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i 

94–093 2015

[H.A.S.C. No. 114–6] 

THE FISCAL YEAR 2016 BUDGET 

REQUEST: A VIEW FROM OUTSIDE 

EXPERTS: ALTERNATIVE BUDGETS 

AND STRATEGIC CHOICES 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

FEBRUARY 11, 2015 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

THOMAS MACARTHUR, New Jersey 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

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

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

MARK TAKAI, Hawaii 

GWEN GRAHAM, Florida 

BRAD ASHFORD, Nebraska 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

PETE AGUILAR, California 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

KARI BINGEN, Professional Staff Member 

MICHAEL CASEY, Professional Staff Member 

AARON FALK, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

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

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

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac,’’ a Representative from Texas, Chairman, 

Committee on Armed Services ............................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Bensahel, Dr. Nora, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, School of International Service, American University ............................................................... 6 

Crotty, Ryan, Fellow and Deputy Director for Defense Budget Analysis, International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies .. 7 

Donnelly, Thomas, Resident Fellow and Co-Director of the Marilyn Ware 

Center for Security Studies, American Enterprise Institute ............................ 10 

Harrison, Todd, Senior Fellow, Defense Budget Studies, Center for Strategic 

and Budgetary Assessments ............................................................................... 4 

Thomas, Jim, Vice President and Director of Studies, Center for Strategic 

and Budgetary Assessments ............................................................................... 9 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Bensahel, Dr. Nora ........................................................................................... 55 

Crotty, Ryan ...................................................................................................... 67 

Donnelly, Thomas ............................................................................................. 90 

Harrison, Todd .................................................................................................. 49 

Thomas, Jim ...................................................................................................... 79 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 

(1) 

THE FISCAL YEAR 2016 BUDGET REQUEST: A VIEW 

FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS: ALTERNATIVE BUDGETS 

AND STRATEGIC CHOICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, February 11, 2015. 

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

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ 

Thornberry (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. Committee will come to order. 

Our hearing today should help clarify some of the hard choices 

we face for our country’s security with the coming budget cycle. We 

live in a time when fiscal problems and mounting debt coincide 

with unprecedented national security challenges in a volatile world. 

Since the end of the Second World War, the U.S. has enjoyed the 

freedom to act in our national interest anywhere on earth. Few nations in history have been so privileged and few nations have 

thrived so well. 

But all of us should recognize that, depending on the choices we 

make, we may be in the sunset of that era. The National Defense 

Panel cautioned that since World War II, no matter which parties 

control the White House and Congress, America’s global military 

capacity and commitment have been the strategic foundation 

undergirding our global leadership. The way we resource the Department of Defense [DOD] forms that strategic foundation of our 

global leadership. 

Today, experts from some of the leading think tanks in Washington will present their views on the budget choices facing us. All 

of them, I think, provide valuable insight into some of the threats 

and choices and different futures which this committee has been 

looking about. 

All are here to present the difficult options before us, and some 

of those difficult options range from the loss of important manpower and equipment to military bases to discarding strategic responsibilities. 

Dr. Kissinger said in the Senate testimony earlier this month 

that the United States has not faced a more diverse and complex 

array of crises since the end of the Second World War. Our task 

is to manage a difficult combination of external and internal pressures on our defenses and be true to the heritage which we have 

enjoyed. 
2 

I would yield at this point to the distinguished ranking member, 

Mr. Smith, for any comments he would like to make. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 

WASHINGTON, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think you have succinctly described the challenge that we face. We have an increasingly dangerous world, with national security threats emerging in 

many different areas, from Russia to the Middle East and North 

Africa, obviously the ongoing struggle against ISIL [Islamic State 

of Iraq and the Levant] in Syria and Iraq. 

It is a dangerous world. It is, you know, not—just because we 

have fewer troops deployed now that we are out of Iraq and significantly drawn down in Afghanistan, you know, there is no such 

thing as a peace dividend at this point. We are in the exact opposite position, facing an array of complex threats that are going to 

require, you know, both resources and considerable creativity to figure out how best to confront. 

At the same time, we are in a budget crisis. And if you went back 

4 years and looked at the Department of Defense’s projections, 

their FYDP [Future Years Defense Program], the 5-year plan and 

then their 10-year plan, for what they expected they were going to 

have to spend and what they have now, it is substantially less, in 

large part because of the Budget Control Act, but also because of, 

you know, government shutdowns and CRs [continuing resolutions], and basically the significant budget dispute here on Capitol 

Hill. 

So more complex, challenging problems, less resources. That is 

the challenge that we face. 

And we will be very interested to hear from you all about how 

best you think we should confront that, because, you know, it is at 

times like that when you really need to get smart. It is the famous 

quote, I think it was from Winston Churchill—I will attribute it to 

him anyway—it is, ‘‘Gentlemen, we are out of money; now we have 

to think,’’ and try to figure out how best to use that money. 

I will say just two final things about that. First of all, we could 

help ourselves enormously if we got rid of sequestration. I think 

there is a budget fight still to be had, and the deficit is down significantly but it is still substantial. The debt is still substantial. 

We need to figure out a solution to that, to get a 10-year plan 

going forward for the budget. But sequestration is just a horrible 

place to do that. 

And it is interesting to note that when sequestration was passed, 

when the Budget Control Act was passed in 2011, the goals that 

it set, it basically said that you had to achieve $1.5 trillion in deficit savings over the course of the next 10 years—you have to come 

up with a plan for achieving that by the end of 2011. We didn’t, 

so sequestration became law. 

We have, however, achieved far more than the amount of savings 

that was called for in the Budget Control Act. But yet, we are still 

stuck with sequestration. 

Our number one is get rid of sequestration. But number two is, 

if we are going to have to live with it, and even if we get rid of 
3 

sequestration, we still are going to have less money than they 

thought we were going to have. 

We are going to have to start making some choices about programs, about personnel, about Guard and Reserve, about a whole 

array of things within the defense budget. And unfortunately, the 

default position to most Members of Congress is to protect their 

own. You know, if you are thinking about shutting down a weapons 

system, well, if it is made in my district or located in my district 

then I am going to be against it. 

We are running up against the Guard and Reserve problem. Nobody wants to reduce anything in terms of personnel costs because 

of the political implications. 

But if we have got the budget we have got, we have to make 

some kind of choice. And I would submit that, for those of us who 

serve on this committee, it is not our primary job to protect everything in our own districts. It is our primary job to protect the country. 

I will give you a personal example. When I represented Joint 

Base Lewis-McChord, they have a ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] program out there—college students who come out, like 

3,000 in the summer, and, you know, it is some business. And they 

wanted to move it to Kentucky, they being the Department of the 

Army. 

And, you know, the local people freaked out and everybody wanted us to, you know, stop this, and they came to me and said, ‘‘This 

must be stopped.’’ 

And I was like, ‘‘Yes, if DOD thinks this is the best thing to do 

then we will be okay at Lewis-McChord. There are other things to 

do, and let’s not get in the way of everything that the, you know, 

Department of Defense wants to do for parochial reasons, because 

if we do that we paralyze their ability to make smart choices and 

adequately provide for the national defense.’’ 

And I know many past chairmen have been fond of quoting the 

thing that is apparently down there on the front of our committee, 

Article 1, Section 8. Article 1, Section 8 doesn’t say, ‘‘Make sure 

that as much defense money as is humanly possible comes into 

your district.’’ That is not what it says. 

And in times like this I think we need to be a little bit wiser 

about how we make those choices. 

So, look forward to hearing from you what you think those 

choices ought to be, and if we don’t like what the Pentagon is offering, what are the alternative suggestions. 

So with that, I yield back. Look forward to testimony. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

Let me welcome each of the witnesses. 

We start with Mr. Todd Harrison, with the Center for Strategic 

and Budgetary Assessments [CSBA], who, I understand Mr. Harrison is the one who ran the exercise that all of the organizations 

participated in. 

Then Dr. Nora Bensahel, who is currently a distinguished scholar at American University, but was with the Center for New American Security [CNAS] when this exercise took place. 

Mr. Ryan Crotty, with the Center for Strategic and International 

Studies, CSIS; Mr. Jim Thomas, with Center for Strategic and 
4 

Budgetary Assessments; and finally, Mr. Thomas Donnelly, with 

American Enterprise Institute [AEI], who used to be a staff member of this committee and was the last one to get his testimony in, 

I noticed, which may be a connection, I am not—I don’t know. 

But we really do appreciate each of you not only being here, but 

for putting the time, effort, and resources into analyzing these different budget options that are before us. 

And so with that, Mr. Harrison—and without objection, your full 

written statements of all of you will be made part of the record. 

And, Mr. Harrison, you may proceed. 

STATEMENT OF TODD HARRISON, SENIOR FELLOW, DEFENSE 

BUDGET STUDIES, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS 

Mr. HARRISON. Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, 

members of the committee, I want to begin by thanking you for the 

opportunity to testify today. 

Approximately one year ago, CSBA convened a group of scholars 

from four think tanks, represented here today on this panel, and 

asked them to develop alternative approaches to rebalance DOD’s 

budget and capabilities in light of projected security challenges and 

fiscal constraints. I should note that the views and choices expressed through this exercise represent those of the people who 

participated and should not be construed as the institutional positions of their organizations. 

The purpose of our exercise was to foster a greater appreciation 

for the difficult strategic choices imposed by the Budget Control Act 

of 2011 [BCA]. The ground rules were that each team could vary 

its defense strategy as it saw fit, using the 2012 Defense Strategic 

Guidance as a starting point. The teams used their own expertise 

to assess the future security environment and associated risk, and 

they were free to modify and reprioritize roles and missions for the 

military accordingly. 

The teams then used an online tool created by CSBA to implement their strategy and capability choices. CSBA’s Strategic 

Choices Tool allows users to quickly add and cut items from the 

current program of record using more than 800 pre-costed options. 

The tool allows the users to see the resulting budget and force 

structure impacts in real time. 

The tool, I should note, does not assess risk or make judgments 

as to the sufficiency or wisdom of one’s choices. Such subjective assessments are better left to the experts here. 

We also limited the degree of choices available to the teams to 

impose some political reality. For example, we limited how quickly 

they could cut end strength in each of the services. We also did not 

give the teams the ability to count savings from additional efficiencies or compensation reform beyond what was already included 

in the President’s budget request. 

And we did this for two reasons. First, the purpose of the exercise was to focus on the major strategic choices facing DOD, and 

while we all agree the Department should always do more to pursue efficiencies, efficiencies do not typically rise to the level of a 

major strategic choice. 
5 

Second, the President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request, which 

served as the baseline for all adds and cuts in this exercise, already 

assumed well over $200 billion in efficiency savings and compensation reform. Since this was already built into the baseline, the 

teams already had the benefit of these savings and it would not be 

realistic to allow the teams to assume even more savings on top of 

these. And it also made the job harder for all of these guys. 

Each of the teams was asked to rebalance the DOD budget over 

10 years, spanning fiscal year 2015 to 2024, under two different 

sets of budget constraints. The first set of constraints used the 

BCA budget caps currently in effect, and the second set used a 

slightly higher level of funding, roughly consistent with the President’s fiscal year 2015 request. 

Allowing the teams to vary their strategies and using two sets 

of budget constraints for each team allowed us to discern which 

choices were budget-driven and which were strategy-driven. 

For example, each of the teams made different choices with respect to the Marine Corps force structure, which suggests that 

these choices were dependent on the teams’ strategies. In other instances, such as the decision to retire Active Component A–10s, all 

of the teams made the same choice, which suggests this decision 

may be independent of strategy. 

We also look for instances when individual teams made different 

choices under the two levels of budget constraints. For example, all 

of the teams made cuts to readiness funding under the full BCA 

budget constraints; but when the budget constraints were loosened, 

they changed their readiness cuts. This suggests that cuts to readiness funding were budget-driven. 

Conversely, we found that each team made roughly the same 

cuts to personnel levels, particularly civilian and support contractors, in the two budget scenarios, which suggests that these personnel cuts were not budget-driven. 

Despite the budget constraints imposed, all of the teams chose to 

make substantial investments in new capabilities, even though 

these new investments required them to make larger offsetting 

cuts in other areas. All of the teams, for example, increased spending on space, cyber, and communications capabilities. This suggests 

that the teams felt DOD’s plans did not adequately address the 

challenges the military is likely to face in this area. 

Much has changed in the security environment since this exercise was conducted a year ago, but the long-term fiscal constraints 

of the Budget Control Act remain the same. What our exercise 

helps illuminate, and what my colleagues will speak to in their testimony, are the core capabilities the military must protect and, in 

some cases, increase investments in, regardless of the budgetary 

constraints imposed. 

Thank you. 

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

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Bensahel. 
6 

STATEMENT OF DR. NORA BENSAHEL, DISTINGUISHED 

SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL 

SERVICE, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

Dr. BENSAHEL. Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, 

and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify in front of you today. 

I participated in this exercise when I was employed at the Center 

for a New American Security as the co-director of the Responsible 

Defense Program. My co-director, retired Lieutenant General Dave 

Barno, and I formed the CNAS team. 

In the interest of time, let me quickly note the three most important conclusions we took away from our participation in the exercise. 

