusion if they should so wish, that the report, in fact, 

is worth the amount of time needed to put it together. 

And as Eric indicated in one of his earlier responses, if the plan 

doesn’t change very much from year to year, then the burden of 

preparing a new one each year is not necessarily that great. But 

if the plan does change a lot from year to year, then that in fact 

becomes a reason why Congress might in fact need to get it every 

year so that it can have that changed data on a timely basis and 

not work off of outdated information. 

Mr. COOPER. If I could reclaim my time. I am limited by the 

chairman. 

I would suggest when you say in oral testimony that the Navy 

is like driving a truck in the dark down a road without headlights 

unless we have such a report, that that is close to an allegation of 

incompetence. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I didn’t say that. I said that the value of it for 

Congress is in providing that advance warning because if Congress 

doesn’t have this report, it is very difficult for Congress to see that 

far ahead, except by making a lot of assumptions which may or 

may not match actual DOD planning assumptions. 

Mr. COOPER. Then you are accusing them of untrustworthiness 

and not revealing to Congress what their true intentions are. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. No, not at all. I am simply saying that Congress 

has visibility into this data when they have a 30-year report, and 

I am not aware of another mechanism by which Congress can regularly become acquainted with this data in a structured manner. 

Mr. COOPER. Remember, we succeeded quite well for many decades without it, and driving in the dark without headlights is not 

a pretty picture under any circumstances. 

Another line of questioning. If we do care about the future, and 

I think we should, remember that the Federal Government is the 

only large entity left in America that refuses to use real accrual accounting, which takes into account future obligations. None of you 

have advocated for that. 

And as I mentioned earlier, the Pentagon is one of the least 

auditable of all government agencies, even using the limited cash 

accounting standard. So if we do want to focus on the future, as 

I believe we should, we need to do this in useful, rigorous ways 

that do not tie us down in red tape, that allow us to focus on some 

of the harder issues, which are a capable industrial base, an agile 

industrial base, so that we can respond to threats. 

Otherwise, I am worried that we are advocating osteoporosis or 

something like that that just will harden an outlook so that we 

meet the plan. And the glory of America has been flexibility and 

ingenuity and genius, not 5-year plans or 30-year plans like the 

former Soviet Union and just wanting to stick with that new blueprint. So it is very important that we balance objectives here. And 

this panel at least seems to have all folks who love the idea of 30- 

year plans, and that worries me. 

Dr. LABS. Mr. Cooper, I would say that CBO routinely looks longterm over a lot of things. In fact, we have a 75-year look at such 

things like Social Security and Medicare because you don’t get sort 
34 

of the long-term effects of what it is going to mean for the Federal 

deficit, for the Federal budget situation. 

Mr. COOPER. I am quite well aware of that. 

Dr. LABS. Yes, sir. I am certain that you are. So, in that sense, 

certainly the organization has looked at long-term perspectives in 

a variety of subject areas. I don’t look at sort of the requirement 

of a presentation of a 30-year shipbuilding or aircraft plan as a 

question challenging the Administration’s or the Services’ competence. 

What it does is it provides information and visibility to sort of 

what the planning process for future military forces should be. And 

I don’t see a disadvantage where more information is—I don’t see 

a situation where more information in that respect would be a bad 

thing. 

Mr. COOPER. I think if you look at personnel trend costs in the 

Pentagon, that they are liable in the out-years to crowd out all 

weapons systems. 

Dr. LABS. Yes, sir. The CBO actually puts out publications that 

show that. 

Mr. COOPER. I am aware of that. It is a little bit different context 

when you are talking about new weapons platforms to meet as yet 

unheralded threats. I mentioned supercavitation earlier. No one 

anticipated, as one of the witnesses mentioned, unmanned aircraft, 

drones, things like that. We have to be flexible. And I trust, at 

least, our admirals and generals to do their jobs and not blindside 

Congress, not to give them a blank check, but to have a capable 

handoff to the next generation of general officers. And that seems 

to be somewhat a question here. 

