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i 

65–811 2011

[H.A.S.C. No. 112–40] 

SUSTAINING THE FORCE: CHALLENGES 

TO READINESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

APRIL 7, 2011 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia, Chairman 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

JOE HECK, Nevada 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

CHRIS GIBSON, New York 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

BOBBY SCHILLING, Illinois 

JON RUNYAN, New Jersey 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

STEVEN PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MARTHA ROBY, Alabama 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVE LOEBSACK, Iowa 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina 

BILL OWENS, New York 

TIM RYAN, Ohio 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

RYAN CRUMPLER, Professional Staff Member 

VICKIE PLUNKETT, Professional Staff Member 

CHRISTINE WAGNER, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2011 

Page 

HEARING: 

Thursday, April 7, 2011, Sustaining the Force: Challenges to Readiness .......... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Thursday, April 7, 2011 .......................................................................................... 33 

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2011 

SUSTAINING THE FORCE: CHALLENGES TO READINESS 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

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

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness ...................................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Collyar, BG Lynn A., USA, Director, Logistics Operations, Defense Logistics 

Agency ................................................................................................................... 8 

Johnson, Maj. Gen. Michelle, USAF, Director, Strategy, Policy, Programs 

and Logistics, J5/4, U.S. Transportation Command .......................................... 6 

Panter, Lt. Gen. Frank A., Jr., USMC, Deputy Commandant, Installations 

and Logistics Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps ............................................... 5 

Stevenson, LTG Mitchell H., USA, Deputy Chief of Staff, Logistics, G4, U.S. 

Army ...................................................................................................................... 4 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Collyar, BG Lynn A. ......................................................................................... 70 

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy ...................................................................................... 37 

Johnson, Maj. Gen. Michelle ........................................................................... 63 

Panter, Lt. Gen. Frank A., Jr. ......................................................................... 51 

Stevenson, LTG Mitchell H. ............................................................................ 39 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Ms. Bordallo ...................................................................................................... 85 

Mr. Forbes ......................................................................................................... 85 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Forbes ......................................................................................................... 89 

(1) 

SUSTAINING THE FORCE: CHALLENGES TO READINESS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS, Washington, DC, Thursday, April 7, 2011. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:30 a.m. in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Randy Forbes (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON READINESS 

Mr. FORBES. I want to welcome everyone to the subcommittee’s 

hearing on ‘‘Sustaining the Force: Challenges to Readiness.’’ Today 

we have the opportunity to discuss not only the current state of our 

logistical and maintenance readiness, but to also look at how we 

are posturing the force to the future. 

Joining us today are four exceptional witnesses representing the 

Army, Marine Corps, U.S. Transportation Command and the Defense Logistics Agency. They are Lieutenant General Mitch H. Stevenson, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Logistics, U.S. Army; Lieutenant 

General Frank A. Panter, Jr., Deputy Commandant, Installations 

and Logistics, U.S. Marine Corps; Major General Michelle D. Johnson, U.S. Air Force, Director of Strategy, Policy, Programs and Logistics, U.S. Transportation Command; and Brigadier General 

Lynn A. Collyar, USA, Director of Logistics Operations, Defense 

Logistics Agency. 

These four distinguished officers are responsible for transporting, 

sustaining and supporting our forces, both at home and abroad. 

They are charged not only with ensuring our men and women have 

what they need when they need it, but are also responsible for ensuring we are postured to respond effectively to future real-world 

contingencies like we have seen recently in Haiti and Japan. 

We are truly honored to have you join us today, and we are extremely grateful for all you do to keep this Nation safe. Thank you 

all for your service. 

Our subcommittee’s hearings over the last couple of months have 

highlighted the many potential global threats and challenges our 

military faces. There is no doubt that our military is under significant strain, but they are performing marvelously despite the many 

challenges they face. 

However, the work of this subcommittee is to not only ensure our 

force can continue to excel in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that it also 

is postured to respond to a myriad of potential challenges around 

the world, both in the near term and in the long term. 
2 

Today the Department of Defense has more than 450,000 personnel abroad in support of our national interest. In CENTCOM 

[U.S. Central Command] alone, the U.S. has more than 150,000 

brave men and women engaged in ongoing operations. 

These complex operations are sure to present significant 

logistical and maintenance challenges well beyond the President’s 

stated goal for redeployment of combat forces from the region. 

I hope that this hearing will allow members to learn more about 

how we are meeting these current challenges, while at the same 

time posturing ourselves for significant challenges we are certain 

to face in the future. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. 

And now I would like to recognize the gentlelady from Guam for 

any remarks she may have. 

Ms. Bordallo. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the Appendix on page 37.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A DELEGATE 

FROM GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. To all our 

witnesses today, I look forward to your testimonies. 

Today we are a Nation at war, confronting threats on every continent with some 3.2 million soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and 

civilian personnel deployed or stationed at 5,000 different locations 

worldwide. 

Supporting this robust and geographically dispersed force requires the significant logistics and maintenance capabilities embodied in the organizations represented by our witnesses here 

today. 

As we continue to draw down forces in Iraq, support troops on 

the ground in Afghanistan, support humanitarian missions in 

Japan and support efforts to attain democracy in Libya, these activities will test the ability of our military logistics enterprise to get 

this done right and in a timely manner. 

Given the austerity of today’s national budget, we must conduct 

these logistics operations in the most cost-effective manner that is 

possible. All these requirements must be fulfilled simultaneously 

with the best possible support of our warfighters, but also with an 

eye on the value to the taxpayer. 

I believe that we have the ability to accomplish these daunting 

tasks, but it is going to take a tremendous coordinated effort with 

military and civilian leaders thinking outside the box to get this 

done right. I believe it is our role in Congress to make sure that 

you have the tools you need to accomplish all these requirements 

and fulfill your missions successfully. 

I also believe that our witnesses will have to look closely at their 

own internal processes to make alterations that will allow for successful completion of these missions. Internal efficiencies are the 

quickest and sometimes the best way to accomplish the multitude 

of tasks that are set before you. 

In particular I look forward to hearing more from the witnesses 

on the logistical challenges within Afghanistan and Pakistan and 
3 

options regarding use of the Northern Distribution Network to 

move personnel and materiel in support of our troops in Afghanistan. 

Now some might say that Guam is isolated, but I have been to 

Afghanistan a number of times, and its geography, I believe, makes 

it a far more isolated location. I understand that there are significant interagency and technical challenges associated with supply 

chains into and out of Afghanistan. 

I hope our witnesses can discuss how this system can be 

strengthened before the inevitable drawdown of forces in Afghanistan. Again, what can Congress do to facilitate this process and 

give you all of the tools that you need to succeed? 

Additionally, I hope that our witnesses from the Army and Marine Corps can discuss their management of workflow at military 

depots across the country as the OPTEMPO [Operations Tempo] of 

the wars slows. 

A recent congressionally directed report from LMI [the Logistics 

Management Institute], the government consulting on future depot 

maintenance requirements, highlights some transformational 

changes that will need to occur to keep these critical capabilities 

viable as more modern weapon systems are integrated into the 

force. 

I welcome comments from our witnesses on this report and what 

steps are currently being taken to transform the depot business 

model. If you believe that adjustments are needed in the statutory 

framework underlying depot operations, we would also be very interested in getting your input in that regard. 

So again I thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity, and I look 

forward to the testimonies. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you for those remarks, Madeleine. 

As we discussed prior to the hearing I ask unanimous consent 

that we dispense with the 5-minute rule for this hearing and depart from regular order so that members may ask questions during 

the course of the discussion. I think this will provide a round tabletype forum and will enhance the dialogue on this very important 

issue. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

We begin today once again thanking all of you for your service 

to our country and for taking time to come here. We have your 

written remarks. They are going to be made a part of the record. 

And oftentimes in written remarks we use those to kind of validate 

what we are doing, and that is what we should be doing. 

We want to give you each, though, about 5 minutes. You can 

take less, or you can take a little bit more, but to tell us from your 

own viewpoint what your biggest concerns are with readiness. 

What do we need to be looking at? 

All of us on here appreciate the logistical side of this. We understand that in any fight, you know, part of the effort that we have 

is how long we can sustain that fight, and that comes down to 

something that is often not very sexy. 

People don’t like to really read reports about it and look at it, 

but it is the logistics. It is how we maintain our fleet, maintain our 

planes, maintain our equipment, get supplies there. The logistical 
4 

part of it determines whether we win or lose. And you guys are on 

the forefront of that. 

You don’t hear it enough, so we want to make sure corporately 

as a subcommittee we are telling you all thank you for what you 

have done in your careers and what you continue to do. 

General Stevenson, if it is okay, we will start with you, since you 

just happened to pick the slot on that side. And if you would, I 

would like to recognize you for 5 minutes or how long you feel appropriate. 

STATEMENT OF LTG MITCHELL H. STEVENSON, USA, DEPUTY 

CHIEF OF STAFF, LOGISTICS, G4, U.S. ARMY 

General STEVENSON. Thank you, Chairman Forbes and Ranking 

Member Bordallo. 

I won’t take the full 5 minutes, but I did want to hit a few high 

points from what is in my opening remarks. The reason why we 

are here today is to answer the question, ‘‘Are we ready?’’ 

And I think in just one sentence I would tell you that in my view 

the Army is more ready and better prepared than we have been in 

a long, long time, certainly in my 37 years in the Army. 

And we will get even better in the coming years for a number 

of reasons, and I would be happy to get into that. We are on track 

to complete our drawdown from Iraq by the end of the year, and 

we are also, I think, doing reasonably well in sustaining our forces 

in Afghanistan, despite the challenges that Ms. Bordallo mentioned. 

Here at home we are working very hard on improving ammunition readiness. I would tell you our ammunition readiness is probably the best shape it has been in since right after the Cold War. 

We are reconstituting our Army prepositioned stocks, probably twothirds of the way through with that. 

And we are, ma’am, as you pointed out that you had asked us 

to be, we are working hard to be better stewards of our taxpayer 

dollars. And a good example of that is the ongoing property accountability campaign we have ongoing in the Army, which will 

also, of course, contribute to readiness. 

Just a couple of final thoughts. You have probably heard testimony from various members of the Army and other Services over 

this past several years that said that, you know, we are going to 

need dollars, appropriations to reset for 2 to 3 years after the end 

of combat operations, and that is still true today. 

And I can, if there is time and you are interested I could walk 

you through why it does take that long. And it does go to why we 

have a lesser requirement for reset dollars in fiscal 2012 than we 

had in perhaps in previous years. 

And lastly, you asked about our challenges. The things that probably are the biggest challenges on my scope right now are supporting dispersed unit operations in Afghanistan. It seems like 

every day we uncover a new challenge that we have got to work 

with there. That is certainly a challenge for us. 

