U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

i 

25–149 2018

[H.A.S.C. No. 115–33] 

CONSEQUENCES TO THE MILITARY OF A 

CONTINUING RESOLUTION 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

APRIL 5, 2017 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

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

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

TRENT KELLY, Mississippi 

MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin 

MATT GAETZ, Florida 

DON BACON, Nebraska 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

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 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

CAROL SHEA–PORTER, New Hampshire 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

A. DONALD MCEACHIN, Virginia 

SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California 

ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland 

STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida 

RO KHANNA, California 

TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

(Vacancy) 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

KARI BINGEN, Professional Staff Member 

WILLIAM S. JOHNSON, Counsel 

BRITTON BURKETT, 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 

Goldfein, Gen David L., USAF, Chief of Staff of the Air Force ........................... 7 

Milley, GEN Mark A., USA, Chief of Staff of the Army ....................................... 4 

Neller, Gen Robert B., USMC, Commandant of the Marine Corps ..................... 10 

Richardson, ADM John M., USN, Chief of Naval Operations ............................. 5 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Goldfein, Gen David L. ..................................................................................... 69 

Milley, GEN Mark A ........................................................................................ 60 

Neller, Gen Robert B. ....................................................................................... 76 

Richardson, ADM John M. ............................................................................... 65 

Smith, Hon. Adam ............................................................................................ 58 

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ ............................................................... 57 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Brooks ......................................................................................................... 87 

(1) 

CONSEQUENCES TO THE MILITARY OF A 

CONTINUING RESOLUTION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, April 5, 2017. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 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. 

After having explored the next steps of defense reform in yesterday’s hearing, we now turn to what is needed to repair and rebuild 

our military. And I am grateful to each of the distinguished service 

chiefs for being with us today. 

There is widespread agreement that funding cuts under the 

Budget Control Act, plus a series of continuing resolutions, coupled 

with the pace of required deployments have damaged the U.S. military. I believe that damage has gone far deeper than most of us 

realize, requiring more time and more money to repair than is generally expected. There is plenty of responsibility to go around for 

the current state of affairs, with both Congress and the Obama administration, with both Republicans and Democrats, with both military and civilian leadership. 

Among other problems, defense funding has gotten caught up in 

partisan back-and-forth on other issues and has even been held 

hostage to other priorities. We need to get back to evaluating defense needs on their own without regard to any agreement or disagreement we may have on other issues. The men and women who 

serve deserve at least that. 

The most important thing now is to repair the damage. We have 

the chance to begin doing so by passing a full appropriation bill for 

this year, acting favorably upon the supplemental request, and 

then enacting adequate authorization and appropriations for fiscal 

year 2018. 

The immediate issue before us is the expiration of the current 

continuing resolution on April 28th. We in the House passed a full 

appropriation bill for fiscal year 2017 on March 8th by a vote of 

371 to 48. The Senate has not yet acted on it. As I have said before, 

I will not vote for a defense continuing resolution for the rest of fiscal year 2017. It would simply do too much harm. 

Fundamental to fixing a problem is to expose it and understand 

it. I understand that we have to be cautious about exposing our 
2 

vulnerabilities, but in order to do better for the military and for the 

country, we must have the best professional military judgment our 

witnesses today can offer on the current state of our military 

forces, and on what a CR [continuing resolution] or inadequate 

funding would mean for them. To get on a better track, we all have 

to be clear and candid with the American people. And that is exactly the purpose of today’s hearing. 

Mr. Smith. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thornberry can be found in the 

Appendix on page 57.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 

WASHINGTON, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I agree with much 

of what the chairman had to say. 

I mean, certainly over the course of the last 6-plus years, you 

know, the uncertainty that has accompanied the defense budget 

has made it very, very difficult to operate. We have had one government shutdown, countless threatened government shutdowns, 

and numerous CRs. And I think most people don’t appreciate what 

a CR means; they just say, well, you are just continuing the budget. 

A CR basically means you can’t start new programs, you can’t 

end programs that need to be ended, and as importantly, a lot of 

times you are not really sure what qualifies as which. All of you 

have to go through a very difficult task when we don’t have a regular appropriations bill of figuring out exactly what you can and 

cannot spend money on, and that is a colossal waste of your time 

and also very expensive. We should give you a clear budget, every 

year, clear appropriations to give you the freedom to implement 

that as is necessary. We have not done that. 

And I agree with the chairman, there is plenty of blame to go 

around on that front. But the lack of budget clarity has caused no 

end of problems. I also agree that the force has been unquestionably been stressed over the course of the last 15 years, certainly 

with two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and then the ongoing 

struggle against extremism all across the world. 

Our military has been given a large number of assignments, and 

couple that with the inadequate, well, with the unpredictable number of resources and you—you have a problem. I think there is a 

larger thing that we need to get at, and I agree with the chairman 

again that we need an appropriations bill, and we need to fund the 

military to meet the mission. 

I don’t agree that we can somehow pull defense out of the entire 

rest of the Federal Government, look at it totally separately as if 

all the other money that we spend in the government doesn’t matter. Because unfortunately, we do have other priorities than just 

national security, some of which are really rather important. In 

fact, some of them have to do with security—the intelligence budget, the Department of Homeland Security; but also our infrastructure, which is crumbling at an alarming rate and it regrettably is 

a tradeoff. 
3 

And I think the budget that President Trump sent up this year makes that absolutely clear. He plussed up defense by $54 billion 

and he took the $54 billion out of everything else, including a 31 

percent cut in the State Department. And as the Secretary of Defense, General Mattis, said, if you are going to cut the State Department, and if you are going to cut development aid, then you 

better give me five more divisions because I am going to have a lot 

of wars to fight. It is all of a piece. 

As much as I would love on this committee to be able to pull defense out and say we can ignore everything else, we aren’t just 

members of the defense committee—we are Members of Congress, 

and we are responsible for all of that. Towards that end I will 

make one final point. 

As we look at how we put together a defense budget, I agree with 

the chairman: we should not give the men and women who serve 

in the military tasks and assignments that we do not equip and 

train them to do. That is where we are at right now; that is completely and totally unacceptable. 

I do not, however, agree that the answer is to simply continue 

to expand what those tasks and responsibilities should be and kind 

of hope that we somehow come up with more money to meet it because the tasks and responsibilities that have been described by 

the President and what he says he wants the military to do. He 

sent up a $603 billion dollar budget that doesn’t even come close 

to meeting those tasks and responsibilities that are outlined. Even 

the $640 billion that the chairman here and the chairman of the 

Senate Armed Services Committee have talked about doesn’t come 

close to meeting that, either. 

So what we also need to do, in addition to rightly pointing out 

the lack of resources and the unpredictability, is come up with a 

set of tasks and missions for the Department of Defense, for the 

men and women who serve in the armed services, that we can actually fund. 

We cannot continue to say, well, you got to do this, got to do this. 

We don’t have money, we don’t have the money, we should have 

the money, we don’t have the money, we should have the money. 

We know where our budget is at. We know that we are $20 trillion 

in debt, that we are running a deficit in excess of $600 billion, and 

that there are other needs in our budget. 

So I think we also have to be really smart about how we spend 

the money in defense and about what missions we decide our men 

and women should be ready, trained, and equipped to serve. 

So I hope that is part of the discussion as well this morning. I 

look forward to your testimony, and I thank you all for your service. 

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

The CHAIRMAN. We are pleased to welcome this morning General 

Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army; Admiral John Richardson, 

Chief of Naval Operations; General David Goldfein, Chief of Staff 

of the Air Force; and General Robert Neller, Commandant of the 

Marine Corps. 

Without objection, your full written statements will be made part 

of the record. 
4 

And let me just say, again, how much I appreciate each of you 

being here. I know you have a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders. I know, for example, the Commandant came back a day early 

from an overseas trip. But I believe the opportunity to get funding 

for the military on a better track deserves all of our careful attention and discussion. Again, that is the purpose of today’s hearing. 

Thank you all for being here. 

General Milley, we would be pleased to turn to you for any oral 

statement you would like to make. 

STATEMENT OF GEN MARK A. MILLEY, USA, CHIEF OF STAFF 

OF THE ARMY 

General MILLEY. Thanks, Chairman Thornberry and Ranking 

Member Smith and all the distinguished members of the committee, for the opportunity before you today. I appreciate that, and I 

know we all do. 

The world is becoming a more dangerous place, with simultaneous challenges to the United States interests from Russia, China, 

Iran, a rapidly growing threat from North Korea, and an ongoing 

series of wars against terrorists. This is no time, in my professional 

view, to increase risk to our national security. A yearlong CR or return to the BCA [Budget Control Act] funding will do just that. It 

will increase risk to the Nation and will ultimately result in dead 

Americans on a future battlefield. 

To execute current operations, sustain readiness while making 

progress toward a more capable and lethal future, the United 

States Army requires, most importantly, predictable and consistent 

funding. The lack of fiscal year 2017 appropriations and no supplemental increase in funding will significantly and negatively impact 

readiness and increase risk to our force. 

Additionally, a return to budget caps due to BCA sequestration 

in fiscal year 2018 forces the Army to reverse our efforts to improve 

readiness and will lead to a hollow Army. In the last 2 years, we 

have made steady progress in our core warfighting skills across 

multiple types of units. But we have much work to do to achieve 

full-spectrum readiness necessary to meet the demands of our National Military Strategy and the Defense Planning Guidance. 

Advances by our adversaries are real, and the cumulative effect 

of persistent and destructive budget instability for 8 consecutive 

years is increasing risk, not only to the Army, but to the Nation, 

and will result in unnecessary U.S. casualties. Readiness to prevent or, if necessary, fight and win wars is a very, very expensive 

proposition. But the cost of preparation is always far less than the 

cost, the pain, the blood, and the sacrifice of regret. 

Readiness is the Army’s number one priority. Our current readiness funding requirement is submitted in the amendment to the 

fiscal year 2017 President’s budget is $3 billion above fiscal year 

2016’s operations and maintenance levels. Our planning efforts for 

fiscal year 2017 request for additional appropriations centered on 

filling critical gaps in readiness, specifically in armor, air defense, 

field artillery, and aviation. 

If forced to operate under a yearlong CR, this will not happen 

and Army current readiness and efforts to close critical gaps will 

be severely impacted. Funding under a CR for a year will result in 
5 

a dramatic decrease in training starting next month in May and by 

15 July all Army training will cease, except those units deploying 

to Afghanistan or Iraq. 

Our CTC [Combat Training Center], collective training exercises, 

at NTC [National Training Center] and JRTC [Joint Readiness 

Training Center] will be significantly degraded and all efforts to increase Army end strength, as mandated in the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act by you for the Regular Army, the 

National Guard, and the Army Reserve will also cease. The cumulative effect of training shortfalls, combined with personnel constraints, will result in an Army that is less ready to meet not only 

current requirements of combatant commanders, but limit our ability to assure our allies, deter our adversaries, now and in the future. 

Also, procurement efforts currently on hold will remain on hold, 

preventing the Army from immediately addressing known shortfalls and gaps in combat systems, and importantly in munitions, 

electronic warfare, cyber programs, air and missile defense, longrange fires, protection and mobility programs, along with several 

other modernization initiatives. We will lose our current overmatch. 

The current battlefield is already very lethal, and a future battlefield will likely prove far more lethal than anything we have recently experienced. Our adversaries have studied us and are rapidly leveraging available technology while the Army has yet to fully 

recover from the effects of the shutdown in 2013. Time is not our 

ally. A return to the BCA caps will damage the Army’s ability to 

build and maintain readiness at appropriate levels and result in 

multiple years of negative impacts on the future of our Army. 

While we cannot forecast precisely when and where the next contingency will arise, it is very likely to require a significant commitment of U.S. Army ground forces. Sustaining high levels of performance that your Army has demonstrated in the face of increasing challenges requires consistent, long-term, balanced, and predictable funding. A yearlong continuing resolution or return to BCA 

funding caps absolutely will result in a U.S. Army that is outranged, outgunned, and outdated against potential adversaries. 

With your support, however, in passing the fiscal year 2017 

budget and the supplemental, the Army will fund readiness at sufficient levels to meet current demand, build readiness for contingencies, and invest in the future force. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to 

your questions. 

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

Appendix on page 60.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Admiral Richardson. 

STATEMENT OF ADM JOHN M. RICHARDSON, USN, CHIEF OF 

NAVAL OPERATIONS 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Smith, and distinguished members of the committee for the opportunity to discuss the impacts that another continuing resolution—in fact, just to leverage General Milley’s statement—con-
6 

tinuing uncertain and inadequate funding levels would do to the 

Navy. 

And two points I just want to clarify and clearly convey right off 

the top is that, Mr. Chairman, we need that fiscal year 2017 bill 

and the supplemental in order to keep Navy programs and key investments moving forward, to recover readiness this year, prevent 

digging the readiness hole deeper, and to sustain it into the near 

future. 

There is a growing gap between the missions that we are asking 

our Navy to do and the unreliability and shortage of the resources 

provided to do those missions, as Ranking Member Smith highlighted. We got to where we are today because of 15 years of operating at wartime pace. The Eisenhower Strike Group has deployed 

five times in the last 7 years. 

Contrast that level of effort with 8 years of continuing resolutions and 5 years of budget restrictions imposed by the Budget 

Control Act and the Balanced Budget Acts. This gap creates years 

of stress over and above the inherent stress of deployed operations. 

And the Navy team, in fact, the joint service team, the joint force 

team, sailors, civilians, and their families, have been absorbing 

that stress. 

And so in the simplest possible terms as I speak to you today, 

if we don’t get the funding just described, lots of our aviators will 

not fly and they can’t train. We won’t have the spares to fix their 

planes; we won’t have the gas to fly them. We may not have the 

pay to keep our pilots in the services. And we won’t have ready aircraft for tomorrow’s pilots. 

Lots of sailors will not go to sea. We can’t afford the maintenance 

to fix their ships, can’t afford the gas to steam them. And ships will 

remain tied up to the pier. In many ways this is irreversible. You 

can’t get lost training time back; we will be less proficient when we 

do go to sea, when we do fly. Our pilots will be less experienced, 

which is a daunting fact when you consider what we are asking 

them in wartime. Our sailors will have less time at sea to practice 

together, to train together, and to achieve the intricate teamwork 

needed to win in modern warfare. 

And the stress doesn’t stop when they return to homeport. Current funding without the fiscal year 2017 bill and the supplemental 

will only allow for 1-month’s notice before they move their families, 

placing a huge burden on their families and especially those with 

children. And we will continue to ask our people to work in substandard conditions in over 6,000 buildings in dismal condition 

awaiting repair, replacement, or demolition. 

At the unit level, we will have to shut down air wings in the 

short term. And in the long term, the shortage of airplanes will get 

worse. We will delay important upgrades that help us keep pace 

with the threat. These delays or cancellations will put sailors at 

greater risk from cyberattacks, with the growing threat of anti-ship 

missiles in the areas that they routinely operate. Submarines will 

lose their certification to dive. Ships will be at the pier instead of 

underway. 

Failing to maintain our equipment has the same net effect as 

cutting force structure; whether we leave a ship tied up to the pier 

because it is not repaired or we decide not to build a new ship, both 
7 

mean one less ship at sea. Not being able to fly an existing aircraft 

or not buying a new aircraft both mean one less plane in the air. 

As the general said, this is not a theoretical debate. While we talk 

about whether or not to keep ships in port and aircraft on the 

ground, our competitors are making steady progress and gaining on 

us. 

America’s risks are getting worse as other nations grow their 

fleet and operate them in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic 

Oceans. As they extend their influence over trade routes that are 

the lifeblood of the international economy, including ours. 

I just got back from Rota, Spain, where I saw our sailors in action. We visited the USS Ross who is now in the increasingly contested waters of the Eastern Mediterranean. Those sailors know 

clearly that they are sailing into harm’s way, but they took an oath 

to support and defend the Constitution and they live up to that 

commitment every day, undaunted by the competition I just described. And their teammates do this every day all around the 

world. They are tough, dedicated, and proud of what they do. 

Back here at home, there is less evidence that we get it. There 

is tangible lack of urgency; we are not doing what we should to 

help them win. In fact, we are here today to discuss plans, potential plans, that would make their lives harder, that will further 

shrink their advantage. 

So, Chairman, I urge Congress to pass the fiscal year 2017 bill 

and give favorable consideration to the supplemental. It will make 

us more ready, more competitive, and relieve a lot of stress that is 

on our people. Together, we can find ways to maintain our edge. 

There is so much at stake. 

Thank you for the chance to testify, and I look forward to your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Admiral Richardson can be found in 

the Appendix on page 65.] 

The CHAIRMAN. General Goldfein. 

STATEMENT OF GEN DAVID L. GOLDFEIN, USAF, CHIEF OF 

STAFF OF THE AIR FORCE 

General GOLDFEIN. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking 

Member Smith, distinguished members of the committee for 

hosting this critically important and timely hearing. It is a privilege to be here with my fellow Joint Chiefs. 

Your Air Force is globally engaged both here in the homeland 

and deployed to capture and control the high ground as we provide 

global vigilance, global reach, and global power for America and 

our allies. As the service with the most diverse portfolio of missions, operating from the outer reaches of space, to 100 feet below 

the surface and everywhere in between, we are involved in some 

way in every mission the joint force performs. Put simply, your Air 

Force is always there. 

Our responsibility begins in the nuclear enterprise as we ensure 

the bomber and missile legs of the triad remains safe, secure, and 

reliable, and on our worst day as a nation we ensure the Commander in Chief is where he needs to be when he needs to be there 

and that he remains connected to our Air Force and naval nuclear 

forces who stand watch for America and our allies. 
8 

In space, your airmen fly and maintain 12 constellations that 

provide critical intelligence, protected communications, nuclear 

command and control, and GPS [Global Positioning Satellite] for 

the joint team and for the globe. When China launched its antisatellite missile in 2007, creating a debris field over 300,000 particles, space became both a contested and a congested place, and 

it is the responsibility of your Air Force to organize, train, equip, 

and present the preponderance of ready space forces to combatant 

commanders to fight should a war either start or extend into space. 

In the cyber domain, airmen join their fellow soldiers, sailors, 

and Marines to defend the Nation and develop tactics, techniques, 

and procedures to produce strategic effects in this new and critical 

warfighting domain. Just 16 years ago, we had a single remotely 

powered aircraft in test. Today your Air Force delivers 60 lines of 

armed reconnaissance along with high-altitude capabilities that 

provide an unblinking eye on our adversaries. 

If you heard jet noise this morning driving to the Capitol, it was 

likely the F–16s from the 113th Air National Guard Wing at Andrews who sit on alert to defend this city, just as we do across the 

Nation to defend our homeland from attack. And I learned just 

walking in this morning that we lost an F–16 from that wing this 

morning. And I am proud to say that at least the news reports are 

telling us the pilot got out and he is okay. These are just some of 

the missions we perform here. 

Simultaneously, airmen are operating forward in over 175 locations to assure allies and partners, deter adversaries, shape the environment, and respond to crises. Job one for our deployed force is 

to gain and maintain air superiority, which we define as freedom 

from attack and freedom to maneuver. 

When a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or coastguardsman hears 

jet noise, I don’t ever want them to look up. I want them to know 

it is me. This is sacred duty for an airman. Once we establish air 

superiority, your Air Force provides unmatched global reach with 

an aircraft taking off or landing every 3 minutes delivering critical 

personnel or supplies where and when they are needed. And we 

sometimes operate out of locations that are in insecure areas. And 

it is our special forces, air commandos, who are trained to secure 

airfields when and where we need them in places like Qayyarah 

West in Iraq. 

And when it comes to global precision strike, I call your attention 

to the January raid where a pair of B–2 bombers departed their 

home base in Missouri for a 32-hour round trip sortie to Libya. 

These stealth bomber crews, refueled by 13 different tankers, delivered 85 bombs over 2 terrorist camps, delivering precise legal effects within 10 seconds. And I repeat, 32-hour mission, within 10 

seconds of their designated time over target. 

And in the counter-ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] fight, 

Lieutenant General Jeff Herigian, the air component commander, 

leads a coalition of 16 nations in the fight to defeat violent extremism in the Middle East. In the current fight against ISIS, coalition partners have dropped over 40,000 munitions on our enemy 

with the vast majority coming from United States Air Force. 

For our enemy, ‘‘always there’’ has a different meaning. General 

Hap Arnold, who led the air effort during World War II, stated dur-
9 

ing the worst days of the daylight bombing campaign, ‘‘The problem with air power is we make it look too easy.’’ The truth is anything but. Today’s Air Force is the smallest, oldest, and least ready 

in its history. We have and will continue to fly, fight, and win, but 

at a cost to our airmen and their families who remain globally engaged. 

Chairman, it is fitting that we are having this hearing on Gold 

Star Spouse Day as a reminder of how vital our families are to our 

mission. For 26 years of continuous conflict, starting with Operation Desert Storm through Operations Northern and Southern 

Watch, Deliberate and Allied Force in the Balkans, Odyssey Dawn 

in Libya, and the current fights in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, 

they have remained faithful to our cause. So it is unfortunate that 

we are now discussing the potential of yet another extended continuing resolution, which, as has already been said, is the equivalent of a mini sequestration round which we have already been 

through before. You see, in the Air Force we still haven’t recovered 

from round one. 