First, DOD is not investing in the right things for the future. As 

Todd mentioned, this exercise was not a budget-cutting drill; it 

truly was about making strategic choices. 

All four teams decided to rebalance the defense budget by reducing spending on many current priorities and reinvesting the newly 

freed funds into other parts of the defense budget. For example, 

our team cut the planned defense budget over the 10-year period 

covered by the exercise by a total of $716 billion, far more than was 

required to meet the spending caps, but added back $384 billion in 

new spending in the full Budget Control Act scenario and added 

$509 billion back in the half sequestration scenario. 

This suggests that the planned DOD budget is overinvested in 

some key areas and underinvested in others. 

Second, it was virtually impossible to meet the budget caps 

under the Budget Control Act without cutting civilian and military 

personnel, readiness, or both. Personnel and readiness simply consume so much of the defense budget that we were unable to stay 

within the budget caps by cutting procurement, force structure, armaments, and logistics alone. People and force readiness had to be 

sacrificed in order to stay within those caps. 

We chose first to cut the number of civilians employed by the Department of Defense and the military services by one-third, which 

was the maximum we were allowed to do under the exercise. Between 2001 and 2012, the number of DOD civilians grew five times 

faster than the number of Active Duty military personnel. In our 

view, military combat forces, the sharp end of DOD’s spear, needed 

to be preserved even at the cost of deeply slashing civilian staff and 

overhead. 

Yet even so, we were also driven to reduce the Active Duty and 

Reserve end strength of all four military services. We cut Active 

Duty end strength by a total of 127,000 personnel, with most of 

those cuts coming from the Active Army. 

And even yet, we still had to cut readiness in order to meet the 

budgeting cap, even though we strongly resisted doing so because 

readiness is expensive. We believe that the United States has a responsibility to prepare its military forces as thoroughly as possible 

for the missions that they are asked to conduct, and sending untrained or inadequately prepared forces into combat is dangerous 

and irresponsible. Yet, we had to make the same difficult choice 

that the services have made in recent years to cut those readiness 

funds. 
7 

Third and finally, defense reform is essential to free resources for 

current and future capabilities—again, to invest as much money as 

possible in the pointy end of the spear. 

There are three key elements of a reform agenda that stood out 

to us on our team. First, DOD must shed unneeded overhead, civilians, and contractors for the reasons I mentioned above. 

Second, another BRAC [Base Closure and Realignment] round is 

needed. Reducing excess infrastructure would have been one of our 

highest priorities if the tool had allowed us to do so. The Army and 

the Air Force have each estimated that they have around 20 percent excess capacity. It is unconscionable to require these services 

to continue spending money on facilities that they do not need 

while the budget caps require them to cut end strength, training, 

and readiness, which puts American troops at risk. 

Third and finally, military compensation must be reformed. This 

is a hard but necessary choice, because pay and benefits and health 

care are eating an ever-larger share of the defense budget. 

The recent Military Compensation and Retirement Commission 

report offers good recommendations on how to do so while grandfathering all currently serving members of the military. The commission has estimated that its proposals would save $15 billion a 

year. 

That amount is certainly not enough to compensate for the cuts 

required by the Budget Control Act, but if we had been able to include around that level of savings in the exercise, for example, 

which did not include an option for compensation reform, we would 

have had to cut far fewer people and maintain more readiness. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Bensahel can be found in the Appendix on page 55.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Crotty. 

STATEMENT OF RYAN CROTTY, FELLOW AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR DEFENSE BUDGET ANALYSIS, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Mr. CROTTY. Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, and 

distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this morning. 

The strategy and budget exercise that we are referencing here 

today occurred almost exactly a year ago, and yet the year—the 

world really already looks significantly different than it did then. 

The volatile and complex security environment already strains 

many of the choices that we made in this exercise, which I think 

speaks directly to the challenge of sequester-level budget, which is 

a loss of flexibility and a limiting of options. 

The U.S. security goals have not been reduced since the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, and yet, $120 billion has been cut from 

that concurrent budget over the 3 years since. The impact of these 

cuts is already in evidence, as the service chiefs have already testified. And with the force as currently constituted, continued sequester-level funding would shift the impacts the force is currently ex-
8 

periencing in readiness, trimmed programs, cut training, from just 

holding patterns to entrenched problems. 

So far during these budget cuts we have asked the military to 

do more with less, and they have risen to that challenge. But that 

is not sustainable over the long term. 

In participating in this exercise it was clear that sequestration 

forces you into decisions that you would not make otherwise. 

The CSIS team worked to tailor our cuts to the strategic priorities that we derived from the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance: 

prioritizing homeland defense; Asia-Pacific engagement, presence, 

and reassurance; and retaining counterterrorism capabilities. We 

took as a guiding principle that a smaller, ready force was preferable to one that maintained force structure or added more new 

programs but is less prepared to face the complex challenges we already face today. 

There was no way to implement the strategy without risk, and 

we took our primary risks in the size of Active ground forces. We 

hedged this risk with increases to the Guard and Reserve, sought 

to facilitate reconstitution of a larger ground force by having additional noncommissioned officers, junior grade field officers, retained; better coordination of training between Active and Reserve, 

and shifting of some roles and missions into the Reserve Component. 

We also cut the carrier force, but forward-stationed one in the 

Pacific to maximize coverage. And we invested in smaller, unconventional capabilities, including cheaper forward presence; more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and special operations 

forces. 

Under the sequester-level budget, the U.S. military will remain 

the preeminent military in the world. However, we have seen a 

shrinking of the breathing space that we have between the capacity 

that the force has and the daily demand on those forces. This limits 

the Pentagon’s ability to react and adapt to new challenges and 

take on the shaping and reassuring activities that can help deter 

a future conflict. 

The Pentagon is being forced to choose between the fights today 

and the fight tomorrow. The reality is that today’s security challenges require capabilities for the full spectrum of operations. 

The 2016 budget process will be a critical one for national security. We are reaching a turning point where the temporary impacts 

of sequester-level budgets are going to more permanently shape the 

force that we have going forward. 

So hopefully today’s testimonies will help the committee better 

understand what a force looks like under those budget constraints 

and inform the budget tradeoffs that will have to be debated over 

the coming months. 

Thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Crotty can be found in the Appendix on page 67.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Thomas. 
9 

STATEMENT OF JIM THOMAS, VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF STUDIES, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS 

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Smith, and members of the committee, thank you very much for holding this hearing today, and also for inviting all of us to testify. I will provide 

a brief overview of CSBA’s approach during last year’s strategic 

choices exercise. 

We started, as well, with an assessment of the external security 

environment and its implications for the types of forces and capabilities we will need in the future. This assessment, in essence, 

served as our filter or our lens for determining our priorities as 

well as where we would take risk regardless of spending levels. 

As challenging as the prospect of continued spending caps are for 

national defense, we face an even more worsening set of challenges 

overseas: revisionist states like Russia, China, and Iran; Islamist 

militant groups like ISIL; new nuclear powers, all of whom are exploiting a host of new technologies that confer the means to impede 

America’s ability to project power and meet its security commitments in the ways it traditionally has done so. 

The bottom line for us, as we assessed these challenges, was that 

the future was going to present far tougher challenges for our military than the post-Cold War era that we are exiting. In particular, 

future operating environments will be far more contested as adversaries exploit anti-access and area denial [A2/AD] capabilities to 

devalue our traditional means of power projection and achieving 

forward presence. 

Thus, we saw an imperative to reshape DOD’s portfolio of forces 

and capabilities around three main objectives. First, we sought to 

reshape the U.S. military to put more weight on deterrence 

through the prospect of swift punishment and more effective denial 

of our enemy’s objectives in the first instance, and at the same 

time, relatively less weight on traditional compellence forces—that 

is, forces that we need to serve eviction notices when our allies or 

friends abroad might be invaded and we have to conduct a counterinvasion. 

Second, consistent with this first objective, we sought to maximize combat strike power and prioritize the most viable options for 

projecting power and holding potential adversaries at risk anywhere and anytime. We maintained the nuclear triad. 

We placed a premium on conventional global surveillance and 

strike forces, including submarines and low-signature, long-range 

land- and sea-based surveillance and strike aircraft, and made substantial increases in our stock of precision-guided munitions. We 

sought to develop new ground-based strike systems. 

We prioritized unconventional power projection capabilities, as 

well, including special operations forces and cyber and electronic 

warfare capabilities. And we invested in potential game-changers, 

like directed energy, electromagnetic railgun, and high-power 

microwave weapons. 

Second, we sought to judo through the A2/AD problem by fielding 

our own air and sea denial forces and helping frontline allies to do 

the same. So we built up stock of sea mines, acquired new tor-
10 

pedoes, and developed new maritime sensor arrays to detect enemy 

intruders in friendly maritime space. 

We pursued new air and missile defense systems, like the AirLaunched Hit-to-Kill missile. And we made substantial investments in decoys, deception measures, aircraft shelters, rapid runway repair kits to improve the resilience of our forward-based 

forces. 

And lastly, we expanded our combat logistics fleet to maintain 

robust naval strike power in distant theaters. 

Making these investments would be difficult in any circumstances, but the BCA caps made the shift even more difficult. 

We took risks in traditional forces less suited for operations in contested environments, including those most dependent on close-in 

bases and those that have to mass in order to be effective. This 

meant significant reductions in legacy short-range combat aircraft 

and ground force capability. 

We also had to make very deep cuts in civilians and contractors. 

And with greatest reluctance, we were also unable to avoid making 

cuts in near-term readiness funding and had the most regret over 

this choice. 

In closing, I urge Congress to develop a serious budget proposal 

that properly funds defense while reshaping the U.S. military for 

tomorrow’s challenges. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas can be found in the Appendix on page 79.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Donnelly. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS DONNELLY, RESIDENT FELLOW AND 

CO–DIRECTOR OF THE MARILYN WARE CENTER FOR SECURITY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

Mr. DONNELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Mr. Smith. 

It is an honor for a former staff member to return to the People’s 

House and to be on this side of the witness table for a change, so 

thank you very much for the invitation. I will try to be brief. 

I think it is important, though, to say that we tried—this was a 

second run through this game for us, and we did not want to repeat the lugubrious experience we had the first time. To be constrained by the BCA budget levels or even the modified levels that 

we used the second time around was, we felt, simply to rearrange 

the deck chairs on the Titanic, that there was no space for strategy 

when the budget choices were so constrained. 

And I think Todd’s observation that there was a whole lot of commonality—another way to say that is there wasn’t a dime’s worth 

of difference—between the BCA-constrained programs that the four 

of us came up with is an important takeaway from the exercise. At 

this level of budget, there really isn’t much chance for a strategy 

to operate. 

Secondly, we also felt that we had to reject the President’s 2012 

defense guidance because it would not, in our judgment, achieve 

the national security goals that this country has always strived to 

achieve and, most recently, annunciated in the National Defense 
11 

Panel. So we thought it was necessary to return to a more traditional military strategy, because what we wanted to do was to find 

out how far we had fallen into the hole that we have built for ourselves over the past decade and what it would cost to get back out 

of that hole. 

That is the approach with which we approached this game. And 

so, very kindly, Todd and his crew allowed us to play a budgetunconstrained version, which we used to try to put a price tag on 

what we thought it would take to return to a more traditional military posture on the part of the United States. 

And again, I won’t go through that in detail. I would be happy 

to respond to that in the question and answer session. But I would 

say that we also refuse to sort of rule out unpleasant forms of warfare—counterinsurgency and the like—in unpopular theaters of 

war, such as the Middle East. 

So we wanted to stick with a strategy that was consistent with 

the long past and not invent a new America that divested itself of 

traditional security interests. Rather, we wanted to put a price tag 

on attempting to return to a more traditional defense posture and 

to exercise a more traditional strategy—one consistent with the 

strategies that have been consistent from administration to administration, from changes of party really since the end of World War 

II, but particularly since the end of the Cold War. 

As my colleagues have observed, it has been a year since we ran 

the game and the world looks a little bit more dangerous today 

than it did a year ago. We didn’t fully understand how firm a grip 

ISIS would have on western Iraq and eastern Syria, or how serious 

the Russians were going to be about holding on and expanding 

their grip on Eastern Europe either. 

So if we were playing the game today, we would take the same 

approach—and that would be not to worry so much about the 20- 

year future, but to try now to rebuild—to get to the point where 

the investments that I think some of my colleagues were more interested in could have a decisive effect. 

We really felt that the critical time was now and that our shortfalls in capacity and readiness were more strategically important 

than shortfalls in capability. So we wanted to try to repair what 

is not broken in order to survive, to live again, to fight another day. 

Just to give you a sense of what that meant to us, a couple of 

things: First of all, we didn’t just simply throw money at everything. First of all, we understand that the rebuilding of the force 

and taking advantage and rebuilding the industry and the infrastructure that would sustain that force has to be cognizant of the 

fact that these are institutions that have been on a starvation diet 

for some time now and overworked. 

We have built a plant, for example, that is capable of producing 

maybe 300 F–35s a year, but so far we have only been producing 

about 30 a year. So while the plant is there, the workforce isn’t 

there. 