Redistributing our Army property, you know, a lot of the reasons 

why we don’t look as ready as I believe we are is because we have 

got maldistributed property and a lot of good reasons for why that 

is, and we are on a path to get better. 
5 

And lastly, to do something about energy consumption, we have 

got to improve and get better at that, although if you were to compare the Services, Army energy consumption isn’t as high as others. We know that we still can do better, and we want to do that. 

Thank you for your support. And you have made us ready 

through the terrific support we have gotten over the past years. 

And I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of General Stevenson can be found in 

the Appendix on page 39.] 

Mr. FORBES. Thanks, General. 

General Panter. 

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. FRANK A. PANTER, JR., USMC, DEPUTY COMMANDANT, INSTALLATIONS AND LOGISTICS HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS 

General PANTER. Chairman Forbes, Representative Bordallo, and 

other distinguished members, thank you for the opportunity this 

morning to talk about the state of equipment and material readiness in the United States Marine Corps. 

On behalf of all the marines, families and our civilian marines, 

thank you for the unwavering support you have provided for the 

last 9 to 10 years as our troops have been engaged in combat. 

We have a high readiness rating forward in Afghanistan. I think 

you know that. But that has come at a cost. Our equipment aboard 

our home stations has been heavily taxed, and after this almost a 

decade of combat operations our average readiness ratings at home 

stations hover around 65 percent. We have accepted that risk so we 

could properly support the forces forward. 

We continue to globally source equipment for Afghanistan 

throughout the Marine Corps, and if there is additional contingency that appears on the horizon, that is the approach we take. 

We globally source it in the Marine Corps so we can respond appropriately. 

We do have some challenges I would like to share with you this 

morning. One of them, much like General Stevenson mentioned, we 

need your support when the time comes for reset from Afghanistan. 

You may well know that we got out of Iraq last year. We are about 

to conclude the reset actions for that equipment we pulled out of 

Iraq. 

We transferred or we swung over about 50 percent of the table 

of equipment from Iraq to Afghanistan, so that equipment set is in 

Afghanistan as we speak. And by that action, it delayed our original reset plan, but we are adjusting to that. We are consistently 

and constantly readjusting our reset plan. 

Another issue, as I just mentioned, is the readiness rating of our 

home station units hovers around 65 percent. We accepted that 

risk early on. 

Another area is the reconstitution effort beyond reset that we 

would ask your help for. We have learned through Iraq and Afghanistan that we—before we went into the war we were—we now 

know we have legacy tables of equipment. The nature of modern 

combat requires that we enhance these tables of equipment. 

For example, comm equipment, communication equipments, we 

have learned that we require almost seven-fold of communication 
6 

equipment from what we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan as 

compared to our old table of equipment. 

Lastly, one of our strategic programs, our Maritime 

Prepositioned Program, our MPSRON [Maritime Prepositioning 

Ship Squadron] commandant has instructed us, instructed me, to 

protect the readiness rating as much as we can with that. 

Originally, we did use some of the equipment off of MPSRON for 

Iraq. We have since replaced that. In general, our attainment rates 

for MPSRON are greater than 90 percent. It is in the 95 percent 

area. 

There is equipment in our MPF program, Maritime Preposition 

Force, that it does require to be modernized. And this is part of 

that reconstitution effort. We do run the equipment through our 

regular maintenance cycles to update as we can, as the equipment 

is available, but we would ask for your continued support to update 

that equipment. 

In closing, and I mean this sincerely on behalf of all our marines, 

their families, thank you for your support. Our marines are doing— 

much like other service members—some great things out there in 

defense of this Nation. We will ensure that we are prepared to 

meet any additional assigned missions for future contingencies, and 

with your help we can. 

Thank you. 

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

Appendix on page 51.] 

Mr. FORBES. General, thank you. 

General Johnson. 

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. MICHELLE JOHNSON, USAF, DIRECTOR, STRATEGY, POLICY, PROGRAMS AND LOGISTICS, J5/4, 

U.S. TRANSPORTATION COMMAND 

General JOHNSON. Chairman and Ranking Member Bordallo, 

thank you so much for your time yesterday and for your time 

today. 

It is an honor to be able to address this committee and to be able 

to represent the U.S. Transportation Command at the side of the 

leaders of logistics in the Army and the Marine Corps and at the 

side of our partner Defense Logistics Agency, because Transportation Command looks globally. We link air, sea, land transportation capabilities with the supply capabilities that DLA [Defense 

Logistics Agency] provides, so that we can provide a worldwide network to support our forces in all the global areas. 

As you mentioned, ma’am, earlier, we are in a far-flung situation 

now. As the national military strategy says, more and more we will 

be asked to act in a complex, far-flung environment and to be able 

to operate indefinitely at the end of very long lines of operation and 

supply. 

Afghanistan represents probably the longest possible line of supply you could achieve at a land-locked country with no ports. Guam 

has ports. At least it has access that way. So, again, that is remote 

there, but surrounded by the highest mountains in the world and 

with no infrastructure. 

And so to address, if I may, just briefly, a question you actually 

put in your opening statement, how can we continue to support 
7 

such far-flung places and continue also to anticipate other contingencies across the globe, meanwhile focusing on Afghanistan? 

And that is the stock and trade of TRANSCOM [U.S. Transportation Command]. So we try to look for options every day. 

Pakistan presents challenges in its approaches to Afghanistan, so 

we have found access through the north, through countries that we 

didn’t normally or used to have relationships with in the past, 

through Central Asia. Russia has been a very supportive partner. 

That route begins in the Baltics, who have been partners with us 

for a long time. 

We have approaches through Central Asia and are therefore able 

to supply over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. So distance has a 

tyranny to it. The volume, the sheer volume to support 100,000 

forces, is a burden on the forces who have to receive that, to receive 

all that good and try to put it into place in the forward operating 

bases. 

So we work together with Central Command and with the Services and, frankly, with European Command to support that theater, 

but also to be ready to swing our forces to where they are needed 

elsewhere—for instance, in Japan—to be able to pivot forces over, 

whether they are commercial forces—and that is who supported 

most immediately, our commercial air carriers, to be able to help 

us with the departures of family members from Japan—and to be 

ready in case we needed to do more than evacuation. At the direction of the PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command] commander, we could 

so do with surface resources perhaps, whether commercial or organic. 

Our Active Duty Forces have a certain amount of resource in aircraft and ships, but if we need to mobilize the Reserves we can also 

mobilize the Reserves. We have many options along those lines, 

and we try to preserve those options, and then when activity arises 

in North Africa, to build a swing as well and to support European 

Command and AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command] in those ways. 

And so it is a constant dynamic interplay between the joint staff, 

TRANSCOM, DLA, the Services and the combatant commands to 

understand the priorities of our Nation and to be able to respond 

appropriately and as creatively as we possibly can. 

And in so doing, we have really become an information command, if you will, to be able to convey openly what we need to do 

with commercial partners, interagency partners, international partners. And in so doing we do those on nonsecure networks most of 

the time. And so in many ways we are very vulnerable on the cyber 

security front. 

And so, if I would say, there are challenges, that we face—challenges of distance, challenges of relationships internationally—and 

we will appreciate Congress’ understanding of our new relationships with countries with whom we haven’t dealt as much before. 

And also on the cyber front, I know this committee has been very 

interested in defense industrial base. And one aspect of that is the 

membership of defense industrial base and the cyber activities of 

Department of Defense to be able to share challenges and to understand that the weak point in any one of our partners is therefore 

the weak part of the system. So if a ‘‘mal-actor’’ [malicious actor] 

wanted to get into the system through a cleared defense contractor, 
8 

it could affect the entire program. So the more partnerships we 

have with the commercial sector on all fronts, the better. 

So again I look forward to the discussion. I value and treasure 

the opportunity to speak to you today and the opportunity to represent the over 150,000 members of the United States Transportation Command from all the Services, as well as commercial partners and the Merchant Marines. 

Thank you for very kindly. 

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

Appendix on page 63.] 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, General. 

General Collyar. 

STATEMENT OF BG LYNN A. COLLYAR, USA, DIRECTOR, 

LOGISTICS OPERATIONS, DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY 

General COLLYAR. Chairman Forbes, Ms. Bordallo, it is my privilege also to speak to you today. I am representing the 27,000 men 

and women of the Defense Logistics Agency. 

As the director of logistics operations, I would like to tell you we 

are primarily a civilian organization. About 25,000 of those personnel are civilians, just over 500 Active Duty military and about 

750 Reserve military, and as such relatively small compared to our 

service counterparts and again our transportation, USTRANSCOM, 

partner. 

We are a critical part of the supply chain, though, as we are represented in both overseas areas and throughout CONUS [continental United States], supporting the industrial base. We have personnel in 48 of the 50 states and about 28 countries overseas. 

On a daily basis we supply about 55,000 requisitions in support 

of the Services and execute over 10,000 different contracts, many 

through automated means, but over 10,000 contracts per day. 

And we do that to support approximately 1,900 weapon systems 

whether it be aviation, land or maritime. And we supply about 85 

percent of those parts along with approximately almost 100 percent 

of the food, fuel and other commodities that the Services need. 

We are funded through the working capital fund, which means 

that the Services pay for our support. And, therefore, it is very, 

very important that we optimize both the effectiveness of what we 

do, but balance that with efficiency. And I think we have continually tried to execute that overseas. 

We now operate 26 depots around the world. We have increased 

that number over the last few years as we have added depots in 

Kuwait supporting the Iraq campaign, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, 

supporting there. That allows us to move things, the slow, low-dollar items by surface and take them out of the air supply chain. 

In my written statement I provided a relatively comprehensive 

look, but we provide primarily Class 1 and Class 3 food and fuel 

to the forces through prime vendors. Along with our ability to 

stretch those, we have worldwide contracts with an extensive vendor base in most all commodities that allows us to support not only 

the present theater, but any of the contingency operations that we 

are also supporting. 
9 

You have heard the challenges, and you have seen the challenges 

in Afghanistan, the land-locked country, infrastructure being one of 

the key things that we have had overcome. 

And, again, working with all of our partners, we have really balanced it or tried to balance what we provide through the PAK 

GLOC [Pakistani ground lines of communication] with the NDN 

[Northern Distribution Network] and with other multi-modal 

means of providing as much of the transportation by ship and then 

flying in the last leg of that, minimizing that air requirement as 

much as we can, along with setting up those depots which have allowed us to support directly from the AOR [Area of Responsibility] 

instead of having items come from the United States. 

I would like to just close by saying although we only have 27,000 

people, we presently have a continued increase in mission in Iraq 

specifically with disposition in our disposition yards as the drawdown takes place. 

With some of our dwell issues with the military personnel and 

the limited military, we have had over 800 volunteers throughout 

the agency to deploy to the AOR within just the last 3 weeks. So 

it speaks volumes for the morale and the desire to support all of 

our personnel along with that of our Services. 

And we have the capability to support not only a change of forces 

in Iraq as we continue to draw down, but also we will support the 

transition to the Department of State through several commodities. 

