Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, it is an honor to be here, and I am grateful for the opportunity to testify on the readiness status of our Navy. But my task today is to report on the status of the entire Navy, not just its forward-deployed forces. The Navy faces many challenges in keeping itself ready, and I want to briefly discuss the most significant of these. In my confirmation hearing I noted we are in a war for people, and this is a war that our Navy must win. Our recruiting goals have been met for the past two years.
Retention is better, but remains below goal.
Our attrition level is too high, and Navy leadership is taking action to reduce it. 31 percent of our navy is deployed overseas today. The current readiness of non-deployed forces is less than it ought to be. I mean, because our Navy is now smaller, a greater percentage of the force is deployed today than 10 years ago. We have benefited greatly from readiness augmentations provided by the Congress.