Failing to pass an appropriations bill will cost the Air Force $2.8 

billion in the remaining 5 months of 2017. Here are just two of the 

direct impacts to our most important resource, our airmen and 

their families, of failing to pass a budget. We will stop flying in late 

June when the money runs out; so only squadrons in the fight or 

preparing to go to the fight will train. By the end of this year, we 

will be short 1,000 fighter pilots. 

Chairman, it takes approximately 10 years and $10 million to 

train a fighter pilot. One thousand short equates to $10 billion of 

capital investment that walked out the door, and it will take us 10 

years to replace that experience. Of all the things that we can do 

to retain pilots, the most important is to get them airborne. Pilots 

who don’t fly, maintainers who don’t maintain, air traffic controllers that don’t control, leave. And while we will never buy our way 

out of this shortage, an extended CR will also negate the pilot bonuses Congress authorized, which will break faith with the force. 

In addition, over 2,000 young men and women have signed up to 

serve in the long blue line who will not be allowed to enter the 

service until we get an appropriation. They represent the greatest 

treasure in our Nation’s arsenal. They come from each of your districts. They have given up jobs, left home, made plans, all to be 

told they will have to wait now for months to pursue their dream. 

How many of these talented young men and women won’t wait and 

will choose an alternative path when we desperately need to grow 

our force in fiscal year 2017? 

As a service chief I have many obligations, but one remains paramount. Every airman we send into harm’s way must be properly 

organized, trained and equipped, and led to succeed in their mission. And we must take care of their families while they are gone. 

This is our moral obligation. A yearlong CR makes meeting this obligation extremely difficult. 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, distinguished members of this 

committee, the demand for air and space superiority has never 

been higher. With it, we win; without it, we lose. We look forward 

to working with you in the weeks ahead to pass a budget and 
10 

thank you again for holding this critically important hearing. I look 

forward to your questions. 

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

Appendix on page 69.] 

The CHAIRMAN. General Neller. 

STATEMENT OF GEN ROBERT B. NELLER, USMC, 

COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS 

General NELLER. Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, 

members of the committee, I will be brief so we can get to your 

questions. 

First, let me fully endorse the comments of my fellow chiefs. And 

second, I think it is important to remember that the readiness of 

our respective services are inextricably linked. The fleet doesn’t 

sail, Marines don’t get to sea; the Army can’t train, we can’t train 

with them; the Air Force can’t fly, we can’t move around the world. 

So none of us can do anything by ourselves. So our readiness of our 

respective forces are part of that of the joint force. 

Marines have a unique perspective on readiness based on the direction of the Congress as the Nation’s force in readiness. Being 

ready is central to our identity. So the bottom line is this: operating under a full-year continuing resolution through the remainder of this fiscal year will seriously degrade readiness across the 

force and have adverse effects on future readiness. 

Specifically, we will cease CONUS [continental United States]- 

based flight operations in late July or early August with the exception of those squadrons getting ready to deploy. Lack of funding 

will slow, halt, or potentially reverse hard-earned material readiness recovery efforts across the force. It will slow the acquisition 

of critical systems and delay the construction of much needed amphibious warships. 

The scope and scale of our training will be significantly reduced, 

impacting service level pre-deployment training such as the integrated training exercise at Twentynine Palms, which is our key 

event for certification before deployment. 

Other events, large multilateral and multinational exercises such 

as Bold Alligator at Camp Lejeune or our cold-weather training in 

Norway, Cold Response, will also be degraded. And we will be challenged to recover from these training gaps, because once you lose 

a training you can’t get it back. You can’t get it back because there 

is another unit in the queue ready to go. And if you miss it, you 

are not going to get another turn. 

As Representative Smith mentioned, the global security environment drives the requirements which determine our operational 

commitments. Your Marines are as busy now as they were during 

the height of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just this morning, I returned from visiting Marines and our joint and coalition 

partners forward deployed in the Republic of Korea and Japan. I 

assure you that the forward-deployed force is engaged around the 

globe in support of not only PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command], but 

all combatant commanders and is ready to go. 

Our current operational tempo, combined against fiscal reductions, the instability of these CRs, and the lasting impacts of sequestration, continue to make us make hard choices that prioritize 
11 

support to the operational forces above many other resource requirements. 

The priority has and will continue to go to deployed and the 

next-to-deploy units. But that results in readiness shortfalls in 

aviation facilities, sustainment, modernization, retention of critical 

skills, and the depth and readiness of our ready bench. Working 

with our Congress and our chiefs and the Department of Defense, 

and the chairman and the Secretary, I assure you, the Marine 

Corps make the most of those resources we are provided, and that 

Marines will meet the high standards of the Congress and the 

American people, regardless. 

I look forward to your questions. 

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

Appendix on page 76.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask each of you to address a relatively 

simple question. Why is it different now? As Admiral Richardson 

and Mr. Smith mentioned, we have had 8 years of CRs, 5 years of 

the Budget Control Act. You know, to most people, they look and 

say, well, we are still bombing ISIS. You know, we are getting by. 

We are doing what needs to be done. And yet, each of you has 

painted a pretty dire picture of where we are and especially where 

we would be under a CR or without a supplemental. 

So, again, I guess my basic question is, why is it different now? 

General Milley. 

General MILLEY. In my view, it is the cumulative effect. We have 

been doing CRs now for 8 years, shutdown in 2013. It is a cumulative effect on the personnel. We have reduced the Army by 80,000 

or 90,000 soldiers in the last 8 years. We have taken out 17 brigade 

combat teams. We still have 180,000 soldiers today deployed in 

under 40 countries around the world. We are still actively engaged 

in terms of OPTEMPO [operational tempo] and combat operations 

in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Central Africa, West Africa, and several other places. 

Roughly speaking, I just got back from the Middle East last 

week, 80 percent of those forces that you see on the ground in 

those countries are Army forces. It is the cumulative effect of all 

of these years. 

And, by the way, it is not just fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

There are other potential contingencies on the horizon. We saw 

that yesterday morning with the launching of a nuclear missile, or 

not a nuclear missile, but a missile from North Korea that landed 

in the Sea of Japan. I have no idea and neither does anybody in 

this room where all that leads. We must be ready. It is the cumulative effect. 

Chairman, if I were to draw an analogy, it would be like smoking 

cigarettes. One cigarette is not going to kill you. But you do that 

for 8, 10, 20 years, 30 years, you are eventually going to die of lung 

cancer. It is the cumulative effect over time that is really devastating and the seesaw effect of money in and money out. 

And also, we can’t invest in modernization because industry has 

to have predictable funding and we can’t do that. It is a very—not 

only is it negative on immediate readiness it is devastating on future modernization because we can’t get out in front of it and it is 

much more expensive when you can’t do multiyear contracts—it is 
12 

very expensive. It is an inefficient, ineffective way of doing the 

budget. 

The CHAIRMAN. Admiral. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I would pile on top of everything that General Milley said. It is the cumulative effect of this 

triple whammy of the operational pace against fighting violent extremism; contrast that against the uncertainty of the budget and 

the budgetary levels. 

We always, all of us, strive to send our forces forward, fully 

ready into those fights so that they are fully prepared for any contingency that comes their way, but that has come at the cost of 

readiness back home and those reinforcement forces, those surge 

forces that would flow into the fight if we had a major contingency, 

as the general highlighted. 

I would also say that one thing, in my mind, that has characterized the discussion is it is very internally focused and it is not just 

us that have been operating in the world in the last 10 years. So 

if we had this conversation 8 years ago, in the intervening 8 years, 

China has completely modernized their fleet and they are operating, not just around their shores, but around the world now. Russia was actually considered an ally at that time. We were exercising with Russia, and now it is a much different picture. 

The general mentioned North Korea and Iran. These competitors 

have also grown in these last intervening 8 years, and so the relative balance has shifted. So it is a combination of our internal effects, the stress of 10 years of combat operations, 15 years, contrasted against the funding instability and levels. But it is also our 

competitors that have been making significant gains during those 

8 years. 

The CHAIRMAN. General Goldfein. 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, that is really, you know, let me build on 

Admiral Richardson’s comments because the reality is the world 

changed in 2014. If you go back to prior to 2014 and look at our 

posture and the collective assumptions we were making, both within Congress and the executive branch, we were out of Iraq, we were 

coming down in Afghanistan and in a single year the world 

changed for us. Russia went into Crimea and got active in Ukraine. 

China started militarizing islands in the South China Sea. We had 

ISIS and we went back into Iraq. And you may remember we had 

this thing called Ebola that happened during 2014. 

And while we may now all look back on that as not that big a 

deal, as we were going through it, you might recall that we weren’t 

sure whether we were facing the plague of the 21st century. All 

that happened in a single year. 

So the world changed. And so the assumptions that we had made 

in terms of strategic trades that we make because for, as service 

chiefs, you know, what we do is we look at trying to balancing capability, capacity, and readiness. And we make strategic trades 

based on our assumptions of the global security environment. And 

so to your question of, what is different now? The world is different 

now. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Commandant. 
13 

† Reference to the primary security challenges for the United States being Russia, China, Iran, 

North Korea, plus terrorism. 

General NELLER. Chairman, on 9/11 there were 172,500 Marines 

and we deployed at a rate of 3:1. We were home for 18 months and 

we were gone for 6 and the gear we had was the gear we had from 

the 1980s buildup; it was only 16, 15, 12 years old. 

You go to Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton today, you drive 

around, that is the same stuff we are driving today. It has been 

modified, been re-engineered. It has been through the depot. Still 

flying the same F–18s; we got one squadron F–35s. We replaced 

CH–46s with MV–22s. We are flying the same 53s [CH–53s]. We 

are starting to get at replacing the Hueys and Cobras. The force 

now deploys at a rate of 2:1. I mean, we have to recapitalize this 

force. 

We fought a fight against an insurgent and counterinsurgency 

stability op. And as my fellow chief said, the game has changed. 

We weren’t talking about ‘‘four plus one’’ † even 5, 6 years ago. And 

all their stuff is new. And we need to have our stuff modernized. 

And we have to change our training. And we can do all that. We 

can do all that. And we are in the process of doing that. 

But we need to have the stability of a known funding stream so 

that we can get the best price for modern gear, that we can plan 

our training, that we know we are going to go, and we know we 

are going to get a ride either on an airplane or a ship. And our allies know they are going to be able to show up and we are going 

to be there to train with them. And this potentially puts all that 

at risk. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I actually have no questions. I have had the opportunity to speak with these gentlemen on 

a number of occasions, so I will let Mrs. Davis take the first questions for our side. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all very much for your service and for being here 

today. 

You know, you make a very good case, and I think we are all 

with you in understanding the difficulties, the challenges that you 

face. But I am also wondering, you know, here we are. It is April; 

we haven’t passed last year’s budget yet. In many ways, as you say, 

we are dealing with a continuing CR, which, in many ways, is almost the norm. And so, what is it that we should be looking at 

doing? Are there different metrics when it comes to readiness and 

setting priorities that suggest that we actually have to adapt to 

this kind of situation and still accomplish the mission? 

What do you think needs to be done differently at all if this is 

the new normal? 

General MILLEY. I don’t accept that—— 

Mrs. DAVIS. I am not suggesting that I like the new norm. 

General MILLEY. I don’t accept it as a new normal, Congresswoman. I think, candidly, failure to pass a budget, in my view, as 

both an American citizen and the Chief of Staff of United States 
14 

Army, constitutes professional malpractice. I don’t think we should 

accept it as the new normal. 

I think we should pass it and pass the supplemental with it and 

get on with it. The world is a dangerous place and is becoming 

more dangerous by the day. Pass the budget. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Ma’am, here is what this new normal 

would mean. It would mean trying to run a mile race and giving 

the competition a lap head start. You have got to run very fast if 

you are going to win that race and we are just not fast. So, I mean, 

that is what you buy into if you accept this as a new normal. I 

couldn’t agree with the chief more. 

General GOLDFEIN. Ma’am, I will just use this as an opportunity 

just to remind us in terms of what I think you expect from us as 

Joint Chiefs. And that is, I think you need from us our best military advice on what we think we need to be able to perform the 

missions that we are being given. And until those missions change, 

what we will continue to tell you is what the force requires. 

So the resistance you are getting from us relative to setting some 

kind of a new normal is that the missions haven’t changed. And so 

what you won’t hear from us is anything but here is what is required to do those missions which we have been given to defend 

this Nation and to do those missions as required both here in the 

homeland and abroad. 

General NELLER. I think we have adapted, otherwise we wouldn’t 

be able to do the things that we do every day. That doesn’t mean 

we like it. I mean, we are not perfect, we make mistakes, but I 

think we are adaptable because of the men and women that serve 

in our services are really smart and they are mission oriented and 

they figure out a way to get it done and everybody is, you know, 

hedging or whatever they are doing, but the bill is in the back end. 

And the people we are contesting right now, they don’t have armored forces, they don’t have electronic warfare, they don’t have an 

Air Force, they don’t have long-range artillery, they don’t have the 

ability to jam space and deny our networks. That is who is out 

there potentially in the wings and that is what we are trying to get 

at. 

And, you know, the force, we are a volunteer force. Or maybe 

more accurately, we are an all-recruited force, and it is expensive. 

And in order to continue to recruit, you have to have the capability 

that they think they can have the opportunity to be successful 

against these other threats. And we can assume that it may or may 

not happen; that is not my job. My job is to manage risk and provide best military advice. 

So we need stability, we need to be able to plan, we need to 

know, whatever the number is, whatever the number is, and then 

we will go forward. But the force has to have confidence that they 

are going to have a continued resource stream for the capabilities 

they need to train and to be operational and for their families and 

for all those things you have to have with an All-Volunteer Force. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Right now we actually have a hiring freeze, a Federal hiring 

freeze. And is that contributing to degraded readiness? And in 

what way? 
15 

General NELLER. I would say, I will just go up and go back the 

other way, but we have had pretty good luck because of the parameters and the guidance that was given as far as we could get a 

waiver for those jobs on the civilian side that were directly affected, 

affecting readiness, maintainers, people that are involved in certain 

things. It is not perfect and it has caused some problems, particularly in the non-appropriated side. And sadly, the people that were 

mostly hurt by that were a lot of family members who worked in 

those organizations where we couldn’t get a waiver. 

But we have worked through it, and we have got good reaction 

from Secretary Stackley and Secretary Mattis and the Department 

to fill those jobs. But it was just another thing because, as you 

know, ma’am, it takes time to fill those jobs, particularly if they involve a security clearance. 

The CHAIRMAN. If the others of you have comments, if you would 

submit them in writing, too, we will try to keep as close as we can 

to the 5-minute rule because of the number of members. 

Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry, for your coordinating this important hearing today on urgent issues to American 

families. 

I appreciate each of you for your extraordinary dedicated service 

to our Nation. 

I would prefer that we were under better circumstances, but unfortunately budget uncertainty is an issue that needs to be understood by the American people. Your clarity today is very much appreciated. 

In South Carolina, I represent over 48,000 enlisted soldiers who 

annually graduate and are stationed at Fort Jackson along with 

the nearby base at Fort Gordon, and the nearby airmen at Shaw 

Air Force Base, the Marines of Parris Island, Beaufort Naval Hospital, Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station, and the Guard members 

at McEntire Joint Airbase. South Carolina knows and loves our 

military. 

Your leadership provides young people opportunities for meaningful and fulfilling lives while protecting American families. Additionally, as a veteran, son of a veteran, I am grateful I have four 

sons that have served overseas in the military, along with a nephew in the Air Force who has served in Iraq. 

It is for this reason that I am particularly concerned about the 

negative impacts a continuing resolution would have on military 

families, such as deferred reenlistment bonuses, delayed family 

moves from summer to the school year, reprogrammed military 

equipment upgrades with limited training. 

How would each of you describe the real-life consequences to 

military families that a continuing resolution poses on our soldiers, 

sailors, airmen, and Marines? How would this affect service member morale, recruitment, and retention? And additionally, could 

each of you provide one specific impact that stands apart from the 

rest? 

General Milley. 

General MILLEY. Thanks, Congressman, appreciate the comment. 

And in South Carolina, as you mentioned, you got Fort Jackson. At 

Fort Jackson alone on an annual basis we train, we recruit, and 
16 

bring into basic combat training the equivalent of the British 

Army, every year. 

Mr. WILSON. Wow. 

General MILLEY. At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or Fort Hood, 

Texas, if you combine both those bases, that is the equivalent of 

the Australian and Canadian armies put together. What will happen in your State, in South Carolina, and many other States that 

have basic training, Missouri and Georgia and elsewhere? That 

basic training is going to stop in July. We are going to run out of 

money next month. And then over the following 60 days we are 

going to not have the gasoline, the fuel, the ammunition, et cetera. 

And basic training is going to stop. 

And what that will mean is we can’t take those basic trainees 

that are already there and then onward deploy them or PCS [permanent change of station] them to operational units. And we will 

have to keep them right there at the fort. They won’t be doing anything, they won’t be training, they won’t be doing anything of substantive value. And then we won’t be able to recruit and bring in 

more trainees. 

So if we don’t get this budget passed, we don’t get the supplemental passed, Fort Jackson, and many other forts, for all intents 

and purposes, will be coming to a screeching halt for all of the activities and training that goes on there. The impact on families will 

be significant. 

We already cut back on several services throughout the Army. 

And we will continue to have to cut back on more services for families, family members. You are going to have to stop PCS moves; 

you are going to have to cancel bonuses. And bottom line is you are 

going to significantly and radically increase stress on the force that 

Admiral Richardson talked about. That is going to be throughout 

all the services. It will be very dramatic. It will be very significant, 

and it is something that should and must be avoided, in my view. 

Mr. WILSON. Admiral. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, before I begin I also have to thank you 

for hosting our nuclear power school down there in South Carolina 

as well. 

Mr. WILSON. Well, that is a bit out of the region so I was just 

trying to include ones nearby. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Okay, all right. It is not too far. 

Mr. WILSON. No. And see, I would have included Charleston Air 

Force Base too, but I was trying just to stay with the immediate 

region. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Roger, sir. Well, I only highlight that because that is some of these areas—— 

Mr. WILSON. We are proud, yes. 

Admiral RICHARDSON [continuing]. Are where some of our most 

skilled operators, our nuclear trainers, our combat aviators, you 

know, those are the folks that will be, you know, they will be the 

first to leave. This is where we talk about competition. Competition 

is everywhere I look. Competition is certainly in the security environment around the world. 

But I will tell you, I am competing every day for people. I am 

competing with the public sector, and the pool of qualified people 
17 

to do those skills is small to start with and gets smaller every time 

somebody gets hired by another place. 

And when we talk about 1-month notice to move your family and 

children from Norfolk to Guam in the middle of the school year, 

that is a huge detractor. And that talent will leave, and I will lose 

that fight for people. And it will be the highest skilled, smartest, 

those folks will leave first. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. And the rest, if you could respond in writing, thank you very much. 

[The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And gentlemen, I want to thank you all for your testimony, but 

most especially for your service to the Nation. So like all of you, 

I am very concerned about the impact of a CR across the board, 

especially when it comes to something like cyber. So can you discuss the potential impacts upon cyber programs, particularly those 

that might be a new start this year, such as the persistent training 

environment [PTE]? 

General Milley, I am going to start with you, as PTE is an Army 

program. But then I would ask the other services to add their 

thoughts. 

Next, for all of our witnesses, also, I remain also concerned about 

recruiting and retaining highly trained cyber warriors, especially 

as U.S. Cyber Command [CYBERCOM] is provided personnel from 

each of the services rather than raising their own forces. So the 

critical role the CYBERCOM plays in defending national interests 

against cyberattacks and providing support to military operations 

is an imperative that we obviously cannot afford to lose. 

And how will a CR and other budget gimmickry hamper your 

ability to recruit and retain the best of the best? 

General MILLEY. Thanks, Congressman. As you rightly point out, 

cyber is a relatively new domain of war, as we refer to it, and it 

is critically important, and significant damage can be done to adversaries through the use of cyber. So it is really important that 

we as a military, and the Army is playing its role, develop both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. 

For the most part, for the Army operational units, they focus on 

protection of the networks and protection of the forces, the defensive cyber capabilities. The impact of the continuing resolution 

means that we are not going to be able to finish the facilities at 

Fort Gordon, which is the Cyber School Center of Excellence. It 

means that the National Guard is not going to be able to field their 

cyber protection teams, their defense teams for the National Guard. 

And we will not be able to continue the level of training that we 

need to do for the teams that are already formed in the Regular 

Army. 

In addition to that, the CR will likely have a negative effect on 

the recruitment of the best talent that we can get out there to become cyber warriors. It is a new branch in the Army. Thus far we 

have had great success. We need to continue that momentum. A 

continuing resolution or return to BCA funding is going to stop 

that momentum right in its tracks. 
18 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, General. 

Admiral. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, I will just again pile on. We have been 

organizing for cyber for some time now. And that organization includes people, the talented people that General Milley referred to. 

And so we have a requirement for 40 cyber mission teams that constitute a cyber mission force throughout the joint force. And then 

there is the engineering. We need to do the work to engineer our 

systems to make them more resilient against a cyberattack. 

Our latest development in that is to stand up the Digital Warfare 

Office this year on my staff that will work with the fleets to enhance our agility in the information domain across the board. And 

it is a very comprehensive program; I would love to come and talk 

to you about it in more detail. But that will stop without this funding. 