I look forward to your questions. Thank you. 

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

Appendix on page 70.] 

Mr. FORBES. General, thank you. 

I want to begin by focusing on a word that General Johnson 

used, which is partnership. And one of the things that Ms. Bordallo 

and I were just talking about is how much we appreciate—we 

talked about your service, but also your willingness to come in here 

and view this as a partnership. 

Each of you did what we asked you to do. You gave us a written 

statement, but then you didn’t come in here with prepared, with 

canned remarks. You talked to us. And that is what we want this 

to be today is a dialogue to get that information out. We were talking, as you were talking, about how encouraging that is that we 

can have that dialogue and have that partnership. 

But also this is, as I have told each of you privately, probably one 

of the most bipartisan committees or subcommittees, I think, in 

Congress. We like each other, work very well together, so got kind 

of two partnerships going here, Republicans and Democrats, and 

we have the Department of Defense and we have Congress. And I 

think if we do that, there is no end to what we can really accomplish. So we thank you for that. 

And the other thing I want to tell you just logistically, as we 

talked about earlier, we do something a little bit different. So if one 

of our members are asking a question and another member has 

kind of a follow-up on that, we will let them go ahead and ask that 

follow-up. And the ranking member has given me some discretion 

in doing that. We won’t allow it to run on, but we just allow that 

so we can have a fruitful discussion. 
10 

I am going to hold my questions until the end, so we can get all 

of our members’ questions in. And I would like to now recognize 

our ranking member, the gentlelady from Guam, for any questions 

she may have. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

And I want to echo the remarks of the chairman. I felt when you 

speak to us just from your heart and not from a written statement, 

I think it is much more meaningful. 

I think you covered some of this, but I would like to ask the 

question for any of our witnesses. During the March 2010 hearing 

before the House Appropriations Committee Defense Subcommittee, GAO [Government Accountability Office] identified several challenges, and I think you mentioned these, in distributing 

supplies and equipment to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. 

Now, these challenges included difficulties with transporting 

cargo through neighboring countries, limited airfield infrastructure 

within Afghanistan, lack of full visibility over supply and equipment movements into and around Afghanistan, lack of coordination, as well as competing logistics priorities in a coalition environment, uncertain requirements and low transportation priority for 

contractors. 

Now, given all these challenges, what does it look like today? 

And is there any one of these that stand out? 

What steps have been taken to mitigate some of these challenges? And what metrics are being used to gauge the effectiveness 

of the supply chain and the distribution processes in delivering required material to deployed forces in Afghanistan? 

I guess whichever want to be would like to answer that? 

Admiral. 

General STEVENSON. There are quite a few challenges, ma’am, in 

your statement there. Let me just hit a few high points and then 

I would ask the others, particularly General Johnson, who is, in 

large measure, the one helping us overcome these challenges. 

We know that it is difficult to get into and out of Afghanistan. 

So one of the things that we have done in the Army is we have 

told units, when you get in there and it is time for you to be replaced leave your equipment there. The new unit will fall in on top 

of it. You go home to the United States, and we will get you replacement equipment. 

Sounds real easy, rolls right off the tongue. It is a little tough 

to do. But it does keep equipment off the roads, and therefore not 

subject to pilferage and not subject to the limited road networks 

and air networks that we have there. So that is one thing we have 

done to mitigate. 

Another is to just limit the amount of things that units take over 

there with them. You know, when you deploy to a place like that 

and you are going to fight, the tendency is to take everything you 

could possibly think you might need in the next year. And it ends 

up being hundreds of containers. 

And we have had to step in with units and say, ‘‘Look, you know, 

have some confidence in the supply chain. When you develop a 

need there, we will get it to you, but don’t try to deploy with, you 

know, a thousand containers in a brigade, for example.’’ 
11 

And so our forces commanders put out some very deliberate guidance about that, and that is helping mitigate, because if you reduce 

the amount of stuff that has got to flow through the soda straw, 

then it flows easier. 

We have added in-transit visibility. Starting this summer, we are 

going to add satellite tagging to that equipment which must transit 

on the ground. We don’t put anything on the ground that we care 

about. No ammunition goes on the ground. No sensitive material 

goes on the ground. That all flies in. 

But that which has to go on the ground, we are going to put satellite tags on it so that we can have real-time visibility as to where 

this cargo is. If it stops at a place it shouldn’t stop, we will know 

immediately, or nearly immediately, and then can take appropriate 

action. 

And I could keep going but I would rather let General Johnson 

talk a little bit about what TRANSCOM is doing. 

Ms. BORDALLO. And what you mentioned then has been quite 

successful? 

General STEVENSON. I would say reasonably successful. I don’t 

want to overstate how successful we are. We have been challenged. 

We have had pilferage. 

Ms. BORDALLO. That is right. 

General STEVENSON. But reasonably successful, I think. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Anyone else like to comment? 

General JOHNSON. Yes, ma’am, if I could. I appreciate General 

Stevenson’s noting the actions the Army has taken itself to provide 

discipline in the process. 

One of the things that we can benefit from being a very wealthy 

country is to have a logistical tail, but sometimes it can a burden 

in the sheer volume, and so I really respect the way the Army is 

managing their massive force. It is a lot of need for 100,000 people 

in-theater. 

So as he pointed out, we fly in sensitive lethal equipment as we 

can, and so, that is able to keep things off the road and keep it 

safe. We also airdrop in an increasingly amount. Last year we 

dropped over 60 million tons of equipment via airdrop, often to very 

remote forward operating bases. 

And we are trying to be creative so that we don’t have to have 

very expensive equipment that we need to recover later. In fact, we 

take low-cost, low-altitude chutes, parachutes that are maybe reused from some other purpose and drop it in a really low level at 

very low speed so that troops don’t have to subject themselves to 

harm in a hazardous environment of a forward operating base, and 

they can still get the equipment that they need or the medicine or 

the food or the water that they need. 

This year we anticipate 100 million tons of equipment 

airdropped. Again, it is more secure, it is more accurate, it is more 

safe for all concerned. So we have taken that effort. 

The pilferage General Stevenson alludes to exists, you know, and 

probably, in all fairness, any of us could look at our own home 

states or any place with human beings involved. There might be 

some, but obviously we don’t want to lose anything on our lines of 

communication to theater. 
12 

One percent is what we are showing. We think that is a fairly 

accurate figure but 1 percent of 8,000 to 9,000 containers at any 

given day is dozens, and if it is yours you don’t want to lose it. And 

by containers we mean the back of a semi-trailer truck size of container that we are talking. 

On the Northern Distribution Net, we have put more and more 

of our volume as we can to try to reduce the risk in Pakistan. So 

we have upwards of 10,000 to 12,000 containers en route from the 

Northern Distribution Net at any given day, and it has been a very 

secure route. There have been really nil pilferage issues, and the 

attacks have been nonexistent as well. 

And, well, we watch that with great concern. And our intelligence community actually has turned their eyes to these routes 

as well, because logistics do matter. Logistics are a great asymmetric advantage for our country, and we know that. 

So, intermodally, I really appreciate my colleague, General 

Collyar, mentioned intermodal options. What does that mean? 

For instance, MRAP [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle], 

all-terrain vehicles—you may be familiar with M–ATVs [MRAP AllTerrain Vehicles]—we needed to deliver upwards of 7,000 to 8,000 

of them in a short amount of time over the last year. 

And to fly them in from the United States after Oshkosh builds 

them and delivers them to Charleston, South Carolina, and to fly 

them four or five at a time on an airplane is prohibitively expensive. 

But actually to load maybe 300 of them on a ship—and some of 

these large ships can hold 200 to 400 C–17 [Boeing Globemaster 

III tactical airlifter] loads—and then send them to a port, maybe 

in the vicinity, perhaps Bahrain or Oman, and then shuttle the airplanes in a shorter distance—less fuel is required, they can carry 

more vehicles—we are saving $110 million per thousand M–ATVs 

delivered. 

So, again, we are trying to use good business practices, be good 

stewards of tax dollars and support the warfighter foremost. And 

so we are nearly finished. We are nearly complete this month. We 

will have delivered over 7,000 of those vehicles. And there are 

other vehicles in the works and heavy trailers that we are delivering that way. 

We have used this method elsewhere. And Rota, Spain, is an important place. And it illustrates how important one COCOM [Combatant Command] can be to another, that bases in Europe are actually very important for Central Command from the transportation 

point of view. 

If we send shiploads of helicopters to Rota, Spain, and then shuttle on heavy aircraft into Afghanistan, it is efficient, it is effective. 

Most importantly, it supports the warfighter, but also saves tax 

dollars as we go. 

So those are the kinds of creative ways we are trying to work 

around the challenges that we have. 

And I will finish up with the in-transit visibility work. You know, 

in business, obviously, there is, you know, tagging. Some of our 

foremost companies take advantage of these operations. But it is 

just not the physical device that goes on the container that senses 
13 

the location of the device. There is a process that is required for 

this volume of material coming. 

And so to the credit of the forces on the ground in Central Command and my counterparts in the logistics community in the Central Command, they have taken into account how best to track the 

inputs from all those data. There is no shortage of data, but how 

to manage that, make it useful and have the soldiers and the marines and the airmen and the sailors on the ground in Afghanistan 

be able to track the things they are bringing in. 

And they have also started maintaining cargo yards, so that 

trucks aren’t lined up on the roads and vulnerable to attack. And 

our commercial partners have helped orchestrate that as well. And 

DLA is helping us work in those lines, too. 

So this is very much a team effort to know what we have, to 

track what we have and to have only what the folks on the ground 

really need. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, General. 

I have a quick follow up to General Stevenson. What about the 

second order effect of theater-provided equipment not being returned to the United States for training or equipment that may 

have been pulled out of the Reserve units? How is the Army meeting this challenge? 

General STEVENSON. Yes, ma’am, that is a very good point. And 

that is sort of what I alluded to in my opening remarks about 

maldistributed equipment. 

Equipment that we told to stay there in Afghanistan becomes 

what we refer to as theater-provided equipment. It is not part of 

any unit table of organization and equipment, like General Panter 

referred to. And so somebody else is doing without because that 

equipment is sitting there. So that is an impact. 

Another impact is because we have decided to leave that material there and let units rotate on top of it, it has interrupted what 

we had planned to do in our depots. And so there has been a workload impact. 

And then, lastly, if you leave unit in country for multiple rotations, there is a point at which if you have got to take it down and 

apply some heavy-duty maintenance to it—you know, when you 

have got a unit going in, they only stay a year, they come out, it 

is generally not a problem. We will get it reset and ready for the 

next operation. 

But when that equipment stays for multiple rotations, there is 

a point at which you have just got to say time out. We got to put 

that equipment into some sort of maintenance facility. And we are 

building one in Kandahar now to help us do that. 

Ms. BORDALLO. General, do you ever sell equipment to the Afghan military, I mean, you know, where they are training them 

and so forth? I mean, is there something like that? 

