Military Readiness for Fiscal Year 2027

The subcommittee will come to order. I ask unanimous consent that the chair be authorized to declare a recess at any time. Without objection, so ordered. I'd like to welcome everyone to today's hearing. I particularly want to thank all of our esteemed witnesses for accepting our invitation. to discuss the plight of our military readiness. I think that we can all agree that the declining readiness trends are unacceptable. These trends have been years in the making and are causing aircraft to be cannil cannibalized and ground vehicles to sit idle as two examples. While I look forward to our witnesses' thoughts, I would like to offer a few ideas as to what we in Congress need to do to make our military more lethal and effective in the near term. First of all, we need to do the hard work and focus on sustaining the existing fleet. The sad fact is that we have allowed our military readiness to broadly decline because we are more focused on procuring that shiny object, rather than holistically managing the day-to-day maintenance necessary to sustain our military. Secondly, the overall overall top line requested by the administration in the fiscal year twenty twenty-seven budget request is unprecedented, but absolutely essential to address the plight of our military forces. For too long our military has resi- has relied on legacy force structure that has not been maintained to the readiness levels required. One needs not look further than the Joint Strike Fighter program and the readiness levels provided by this exquisite platform. Cannibalizing our Joint Strike Fighter fleet because we have not provided the basic parts to support this superior platform is not a reasonable long-term solution to maintaining current readiness. This budget request with the accompanying reconciliation supplement will break this cannibalization cycle and put the joint strike fighter on a sustainable path. Finally, we need to develop a modernization strategy that provides for our ability to maintain legacy assets through their expected service life. A stark example of this readiness crisis is the state of our amphibious fleet. The Marine Corps has long championed a naval strategy capable of accelerated national security response, and has consistently advocated for the restoration of a three point O amphibious ready readiness group worldwide presence, a standard the Navy has to date failed to meet. Years of neglect, misplaced priorities, and open derision from from certain Navy pundits have left less than half of our amphibious ships available for tasking. This is not a maintenance problem, it is a leadership problem. This subcommittee will hold the Navy accountable for restoring these ships to their expected service life. The Marine Corps should not have to implore its sister service for the platforms it needs to execute America's crisis response mission. In conclusion, I think any expanded force structure needs to be accompanied with a strategic focus on maintaining the existing forces through their expected service life. This approach is not only cost-effective, but more rapidly expands our readiness uh in the forced pro- posture realm to best meet our ongoing national security challenges. I thank our witnesses for being here today. I look forward to your testimony and to working together with my colleagues and all of you to address these challenges. And with that, I turn it over to my friend and the ranking member, Mister Garimendi of California.

Uh thank you, Mister Chairman. Uh indeed uh your opening statement covers the critical issues that are before us. Uh but before we, before I get into this and talking to uh to our witnesses, I do want to um acknowledge the men and women that have lost their life

Hope you mean.