Dr. LABS. I don’t think the presentation of a 30-year plan is in 

any way limiting the flexibility of the Services in developing responses to new weapons, new capabilities, new security environments. In fact, if anything it would help illuminate sort of what is 

going on and what factors into the decisionmaking as they look into 

the future. 

Mr. COOPER. But it creates an entitlement mentality in certain 

seaports, ship ports, you know, building yards for a certain amount 

of jobs going forward whether the Nation needs them or not. It creates that environment of promise, and I think it reduces agility. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cooper. Mr. Coffman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One question on the 

30-year plan, and given, I think, on our capital ships, I think 30 

years is the average life of those ships. Is it important up front to 

make—because don’t we use the service life extension program for 

most of our major weapons systems, like ships? Is it feasible to incorporate that in the planning process directly, that there is going 

to be a SLEP of these systems? Anybody. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. We are tending to run our systems longer and 

longer over time. We are running ships over longer lives now than 

we did in previous decades. And that is true for aircraft as well. 

If DOD or the Navy has a program for extending the official service 

life of a platform, it can incorporate that in a 30-year plan. What 

the 30-year plan can also tell you is whether there is possibly a 

need for doing more of that on classes of ships or aircraft for which 
35 

SLEPs have not yet been approved. SLEPs are also sometimes not 

technically feasible or cost effective for every kind of ship or aircraft. They could be, for example, very difficult to accomplish on attack submarines, due to limits on pressure hull life. 

Dr. LABS. I would agree with what Mr. O’Rourke said. And the 

other thing that is sort of at work here is that we have done service 

life extension programs on certain types of ships in the past, which 

has been actually an SCN, usually has been an SCN-funded activity. Where the Navy seems to be moving in the future as they recognize that certain ships are going to be in the fleet longer or 

longer than anticipated, they try to put a lot of that maintenance 

activity actually in the maintenance accounts on a more incremental basis. In other words, the Navy’s planning going forward 

has been to do less of sort of take a ship out of service for a year 

and do a major overhaul, but rather try to maintain it a little bit 

better over the course of its service life so they can still maintain 

a higher state of readiness and a higher state of utility for that 

ship as possible. But it is certainly something that can be featured 

into the planning process and has occurred so in the past. 

Ms. EAGLEN. I would just add that to put service life extension 

in context, the answer to your question is yes. But it also can help 

you take it one step even further into detail and highlight the costbenefit analysis of a service life extension versus of the purchase 

of a brand new system. So the C–130 is a good example here. The 

C–130 center wing box design has an inherent weakness, which 

means all of them will need to be replaced. This is in addition to 

the modernization of all of the H models. There may come a tipping 

point where Congress may say, forget it. We want just additional 

new aircraft. But also SLEPs aren’t fail-safe. We have seen this 

with the A–10Cs [Fairchild Republic Thunderbolt II close air support jets], for example. Those aircraft were recently rewinged, and 

they had their avionics upgraded, and now they are showing fuselage cracks, which was not the point of the SLEP in the first place, 

so we may have to go back and reSLEP for example. And again, 

what is the cost-benefit analysis of doing this and the impact on 

the ripple effect on the rest of the fleet? 

Mr. COFFMAN. How realistic is the objective of a 313-ship Navy? 

Are we chasing a metric versus looking at capability? Numerical 

metric in terms of focusing on capability? 