General STEVENSON. We do. There are a number of ways by 

which we transfer equipment to the Afghans. One is what is called 

sale from stock. There isn’t much of that going on. 

The Congress authorized us to provide equipment that was excess to our needs to them, I think it was in fiscal year 2010 in the 

authorization bill. And so as a result of that, we have been transferring some equipment to them. 
14 

And then, lastly, there is foreign military sales. This actually 

ends up being grant money provided by the United States, appropriated by the Congress, that we have people—Army and other 

service people in-country—helping to build their military and decide what they need. You know, as you know, we are building the 

Afghan army up into several hundred thousand Afghan soldiers. 

Ms. BORDALLO. That is right. 

General STEVENSON. They all need rifles. They all need radios. 

And they all need transport. And all that stuff is being bought as 

part of that foreign military sales effort. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Chairman, on my last trip to Afghanistan 

with a CODEL [Congressional Delegation], we all received desert 

boots as a gift, made in Afghanistan. So I understand they are now 

making their own uniforms. Is that a true comment? 

General STEVENSON. Ma’am, it wouldn’t surprise me, and it 

would be a good thing if they are. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. FORBES. The next question will come from our gentleman 

from New Jersey. But before he does, the gentleman from New 

York had a quick follow-up question to Ms. Bordallo’s questions. 

Mr. Gibson. 

Mr. GIBSON. I thank the chairman and the ranking member. 

And I thank the panelists. 

With regard to movement of logistics in-theater, my question has 

to do with are we confident we have learned from the lessons from 

Iraq as far as rearward movement? The President has laid down 

the marker to begin the drawdown this year and to complete combat operations by 2014. 

And please give me some assurances that—because it was Herculean work that was done to move that—how are we applying those 

lessons and how that might impact reset operations at the completion. 

General PANTER. If I may, since we are out of Iraq, and we had 

some pretty good lessons learned coming out of Iraq and we 

thought we had a fairly successful drawdown plan, some of this is 

basic leadership. 

For example, the commander we had on the ground at the time 

told his subordinate commanders they can’t go home until they account for all of their equipment. That got everybody’s attention to 

the degree that we had a 110 percent turn-in as we were getting 

out of Iraq. 

[Laughter.] 

Now, that says something about our legacy accounting systems, 

which is a different issue that we are working in trying to solve, 

and one of those solutions will be MCCS [Marine Corps Community 

Services] Marine Corps, our future logistical information backbone. 

So the commander told everyone of the equipment accountability. 

The second thing was early decisions. Now, we took some risk 

early on, but they proved to be right. Without knowing the political 

dimensions or the decisions that might be made related to a 

timeline for a drawdown, the commanders made the decision to 

pull 10 percent of the equipment off your forward operating bases 

to try and get ahead of the game. And that proved to be successful 
15 

in that we had a sense that we had maybe too much equipment forward. 

So, again, the leadership came in play there. I have to admit 

though that we were lucky in that we were not having to compete 

with our Army friends as we were coming out of Iraq. Thus, the 

competition for the LOCs [Lines of Communication] and the strategic airflow diminished. The transportation that TRANSCOM provided to get us out of country was tremendous. 

Those lessons learned like that we immediately captured after 

our withdrawal from Iraq. And we have already started planning 

for when the time comes for Afghanistan not to repeat any bad 

practices, but to use some of the good practices that we learned 

from that. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, General. 

The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Runyan, is recognized for 

5 minutes. 

General STEVENSON. Sir, I just want to do a quick follow-up. 

Mr. FORBES. Sorry, General, go ahead. I apologize. 

General STEVENSON. You heard General Johnson refer to the 

Northern Distribution Network. It is going to be key that that 

Northern Distribution Network allows movement of what is referred to as lethal cargo. 

You know, today, we can only move non-lethal cargo on that network. Fully 60 percent of our materiel flows in through the Northern Distribution Network today, but it is only non-lethal stuff. It 

is food. It is fuel. It is water. It is construction materials. 

In order to do a withdrawal, an orderly withdrawal out of Afghanistan, we are going to need to—and TRANSCOM is working 

on it; perhaps General Johnson can talk about it—we are going to 

need to be able to go out through the north as well from the south. 

General JOHNSON. Sir, if I may? 

Mr. FORBES. Yes. 

General JOHNSON. Absolutely to the point, one of the points of 

fragility in the Northern Distribution Network is that each of our 

transit agreements is bilateral. It is individual per country in this 

chain and series of each country. And it is one way right now. 

And for many reasons, these countries have long memories of 

what happened in Afghanistan, you know, a couple of decades ago 

and are very nervous about the security on their southern borders. 

So we do not currently have permission from all the countries to 

be able to come out, whether just to rotate forces or to eventually 

move out. 

And even for—we are working with our NATO [North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization] partners as well because some of their units 

are obviously based on Europe. They would like to be able to rotate 

that way. 

So these are the kinds of agreements that the State Department 

is helping us with in each country team to try to find a way for 

us not just to rotate units but eventually to build a plan to move 

in and out with unlimited equipment. But right now, it is very restricted. 

Mr. GIBSON. Well, it is encouraging that you at least have identified the challenges and you are working to in a joint way incor-
16 

porate the lessons. I think that is going to make us stronger, as 

we look towards the reset. Thanks. 

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Runyan. 

Mr. RUNYAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I thank all of you for your testimony and your service to our 

country. 

General Stevenson, you mentioned it in your opening statement 

that, you know, as we move to a reset, which you said typically 

takes 2 to 3 years, you have a lesser ask in your fiscal year 2012 

budget. I just wanted you to elaborate on that a little bit. 

General STEVENSON. Yes, sir, the amount next year, I believe, is 

somewhere around $4.5 billion for a reset for the Army. And that 

is considerably less than it has been in previous years. 

Two big reasons for that. One is timing, that is, when the stuff 

that is in Iraq is going to be put into maintenance. And the other 

is the type of stuff that is coming out of Iraq. 

We have virtually no combat vehicles left, no tanks, no Bradley 

Fighting Vehicles, no M113 personnel carriers, no self-propelled 

howitzers. There are some, but not very large numbers. And those 

are the big dollar drivers for a reset for the Army. But mostly what 

we have in Iraq today is MRAPs. And they are not nearly as expensive to reset as a tank or a Bradley. 

But back to the timing issue, if you just consider when we are 

going to be coming out, and if you look—and you perhaps haven’t 

had a chance to see the plan yet, because it is still coming together—but the plan has the 50,000 forces that are there are coming out mostly in the fall of this year, which means they will end 

up in Kuwait somewhere around the turn of the year. 

And by the time we get them on a ship and back to the continental United States and then off to a source of repair, it will be 

the third quarter when they finally land there. And then they have 

got to be inducted into a maintenance program. Our depots typically plan their work a year in advance, so most of them probably 

won’t induct until fiscal 2013. 

And that is why it is a timing thing. You will see our 2013 request will account for all of that. 

Mr. RUNYAN. Well, thank you. 

And as we are talking budgets, General Johnson, you know, moving all this equipment, and I think we all feel it in our lives every 

day, the price of fuel around the world is drastically affecting your 

ability and your budget constraints. Can you comment on that? 

General JOHNSON. Yes, sir. In the short run, obviously, we probably are the greatest consumer of fuel in the Department of Defense with our Air Mobility Command component. So Air Mobility 

Command has undertaken some fuel efficiency efforts before this 

current change in the fuel price, because we know we need a smaller carbon footprint and to be good stewards of money. 

And so what they have done is invested in some fuel planning 

types of software programs and in a way of conducting flights that 

the commercial industry has taken on in the past and has achieved 

already 5 to 10 percent of savings in the fuel use. And, as well, we 

are trying to find ways to avoid using air when we can. That is 

why the surface alternative is a better one. 
17 

And when you factor in all costs, including fuel, if, for instance, 

it costs, say, 30 cents a pound to send something via ship and land, 

it costs 10 times that. It costs $3 a pound to do it by fixed wing 

air. Rotary air is 20 times. 

And so if we can find some way to get that cost closer to what 

it would be on a ship or a truck, the way business does to reduce 

their costs as well, that is what we are trying to do. 

There are obviously some efforts with alternative fuels that we 

have explored. The Air Force has explored using various—whether 

it is from coal or other alternative fuels in engines to see if that 

might work, there needs to be a larger, obviously, market for that 

for us to be part of it as we go. 

And then we have a very small R&D [Research & Development] 

budget at TRANSCOM. We try to come up with ways, whether it 

is low-cost, low-altitude parachutes or look at other crafts to see if 

there is another way to deliver logistics cheaper, maybe from unmanned vehicles. 

We are actually looking at a new generation of air ships, sort of 

blimps, if you will, to be, you know, sort of faster ships. They are 

not slow airplanes. They are really faster ships. 

And there may be a business case for that in austere environments, especially for humanitarian assistance, to be able to use 

large amounts of equipment for a very little bit of fuel and without 

having, you know, port facilities or an elaborate airfield, to able to 

do it simply and have some benefit from what is old is new and 

look at those ways and try to be more creative in how we deliver. 

Mr. RUNYAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

General COLLYAR. Can I add something to that statement please? 

Mr. FORBES. Please, General. 

General COLLYAR. At Defense Logistics Agency, we provide all of 

the fuel for the Services. And today that is about 70 million gallons 

a month. So the quantity is very, very significant and we are looking at all possible mitigation strategies. 

The key to the keeping the fuel cost down, though is we do have 

long-term contracts. There is an extensive vendor base throughout 

the world. We provide fuel to a specific location on the ground at 

a specified price delivered, FOB [Forward Operating Base] destination, which is right now just over $3 a gallon. 

We adjust that price to the Services about every 6 months based 

on actual cost so that we can, again, try to mitigate the continuous 

fluctuations of day-to-day pricing. But our long-term contracts and 

the significant buying power we have across the world lets us buy 

at a relatively low cost. That final delivery that Michelle talked 

about is very, very significant in that, though. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, gentlemen. 

Mr. Ryan has a quick follow-up question before we go to the gentleman from Texas. 

Mr. RYAN. Yes. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

General, I guess either of you can answer this. Last year I was 

on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and we were talking 

a lot about how much it actually costs to get a gallon of fuel from 

wherever it originates to somewhere in Iraq or Afghanistan, if you 

can just enlighten us on that? 
18 

General COLLYAR. There is a lot of myth and legend about the 

fully burdened cost of fuel. The Defense Logistics Agency today, the 

cost of fuel anywhere in the world is $3.03. That is with our delivery to a FOB. And in Afghanistan, we are delivering to about 14 

different locations. And that is the cost to deliver to there. 

Now, there is a challenge that I can’t answer how much it costs 

for a Service to take it from there to another FOB out of the 200- 

plus locations that they may have to deliver to, but the cost of basic 

delivery to the large locations that we support in supply is $3 a 

gallon. 