So when we were reinvesting, we tried to be cognizant of how 

much money the Department could intelligently digest over the 10- 

year period that we were talking about. So we didn’t think that 

just flipping the money switch was going to be an adequate solution. 
12 

Nonetheless, over 10 years we calculated that the difference between the BCA levels of spending and what we thought might 

begin to reduce things to a manageable level of risk was $780 billion. That is a lot of money. 

By the same token, we were surprised to understand that not 

even that level of further investment would restore the program to 

what it was prior to the BCA. Let me repeat that. In other words, 

we couldn’t get back to where we were, in terms of what the defense program was in 2011, 10 years from now even if we added 

almost $800 billion to the defense program. 

So that is a measure of how deep the hole is that we have dug 

for ourselves. 

Final metric: That level of spending—the budgets that we imagined at the end of this reinvestment period would still be less than 

4 percent of projected GDP [gross domestic product]. And to the degree that the 4 percent of GDP figure means anything other than 

a level of affordability, it means that even this kind of reinvestment would still be below what reasonable people imagine would 

be a sustainable level of defense burden for the economy and our 

society. 

So the big takeaway for me was, in order for us to restore a traditional form of American leadership it is going to cost a lot of 

money. It would still be affordable, but we can’t get there from 

here. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Donnelly can be found in the Appendix on page 90.] 

The CHAIRMAN. That wasn’t very cheerful. 

So in essence, four of the leading institutions in town formed 

teams to look at how you would reprioritize the defense budget. 

And as each of you, I think, has acknowledged, a fair number of 

things have happened in the last 12 months—Crimea and Ukraine, 

ISIS, these negotiations with Iran, North Korea says it is testing 

various systems, the Chinese in waters close in the Western Pacific 

are more aggressive. 

My one question I would ask for each of the four teams is, hold 

yourself accountable. Knowing what you know now has happened 

over the last year, where did you mess up? What would you do— 

what would be the one or two areas you would do differently now 

than you did then based on these events that have happened over 

the last year? 

So, Dr. Bensahel, would you like to start? 

Dr. BENSAHEL. Sure. An easy question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Sorry. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I think the guiding principles that we used during the exercise where the fundamental question is where do you 

assign risk, right, because all of strategy is about assigning risk. 

We made a calculation to assign more risk in the short to medium 

term than in the longer term because of some of the challenges, as 

Jim mentioned, because we saw some very significant threats coming out on the horizon. 

And therefore, we prioritized investments in advanced military 

capabilities and research and development because of the long lead 

times those involve. 
13 

I don’t think we would have made very many fundamentally different choices, given what we know now about what has happened 

over the past year. The one area where I think we might have 

made a different choice is we might not have cut Active Duty Army 

end strength by quite as much as we did. 

In the exercise we cut it down from the planned level of 490,000 

to 420,000. I think we would maybe have made a different choice 

to cut that only as far as about 450,000 to hedge against some of 

those threats. 

But we still would be changing the balance of the force between 

the Active and Reserve, even in the Army, and still trying to preserve as much money as we could for those long-term investments, 

given our strategic principles that we used to guide the exercise. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. Crotty. 

Mr. CROTTY. So we actually tried to focus a little more on the 

near term, and that was something that was borne out, and yet 

still, I think we were underinvested in the kinds of reassurance 

and low-end deterrence that actually has been shown as something 

that we desperately need, whether it is in Europe or in Asia. 

And I think that that is something that can only be done with 

more capacity. You need more people out there engaging with partner and allies, having the flag, being available, being close by, because I think that really provides a reassurance that is required, 

especially at the lower end. 

You know, we are very good at deterring at the high end, and 

it is something that we will have to continue to invest in to maintain that. But that has changed the level of the conflict discourse, 

and that has not looked very good over the past year. 

So for us, so even having focused more on that near term, I agree 

with Nora, it was primarily in some of those personnel cuts that 

we made. We cut the Marines and I think we now definitely regret 

that, particularly with their sort of more unique capabilities as well 

as the requirements that are being put on them and sort of the 

new normal environment. You know, there is a lot that we need 

from them. 

But also, I think—we did not say this specifically, but I think 

that based on the 2012 defense review guidance, we would have 

been pulling some of those Army units that we cut out of Europe, 

and that immediately comes to mind as something that might have 

been a dangerous decision. 

So as you said, I think it immediately tells you that there are 

significant choices that can change in just the course of a year, how 

those will impact your future security. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Thomas. 

Mr. THOMAS. One of the things that really strikes me, Mr. Chairman, as we look back over the past year has been this growing 

trend in sub-conventional, creeping aggression, whether it is little 

green men in Ukraine, or it is fishermen and the use of paramilitary coast guards in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, 

the use of the Quds force in the Middle East. This looks like it is 

a growing trend. 
14 

And I don’t think it is a question of, do we deal with anti-access 

and area denial threats or we deal with creeping aggression. What 

I see is really the confluence of the two, is that anti-access and 

area denial capabilities are providing umbrellas that make it easier 

for revisionist states to conduct creeping aggression activities in 

their immediate regions. 

Fundamentally, this is about the weakness of frontline states. As 

we look around the periphery of Eurasia, from East Asia to our 

friends and allies in the Middle East, to Europe and countries in 

the Baltics and elsewhere, how do we strengthen their capabilities 

and ability especially to deter sub-conventional threats? 

I think this—we need to place more emphasis on foreign security 

assistance, and in particular, think if there are ways that we can 

further expand or strengthen our unconventional warfare capabilities for countering some of these threats. So I think special operations have an incredibly important role to play, and that would be 

one of the things I would want to look at again. 

ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] is another. I 

think what we are seeing on the global basis is inadequate ISR capacity to deal with multiple crises simultaneously. 

And the last is we, as I mentioned earlier, we already have regrets about readiness, and that cuts in readiness under BCA caps 

are deleterious to our ability to deal with all of these situations. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. If I could interject for just a second, just to remind members that tomorrow we have an informal roundtable on 

exactly this topic. What would you call it? Creeping aggression. 

Unconventional, hybrid warfare—lots of names. But we need to 

understand this better and see whether we have a—whether we 

are able to deal with it. And we have outstanding folks to come and 

visit with us about it tomorrow. 

Mr. Donnelly, you kind of answered this, but I don’t know if you 

have some additional comments? 

Mr. DONNELLY. I have no regrets, Mr. Chairman. I think the 

events of the last year really underscore our fundamental approach, that the near-term crisis is so immediate and, taken in the 

aggregate, it is a global crisis. There is no theater, there is no domain of warfare, in which American strength isn’t being seriously 

called into question. 

So again, it really sort of underscores two things to me: that the 

crisis is now; and that the fundamental strategy that was defined 

in 2012, however wise it may have seemed then, is not responsive 

to current conditions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. I guess the big question is where do we save money, 

and a couple of you mentioned a few things, but if we could just 

really emphasize again, you know, there is a laundry list of things 

that the Pentagon has put out there—BRAC, personnel cost savings, getting rid of the A–10, laying up various Marine and Navy 

ships. Give me your three best ideas for saving money that, you 

know, fit within the national security challenge that we have. 

Mr. HARRISON. Sir, I would start by noting some of the things 

that we took off the table are probably the place we should actually 
15 

start—compensation reform. We did allow base closures in the exercise, but we made it realistic. Base closures cost you a little 

money up front and then save you money in the long run. 

Every single team here chose to do base closures under both 

budget scenarios, so I think that that is an important takeaway 

from this exercise. 

But ultimately, you know, having run two of these exercises with 

this group of think tanks and dozens of exercises with other 

groups, the common trend that I have found is that in almost every 

single case, every team, the largest amount of savings dollar-wise 

comes from personnel—military personnel, Active and Reserve 

Component, and civilian personnel that work for the DOD. 

Mr. SMITH. And specifically on those personnel savings, there are 

a bunch of different areas. There is health care, there is compensation, there is pensions, and then there is a variety of different benefits—housing, commissaries. You know, what makes the most 

sense and where do you get to the point where you fear that you 

are risking the All-Volunteer Force, the willingness of people to 

sign up? 

Mr. HARRISON. In the exercises it all came from cutting head 

counts. But I will say in my own opinion, having, you know, studied and written about this issue, I think what the compensation 

commission came out with in their final report at the end of last 

month—I think that they have got a sound approach there. 

It certainly, you know, could use some tweaks and improvement 

by Congress, but their two main recommendations that affect the 

DOD budget are to alter the current retirement plan to add a 

401(k)-like plan that would benefit, you know, 75 percent of people 

who leave without any retirement savings while maintaining the 

defined benefit plan for people who serve a full career and retire. 

Mr. SMITH. How does that save money? 

Mr. HARRISON. Well, so the commission’s plan, using their own 

numbers, once fully implemented it would save about $2 billion a 

year, which is not a lot from that one change, but it basically saves 

money by DOD not having to set aside as much in an accrual payment each year to the Military Retirement Trust Fund, and taking 

some of those savings and reinvesting in a defined contribution 

plan, like a 401(k), but banking the rest of the savings. 

The other main recommendation of the commission that saved 

more money was a change to the health care system, and allowing, 

you know, Active Duty dependents, reservists, and retirees to do 

something they were calling TRICARE Choice, where you would 

get a basic allowance for health care for Active Duty dependents, 

for example, and they could buy into commercial health insurance 

plans instead of remaining on the military health care system. 

That change, when fully implemented, according to their own estimates, would save a little over $6 billion—almost $7 billion a year 

once it was fully implemented. 

Just those two changes alone in the Military Compensation Com- mission report would save about $33 billion in aggregate over the 

next 5 years, and more than that in every 5-year period that comes 

after it. Thirty-three billion dollars is a good amount of money. It 

does not get you all the way where you have to be in terms of the 

Budget Control Act, but it certainly would help. 
16 

Mr. SMITH. Just one quick question, and anyone can take this: 

weapons systems. Give me a reasonably expensive weapons system 

that you think we don’t need, that we could live with 8 carriers instead of 11, we don’t need the new Ohio-class submarine, you 

know, we can buy half as many F–35s, we, you know—give me a 

major—because I think by some estimates, the weapons systems 

that we are planning on building right now we can’t afford, barring 

for some unforeseen acquisition reform miracle. 

So something has got to go. What would you say should go? 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I think that is exactly the right question to ask, 

and the obvious answer to us when we ran through this exercise 

is the F–35. That is the procurement program that is eating the 

entire defense budget alive—particularly the Air Force budget, but 

its costs are so high that it is crowding out everything else in the 

procurement area, as well. 

Mr. SMITH. So it is possible to consider basically eating at this 

point close to 20 years’ worth of expenditures on the F–35, and 

then simply relying on—I get my generations mixed up here—third 

or fourth generation fighter planes? 

Dr. BENSAHEL. No, we didn’t recommend canceling the program. 

F–35s are needed by the Air Force in the future. But in particular, 

the Air Force doesn’t need as many of them as it says it needs. 

The number that the Air Force originally came up with of 1,746 

F–35s was derived by doing a one-for-one replacement with the 

current fighter fleet. And so if the F–35 is supposed to have and 

it does have all these additional capabilities, it is not clear to me 

why the one-to-one number is the right force structure for the Air 

Force, for example. 

Again, because of the constraints of the exercise, on our team we 

did also cut some Navy ships. We cut cruisers, we cut a couple of 

destroyers, and we did cut an aircraft carrier, although again, a lot 

of that was budget-driven more than strategy-driven. 

And we ended up cutting a lot of force structure in the services, 

again, particularly in the Army, but because that reflected our personnel cuts. It doesn’t make any sense to try to keep the force 

structure and the headquarters if you are cutting the personnel. 

So we did cut some brigade combat teams, some force structure 

in the Marines; but again, that reflected our primary decision because of the budget caps to cut the personnel, to then shrink the 

force structure in proportion to that. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I just think you need to have a larger aperture 

when you start going down this road. Just suppose, for example, 

you know, you are concerned because the F–35 is a huge program. 

What sense does it make to have—if you are going to cut the F– 

35s for the Navy, what sense does it make to have the big-deck carriers? 

Who wants a $5 billion, $7 billion carrier with a 30-year-old airplane that can’t go very far or carry very much on it? It is not like 

the F–35 is, you know, a miracle weapon for the carrier, but the 

carrier, without a better airplane on it, doesn’t make any sense. 
17 

So you have to take the force—likewise, why should the Marines 

buy large-deck America-class amphibs, which was designed for the 

F–35? The whole boat is designed to accommodate the F–35. 

Also, the force numbers are not necessarily capability numbers; 

they are force generation numbers. You may have to have 1,700 Air 

Force F–35s in order to generate a certain number in a certain 

number of theaters. I mean, I don’t know that that RFTA [Reserve 

Forces Training Area] couldn’t be revisited, but again, if you are 

worried about covering all the bases that we have to cover, you 

have to generate a force that is there. 

We haven’t invented a capability for any platform to be in two 

places at once. So the numbers make a certain bit of sense, and if 

you just start taking them in the abstract, you are going to end up 

doing, you know, exponential damage rather than arithmetic damage. And the pieces of the force interact with one another. 

So this is what budget drills lead to that have second- and thirdorder consequences that we see reflected in the headlines every day 

but we don’t really take into account when we go through these 

sort of budget drills. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

I used up quite a bit of time here. I want to yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. So do budgets. It is not just budget drills that 

have second-order effects; real budgets do too. 