uh in epic furies uh war. Also want to acknowledge the extraordinary stress that is placed on the men and women of our military uh and in other areas as they uh deal with this uh war in Iran and the uh families that have to carry the burden. It's uh difficult for all of them and we acknowledge their service. Uh this is one of the most consequential hearings we have each year and this year the stakes are especially high. We're convening today with service members that are actively engaged in the Middle East uh with CENTCOM executing a maritime blockade of the Iranian ports, and I think we're into the uh sixth week of that war. Our forces have been stretched uh all across this globe, from SouthKom to CENTKOM and to EuroKom, even as we prepare for the possibilities of a near-peer conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. Regardless of where any of us stand on the strategic decisions that brought us here today, we share the fundamental obligation of ensuring that our service members have the equipment, the training, and the infrastructure they need to succeed in their mission. Let me start with uh epic fury and our tanker force. We lost six airmen in the KC one thirty-five crash that occurred over Iraq on March the twelfth and uh we mourn their loss of course and look to where we go from here. The fleet further sustained damages at Prince Prince-Sultan Air Base in i- and in Israel sustaining a fleet that is already under pressure. I have previously raised concerns about the air refueling capacity, especially given the ongoing delays with the KC forty-six program. Earlier last month, one of our witnesses, uh the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, uh stated that the Air Force would not contract any new KC one forty KC forty sixes until the existing technical deficiencies are resolved. I'm encouraged to see that the Air Force has prioritized the resolution of the capability gaps over speed of acquisition. And I view this pause as an important opportunity to ensure that investments are made to date that translate into mission ready, sustainable assets. I look forward to working with the Air Force on the deficiencies and make sure that they are addressed. Now I also want to shift over to the Navy, uh some of which you covered, Mister Chairman, uh in your opening remarks. Uh typically uh for the last six months while extensions have occurred during the time of crisis, the USS Ford is likely to enter the eleventh month of deployment, a record-breaking commitment. The carrier which was first deployed to Eurocom and then to South Com, and now back to CENTCOM, has dealed with mechanical issues, including sewage problems, toilets don't work, and then there was the fire in the laundry, all of which have caused extraordinary stress to the sailors and to the ongoing commitment that the uh Navy makes to, in this case, CENTCOM. I understand there's an ongoing investigation of the fire and I'd like to uh keep make sure that we are kept abreast of the uh results of that. But there's more to it than that, and that is the sustainment of this platform itself. Uh extending uh this deployments like the four do not just strain the crew, they create maintenance backlogs that reverberate across the entire fleet, cuz it's not just that one ship, it is also the support vessels that are necessary. Thus our uh options are limited uh for future contingencies, throwing c- career availability plans out of the outlets, and while our force deployed base our needs of the COCOMs I want to be very direct that we need transparency, accountability, and the cascading effects that these extended deployments have on the maintenance schedules on readiness and on the quality of life and on the retention. The same pressures that now confined to the carri- are not confined to the carrier fleet. We talked uh the chairman talked about the Marine Corps, I'll short uh this part of it, but there is a very serious problem with the Marines and their ability to uh meet the requirements that they have. Obviously the ships that they need are not available, but they could be if they were properly maintained. And so we're gonna drill down on that piece of it. Uh I'll let uh th- that's this part of my testimony go for a moment uh because the chairman covered it in detail. Uh we have many many challenges ahead of us. Space force and in fact all of you lost a significant portion of your civilian workforce due to personnel reductions. Uh without going in that in great detail it is creating a problem. Particularly since your budgets were significantly increased. in the uh twenty five twenty six period of time and are those increases able to be carried out without the civilian force available to do the paperwork at the contracts and the like. With regard to the uh Space Force uh you are scheduled under the new uh budget proposal to double. How do you do that? And what do you need to be able to carry that out? I value the conf- the conversations that we've had on this. Uh and finally I do want to uh pick up one of the more persistent and frustrating readiness problems facing all of you and that is the lack of access to technical data. There are maintainers need to repair the equipment that we own. This is not a new problem, but it's an urgent one, and it is the direct result of sustainment being treated as an afterthought during the acquisition process. Uh we continue to uh talk about this here, we continue to uh drive this issue. Uh last year's NDA made meaningful progress by requiring life cycle sustainment to be considered in the acquisition decisions. Now why this hasn't been done over the last forty years, I don't know, maybe it's because this committee did not uh see it as a necessity. As the department works to implement these reforms, we'll be watching closely to see how they translate into real acquisition decisions. So let me be clear, we're gonna monitor this, and if there are acquisition decisions being made without taking into account the life cycle and I'm not talking about the cost only I'm talking about all of the parts and pieces and necessary information necessary to sustain these uh platforms. However, this cannot be the only forward-looking fix. We must back, we must look back to our legacy and current platforms to deferent to determine how best to equip our maintainers with the technical packages needed to perform maintenance on the government-owned equipment and platforms. I know the army has been moving forward on the right to repair, but apparently that has not translated into the necessary availability of the platforms themselves. I want to know more about your efforts from the Army and for the rest of you. You should be listening if you haven't done it yourself. Uh maybe the Army can lead the way, as they like to say every fall. I want to thank each of our witnesses for being here. I look forward to uh your testimony and to working with all of you. Uh know that uh with the uh Chairman and I and the members of the committee, We're gonna press you very hard. We are very, very concerned about the uh availability of the platforms, all of them, whether they are a uh Abrams tank or an F-thirty-five. The problem persists across every platform, uh including almost every one of the military uh the naval vessels uh and the air force. With regard to the space force, uh you may be new to this and we don't want you to develop what has become a persistent problem with the Department of Defense, and that is maintaining the equipment that we have. Though it's little good to have uh three hundred ships, only fifty percent of them can go to sea.