And also, many of those upgrades, those modernizations that I 

talked about are to enhance our resilience against cyberattack, 

which, you know, as the chief said, the critical vulnerabilities. The 

first shots in the next war, in fact the war that is going on right 

now, is in the cyber domain. The war is on there. We need to keep 

that funding in place. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Admiral. 

General. 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, I will just offer you some thoughts on 

what this is doing to Admiral Rogers as the combatant commander 

who has been entrusted with the mission of defending the Nation 

in cyber, defending the defense networks, and ensuring that we 

have the talent to be able to do his mission. 

All of us contribute to those cyber mission teams. And while we 

can’t go into operational details, this extended CR will have an impact on all of our ability to be able to put those teams in place and 

allow him to accomplish the mission that he has been given at the 

very national level. 

General NELLER. Sir, I was up at Fort Meade talking to Marines 

at MARFORCYBER [Marine Forces Cyberspace Command]. And a 

sergeant stuck his hand up and goes, ‘‘Hey, Commandant, how are 

you going to afford to keep me?’’ I said I don’t know if I can afford 

to keep you. What is it going to cost me? 

I don’t know if there is enough money out there. We got people 

up there getting offered six figures-plus to leave and go work in the 

civilian side. So we have already made the—we close down, we are 

going to have to treat cyber like special operations; once you are 

in, you are in, because the investment is too high to get them 

trained, they got to stay. But then I got to figure out how to pay 

them or get a contract out of them long enough to get a return. 

Obviously, if we are at a CR level, any money for bonuses or anything like that, there is a tradeoff for something else. I mean, you 

will find the money, but what are you going to take it away from? 

There are no good choices. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you all. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. LoBiondo. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for your very candid 

and sobering explanation of what we are facing. Been on this com-
19 

mittee for a while, and I can remember in years past when witnesses came in and just danced around the edges about what the 

consequences would be if we didn’t do our responsibility the right 

way. And unfortunately we are seeing the results of it now. But understanding in clear and uncertain [sic] terms of what it means to 

each of the branches and to the country overall I think is the sobering information we need. 

With that in mind, I want to talk about the potential strains on 

the military and tie in with what you have been saying to highlight 

what I think our most important resource, our men and women. So 

we need the weapon systems. We need the modernization. But 

without the men and women, as you have been saying, we have got 

a real problem. 

Specifically the 177th Fighter Wing in my district experienced a 

CONUS COLA [cost of living allowance] drop of 7 percent in 2017, 

compared to 2016. It was cutting paychecks this year. While the 

fiscal year 2017 supplemental funds a 2.1 percent pay raise for 

troops, as authorized in the 2017 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act], and by law DOD [Department of Defense] must provide this pay raise, unless the supplemental is passed, DOD will 

likely have to realign funds from military personnel accounts. 

So, first for General Goldfein, what is the effect on service members’ pay if a fiscal year 2017 supplemental is not passed? Exacerbating the strains they have already experienced with such 

CONUS COLA cuts, how could this affect service members’ morale, 

recruitment, and retention? I know it is not good, but I would like 

to hear it in your words. And what other personnel issues concern 

you if we are stuck in a yearlong CR? 

General GOLDFEIN. No, thanks, sir. You know, I will piggyback 

on what General Neller said. You know, when it comes to meeting 

our obligations to our airmen when it comes to pay, we are going 

to meet those obligations. The issue is we are going to have to go 

somewhere in that military personnel account to find that money. 

So it is the tradeoffs that will be the issue. 

For example, under a continuing resolution, we have talked 

about PCS moves, right? Moves, change of station. For the Air 

Force, for 5 months of a CR, there will be 13,000 families that now 

will have to be delayed in their moves. Of those families that now 

have children in school, think of all of the issues that will go on 

now to have to delay all of those moves into the fall cycle after they 

have started school. That puts a stress on our families that actually can’t be quantified. 

When it comes to the last part of your question, which is one of 

my biggest concerns relative to a long CR, quite frankly, it is 

breaking faith with our airmen and their families. They have been 

at this for 26 years now. They will stay with us if they believe they 

can count on us to ensure that we take care of them and their families as they deploy. They will stay with us if they believe they are 

given the resources to be the very best they can be. 

And so I go back to my point. Pilots who don’t fly, maintainers 

who don’t maintain, air traffic controllers who don’t control will not 

stay with us. So that is why you are hearing all of us talk about 

readiness as our top priority. And being able to fund them to be 
20 

able to get them in the air is a key priority for the United States 

Air Force. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. We only have little more than a minute, but General Milley, you want to comment on that as well? 

General MILLEY. Thanks, Congressman. Just very briefly, I concur and endorse everything that General Goldfein said. By law, we 

are supposed to do a 2.4 percent pay raise, you know, ECI [employment cost index] is how they calculate it, to keep pace with inflation, 2.1 percent is built into it. If we go to a CR or go to BCA funding, that is going to kill any pay raise. 

Right now, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, we are 

reasonably well-paid by global standards. But I want you to consider something, that in World War II only 10 percent of the 

United States military was married; today 60 percent of us are 

married and on average there are two children. So you are talking 

about families of four here. If you are a specialist or corporal with 

a family of four earns just slightly above the poverty level. There 

are thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines today that 

still use food stamps. That should really get people’s attention. And 

if we don’t pass the budget with the supplemental, it is going to 

hurt their pay, it is going to hurt other forms of benefits, it is going 

to hurt services, and it is going to crush morale, it will be very devastating to morale. 

So, again, I can’t highlight enough yellow ink here to get the 

budget and the supplemental passed, because to do otherwise is 

going to have significant negative impact. 

Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all 

witnesses for your testimony. 

We have 5 legislative days, not counting today, to get this done, 

so obviously the urgency of your message is, you know, very important and, again, we appreciate it. 

Admiral Richardson, I wanted to just drill down a little bit on 

the maintenance availabilities impact of a CR. But before I do, I 

would just like to clarify a point that was raised yesterday when 

General Hyten of Strategic Command testified over in the Senate 

regarding the knife-edge timeline the Navy faces to sustain the 

SSBN [ballistic missile submarine] fleet. As he correctly stated, 

Ohio SSBNs will be coming offline starting in 2027 at a rate of one 

per year, which you have testified about many times. 

In order to avoid dipping below 10 SSBNs while the new Columbia class comes into service, last December CR we included a yearlong $773 million anomaly to keep Columbia moving forward with 

detail design and production this year. Just again, for clarification’s 

sake, is that $773 million plus-up that we, again, made as a yearlong anomaly adequate to keep Columbia on track this year? 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, I appreciate you highlighting the 

forced march that we are on to get that submarine on patrol in 

2031. And this is a program [that has] zero margin and so we need 

every dollar of that for the year to keep that on track. There is 

good news there. The team up at Electric Boat has regained track, 

so our designs are on pace, and I will tell you there is no margin 

in that. And even the fact you highlighted going down to 10, that 
21 

requires pretty much error-free operation to maintain the requirements at that. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Right. So that will be adequate for this year, but 

stable, continuous funding to keep that on track. Great, thank you, 

appreciate that. 

Admiral Malloy, when he was over here earlier this year, stated 

that a yearlong CR would drive the Navy to cancel some 14 or 

more ship availabilities. You know, you are dealing with a phenomenon over the last couple years of carrier gaps. Obviously that 

would kind of spread into other areas of the fleet in terms of performance gaps. And I was wondering if you could just kind of highlight that little critical point. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Yes, sir. I mean, certainly we don’t just fix 

the ships just to fix them. We maintain and upgrade those ships 

so they can go forward and do the Nation’s business, but we need 

to send them forward fully ready, maintained, ready to go, just like 

your car would be. You just wouldn’t drive your car without doing 

the maintenance on it, without giving it the gas. And so this will 

translate downstream, the maintenance thing writ large. 

You know, when you can’t fly an air wing because the aircraft 

aren’t maintained, that just will result in, you know, we are not 

going to send them forward untrained. We are not going to send 

them forward unable to defend themselves because of poor maintenance. And so this will result in a smaller Navy around the world, 

longer tethers, less presence, gaps, if you will. 

And so, you know, it is a domino effect as well when those maintenance availabilities get canceled. Well, all of our, particularly the 

private shipyards, have to adapt to that as well. So their workforce 

is going to have to be cut and those people necessarily do not come 

back. They will find new jobs. And so you can see this downward 

spiral that results. 

Mr. COURTNEY. And just to follow up the chairman’s question 

about what is different this time, again Admiral Malloy seemed to 

suggest that, you know, this is going to happen pretty much immediately if the CR is the final outcome. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, our fleet commanders and maintainers 

are hanging out with their fingernails right now. They wanted to 

take action before because they are at risk. Right? There are laws 

in place here in terms of spending more money than you have. And 

if we don’t pass this, it will be abrupt. They have extended this as 

long as they can. 

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

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Turner. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Milley, thank you for your incredible answer to Susan 

Davis concerning the prospects of continuing CRs. Your statement 

that it is malpractice and unprofessional is incredibly important, 

and everyone in Congress needs to hear it. We know certainly that 

members of this committee not only understand it, but are the advocates to the rest of Congress to try to ensure that it doesn’t happen. 

When the last CR came forward, many of you are aware that 

members of this committee refused to vote for the CR unless we received a promise from the Speaker that DOD approps [appropria-
22 

tions] would move from the House. It did. There is no reason, as 

we look forward to the prospects of a CR, that DOD funding should 

be an exception. There is no reason it should not be an exception 

because we have already passed the DOD approps, we have already 

passed the NDAA. They should absolutely just be stapled to whatever is moving forward for funding and we certainly are to be advocating that it does. 

But I want to drill down for a minute on what the effects of sequestration and a possible CR, General Milley, would be, specifically on the Army. Last year, Chris Gibson and I introduced the 

POSTURE [Protecting Our Security Through Utilizing Right-Sized 

End-Strength] Act. The bill recognized the importance of ground 

forces in current and future conflicts and, most importantly, implemented a strategic pause in the Obama administration’s proposed 

reductions to land force end strength level, given future and current threats. It began the process of reversing the harmful effects 

of downsizing our land forces as a result of the Budget Control Act. 

Under Chairman Thornberry’s leadership, we successfully incorporated these end strength increases as part of the NDAA for fiscal 

year 2017. The NDAA provided full funding for manning, training, 

and equipping for these increases. These end strength authorizations associated with the fiscal year 2017 NDAA will allow the 

Army to begin the process of mitigating some of the strategic risks 

imposed by the Budget Control Act. 

However, we recently heard testimony from the Vice Chief of 

Staff of the Army, and he stated that at today’s end strength, the 

Army risks consuming readiness as fast as we build it. This leads 

me to believe that we need to continue to look at ways to reasonably continue to grow the Army to minimize the risks associated 

with the current and future operational demands. So, a few questions in that regard. 

First, we now know that the President has proposed a spending 

level of $603 [billion] for fiscal year 2018. As you know, our chairman has proposed $640 [billion]. Could you please tell me what the 

effects of a $603 [billion] funding level in the aggregate would be 

on rebuilding our military? And what is the impact on Army end 

strength under a yearlong CR? As we have continued to try to rebuild, what would the effect of the CR be? So those two questions. 

General MILLEY. There will be lots of impacts. Probably the most 

significant, we have been authorized to move out for the Regular 

Army to reverse the downward trend in end strength and to move 

out to 476 [thousand] by 1 October of this year. For the National 

Guard, we want to stabilize that force and bring them to 343,000 

by 1 October. And for the U.S. Army Reserve, we would like to 

bring them back to about 197,000 by 1 October. 

A yearlong CR will stop all of that, it will stop the recruiting. As 

I mentioned earlier, it will stop the basic training and we will essentially resume a downward trend. What does that mean? Operationally, it means that units are going to go to the field at less 

than optimal strength for training. We already have units in the 

field for training in the 60 to 70 percentile versus what is required 

of 90 to 95 percent present for training. That is a significant degradation in capability over time. 
23 

We are going to end up having to, if it is a yearlong CR, we will 

end up having to cancel the National Training Center rotations out 

in California and we will end up canceling JRTC rotations. We will 

also end up canceling significant collective training for home-station training for all of the Active units. 

And for the Guard, they are going to have to cancel four of their, 

what we call, XCTC [eXportable Combat Training Capability], or 

significant training events. So training across the board, beginning 

shortly after we run out of money in May, looking at June or July, 

training will be reduced to individual squad training. 

Individuals and squads an Army does not make. You have to 

train at the company, the battalion, the brigade, and higher levels 

in order to have an effective force for full-spectrum warfare against 

the type of enemies that are possible out there. So it will be very 

significant across the board, Congressman. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Garamendi. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Gentlemen, thank you for your impassioned 

plea for money. We know where it is coming from, it is coming from 

all the other things the American public would like us to do and, 

frankly, we need to do. 

Our ranking member spoke to the 30 percent decrease in the 

State Department and what that means. The $5 billion decrease in 

the National Institute of Health research programs for everything 

from cancer to Alzheimer’s and the like. So we are going to make 

some choices here. 

You have been told to develop a war plan for ISIS, where is that 

plan? 

General Milley, where is the war plan for ISIS? You were supposed to have it done in 30 days. 

General MILLEY. Yeah, Congressman, appreciate that. I am not 

going to discuss classified operational matters, but I will be happy 

to do that—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. But just tell me generally, where is the plan? 

Not what it is, where it is? 

General MILLEY. It has been submitted, and it has been looked 

at and reviewed, and it has been submitted. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. By this committee? 

General MILLEY. I don’t know that we submit it to this committee. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. No, I don’t believe you have. 

General MILLEY. We submit it to the chain of command through 

the Chairman, through the Secretary of Defense. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. You got $5 billion dollars, in your supplemental 

you have $5 billion for a war plan that has never been submitted 

to us. You expect us to approve something that you have not submitted to us? 

General MILLEY. Congressman, I am not going to get into a discussion of classified operational plan. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. No, my question was very direct, sir. 

General MILLEY. I am sorry? 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Do you expect us to give you $5 billion on a war 

plan that you have not submitted to us? 
24 

General MILLEY. I would ask that you refer that to the Secretary 

of Defense or the President. We work through the chain of command on war plans. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. That is not an answer to my question, but I 

guess the answer is that you would expect us to approve a plan 

that has not been submitted. Where the money would be spent, 

how it would be spent, where it would be spent. Okay, fair enough. 

That is $5 billion of the $30 billion supplemental. 

You said in this testimony that pay will be reduced unless you 

have the supplemental. But yet in the base bill there is a 2.1 percent pay increase. How does that work? 

General Goldfein, apparently you would like to answer. 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, sir. And what we said was that we will 

find the money within our budget to pay that 2 percent pay raise. 

The issue is we will have to make choices and trades within the 

military personnel account to do that. So we will—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And I think the budget, if I might, sir, the 

budget that we put out, the 2017 appropriation had 2.1 percent 

built into it for the forces that presumably you have, all of you 

have. Are you suggesting that that is not the way we—— 

General NELLER. No, sir. We are not suggesting that at all. The 

appropriations that came from this body had a growth, for example, of 3,000 Marines in a 2.1 percent pay. What we were brought 

here today to talk about would be the impact if we had the continuing resolution went through the whole year. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And you have spent a good deal of your time 

talking about the supplemental. All four of you did. 

General NELLER. No, I believe we have spent most of our time 

talking about the effect of the CR, but I take your point, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Then we are debating the word ‘‘good deal of 

your time.’’ Let us not get into too much detail about how much 

time you spent on the supplemental, but each one of you advocated 

for the supplemental. And we, at least I, have never seen how you 

would want that supplemental to be spent in certain key areas. 

That is not to say it may not be necessary, but we are going to 

have to make some tough choices. And we are going to need some 

detail in order to make those choices. 

General Goldfein, you and I have spent a lot of time talking 

about, do we really need to replace all of our ground-based strategic missiles in the near term? You know, that is about $50 billion. Do we need to do it right now? Or we are saying can that be 

delayed and we can do some of these other things that you would 

like to have us do? 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, I would submit to you that all three legs 

of the triad, the missile leg, the bomber leg, and the submarine leg, 

the three legs of the triad, were all built to build into a specific attribute we were looking for. The missile leg gives us the most responsive leg of the triad. The bomber leg gives us the most flexible 

leg. And the submarine is the most survivable leg of the triad. And 

my best military advice to you, sir, is that we need all three of 

those legs to be able to do the mission that we have been asked 

to. 
25 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I have got 10 seconds. I am not debating whether we need it or not, my question is, when do we need it? We have 

to make some tough choices. 

General GOLDFEIN. Absolutely. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And in making those tough choices, some things 

may get delayed. We have got to figure out what needs to be delayed. 

With that, I am out of time. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lamborn. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me just try to clarify one thing here. I don’t think there is 

anything in any legislation where a plan has to be devised and 

given to this committee. I think your responsibility is to the Secretary of Defense, his responsibility is to the President. And at 

some point we are interested in what that plan is, but I don’t think 

that is written in stone that we have to be given that plan at point 

X. 

General MILLEY. That is correct. We normally do not submit an 

operation plan for full review to the United States Congress. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Okay, well, thank you for that clarification. 

General Milley I do want to ask you about a readiness and modernization issue. Currently, Fort Carson, which is in my district, 

has a brigade combat team [BCT] deployed to Europe in support 

of our allies to deter Russian aggression. To get the BCT ready to 

deploy, they obviously require reliable, modern equipment and 

training. 

So my two-part question is, if we had a CR, will the next brigade 

combat team out of Fort Carson be able to deploy with reliable 

equipment and necessary training? And secondly, would the next 

Stryker brigade out of Fort Carson be able to go to the National 

Training Center to get critical training before deploying? 

General MILLEY. Congressman, the Stryker brigade you are referring to, that is one of the rotations that would be canceled, so 

if there is a yearlong CR that unit rotation would likely be canceled. For the deployment to Europe, we plan on fully funding and 

resourcing units that are deploying into Iraq, Afghanistan, and 

other areas of combat. 

However, the unit that goes to Europe, for example, on a rotational basis that you are referring to, they would not get their full 

suite of home-station training prior to deploying because of the personnel strength issue that was previously discussed, the end 

strength issue. They would likely not deploy at full operational 

readiness standards that we would like them to deploy at. So there 

would be a negative impact on that particular brigade deploying. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you. That is very sobering and, to me, has 

national implications and certainly has community implications 

back in Colorado Springs. 

General Goldfein, I would like to ask you a question about space. 

In your written statement, you say that the JICSpOC [Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center], recently renamed the 

National Space Defense Center, will face critical acquisition delays. 

You also mentioned delays in the new GPS ground infrastructure 

and GPS III. So my question is this: With so many military and 

civilian systems relying on assured access to space, and even just 
26 

GPS is critical for navigation, for financial transactions, 2 billion 

out of our 7 billion people use GPS every day one way or another 

on the surface of the earth; what does this mean for security in 

space and access to our space-based resources? 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, sir. You know, we have been the stewards of space since 1954 and we continue to take that priority seriously. As we look at the GPS constellation, moving forward with 

GPS III, with the ground-based stations and with all of the integration that needs to occur is a priority. And so we are managing that 

very closely. 

The part that we actually haven’t discussed here, I think General 

Milley may have referred to it earlier, and that is the impact on 

the industrial base if we don’t have a resolution. This is an incredibly sophisticated workforce that you keep on the books if you are 

industry to be able to do the business of space. 

And so as we jockey the throttle between a CR, a budget, no 

budget, an annual appropriation or not, these industries that we 

rely on to be able to bring that kind of sophisticated workforce have 

got to figure out what they do with them when we tell them, well, 

we are not going to be able to use the workforce for next year, but 

we are hoping we can do the year after that. So it has incredible 

impact on the industrial base for CEOs [chief executive officers] out 

there who are trying to manage their businesses. And I will tell 

you, as the service that is working the preponderance of space, that 

is a significant impact. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Okay. I want to thank you all for your service. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Hanabusa. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Thank you for your 

service. A special shout out, of course, to Admiral Richardson for 

the time you spent in Pearl and on the USS Honolulu. Thank you 

very much. 

I represent the congressional district that is home to PACOM 

[U.S. Pacific Command]. And we all know PACOM is the largest 

AOR [area of responsibility] among all of you, you all know that. 

And, of course, the concerns, like this morning with North Korea, 

in protest maybe of what is going on in Mar-a-Lago, they shot off 

missiles. And we also saw this morning’s news as to what is going 

on in Syria. 

Having said all of that, we understand and I, in particular, are 

very empathetic to the fact that you are on a CR, but the fact remains. I think, Admiral Richardson, you in particular pointed out 

in your written statement that we are 6 months into the CR, and 

irrespective of what happens between now and 5 days from now, 

chances are it may not be anything that you want to see. 

The House, I think, has done, as the chairman says, its job. It 

has sent over basically the defense budget or defense approps. But 

having done that, we are in a situation where you will be potentially faced with it and historically you have been faced with it. 

And, General, I agree with you, it may border on malpractice if 

it were in a civilian situation. But the fact remains that is what 

happens. 
27 

Yesterday where Admiral Richardson sits, we had Under Secretary Flournoy. And former Under Secretary made a statement 

that one of the things that she thought was necessary was a flexibility in your individual abilities or defense’s abilities to move 

funds. 