Dr. LABS. Well, if you think about it in terms of the 313 is not 

a numerical metric but actually represents the sets of capabilities 

that the Department of the Navy says it needs to meet its 

warfighting planning scenarios, then whether it is a realistic—it is 

certainly realistic that the Navy could build the ships it needs to 

achieve that metric and particularly the components of the Navy, 

the different components of ships that would present the capabilities that you are referring to. But in terms of the realism, is it realism to achieve that under current funding requirements, under current funding levels? Under current funding levels of about $15 billion to $16 billion a year, the Navy is looking at the prospect of 

about a 250-ship Navy over a 30-year time period, under CBO estimates, without an increase in funding. And so, in that sense, it depends very much on what you think your future projected funding 

levels for shipbuilding will be. 
36 

Ms. EAGLEN. I would just add the Navy would tell you that the 

number of ships actually includes an analysis of their unmanned 

aerial system capability in the BAMS [Broad Area Maritime Surveillance], for example, their maritime mobility aircraft, the P8 

[Boeing Poseidon anti-submarine warfare aircraft] in particular, 

other unmanned systems, the battle network, the sensor grids, that 

all of this is part of the 313-ship fleet. So it is, I would agree with 

the Navy in this case that it actually is a capability assessment, 

although it sounds simplistic that it is just a number, but it is 

more than that. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Part of what the 30-year shipbuilding plan does 

in my view right now is illuminate the possible need for re-examining the allocation of DOD resources between, frankly, between 

the Navy and other parts of DOD if people in fact do want to 

achieve a fleet of that size and capability. 

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

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Young. 

Mr. YOUNG. Mrs. Eaglen, I am most intrigued by your long-range 

technology plan, integrating that into our overall planning process 

here. And so I wanted to briefly dig into that with you a moment. 

It seems like right now, we first have the National Security Strategy, coming from the White House and the President’s advisers, 

driving the QDR, and then you propose adding an additional step 

after the QDR step, before we come up with our inventory goals for 

our ships and our aircraft production. Is that correct? Did I put it 

in the right spot there in terms of the sequencing? 

Ms. EAGLEN. I am open to the timing. I am open to the sequencing. It could be off year every two, so your R&D, S&T [science and 

technology] could be after the QDR. 

Mr. YOUNG. But the developers of the technology road map, as 

you have styled it, would look to the QDR for strategic guidance 

presumably, right? 

Ms. EAGLEN. Presumably, if the QDR takes a 20-year review, 

which this last one did not. 

Mr. YOUNG. Okay. Which leads me to my next set of questions 

here. You have I think correctly indicated that any such document 

should prioritize our needs for additional investment and different 

capabilities based on those perceived threats and estimated threats 

out there. 

Right now, under the most recent QDR, it seems like the 

prioritization should begin there, maybe should begin with the 

President and the National Security Strategy. Do we have that 

prioritization under the current strategic thinking occurring in the 

Administration? Do we have enough direction to be able to develop 

or prioritize long-range technology or R&D plan? 

Ms. EAGLEN. Unfortunately no, so it does raise a difficulty in 

terms of doing it, but it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. Because, 

for example, the last QDR was issued in the absence of a National 

Security Strategy, and it was largely based on a National Defense 

Strategy issued under the previous administration. And I would 

think Congress would have some problems with the Department 

not meeting its statutory obligations. 
37 

It also largely renders the document ineffective or at least not 

tied to the current administration’s foreign policy of which defense 

policy is a derivative. In this case, we had the cart before the horse. 

The Secretary in his recent speech at the American Enterprise 

Institute basically alluded to shockingly some shortfalls in the 

QDR planning process, which I think should inform the NDAA debate this year, in fact, saying that there isn’t a good link to force 

structure, and certainly I am paraphrasing here of course, and 

some other challenges therein. 

The last QDR served to simply justify the 2010 defense budget. 

I didn’t see it as much more, not to be overly simplistic. So it does 

pose a challenge for a long-term R&D and S&T plan, but it doesn’t 

make that need irrelevant, because neither of those are really 

being talked about now. 

For example, in the aviation plan, we heard the Navy talk about 

the need for a next-generation air dominant fighter some time after 

2019. The Air Force says they need a new cargo jet, but we are getting ready to shutting down our only wide-bodied air production 

line right now. So, I mean, these are, like I said, it is all about the 

back end clarifying the front end investment choices. 