Mm.

And that persists across every one of your departments. So with that I yield back. I see the Chairman has left for a few moments and this back-up team is here.

Back-up team.

I yield back.

Thank you. Thank you, Mister Carey Mandy, for your twenty minutes of opening statements. Um, gentlemen, if you could keep your statements to about five minutes, we would appreciate it, uh, so that we have time for for questions and hopefully maybe even a second round. We'll start with uh General Lanive and uh when you hit your five minutes, we'll just we'll just move on down the line. Uh, today we have General Lanive, we have Admiral Kilby, General Lamontagne, did I say that right? No, but

Lamontagne?

Lamontagne. Sorry about

Thanks.

uh General Gehring and uh General Bratton. Um General Leneve, please.

Uh Representative Scott, Ranking Member uh Garamendi, uh thank you for the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee today. We're grateful for your engagement on issues that shapes the lives of our soldiers and their families. Every decision I make as the Vice Chief begins and ends with one question. Does this make our soldiers more lethal and ready to fight and win when called upon? Today, over two hundred and twelve thousand soldiers are deployed or forward-postured across a hundred and sixty countries, securing our interests in the Western Hemisphere, deterring aggression in Indo-Pacific, and responding to threats worldwide. In the Middle East, our soldiers continue to defend US forces and partners, sustain layered air defense and missile defense, maintain our long-range strike capabilities, And our sustainment forces are postured across the theater, moving fuel, munitions, and medical support, while command posts integrate joint fires and intelligence to respond to the evolving threats. Operations overseas are sustained by the command structure and ready forces we maintain at home. We consolidated army north and south in the western hemisphere command to create a single unified headquarters responsible for homeland defense. And in the in the Indo-Pacific, The army maintains ninety-one thousand troops and committed one point three billion dollars to the Pacific deterrence initiative. We're decisively modernizing our full spectrum of capabilities to counter any pacing threat. And commanding in Korea showed me that years of combined training and shared risk with regional partners creates relationships that cannot be forged in crisis those enduring bonds built through repetition and sustained presence, underpan our posture in the region. and reinforce our operations globally. We're building readiness for the future fight at our combat training centers, and having been the commander of the ops group at joint readiness training center, I know the value of our CTCs, where we train our soldiers to fight against any adversary in the mud, to solve complex problems, and to test our new kit. But we can't field our modern kit while sustaining aging systems that consume time and power. The vesting legacy platforms reduces the maintenance demand that falls hardest on our junior soldiers. This is why we've restructured our acquisition process to close the distance from between soldiers' feedback and program decisions from years down to months. And this is reflecting in the capabilities we're accelerating. Next generation command and control fundamentally changes the speed of decision making connecting sensors shooters and commanders closing the gap between information and action at every echelon across any mission. We're progressing the XM thirty infantry fighter fighting vehicle, unveiled the M-one E-three prototype years ahead of scheduled, and fielded the Amp-B to replace the M-one-one-three, which entered service in nineteen sixty, seven years before I was born. In army aviation we're on track to deliver a prototype of the M-V-seventy-five by F-Y-twenty-seven, increasing the speed, range, and survivability required for future operations. But this next generation of equipment we're filling is only as good as the industrial base what that produces and sustains it at scale. We continue to modernize our OIB through our fifteen year plan. We're expanding industry partnerships through enhanced use leases and advanced manufacturing. Uh, and but after thirty six years, I've never seen a unit's readiness determined by industrial capacity alone. What I have seen repeatedly is how we treat our soldiers' shapes whether we retain the experienced ones and whether the force we're building reflects the standards we claimed uphold. That standard includes four billion in inf- infrastructure investments through twenty twenty six. We're working on improving nutrition, we're rolling out campus style dining facilities across five installations and planning for an additional six. And we're scaling our holistic health and fitness across the entire force, active guard and reserve. And these investments are having a measurable impact. It shows in our recruiting trends. Our numbers are up and continue to exceed last year's targets. Thank you for your continued support as we sustain the best army the world has ever seen. That will not change and this will defend. Thank you.