So my question to each and every one of you is, we can all agree 

we don’t like it, we don’t like the situation you are in, but the fact 

is you are in that situation. I would like to understand what you 

all do to make things work. I mean, I am envisioning someone in 

the back room with a little pencil saying it is another month, Admiral, or another month, General, so we are going to have to move 

money here and there if we are going to do X. I assume you have 

the ability to do that. And if you don’t have the ability to do that, 

I would like to know what will make it better so that you compensate for that. 

And like I said, we all can see CR is not good, but we are 6 

months into it. And even if you were to get what you want, you 

still have 6 months that you had to have done something and made 

it work. So with that, whoever wants to take a stab. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Ma’am, I will lead off. The first part of the 

deal was that everything that we have requested, particularly in 

the supplemental, would be executable in the remaining time. So, 

you know, the 6-month period of time is that. 

And, as I mentioned earlier, we—we have been doing all of that 

adjustments that revisit and re-revisit to a tremendous waste of 

time and energy by our leadership as we navigate through the 

shoal waters of just continuing budget unpredictability, instability, 

and insufficient levels. But for this year, we are out of creative 

space. 

Our fleet commanders, Admiral Swift out there in Pearl Harbor 

as well who runs the fleet for Admiral Harris at PACOM, he and 

his colleague, Admiral Davidson in Norfolk, they are out of options. 

They have stretched it to the breaking point on the faith that we 

will be able to do something to be able to fund the rest of the year. 

And so I share that faith that they have. This is not a fait 

accompli, we can do the right thing, get your military out so we can 

defend the Nation, can provide the flexibility and protection for all 

the other things to happen. I am just not ready to concede that this 

is the new normal. 

General GOLDFEIN. Ma’am, if I could add that so here is the 

sandbox for a service chief: capability, capacity, readiness and we 

make strategic trades. And so I mentioned earlier that part of 

2014, the world was different. And so as we were making trades, 

I can tell you in the Air Force we actually traded capacity and 

readiness to get capability, to modernize for the future. Then the 

world changed. And so we have to relook at that balance and make 

different kinds of trades. 

When we are then limited or restricted congressionally or legislatively to be able to work within that box to be able to make those 

trades, it makes our job even harder because what we owe you is 

the best Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine Corps that we can give you 

for the money that we are given. And so that is what happens. 

I will give you one quick example. So we got additional acquisition authorities, we have used those acquisition authorities to be 
28 

able to look at a weapon system that we can procure at a faster 

rate. We get in a CR, anything that falls in the new start category 

we are going to be stopped. So modernization is future readiness, 

and so that is one example of when we get legislative restrictions 

of our ability to move within that sandbox, it is hurtful. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Mr. Chair, I am out of time. Could we ask that 

it be submitted for the record? Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. If the other witnesses have other comments, absolutely. 

Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us, thanks for your leadership. 

I think it is unfortunate we find ourselves in a situation where 

we hear this familiar refrain and that is the uncertainty of resources coming forward. And what you all have done to accommodate that leaves you at a place where you have no flexibility to do 

the job that we ask you to do. Whether it is the OPLANS [operation plans], whether it is the national defense strategy, we are 

now stretched to the limit. We are there at this point, I think, that 

begs the question, what is the collective impact of this line of CRs 

or the sequester? I talked earlier about time is now one of our adversaries because we lose time with these things. When we have 

a CR and the things that we can’t do and we redirect dollars, as 

you should, to training, to developing readiness, but that takes 

away money from programs where we are trying to modernize, we 

are trying to keep up with our adversaries. And then there are additional costs. So when you try to catch up later, you never catch 

up timewise and it is more expensive to do that later. 

Admiral Richardson, give me your perspective on the impacts of 

this roller-coaster ride of uncertainty and where it leaves you, 

whether it is postponed ship availabilities, whether it is lack of 

training for pilots, where does that leave you? And what is the 

overall long-term impact both of time that we lose and of additional 

costs to regenerate that in the future? 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, if I could, how about if I phrase my 

answer in the positive and talk about what could be done if we 

pass this budget with its supplemental. I will run down as quickly 

as I can a fairly extensive list. 

First, we will keep the USS Ponce forward deployed, on station 

in the Middle East. We will retain five cruisers deployable, we will 

buy repair parts, ship spares, consumables, we will fill those coffers. We will fund the 14 availabilities for submarines and surface 

ships that were talked about earlier. We will fund 14,000 flying 

hours for tactical squadrons and we will fund 27,000 flying hours 

for student pilots. Our aviation spares, which have been a big contributor to the reduced readiness of aviation, will be funded. 

We will upgrade our afloat and ashore networks to improve their 

cybersecurity. We will add 15,000 moves and increase the lead time 

for those moves to 2 months or more, from 2 months to 4 months. 

We will do material improvements to six airfields, five piers, three 

hangars, a communications center, and other facilities. We will do 

security improvements, physical security improvements to our 
29 

bases. We will buy more Tomahawk missiles, more rolling airframe 

missiles, more ship-to-shore connectors. 

We will complete the—the fiscal year 2016 DDG [guided-missile 

destroyer]. We will keep on track the aircraft carriers CVN–80. We 

will keep on track two aircraft carrier overhauls. We will keep on 

track LHA–8 [amphibious assault ship], the TAO(X) [new replenishment oiler] program. We will complete a destroyer, four LCSs 

[littoral combat ships], LPD [amphibious transport dock] and other 

expeditionary ships. The list goes on and on. This is what we can 

do if we pass that budget with its supplemental. 

What a list that is. And this is just the Navy. The joint force, 

each of my comrades here, my colleagues, has a list just like that. 

And so you flip the coin on its other side and all of those things 

will not get done. And that divot will be felt for decades in the 

United States Navy. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. 

General MILLEY. Let me make a brief comment. 

Mr. WITTMAN. General Milley, yes. 

General MILLEY. You know, for two-and-a-half centuries, our 

country has got a long, cyclic history of unreadiness for the next 

conflict. When they fired the first shot at Lexington, they had no 

idea they were entering into an 8- or 9-year war with the greatest 

power of the day. We weren’t ready for the Civil War. Lincoln 

thought he was going into a 90-day conflict to put down a local rebellion. 

And we sent guys off with wool uniforms to Cuba or into the 

tropics. World War I, which we are in the 100th anniversary of 

World War I right now, that army was fighting a Pancho Villa on 

the Mexican border 2 years after the war started. And we entered 

into it in 1917, Pershing takes those soldiers over there, they are 

in a state of unreadiness when they get there. And he has to train 

them for 6 or 8 months in France before he commits them to the 

ground combat. World War II, it is well known, right after Pearl 

Harbor, 1942. Go look at the history of 1942. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Yes. 

General MILLEY. Look at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, look at the naval 

battles in the South Pacific. My father fought in the central Pacific, 

1942 was a disaster for the United States military in the Pacific. 

And it was a disaster in North Africa at Kasserine Pass. Look at 

June 1950, Korea, yet again where we were completely in a state 

of unreadiness, where Task Force Smith deploys with two squads 

out of a platoon, two platoons out of a company. Maintenance and 

equipment that didn’t work, soldiers that weren’t adequately 

trained. 

The ultimate impact of all of this stuff is cumulative and it results in failed battles, lost battles, and dead soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines on the battlefield. That is what this ultimately 

results in. 

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr Chairman. 

I want to thank General Goldfein for bringing attention to the 

downed F–16 at Joint Base Andrews; it is in my district. Glad to 
30 

hear that no life-threatening injuries to the pilot, no reported injuries on the ground. Obviously it is early. Investigation will reveal 

the cause. But I am confident that with greater resources we do reduce the number of aircraft incidents that are related to either 

human error, training, or maintenance. 

So this is yet just another example of the need to continue to invest in readiness, modernization, and in the men and women to do 

the difficult work that we ask them to do. 

Look, I was on the USS Nimitz last weekend and I looked at 

those sailors, average age is 23, we ask them to do things that few 

Americans want to do today. It is dangerous, it is important, they 

are excited about it. A big majority of those sailors, first deployment and the first time that they were working with one another, 

but they are confident that they are going to be able to do the job 

that we ask them to do. 

And I said to them and I wanted to reassure them that Congress 

recognizes that we are a great nation because of the work that they 

do. We are the most prosperous nation in the world, not just economically, culturally, our democracy, our religious tolerance, because of the work that men and women in uniform do. So we owe 

it to them to invest in the work that they do, but we also owe it 

to the country to ensure that we continue to be prosperous by investing in good schools, safe neighborhoods, a clean environment, 

and health care and there was no debate on that. And Admiral 

Byrne, who is doing a great job on the USS Nimitz and that strike 

group, he gets that as well. 

So you are doing a great job, I appreciate what you are doing. 

Here is my question and it has to do with BRAC [base realignment 

and closure]. Because as we are looking, you know, for all different 

ways to resource what we need to do, to find the resources, the assets, the equity, the funding, here is my question. The acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment testified about a few years ago that a future base realignment 

and closure round will cost about $6 billion to implement and result in $6 billion in initial savings and then $2 billion per year. 

The Army and the Air Force in particular have been arguing that 

maintaining excess basing capacity diverts scarce resources from 

maintaining readiness and mission capability to maintain an unneeded infrastructure. If a new round were to be authorized, how 

would you reduce excess infrastructure and balance of force? And 

given the potentially significant upfront cost to implement a BRAC 

round, what other ways, if any, exists that would permit you to dispose of excess capacity at a potentially lower cost? 

General MILLEY. For the Army, we do have excess capacity to the 

tune of about half a billion to a billion dollars that we would gladly 

try to shed if we could. And at the same time, we have failed and 

failing infrastructure out there, about 22 percent, 33,000 facilities 

across the entire Army throughout the world that are in really bad 

shape that need work. 

A continuing resolution or a return to BCA funding is going to 

stop the progress we are trying to make against that 22 percent of 

our facilities that are in bad shape. And obviously, it is going to 

prevent any sort of BRAC, which we would encourage, so we can 
31 

get rid of the half a billion to about a billion dollars worth of unneeded infrastructure that we have. 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, I will just add that, you know, when we 

talk BRAC we tend to focus on the C and we don’t spend enough 

on the R, the C being closure, the R being realignment. And quite 

frankly, for the Air Force, it is as important for us to have the 

flexibility to realign as it is to talk about closure. And quite frankly, to General Milley’s point, you know, when I look through this 

lens, I look more at the infrastructure I have right now and ensuring that we have a budget that allows us the MILCON [military 

construction] dollars to be able to improve what we need, not only 

to bring on new mission, but to fix dorms, you know, that are 

World War II era, to get the facilities that we need, to be able to 

demolish those things that we don’t need and bring our footprint 

in, so we are not having to spend these precious dollars on keeping 

large installations not only open, but keeping all of those buildings 

continually be run, right, when I don’t actually need them given 

the size of the force. 

So for us, you know, this starts with why we are here, which is 

to talk about, first and foremost, getting a budget so we can get 

into our military construction projects and our modernization that 

we need and our restoration that we need. That, to me, is far more 

important than a discussion about a future BRAC. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Goldfein, good to see you again. 

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that the average age 

of an aircraft in the Air Force today is 27 years old and that some 

fleets like the JSTARS [Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar 

System] are nearly 50 years old. How would a yearlong continuing 

resolution affect the Air Force’s ability to recapitalize these 50- 

year-old JSTARS aircraft? 

General GOLDFEIN. Hey, sir, thank you. And, you know, you are 

right. About 48 years average that these JSTARS aircraft are being 

used. And as the air component commander deployed forward, 

working in CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command], you know, we 

often talk about what we do with these aircraft relative to the 

ground fight. But I will tell you, they are as equally important to 

the maritime domain and what we do for Admiral Richardson and 

his forces as well. So these are critical aircraft. 

Right now, a 5-month continuing resolution would delay the contract vehicle that we are working on, the risk reduction on the 

radar to be able to move that forward. And it is not a linear. We 

don’t just pick it up again because, again, back to industry, if we 

go back to industry, they are going to have to manage that workforce and that workforce may walk. And so when we pick it up 

again, there is no telling what the long-term impact of delaying our 

ability to recapitalize that critical weapons system. 

Mr. SCOTT. General, I am also concerned about the loss of the 

weapons system when they go in for, I mean, they are going to be 

overdue for major depot overhauls and then they are not going to 

be in the air flying. And it certainly seems to me better to put that 

money into new aircraft with new technology than to rebuild 50- 

year-old planes. 
32 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, that is what we are trying to do. And you 

made a point about the maintenance. The civilian workforce—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes, sir. 

General GOLDFEIN [continuing]. Who are the ones that are at our 

depots who keep these much older aircraft flying are the ones that 

are impacted the most personnel-wise from a CR. And so you lose 

literally hundreds of man-hours of being about to get the depot 

maintenance on these older aircraft to keep them airborne. 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes, sir. And I hope that you all maintain that position that you do not want a CR. 

General Milley, congratulations on the pistol, long overdue. That 

is the first time I have seen you laugh. 

You state in your testimony that over 80 percent of the U.S. military forces in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan are U.S. Army soldiers. 

Building on what General Goldfein has stated today about the impact of the continuing resolution on the Air Force, how would the 

constraint on heavy lift and combat support aircraft impact your 

piece of the fight against ISIS? 

General MILLEY. Well, frankly, the Army is dependent and we 

are all dependent on each other, as General Neller said earlier. 

With respect to heavy lift, I mean, the Army can’t get to the fight 

without the Navy or the Air Force. Just can’t get there. Our people 

and equipment doesn’t arrive at the point of decision without the 

transport capabilities of the Navy and the Air Force. So it will be 

significant if the Air Force doesn’t have that kind of capability. So 

we are a big advocate. We in the Army are a huge advocate for the 

Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines who are on the ground with 

us. It is a joint fight. 

And I as a soldier, I want the most unbelievable Air Force the 

world has ever known because a soldier’s best friend is when a 

fixed-wing Air Force pilot is showing up in his aircraft when we are 

in contact. And that is the first call we all make is to the United 

States Air Force or Navy or Marines, whatever aircraft is flying 

around there, or an Army attack helicopter, to come to us to make 

sure it is an uneven fight on the ground. So I want the best Navy, 

the best Air Force, the best Marine Corps as the Chief of Staff of 

the Army. It is a single joint fight. 

Mr. SCOTT. Could you reiterate the impact, if we don’t get the $5 

billion for the urgent operational requirements for Iraq, Syria, and 

Afghanistan to counter ISIS and the additional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, could you reiterate your points on 

the consequences to our deployed forces in those areas and our 

operational mission if the supplemental is not passed? 

General MILLEY. Candidly, Congressman, I would like to do that, 

but I would like to do that in a classified session to talk about specific operational impacts. What I would say just here is it would 

be negative. 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes, sir. 

General MILLEY. And it would be unhelpful to the ongoing efforts. 

Mr. SCOTT. Gentlemen, I want to thank you all for your service, 

and I hope that you will continue to maintain the position of no 

CR. This has gone on way too long. Thank you, and God bless you. 

I yield back. 
33 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Rosen. 

Ms. ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Smith. 

And I thank all of you for your testimony today and being here 

and we know how detrimental the continuing resolution is to everyone’s ability to plan, prepare, and do long-range strategic planning, 

not just in our military, but in every area of our Nation. That affects all of us in the country, worldwide. 

But I want to ask General Goldfein a question. Of course, I represent Nevada’s Third District. Nellis Air Force Base is just a few 

miles outside my district, and, of course, it is one of our main combat training exercises, the Red Flag, right there, very important to 

us, very important to you. And so we are designed to provide our 

pilots with their first 10 combat missions prior to actually flying in 

combat there. So is Red Flag going to be included in the standdown under a continuing resolution this time? 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, ma’am. I think what you have already 

heard from us is that one of the first things that will go, as we look 

at where we have to go for the money, like for the Air Force. Where 

do I find $2.8 billion? One of the first places I have to go is to cancel exercises. So I have got airmen right now that are actually 

scheduled to deploy, that are scheduled to come to Nellis to do 

their first 10 combat missions in that unmatched training environment, that will not go do that training. 

They are still going to deploy, we don’t stop the deployment because that is what the Nation calls on us to do, we just go less 

ready. So we are all going to end up canceling rotations at National 

Training Center, at Fallon, at Camp Lejeune, and clearly at Nellis. 

Ms. ROSEN. So you would say the impact of a continuing resolution impacts human lives, obviously, the lives of our soldiers and 

it will impact the lives of their families because we are not able to 

pass a budget? 

General GOLDFEIN. Ma’am, I will share a very personal story. So, 

you know, Captain Goldfein, day one, Desert Storm, never been 

into combat, we had one guy in the whole formation that had been 

into combat in Vietnam, and we all went across the line. And I remember the first time I heard triple-A, you know, anti-aircraft [artillery], right, 2:00. 

Ms. ROSEN. Right. 

General GOLDFEIN. And we all looked and then I remember hearing, you know, SA–2, left, 10:00, and we all saw our first surfaceto-air missile. And then I remember hearing splash, MiG–29, and 

I was in the formation, and I saw a MiG–29 hit the ground. And 

I remember that moment in my cockpit. And I remember the confidence that came over my cockpit because I realized I have seen 

this before, I have heard these radio calls. I have actually seen 

Smokey Sam simulators simulating triple-A and surface-to-air missiles. 

Never seen an airplane hit the ground before, but I have heard 

this, I have been in this environment before. And you can’t imagine 

the confidence that came over my cockpit and all of those that were 

flying that day that said we have been here, we can do this mission, and we went in and we crushed it. 
34 

So what Nellis provides is confidence in the air and confidence 

under fire, and so it concerns me that we are not going to give that 

training to our young men and women. 

Ms. ROSEN. Well, I think we know that from everything we do, 

the more training you have, the more muscle memory you have, 

the better able you are to execute your job, no matter what it is. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Ma’am, if I could also just pile on. There 

is a great responsibility we have to do things different and better 

as well. We can’t just do—keep doing the same things for the same 

cost and expect to be effective. 

Ms. ROSEN. Right. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. And Nellis and Fallon and our training 

ranges, that is where that development is done, that is where we 

experiment, that is where we learn the new ways to fight, more effective ways to fight, more efficient ways to fight. And so it is not 

just, you know, going out and doing sets and reps, this is learning 

how to fight in the future. It is extremely important. 

Ms. ROSEN. Well, I thank you for your service and I, for one, 

don’t want to send one more service member into battle unprepared. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Wenstrup. 

Dr. WENSTRUP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us today. 

You know, in budgeting decisions, we don’t get to decide ourselves here in this committee, it is beyond us. And I just don’t 

know how many of our members sometimes really dwell on or understand the details and the difficulty that goes into running an efficient and effective military. And when we are in this discussion 

today, it is probably the most grave I have heard since I have been 

here and rightfully so. 

And I know that each of you look at your troops as part of your 

family and that is what makes this even tougher to think the environment that you are being asked to be put in and your family 

members being asked to be put in. We have touched a little bit 

about what happens to those next to deploy; they may deploy, but 

they are not going to be as ready as they should be. 

And I also would like to hear from you, if we could, on the consequences of those that are currently deployed in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and what is going through your mind if we find ourselves in the situation that may happen, which we do not want. 

And I will start with you, General Neller. 

General NELLER. As we have all said, we will make trades. I 

mean, I think we are pretty flexible, we are all in learning organizations and as much as we don’t like the fiscal situation we have 

been in, you know, we are mission oriented and we figured it out. 

But I think, at this point, what you are seeing is those that are 

forward deployed have got the best gear, they got the best part 

support, they got the best training we can give them. The next ones 

out the door, then, and it goes down from there. 

But because of the security environment that we see, the folks 

that just came back, if you would, the people on deck, or actually 

in the hole in the dugout getting ready to run out on the field, 

those are the ones that are going to end up getting the shorter end 

of the stick. 
35 

I mean, there is normal level and rhythm of a force and how you 

train it. But if we have to make cuts, for example if we had a CR 

as opposed to the budget that you have all passed, that is an $800 

million delta for the Marine Corps, $500 million on the ground 

side, $300 million on the air side. So those that are in the dugout, 

in the hole, if you will, they are the ones that are going to take 

the hit. 

And then when they get on deck, you will be chasing yourself, 

to try to catch up, to get the reps and sets you need and the time 

is not there. We just don’t have the time that we used to have. So 

that is the risk, that is the risk. And that is just in today’s fight. 

If you go to one of the other adversaries that we have all talked 

about and we continue to maintain the current ops, those are the 

ones that are going to have to go there, or you are going to have 

to shift the force. So that is the risk that we have all talked about. 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, I would also add that, you know, we have 

all had a lot of time deployed forward and a lot of time deployed 

together. And when we would do our battlefield circulation and 

talk to our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, we would always 

most of us get the same question, okay, exactly what are we doing 

here? And we could all give that speech. 

The hardest question to answer was, why isn’t anybody talking 

about it back home? Why are we all completely focused about it 

here forward, but nobody is focused on it back home? That was the 

hardest question to answer as a commander in the field. 

So my concern, in terms of those who are deployed forward right 

now and for their families, is they are going to ask the question, 

are we serious about this or not? Is their risk going forward worth 

it or not? And I am not sure, if we don’t even pass a budget, we 

can look them in the eye and tell them that what they are doing 

forward is on the minds of this Congress. 

Dr. WENSTRUP. I appreciate that, General. 

Admiral. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, I will just—one word is munitions. 