Mr. YOUNG. Right. So to break this down to the sort of real-world 

decisions that those of us in Congress and even people in the Pentagon are asked to make, career military people, I think 

prioritizing whether we invest in satellite recapitalization or nextgeneration rotary-winged aircraft and setting those priorities and 

determining what level we are going to fund each respective technology becomes impossible, frankly, to do in an informed fashion 

unless, first the Administration and then the Pentagon with their 

robust QDR, unless they do their homework. Am I correct in that 

analysis? 

Ms. EAGLEN. Yes, you are. 

Mr. YOUNG. Okay. Where in your estimation in this model from 

QDR to the technology road map and setting the inventory goals, 

at what point do we consider resource constraints, especially since 

our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and many other observers have 

noted that our national debt constitutes our Nation’s greatest national security threat. When do we consider those resource constraints, is it way back in the QDR process or the National Security Strategy, or is it after we have developed inventory goals for 

our Navy? 

Ms. EAGLEN. Well, DOD currently does it as part of the QDR and 

the 2010 QDR said, vaguely referenced here, that it took resource 

constraints into account, you know. It didn’t project I think a cost 

growth zero percent or 3 percent, but something about an inflationadjusted flat defense budget, roughly speaking, was what it predicted. So that is one way of taking into account. 

Now that doesn’t take into the roles and missions review that is 

ongoing now that is going to need to inform the next QDR because 

it is going to be significantly different with up to $400 billion in 

cuts. 

Mr. YOUNG. But looking to previous years or previous decades investment in say shipbuilding is probably not the best way to benchmark future investments. 

Ms. EAGLEN. I think that is fair. 
38 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Palazzo. 

Mr. PALAZZO. If we have time, I have one question. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Just a minute, please, go ahead. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Eaglen, in April, 

your organization put out a report on defense spending entitled ‘‘A 

Strong National Defense: The Armed Forces America Needs and 

What They Will Cost.’’ It recommends, among other things, an attack submarine force, with 55 boats compared to the Navy’s current requirement of 48. The report also calls for a force of 37 amphibious ships compared to the Navy’s fiscally constrained goal of 

33. Can you tell me how you came up with those figures? 

Ms. EAGLEN. Sure, this was not meant to be an alternate QDR 

document by any means. It was really linear and it was at the request of several members of your committee. 

A quick holistic look around the world at the threats today as 

they are, not necessarily what they are going to be in 20 years, but 

certainly taking that into account, saying these are the capabilities 

required for major contingencies or even some minor ones, and this 

is what it costs. 

On the attack submarine front, I think the last panel basically 

agreed with our assessment that the current fleet is the minimum 

required. In fact, Admiral Blake said that they are looking to add 

an additional attack submarine in fiscal year 2018 and saying that 

decision would be made next year by the Department, because that 

is how much in advance they need to plan for that. 

Our ‘‘bath tub’’ or our shortfall in attack submarines exists not 

just in the future in terms of numbers but, as another member referenced, it is actually today in terms of meeting combatant commander requirements, on any given day, it can be less than half 

up to maybe 60, 65 percent of meeting the worldwide requirements. 

And so we either need to reduce our appetite for these needs, or 

if we are not changing the missions, then we need to fund at the 

appropriate level. 

On the amphibious side, the Navy has previously said that they 

need 38 of these ships, but they can live with 33 because simply 

it is unaffordable. So they certainly took resource constraints into 

account. What I am concerned about primarily is that the mission 

set has not changed, and I suppose the current roles and missions 

review may help alleviate this mismatch we are seeing across systems, as you have heard here this morning, the high-end requirement is 38, so basically a two-contingency scenario. So the Two Marine Expeditionary Brigade fulfillment at 33 is adequate, as General Flynn said, but it doesn’t include all their support equipment. 