Mr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want to thank the panel for all the work you have done 

to help enlighten us to make some very hard and difficult decisions 

forthcoming. 

I wanted to ask you that if we continue to go down this road of 

policing the world, and certain—there is a need with these attacks 

from ISIS and groups like that. And yet, we here in Congress are 

having to make some very difficult budget cuts not just as it relates 

to the military, but to other programs for the American citizen. 

I think that is why the—today, with your testimony, is very important, because again, we will be making these decisions in the 

next few months. 

I somewhat get perplexed with the fact that—I will use for an 

example Afghanistan. John Sopko, the Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, has testified before subcommittees and a full 

committee—Oversight—that so much of the money we are spending in Afghanistan is a waste. It ends up in the hands of the 

Taliban to buy weapons to kill Americans, or the Taliban decides 

that a road that we built, they want to blow it up. 

I know this wasn’t part of your responsibility, but I gotta get to 

a point. If we continue to do this policing work around the world, 

and then we decide that, yes, we fought, our men have died and 

given their life and limbs, but we are going to still stay there and 

help them rebuild their country. The Bilateral Security Agreement 

with Afghanistan is 10 more years at an average of anywhere from 

$25 million to $40 million. I mean, it is just on and on and on. 

Then you testify here today that we are not going to have the 

strong military that we need because, again, money is going to be 

part of the issue. Yes, there is waste. You acknowledge that, in the 
18 

Air Force and the Army, I think; 20 percent, you said maybe, was 

excess. There are things we can do and should do. 

But I want to get to the point now of the question. In your analysis and your personal opinion, is there not going to be a time that 

the Congress pass a war tax to pay for what we have and what we 

need to keep this country militarily strong? Because I just don’t 

think we can continue to go down this road, quite frankly, without 

a collapse. 

So my point is why the Congress does not have a debate—and 

maybe we will have a debate—on the fact that maybe we need to 

debate a war tax, or some type of taxation to make sure that we 

are not cheating our defenses from being strong enough to protect 

this country. 

Do you believe sincerely at some point in time—and maybe this 

is a little bit off your responsibility, but I would like to know your 

personal opinion—that if we continue to go down this road, we cannot keep doing business as we are doing it now because we are not 

paying for it? It just is ongoing and ongoing to a point that we 

won’t have any more money. 

Is it fair to say that Congress should have this kind of debate 

so we can answer some of the—have some solutions for some of the 

areas that you have shared with us today that are going to be problem areas in the days to come? 

Mr. HARRISON. I would just respond that, you know, I fully agree 

that we as a nation need to have a debate on what it is we want 

our military to be able to do. And that is where we began the exercises, by each of these teams having that debate amongst themselves on exactly what are the right roles and missions for the military now and into the future. 

Once we have that debate then we need to do the hard work of 

figuring out what it is we need in our military, in terms of capability, capacity, and readiness, in order to execute those roles and 

missions that have been assigned to the military. And once we 

know what resources would then be required, then as a nation we 

need to be willing to pay for it. 

And if that means additional revenues by, you know, some 

means, then so be it. But that is the debate that we should be having. 

Mr. THOMAS. Congressman, if I could just add to Harrison’s remarks, I think in addition to a national debate about what we need 

our military to do, I think we also need a much greater dialogue 

with our allies and partners overseas. I think it is not just a question of what do the American people pay, but what more can our 

allies be doing in various places. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I will be very brief, if I may. If the question is 

about how to finance military power and the conduct of war, historically these are the reasons that countries have national banks 

and borrow money—not to support current entitlements, not to pay 

for current, you know, recurring domestic expenditures. 

The British national debt during the Napoleonic Wars was something like 250 percent of GDP per year. Yet, because that was a 

public good, the markets of Europe were willing to finance that and 

eventually the British retired that debt. 

We are doing precisely the opposite right now. 
19 

Mr. JONES. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Appreciate the gentleman. 

I realize it is hard with five witnesses to stay within 5 minutes, 

but if members can keep their questions briefer then we might 

have a chance. 

Mr. Moulton. 

Mr. MOULTON. I have no questions at this time, Mr. Chairman. 

But thank you all very much for participating in this incredibly 

important discussion. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Speier. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

In reading your testimony, I wondered if you thought there was 

any fat in the defense budget. 

Mr. DONNELLY. There are things that I wouldn’t necessarily buy. 

I am not sure I would call them ‘‘fat’’; I don’t think that is really 

a useful—— 

Ms. SPEIER. What would they be? 

Mr. DONNELLY. There were things I would reinvest in, and not 

invest in at the moment. I think, for example, although the littoral 

combat ship [LCS] is a great littoral combat ship, it is not a very 

good frigate. 

So the problem is not the ship, per se. It doesn’t make it a ‘‘fat’’ 

ship, although, unfortunately, the Navy made it way—— 

Ms. SPEIER. Too heavy. 

Mr. DONNELLY. Yes. Yes, okay, so but the problem is a bad analysis of the mission and the need or a changing international environment. There is nothing wrong with the program, per se, or the 

technologies, per se; it is just too small to be a frigate. 

So it is the wrong weapon. It is not a—you know, it is not that 

this was fat or government waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you. 

The National Defense Panel, with members appointed by this 

very committee, concluded that, ‘‘A recapitalization of the nuclear 

triad under current budget constraints is, ‘unaffordable.’ ’’ Yet the 

President’s budget is asking us to overhaul our arsenal, costing $1 

trillion over the next 30 years—money that could be spent on dozens of other national security concerns. 

Before we move forward with this overhaul, do we need to reevaluate our assumptions and goals of our nuclear deterrent? I 

would like to know your thoughts on how we juxtapose that with 

the budget. 

Mr. Harrison, why don’t you start? 

Mr. HARRISON. As a budget analyst, I always cringe at the term 

‘‘affordability’’ because, you know, the things that we are talking 

about here today, some of them are very expensive, no doubt, but 

affordability is a choice, right? It is a matter of whether or not we 

are willing to make the resources available. 

I think when I look at the nuclear triad my conclusion is that 

it is not yet ripe for a decision. If you look at the $1 trillion projection, it is over 30 years, you know, we will likely spend $15 trillion 

to $20 trillion on defense over that same time period. So it is a 

rather small part of our overall force and expenditures. 
20 

And many of the platforms included in the nuclear triad that we 

are going to need to recapitalize are dual-use, and especially many 

of the supporting capabilities, in terms of communication networks, 

tankers for the aircraft. Many of these things we would fund anyway even if we had new nuclear weapons in our arsenal. 

I think you get to a good point, though, of do we need to rethink 

the triad? Do we need to rethink the way that we modernize it and 

the type of capabilities that we have in there? I think absolutely 

we need to be looking at it, and the time to look at it is between 

now and the end of the decade, and then we can start making some 

smart decisions. 

The one thing that concerns me most about the recapitalization 

of the nuclear triad is we have put off some of these recapitalization efforts so that now many of these programs, the peak in funding are starting to overlap in the 2020s, in the next decade. And 

it is not just nuclear forces either; if you look at the rest of our acquisition portfolio, we have a number of major programs where 

their peak levels of funding are projected to occur at about the 

same time in the 2020s. 

If you just look at the Air Force’s aircraft procurement plan, 

their long-term plans—and I don’t mean to pick on the Air Force 

here, but the F–35A will be in full-rate production; the next-generation, LRSB [Long Range Strike Bomber], will be ramping up to 

full-rate production; the KC–46A tanker aircraft will be at full-rate 

production; and they would like to buy a new trainer aircraft, 

ramping up to full-rate production. 

Ms. SPEIER. Okay. Mr. Harrison, I am going to have to cut you 

off because I am running out of time, want to get one more question. But thank you very much. 

And thank you all for your participation. I think this is an extraordinary exercise, and I would love to see us as members of this 

committee attempt to do what you have just done. It would be 

quite a challenge. 

I would like to focus one last—30 seconds on the F–35. And I am 

more concerned than anything else on the cost of maintenance. And 

we do not factor that in when we built these sophisticated weaponry. 

And I understand it, it is going to be about $19.9 billion a year, 

and $1 trillion over the lifetime of the program just for maintenance. And maybe you could all respond to that in writing, because 

my time is expired. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Forbes. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Not trying to flatter you, but I believe all of you are brilliant analysts. But you don’t feed your families because you think lofty 

thoughts; you feed them because you are able to communicate well. 

And by and large, we are failing. This committee is failing; anyone related to national defense is failing in communicating the 

problem we have to our policymakers and to the public. 

The real essence, when it comes to national defense preparation, 

has nothing to do with intent, because intent can change within 24 

hours. We really look at the curve lines for strategy, capacity, and 

capability. 
21 

As I see it, the problem we have is the curve lines for those who 

may want to do us harm today or in the future are dramatically 

going up, and ours are dramatically going down. The primary driver of that, in my estimation, is sequestration right now. 

And yet, when we talk about sequestration, everybody on this 

committee would be against it but we would all have a caveat. 

Some would say, ‘‘But I didn’t vote for it.’’ Okay. I am in that 

group. Others would say, ‘‘But we can’t deal with it unless we raise 

taxes.’’ Some would say unless we remove it from everything else, 

unless we have a BRAC. You know the drill. 

Taking all of that aside, using your best communication skills not 

with defense speak—not A2/AD defenses, or readiness, or any of 

those things that you have—what is the best message that we can 

use to communicate with other policymakers who might be sitting 

in Ways and Means [Committee] right now, or who may be individuals across the country, to tell them the dangers to this country if 

these curve lines continue the way they are and we can’t change 

them? What would you say? 

Mr. THOMAS. Congressman, I guess I would start by talking 

about not just the security that we have today in this country, but 

what is the security for our kids. That is something that affects 

every Member of Congress and it affects every one of us. 

What kind of country are we leaving in the future? And as you 

point to these trend lines, there is a perception of American weakness right now in the world and that perception, I think, is growing. 

And how we overcome it I think really involves two things. One 

is we have to get our fiscal house in order. 

As Tom was talking earlier, in terms of being able to tap financial markets, our ability as a nation to go into financial markets 

and get whatever the heck we need, whether it is in World War 

II or it is in the next World War III, God forbid, rests on our fiscal 

foundation. How secure are we as a potential investment? 

And so that is critical. Fiscal rectitude is the foundation for everything else. 

And so I think that we would be very open to, whether it is 

entitlement reform, revenue increases—— 

Mr. FORBES. But you are covering the solutions. Tell me what 

happens if we continue the curve lines. 

Any of you guys. 

Mr. DONNELLY. Sir, I mean, we will lose wars, our people in uniform will die, and we as a civilian society will have broken faith 

with the very small number of Americans who go in harm’s way 

to defend us. It is really that simple. 

You know, the chiefs talk about readiness statistics and all the 

rest of that stuff, which abstracts it to one level, but it—you know, 

that is what it comes down to. 

Mr. FORBES. Anybody else? 

Mr. CROTTY. To me, you know, the strength of American power 

is on our economic prosperity, and that prosperity is based on a 

rules-based international order that is undergirded by our involvement in the global security. And I think that that is the biggest argument, to me, about why we need what we have. 

Mr. FORBES. Anybody else? 
22 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I would add to that that, particularly for the 

American public, we need to emphasize that the future of wars do 

not necessarily look like Afghanistan and Iraq. I think that for 

most people who don’t follow these issues closely, that is what war 

looks like and that is what the future looks like, and they don’t 

want a part of that. 

And so I think distinguishing what the future environment is 

like, future threats, and making clear that they do not always require large-scale deployments of combat forces in irregular environments is very important. I think the American public responds to 

the need for American leadership in the world. I think that resonates quite well. 

And I also think—I hate to come back to this, but reforming the 

defense budget resonates. You know, my mother used to ask me, 

‘‘Why can’t the United States defend itself on $500 billion a year?’’ 

It is an excellent question. If we started the budget from zero we 

would probably allocate things very differently. 

But making a public case about how we spend that money and 

why those dollars are needed to protect U.S. interests around the 

world, to continue playing a leadership role, and to say that not 

everything looks like the wars of the past 13 years is an important 

step. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the witnesses for their testimony today. 

You know, I have been sort of in and out. We are dealing with 

the education markup, and sequestration is haunting that process, 

which is, again, I think some of the more thoughtful people who 

care about our ability to advance technological capability in defense 

understand that education is also a priority that really plays into 

national defense, as well. 

And that sort of, I think, goes right back to the question of, you 

know, when sometimes sequestration is talked about it is sort of, 

like, viewed as this, you know, the Ten Commandments that we 

are all sort of trapped under. And, you know, I was around when 

the 2011 Budget Control Act was passed, and when that was incorporated into the Budget Control Act, number one, you know debtto-GDP was closer to 10 percent—or deficit spending-to-GDP was 

closer to 10 percent; today we are under 3 percent. 

And secondly, the history—the forensics of sequestration really 

go back to the 1980s. I mean, this language was almost done verbatim from the Gramm-Rudman sequestration. 

And Phil Gramm, the grandfather, you know, the inventor of sequestration, he gave a speech in 2011 where, you know, he reminded Congress that it was never the objective of Gramm-Rudman to trigger sequester; the objective of Gramm-Rudman was to 

have the threat of sequester force compromise and action. 