That is how the forward force will be affected. Every one of my 

strike group commanders that comes back is coming back on fumes 

when it comes to munitions. And this is the good stuff, if you will, 

the precision munitions, the ones that we are using for a very good 

reason. And so I know that General Milley feels that same shortage 

and that is an absolutely critical part of this recovery is the restock 

of our magazines with the munitions we need to prevail. 

General MILLEY. Congressman, for those that are deploying, we 

try to ensure that they get the maximum equipment and training. 

It is really the bench, as General Neller said. And then as Admiral 

Richardson said about munitions, we are critically short, and I am 

not going to go into it publicly and happy to do it in classified sessions, but a discussion of munitions is important. 

And for the Army, we actually, I didn’t realize this before becoming the chief, but we actually make the bombs for the aircraft that 

the Navy, Air Force, and Marines fly. They had all the precision 

stuff, but we make the basic bombs at our joint munitions facility 

for which we are responsible for. And next month, we are not going 

to be able to ship those bombs to our sister services for training. 
36 

Operational things will be taken care of, but at Nellis, at the different Red Flags, they are not going to have bombs to drop. They 

are not going to have that practice that ‘‘Fingers’’ just talked about, 

that General Goldfein just talked about. So munitions is critical 

and the shipping of those training munitions is going to cease here 

in the next month or two. 

And the other thing that we talk about is leader development. 

Missed training, missed opportunities. Say we miss 6 months of 

training, that is an entire generation of lieutenants and captains 

that are going to miss training that is never going to be made up, 

sergeants and so on. 

The other piece is, like this summer, we are not going to be able 

to run ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] summer camp, or 

military academy summer camp at West Point. We are going to 

have 74 percent of second lieutenants in the United States Army 

won’t get commissioned in fiscal year 2018 because they won’t be 

qualified because their summer camp is going to be missed this 

summer. 

So there is enormous amount of consequence in all kinds of areas 

if we go with the continuing resolution or return to BCA and we 

don’t get this budget and supplemental passed and quickly. 

Dr. WENSTRUP. Thank you, General. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Carbajal. 

Mr. CARBAJAL. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry and Ranking 

Member Smith. 

And thank you all for coming and addressing us today and thank 

you for your service. Even with a Budget Control Act repeal, we 

would not have a blank check and must prioritize as intelligently 

as possible. While some estimates put costs at an additional $1.2 

billion per 10,000 uniformed personnel, how do you reconcile the 

need to train and equip the current force with a desire to increase 

end strength? 

General MILLEY. For the Army, they are interlinked, the idea of 

the readiness of the force, the size, the capacity and capability of 

the force. Obviously, what we want for this budget, for 2017, is we 

want to fill holes. There are already holes existing in the forces; not 

increasing the force structure, the increased end strength is not to 

make the Army bigger in terms of number of brigades and divisions and so on. It is to make the units that do exist, whole. To 

make them capable of doing adequate levels of training. 

Training a unit at 65 or 70 percent strength is inadequate. You 

take 10 percent casualties in combat, maybe 15 percent, you are 

going to be a combat-ineffective unit. Yet we are training on a routine basis units at 65, 70, 75 percent strength at the training centers for the high-end collective training. 

So this increase in end strength, I want to be careful that it is 

not mischaracterized as an increase in the Army. It is not. It is a 

filling of the holes in the existing force structure, and I think that 

is an important piece of it, and that is how I would reconcile it. We 

are not increasing the brigades and divisions or any of that. We are 

just filling holes in the existing units. 

General GOLDFEIN. And I add, because it is the exact same thing 

in the Air Force. We are filling formations to do the mission that 

we have been given. 
37 

I will also tell you that you need those forces to actually achieve 

the training, to be able to build the time you need and the forces 

you need to support the training we have been talking about. And 

here is how sometimes this gets masked. So when I was a younger 

pilot, and I would show up at the aircraft, I would meet my crew 

chief, the dedicated crew chief and the assistant, and we walk 

around the airplane, and then I taxi to the end of the runway and 

a different crew would be there to meet me, and they would pull 

the pins and arm the aircraft and I would take off, and I would 

go to another destination, and a third crew would be there to meet 

me. 

Here is what often happens when you get to the shortfalls that 

we are seeing right now. Your taxi is slow because the same single 

crew chief has got to get to the end of the runway, because it is 

the same individual that is pulling your pins and arming you. And 

then you have to fly slow because that guy has got to get on a C– 

17 and fly to the next location to be able to meet you. That is a 

vignette of some of the ways that we are managing the smaller 

force. 

So to General Milley’s point, this is not about growing the Air 

Force or the Army. This is about filling holes. 

General NELLER. I would say for us it is a little bit different. 

This body authorized an increase in 3,000 Marines. And those Marines are going to do different missions than the 183,000, 184,000 

are doing today because we have a requirement to develop different 

capabilities that we think we need for the future fight. So if that 

money is not there and we can’t grow the force, we are going to 

develop those capabilities, but it is going to come out of that 

182,000 base. So 3,000 Marines that are doing something today are 

going to do something different. And that is going to reduce our capability in those particular areas. 

So we have got to grow these new capabilities. Yeah, there is 

going to be some filling of shortfalls in maintenance and other 

places, but ours is different. We have got to build a force that is 

ready to fight what we think we are going to face in 2025. 

Mr. CARBAJAL. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I yield 

back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Stefanik. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you to our witnesses for your leadership and for your 

service. 

In my district, which is New York’s 21st District, I represent two 

of our Nation’s premier career military installations: Fort Drum, 

which is home of the 10th Mountain Division, and Kesselring, 

which is a naval nuclear training facility. 

My first question is for General Milley, and it is regarding 

Army’s aviation readiness. 

The 10th Mountain Combat Aviation Brigade is currently supporting Operation Atlantic Resolve throughout EUCOM [U.S. European Command], and I have serious concerns that the CR could 

limit future aviation capabilities and training opportunities, like 

the ongoing deployment of the 10th Mountain. Could you describe 

how a CR would impact the Army’s aviation readiness, specifically 
38 

its training, and, on top of that, the pilot shortage that the Army 

is already experiencing? 

General MILLEY. Thanks, Congresswoman. I appreciate that and 

‘‘climb to glory’’ for the mighty 10th Mountain Division, a shout-out 

to the north country. A continuing resolution or a return to BCA 

would have a significant, negative effect on Army rotary-wing aviation. 

We are already short 741 pilots, which we are trying, if we can 

get the budget passed with the supplemental, we are trying to 

make that up. But if we don’t get the budget passed with the supplemental, we are not going to make that up and that is going to 

increase several hundred more. And that is across the entire total 

Army with the Active, the National Guard, and the U.S. Army Reserve. 

For the National Guard specifically, there are about 1,300 pilot 

seats available in a given year that won’t be available in the following year as a result of a continuing resolution. Those would be 

National Guard and Reserve seats. There are about another 1,000 

seats that might not be available for the Regular Army. 

We are going to try to preserve and fence the flying hour program, those already qualified pilots that are in units, although I 

must mention that the standard is about 14 hours, 15 hours a 

month of rotary-wing flying. We have reduced that over the last 8 

years, so the new normal, if you will, is something around the 12 

or 13 hours, but we are going to preserve the 12 or 13 hours. 

We don’t like the new normal, but the flying hours program will 

try to fence that. For units that are deploying, we will make sure 

that they get the appropriate levels of training to deploy into combat. 

And the last piece is upgrading the fleet. The continuing resolution or a BCA is going to prevent us from putting active protection 

systems for missile defense on the aircraft. We will not be able to 

upgrade some of the modernization efforts that we have inside the 

cockpits. We are going to be short on the munitions and Hellfires, 

et cetera, for the Apaches. And most importantly, we are not going 

to be able to buy the additional Apaches we need to fill the holes 

in the existing force structure, for both the Regular Army and the 

National Guard. It will be a significant negative impact on Army 

aviation. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, General Milley. 

And my second question is for Admiral Richardson. I understand 

the second moored training ship [MTS] requires a new start and 

full funding this year to provide training for nuclear operators, and 

I am asking this question in context of Kesselring. 

What is the current status of the second MTS and how would a 

CR create challenges for the Navy if it is not funded and allowed 

to start in fiscal year 2017? 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Ma’am, great question, and thanks for 

your support of Kesselring and everything that they do up there. 

There has been a fair amount of talk about a balanced approach 

and that everything that has to do with national health and particularly national security doesn’t all reside in defense. And Kesselring is a great example of that, where a lot of that site is supported 

by the Department of Energy and the NNSA [National Nuclear Se-
39 

curity Administration]. And so it is critical that we understand 

those relationships. 

And if we are not training operators and developing new nuclear 

technologies up there, we are training them at our moored training 

ships. And the second moored training ship is the next generation. 

Right now, we are using ships that were built in the 1960s to do 

that. They are the oldest operating nuclear power plants I think in 

the country, and it is time to recapitalize those. 

This is a new start. There has been a lot of talk about funding 

flexibility. The continuing resolution is the opposite of funding 

flexibility. It is absolute funding rigidity. You have to continue to 

do the things you would like to stop, you can’t do the things you 

would like to start. One of the things I would like to start is the 

second moored training ship, and I can’t do it with a CR. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Suozzi. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First, let me say I am very sobered and humbled by the responsibility that we have listening to your testimony. It is really incredible the vocation that you have made with your lives and how dedicated you are to this mission that you have. 

I am new to this job. I am formerly a mayor and a county executive of a large county with a $2.8 billion budget. I am a freshman 

in the minority and don’t have as much influence as I would like 

to have, obviously. But I know that there is an important mission 

that the Congress has, and I really want you to know that I am 

going to do the best I can to communicate that we are dealing with 

people’s lives here, the people that work for you. And what we do 

has a tremendous impact on their lives. And as you pointed out so 

eloquently, on their morale and on their effectiveness. 

I want to just look at some big picture things. The overall budget 

in 2016 was about $580 billion, and personnel made up 24 percent 

of that overall budget, and O&M [operations and maintenance] 

made up 42 percent of that budget. So that is a big number, 42 percent of the budget for O&M, and 20 percent went to procurement 

and 13 percent went for other. And it is going to be different for 

each of your services. 

You know, the Army, they might not be procuring as much in 

equipment, for example. But you are all spending about this 40 

percent in O&M. I just want to ask you from a big picture perspective, does that make sense that we are spending as much as we are 

on O&M, on operation and maintenance, or should that be something over time that we are trying to change? 

So, go ahead. 

General NELLER. Well, we are a little bit different. I mean, our 

people account is about 65 percent of our budget, at least the green 

Marine Corps budget is about 65 percent. Our O&M, probably 

about 15 percent. Acquisition and then the facilities make up the 

rest. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Now, a lot of your equipment is in the Navy though, 

right? 

General NELLER. No, our aviation is naval aviation, but all our 

ground equipment, we own our ground equipment. So, you know, 
40 

we are a small percentage of the overall force. But most of our cost 

is people. 

So I take your point, but if we have people costs or we have to 

increase the size of the force, or the force gets more senior or the 

pay raise that is voted upon, then those bills where we have to 

make those trades and the trades are in those other areas, in operation and maintenance and procurement modernization or in facilities. And so then you start to build up a deficit in those areas. 

And you have got a force that is—that’s what a hollow force is, 

is a large force. So there are trades. We can reduce the size of the 

force, we can reduce acquisitions. So those are the puts and takes 

that always go on as we manage the budget, but we are probably 

not a good example of what you are looking at as far as a large 

amount of O&M. 

General GOLDFEIN. Actually, no mystery for an Air Force. Older 

aircraft are more expensive to fly, period. And so what happens 

with us is you get an average aircraft age of 27 years. And when 

I go out and talk to airmen, you know, every once in a while I will 

find somebody who has been driving a 27-year-old car, not many. 

But when you find something like that, one of the things they 

know is they know that that company stopped building parts for 

that car 11 years after. 

So when you are 27 years old, right, there was a Fox News special that maybe you saw that had B–1 maintainers that were actually cruising museums to find parts to keep those B–1s flying. That 

is what it takes to keep older aircraft flying. So when you look at 

our O&M costs going up, it is because that is a direct result of aircraft age. 

And so as we try to procure and try to get that aircraft age going 

down, what comes along with that, quite frankly, is a bigger bill 

than the procurement cost is the sustainment costs over the life 

cycle of that weapon system. So we drive that down as much as we 

possibly can. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Admiral. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, I will just say I think General 

Goldfein and I share that we are a pretty capital-intensive force, 

right? So we operate a lot of stuff and we have to fuel it, maintain 

it, that sort of thing. And so we have got about between 25 and 30 

percent of our budget in the Navy is operations, and I think the 

general captured it very well. 

Newer things don’t require so much maintenance, and so this renewal of the force at the end of the day, it helps us do our business 

for less operating and maintenance costs. 

Mr. SUOZZI. So for the two of you, as a general rule, you know, 

if you could have the Congress work with you effectively and you 

could get your way over time, would you like to see your O&M be 

a lower percentage of your budget? And where would you rather 

see an increase, in procurement or in personnel? 

Admiral RICHARDSON. I think that both for operations and for 

procurement, stable, adequate funding. That is the way I would 

like to partner with Congress the most. 

Mr. SUOZZI. General. 

General MILLEY. For the Army, we committed about just a little 

bit less than 50 percent for personnel costs, which is, you know, no 
41 

surprise. Cost of labor is Economics 101, and that is going to be 

your expensive factor of production. 

For us, O&M accounts, as you said, just under, in our case, just 

under 40 percent. So what is operation maintenance for the Army? 

It is ammunition, it is fuel or POL [petroleum, oil, lubricants] products for the vehicles, flight hours for aviation, and, importantly, 

parts. 

So our O&M costs have gone up in the last couple of years. Why? 

Because we are trying to intensify our levels of readiness and 

training for combined arms operations against a near-peer threat. 

We have been fighting for 16 consecutive years against guerrillas 

and terrorists in tennis shoes with IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and AKs [AK–47 rifles] in desert terrain in the Middle East. 

We don’t know, no one knows, where the next conflict will occur. 

We don’t want to be preparing for the last war for the next one. 

So we don’t know. We have to keep all the cards on the table for 

the U.S. military to be able to fight a wide range of threats. So we 

have reemphasized combined arms, higher end combat, unless you 

are specifically deploying. That training is having a positive effect 

over the last couple of years, about 24 to 36 months or so. We are 

seeing improvements, slightly, in our readiness in that regard. 

If we don’t pass the budget with the supplemental and we continue with the CR or we go to BCA funding, that level of training 

is going to come to a halt and that readiness improvement is going 

to stop. So we need to continue funding O&M in order to do that 

for current day readiness. 

For procurement, in the Army’s case, what we have done, we 

have biased current readiness, today’s fight and, you know, the 

next couple of years’ readiness. And we are really mortgaging the 

future, in terms of our procurement. We only put 20 percent of our 

money into research, development, science, technology. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Yes, I saw that. 

General MILLEY. And we need to improve that. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Okay, well, thank you very much, General. 

And again, I know that our mission is to do our jobs to try to 

help you do your jobs. So thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Russell. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to all of 

you for being here today. 

This body historically has wrestled with these issues since we 

have been wearing tri-corner hats. I am mindful of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War after Bull Run. The congressional investigation of the sinking of the USS Maine and how did 

we let that happen? The Joint Committee on the Investigation of 

the Aerial Attack on Pearl Harbor and what went wrong, or the 

one on the communist attack on South Korea and how did we get 

so surprised. 

These are but a few of the examples, but the story is familiar. 

Service chiefs, given shifting, declining budgets that makes the dollars that did arrive less flexible and less valuable; endless questions by people like me, in previous lives, wondering why so much 

treasure must be spent when there are domestic priorities that demand immediate action, and we can eke out savings that will realize all of our dreams. 
42 

Whatever saving that has been realized by this American bad 

habit of unpreparedness, it has been more than horrifically compensated for by scores more in spending and thousands more of 

American dead. I don’t know, Mr. Chairman, what the next committee will be named, but I already know what its recommendations will be. 

Mr. Chairman, I don’t want to waste any more of these warriors’ 

time. We need to give them what they ask for, and I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Shea-Porter. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. And I thank you all for being 

here. 

And I have had 6 years on this committee, and I think this is 

about the grimmest it has gotten. And so clearly, we are not addressing these really crucial issues. 

I want to put a little bit of a change in the direction of the questioning. I understand, you know, that we are falling behind in 

equipment, et cetera. But I am looking out at the world now as 

they look in on us. 

And I think I agree with you, General Goldfein, that when you 

were talking about people wondering, you know, are they talking 

about it at home? I don’t think we are talking about it enough right 

here. I think that what happens is these committees are like silos. 

And everybody is incredibly busy. I just ran from another committee hearing, but we have to somehow or another address this. So 

I recognize the urgency, and I thank you. 

So what I am looking at right now is, what about the rest of the 

world? Is the conversation going around, you know, in your profession? Are friends worried that we are not going to be able to keep 

our commitments or we lack the will to keep our commitments? 

And are our enemies hopeful that we are going to just, you know, 

get so bogged down in this, in our budget issues, that we are not 

going to properly fund? 

And I would appreciate hearing from each one of you on that. 

General NELLER. I will go first. I think the simple answer is yes. 

Our allies—our strategy is based on our ability to build partner capacity and that they are going to be there with us if we have to 

face any of the future challenges. In order to do that, we have to 

be able to show up for exercises, work interoperability, do things 

with them, have them procure equipment that is interoperable with 

us, ideally made by the same manufacturers, by American manufacturers. 

We need to make it a little bit easier to be our partner across 

all areas, intel sharing, acquisition, foreign military sales. But I 

think they look to us and they have looked to us since the end of 

World War II when this world was created where the United States 

was the guarantor of peace and stability in the world. And whether 

it be NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] or ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] or any other security apparatus, or the United Nations, they look to the United States. 

And so it is important that we as military members go out there 

in the profession of arms, not as Department of State or ministry 

of foreign affairs, we maintain these relationships, and that we 

have to be able to go to our partners and say we are going to be 

there for you. And then they can pass that back onto their political 
43 

leaders, because we occupy a very interesting space out there in 

the international world. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. 

General GOLDFEIN. Ma’am, you know, technology changes over 

time, but the fundamentals of deterrence, I would argue, have not 

changed. It is capability times will. And the times is important because if either side of those is zero it equals zero. 

And so what I will tell you is that we have the luxury, not only 

as Joint Chiefs but throughout our career, of having developed relationships of trust and confidence with our counterparts around 

the world. And I can’t tell you how important those relationships 

are. We call them mil-to-mil or military-to-military. And I think we 

could all give you examples of where sometimes diplomatically we 

may not have had agreements with a country, but our relationships 

with fellow airmen, soldiers, sailors, or Marines are vital. 

And so we keep those long. And very often, to what General 

Neller was talking about, our commitment that brings that capability and brings that will is to the relationships that we build. You 

know, this is one of those questions where it would be inappropriate to do a big, broad brush over, you know, general concerns, 

because the reality is it is a bit mixed bag as you go around the 

world. 

But I can just tell you that we are committed to making sure 

that we keep those relationships alive and well. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Ma’am, thanks for a great question. I 

would say that, and I appreciate you looking around the world and 

directing our attention there as well. You know, in the very short 

term we are in a very unstable environment right now. There are 

a lot of governments coming into place, elections, the world is shifting in many ways, including our administration as, you know, they 

settle in, we settle in. 

And in times of great uncertainty, there also is the opportunity, 

I think, for a great miscalculation. And it is even more important, 

in my mind, that during these times of uncertainty we minimize 

that possibility of miscalculation by making sure we operate from 

a position of strength. 

And this strength will assure our allies that we will be there and 

not contribute to that uncertainty, not contribute to that instability. And it will also deter our enemies, so that even though a period of transition, they will wake up every morning and say not 

today, this is not the day to start something. 

And so in the very near term and then I would say in the long 

term, and we can have a different conversation through the 2020s, 

we have got to ensure that we operate from a position of strength 

for assurance and deterrence. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Right. And I will add to that that this committee knows our responsibility and we are active in seeking the 

answers and recognizing that we have got to properly fund if we 

want you to do what we need you to do. So thank you. 

General MILLEY. I would echo my teammates here. Assuring allies is critical and we do that through presence, exercises, exchanges. Interoperability is important to readiness and capability 

overall with our allies. The United States has a great set of allies 
44 

and partners and friends around the world. I believe that is still 

strong, but we have to continue to make it strong. 

And virtual presence is actual absence, so we need to be there 

with them in the air, on the sea, and on the ground. And that will 

help reassure and stabilize various situations around the world. 

With respect to adversaries or enemies, you know, ‘‘Fingers’’ hit 

it on the head. It is capability plus will. The capability has to be 

real. It has to be seen. It has to be demonstrated. It has to be 

sensed. And your opponent needs to know that you have the will 

to use it. If you do that, then you will have peace through strength 

because you will definitely deter any rational actor on the other 

side. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. 

Thank you, Chairman, for the extra time. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Abraham. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, 

for being here. 

As vitally critical as our schools, our infrastructure, and certainly 

cures for cancer are—I am a physician and have certainly lost my, 

unfortunately, share of good people to that horrific disease—as important as all those are, I think we are all smart enough to understand that that makes no difference if we don’t have a country and 

national security. So certainly we want to, I want to give you what 

you ask to protect our country. 