So we came out at 37—there is more detail to it, which I could certainly speak to—but to help find the right balance between what 

is fiscally affordable and what the Navy said is its low and high 

end requirement. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Palazzo. Folks, we are going to 

head on to a vote right now. I thank you so much for your testimony today. What I ask, as I did with the last group of panelists, 

if you would let us know again in writing your thoughts about 

what we could do to make the planning process as useful as pos-
39 

sible, making it as streamlined as possible. I can assure you that 

this planning process is not an attempt to question the integrity of 

any of our military leaders, but it is incumbent upon us as Members of Congress to assert our Constitutional duties in oversight. 

And that is getting information from the executive branch in order 

to make sure that we are performing those proper duties. The way 

we do that is to get good, accurate and timely information from the 

Department of Defense, and I do think that is necessary for planning. 

And I would agree that short of that, how do we make proper decisions? So I would say that we are trying to find the best balance 

with the planning process and the timeliness of it. 

So if you could give us, again, your thoughts, and many of those 

you gave us here today, that would be helpful, because we do plan 

on pursuing how to make sure we make that planning process as 

functional and as useful as possible. 

So thank you, again, for your testimony today. I will adjourn the 

committee. 

[Whereupon, at 1:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

JUNE 1, 2011 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

JUNE 1, 2011 

(45) 

Statement of Hon. Rob Wittman 

Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations 

Hearing on 

Efficacy of the DOD’s 30–Year 

Shipbuilding and Aviation Plans 

April 13, 2011 

The main purpose supporting the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans requirements is to ensure effective congressional oversight of DOD plans by giving Congress the information we need to 

make decisions on issues that are not consistently available in the 

five-year data of the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP). 

In my view, we tend to spend too much time arguing about tactics when we’re discussing these plans, and not enough time focused on long-term strategy. We are constantly reacting to events 

rather than planning for them, resulting in a system that is burdened with waste and inefficiency. 

We cannot afford to do this any longer. The stakes are too high 

and we owe it to the American taxpayer to insist on well thoughtout, fiscally sound, long-term policy decisions that shape our national defense strategy. 

The central question, put in simple terms, is: Are we doing the 

best job we can when we develop and implement our 30-year plans 

to meet our Nation’s current and future threats? 

To illustrate this point, I want to highlight just a few examples 

of what I’m talking about: 

• The decision to not build submarines in the 1990s which has 

created a shortfall in the attack submarine force structure 

that we won’t be able to fix in the foreseeable future; 

• Decisions to cut or efforts to kill a number of programs including the F–22 fifth-generation fighter, the C–17 cargo aircraft, and the Air Force’s combat search and rescue helicopter—all of which arguably place American air supremacy 

at risk; and 

• Ending purchases of the next-generation DDG–1000 destroyers and killing the MPF–A large-deck aviation ship—reducing our Navy to the smallest it’s been since 1916. 

While arguments can be made to support the reasoning behind 

these decisions, no one can argue about the number of growing 

threats we face from both state and non-state actors, each with 

ever-expanding capabilities ready to challenge our own. 

Between force reductions, a dramatic slowing of new starts, and 

closures of production lines, America’s domestic industrial strategy 
46 

is slowly being whittled away, emphasizing the need for smart 

long-term strategic planning. 

We will hear from two panels. Witnesses from our first panel are: 

• Major General Richard C. Johnston, USAF, Deputy Chief of 

Staff for Strategic Plans and Programs, U.S. Air Force; 

• Vice Admiral P. Stephen Stanley, USN, Principal Deputy Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, Office of 

the Secretary of Defense; 

• Vice Admiral John T. Blake, USN, Deputy Chief of Naval 

Operations, Integration of Capabilities and Resources (N8); 

and 

• Lieutenant General George Flynn, USMC, Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration. 