So in other words, I mean, the fact is we are not helpless here. 

I mean, we can turn off those cuts by an act of Congress, which 

the Budget Control Act, by the way, was, as well. 

So, you know, this is—you know, I just think it is important 

sometimes for people to remember we are not sort of trapped here, 
23 

that, you know, we can do this. And Mr. Thomas alluded to, you 

know, some of the ways that we need to take a global approach. 

And the good news is that, again, because the deficit has moved 

in the right direction far faster than CBO [Congressional Budget 

Office] projected in 2011 when we passed the Budget Control—I 

mean, if you said that we would have the deficit down to less than 

3 percent of GDP back in 2011 you would have been dismissed as 

a stark raving lunatic, and yet that is where we are today. So this 

is not mission impossible. 

And again, I just think that that is something that we all have 

to kind of keep sort of drumming into is this is not something that 

we have to accept. 

One quick question, again, looking at some of the priorities that, 

again, you guys still went through this process, you know, sharpening your pencils. You know, I sit on Seapower and, you know, the 

Navy changes that you sort of suggested—certainly the undersea, 

you know, sort of bolstering of forces is something that some of us 

are—you know, feel pretty validated about. 

But there was also, again, the LCS program and the cruiser program seem to be sort of a target, in terms of some of your suggestions. And I was wondering if whoever wants to step up and sort 

of talk about that, you know the floor is yours. 

Mr. DONNELLY. If you don’t push the button you don’t get to talk. 

The sea services back in the 1990s made a fundamental misjudgment about the nature of warfare in their domain, which we have 

been paying for. They thought they were going to be able to eternally operate close to shore, so the Zumwalt cruiser was basically 

like a giant battleship. 

It had a gun that shot 100 miles, which is a pretty amazing bit 

of engineering. But, you know, if you can’t sail close enough to use 

the gun then it is a little bit of a problem. 

Likewise, the littoral combat ship, as the name indicates, was 

meant to fight in littoral waters, and it was designed to go fast 

originally. It was called the ‘‘Streetfighter’’ at one point. 

Well, so now we find that the environment in which it may be 

asked to operate is a lot more lethal. And thus, it was a fundamental misjudgment by the Navy about what its operational environment was going to be that has affected a whole host of programs, and it is going to, I don’t know, take a long time for the 

Navy to recover from having made that profound mistake. 

It has been a problem for the Marine Corps, as well. And you 

could probably make similar judgments about the other services. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I would like to just add briefly, your comment 

about education and how that affects this. One of the things we 

prioritized on our team was preserving as much of the defense 

budget as possible for research and development, and particularly 

within that basic science, things that don’t have yet a direct link 

to defense programs, because of our concerns that the funding for 

that in other parts of the Federal budget will be coming down and 

that ultimately, basic research and basic technological research is 

absolutely essential to stay on the forefront of defense capabilities 

in the future. So we prioritized that even within the defense budget. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rogers. 
24 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to go back to the topic that Mr. Forbes was pursuing— 

that is how we communicate this problem. Anybody on this committee knows that the spending caps that were put on defense 

through the BCA are moronic and need to be gone. 

The problem we have is many people in the Congress think it is 

working out just fine. Deficit is going down, they are not hearing 

the Defense Department squeal too much, and we are not dead. 

So we have the challenge, as members of this committee, to communicate not only to the public but, more importantly, to our fellow 

colleagues and our leadership the problem in a way that makes 

them want to act. You know, Mr. Courtney is right—we can fix 

this, but we have got to have consensus that it needs to be fixed. 

That is not there. 

So I would ask each of you—and, Mr. Donnelly, Mr. Forbes asked 

you to, in plain language, describe why it needs to be fixed, and 

you talked about we have broken faith, and all that was fine. That 

is not going to persuade Members to change their mind. What I 

think we have to do is offer that, but then follow it up with some 

specific examples of why this is a threat to our country’s security. 

So I would ask you to use this threshold: Assume you are talking 

to my 75-year-old mother who never finished high school, in that 

kind of language, and explain to her, who happens to be another 

Member of Congress, why this has got to be fixed and it has got 

to be fixed with this budget. 

Start with Mr. Donnelly and go down. And you have got 30 seconds at most, because they are not paying attention after that. We 

are talking to them on the floor; they are wanting to get on to 

something else. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I can’t believe that a woman like that would be 

content to send American soldiers into harm’s way without preparing them for victory. I would not want to give up on that idea. 

I think that is something that touches Americans who don’t serve 

very deeply. 

Mr. ROGERS. My colleagues are going to say, ‘‘Listen, the Defense 

Department is not squealing. I think it is working out just fine. 

Tell me why it is a threat.’’ 

Mr. DONNELLY. Because—— 

Mr. ROGERS [continuing]. Example. 

Mr. DONNELLY. Part of the job of this committee is to put a—is 

to make that case. 

Mr. ROGERS. That is what I am asking—— 

Mr. DONNELLY. You know, go out to a rifle range, go to a unit, 

go to a hangar and see pilots who aren’t flying. 

Mr. ROGERS. You are missing my point. I am on the floor talking 

to a colleague from Wisconsin. He is giving me 15 or 20 seconds 

of attention before he is moving on. I am asking you to help me 

have some examples I can provide. 

Mr. Thomas, you are shaking your head. You know what you are 

doing. 

Mr. THOMAS. I will try to redeem myself after Mr. Forbes’ comment. 

What I would say is that, are we better off now as a nation than 

we were in July of 2011, before the—— 
25 

Mr. ROGERS. And he said, ‘‘Yes, well, our deficit is down.’’ 

Mr. THOMAS. Our deficit is down, but the world is going to hell 

in a handbasket. And what I would say is the reason we have to 

make—we have to fully fund defense today is because an ounce of 

prevention is worth a pound of cure, and we either pay now or we 

are going to pay much more later as we look at a deteriorating 

global security environment. 

Mr. ROGERS. Y’all are making a wonderful case to people on this 

committee who get it. You are too abstract. Give me some examples 

of why we should scare the crap out of somebody that if we don’t 

turn this around we are going to be in trouble. 

Mr. CROTTY. So the last time we sort of ignored things and went 

down farther than most planners would have wanted us to go was 

the time we ended up back in—or we ended up in Afghanistan because we had not been paying attention and didn’t have the capacity to—and will to respond. Or maybe more currently, if you are 

speaking to someone today, you know, ‘‘You see the beheadings 

from ISIS on the news. Do you want us to be able to do something 

about that?’’ 

I think that that is the fundamental question. I mean, there are 

deeper questions buried in that, but I think that is the fundamental question we are sort of trying to face. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. The world is a dangerous place and we are dealing with more difficult threats than we have in a long time. And 

we have to be able to deal with the full range of threats, from a 

group like ISIL that beheads innocent people, to an aggressive Russia that is invading, taking over territory from other states. 

The United States has a leadership role to play in ensuring those 

things don’t happen. 

Mr. HARRISON. Sir, can I try a completely different approach? Because I don’t think the defense arguments are necessary going to 

convince a person that hasn’t already been convinced by them, because I think they have heard all of this. 

What I would say is the BCA budget caps were set without regard for need. They were set to reach a predetermined deficit reduction target. 

The BCA was intended as a forcing function, not as a means of 

governing. So I would say, with all due respect, Congress should 

do its job and govern, and reconsider those caps, and spend what 

is necessary for defense, not an arbitrary level. 

Mr. ROGERS. Well, you know, all of you make very good cases, 

but I am just telling you, our colleagues don’t get it. They really 

think they are working and they don’t see the harm, and this is 

dangerous. 

But thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

I have listened carefully, and, Mr. Donnelly, you mentioned 

about entitlement funding and inferred that that is one of the reasons why we cannot fund our defense needs. 

And so my question is this: Defense spending, particularly sequester, are hollowing out our defense infrastructure and will leave 

us with a hollowed-out military unable to meet the current and fu-
26 

ture threats to our national security. And my question to you is 

this: What is worse, a hollowed-out military and inability to respond to the current challenges to our national security and those 

that will arise in the future most certainly, or is it a hollowed-out 

social safety net with millions of poor, hungry, and homeless children, elderly, and mentally and physically ill Americans all clamoring and solely dependent upon private charity for their basic sustenance? 

Which is worse? 

Mr. DONNELLY. Both those things are bad. The worst case of all 

is paying for my entitlements. I am not yet poor. I don’t intend to 

become poor, and—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. You do realize that there are many poor people 

out there—— 

Mr. DONNELLY. I do, but the entitlement—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. You realize that—— 

Mr. DONNELLY. But you are not talking about entitlements when 

you are talking about poverty. You are talking about the middle 

class. You are—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. You also recognize that—— 

Mr. DONNELLY. You are going to be—Social Security and other 

entitlements are going to be paying for baby boomer retirement. I 

would sacrifice some slice of that to protect the poor and to give 

people who need in this society a decent quality of life, and to protect us all as Americans. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well—— 

Mr. DONNELLY. Take my slice. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I think most of us would agree with you. Most of 

us would have some affinity for the idea of perhaps removing caps 

on social—income subject to Social Security taxes, those kinds of 

things that would strengthen our so-called entitlements. 

But you did not answer my question, though. What is worse, a 

hollowed-out military or a hollowed-out social safety net, which affects millions of poor children, elderly, sick, both mentally and 

physically—what is worse—— 

Mr. DONNELLY. That is a false choice that I won’t make. We are 

a wealthy society. We can afford to defend ourselves and we can 

afford to take care of the people who need help in our society. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I think your comments were indicative of 

wanting to just totally cut and obliterate the entitlement spending. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I said we are spending too much on entitlements; 

I didn’t say that we should obliterate or eliminate the entitlement 

program. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Current levels of spending on entitlement programs is too much, and current spending on defense is too little. 

Mr. DONNELLY. In bottom-line terms, I would agree with that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. All right. I just wanted to get you on record on 

that. 

Unless any of the other members of the panel wanted to respond, 

I would have no other questions. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman yields back. 

Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
27 

I would like to thank our panelists today for joining us. 

Dr. Bensahel, I would like to go to one of the comments that you 

made specifically about base capacity. Your comment in your analysis is, ‘‘It is unconscionable to require these services to continue 

to spend money on facilities they don’t need while the budget caps 

require them to cut end strength, training, readiness, which puts 

American troops at unneeded risk.’’ 

And looking at that, give me your perspective on how the analysis was done on current base capacity. What are some of the assumptions there? Was it different than the analysis that was done 

in 2005? 

And one of the issues that comes up is, you know, not only are 

we looking at capitalization, but, you know, how does this square 

with the national security strategies that we have and making sure 

that there is, indeed, alignment there? 

And another one of the most important questions is there is a 

cost to these base realignment and closure. If you can’t capture 

those savings within the FYDP, then all of that is speculative 

about what impact truly realigning capacity has. 

So give me your assumptions about that analysis and about 

where we really need to be addressing this particular question. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. First of all, that is exactly right about needing to 

be able to harvest the savings within a certain period of time, the 

5-year FYDP period. And in fact, that was the one defense reformtype option that was available to us in this exercise was what Todd 

dubbed, and others have dubbed, the clean-kill BRAC, which is 

that all the savings as part of that would have to be generated 

within 5 years. 

I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the 2005 

BRAC experience. I don’t think anybody is happy with how that occurred. 

I would say that that process was much more about alignment 

than closure. There was a tremendous amount of new construction. 

The new construction costs reduced the planned savings for that by 

over 70 percent. 

So the 2005 BRAC model is not what I think that Congress 

should endorse. The previous BRAC rounds did a far, far better job 

of reducing costs and actually harvesting savings, even though 

some of it was beyond the 5-year period. That is what Congress 

should use as a model and not be scared off by the 2005 experience. 

I don’t know the details of where those numbers came from within the services, but I do know that there have been efforts, for financial reasons, to shrink footprints, to consolidate, and some of it 

also reflects force structure cuts. When you cut force structure and 

end strength you don’t need as many facilities as you have in the 

past, and I know that was one of the drivers of their cost estimates. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Looking at the national defense strategies, I think 

one of the concerns is that in haste to be able to save money we 

look at the short term. But understanding, too, just as you all have 

pointed out, that things change in the long term. 

And we know in the United States, as it is configured today, if 

you get rid of base structure you will never get it back in that configuration. And if you do need to regenerate that it will be much, 

much more expensive, and it will be sometimes impossible to re-
28 

generate it because people don’t want those things in their backyard anymore once they disappear. 

So the balance is how do we save money in an effective way to 

meet today’s needs, but how do we make sure that we don’t rid ourselves of capacity that may be needed in the future? 

And a great example is let’s say theoretically you want to close 

an Air Force base, but we are planning to put in place a new longrange strategic bomber. And all of a sudden later down the road, 

as these aircrafts start to come online in 2020 and beyond, you look 

at it and you go, ‘‘Wow, you know, we closed this base, but that 

is really a place where we need to be placing these long-range strategic bombers, for a variety of reasons: we don’t want them flying 

over neighborhoods, the sound, all those kinds of things.’’ 