Mr. FORBES. The gentlelady from Hawaii had a quick follow up 

to that. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Hello, General. Somehow it doesn’t seem to logi- cally follow that it would be $3.03 cents to wherever we want to 

send it. I mean, isn’t there some logistical advantages to be in a 

particular location, or, more importantly, shouldn’t there be an advantage, if you are going to a shorter distance that you wouldn’t 

be paying $3.03 cents, whether you are going to Afghanistan or, 

say, Hawaii. 

I mean, you know, there should be some—it just logically seems 

there should be some kind of advantage to that. 

General COLLYAR. There are advantages. Again, the average cost, 

which is what we charge per gallon to the Services, is averaged 

across all of that worldwide fuel requirement. And that is it is 

cheaper to certain locations, but they pay an average price. 

But in Afghanistan today our contract, again, we get fuel based 

on a worldwide vendor network from that area. So I know there are 

no refineries in Afghanistan itself, but we get fuel from Pakistan 

and certain types that they provide, JP–8 [Jet Propellant 8 jet 

fuel]. And then we provide also through India and through the 

Northern Distribution Network. 

Mr. FORBES. General, I think what the gentlelady from Hawaii 

is asking—maybe you can get back to us on the record on this— 

is we understand that you may average it all out and charge a single price. But I think her question is, do we ever get a breakout 

and see how much it is actually costing to have different areas geographically, because there is a differentiation in cost. 

And I understand you don’t have those figures today, but if you 

could get back to us with those. 

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

page 85.] 

Mr. FORBES. I think Mr. Runyan, you hit a nerve because the 

gentlelady from Missouri also has a question on that, if we can 

briefly. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you. Just a real quick question, and I 

think you may have partially answered it. I was wondering where 

the fuel is originating that we are using in Afghanistan. So you 

said part of it is from Pakistan. I just wondered how much are we 

buying and depending on Russia for a lot of that fuel. 

General COLLYAR. Ma’am, we get a portion from Pakistan. There 

is a portion of it that is provided through Russia. We get it through 

multiple different routes. The NDN provides about five or six different countries through the Caucasus and across that we provide 

fuel from. 
19 

Again, our goal is to have it from as many locations as possible 

to ensure your vendor base is solid. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Yes. I am a little nervous about depending too 

much on any one of those people you have mentioned at this point. 

I think that makes sense. 

Thank you. 

Ms. BORDALLO. I have a quick follow up also. Did you get your— 

what is the length of the contracts? You said ‘‘lengthy.’’ Somebody 

mentioned lengthy contracts. I just hope we are not tied into contracts for too long a period. 

General COLLYAR. Ma’am, the average contract right now is 

based on either a 12-month or it could be an 18-month contract 

with options available to us. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Oh, well, that is not so bad. I was thinking years. 

Mr. FORBES. And if you will bear with us, we have three votes. 

We are going to try to get one more question in. But if you will just 

be patient, we will run over and vote and then come back. 

The gentleman from Texas. 

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all for the great work that you are doing and for 

your service. 

My question deals with—and I know contractors have been mentioned here several times, but my question deals with our reliance 

on contractors worldwide and in particular in areas like the Middle 

East and in combat situations. 

According to our figures, last year we spent more than $200 billion on contractor support. Many of these contractors, I know, fulfill vital logistics roles, and, as has been noted, fuel is only one of 

them, but also maintenance and dining facilities contracts. 

And the concern that I have is that we may be losing our ability 

to have our own in-house system of being able to take care of these 

kinds of issues. I know that in an asymmetrical low-intensity conflict, the use of contractors has been an option—some would argue 

not a good option, but an option nonetheless. 

But my concern is that with this reliance, is the military relying 

too much on contractors? And can we still have the capability to 

do these kinds of tasks, you know, I guess organically for lack of 

a better way to describe it? 

So in the event of a high-intensity conflict, do our military capabilities, will they be able to fulfill these kinds of requirements? Because we all know that not only do we have the finest military in 

the world, in the history of the world, but what differentiates us 

many times from others is the logistical capabilities that we bring 

to the fight. 

So can anybody address that? 

General STEVENSON. Yes, sir. I would take a first shot at it. This 

is something I spend a lot of my time thinking about, concerned 

about and examining as we structure the Army. 

You know, we go through a very deliberate process to structure 

the Army. We run that cycle every 2 years and are about to start 

running it every year. The short answer of your question is I am 

not concerned. I think we are okay. 

In the specific case of food service that you mentioned, we designed the Army to be able to do what we call field feeding, MREs 
20 

[Meals, Ready-To-Eat], and something called a heat-and-serve ration. We don’t have enough cooks to do the kind of food service operations that you might see in a garrison dining facility, because 

we just don’t think we need that for wartime. 

When we get into a position, like we are today, where we are in 

a sort of a benign environment where you can use contractors and 

you can set up a dining facility and provide a soldier what we call 

an A-ration meal, great. And we will do that with contractors. 

But when we get into an area where we are fighting or we are 

in major combat operations, or at these combat outposts that you 

see in Afghanistan, that is all soldiers. That is not contractors. 

General PANTER. If I may, just to jump on with General 

Stevenson’s comment, the expeditionary nature of the Marine 

Corps, early on in any conflict, we do maintain and we have this 

capability, the organic capability you speak of, sir. That is there. 

We have our appropriate logistics unit to do this organic piece that 

you speak of. 

As General Stevenson says, as the theater matures and it gets 

more stable, I think that is where you see the larger influx of contractors, getting to the issue you speak about. 

General JOHNSON. Sir, at the other end of the spectrum of the 

contracting, TRANSCOM obviously works in partnership with U.S. 

flag fleets and the commercial reserve air fleet and also the sealift 

fleet. 

And those carriers are worldwide carriers. They are very reputable, and they have networks to help us have economic and transit access in different countries. And also they provide this surge 

capability for us that day in and day out would be prohibitively expensive for the taxpayer to support, but our organic fleet can do it. 

But having that surge capability and knowing if we really needed 

it, it would be there, that relationship is tremendously important. 

And then, obviously, there is a concurrent benefit to the flag fleet, 

the prosperity of the merchant mariners and the ports that support 

them and that whole dynamic that goes along with the U.S. flag 

fleet. 

So that is TRANSCOM’s end. And we appreciate the partnership. 

But we can handle it with the organic fleet as well. 

Mr. FORBES. And if you have any other comments, we will finish 

these when we come back. But we need to adjourn now, or recess 

now for an opportunity to vote. 

We will be back after three votes. Thank you. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you for your patience, and we hope some of 

our members will make it back. We know that today is an interesting day. As you all know, we are talking about budgets, and 

they all impact all of you significantly as well. So we don’t know 

what our scheduling is going to be in terms of our members. 

But I want to pick up where Mr. Reyes left off when we asked 

about the concern with contractors. And I think all of you indicated 

that our contractors are an essential part of what you do. And 

would you not agree that without our contractors, we simply 

couldn’t do that jobs that we need to do? 

I think, General Stevenson, your comment was that you thought 

we had it under control, and it was right. And is that pretty much 
21 

consistently what the panel feels in terms of our contractor mix 

with what we are doing? 

Anybody disagree with that, to do it? 

The other question I wanted to ask while we are waiting for 

some of our other members to come back is the prepositioned 

stocks. I know some of you have talked about some of our reductions in that. And that is a concern that we have heard voiced in 

our subcommittee in past hearings. 

Can you tell us what the impacts of some of those reductions 

might be on you? And are we kind of at the right place there? Or 

is that something we need to look at to change? 

General. 

General STEVENSON. Sir, there aren’t any reductions been decided upon yet. There is discussion about whether or not the size 

of the afloat prepositioned stocks, both Army and Marine Corps, is 

too big. But we are probably at least, I would say, 6 to 9 months 

away from recommendations and decisions about that. 

But beyond that, there is no plan to reduce. In fact, we are actively working to rebuild our prepositioned stocks in accordance 

with something we call APS, Army prepositioned stocks 2015. And 

we are well on our way. I would say we are probably two-thirds of 

the way there toward rebuilding. But any reductions we are not 

even close to a decision on it. 

Mr. FORBES. General Panter, I know one of the things we have 

seen is the Navy’s budget has included an initiative that projects 

about $4.2 billion in savings by, among other things, restructuring 

its prepositioned ship squadrons. 

In your opinion, what are the impacts of readiness of moving this 

capability to a reduced status? 

General PANTER. Sir, that reduced status issue, the Marine 

Corps does have a concern over it. That particular squadron supports EUCOM [U.S. European Command] and AFRICOM, and we 

routinely use that in theater engagement and for training exercises. I would suspect the two COCOMs involved also have a concern over that as well. 

And getting back to General Stevenson’s comment, we think 

what we have right now is aligned properly with the requirements 

of the COCOM commanders. 

Now, the issue I earlier brought up, that equipment, while we 

have some critical shortfalls, in general the readiness ratings are 

pretty high. We do need to refresh it from the lessons learned in 

combat. 

Thank you. 

Mr. FORBES. General Johnson, I know that TRANSCOM structures its force and how prepositioned stocks are factored in. How 

would reductions in prepositioned stocks affect your ability to meet 

your requirements? 

General JOHNSON. Sir, we are actually in the midst right now of 

studying the as-is state of prepositioned materials to see if, in partnership with DLA, if TRANSCOM and DLA could possibly be even 

more effective in delivering what is there. 

We don’t have a vote in what the content is. Because the Services 

are having the opportunity now to reset and to reconstitute their 

‘‘pre-po’’ [prepositioned materials], the Department saw this as an 
22 

opportune time to take a look at how it is arrayed, to see if we 

have learned anything about distribution in the last 10 years or so, 

to see where they are and in what medium, whether they are afloat 

or ashore, if they can be presented even better than they are. 

Because now, it has been deemed, as the general said, effective 

that they can respond to the plans that they are aligned for. We 

just want to see if we can do better. But that study is literally just 

completing the very first phase to assess what we have. 

And those are things that we are trying to take account of, of 

being good stewards of how much it costs to move things and store 

them, but most importantly to build a support to the warfighters 

in their efforts. 

Mr. FORBES. General—— 

General STEVENSON. [Off mike.] 

Mr. FORBES. I am sorry. Yes. 

General STEVENSON. Chairman, if I could follow up? 

Mr. FORBES. Sure. 

General STEVENSON. Something that we have done, and this was 

done internal to the Army, given what DLA has done in the last 

10 years in terms of forward-positioned depots—and General 

Collyar alluded to that—we used to have in our afloat set two large 

container ships, which we spent probably $40 million, $50 million 

per year each to maintain afloat sustainment stocks. 

Because of the nature of DLA’s distribution of their depots 

around the world, we believe now that we can position our materiel 

in those depots on land and have them in the right places to meet 

all of the potential contingencies and won’t need those sustainment 

ships, those two container ships that we would contract for as part 

of the afloat stock. 