For our second panel, we will receive testimony from: 

• Mr. Ronald O’Rourke, Defense Policy and Arms Control Section, Congressional Research Service 

• Mr. Eric Labs, National Security Division, Congressional 

Budget Office; and 

• Ms. Mackenzie Eaglen, Research Fellow for National Security Studies, The Heritage Foundation 

I look forward to hearing our witnesses’ views on this important 

subject and discussing how we can ensure that as we make difficult 

policy decisions on long-term procurement issues we don’t inadvertently place our national security at risk. 
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

JUNE 1, 2011 

(95) 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN 

General FLYNN. Before submitting the Department of the Navy (DON) 30–Year 

Aircraft Investment Plan to OSD, the Navy and Marine Corps assess affordability 

of the entire Naval Aviation portfolio to include fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and unmanned aircraft systems. For that reason, rotary-wing aircraft should be included 

in the 30–Year Aircraft Investment Plan. [See page 9.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

JUNE 1, 2011 

(99) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN 

Mr. WITTMAN. What are your thoughts for ways to improve the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation planning process? 

General FLYNN. 1. The shipbuilding plan serves to provide Congress with a resource strategy for Naval force employment—a strategy that is developed through 

a shared Naval vision. Today that strategy exists in Cooperative Strategy for 21st 

Century Seapower, a shared vision between the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast 

Guard in support of the President’s National Security Strategy. This strategy is 

placed into operational terms by the Naval Operations Concept 2010 (NOC 10) 

which describes when, where, and how U.S. Naval forces contribute to enhancing 

national security, preventing conflict, and prevailing in war. The shipbuilding plan 

is the end result of matching the necessary resources to support both the cooperative strategy and the operations concept. 

2. The shipbuilding plan development must be an integrated process, combining 

naval strategy, its operational concepts, and resource allocation. The process would 

be enhanced by including a Naval risk assessment that defines the shortfalls between operational needs and resources across the full range of military operations. 

3. The following comments apply to the 30–Year Aircraft Investment Plan. 

A. Include rotary-wing aircraft in the 30–Year Aircraft Investment Plan (AIP). 

Before submitting the Department of the Navy (DON) 30–Year AIP to OSD, 

the Navy and Marine Corps assess affordability of the entire Naval Aviation 

portfolio to include fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and unmanned aircraft systems. 

B. Adjust scope of the 30–Year AIP to 20 years instead of 30 years to reflect 

well-defined requirements and reasonable cost estimates. 

C. Adjust the report timeline to allow Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) to 

advise the AIP; SARs are submitted in April. 

D. Consider tying the AIP requirement to the Quadrennial Defense Review 

(QDR). There are minor changes to the AIP from year to year that primarily 

reflect changes to service budget priorities. By tying the AIP to the QDR, 

Congress will be better able to track programmatic adjustments related to 

changes to defense strategy and threat posture. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What are your thoughts for ways to improve the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation planning process? 

Admiral BLAKE. The Department of the Navy supports the requirement for the 

submission of the Long Range Shipbuilding and Aviation Plans as they provide important information for Congress, the Department of Defense, and industry to make 

critical investment decisions. These plans support the Department’s ability to build 

a force structure in accordance with requirements addressed in the National Defense Strategy, the Maritime Strategy and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review; 

however, some modification to the timing for submission and the time period required for investment projection will likely increase the accuracy and value of these 

reports. 

The shipbuilding report would be improved if its scope was limited to a period 

of twenty years, with the submission of funding tables for only the first ten years. 

The first ten years of the report are the most definitive aspect of the report, both 

in terms of requirements and cost data, and would provide the data necessary for 

meaningful analysis by outside entities such as the Congressional Budget Office 

(CBO) and Congressional Research Service (CRS). The second ten years relies on 

analysis of trends and projections, and the cost data is not as accurate. However, 

the data tables provide valuable information concerning future acquisition intentions for various ship platforms necessary to meet the perceived and anticipated 

threats. 

The Department of the Navy fully supports the amendment to the 2011 Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act, changing the requirement of the shipbuilding report from an annual requirement to one that requires the plan be submitted only in QDR years. However, submission of the report in the year following 

the QDR vice in the year of the QDR would improve the efficacy of the report. This 

would permit better synchronization within the Department of Defense since suffi-
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cient time would have elapsed after QDR delivery to interpret the broad strategy 

and guidance against the practical requirements and resources backdrop. Such a 

process would allow the Department of the Navy to align its plans with the QDR 

submission. Finally, the existing requirement to submit a shipbuilding report when 

the number of ships drops from previous submissions should also be reconsidered. 