So my concern is aligning strategically long-term needs with 

where we are trying to go in the short term. So just give me your 

perspective on how to—how those elements balanced in this decisionmaking. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I would just say that I believe the chiefs of staffs 

of all of the services are well aware of that. They do think longterm. They are not concerned—when they make recommendations 

like that and estimates of that kind of capacity they are not talking 

about what they need for today or even tomorrow; they are thinking much longer term. 

And, you know, if those are the conclusions that they have 

reached, that they have asked Congress for—they are asking Congress to close 20 percent of their capacity—that will already have 

figured into their calculations, particularly because they are also, 

you know, involved—the Secretary of the Air Force, the Chief of 

staff of the Air Force are thinking about the long-range bomber, for 

example, when they make those decisions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Sure. I think that is why the questions about the 

assumptions that they make about needed capacity and whether 

that aligns with the strategies is such a critical question. I think 

those questions need to be asked if we are to make the proper decisions. 

I don’t know if any of the other panelists have a view on that 

and how we need to keep those things in mind. 

Mr. THOMAS. Congressman, one thing I might add is we certainly 

have to be concerned about regret factors for closing domestic 

bases, but I think that danger is greatly compounded when it 

comes to thinking about our overseas bases. And there I think the 

regret factors could be far greater. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Yes. Very good. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Veasey. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I had a question, you know, just about—particularly because the 

American public obviously has a lot of concerns about costs in general and defense budgets and what have you. But help me understand like how do you—with all the aggression that we see popping 

up in different parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East, 

but also in the Ukraine and other places, paying for all of the 

needs to address all of those different issues and be prepared? Be-
29 

cause I think that a big part of preparedness is that even if we 

never have to use force, like let’s say like in the Ukraine, for instance, we obviously want to have the appearance or the perception 

that we are prepared to deal with it if need be. 

And so how do you deal with all of these—with having to keep 

up that perception and that capability at the same time and dealing with the money that is needed to do that, in particular when 

we start talking about personnel costs, which is a big part of the 

budget? 

Mr. THOMAS. Congressman, one thing I would offer is that, as I 

mentioned in my testimony, we have to think about new ways of 

deterring conflict abroad. And in the past we have maintained very 

large, sizeable forces in an expeditionary fashion that we can dispatch overseas to come to the aid of an ally very reactively after 

something has occurred. 

And we have an opportunity, I think, to make a shift. We can 

put greater emphasis on preventive capabilities and the ability to 

deny adversaries the ability to commit acts of aggression or coercion in the first instance. 

But we also can place greater emphasis on global surveillance 

and strike capabilities that can cover down on multiple areas of the 

world simultaneously and hold out the potential for very devastating reprisals, should aggression or coercion be conducted. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I would add to that that the United States has 

a tremendous deterrence capability today, especially if you are 

talking about things like Russian aggression in Ukraine. The U.S. 

Army, in both the Active Component and Reserve Component, has 

a tremendous number of tanks, for example. 

The question about whether they are forward-based and whether 

they are, you know, reassuring to our allies is an important one, 

but that is not a question of the equipment. The equipment is 

there; the people are there. It’s a, you know, a basing issue and a 

force posture issue. 

The types of current threats that we are facing don’t require 

large-scale conventional forces in order to address. They are more 

likely to be addressed by special operations forces, light footprint 

types of approaches that cost much less money in terms of equipment; they are expensive on the personnel side. 

But at least in the current threat environment, that is not a 

tradeoff that you have to make within the defense budget. Now, as 

I said, our principles when we went through this exercise were not 

convinced that that is the same logic over the long term, so our 

long-term investments shifted a bit in order to ensure that the 

United States maintains a credible deterrent force across all of its 

military services. 

But the capabilities to deal with the threats that we are facing 

today, in our view, largely do reside within the services. 

Mr. DONNELLY. If I may, I would say we have a problem more 

with dissuasion than deterrence. We have an incredible ability to 

punish anybody that we wish to punish, whether we are based forward or based in the continental United States. I mean, that destructive power of the American military is, you know, literally 

awesome. 
30 

The problem is to dissuade the Russians or whoever from crossing the line in the first place, and that is very much a matter of 

where we are and in what kinds of numbers. This is the problem, 

you know, both in Europe and in East Asia. 

But it—the problem in the Middle East goes even beyond that, 

I would say. I have always been attracted to Jim’s idea that we 

have been issuing eviction notices in the Middle East rather regularly over the past 20 years. 

What is our strategy for ISIS if not to evict them from their current statelet, or whatever you want to call it. Anything less than 

that would be a strategic failure of huge magnitude. 

So, you know, if our real goal is to not simply deter but to dissuade a whole host of bad guys from even thinking about it, they 

have to think not only of the severity of the punishment but of the 

certainty of the punishment and our ability to roll back, as it were, 

if they do cross various red lines. 

And that is where I think the immediate problem is. Nobody 

doubts the United States’ ability to exact—or to wreak havoc on 

our adversaries. What they question is our sort of willingness to do 

so, and our willingness to do so in a way that will be tolerable to 

our allies. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Nugent. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you for being here today, to the panel. 

You know, I agree with some of what you say and I disagree with 

some of what you say, which is a good thing, right? You know, we 

had a retreat yesterday, which was the first for this committee, 

ever, and we heard from some, you know, pretty insightful folks. 

Some was, you know, classified and some was unclassified. 

But at the end of the day, I think most of us walked away saying, you know, we have—the multiple threats are so different, and 

we have state actors and we have resurgence of some state actors— 

Russia in one and China now emerging. 

And our response obviously is worldwide while theirs is more regionally allocated, so they can have, you know, less money spent, 

but we have to spend a whole lot more to reach out and do the 

things we need to do, plus the counterterrorism issues that we 

have through non-state actors that are proxies for some states. So 

we have a whole host of issues to deal with. 

But your review—and, Mr. Crotty, I think you—Crotty—you 

touched on an area as it related to the National Guard and Reserve 

Component. I think you were the only one that actually increased 

National Guard and Reserve, and I was just trying to figure out 

why did you do that and what was your basis behind that? 

Mr. CROTTY. Sure. I think that when you start talking about getting down to these big budget cuts, one of the first things that you 

need to think about is the roles and missions question. What 

should everybody be doing? 

And I think that as we talk about the changing and diverse nature of threats, and some of us have talked about the move away 

from how important conventional response is—perhaps the Guard 
31 

and Reserve can start to be a place where we start to develop these 

other capabilities. 

Maybe these are not people who are going to be out there in the 

front line in tanks, but they may be—maybe the cyber mission 

needs to move out of the Active Component and into Guard and Reserve because that is how we can better access people that, you 

know, don’t—they want to serve their country; they don’t necessarily want to be in uniform on the front lines, but they have 

skills that they can bring. And I think that that is something that 

we—if you are going to have to start thinking about big cuts you 

have to start thinking about big moves, so that was one area. 

I think another area where we were thinking about the Guard 

and Reserve is as a better rotation base for doing some of the engagement overseas or, you know, sort of short-term things, being 

involved in exercises and building relationships and having some 

of those language and cultural skills that might be harder to keep 

in the Active services. 

And finally, one of the things that we did was we brought down 

the size of the Army significantly, and while conventional threats 

are less than they have been at times—or our conventional responses are maybe not as effective as they have been in the past, 

the ability to mobilize a large ground force is an important capability to maintain. And so while you lose some time and capability 

by moving it from Active to Reserve, it is still important to be able 

to do that if you have to. 

And so making sure that the Guard and Reserve are sized and 

also organized to work better with the Active—— 

Mr. NUGENT. And the Guard and Reserve—— 

Mr. CROTTY. Yes. 

Mr. NUGENT [continuing]. They do it at a reduced cost. 

Mr. CROTTY. Yes. Yes. I mean, part of the reason we moved out 

of Active into the Reserve is it was cheaper. 

Mr. NUGENT. But they have been utilized to a greater extent 

than ever, you know, the last 10, 13 years. They were never really, 

I don’t think, envisioned to be that—you know, that operational, 

but they are today. And I think we have relied upon them to a 

greater extent. 

Here is what I worry about, and, you know, we focus on what 

is in front of us. Right now the shiny object is ISIS. But, you know, 

it is much greater than that, you know, across the globe. You know, 

when you start trying to identify what the threat is and it is, you 

know, it is radical Islam, it is those types of things that are not 

just in, you know, in Syria and in Iraq, but they are in, you know, 

Africa. 

They are all over the world, and so we are focused on that, but 

at the same time, we have state actors that are increasing their capabilities to an extent that we have never seen before. You know, 

China has never been a real threat to us, and I don’t think they 

are necessarily a threat to the homeland, but they are a threat to 

our way of life, particularly in regards to what is going on, you 

know, in the Pacific, and what they can do and what their modernization is designed to do. 

And we have to be able to project force to that because I think 

one of the things that was mentioned, you know, that ounce of pre-
32 

vention is worth a pound of cure. And I just want to leave it at 

that. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for an excellent hearing. 

I wish all of our colleagues were able to attend. 

I also want to thank CSBA, because it sounds like that budget 

exercise you went through was extraordinarily useful not only for 

the expert panelists, but it made me wonder, Mr. Chairman, if we 

should get all the members of this committee to go through that 

exercise, because life is about tradeoffs; legislation is about tradeoffs. 

And I thought Mr. Donnelly was particularly useful in his exercise in a traditional U.S. defense posture costing us $780 billion. 

Like, is anybody on the Hill talking about numbers of that size? 

You know, and that is very useful because your benchmark is 

kind of like traditional HASC [House Armed Services Committee] 

speech material. So I would suggest that no member continue making that speech unless he or she is willing to find $780 billion so 

we are more than a paper tiger here. 

Mr. Donnelly. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I just want to clarify what the—that is the difference between what we thought would begin to be adequate and 

what the 10-year baseline is. So it is about a—almost a 20 percent 

increase, you know, so it is $800 billion out of $2 trillion, something like that. 

Mr. COOPER. Yes. So it is 4 percent of GDP, which is a reasonable figure to spend on defense, but yet we, even on HASC, who 

are more familiar with these issues, are nowhere near in the reality ballpark to get this done. 

Now, we perhaps don’t need the traditional defense posture. The 

other panelists provide a useful service by getting even more realistic. 

But just in that ballpark, when Mr. Harrison said, well, for certain personnel measures, reforms that we probably won’t have the 

courage to do on this committee, that would save us $33 billion 

over 5 years. 

Well guess what? This week this House of Representatives, in 

legislation so minor it won’t even be reported in the newspaper, we 

will increase the deficit by $77 billion just by routine stuff that we 

will do this week. 

Seventy-seven billion dollars. Now that is a 10-year figure, as opposed to Mr. Harrison’s 5-year figure, but these are approximate 

numbers. Just this week we will blow through savings like that 

that this committee will not have the courage to come up with. 

So I thought the single most powerful word in the testimony was 

Ms. Bensahel’s word ‘‘unconscionable.’’ That is a strong word. 

And what was she referring to? The fact that this committee will 

not even allow the Pentagon to consider a BRAC reduction when 

the Army and the Air Force testified there is 20 percent surplus 

capacity. That is outrageous. 
33 

When our own military is begging them to—begging us to get the 

flexibility to do the right thing and we refuse to give it to them. 

We look incompetent. We look selfish. We look weak. 

And America should not look like that. So this is this committee’s 

chance, under new leadership, to come forward with a realistic and 

funded defense strategy. 

On another note, Mr. Thomas, I wanted to ask—you mentioned 

a new strategy regarding sea mines and things like that. I would 

like to understand more about that. Aren’t mining the seas considered an act of war? But that’s a useful way to do A2/area denial? 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Congressman. 

What we have seen our adversaries doing over the last decade 

or more has been developing capabilities that can impede our ability to project power. Sea mines, as they sound offensive, are actually extremely useful defensive weapons. 

So you could imagine in places like the East China Sea, the ability for the United States and its local allies to be able to implant 

mines in their own territorial waters that could impede intruding 

submarines and other forces could be valuable for helping to better 

defend their maritime areas of control. 

Mr. COOPER. You have written about this, and so just go to your 

think tank and CSBA and get the materials on this? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, sir. We would be happy to send you something. 

Mr. COOPER. That would be great. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, an excellent hearing. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Harrison, you are as knowledgeable an expert on defense 

budget as I know of in town following it closely. Are you aware of 

any study or basis for this figure that some folks from the Pentagon throw around that we have 20 percent extra infrastructure? 

Mr. HARRISON. My understanding of that figure is, well, first of 

all, I believe DOD is prohibited from doing a detailed analysis of 

this issue, so they aren’t able to produce new analysis to substantiate the number. The figure is an estimate that is derived from the 

detailed analysis they did of the inventory of facilities in the 

United States prior to the last round of base closures, and then 

subtracting the amount of infrastructure that was reduced during 

the fifth round of base closures. You end up with somewhere in the 

neighborhood of 20 percent excess capacity. 

The CHAIRMAN. As I understand what you are saying, sometime 

before 2005 they believe they had—and I don’t know if these numbers are exactly right—23 percent extra infrastructure. The 2005 

BRAC round reduced 3 percent, so they are saying, okay, we still 

have 20 percent extra. 

Mr. HARRISON. That is my understanding, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is where that number is basis—— 

Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. MacArthur. 