So there is an example of how we are working with the Defense 

Logistics Agency to come up with a cheaper way to achieve the 

same end. 

Mr. FORBES. And General Panter, I know that you may have a 

little disagreement with how the Marine Corps views that, as opposed to the Army. What is your thought there? 

General PANTER. We approach it a little differently, sir. I think 

you realize when we load our ships out, these are capability ships. 

And the expectations are that the equipment that we put on these 

ships can support the war fight in the initial stages of the war 

fight. 

As we run these things through our maintenance cycle, we pay 

particular attention on how we would load these ships so they can 

achieve that mission. So, for us, it is not considered a floating 

warehouse. It is capability—warfighting capability—that we can 

project for. 

Mr. FORBES. And that is something we have just got to keep our 

eyes on that ball and not miss that. 

General Collyar, in our supply chains now, if you had to point 

out, do we have any key single points of failure? And maybe the 

flip side of that, are there places where we have too much redundancy? 

General COLLYAR. Sir, many of the commodities, the big commodities of food and fuel, we are such a small portion—and in medical 
23 

also—a small portion of the overall worldwide supply chain that we 

don’t have issues with those. 

Probably the greatest individual chain that we have issues with 

is clothing and textiles and the American base there. With the continuing adjustments to uniforms and all to support the theaters, we 

are challenged to have a supply base here in the United States 

for—really, the textile industry is probably our most important. 

Mr. FORBES. Gentlelady from Hawaii is recognized for—— 

I am sorry. I am sorry. Ms. Bordallo has a follow-up on that. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Well, not exactly a follow-up, but I do have a 

question. During a recent posture hearing with General McNabb 

from TRANSCOM, we discussed ship repairs in U.S. shipyards. 

And to continue and to dig a little deeper into this issue, I understand that the Guam shipyard has had some difficulty with its dry 

dock. However, I find that it is up. But it is undergoing some repairs now. 

But the trend of sending ships overseas has occurred consistently, even before this event. In other words, they are sending MSC 

ships to Singapore and other foreign ports. What steps can be 

taken to address this matter further? And I am very concerned 

that we are degrading our domestic industrial capabilities. 

I think, General Johnson, you probably will be able to answer 

that. Could you discuss what sort of planning models are taken 

into consideration when repairing naval or MSC [Military Sealift 

Command] ships. You know, where is ‘‘Buy America’’? 

General JOHNSON. Ma’am, I will probably take the larger portion 

of this question for the record so I can get you the detail. But in 

general, the vessels that are staged overseas from a certain period 

of time is something like over 2 years. You know, the big Navy can 

determine to have those repairs done overseas. 

Those tend not to be the kinds of vessels that attend to 

TRANSCOM work to do the cargo vessels. As you have had a 

chance to talk with the commander of Military Sealift Command, 

you have had a sense to know that we, you know, the $40 million 

worth of work that we do in Guam. And we do hope that the Big 

Blue dry dock can be back up. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Yes, it is up now. 

General JOHNSON. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. BORDALLO. I understand. 

General JOHNSON. And so I will have to take for the record the 

details of that process for you and for your staff to better understand that. 

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

page 85.] 

Ms. BORDALLO. Very good. 

And one quick question for General Johnson also, referencing the 

Defense Personal Property System, DPS, I understand that a new 

system is in place now for the movement of personal goods during 

a PCS [Permanent Change of Station] move. 

However, I do understand that some in the community of users 

have raised concerns about the new system. And I also understand 

that there is a concern this system was developed without adequate 

input from the shipping community that provides the services. 
24 

So can you discuss what is being done to improve this and to 

what extent contractors are involved in the improvements of this 

new technology? 

General JOHNSON. Yes, ma’am. Thank you for that question. The 

movement of household goods is an enormous undertaking for the 

Department of Defense, obviously, with all the movement of our 

forces. 

And the last 2 years have been particularly challenging, because 

with the economy in decline, the trucking industry has laid up several of their vehicles, so their capacity was much reduced. 

Unfortunately, at the same time, some of the BRAC [Base Closure and Realignment] moves have actually accelerated household 

goods moves in the Department of Defense, which put more pressure on the industry to just create more of a perfect storm then. 

At the same time, we have been developing this new Web-based 

program to actually help with the quality of life for military members in their moves. 

And we have had 11 different occasions to meet with industry in 

major forums over the last 2 years, and then the discussions went 

on before that, to try to refine the process. 

We have over 70 percent of members of the Services, I think, 

using the DPS now. We have received 30 percent customer surveys. 

So of those 30 percent who have submitted customer surveys, we 

can have a sense of how that is working for the military members. 

There is also a feedback loop with the carriers as well. 

Some of the complaints initially was that the Web site was cumbersome, and it was. And we are trying to do better with that. It 

wasn’t as elegant as some of the—I think the easiest, you know, 

whether expedia.com or Amazon or that sort of thing. It is meant 

to be. And so it has improved with the feedback. 

And as we approach this peak season, this peak move season 

coming up, our teammates have worked with the trucking industry 

to come up with alternatives. 

Even though the normal enclosed moving truck that we are used 

to seeing is in shorter supply this year, we have come up with 

agreements with them to use crating and on flatbed trucks that 

will provide a secure move for the members, but also gives an alternative to industry for them to have business as their business 

picks up. 

And we have also, with this program, been able to black out, in 

a sense, to block out times of peak, so that people don’t oversubscribe to a period of time when they can’t be supported, which is 

a burden on the industry as well as on the members, and to then 

phase out the move to make it more smooth. 

So we think the improvements we have made will benefit both 

the members and the industry. And, actually, a side benefit of this 

is we have saved over $200 million along the way. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Absolutely. 

General JOHNSON. So that has really been a benefit to the Department of Defense and makes it a competitive environment for 

industry. But it has been quite a value for the Department of Defense. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. 

Thank you, General, and I yield back. 
25 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you. 

The gentlelady from Hawaii is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

And thank you, all of you, for being here to testify. You are really 

probably the unsung heroes, because you make things actually 

work. 

So, having said that, my first question is to Lieutenant General 

Stevenson. In your statement, you used this word or this phrase 

‘‘organic industrial base.’’ What is an organic industrial base? 

General STEVENSON. Yes, ma’am. What I was referring to are depots, maintenance depots that are operated by the Army—we have 

five; arsenals, which are operated by the Army—we have three, 

manufacturing arsenals; and then a number of ammunition plants 

and also ammunition depots, and there are a total of 14 of those. 

That makes up the organic industrial base. 

And the notion there is that we have a capability internal to the 

Army to support ourselves in time of war and so that we are not 

reliant, necessarily, on the commercial outside the Army base. 

Ms. HANABUSA. And how much of our needs are the organic industrial bases or depots capable of meeting? 

General STEVENSON. I think, geez, that is an interesting question. I have not really looked at it in that way. 

Let me say this. By law, we were required to do no more than 

50 percent of our depot maintenance outside the base. In other 

words, the law says, ‘‘Do at least 50 percent of the depot level work 

in the depot,’’ the organic depots. And we are complying with that. 

We are actually about 60 percent in the organic base. 

Could we do 100 percent? Pretty close. We probably could. 

Ms. HANABUSA. And particular ammunitions, for example. 

General STEVENSON. Ammunition is much closer. The law doesn’t 

talk about how much of our ammunition must be produced organically. It only refers to the maintenance depots. It doesn’t even refer 

to the manufacturing arsenals, which is something we would like 

to—we plan to propose some thoughts about what we ought to have 

in the way of law for that in the future. 

But in ammunition, there are no requirements. There are things, 

though, that we know that commercial industry won’t do. Just 

South of here in Radford, Virginia, we make what is called nitrocellulose. It is the T in TNT. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Can you also tell me, then, if this is what is ongoing, what is the savings, if we are able to go to 100 percent? 

And, let me just share with you, I happen to believe that if the 

military can insource, basically, all of its needs in terms of what 

we are outsourcing, not to say anything about the private sector, 

but if we could insource especially these critical aspects of our 

needs, that we probably, you know, could do it efficiently and, in 

addition to that, at a great cost savings. 

And I just wondered if there was a cost-benefit analysis done. 

General STEVENSON. There is. And that is exactly what drives us 

to not use the organic bases. It is a maintenance action that has 

to occur every once in a blue moon. It doesn’t really make sense 

to keep that capability to gear up the organic base just to do that 

small task and then gear back down. It is inefficient. 
26 

We have another law besides the 50–50 law that says 50 percent 

must be done organically. Another law says we must maintain a 

core, C–O–R–E, organic capability in our organic industrial base 

that is the amount of capability to meet our needs in wartime. And 

we are very careful about ensuring that we meet that core capability. We can do 100 percent of our core requirement in our base. 

To be completely frank with you, today we have some shortcomings there, where there are things that we should have the capability to do in the base that we can’t. And there are long reasons 

for how that occurred. We are working to fix that and ensure that 

we have complete compliance with the law and can do every bit of 

our wartime requirement organically, should we have the need to. 

Ms. HANABUSA. And I am running out of time, but I believe that 

maybe you can answer this in writing. You know, Secretary Gates 

has this whole idea of how to save monies through efficiencies. 

Now, is, by any chance, any of the operations regarding the organic 

base part of it? And if not, what exactly or how does his efficiency 

measures that are going to cut cost affect you? 

General STEVENSON. Everything is subject to being considered in 

this look at the efficiency of the Department of Defense. And we 

shouldn’t be exempt from that. We should be looking internally to 

see if we are doing business as efficiently as possible. 

And the fact is, we can. I mean, there are still cases where there 

are redundancies that don’t need to be, perhaps between the Services. And there has been a lot of work to correct that over the 

years—centers of technical excellence in one Service that the other 

Service can depend upon, and that goes both ways. 

And then just the way we operate in the base. An example for 

you, our arsenals are probably—of our organic industrial base, they 

are probably the least workloaded. And we have capacity there, untapped capacity. But having untapped capacity in the business— 

and this organic base is a business—is not efficient. It means you 

are paying overhead that you don’t need to be paying. 

And so we have got to do a better job ourselves of getting business for our manufacturing arsenals. We are doing some work with 

that. General Collyar can tell you that we are manufacturing small 

arms parts, weapons parts, for the DLA, because they have had 

some difficulties with some of their suppliers. That is perfect work 

for an arsenal. In fact, it is being done at the Rock Island Arsenal 

in Illinois. 

We need to do more of that. I sent a note last night to my counterpart in the Air Force asking about bomb casings that they are 

using a contractor to make for them. We could make those bomb 

casings at Watervliet arsenal. And my approach to him was, let us 

do that for you. 

The more of that kind of work we can do, we can make our arsenals more efficient. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you. 

As I mentioned at the beginning, I deferred my questions. I just 

have about three questions for you. 

Now, one of them is about counterfeit parts. All of us know that 

they have the potential to seriously disrupt the DOD [Department 
27 

of Defense] supply chain, to delay missions, to infect the integrity 

of our weapon systems. 