A single ship deletion or move from one year to the next is not an indicator of success or failure of the shipbuilding plan, and typically does not provide a change of 

sufficient substance to warrant a new submission. 

The aviation report can be improved by inclusion of all aircraft in the report. 

Fixed wing, rotary wing, unmanned aerial systems, and trainer aircraft are all part 

of the Navy and Marine Corps aviation planning and programming process. Each 

platform has capabilities that are delivered through sufficient capacity that must be 

balanced in an affordable, integrated warfighting plan. Congress could then view 

the aviation plan in its full context. As with the shipbuilding plan, Navy recommends that subsequent aviation reports be limited to a twenty year timeframe 

due to the highly speculative nature of future threats and technology. Also in line 

with the shipbuilding plan, the aviation report should be submitted every four years 

in the year following each QDR. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What are your thoughts for ways to improve the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation planning process? 

Admiral STANLEY. Because of our inability to precisely predict the future, 30-year 

plans should not be viewed as precise roadmaps for execution. Instead, the planning 

process used to assemble the reports provides a useful opportunity to consider and 

confront outyear implications of near-term decisions. By finding problems early, the 

Department can work to plan a program that will meet needs, but spread the costs 

and industrial workload more reasonably. 

Both plans should be submitted every four years. Current legislation requires the 

30-year shipbuilding plan to be submitted every four years while the 30-year aviation plan is submitted annually. Given that the first five years of the plans contain 

the same information that is included in the President’s Budget FYDP and that the 

period beyond the FYDP is less subject to change, submission of both plans every 

four years would reduce the burden of producing the reports while allowing Congressional oversight. 

Submission of both plans in the year following the Quadrennial Defense Review 

(QDR) would be an improvement. Current law requires the shipbuilding plan to be 

submitted in the same years as the QDR; however, this may provide insufficient 

time to incorporate QDR results. Delaying submission until the year following the 

QDR would ensure that the plan reflects the new strategy. Additionally, three Congressional reports require integration: The President’s budget, the Selected Acquisition Reports and the 30-year plans. In order to allow this integration, submission 

of the 30-year plans should be required 60 days after submission of the President’s 

budget request. 

Reducing the time-frame covered by the plans to 20 years would also be an improvement. Future projections are always speculative however, those beyond 20 

years are even less credible. While there is value in looking ahead, especially to the 

near future, we should recognize that the accuracy and value of the plans diminishes the further we get beyond the FYDP. 

We understand your important oversight role and want to provide information 

that empowers Congress to fulfill its responsibilities. I believe that implementing 

these improvements will result in a more balanced approach to our shipbuilding and 

aviation planning. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What are your thoughts for ways to improve the 30-year shipbuilding and aviation planning process? 

General JOHNSTON. The United States Air Force takes very seriously its Strategic 

Planning process in order to better understand the impacts of the decisions made 

today, and to identify issues we will face in the out-years. We believe our planning 

greatly informs and improves the way we budget in order to provide the most capable Air Force at the best value for the nation’s defense. Over the past two years, 

the 30–Year Aircraft Procurement Plan has been incorporated into the Air Force’s 

Strategic Planning System. This past year’s process for the second plan built for 

Congress was well executed, allowing the Air Force the opportunity to provide the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) its input to the report. We are cognizant 

of the need for the DoD to provide the committee this report in a timely manner, 

and will continue to improve our processes to meet the needs of the Congress. 

Two changes can help improve the planning process and the utility of the report. 