Mr. MACARTHUR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have lived through budgets for about 30 years in a very different context—in a business context—and I am still trying to decide and discern to what degree that helps me and to what degree 

that hurts me in trying to assess our role and how we make 
34 

progress in this. And I have presented budgets where I argued for 

my priorities; I have sat on boards of directors where I evaluated 

those and made cuts. 

It seems to me that our role is probably more like the board. I 

don’t see us cutting individual programs, getting into the weeds. I 

think we lose something there. 

So I have been focused on the broader sense, and I would be interested when I am done in whether you think that is the right approach for us. 

It also seems to me the difficulty for us in assessing what level 

of military investment is adequate, there are a couple things I have 

jotted down here. One, the scope of the DOD is vast and arcane. 

It is so complex that only initiates like the DOD, perhaps you, and 

others really get it. 

It is difficult to compare dollar levels to your mother. What is the difference between $500 billion and $550 billion? You know, what 

is the difference, really? It is hard for us to assess that. 

There is a myriad of different opinions is a third problem about 

the risks, the priorities, the relative effectiveness of options. 

And then there is a whole set of—a fourth issue is differences in 

values. I heard a question earlier about, you know, is this more important than social programs. And you can argue whether that is 

a false choice, but it is a choice that is in many people’s minds. 

So I have tried to stay focused on a little bit of a broader approach to this, and that is, what is military spending over time as 

a percentage of GDP in peacetime, in wartime, and where are we? 

Are we in wartime, peacetime as you look—you know, it is not a 

World War II environment, but we are certainly a nation at war. 

And I would like you to talk about it, but I would actually like 

it if one of you could send analysis, if you have it, I assume you 

do—what have we spent throughout the course of modern history 

in military spending as a percentage of GDP? And then what level 

of DOD spending is implied by the current BCA as a percentage 

of GDP? 

So I would be happy to have you grasp any of those points that 

I just mentioned and comment on them. 

Mr. HARRISON. If you don’t mind, if I can go first? I have a report, I will send it to you, that tracks it, at least since the end of 

World War II, of defense spending as a percent of GDP. I do not 

remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I believe 

the peacetime average, if you cut out the periods of the Korean 

War and Vietnam War, et cetera, that we have typically averaged 

around 6 percent of GDP. 

But also, if you look at the trend in the graph, it has been steadily declining, and that is over decades. 

I caution people against using percent of GDP as a good metric 

for defense spending. I think what that leads us to is setting things 

like an arbitrary floor for defense spending. 

People floated things like 4 percent of GDP, ‘‘Four Percent for 

Freedom.’’ It is great alliteration. I don’t know that it is good strategy, though. 

I still fundamentally believe—the reason I am against the BCA 

budget caps is the same reason I am against setting a percent of 

GDP for defense, is because I think our spending level should be 
35 

driven by our security needs and not set at some arbitrary level, 

regardless of where that ends up. Let’s have the debate about what 

we need to spend and then let’s fully fund that. 

Mr. MACARTHUR. If we could get some agreement around that I 

would agree with you. But I am not sure we can, and so in the interest of persuading colleagues who are part of this decision, it 

seems to me there needs to be something else, some handle for people to grab hold of and say, ‘‘Okay, we do have deficit issues, but 

if we spent 6 percent traditionally then maybe I can live with, you 

know, 3.5 percent today.’’ That is why I gravitate a little bit to 

that. 

Mr. HARRISON. I have failed to answer the last part of your question. We are on track now to fall below 3 percent of GDP on defense spending. That is where we are headed at this moment. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I will try to put this in 15 seconds. Since the end 

of World War II we have guaranteed a remarkably historically secure and stable international environment. It has been the framework for our prosperity, been the framework for the expansion of 

human liberty across the planet, and for a really—if you are talking about great power stability, unprecedented in history. 

The cost of that has declined as we have become richer and the 

system has become more entrenched, which is reflected in that 

downward GDP slice. GDP is nothing more than a measure of the 

opportunity cost. Can we afford to sustain what we have built? 

And at 5 percent, a nickel on the dollar, it seems like a pretty 

good value and a cost that we could sustain, you know, indefinitely. 

Mr. MACARTHUR. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I will try, Mr. Chairman, really quickly. I have been 

called back to another meeting. 

Thank you so much. Your presentations were good. I read most 

of those before and have heard the questions. 

Mr. Harrison, if I could turn to you, because I know you have 

been very involved in personnel issues, and I believe the chairman 

asked about that earlier and, you know, the cost factors involved. 

We have 1 percent of our population that engage in the military, 

and so part of the pushback as we move forward and try and deal 

with these issues is that very fact of people feeling like, you know, 

we are looking at the budget but, you know, we are going to this 

area—and I greatly appreciate the commission, but I am just—you 

know, we were talking about how do we sell some of this. 

And what would you say, I guess, to that 1 percent? And what 

is it that we should be coupling particularly with those changes, 

that modernization, that we demonstrate that we are actually, you 

know, being very true to the young men and women and the families who serve this country? 

Mr. HARRISON. I would say that when it comes to the defense 

budget, it’s about balance. And when it comes to keeping faith with 

the troops, it is not just about pay and benefits; it is about ensuring that the force that we have and the funding we provide provides an adequate number of people, it provides the best equipment 

in the world that is properly maintained, and the best training in 

the world. 
36 

And we are breaking faith with the troops when we shortchange 

any of those things. So it is about keeping the right level of balance. 

And for me, when I look at the compensation reform issue, I 

served in uniform in the past and, you know, I can tell you—and 

anyone who serves I think would agree—that it is not the only reason people join the military or choose to make a career of the military. It is not just about compensation; it’s about serving one’s 

country. So let’s not forget that. 

But also, what is important to me is thinking about the future. 

I am not in the military anymore, but what if one day my two little 

daughters—this is still a long way off—what if one of them wants 

to join the military. What will I care about as a parent at that 

point? 

I will tell you, I will not care one bit about their retirement plan. 

I will care about making sure they have got the best training, the 

best equipment in the world, and they have got enough people 

going into battle with them that they will be protected and they 

will be able to come back home to me. That is what I care about. 

And so I think when we are looking at, you know, what we can 

do in the future, yes, we absolutely have to keep faith with the 

troops. And we absolutely need to maintain an All-Volunteer Force 

with a compensation system that can recruit and retain the best 

and the brightest, but it is about balance, so I think we have got 

to look beyond just trying to maintain the status quo. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Just too, I think a few of the other issues that you 

raised—one is focusing on cyber, and that is understandable. I 

know that in the last budget we actually did improve those budgets 

considerably, and on some levels they—technological piece and the 

intel piece is really dependent on the best minds, you know, so it 

is personnel, it is human capital that in many ways is required 

here. 

Why did everybody want to raise those cyber budgets significantly and what should we know about that? Is it in competition, 

necessarily, with adversaries and the idea that, you know, we are— 

we can’t stand still while they are, you know, racing ahead, or is 

it something else? 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I think there is a tremendous amount of concern 

about proliferating cyber capabilities, particularly in the hands of 

some U.S. potential state adversaries and their capabilities. So I do 

think that there is a reason to be investing in that. 

I would caution, though—and I don’t think the American people 

are aware of this—that most of the money that DOD spends on 

cyber goes to protecting and dealing with DOD networks and dealing with offensive capabilities against state adversaries. They don’t 

go about protecting, you know, the networks that we depend on for 

our, you know, banking, for, you know, the fact that we all have 

iPhones in our pockets, you know, the basic networks that undergird our society. 

I think there is an important role here for Reserve forces to play 

not just because they offer the chance to bring in people who 

wouldn’t necessarily serve otherwise, but because you want the 

people who work at Apple, and Microsoft, at whatever, you know, 

startup tech company, you want the military to be able to address 
37 

their skills. And particularly if—to be able to utilize their skills. 

And particularly if you are talking about the Army and the Air 

Force, you want them in the National Guard so that they can also 

deal with state preparedness for cyber emergencies and events that 

may occur, as well. 

Mrs. DAVIS. If I may say, because I think you were pointing out 

the fact that those Reserve forces and civilian have increased greatly, but that is part of the argument, that being specific about the 

talents that people bring in that area, we actually—maybe we 

should be increasing that a lot more. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. I think it is important to bring in people who already have those skills. It is much harder to grow someone within 

the military force structure to do that than to bring in people with 

the outside expertise. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Brooks. 

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The Budget Control Act passed in 2011. It held the sequestration 

provisions in it that have done such damage to national defense. 

For emphasis, I am one of those that heeded the warnings and 

voted against the Budget Control Act. 

We were advised—the House Armed Services Committee in 

2011—that if sequestration played out through the full 10-year period, after everything was said and done our military would have 

the smallest number of men and women in uniform since before 

World War II, Great Depression era numbers; the smallest number 

of operational naval vessels since roughly World War I; and the 

smallest number of operational aircraft in the history of the United 

States Air Force. That’s 31⁄2 years ago. 

Today, do you have a judgment as to whether those projections 

are holding up, or they were exaggerations, or underestimates? 

Mr. CROTTY. My first reaction is, actually, I think we are getting 

there even faster than some would have guessed at that time. You 

know, we already had a Navy and an Air Force that were shrinking as budgets were growing. 

I believe the Air Force is now trying to rebound from hitting 

their lowest point since their creation after World War II this year. 

The Navy force structure that we have projected even in the President’s budget level, not even the BCA level, is bringing us far 

below where we have traditionally been as a Navy. 

And it is both the size and efficacy of those forces. We have 

shrunk them, but they also have the oldest equipment that they 

have had, especially in the Air Force, as sort of an average age of 

inventory, and they are getting less time to fly, steam, drive, and 

train and exercise. 

So I think we have already seen a lot of those impacts probably 

faster than we would have expected. 

Mr. HARRISON. And I could add one thing. Fully agree, we are 

rapidly shrinking the force, I think faster than many of us even expected. I think even when we were running this exercise I think 

we thought that our cuts might have been too rapid, and yet it 

seems to be the track that we are on. 

A caution I would offer is while, you know, for many types of 

threats and many types of contingencies the size and the capacity 
38 

of the force matters and the number of platforms matters, in other 

contingencies, other situations, it is the capabilities that those platforms have that actually may be more important. So while we do 

see that our ship count in the Navy, just if you take an example, 

is far below where it was in the 1980s, it is a different mix of ships 

with different capabilities. 

The same is true of the Air Force. Much smaller number of platforms, but I would argue that the platforms are a lot more capable. 

So it is a very complicated question when you are looking at the 

size and capacity of the force. You have to also take into account, 

what are the capabilities of that force? What can it actually do? 

And that—I think that is a key role of this committee is providing oversight to make sure that we have got the right set and 

the right mix of capabilities and capacity in the future. 

Mr. BROOKS. Is it fair to say at the same time that our potential 

geopolitical foes’ platforms or weapons systems are also being upgraded? 

Mr. DONNELLY. Or just changed. 

The other thing that I would say about our forces is they are 

really remarkably less ready. So it is not just a question of how capable they are, how many of them there are, but how many of them 

are prepared to go into harm’s way on short notice. 

The chiefs recently testified that, because of the little squirt of 

money they got in the Ryan-Murray deal, the Air Force got up to 

50 percent of its combat fleet being ready. The Chief of Staff of the 

Army reported a third of its brigade combat teams were ready. 

That was the high watermark of recent years. 

So if you ask, ‘‘How many units can we send to respond to a crisis who have all their gear, well-trained, all their people, and are 

ready to go,’’ that is a small slice of a shrinking pie, an aging, you 

know, pie with aging equipment, et cetera, et cetera. So if you are 

looking at outputs rather than inputs, I think that is the sort of 

metrics that really frighten me much more either than capacity or 

capability. 

Mr. THOMAS. China has had double-digit increases in its defense 

spending for 24 of the last 25 years. That is a situation that we 

can’t imagine, sitting in this room, for ourselves. And over time, 

those—just looking at those trajectories, this just presents a far 

greater problem for us as we look out a decade or more. 

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Stefanik. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, to all the witnesses, for the excellent testimony 

today. 

My question—and I hope in this question I bring generational 

perspective—I was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened, 

and in our world today, at no point in my lifetime did we have 

more hotspots and chaos than we do when we open the newspapers. I find that much of our discussion in Congress, unfortunately, focuses on the impact of the sequester with a snapshot of 

the present time. 

My challenge to you is, what is the snapshot of the future for my 

generation that is going to inherit the negative implications of the 
39 

sequester if we do not change the trajectory? I would like to hear 

what that snapshot is 10, 20 years in the future, how it affects the 

free flow of goods and services around the world, the tough choices 

our military is going to have to make, and whether we will be able 

to support our allies. 

Mr. CROTTY. I will just take a quick comment to that. You know, 

I think that the worst case scenario is a continuation of actually 

some of what we have seen this year, which is the freedom of regional actors to start to take things into their own hands without 

fear of repercussion, which I think is sort of the harbinger of a 

breakdown of sort of the international order. 

When we reach a point where, you know, we see all of these hotspots, the concept of regional actors being able to physically take 

territory—I mean, the last time there was an annexation of land 

was Kuwait, and before that it was back in the 1960s. I mean, this 

is sort of relatively unprecedented in the current time. 

And so if that is what the worst case scenario looks like, I think 

the hotspots only sort of exponentially grow. 