As you also know, a congressionally requested GAO study on 

counterfeit parts completed in March 2010 found that DOD is limited in its ability to determine the extent to which counterfeit parts 

exist in our supply chain, because it does not have a DOD-wide definition of the term ‘‘counterfeit’’ and does not have a policy or specific process for detecting and preventing counterfeit parts. 

General Collyar, what are we doing about that, and how can we 

address that problem better? 

General COLLYAR. Sir, first of all, we recognize that there is a 

problem. We don’t truly know the depth of the problem and the 

scope of the problem. But we know it, and it hurts us and it hurts 

industry. 

So we have actually formed an organizational effectiveness team 

led by two Senior Executive Service personnel. We have got contracting personnel, we have got legal personnel, engineers, all 

working together to develop and, again, work with industry to find 

certified traceability of parts, certify both the manufacturers and 

the parts. And we have different ways of doing that. 

Again, we are very susceptible when with those 10,000 automated contracts every day, you have a hard time vetting all of 

those people that are truly providing those parts. So we are looking, using automation models to determine if things are out of line 

with either pricing or quality of the parts. 

And then we are also looking at ways to even DNA-stamp parts 

to ensure that the chain of reliability or certification of the parts 

is there, because a lot of times, it is not the OEM [Original Equipment Manufacturer] that is providing it. It is one of the sub-manufacturers way down the line, as complex as many of these things 

are. 

And so we have a testing facility. We are working heavily with 

them out in Columbus, Ohio, to test for counterfeit. It is one of the 

priorities that we have on line right now. 

Mr. FORBES. If you see something else you think we can do to 

help, please let us know. 

The other thing the gentlelady from Hawaii mentioned were the 

efficiencies and, for a better term, we call them just cuts, that are 

taking place. And I think, General Stevenson, you mentioned everything should be on the table. We don’t question that. 

Here is the concern we have as a committee, I think, though, and 

perhaps congressionally, that oftentimes these efficiencies or cuts, 

however you want to deem them, are not being done based on business models that have milestones that you can really measure to 

make sure that in the long run they are cost savings, as opposed 

to things that we are just kicking down the road. 

Do we need to have more business models when we make these 

decisions, do you think? And how do we go about bridging that gap, 

I guess, of credibility, because it seems like more and more we are 

getting it where somebody is coming and just telling us well, we 

had some meetings, and we decided, but we never see that analysis. 

General STEVENSON. Sir, two thoughts. First thought is, at least 

in the logistics area, we are getting a vote. It is a bottom-up offer-
28 

ing, not a top-down ‘‘cut 10 percent, and you guys figure out how 

to make that work.’’ 

Mr. FORBES. But is your vote based on a business model, or is 

it based on the fact we have got to cut something, and this what 

we think is the thing that would be the least painful? 

General STEVENSON. I am not sure I would call it a business 

model, but it is certainly an examination of what we think the possibilities are. And then it is, you know, on us as managers to ensure that we deliver the goods and what we said we could do. And 

shame on us if we can’t pull it off. Then we were silly and shortsighted in what we proposed. 

Mr. FORBES. But you guys oftentimes have a great mentality, 

and we salute you for this. But it is that whenever somebody asks 

you to do something, you salute and say, ‘‘We can do it.’’ And I 

have never heard you say, ‘‘No, we can’t do it,’’ which is admirable, 

but we don’t want to put you in that position. 

General STEVENSON. Yes, sir. We do say we can’t do things. We 

just don’t do it publicly. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. FORBES. And that is what we are trying to get you to do, I 

guess. 

Anybody else weigh in on a business model aspect of what—General? 

General PANTER. Mr. Chairman, if I may, and I will be a little 

bit more blunt with it, I guess. We are concerned about some of the 

efficiencies as they are being discussed and the business case analysis that might be behind them. 

In all honesty, my Service, and fair to say, Department of Navy 

has the position that some of these efficiencies we have concerns, 

not that we can’t accept them, not that they are not good ideas, we 

are just asking for the proper analysis to be done so there are not 

secondary effects that we will regret. 

Mr. FORBES. And just so you know, this committee is going to 

help you guys. We are going to try to give you some of that business model analysis so that you don’t have to ask for it, but that 

it is in there so that we know. And I hope that we will have some 

stuff to help along that line. 

Just two other questions that I have got. One of them we kind 

of hinted at, and it is in the industrial base. I know this is not totally your areas. 

But one of the things that worries me, and I have talked to, I 

think, all of you privately about this, you know, when we go back 

to World War II, when we had to gear up for World War II, we will 

never be in a situation where our military is capable of fighting 

long-term battles by itself. I mean, they have got to have private 

sector and all involved. 

We shifted manufacturers of arcade games into making munitions and other kinds of things. We are losing that industrial base 

here, as you have to depend more and more on foreign sources to 

even get the supplies that you need. 

Does that concern you? And at any time, do any of you take a 

look at not just how I am getting the items I need today, be it 

maintenance or be it items that I have to put in the supply chain, 

but who is manufacturing them? 
29 

And if we had to have that intense long-going conflict, do we 

have the industrial base, not just for ships—that is important—but 

for everything that you have to supply to our military? 

General STEVENSON. Yes. The short answer is yes. And probably 

the best example I can give you is in the ammunition business. We 

have a very deliberate, detailed industrial base assessment process 

we use for every munition that we produce. 

As you know, the Army is the single manager for conventional 

ammunition for all the Services. And I could show you for every 

munition we produce a complete breakout of where every part 

comes from, where the single points of failure are, and what mitigation steps that we are taking to ensure that in time of war we 

have the ability to get that subcomponent so that we can produce 

the munition. 

We work very hard at that, and we know that we are susceptible 

to offshore sources, and we have got to have mitigating strategy. 

In some cases, we buy to keep a vendor in business even though 

we don’t have a need because it is so critical—— 

Mr. FORBES. Create capability. 

General STEVENSON [continuing]. For our future. Yes, sir. 

General PANTER. Mr. Chairman, if I may—if I could use another 

example in this area that I am pretty comfortable with, ground tactical equipment. If you look at what we do with the MRAP, since 

2007, they were there. Industry was there when we needed them. 

We expended over $30 billion. We delivered in a partnership an 

item that actually saved lives. 

When it comes to ground equipment, I think there are many 

skills sets out there that are transferable and they are well today. 

And I think in a time of great crisis, we could pretty well rely on 

them. 

When it comes to aviation, shipbuilding, I am certainly not an 

expert in that area, but my experience with the ground side of the 

house, I think we are in pretty good situation. 

Mr. FORBES. You know, one of the things we may just need to 

be looking at, too. I know if you look at plants, for example, that 

geared up to help do the Kevlar that we needed for some of our 

vests and all, at times they feel like we pulled the rug out from 

under them. You know, we asked them to shift. It cost them a lot 

of money to do it. But then we kind of pulled that rug out from 

under them. 

And the question I always have, if we do that, what are they 

going to do next time, you know, when we need them? So it is 

something I know you guys are concerned about. We just need to 

have that conversation about how we support them. 

General Johnson, what are your thoughts? 

General JOHNSON. Well, sir, you have alluded to sealift and airlift, and obviously that is one of our greatest interests, even with 

these air ships that we talked about. There are companies trying 

to figure out if they have a business case for that type of different 

vehicle. Some of the testing we do out in the ranges for our unmanned logistics vehicles and that sort of thing, it shows a dynamic interest out there. 

If you are talking about producing in great numbers, though, 

that is obviously the business of this committee more than for us 
30 

in transport. But we have found great support. When we try to look 

for new ideas, we have found great support from the U.S. flag industry and then home-based industry. 

Mr. FORBES. General Collyar, any thoughts? 

General COLLYAR. Sir, no. You know, overall, most of the commodities that we support, we have a relatively good industrial base. 

I said textiles and some of the Nomex® [flame resistant fiber] and 

different types of things. You actually said one of them that is very 

key with the armor protecting materials. And it is a challenge because of our long-term commitment to those types of organizations 

and what they produce. 

I think one of the things that the Army has done well is try to 

look at those and see which of the items that is the item du jour 

today that we are really going to keep in the system long-term and 

make sure we do continue to support those versus what we are 

using in today’s conflict and may decide we don’t need to keep that 

long-term within our capability. 

The other challenge that we have in DLA is to support all the 

legacy systems along with those new systems coming out, and we 

lose manufacturers off of those systems routinely also. 

Mr. FORBES. Last question I have got for you. All of us, we appreciate so much, as we said at the beginning, your expertise, the 

experience you bring here, your service to our country. It all comes 

with a unique skill set that you bring to the table. 

All of us, though, go through our days sometime, and we have 

good days, but there is one thing that just kind of worries us and 

nags at us. And sometime you wake up at night and that hits you. 

And we oftentimes say, ‘‘What keeps us up at night?’’ You have 

heard those kinds of comments. 

What is the thing that concerns you most in what you have seen 

in terms of our readiness posture that you would say would be the 

thing that would concern you the most, not just for today, but 5 

years down the road or 6 years down the road, if you had to peg 

that as the thing that would worry you most at night, if you had 

to pick one thing? 

General STEVENSON. I was about to answer a today answer, but 

you took—— 

Mr. FORBES. Today is okay if you want to do that. Or give me 

both. 

General STEVENSON. The obvious thing, sir, is the CR [Continuing Resolution] and potentially the shutting down of the government. 

Mr. FORBES. That is a little out of our pay grade. So let us go 

to one that we can deal with. 

General STEVENSON. But one that sort of Haiti brought to mind. 

You know, we have been very, very good at deploying and operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it has gotten in—it is a cyclic 

thing, and we know how to do it and it happens almost so smoothly 

and so by rote. 

But we have got to be able to do that on short notice to other 

places in the world. And we got soldiers—when we did Haiti, there 

are some skills that we didn’t have because we had gotten rusty 

at them. 
31 

And so 5 years from now, you know, we are out of Iraq, we are 

out of Afghanistan. You know, how are we going to keep those 

skills? You know, it just almost makes you cry how competent 

Army, Marine Corps, other Service logisticians are. They have gotten really, really good at this. 

It is something we haven’t done, you know. I mean before the 

Cold War, end of the Cold War, I mean, we talked a lot, we practiced a lot, but we didn’t do. We have been doing for 10 years. And 

to keep those skills is what—how you keep them. How do you keep 

the soldiers motivated after what they have been through? That is 

what keeps me up at night. 

Mr. FORBES. So we found that with NASA [National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration] when we lost our ability to put somebody on the moon, you know. 

General. 

General PANTER. I am sorry. If I was going to pick one thing, I 

think it is this reset issue. I use an analogy, and my folks hate it 

when I use it, but this ‘‘pig in a snake’’ [bottleneck] is coming. 