First, the requirement to submit an annual report should be modified to require the 

plan every two years or upon specific request by the Congress in response to a stra-
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tegically significant budgetary change. The plan is rooted in national strategic documents that are modified either biennially or quadrennially; therefore the basis for 

the planning changes little each year. As such, the requirement to submit the report 

annually provides only marginal benefit. Second, a modification from a 30-year to 

a 20-year Aircraft Procurement Plan would prove just as useful in matching strategy to long-range planning because predicting the security environment and technological needs of national defense beyond 20 years into the future is highly speculative and adds little value to the national defense. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. HANABUSA 

Ms. HANABUSA. Reflecting back on your graduation from the Naval Academy 36 

years ago, do you think you would have been able to predict where we are today 

with regards to shipbuilding needs and current status of United States shipbuilding 

efforts? How impossible of a task is it to accurately predict needs thirty years in 

the future? 

Admiral BLAKE. In the last thirty years, no one could have predicted the Vietnam 

drawdown, the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the tragic events of September 

11th, or the fact that we would be involved in two wars today. None of us can predict with 100% accuracy what the future will hold. I do, however, believe that planning is indispensable and that the Navy’s planning process provides valuable insight 

into projected future shortfalls and needs from the shipbuilding industrial base. For 

example, if we did not do long range planning then we would not be able to identify 

the significant funding challenge with the OHIO Replacement Program or that our 

inventory of surface force combatants and submarines declines in large numbers in 

the 2020s. With this insight, we can make decisions and plan changes earlier to address concerns such as these projected shortfalls. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Reflecting back on your graduation from the Naval Academy 36 

years ago, do you think you would have been able to predict where we are today 

with regards to shipbuilding needs and current status of United States shipbuilding 

efforts? How impossible of a task is it to accurately predict needs thirty years in 

the future? 

Admiral STANLEY. Simple answer is no. There have been many profound events 

that have occurred since my graduation from the Naval Academy. Many of these 

affect our Defense Strategy and how we view our requirement for ships and aircraft. 

Precise predictions of these events or their effects are not possible. 

It is the uncertainty inherent in trying to predict the future that diminishes the 

value of the later years in the 30–Year plans. Outyear predictions necessarily involve considerable speculation about such things as the future security environment, 

technology development, operational concepts, and fiscal constraints. Long range 

projections unravel in the face of unforeseen developments or advances. An example 

is the recent explosive growth in unmanned aerial systems, which would have been 

impossible to predict 30 years ago. It is because of this fundamental problem with 

long-term prediction that I recommend reducing the time-frame covered by the shipbuilding and aviation plans to 20 years. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Reflecting back on your graduation from the Naval Academy 36 

years ago, do you think you would have been able to predict where we are today 

with regards to shipbuilding needs and current status of United States shipbuilding 

efforts? How impossible of a task is it to accurately predict needs thirty years in 

the future? 

General JOHNSTON. The 30–Year Aircraft Procurement Plan provides a view of 

how the USAF intends to recapitalize and modernize its aircraft. Within the Future 

Years Defense Program (FYDP) it mirrors the President’s budget. Beyond the 

FYDP, the recapitalization and modernization predictive profile is less precise further out in the future. Nonetheless, the USAF values the time spent developing the 

30–Year Aircraft Procurement Plan for two main reasons. First, it’s a tool that helps 

us understand the impact of decisions made today. For example, decisions regarding 

large scale acquisition programs like the F–35 and KC–46 will have significant influence on the shape of the Air Force ten to twenty years from now. The impact 

of decisions to delay or accelerate procurement profiles can be readily viewed within 

the plan. The second advantage of long-range planning is a greater understanding 

of issues that will need to be addressed in the years outside of the FYDP. For example, we recognize the need to invest in the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS–B) and 

Next Generation Trainer (T–X) during these out-years. The plan helps the USAF 

de-conflict the timing of these programs and, in turn, mitigate the risk of 

unaffordable spikes in spending. That said, predicting in the out-years is difficult 
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because the future strategic environment will change for a variety of reasons—to include the capabilities of our allies and future threats. 

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