And, General Milley, when you reminded us that our men and 

women in uniform unfortunately have to still rely on food stamps 

to feed their family, that is both a moral and ethical tragedy that 

I hope makes everyone angry. And we need to fix that problem. 

General Goldfein, I want to thank you for—I am a mission pilot 

for the Civil Air Patrol, the Air Force auxiliary, and I fly for the 

Green Flag Program, which you had the foresight to actually start, 

which has been a phenomenal success, giving real-time training to 

our men and women on the ground. 

Last week, we heard from the vice chiefs. We were talking about 

the pilot shortage that you have referenced already, and the intellectual property and the institutional knowledge that these pilots, 

you said it takes at least 10 years to train that great pilot, and that 

is certainly true, that with this CR, retaining that pilot with what 

the airlines are now offering on the civilian side is almost an impossible task. 

My question is, what other areas of the DOD do any of you see 

where we are losing this intellectual property, this institutional 

knowledge, because of the CR? 

And I will start with you, General Goldfein. 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, sir. You know, the reality of the pilot 

shortage is it is actually not a military problem, it is a national 

challenge that we have all got to face. And Chairman, this is something that I think we need to work together, because here are the 

basics. We in the United States Air Force produce about 1,200 pilots per year. The airlines, based on their projections, need 4,500 

every year for the next decade. We are not going to buy our way 

out of that challenge. This is a supply-demand mismatch nationally 

to be able to produce the pilots we need, to service the commercial, 
45 

the business, the private, and the military aviation needs of the 

Nation. 

So first and foremost, we have to have a national approach to 

this that looks at, what are the incentives we can put in place to 

increase the supply going up for the pilots that we need to service 

all of these bins? And then what we need to do across the military, 

I would offer, is to approach it from a combination of quality of life 

and quality of service. 

Quality of life we tend to focus on, which is the financial piece 

and taking that financial burden off of the family. And that is important. But I would argue that quality of service is equally, if not 

more important. 

That we have got to ensure that our pilots, our maintainers that 

are getting the resources they need to train, that they feel like they 

can be competitive and the best that they can be. That they are 

part of a unit, that they are part of something that is better than 

themselves. That they know that they are in an organization where 

they are valued, that we take care of their families. 

All of the cultural things that go along with wearing these uniforms, that is as important as anything we do financially. And I 

would just offer that this is something we have to work together, 

because it is a national crisis. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Admiral. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, I will just add on, other areas that are 

under stress just from this competition for people that I described 

earlier, certainly pilots, as we have mentioned, our cyber forces are 

very much under stress. Our nuclear-trained sailors are under 

stress. And our special forces have been extremely busy in this war 

and they are also under stress. 

I will tell you, just as we have said, none of these, we can’t compete in money. And you know what? They didn’t join for money. I 

mean, we need to give them adequate resources to live. And I think 

with this bill and supplemental, we will be meeting that responsibility. 

But these folks, they joined to sail and fly and operate at the 

high end, become the most lethal force on the earth to protect and 

defend the Constitution of the United States. And that is all we 

have to do is keep that covenant with them and they will keep 

coming. If they start to doubt that, they are going to go to where 

the money is. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Banks. 

Mr. BANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, 

for being here and for your service. 

I am rather unique on the committee. I don’t serve a district that 

has an Active Duty military base. However, in my district in northeast Indiana, we are the proud home of Indiana’s Air National 

Guard 122nd Fighter Wing. The men and women of the 122nd 

serve our country with distinction and often go into harm’s way in 

service to our Nation, just as our Active Duty troops do as well. Yet 

I am concerned that the prospect of a CR will have an even greater 

impact on our National Guard and Reserve forces than the Active 

Component. 
46 

General Goldfein, while I am dismayed at the prospect of yet another CR, can we have some sort of commitment from you or what 

kind of commitment can you make on behalf of your branch that 

a continuing resolution will not have a disproportionate impact on 

our National Guard or Reserve forces? 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, I can tell you this. I can’t do the mission 

without the Air National Guard, period. You go into a cockpit of a 

C–17 today and ask the crew that is in the front of that cockpit, 

okay, who is Active, who is Guard, and who is Reserve? I can’t tell 

you the number of times that I have flown in C–17s and all three 

hands go up. You actually can’t tell us apart. So we, first and foremost, we can’t do the mission without the Air National Guard. 

So my commitment to you is that this is one Air Force and I am 

their chief. And so I am going to make sure that the Air National 

Guard has everything it needs commensurate with the force because we are one Air Force to accomplish the mission we are given. 

Mr. BANKS. I appreciate that strong statement and commitment. 

Another frequent concern that I hear related to the supply chain 

and spares account that are required to keep our A–10s flying is 

related to the suppliers that are no longer in the A–10 business. 

So can you speak a little bit to how the continuing resolution would 

affect or impact the supply chain of the A–10 specifically? 

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, it is not so much that it will have that 

much impact on the supply chain. It will have more of an impact 

in terms of our ability to take those A–10s and put them in depot 

maintenance because that depot maintenance line will stop. And it 

will stop because the civilian hiring freeze and a combination of 

other things. 

I am going to have to figure out, you know, we are each going 

to have to figure out how to pay the bill. Okay? So for the Air 

Force, it is $2.8 billion. To find $2.8 billion, one of the things I am 

going to have to do is stop a lot of depot maintenance lines. And 

the A–10 will be directly affected. 

And it is not linear, meaning at the end of that timeframe when 

we get appropriations, it is not like you just start the line back up 

immediately. Because all those workers have left, we haven’t been 

able to hire their backfill, and they have lost their qualifications. 

And so there is going to be a spin-up time at the end when we get 

an appropriation to get those lines back up and running. 

So what you have in the middle is a number of aircraft. And, oh, 

by the way, the aircraft that have been flying in the fight are coming due for their maintenance, and so it continues that backlog 

over time and what you end up doing is grounding aircraft. 

And so while I could buy all the parts in the world, if I chose 

to be able to do that within my flexibility, those parts will sit on 

the shelf because I don’t have the workforce I need to put those 

parts in the airplane. 

Mr. BANKS. I appreciate the insight. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. McSally. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony and your service and 

your leadership and your candor about the impact on the men and 

women in uniform who are putting their lives on the line to protect 

our freedoms. And I really appreciate it. And I hope there are a lot 
47 

of people out there listening and there will be a lot of stories about 

what you said today. 

Admiral Richardson, I want to start off with a story that troubled me about a hundred pilots that are essentially refusing to fly. 

Having been a pilot myself, to get to the point where you don’t 

trust your equipment and you think your life and your student’s 

life is in danger is pretty severe. And now, some of that is because 

of the aging fleet and the resource implications that have been discussed today. But it sounds like some of it is also a leadership 

issue. 

So can you please comment on what the Navy is doing to address 

this issue? That is going to be impacting, obviously, our readiness, 

our pipeline, morale, and the lives of the men and women. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Certainly. Thank you for the question. 

And as has been said before, this is the top safety priority for naval 

aviation. It is a vexing problem. And this is not a resource-constrained thing. This is an area where we are applying every bit of 

resources we need. Cost is not an issue as we approach this problem. 

It, as you said, is directly related to crew safety. And it has got 

the full attention of all leadership in the naval aviation—— 

Ms. MCSALLY. You are aware that, some of the quotes by instructors, that is not how they felt, right? 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Right. Well, so, let me just continue my 

answer. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Yes. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. To address this, we have established a 

dedicated team. And I am going to take a little bit of time to step 

through it because it is complicated. And that team will stay on 

this from a technical standpoint until it is fixed. But as I said, it 

is a complex problem and it requires a multidimensional solution. 

First and foremost is the human dimension. And communication 

is a big part of that. And so when we heard about the concerns of 

our instructor pilots in our training wings, we sent, you know, a 

team down there to make sure that we fully understood their concerns and they fully understood what we were doing. 

I think what we had there, more than anything else, was a 

breakdown in communication. And those teams are on-site now. 

They are working through each of the training wings. And they are 

resolving their differences in perspective and differences in communication. 

And so, in addition, you know, from the human perspective, you 

know, the crew and their awareness is going to be the most important thing towards minimizing risk here. And so we have improved 

training to make sure they recognize the symptoms of hypoxia and 

related effects. 

We have improved their training on emergency procedures. That 

includes training in simulators where they actually feel those effects and go through those procedures. And as I said, we are making sure that we are listening and they all feel like they can be 

talking to leadership so we understand where their anxiety and 

concerns are. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Great. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. It is a constant effort. 
48 

Ms. MCSALLY. I appreciate that. I would like to follow up more 

with you maybe after the hearing. I appreciate it and would like 

to stay in touch on the impacts on that side. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. I will make sure we do that. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Thank you, I appreciate it. 

General Goldfein, you have eloquently expressed the challenges 

of a CR and how it is going to impact flying operations, saying 

squadrons will be grounded in June. I don’t know if everybody who 

is listening fully understands what that means. So even to just localize it for Davis-Monthan, so the Bulldogs that I commanded are 

over shwacking bad guys right now, when they come home in the 

summer they are going to be grounded, like, no flying, no upgrades, 

no training. They are done, right? 

General GOLDFEIN. So, ma’am, what I would tell you is that if 

you don’t have a unit on your base that is either preparing to go, 

that is directly preparing to go into conflict, you will have the 

equivalent of a no-fly zone over your base. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Yeah, this is unprecedented. I know it happened 

for a little while a few years ago. But this is unprecedented in the 

impact it is going to have. They need to be ready to go anywhere 

in the world on 24 hours’ notice, as you know. 

Similarly, the EC–130s, they are only the capability in the world, 

and the cross-decking, the training and everything, same thing, 

right? They are done? 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, ma’am. And so, Congress gave us acquisition authorities and told us to use those authorities to speed up 

acquisition. There is no better example than Compass Call, electronic warfare asset in high demand in this fight and it is going 

to be a central asset in any fight. So we took those authorities and 

we looked at how could we rapidly take the exact same equipment 

that is on the current EC–130 and cross-deck it. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Right. But with a CR? 

General GOLDFEIN. It stops. 

Ms. MCSALLY. It stops, okay. 

General GOLDFEIN. That contract going forward stops. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Red Flags, we talked about Air Warriors, Angel 

Thunder, same thing. Those that are going to deploy to rescue 

Americans in harm’s way, their training is done as well. 

General GOLDFEIN. No, ma’am, be very clear, there will be no 

degradation to folks that we are preparing to go into the fight. 

Ms. MCSALLY. Okay, I hear you. 

General GOLDFEIN. Everyone is trained to go. 

Ms. MCSALLY. But as you know, that is just-in-time training. 

General GOLDFEIN. That is right. 

Ms. MCSALLY. But the cumulative effect of missing out training 

throughout the year does have a degradation, is that fair? 

General GOLDFEIN. Absolutely. 

Ms. MCSALLY. And we have got a thousand fighter pilots short 

and you are grounding pilots. And we are expecting them to stay? 

That is insane. You agree? 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. MCSALLY. All right, thank you. I yield back. Thanks. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hunter. 
49 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, great to see 

you. 

I guess let me ask my first question is, how do you mitigate the 

risk of not fighting? And let me give an example. Haven’t had a 

naval battle in a long time. I mean, ships shooting at ships with 

cannons, right? We haven’t had air-to-air combat in quite a long 

time. The places we are at right now, we have air superiority. We 

know how to set up FOBs [forward operating bases], we know how 

to do life support with the best expeditionary military since the Romans. I mean, it is amazing what all of you do and what our services can do. How do you mitigate the risk of atrophy when it comes 

to facing peer competitor countries? 

And I am looking for one word. 

General MILLEY. Training. 

Mr. HUNTER. Training. 

General MILLEY. That is it. 

Mr. HUNTER. All right. 

General MILLEY. What it is all about. 

Mr. HUNTER. That was my question. So it is training. 

General MILLEY. To follow on Ms. McSally, it is not just airplanes that are shutting down training in July. The entire Army’s 

training is shutting down except those guys that are deploying. 

Navy, same thing in the Navy and the Marines as well. It is across 

the board. And training is the answer. That is how you mitigate 

it. 

Mr. HUNTER. How does training get slammed by the CR? 

General MILLEY. It stops. 

Mr. HUNTER. It stops, right? 

General MILLEY. Right. 

Mr. HUNTER. Yes, what happened with the units? 

General MILLEY. That is with the OPTEMPO. What happens is 

the OPTEMPO money, the gas, the parts, the ammunition, that 

ceases. And so people still get paid, but there is no training going 

on. So what ends up happening is, is if called upon, this is for the 

bench now, if called upon for some unknown contingency that no 

one can predict right this moment, but if it happens, people are 

going to be going out the door with equipment that is less than optimally maintained, units that are not properly trained, and we are 

going to be putting young men and women into harm’s way that 

are not ready for that level of combat. That is what is going to happen with the lack of training. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. Sir, I would just add that also there is a 

lot of that contained in that supplemental. 

General MILLEY. That is right. 

Admiral RICHARDSON. And so it is the combination of both that 

we need favorable attention to, not only the fiscal year 2017 budget, but there is a lot of training, operating money in that supplemental. 

Mr. HUNTER. You both probably have the same answer. 

Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for your leadership on 

this. You came out very publicly and said you are not going to vote 

for a CR that is for defense. I just want to just say thanks for your 

leadership on this. We are behind you. 

Thank you, gentlemen. I yield back the balance my time. 
50 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Cheney. 

Ms. CHENEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to 

start by thanking all of you very much for your service, for being 

here today. 

Associate myself also with the comments of Mr. Hunter and the 

chairman; I will not support a CR either, in terms of the damage 

that it will do to the Defense Department. 

We are engaged, as you all know, in a whole range of crucial 

issues here on the Hill, issues that affect the Nation domestically, 

health care, tax reform. I would argue that none of those is as important as this issue we face today. And if we get this wrong, none 

of those matter either. 

That we are in a situation today, as you have all laid out during 

this hearing, that we have got to make sure that not only do we 

fill the gaps, but that we begin to rebuild our superiority. And in 

that regard, General Keane testified last year about the extent to 

which we are running the risk now of not prevailing in a fight in 

some circumstances. 

And I would like to ask each of you to talk about the shortfalls 

that we face, which you have detailed very effectively today, but 

talk about it in the context of the overall threat and as we see our 

own capabilities decline in too many instances, it seems to me we 

have seen the capabilities of our adversaries increasing and advancing. 

And so whether we are talking about ISIS, North Korea, China, 

Russia, Iran, if you could just talk for a little bit about the extent 

to which our declining capabilities have just created a gap which 

may be a gap of historic proportions in terms of where our adversaries are. 

General Neller, I will start with you. 

General NELLER. I think we have all watched this over the last 

5 to 6 years as we have been continually involved in the daily grind 

of the counterterrorism fight. We have seen the growth of the capabilities of the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans. On the countering to that is our OPTEMPO has stayed high 

because of what is going on fiscally, our ability to modernize and 

start to train to face that type of a threat and develop the capabilities through equipment and training and leverage technology. We 

have made a move. We started to do that. It is not like we have 

been sitting here ignoring it, but to get to that point, while at the 

same time do what we do on a day-to-day basis. 

It is the equivalent of rebuilding the airplane or the vehicle as 

you are driving down the road moving toward the day-to-day efforts. You are trying to rebuild the thing in motion, which is difficult enough, but if you don’t have the resources to do that, and 

fifth-generation stuff is expensive. It is. And we all want to drive 

down the costs, we all want to get it faster, but to do that we need 

to have adequate resourcing, and it has got to be stable. 

We are not going to get a good price point on any of this stuff 

if we can’t tell the vendor, okay, we are in for 3, 4, 5, 6 years because we know we can buy five for the price of three-and-a-half, or 

whatever it is, if we can get the money to get the long-term contract. So, that is the dilemma we face. 
51 

It would be great if we could stop and get a time-out. People talk 

about, you know, the interwar period; we have had no interwar period. We have been since 9/11 at war, and I don’t see there being 

an interwar period, which makes it difficult, but it also makes it 

necessary that the resources are there to maintain the current 

fight, but to build up the capability for the fight that we hope 

doesn’t come. And if we are ready and we have the capability, the 

probability that it will come goes down, but we can’t assume that 

it won’t. 

Ms. CHENEY. Thank you. 

General Goldfein, could you also talk, I know we are focused on 

the CR, but the Budget Control Act and sequestration, as a whole, 

and whether we really can do what we need to do before we repeal 

those. 

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, ma’am, and I would just tell you that 

one of the things that you have heard from us here is that when 

called to go, we go. We have heard all the impacts of a CR. We are 

going to cancel exercises, we are going to cancel training. But let 

no one question for a second that when the United States militaries 

are called upon, we go. 

And when you take the combined military might, although none 

of us, as Joint Chiefs, are happy with our current level of readiness, for those that may be listening ought to have no question in 

their mind that if they take us on they lose. 

I will give you just one example. You know, if Mr. Putin makes 

a bad choice, he will face the combined economic and military 

might of 28 nations in the most powerful alliance we have ever 

been part of, and that spells his loss. 

So we are going to work with you on ensuring that we can manage this to the best of our ability. We have been through sequestration before, and I think we would all tell you we still haven’t recovered from that. And one of the worst things we did during that entire period when we shut down the government was we broke faith 

with our civilian workforce, and especially our young civilian workforce that don’t have the luxury of 4 to 5 months of pay, you know, 

in the bank that can cover them while they are out of work. 

And we had so many civilian workers, young civilian workers, 

that left the government service because they couldn’t pay the bills. 

Or those that didn’t pay the bills then had security challenge 

issues because one of the things we look at are their financial reports. And they left government service, talented young men and 

women, and never came back. We can’t go through that again. 

Ms. CHENEY. My time has expired, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all for your time, your testimony, and 

your service. 

You know, the earlier conversation General Milley had, Mr. Russell referenced to some historical parallels, reminds me that tomorrow, April 6th, is the 100th anniversary of our entry into World 

War I. 

You know, we tend to think about World War II and Patton’s 

dash across Europe, Iwo Jima, those incredible battles, but the 

thing about World War I is nobody ever thought it would happen. 

They all traded with each other, the rulers were related to one an-
52 

other, and they thought they could out-bluff each other, that there 

might be a skirmish, and yet a whole generation of European men 

were wiped out in World War I. It just, I think, should be a sober 

reminder to all of us about the stakes of what we are talking about 

here. They are incredibly high. 

And I appreciate you all’s testimony; as you have heard many 

times, I think it has been sobering. 

The bottom line is we have to do better than that, than CRs, 

than not passing a supplemental, than sequestration. We have to 

do better than that. 

The hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:43 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

APRIL 5, 2017 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

APRIL 5, 2017 

(57) 

Opening Statement of Hon. William M. "Mac" Thornberry 

Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services 

HEARING ON 

"Consequences to the Military of a Continuing Resolution" 

April5, 2017 

After having explored the next steps of defense reform in yesterday's 

hearing, we now tum to what is needed to repair and rebuild our military. 

And I am gratefl!l to each of the distinguished Service Chiefs for being with 

us today. 

There is widespread agreement that funding cuts under the Budget 

Control Act, plus a series of continuing resolutions, coupled with the pace 

of required deployments have damaged the U.S. military. I believe that the 

damage has gone far deeper than most of us realize, requiring more time 

and more money to repair than is generally expected. 

There is plenty of responsibility to go around for the current state of 

affairs-with both Congress and the Obama Administration, with both 

Republicans and Democrats, with both military and civilian leadership. 

Among other problems, defense funding got caught up in the 

partisan back and fmih on other issues and has even been held hostage for 

other priorities. We need to get back to evaluating our defense needs on 

their own without regard to any agreement or disagreement we may have 

on other issues. The men and women who serve deserve at least that. 

The most important thing now is to repair the damage. We have the 

chance to begin doing so by passing a full appropriations bill for this year, 

acting favorably on the supplemental request, and then enacting adequate 

authorization and appropriations for fiscal year 2018. 

The immediate issue before us is the expiration of the current 

continuing resolution on April28. We in the House passed a full 

appropriations bill for FY 2017 on March 8 by a vote of371 to 48. The 

Senate has not yet acted on it. 

As I have said before, I will not vote for a defense continuing resolution 

for the rest ofFY17. It would simply do too much hann. 

Fundamental to fixing a problem is to expose it and to understand it. I 

understand that we must all be cautious about exposing our vulnerabilities. 

But in order to do better for the military and for the country, we must have 

the best professional military judgment of our witnesses today on the 

current state of our military forces and on what a CR or inadequate funding 

would mean. To get on a better track we aU have to be clear and candid 

with the American people. That is the purpose oftoday's hearing. 
58 

Statement of Ranking Member Adam Smith 

House Armed Services Committee Hearing: 

Consequences to the Military of a Continuing Resolution 

April5, 2017 

I thank the Chainnan tor holding this hearing, and I thank each of the 

service chiefs for appearing today. Their expert perspectives on military 

preparedness and how it might be affected by an annualized continuing 

resolution are vital to our deliberation of the issue. We are now in the second 

half of fiscal year 2017, and the federal government is still operating under a 

continuing resolution. By April 28, Congress must pass an appropriations bill, 

another continuing resolution, or a combination of the two to avoid a 

government shutdown. 