When we get out of Afghanistan, we are going to have this tremendous requirement to reset our corps, our Marine Corps. I just 

hope that the American public and Congress will be there when we 

need them. 

And, as Mitch has said before, we are going to need 2 or 3 years 

to get this right, and that is coming. And I just hope the will is 

there to help us when we do start coming out of Afghanistan. 

Thank you. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you. 

General Johnson. 

General JOHNSON. Sir, as we look at our responsibilities in the 

future environment that we are going to face, the idea of going to 

remote places with austere environments is more and more a reality. 

Our alignment in the world has been fairly East-West. We find 

that our presence north and south and those, whether in Africa, 

South America or even southern parts of the Pacific, perhaps aren’t 

as robust. 

And so one of the interests we have taken is to come up with an 

infrastructure look, an annual look, with the other combatant commands to see if what if we could fix a road here or a port there, 

so that in the future, we would be able to go in to do—in a benign 

way to go do humanitarian assistance, not necessarily, you know, 

to do bellicose acts, although we could do that as well. 

But to fix a road in Souda Bay, Greece, may be a small investment, but it would give us the opportunity to support perhaps even 

better the activities in North Africa right now. The kind of work 

we are doing in Guam right now represents that sort of work, to 

make these intermodal nodes as we go. 

But as we build relationships with other countries, whether Vietnam or others that might give us this presence, so that we don’t 

have a giant expensive footprint, but we have a way to respond in 

the way that General Stevenson alluded to, in ways that we can 

anticipate in place, that we can anticipate the kinds of things that 

might happen in the increasingly remote areas. 

Mr. FORBES. General Collyar. 
32 

General COLLYAR. Sir, my thought is more along the lines of 

wearing my service uniform versus a DLA uniform. 

But it really does go back to more of what General Panter said. 

We have been given the greatest equipment today, and we continue 

to get full support for any new piece of equipment to support our 

troops deployed around the world. 

And I worry about our ability to continue to get that money, for 

the public to stomach us getting that money to reset and recap our 

equipment so we are prepared it in the future. 

And along the other thing that General Stevenson, I think, said, 

we have noncommissioned officers today that have no peer anywhere in the world, and it is because of what we allow them to do 

in the theater. And yet our regulations when we bring them back 

here require officers to do many of those same functions. 

And how do we keep junior, mid-grade NCOs [Non-Commissioned Officers] engaged when we take those responsibilities away 

from them that we fully handed them, including soldiers’ lives? 

How do we keep them engaged and wanting to stay in and do what 

we need them to do in the future? 

Mr. FORBES. Good. Good comments. I promised all of you before 

that if you needed any other time to correct anything that you said 

or something we left out, to give you that opportunity. 

Anybody need anything else or feel that we have left out something that you think we need to put in the record or that you need 

to go back and reevaluate? 

Well, if not, we want to, again, thank you so much. This committee appreciates not just you being here today, but your service 

to our country. And by telling you that, we also hopefully are telling all the men and women that serve under you, and thank you. 

And with that, we are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:46 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

APRIL 7, 2011 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

APRIL 7, 2011 

(37) 

Statement of Hon. J. Randy Forbes 

Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness 

Hearing on 

Sustaining the Force: Challenges to Readiness 

April 7, 2011 

I want to welcome everyone to the subcommittee’s hearing on 

‘‘Sustaining the Force: Challenges to Readiness.’’ Today we have 

the opportunity to discuss not only the current state of our 

logistical and maintenance readiness, but to also look at how we 

are posturing the force for the future. Joining us today are four exceptional witnesses representing the Army, Marine Corps, U.S. 

Transportation Command, and the Defense Logistics Agency. 

They are: 

• Lieutenant General Mitchell H. Stevenson, USA, Deputy 

Chief of Staff, Logistics, G4, U.S. Army; 

• Lieutenant General Frank A. Panter, Jr., USMC, Deputy 

Commandant, Installations and Logistics Headquarters, U.S. 

Marine Corps; 

• Major General Michelle D. Johnson, USAF, Director of Strategy, Policy, Programs and Logisitics, J5/4, U.S. Transportation Command; and 

• Brigadier General Lynn A. Collyar, USA, Director of Logistics Operations, Defense Logistics Agency. 

These four distinguished officers are responsible for transporting, 

sustaining and supporting our forces with both at home and 

abroad. They are charged not only with ensuring our men and 

women in have what they need when they need it, but are also responsible for ensuring we are postured to respond effectively to future real world contingencies like we have seen recently in Haiti 

and Japan. 

We are truly honored to have you join us today and we are extremely grateful for all you do to keep this nation safe. Thank you 

for your service. 

Our subcommittee’s hearings over the last couple of months have 

highlighted the many potential global threats and challenges our 

military faces. There is no doubt that our military is under significant strain, but they are performing marvelously despite the many 

challenges they face. However, the work of this subcommittee is to 

not only ensure our force can continue to excel in Iraq and Afghanistan, but is also postured to respond to a myriad of potential challenges around the world, both in the near term and in the long 

term. 
38 

Today, the Department of Defense has more than 450,000 personnel abroad in support of our national interests. In CENTCOM 

[United States Central Command] alone, the U.S. has more than 

150,000 brave men and women engaged in ongoing operations. 

These complex operations are sure to present significant logistical 

and maintenance challenges well beyond the President’s stated 

goal for redeployment of combat forces from the region. 

I hope that this hearing will allow members to learn more about 

how we are meeting these current challenges while, at the same 

time, posturing ourselves for significant challenges we are certain 

to face in the future. 
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

APRIL 7, 2011 

(85) 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. FORBES 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

[See page 18.] 

RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO 

General JOHNSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

[See page 23.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

APRIL 7, 2011 

(89) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. FORBES 

Mr. FORBES. The budget contains a proposal to streamline logistics sustainment 

processes and optimize the Army’s distribution, disposal, and transportation network in order to reduce your budget requirement by $600 million. Please discuss 

this optimization process and the implications should these savings not be fully realized. 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. How can we improve the core determination process? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Among the Section 322 report’s findings was that the Congress has 

poor visibility of the depot maintenance budget. How can we improve the reporting 

process to ensure Congress has the necessary information to provide oversight? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Is there a formal process in place to nominate non-standard equipment for inclusion in Modified Tables of Equipment and subsequently Prepositioned 

Stocks? If not, are we bringing home equipment that does not meet an enduring 

need? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Are there items that need to be removed from prepositioned stocks 

because they no longer meet mission needs? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What are your plans to better manage limited-life medical 

prepositioned stocks to avoid expiration and waste? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Please discuss your requirements for DLA. How are things working? 

Where do you see gaps, if any? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Can you discuss your requirements for TRANSCOM? How are things 

working? Where do you see gaps, if any? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Please discuss how we are using forward depot maintenance and theatre provided equipment (TPE). What are the challenges associated with this approach? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What can be done to enhance the Northern Distribution Network? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What impact would a delayed redeployment of the remaining U.S. 

forces in Iraq have on our logistics and maintenance enterprise? Are we poised or 

such a contingency? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. In April of last year, the GAO identified several challenges facing 

the Department with retrograde of equipment from Iraq to include: unclear guidance on what non-standard equipment will be transferred to the Government of 

Iraq; the inability to fully identify its need for contracted services; and visibility over 

its inventory of equipment and shipping containers. What steps have you taken to 

improve the retrograde process? What steps have you taken to improve the process 

of transferring excess non-standard equipment to U.S. state and local governments? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What steps are being taken to posture the depots for a post-reset environment? Are there adjustments to the statutory framework that need to be 

made? 

General STEVENSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. How can we improve the core determination process? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Among the Section 322 report’s findings was that the Congress has 

poor visibility of the depot maintenance budget. How can we improve the reporting 

process to ensure Congress has the necessary information to provide oversight? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 
90 

Mr. FORBES. Are there items that need to be removed from prepositioned stocks 

because they no longer meet mission needs? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What are your plans to better manage limited-life medical 

prepositioned stocks to avoid expiration and waste? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Please discuss your requirements for DLA. How are things working? 

Where do you see gaps, if any? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Can you discuss your requirements for TRANSCOM? How are things 

working? Where do you see gaps, if any? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Please discuss how we are using forward depot maintenance and theatre provided equipment (TPE). What are the challenges associated with this approach? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What can be done to enhance the Northern Distribution Network? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What impact would a delayed redeployment of the remaining U.S. 

forces in Iraq have on our logistics and maintenance enterprise? Are we poised or 

such a contingency? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. In April of last year, the GAO identified several challenges facing 

the Department with retrograde of equipment from Iraq to include: unclear guidance on what non-standard equipment will be transferred to the Government of 

Iraq; the inability to fully identify its need for contracted services; and visibility over 

its inventory of equipment and shipping containers. What steps have you taken to 

improve the retrograde process? What steps have you taken to improve the process 

of transferring excess non-standard equipment to U.S. state and local governments? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What steps are being taken to posture the depots for a post-reset environment? Are there adjustments to the statutory framework that need to be 

made? 

General PANTER. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. Are there items that need to be removed from prepositioned stocks 

because they no longer meet mission needs? 

General JOHNSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What can be done to enhance the Northern Distribution Network? 

General JOHNSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What impact would a delayed redeployment of the remaining U.S. 

forces in Iraq have on our logistics and maintenance enterprise? Are we poised or 

such a contingency? 

General JOHNSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. In April of last year, the GAO identified several challenges facing 

the Department with retrograde of equipment from Iraq to include: unclear guidance on what non-standard equipment will be transferred to the Government of 

Iraq; the inability to fully identify its need for contracted services; and visibility over 

its inventory of equipment and shipping containers. What steps have you taken to 

improve the retrograde process? What steps have you taken to improve the process 

of transferring excess non-standard equipment to U.S. state and local governments? 

General JOHNSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What steps are being taken to posture the depots for a post-reset environment? Are there adjustments to the statutory framework that need to be 

made? 

General JOHNSON. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. How is DLA supporting the Services and are you properly equipped 

to meet their logistical needs? If not, where are some of the shortfalls? 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What are the top challenges associated with our supply chain? What 

is DLA doing to address these challenges? 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What can be done to enhance the Northern Distribution Network? 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What impact would a delayed redeployment of the remaining U.S. 

forces in Iraq have on our logistics and maintenance enterprise? Are we poised or 

such a contingency? 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 
91 

Mr. FORBES. In April of last year, the GAO identified several challenges facing 

the Department with retrograde of equipment from Iraq to include: unclear guidance on what non-standard equipment will be transferred to the Government of 

Iraq; the inability to fully identify its need for contracted services; and visibility over 

its inventory of equipment and shipping containers. What steps have you taken to 

improve the retrograde process? What steps have you taken to improve the process 

of transferring excess non-standard equipment to U.S. state and local governments? 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. FORBES. What steps are being taken to posture the depots for a post-reset environment? Are there adjustments to the statutory framework that need to be 

made? 

General COLLYAR. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

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