Mr. THOMAS. Really since World War II we have taken for granted the international set of rules that everyone plays by, which are 

really underpinned by American defense capabilities. And as we 

look out over the next couple decades, I think it is likely that we 

are not only going to have challenges to that global set of rules, but 

in fact, there are a number of revisionist states, whether it is Russia and Europe in the Caucasus or Iran in the Middle East, particularly if it acquires a nuclear weapon, or China in East Asia, 

that are going to impose new rule sets, at least regionally, and over 

time globally. 

Mr. DONNELLY. Suppose a couple years from now you are voting 

on an authorization of force requested by the President in whatever 

scenario you can imagine, and you thought as a member of the 

committee that you were going to send people into harm’s way who 

might not win, and that more of them would die than you felt comfortable with. That is not something that anybody since 9/11 or 

since the end of the Cold War has had to take into account. When 

we have gone to war we have gone to war with the expectation of 

victory and at a particularly low cost. 

So as you look forward to your long and no doubt distinguished 

career, that is the kind of proposition that you may have to wrap 

your head around. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Donnelly, I want to follow up on that. 

My second question, I have the distinct honor of representing 

Fort Drum, which is home of the historic 10th Mountain Division, 

the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army since 9/11. And my basic 

question—and I want you all on record—as we focus on the negative consequences of these devastating defense cuts, are our soldiers’ lives at risk today and tomorrow? 

Mr. DONNELLY. Yes. I mean, and again, more so. War is a dangerous business. All kinds of—you know, training is a dangerous 

business. 

You know, we ask people in uniform to take these kinds of risks, 

but we also think that our responsibility is to send them out there 

with the prospect of victory, and a prospect of coming home in one 

piece and living a decent life when they are not deployed. 
40 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. I mean, a force that is not adequately trained 

and adequately equipped is going to be at far greater risk, and this 

is a real danger with the Budget Control Act and the imposition 

of the caps. 

Mr. CROTTY. Yes. And I would add that we have talked a lot 

about the impact of sequester-level budgets, which is, as distinct 

from sequestration, the mechanism itself—you know, we talk about 

how bad sequester-level, BCA-level budgets are. I actually think 

the impact of sequester, particularly on those readiness questions 

and training, is even worse. So I would just highlight that in the 

future as we see where this budget goes this year. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. Yes. The cuts to readiness undoubtedly increase 

the risks that our military personnel will face. 

Mr. HARRISON. The one thing I would just add is not only is it 

the amount of budget reductions that play—increases this risk. 

That would only be compounded by a failure to make strategic 

choices, because I think the way we spend our defense dollars is 

just as important as how many dollars we have to spend. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Absolutely. And as we seek to educate our colleagues of the importance of replacing this sequester and not gutting our Nation’s military, it is more than dollar signs. This is 

about our soldiers’ lives at risk and brave young men and women 

who serve in our military. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Knight. 

Mr. KNIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

And I would like to say that I appreciate these briefings. They 

are very helpful, especially to the freshmen that are learning quite 

a bit, and we are getting into this process. Maybe we have come 

from somewhere where we have got a little bit of knowledge about 

this, but the whole budget process is quite a bit. 

I want to talk about two things real quickly. One is in a time 

where we are deploying one-to-one in many of our cases—I know 

the Marines as a whole are about one-to-five-to-one right now. It 

is very difficult, and it is very difficult to maintain a force. 

Some of the force wants to be deployed, but when you start getting into one-to-one or 1.5-to-one, you start diminishing your force 

and diminishing what—well, what they are capable of, quite honestly. 

How much should we worry about that? How much should we 

worry about many of these divisions going out at such a high rate? 

And then secondly—and you can take these as a bunch; this is 

a totally different subject, but let me talk about the F–35 program. 

The F–16 has been out IOCs [initial operational capability] for 

about 36 years; the F–15 for about 43 years. We are going to have 

those two aircraft, those two fourth-generation fighters, for probably another 20 to 25 years in some capacity in the U.S. Air Force. 

At what point to we say the F–35 program is a leap ahead in 

technology that we just can’t skip? You can’t take two bites of the 

apple, in other words. You have to do that technology jump right 

now. 

In other words, if you don’t do it in 10 or 15 years, if you try and 

take the next step it is going to be hugely costly and we won’t be 
41 

able to afford it at that point, so the Joint Strike Fighter [JSF] 

makes sense. And maybe we can run down the road on that. 

Mr. HARRISON. I would just start by saying in this exercise, no 

one actually cancelled the JSF program. Three of the four teams 

did reduce the quantity that we are buying, but I will let them explain their rationales. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. On both your questions, first, the rotation demand, the one-to-one and one-to-two and one-to-three that we have 

seen should no longer be the rotation requirements of the future 

now that we are not sourcing two large-scale ground wars in Iraq 

and Afghanistan, so those numbers are naturally going to come 

down. So the way that we have looked at rotation policies in the 

past, the way even that the services have thought about staffing 

themselves and modeling what units are ready to go is all going 

to be changing because we will no longer have that kind of rotation 

demand on our largest forces. 

The caveat to that is special operations forces and other specialized capabilities will continue to deploy at those rapid rates because that is where the demand is, and so there does need to be 

some caution there. But those larger problems I think will naturally reduce themselves because of—we are going to be having 

fewer people deployed overseas. 

Second, on the F–35, exactly as was just said, I think the question is not whether we should have the F–35, but how many. I 

would make an argument that the leap ahead is not to the F–35. 

The F–35 is important, but it is a linear continuation of the succession of fighters that we have had. 

The real leap-ahead technology is into unmanned, and there are 

very, very good reasons that the Air Force in particular should be 

exploring that. And I would argue for not investing additional 

funds in the F–35 as the leap ahead, but taking any harvested savings and investing that in the future of unmanned technology, 

which will be a truly bad capability. 

Mr. CROTTY. On the first question, I would say that one of the 

things we do have to keep in mind is that while we are coming, 

you know, sort of having a changing of our structure of rotating, 

I think that there is also greater demand on forward deployment 

worldwide, and that is something we will have to keep in mind and 

keep an eye on, especially with any changes to capacity. I think 

that is one of the big issues. You know, we need to be places to 

reassure, to have presence, to engage with allies, which I think is 

critical today. 

As far as the F–35, I think one of the undersold advantages that 

it provides is as the sort of network node that actually makes 

everything around it better. And then, in fact, that is sort of the 

multiplication, to me, that it brings to the table is actually taking 

the fighters that we are going to have for another 20 years, and 

when you start working them together it actually vastly increases 

their capability, their survivability. And I think that is something 

that we can’t sort of wait on. 

Mr. THOMAS. To your first question, undoubtedly if we are going 

to have a smaller force we have to change what we are doing. We 

can’t have unsustainable OPTEMPO [operations tempo], PERSTEMPO [personnel tempo], where you have one-to-one rotations. 
42 

But that is going to drive you in one of two directions. Either you 

are just not going to be overseas because you are just not—you 

don’t have the rotation base if you continue business as usual. 

The other alternative as a smaller force means we are going to 

have to be more forward stationed, and I think that probably is the 

right answer. And it is the right answer not only because we are 

a smaller force, but it is the right answer because the environments in which we are going to operate are going to be far more 

contested, and our ability in a crisis or in a conflict to simply flow 

C–17s and commercial aircraft into a theater or drop off ships in 

that theater with troops is just not going to be realistic. 

On the F–35 point, I would just echo Ryan’s comments on how 

we think about the F–35. It is more than just a fifth-generation 

fighter aircraft; it is a node and a network. 

And in particular, I would highlight the incredible capabilities of 

the advanced electronically scanned array, the AESA radar, which 

not only is a sensor, but it also is a potential weapon in the future. 

So I think we have to kind of change how we think about this capability. 

That said, we are going to have to look at what the capacity of 

that force is going to be. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I will be quick because there is not much time 

left. 

Anybody who tells you we will never get another large-scale land 

campaign in the Middle East, you should go have a little lie-down 

and, you know, wait till it passes. Nobody ever wanted to do these 

things in the first place, but there is a logic there that is pretty 

compelling. If you do care about the balance of power in the Middle 

East, this is going to keep coming back up. 

The points that people have made about the F–35 being something fundamentally different than a fancier version of the F–16 

are right on point. I would offer that it is not really a fighter; it 

is more like an armed scout. It can go and protect itself and find 

targets for other things to kill. 

Mr. KNIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. Time of the gentleman is expired. 

Let me see if you all are comfortable in answering how much we 

should spend this year on defense. Given everything you know 

about the work that your organizations have done, the exercise we 

have been talking about—and just for reference, using the 050 

numbers, we are at $521 billion this year; under the BCA caps it 

is $523 billion; the President’s budget request is $561 billion. 

I am not trying to influence you, but yesterday General Dempsey told us that $561 was the lower ragged edge of how much spending 

it would take to defend the country. 

So, based on everything that you have done and everything you 

know, let me just see if—and if you don’t feel comfortable I understand, but do you have a number for fiscal year 2016 that you 

think would be an appropriate amount to spend for defense? 

Mr. Harrison. 

Mr. HARRISON. Well, being from a think tank, I will start with 

my caveats. If you—what do you want the military to do is the 

strategy that is laid out in the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance 

and updated in the 2014 QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review], if 
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that is what you want our military to do then I think—and the 

other caveat, if you are willing to accept many of the cost savings 

proposals that DOD has included with their budget, which do include some compensation reform proposals—if you are willing to 

accept that and cross your finger that some efficiency initiatives actually come true, then I think their number of $561 billion for the 

total national defense budget is probably about right. 

Dr. BENSAHEL. His caveats were my caveats. I think that the key 

question is what savings do you harvest in other parts of the defense budget and the assumptions that go into that. 

But if you make those assumptions, I think that that is a reasonable number to be considering. But I don’t have a lot of optimism 

that a lot of those caveats will hold. 

The CHAIRMAN. And your reason for saying that is if we gain efficiencies or savings in parts of the budget, those savings and efficiencies need to stay within the defense budget, right? 

Dr. BENSAHEL. Yes, that is part of it. It is also—and you will 

know this far better than we do—it is very, very difficult to achieve 

current-year savings by looking at efficiencies on the kind of reforms we are talking about; you do need to have a much longer perspective. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Okay. 

Mr. CROTTY. I agree. I do think, obviously, Chairman Dempsey going with the ragged edge at $561, it is hard to refute that. And 

the—sort of the rumor has always been that, you know, that they 

tried to come in significantly higher. 

You know, I think that having some pressure on making sure 

that internal reforms do happen and there is some rationalizing of 

say civilian and contractor forces, as the force changes, you know, 

there needs to be some downward pressure. But I am concerned 

about some of the risk is all in the other direction. The risk is in 

the money we are trying to bring back in from OCO [Overseas Contingency Operations] that—in the war funding, that really is now 

just about how we live day-to-day. It is part of what the military 

is doing. 

So between that, the past efficiencies, and assumed future efficiencies, the $561 starts to jump to $580, $590 really quickly when 

you start thinking about exactly what it is we think we are paying 

for and need to pay for. 

Mr. THOMAS. Just to underscore, we really need reform, because 

the reforms are not just about treating the President’s request as 

a floor for this year and saying, ‘‘If we don’t get the reforms you 

potentially need more,’’ but it is the long-term savings. And if we 

don’t start placing—putting these reforms in place, we have this 

problem year after year. And at the same time, if we do put the 

reforms in place, we get those accumulated savings sooner rather 

than later. 

Mr. DONNELLY. I would fall back on the report of the National 

Defense Panel, for which I worked as a scribe and so I got to see 

the members wrestling with this question. And their answer was 

to say we needed to go back to the 2011 budget—the last Gates 

budget, as it is commonly referred to, which was the last time prior 

to the BCA that the Department was allowed to do anything like 

budget building that was based on a strategy. 
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And I think their observation was that the BCA has fundamentally changed everything since then, including the National Military Strategy, as reflected in the Defense Guidance. 

So the question is how reasonably fast can we get back to that 

Gates ramp? So based on where we are and what that Gates number is, something in the $560 to $570 range is probably as much 

money as the Department can reasonably digest, even if you wanted to get back to Gates, say, by 2018 or something like that. 

The CHAIRMAN. I don’t remember the exact number for this year for Gates, but it is in the—I think $580s or something like that 

would be what it would be, so— I’m sorry? 

STAFF. 638—— 

The CHAIRMAN. $638 billion. Sorry. It is always good to have a 

budget person on your right shoulder to remind you what the real 

numbers are. 

Last comment I would make: I appreciate what a number of you, 

including Mr. Thomas at the end, said about reform. My only point 

to you is it is not just about saving money; reform is necessary for 

the agility we have to have in a very volatile, uncertain world. And 

so there are two goals of this reform, and we need to keep them 

both in mind. 

But you all have done a terrific job of fielding our questions and 

also some of our frustrations today. I appreciate it very much. And 

as I said at the beginning, I really appreciate all of the work that 

your organizations do to contribute to our national dialogue and decisionmaking on defense. 

So thanks for being here, and please keep up the good work. I 

know I and other members of the committee depend on the work 

y’all do to help inform and educate us. 

And with that, the hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

FEBRUARY 11, 2015 

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