Another continuing resolution would undermine timely and productive 

action. As I stated for the record when the service vice chiefs recently 

testified, the banns inflicted by the Budget Control Act (BCA) caps, years of 

budgetary standoffs leading to several threatened government shutdowns, one 

actual government shutdown, and congressional overreliance on continuing 

resolutions have combined to foster fiscal uncertainty, which has weakened 

the abilities of the Department of Defense and every other Federal 

Department and Agency to invest confidently and to fund critical activities. 

Uncertainty challenges the military's ability to fulfill the national defense 

strategy, and uncertainties regarding ground force end strength totals, the 

number of serviceable Navy ships and aircraft, the numbers of Air Force 

bomber and tactical fighter aircraft, other major weapon system procurement 

programs, and combat unit readiness are just a few defense-related examples 

of the numerous unsettling effects that the congressional failure to enact a 

comprehensive, deficit-reduction plan has imparted on governmental 

operations. Extended reliance on a continuing resolution in fiscal year 2017 

would only perpetuate these uncertainties and further frustrate important plans 

and priorities. 

It is, therefore, high time for Congress to put the country's fiscal house 

in order. I have long held that it must begin by eliminating sequestration in its 

entirety and by subsequently establishing a long-term, discretionary spending 

plan that advances national interests on a broad front. Unless the law is 

changed, sequestration would be applied in fiscal year 2018 through fiscal 

year 2021 to a wide variety of discretionary spending programs. Even the 

Administration's request for roughly $30 billion in supplemental 

appropriations for the national defense budget function for fiscal year 20 17 

and its request for approximately $603 billion in national defense base budget 

funding for fiscal year 2018 depend on Congress adjusting the BCA caps. 

However, securing defense dollars alone, especially at the expense of nondefense accounts, is unacceptable. Investments in homeland security, law 
59 

enforcement, emergency preparedness and response capacities, veterans 

services, diplomatic efforts, and foreign assistance programs also need to be 

prioritized, and we need to reinvest heavily in sound infrastructure, research 

and innovation, education, health care, public safety, housing, the workforce, 

small businesses and many other facets of enduring national strength. 

National security involves much more than defense. I also wish to reiterate 

that deticit-reduction goals cannot be achieved through cuts alone. Increased 

revenues and changes in mandatory spending are integral to the solution. 

As we focus on addressing the needs of the military, we need to strike 

the right balance with respect to providing resources and with respect to 

maintaining an effective joint force. The National Defense Authorization Act 

for Fiscal Year 2017 authorized $611.2 billion for national defense. Assuming 

that appropriations supporting that top-line amount eventually follow, it is a 

considerable sum. Given the complex diversity of the current security 

environment, one can make a strong argument for increasing funding for 

defense, but we clearly need to find new ways to realize savings within the 

defense budget to maximize effectiveness. I concur with former Secretary 

Gates' assertion that "not every defense dollar is sacred and well-spent, and 

that more of nearly everything is simply not sustainable." Simply throwing 

money at the defense budget is not a viable option. Rather, the legislative and 

the executive branches of government must work in concert to identify 

efficiencies that can be justifiably reinvested to good effect. 

We must also guard against making force structure adjustments that 

could potentially compromise military effectiveness. The modem joint force 

is a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated body of specialized roles and 

capabilities. Too much attention to any one element or detail risks the 

cohesion and readiness of the whole. As we evaluate methods for rebuilding 

readiness and the preferences of the individual services for improving it, we 

need to do so with a mind to optimizing the effectiveness of the joint force 

construct. We must invest wisely when it comes to national security. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to our witnesses' testimony. 
60 

RECORD VERSION 

STATEMENT BY 

GENERAL MARK A. MILLEY 

CHIEF OF STAFF UNITED STATES ARMY 

BEFORE THE 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

FIRST SESSION, 115TH CONGRESS 

ON 

CONSEQUENCES TO THE MILITARY OF A CONTINUING RESOLUTION 

APRIL 5, 2017 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 
61 

INTRODUCTION 

Today, our Army remains globally engaged to help secure our nation's interests in 

the face of a wide range of challenges. We continue to build partner capacity in Iraq as 

we destroy ISIS. We are training, advising, and assisting the Afghan National Defense 

Security Forces. In Europe, we are actively deterring Russian aggression and 

reassuring allies. In the Pacific Rim, we are sustaining regional stability and deterring 

aggression on the Korean peninsula. We are engaging our partners in Africa, and 

throughout North and South America, improving stability and security. Our Army is 

protecting important national security objectives in every region of the world, and plays 

a key role in every major contingency plan. In fact, almost 50% of Combatant 

Commander annual demand is met by Army capabilities and over 60% of Combatant 

Commander emergent demand is filled with Army capabilities. Today, over 80% of U.S. 

military forces in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan are U.S. Army soldiers. Ground Forces 

remain the most globally committed U.S. military force with over 180,000 U.S. Army 

Soldiers- Active, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve- committed to COCOM 

missions in over 140 countries worldwide. Meeting these demands requires your Army 

to be trained, ready and modernized. Moreover, investments made by Russia, China, 

and other challengers have exposed areas where we no longer retain the overmatch 

our nation has come to expect. 

Conducting current operations, sustaining current readiness, and making progress 

towards a more modern, capable, and lethal future Army requires predictable and 

consistent funding at levels commensurate with the current and contingency operating 

plans. The lack of Fiscal Year 2017 appropriations resulting in a year-long continuing 

resolution, and no supplemental increase in funding for the remainder of FY 17, would 

result in significant negative impacts to current and future readiness and a reversal of 

progress towards reducing an already high military risk. Additionally, a return to 

arbitrary budget caps set by the Budget Control Act (BCA) in Fiscal Year 2018 will 

reverse gains we have made to improve readiness, risking a hollow Army lacking 

sufficient funding to man, train, equip, house, and modernize the force. We simply 

cannot sustain readiness or build the Army our Nation needs in the future if we continue 

2 
62 

to rely on continuing resolutions and return to BCA caps in FY 18 instead of full-year 

defense appropriations bills. 

In the last two years we have made steady progress in our core warfighting skills 

across multiple types of units, but we have much work to do to achieve full spectrum 

readiness necessary to meet the demands of our national military strategy and the 

Defense Planning Guidance. In short, we need to sustain the capability to fight and win 

against potential near-peer adversaries. Advances by our adversaries are real and the 

cumulative effect of persistent and destructive budget instability is increasing risk not 

only to the Army but to the Nation and could result in unnecessary U.S. military 

casualties on a future battlefield. Readiness to prevent or if necessary to fight and win 

wars is very expensive but the cost of preparation is always far less than the cost and 

pain of regret. 

FISCAL YEAR 2017 

Readiness is the Army's number one priority. Our current readiness funding 

requirement as submitted in the amended FY 17 President's Budget is $3 billion above 

the Fiscal Year 2016 operations and maintenance enacted funding levels. 

Our planning efforts for the FY 17 Request for Additional Appropriations centered 

on filling critical gaps in readiness, armor, air defense, artillery, aviation, and training 

resource gaps. We projected this funding would result in a doubling of Brigade Combat 

Teams (BCT)- from three to six- at the highest levels of readiness. If forced to 

operate under a year-long CR, this will not happen, and Army current readiness and 

efforts to close critical capability gaps would be severely impacted. 

Funding under a CR will result in a dramatic decrease of all training, except 

aviation training, starts in May of this year and by 15 July will include a shutdown of 

critical homestation collective training for five Army BCTs preparing to deploy to Combat 

Training Centers (CTC), as well as the possible cancellation of one BCT CTC rotation. 

Concurrently, all efforts to increase Army end strength to 1 ,018K, an increase of 28,000 

Soldiers across all components - as authorized in the FY 17 National Defense 

Authorization Act -will also cease. The cumulative effect of training shortfalls 

3 
63 

combined with personnel constraints will result in an Army less ready to meet the 

current requirements of combatant commanders and limit our ability to assure allies and 

deter adversaries now and in the future. 

Procurement efforts currently on hold will remain on hold, preventing the Army 

from immediately addressing known shortfalls and gaps in combat systems and 

munitions, electronic warfare and cyber programs, air and missile defense capabilities, 

long range fires, protection, and mobility programs, and other modernization efforts 

critical to maintaining, and in some cases, re-gaining overmatch. 

Planned FY 17 production rate increases for current funding lines will cause 

operational delays in procurement and research across the Army and to specific 

initiatives, such as the European Reassurance Initiative- critical to deterrence in 

Europe. The programs most affected include ammunition, air and missile defense 

capabilities, and protection and mobility programs. 

The resulting net effect of a year-long CR means a further degradation of Army 

readiness in both the current and future fiscal years, and no progress toward reducing 

the risk in modernization. In short, a year-long CR and a return to BCA funding risks 

deploying forces that are not fully ready for combat. We must never allow that to 

happen. 

FY 2018 

The return of funding caps under the Budget Control Act will reverse efforts to 

restore prior end strength cuts and improve Army readiness, and will cause the Army to 

further mortgage future readiness especially in our modernization accounts. Army force 

structure- our capacity, or size- will almost certainly contract to free the resources 

necessary to ensure near-term operational readiness to meet the demands of 

combatant commanders and fulfill war plan requirements. This significantly risks a 

return to a hollow Army. Mandated end strength without commensurate funding will 

mean only a select few units will be ready for combat. Turbulence associated with 

decreasing force structure caused by deactivating units will further hurt the readiness of 

remaining units. Training will continue to slow, as units will lack the funds, spare parts 

4 
64 

for combat systems, and personnel to conduct critical combat training. Modernizing 

already deficient key infrastructure and facilities essential for training, mobilizing, and 

deploying forces will also be severely impacted. 

The current battlefield is already very lethal, and the future battlefield will likely 

prove far more lethal than anything we have recently experienced. Continuing 

resolutions - paired with a return to BCA funding caps -will force the Army to defer and 

cancel modernization efforts across both our air and ground fleets that address 

immediate capability gaps and build our future Army. The continued recapitalization 

and modernization of forty to fifty year old equipment in the face of overmatch and 

increasing challenges from our adversaries places our Army at increasing risk on the 

future battlefield against near peer threats. Our adversaries have studied us and are 

rapidly leveraging available technology while the Army has yet to fully recover from the 

effects of sequestration in 2013. Time is not our ally. A return to the BCA caps would 

hamstring the Army's ability to build and maintain readiness at appropriate levels 

required by the Defense Planning Guidance and result in a multi-decade negative 

impact on our future Army due to a lack of modernization. 

CONCLUSION 

Sustaining the high levels of performance our Army has demonstrated in the face 

of increasing challenges requires consistent, long term, balanced, and predictable 

funding. Without it, the Army must fully fund current readiness at the expense of all 

else, including future readiness, facilities modernization, maintenance, and building the 

future Army. A year-long Continuing Resolution and a return to BCA funding caps will 

result in a U.S. Army that is out-ranged, out-gunned and outdated against potential 

adversaries. 

We request the support of Congress to predictably fund the Army at balanced 

and sufficient levels to meet current demands and build a more capable, modern, ready 

force that is prepared to meet future contingencies. 

5 
65 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED 

BY THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED 

SERVICES 

STATEMENT OF 

ADMIRAL JOHN M. RICHARDSON 

U.S. NAVY 

CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS 

BEFORE THE 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON 

ARMED SERVICES 

ON 

CONSEQUENCES TO THE MILTT ARY OF A CONTINUTING RESOLUTION 

APRIL 5, 2017 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTfL RELEASED BY THE 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 
66 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Smith, distinguished members of the Committee, thank 

you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the impact on Navy readiness of 

extending the current continuing resolution (CR) for a full year. 

I see readiness in the context of a competition that is real and intensifying, in which our 

maritime superiority is approaching razor thin margins. It is clear that Russia and China are 

working hard and fast to strengthen their position, influence their neighbors, and shift the world 

order in their favor. There are persistent headlines about Iran's actions to challenge security and 

commerce in their region, including by providing lethal assistance to forces nearby. North 

Korea's reckless and provocative missile tests and rocket launches infom1 its advance toward 

the goal of a nuclear weapon that can threaten the United States, raising tensions and creating 

uncertainty. And ten·orist groups adapt and persist, continuing to inspire attacks in the west. All 

of this activity is occurring at an ever-quickening pace, and is increasingly complex. 

As these threats evolve, the Navy maintains our relentless focus on protecting America 

from attack and promoting our interests around the world. We achieve this by 

• Being powerful enough to deter conflict, but if deterrence fails, ready for prompt, 

sustained, and decisive combat operations at and from the sea; 

• Operating forward, beyond the horizon and away from our shores, and prepared to fight 

close to home if required; 

• Operating with our allies and partners. The scope and scale oftoday's challenges places 

a growing imperative on the assistance of our friends around the world -- assistance that 

can range from fighting with us in combined operations to intelligence sharing, from 

overflight rights to permission to operate from their ports. We can fight alone if we 

must, but together we are much stronger than the sum of our individual parts; and 

• Coordinating and synchronizing across naval component commands around the globe, 

as part of the joint force. 

As we have discussed bef(Jre, ensuring the Navy's ability to perform our mission, now 

and in the future, is becoming a greater and greater challenge. We have not had sufficient 

resources to maintain the fleet at current levels of operational tempo, to modemize it to 

adequately address evolving threats, and to invest in new capabilities to maintain an edge into 

the future. Our competitors are gaining on us, and our advantage is shrinking. 

I have previously described the combined effects of the continuously high pace of 

operations, the uncertainty of when our budgets will actually be approved, and constrained 

funding levels as a "triple whammy." All three elements of that dynamic persist, and the 

detrimental effects are being felt more and more acutely. 

Our sailors, civilians, and families continue to bear the brunt of these realities, as many 

of you have seen in your visits to the fleet. Ensuring the full preparation of our deploying forces 

means we are unable to give our bench the training they deserve to achieve optimal levels of 
67 

expertise, the spare parts to keep their equipment functioning, work or office spaces that support 

their missions, or even the courtesy of more than one to two months' advance notice before we 

uproot them and send their families to new and distant locations. And once our sailors set out to 

sea, operational demands emerge that too frequently mean our teams return home later than 

planned. 

These realities have consequences. Despite their many choices, our sailors willingly 

took an oath of office to support and defend our Constitution, knowing that this would involve 

danger and sacrifice. We must face the truth that those sacrifices are being exacerbated by the 

conditions that we are imposing upon them. It is taking a real toll on our teams and their 

families, adding stress that detracts from our focus on staying ahead of those that challenge us. 

Fixing our readiness is not just about sufticient funding to buy what we need. Just as 

important, we must change how we do business so that we can act more quickly. In 

competition, time matters - the best Navy that arrives too late will lose. We are competing in 

time, but our processes are byzantine and lack urgency. This reduces our chances to be the first 

to field a new capability or develop a new concept. I am doing what I can to address this 

problem, and am grateful for the new authorities that you have provided to me. But funding 

instability and uncertainty add delays, delays that are becoming increasingly costly as we fall 

further and further behind the pace of available technology. 

We are now six months into the fiscal year, and face the prospect of another CR. The 

negative impacts of a CR will continue to be felt long after this fiscal year ends in September. 

First, we will need to identify areas to cut over $500 million to shift to much-deserved pay 

raises, housing allowances, and other cost of living adjustments tor our sailors. Second, within 

our shipbuilding accounts, an extended CR will require us to realign $4.4 billion in order to 

move ahead with planned ship purchases, adding more delay and churn for our already-besieged 

shipyards. The time to make these adjustments means that new ships will deliver late, and in 

turn that current ships will need to operate longer, at great effort and expense. Third, CR 

limitations will set us further back in the years to come, as we will lack the authorities to invest 

in new things that we had planned to help us to remain ahead of our competitors' advances. 

Under aCR: 

• We will not purchase numerous new ships and advanced missiles; 

• We will not start developing new ways to address a growing undersea warfare threat or 

create new and advanced cyber tools; 

• And we will not increase production rates or buy parts for new aircraft carriers, early 

warning aircraft, armed helicopters, advanced missiles, undersea sensors and arrays, 

missile decoys, or radar enhancements. 

Finally, if or when we ultimately do get funding, under a CR we will get less for our 

dollar. We will not have authority to enter into new multi-year contracts that allow us to 

2 
68 

negotiate lower unit costs. We will pay higher prices for short-length services contracts. And we 

will have to spend more on overhead to write and review those agreements. 

While the House-passed FY20 17 Appropriations bill resolves many of these problems 

and is much better than an extension of the CR, the Navy will still need an additional $2.1 

billion to address immediate readiness shortfalls. Without it, three ships scheduled to deploy to 

Europe and the Middle East will stay home, our pilots will not t1y and their jets will sit on the 

ramp needing maintenance, we may lose skilled sailors because we cannot fund their bonuses, 

our stocks of critical munitions will remain too low, and we will not be able to fix known cyber 

vulnerabilities. Our ability to deter potential adversaries will be undercut, and our allies and 

partners will become less certain of our capabilities, which will further intensify the 

competition. 

Beyond the $2.1 billion, the Navy's portion of the Request for Additional 

Appropriations also includes funding for things that, while they do not improve readiness in this 

fiscal year, still help to deliver combat power more quickly. Accelerating the number of 

available aircraft and spare parts for our squadrons, launching a new and more capable 

destroyer, and increasing the depth of our missile and ammunition magazines would help us dig 

out and stay out of the readiness hole that we arc in more quickly--, a hole that gets deeper as 

we continue to steam and t1y in support of ongoing operations. 

Ultimately, my request to you is simple. Your Navy is out on the seas. Its sailors are 

being harassed by submarines and strike fighters, and even fired upon, as they protect the U.S. 

and its interests. We've been at war, operating hard, for 15 years. As we have been doing that, 

the rest of the world has not stood still - the competition is on, and it is heating up. Now, more 

than ever, time matters. 1 have a hard time believing that I am sitting before you now to discuss 

the potential that we might take steps to make those sailors' mission still more difficult, to give 

our adversaries more advantage, to make our people's lives more stressful-- not only now but 

in the years to come. 1 am hopeful that we can together find a way to reverse this trend and tum 

our attention to staying ahead of our competitors today and in the years to come. 

3 
69 

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE 

PRESENTATION TO THE COMMITTEE 

ON 

ARMED SERVICES 

UNITED STATES CONGRESS 

SUBJECT: IMPACTS OF A YEAR-LONG CONTINUING RESOLUTION 

STATEMENT OF: GENERAL DAVID L. GOLDFEIN 

CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE AIR FORCE 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED 

BY THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

UNITED STATES CONGRESS 

Page 1 of7 

APRIL 5, 2017 
70 

INTRODUCTION 

To prevent sequestration-like effects and severe impacts to our Airmen and 

readiness, we need Congressional action to pass the Fiscal Year 2017 Defense 

Appropriations Bill, as specified in the amended FY 2017 budget request 

Your United States Air Force has been breaking barriers since 1947 and our 

Total Force Airmen are prepared to fight and win today. We secure peace throughout 

the full spectrum of hostilities with a decisive warfighting advantage in, through, and 

from air, space, and cyberspace. The unmatched Global Vigilance, Global Reach, 

and Global Power we provide for the Nation and our allies has never been more 

indispensable, and the demand for Air Force capabilities continues to grow. Rest 

assured, as long as our Joint Force is in the fight, the Air Force will continue to provide 

our nation's leaders and combatant commanders with air, space, and cyber options to 

deliver decisive action anytime, anywhere. 

However, after 26 years of sustained global combat operations, a growing 

mission set coupled with a 38% reduction in end strength since 1991, and over half a 

decade of volatile and unpredictable budgets, we can no longer effectively balance 

capability, capacity, and readiness within constraints. The military funding constraints 

and resulting budgetary turbulence stemming from the Budget Control Act of 2011 

(BCA), when combined with an unrelenting succession of eight Continuing Resolutions 

(CR), have critically challenged our ability to sustain warfighting capacity, improve 

readiness, modernize our force, and invest in research and development to maintain 

decisive advantages over near-peer competitors. The competitive edge we've long 

maintained over these actors is rapidly closing and, in some cases, has closed. Thus, 

Page 2 of7 
71 

we need immediate Congressional action to pass the Fiscal Year 2017 Defense 

Appropriations Bill. 

NEGATIVE IMPACTS TO OUR AIRMEN 

A year-long CR would have an adverse impact on our people and readiness 

recovery. We would have to cut over $2.88 in base and Overseas Contingency 

Operations (OCO) funding in the remaining five months of the Fiscal Year, forcing 

actions similar to those taken in 2013 during Sequestration. Further, we would be 

forced to use significant portions of DOD's limited general and special transfer authority 

to move funding between appropriations to cover must-pay bills (e.g., military pay), and 

even with the transfer authority, we cannot avoid impacts to personnel and readiness. 

This CR: 

• Halts efforts to grow active duty personnel end-strength as directed in the FY 2017 

National Defense Authorization Act (NOAA), preventing us from meeting our top 

readiness priority. It also inhibits manpower growth in new or expanding mission 

areas including Remotely-Piloted Aircraft (RPA), cyberspace operations, 

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and nuclear command, control, 

and communications (NC3). 

• Prevents the Air Force from continuing to close critical career field gaps, undercuts 

our ability to close aircraft maintenance manning shortfalls, and thwarts our efforts to 

remedy our pilot shortage crisis. 

• Defers bonus payments across numerous critical career fields, devastating critical 

programs we must have in place to retain Airmen with indispensable skillsets. Our 

taxpayers invest approximately $11M to produce each fifth-generation fighter pilot, 

Page 3 of7 
72 

and our active-duty fighter pilot shortage is expected to exceed 1 ,000 by the end of 

Fiscal Year 2017. The Aviation Retention Bonus is critical to our efforts to address 

this crisis. Most important, deferring bonuses breaks faith with our Airmen, who 

make great sacrifices every day to defend our nation. 

• Delays operational, unit, and training permanent-change-of-station moves until 

Fiscal Year 2018, halting all moves internal to the Continental U.S., creating a 

severe training backlog, and leaving positions vacant across the Air Force. This 

severely degrades the quality of life for our Airmen and their families in the process 

of moving, as schools, jobs, child care, and other plans are disrupted. 

• Significantly reduces Air Reserve Component (ARC)-filled OCO taskings, causing 

significant degradation in Air Force support of current global operations. 

• Precludes filling civilian vacancies outside of mission-critical areas, which would 

directly increase workload demands on remaining personnel. 

NEGATIVE IMPACTS TO OUR OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE <O&Ml 

Significantly impacting our O&M readiness accounts, a year-long CR: 

• Creates a $2.4B (Base and OCO) shortfall in the O&M portfolio that will need to be 

sourced at the expense of readiness requirements. 

• Eviscerates our Flying Hour Program (FHP), grounds non-deploying squadrons, and 

degrades qualifications and proficiencies of remaining aircrew. This exacerbates the 

Air Force's ability to meet pilot production throughout and reduces readiness in 

Combat Air Forces units for the foreseeable future. 

• Forces a $1 B cut to our Weapon System Sustainment (WSS) accounts, preventing us 

from maintaining predictable and sufficient funding for our sustainment actionsPage 4 of7 
73 

limiting aircraft availability, beyond those grounded for lack of FHP, needed for 

wartime and full-spectrum training. 

• The Air Force would need to reconsider participation in 3'd and 4th quarter live-fly 

exercises. Distributed exercises could be supported but would continue at a lower 

level of participation. While the Air Force cannot "cancel" any Combatant Command 

exercise, the Air Force could reduce participation in such exercises, which would 

impact training in support of combat capabilities. 

• Halts all restoration and modernization projects, effectively cancelling 301 projects at 

78 installations across the Air Force, including 51 directly related to maintaining Air 

Force readiness levels. It also limits facility projects to only those actions addressing 

life, health, and safety. 

NEGATIVE IMPACTS TO OUR MODERNIZATION EFFORTS 

A year-long CR would impact more than 60 Air Force acquisition new starts in 

aircraft, space, missile, and ammunition procurement while simultaneously curtailing 

our Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation efforts. This CR: 

• Negatively impacts programs intended to sustain strategic platforms, forcing 

shortfalls in five critical programs. 

• Limits munitions production to Fiscal Year 2016 rates, which do not meet current 

usage and inventory requirements. Additionally, inventory levels for flares, cartridges, 

and training munitions are already very low, impacting our aviators' ability to counter 

real-world enemy fire while reducing live fire training scenarios-both essential for 

success on the battlefield. 

• Forces delays in critical acquisition new starts, including MQ-9 upgrades, Joint 

Page 5 of7 
74 

Interagency Combined Space Operations Center, and C-130 Avionics Modernization 

Program Increment 2. 

• Delays fielding of the new COMPASS CALL Prime Mission Equipment platform, 

putting the Air Force's ability to meet Combatant Command requirements for vital 

COMPASS CALL at risk. This weapon system is essential for disrupting enemy 

command and control communications in support of U.S. and Coalition tactical air, 

surface, and special operations forces. 

• Restricts our ability to award the Long Range Standoff Weapon and Ground Based 

Strategic Deterrent technology-maturation and risk-reduction contracts on time, 

jeopardizing the Initial Operational Capability dates, and requiring service life 

extension of the aging Air Launched Cruise Missile system. 

• Inhibits our ability to meet the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program's 

mission critical requirements. This CR would impact launch capability, force the Air 

Force to delay award of a competitive EELV procurement currently in source 

selection, and delay the launch of a critical national security space capability. 

• Limits the Air Force's ability to support on-going MMIII flight tests, potentially impacting 

our most-responsive leg of the nation's nuclear triad. This will create a year-long gap 

in ICBM Force Development Evaluations (FDE), which are needed to collect the data 

for the weapon system's effectiveness report to show the MMIII weapon system is 

reliable and accurate. Also, the data collected during the FOEs are used by 

Department of Energy for continued certification to the President in the Report on the 

Stockpile Assessment. 

• Significantly impacts our Combat Training Ranges supporting warfighter development 

Page 6 of7 
75 

of new tactics, techniques, and procedures in a relevant, realistic combat 

environment, which is critical to 4th and 5th generation air dominance. 

• Stops work on the Global Positioning System (GPS) Next Generation Operational 

Controls System program, delaying scheduled acceptance and preventing availability 

to support the planned GPS Ill Satellite Vehicle 1 launch in March 2018. Launch of 

the first GPS Ill satellite is critical to maintain operational availability of the GPS 

constellation. 

• Delays Initial Operational Capability of the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service to 4th 

Quarter Fiscal Year 2023, directly impacting the Navy's ability to utilize the Wideband 

Anti-jam Modem System. 

• Restricts F-35A Dual Capable Aircraft funding in FY17, delaying compatibility and 

safety design certification tasks critical to maintaining nuclear certification timelines 

and jeopardizing our ability to provide this key capability in support of our allies in the 

future. 

CONCLUSION 

We need Congressional action to pass the FY17 Defense Appropriations Bill (at 

the amended FY 2017 budget request funding levels), repeal the Budget Control Act, 

and provide us with budget stability. These actions will allow us to train and equip our 

Airmen to meet current threats to our nation as well as develop a ready force to defeat 

future adversaries. Our fellow Americans expect us to deliver overwhelming air, space, 

and cyber dominance for the nation, and we need your support to provide this blanket 

of freedom and security. 

Page 7 of7 
76 

STATEMENT OF 

Not public until released by the 

House Armed Services Committee 

GENERAL ROBERT B. NELLER 

COMMANDANT OF THE MARlNE CORPS 

BEFORE THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

ON 

CONTINUING RESOLUTION CONSEQUENCES 

Not public until released by the 

House Armed Services Committee 

05 APRIL 2017 
77 

General Robert B. Neller, USMC 

Commandant of the Marine Corps 

General Robert B. Neller assumed the duties of Commandant of the Marine Corps on September 

24th, 2015. A native of East Lansing, Michigan, he graduated from the University of Virginia 

and was commissioned in May 1975. He previously served as the Commander, Marine Forces 

Command from June 2014 to September 2015. 

General Neller has served as an infantry ot1iccr at all levels. He commanded the Marine Security 

Force Company Panama during Operations JUST CAUSE and PROMOTE LIBERTY, 3d Light 

Armored lnti:mtry Battalion during Operation RESTORE HOPE in Somalia, 6th Marine 

Regiment, 3d Marine Division and Marine Forces Central Command. 

His Joint assignments include service in the Policy Division of Supreme Headquarters Allied 

Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Casteau, Belgium, and as the Director of Operations (B) of the Joint 

StatTin Washington, D.C. 

He has also served as Executive Officer, 7th Marine Regiment, G-3, 2d Marine Division, G-3, II 

Marine Expeditionary Force, Assistant Division Commander tor the 1st and 2d Marine 

Divisions, and Deputy Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) during 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM 05-07. 

General Neller is a graduate of the Advanced Armor Ot1icer Course, the Marine Corps 

Command and Staff College, the NATO Defense College and the Armed Forces Staff College. 

He holds a M.A. in Human Resource Management from Peppcrdinc University. 

2 
78 

Introduction 

Your Marine Corps stands ready to answer the call in any clime and place as our Nation's Naval 

Expeditionary Force-in-Readiness. That said, our current operational tempo remains 

exceptionally high. We continue to adapt and innovate across our five focus areas of people, 

readiness, training, naval integration, and modernization in the context of the current continuing 

resolution (CR) and resulting resource challenges. We arc building a "5th Generation Marine 

Corps" able to counter the evolving threats of this century (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and 

violent extremism). This requires us to change the composition of the force, while we continue 

to execute our material readiness recovery plans, and concurrently modernize our equipment. 

The Marine Corps has and will remain good stewards of the resources we are provided; 

we are affordable. Case in point; for 7% ofthe Department of Defense budget the Marine Corps 

provides 21% of the active infantry battalions, 15% of the fighter/attack aircraft and 19% ofthe 

artillery battalions. However, operating under CRs for some portion of the past eight fiscal 

years, to include government shutdowns, has impacted readiness. Operating under a full-year 

continuing resolution through the remainder ofFY17 will seriously degrade readiness across our 

force affecting our people, readiness, and modernization efforts. Additionally, without the 

ability to reprogram funds while under a full year CR, the Marine Corps is unable to address 

unplanned urgent needs and other operational requirements such as tools to counter adversary 

Unmanned Aerial Systems in theater. In specific terms, a full year CR and no additional funding 

may result in the following: the termination of Hight operations in July, delayed construction of 

one amphibious ship, a halt to many modernization gains, cancelled or reduced participation in 

service-level, joint and combined exercises, many necessary to prepare units for deployment 

3 
79 

such as Integrated Training Exercise (ITX), and reductions in available aviation munitions to 

include delays to necessary modification oflaser Maverick missiles, procurement of Hellfire 

missiles, and recovery of Laser Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) stocks. Marines are 

deployed around the globe and need adequate resources to meet our commitments and at the 

same time prepare and adapt to meet the challenges of our evolving foes. 

People 

The center of gravity of the Marine Corps is its people. Trust amongst Marines is critical 

to readiness. The Marine Corps has reason to look inward in light of the "Marines United" 

revelations to ensure our culture reflects our core values of honor, courage, and commitment, to 

improve the manner in which we value and treat all Marines, and emerge a better Corps. At the 

same time, the American people trust us with precious resources. We must and will remain good 

stewards with what we are provided, however, central to meeting and upholding our commitment 

is dependable and predictable funding such that we are fully ready to accomplish the mission. 

The FY17 National Defense Authorization Act approved an end strength of 185,000 

Marines. Under a lull year CR we would not be able to grow to that end strength. The Marine 

Corps operating forces are cun·ently averaging, in the aggregate, less than a l :2 deployment to 

dwell ratio. This tempo is not sustainable as it does not provide options to train to our full 

mission sets and puts unreasonable strain on our Marines and families. A combination of a 

deliberate and measured end stren~:;th increase coupled with prudent operational employment of 

the force is the only path to a sustainable I :3 deployment to dwell ratio. The CR does not afford 

this option. 

4 
80 

A liJil year CR will impact the Reserve Component (RC) the most as it will result in a 44 million 

dollar, or 6.2 percent decrease fl·om the amended FY 17 budget request in the Reserve Personnel, 

Marine Corps (RPMC) account. This decrease will directly impact the Marine Corps Reserve's 

FY17 ability to JiJlJill commitments to Combatant Commanders (CCDRs) to provide forces in 

support of regional security cooperation, crisis response, crisis prevention activities, and support 

to combat operations. Our Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force- Southern 

Command is largely comprised of Marines from the RC -this deployment will suffer, potentially 

straining relationships in that region. Furthermore, the fourth quarter would see almost a 50 

percent reduction in drill and annual training. The Marine Corps multi-year Training and 

Readiness Plan includes the integration of Reserve units, detachments, and individuals into 

Service, Joint, and Multilateral level exercises; therefore, the 44-million-dollar reduction will 

have substantial impacts on FY17 unit formations that have been planned for over a year. If not 

funded, the reduction will immediately create a force management dilemma that will increase an 

already high operational tempo across the total force. 

Readiness 

Readiness is central to who we are as Marines. We are the force "most ready when our 

nation is least ready," which is incompatible with tiered readiness in theory or practice. Forward 

deployed forces in every geographic combatant command are trained and ready; Marines in Iraq, 

Afghanistan and Syria, the over 21,000 in the Pacific, and those embarked on naval ships with 

our three deployed Marine Expeditionary Units are ready. Marines don't get ready when the 

crisis occurs. We must prepare those next to deploy and maintain a ready bench to respond to 

crisis or contingency, with minimal notice. While forward deployed forces and those about to 

5 
81 

deploy will remain ready, the instability of the cu!Tent Jiscal environment, compounded by 

cuiTent shortfalls in our Operation and Maintenance (O&M) accounts, impact our ability to 

maintain a "ready bench." A full year CR would see and even larger O&M deficit and 

exacerbate the problem further. 

For example, Marine Aviation is in the midst of a focused readiness recovery effort. We 

have developed an extensive plan to recover or improve readiness across every 

Type/Model/Series in the current legacy inventory, all while we continue to procure new aircraft. 

We are realizing steady improvements in aviation readiness, but the plan requires sustained 

funding, parts and supply support, flight operations, and time. Under a full year CR, flight 

operations within the continental U.S. will cease in July and hard fought gains made in Marine 

Corps aviation readiness will stall or be reversed. Finally, a full year CR will further delay the 

modification of nearly 200 laser Maverick missiles, procurement of l 00 Hellfire missiles, and 

delay the planned recovery of Laser Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) shortfalls. These 

delays affect our ability to replenish warfighting assets, impact our current operational 

capabilities to support current contingency operations, limit our next to deploy units' ability to 

train, and cost us more in the long-run. 

A full year CR will reduce the scope and scale of exercises which will impact unit level 

deployments for training, service level pre-deployment training such as ITX, and large, multilateral exercises such as BOLD ALLIGATOR '17 and COLD RESPONSE '18. This will not 

only reduce readiness, it will impact hard won, but never guaranteed relationships with foreign 

partners and allies. 

Our ground equipment readiness is approximately 90 percent availability and 94 percent 

serviceability, allowing the Marine Corps to conduct mission requirements. That said, under a 

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82 

full year CR we can expect to see delayed maintenance, shortages of parts, dramatically extended 

work hours as Marines try to sustain the increased workload of unserviceable equipment. 

Furthermore, long-term underJimding of aging facilities and sustainment requirements has 

resulted in the degradation of our infrastructure and increased long-term costs to return these 

assets to proper condition. Funding for our facilities sustainment, recapitalization, and 

modernization (FSRM) has been sacrificed to support the readiness of our deployed and 

deploying forces in recent budget cycles. A full year CR will impact an already bad situation 

resulting in a I 0 to 15 percent reduction to facilities sustainment levels and/or elimination of 

currently programmed demolition, restoration, and modernization projects, including recovery 

from the tornado damage recently sustained at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia. 

Infrastructure sustainment is a key enabler to our current readiness. Investment in real property, 

facilities maintenance, and base intl·astructurc to support the missions and readiness of our 

operating forces and other tenant commands are critical to providing the capacity and capability 

needed to build, train, and launch combat ready forces. 

Modernization 

Modernization is future readiness; however, under a full-year CR recapitalization and 

modernization efforts will be disrupted. Budget cuts since the Department ofthe Navy top line 

peaked in FY08 coupled with fiscal uncertainty, forced us to utilize limited resources to ensure 

the readiness of deployed forces and sacrifice end strene,>ih, home station readiness, infrastructure 

sustainment, quality of life programs, and delay critical modernization. We need to modernize 

rapidly, to replace "old iron" with new, reliable, sustainable, and affordable equipment across the 

7 
83 

Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). We must remain relevant and develop as a "5th 

Generation Marine Corps" able to operate across all domains. 

FY 17 CR based prohibitions on program new starts and quantity increases, as well as 

limitations on investment funding at line item levels, will prevent planned funding and 

production rate increases for multiple ground and aviation programs. Under a full-year CR 

specific FY 17 new starts, quantity increases, and line item funding increases will be affected. 

New starts affected by a full year CR include: Cyber Operations Technology Development 

supporting Marine Corps Cyber Mission Forces, CH-53K low rate initial production (LRIP), 

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Sensor Payloads, and Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM). 

Under a full year CR our acquisition of key systems is at risk and would drive necessary 

reductions to include: Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (74 vehicles), Common Aviation Command 

and Control System (CAC2S) ( 10 systems), RQ-21 UAS (I full system: ground infrastructure 

plus 5 air vehicles), F35B (I aircraft), and CH-53K (2 aircraft). Slowing CAC2S is detrimental 

to our aviation combat element as it is a much needed command and control (C2) upgrade 

necessary to further exploit the information domain. Additionally, many programs require 

funding increases included in our amended FYI7 budget request to support capabilities to meet 

the needs of an ever changing future operating environment. Systems that require additional 

funding include: Network on the Move (NOTM), Ground I Air Task Oriented Radar (GATOR), 

and Precision Extended Range Munition (PERM). A tull year CR prevents a funding increase 

for NOTM another C2 system necessary to increase ground maneuver capabilities. New starts, 

quantity increases, and requested line item funding increases are all essential tools to ensure our 

Marines are operating with the most technologically advanced equipment necessary, building 

future readiness for our Corps, and are prohibited when operating under a CR. 

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84 

Conclusion 

The Marine Corps will continue to meet current operational requirements; however, 

without support for our budget requests and consistent funding we cannot achieve and sustain 

acceptable levels of readiness. To tmly operate, recover, recapitalize, and rebuild the readiness 

our nation needs, the Marine Corps requires the resources and stability provided by the FY17 

budget, plus the additional resources identified by the Secretary of Defense in the FYI? Request 

for Additional Appropriations. Funding the Marine Corps via a CR continues to stress the force, 

stunt necessary capability and capacity growth, and reverse hard earned gains made by our 

readiness recovery efforts. The American people expect and deserve nothing less than a Marine 

Corps that is ready and capable of deterring and defeating future threats, and the Marines Sailors, 

Civilian Marines and our families need the resources to successfully meet this challenge. 

9 
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

APRIL 5, 2017 

(87) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. BROOKS 

Mr. BROOKS. If a high priority is being placed on the fastest schedule to field five 

Airborne IBCTs and particularly the three IBCTs with the 82nd Airborne Division 

who have the Global Response Force Mission, why wouldn’t leveraging the 70 

DAGORs already in the 82nd along with the OEM available inventory and production be the most expeditious and cost effective way to accomplish this especially 

given it has been certified for Air Drop and Sling Loaded by the National Mission 

Force? 

General MILLEY. The DAGORs were bought specifically to support the Global Response Force requirement in an Operational Needs Statement (ONS) submitted by 

the 82nd Airborne Division. No other ONS exists for the remaining Airborne IBCTs. 

An additional purchase of the same vehicle without a validated ONS is prohibited 

based on regulatory and statutory limitations. 

To quickly field this capability, we will procure a limited quantity of 295 GMV1.1 

vehicles under a directed requirement for the Airborne IBCTs thru an existing, competitively-awarded Special Operations Command (SOCOM) contract. The SOCOM’s 

Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System-approved requirement for 

GMV1.1 meets the Army’s current requirement as well. This plan accelerates delivery of this critical capability by two years—from Fiscal Year 2020 to Fiscal Year 

2018. It allows us to fill an immediate need while refining the requirement to support full and open competition for the remaining IBCTs. 

This approach is consistent with Congressional intent to find ways to accelerate 

the delivery of equipment to our Soldiers. 

Mr. BROOKS. Why is the Army taking on the significantly higher vehicle costs and the cost risk for an unknown final unit price with a guidance of $260,000.00 Average Unit Manufacturing Cost (AUMC)? 

General MILLEY. Speed of delivery is our highest priority. The Army is willing to pay a higher cost of up to $260,000 to provide the initial capability of 295 vehicles 

to support our Soldiers’ as quickly as possible. The Army benefits from purchasing 

the GMV1.1 because the vehicle has already gone through testing and logistics development and shares the same repair parts system in the Army, all of which save 

time. The remaining ∼1,700 GMVs will be procured through a full and open competition, once the requirement has been refined, which should reduce cost. 

Mr. BROOKS. Explain the rationale for how the SOCOM GMV 1.1 requirement can 

meet the critical parameters of the Airborne IBCT GMV; e.g. 9 infantry soldiers and 

their gear, air droppable, sling load capable and 250 miles range or more on vehicle 

organic fuel tank? 

General MILLEY. The approved SOCOM GMV 1.1 Capability Production Document supports all of the critical capabilities for the Airborne IBCTs, except for the 

9-seat capacity. The SOCOM program office is supporting a contract modification 

that allows for production of a 9-seat variant within the scope of the existing production contract. Based on test results, the GMV 1.1 is transportable by CH–47 internally and externally with 250 mile operational range. The SOCOM program 

plans to complete the air drop test by the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2018. 

Mr. BROOKS. Is there a material difference between the Sustainment and Maintenance support of the SOCOM GMV 1.1 solution and the commercial alternative currently being used by the 82nd? 

General MILLEY. Yes, there is a material difference. The Army benefits from purchasing the SOCOM GMV1.1 because under the contract the vehicle shares the 

same sustainment and maintenance system with SOCOM. The DAGOR’s were commercially purchased for the specific purpose of filling an Operational Needs Statement for the 82nd Airborne Division. Because the vehicles are not centrally managed they must be maintained by the unit without support from the Army logistics 

system or any additional funding to maintain them. There is also no long term 

sustainment support for DAGOR. The unit must continue to use unit training funds 

to purchase maintenance and sustainment requirements directly from a commercial 

vendor. Ultimately the vehicles will be replaced by the GMV which will provide the 

parts system to support the unit. 

Æ