Representative Scott, Ranking Member Garimendi, subcommittee members, thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the readiness of the United States Navy. Your oversight and authorization of funding ensure the Navy is ready when the nation calls that readiness was put to a test this past year in the in the Atlantic. The Navy played a key role in Operation Absolute Resolve. In the Pacific, our sailors operate every day. deterring China and building partnerships. In the Middle East, the Navy has supported the joint force in achieving objectives in Operations Rough Rider, Midnight Hammer, and now Epic Fury. And the Navy continues to maintain an unbroken strategic deterrent with our ballistic missile submarines. Around the globe, we are ready to defend the homeland, deter, deter threats, and when called upon, to fight and win. continue to meet the demands of today's rapidly evolving threats, we are thinking, acting, and operating differently. And this starts with the Navy's primary weapon system, our sailors. In the fiscal year twenty twenty five, we set a goal to enlist forty thousand six hundred sailors. We exceeded that goal and shipped forty four thousand, ninety six sailors to Recruit Training Command. I am confident we will meet our twenty twenty six goal of forty five thousand new recruits. To improve retention, we made personnel policy changes that led to thousands of sailors who were considering separation to continue their service. These efforts reduced gaps at sea from twenty-three thousand in October twenty-twenty-five to eighteen thousand last month with a goal of fifteen thousand by October first of this year. We are focused on improving sailors' quality of service. Through a new initiative, we are providing permanent shore base housing so that no sailor is required to live aboard a ship in port. As of last month fifty five fifty-seven hundred sailors have transitioned from living afloat to residing ashore. Last year we we reduced our unmet need of child care from twenty-two hundred to fifteen hundred spaces. Our fitness facilities are now open twenty-four seven and we are expanding meal selections and healthy options in our galleys. We are improving platform readiness by investing in the shipyard infrastructure optimization program, and developing our civilian workforce. We are leveraging advanced technologies such as condition-based maintenance and additive manufacturing. The Navy continues to drive to our goal of eighty percent combat surge ready with urgency and accountability. However, I remain concerned with the material condition of our amphibious ships. The Navy is committed to improving here and I am working closely on this through the amphibious force readiness board which I co-chair with General Gehring. To meet the high demand for forward operations, the Navy is changing how we build, equip, and sustain our fleet. The Golden Fleet initiative is our plan to deliver the best and most capable platforms, to revitalize our maritime industrial base, and to change how we acquire ships. One example of that change is the establishment of Navy portfolio acquisition executives. This new structure aligns accountability, accelerates delivery capabilities, and prioritizes the readiness. and innovation of our platforms. Your continued support of our Navy is vital to our readiness, in particular expanded flexible multi-year procurement, guaranteed purchase commitments, and predictable funding streams enable us to achieve speed and scale. These legislative authorities allow us uh allow our maritime industrial partners to expand production capacity modernize facilities and strengthen supply chains. In closing, your leadership and partnership are critical to the Navy's continued success and improvement. On behalf of our sailors and civilians and families around the world, I thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Congressman Scott, Ranking Member Garamendi, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'm honored to represent the Marine Corps and discuss our current warfighter readiness. The Marine Corps provides unique value to the nation in joint force. We are both the nation's global crisis response force and a persistent integrated stand-in force in the Indo-Pacific. This combination is at the heart of our force design and ensures that we are prepared to meet the challenges outlined in the national defense strategy. Our traditional role as a crisis response force is embodied by the amphibious ready group and marine expeditionary unit most often referred to as the Arg-Mu. This sea-based capability provides our nation with decision space and options, changes the behavior of bad actors, and delivers swift and decisive action when required. Our commandant has set the North Star of providing combatant commanders with a global three point O Arg-Mu presence. This equates to continuous Arg-Mu deployments from both the east and west coasts, and an episodically deployed Arg-Mu from our forward deployed naval forces in Japan. Building on this, our force design has created stand-in forces that are purpose-built to operate persistently within contested maritime spaces. These forward deployed forces provide a continuous presence, enable the joint force, and contribute to deterrence with allies and partners. We are not without challenges, but we're getting after them. In partnership with the Navy, we are working to improve the availability of our amphibious warfare ships towards a goal of achieving a three point O RG mu presence. We're also working to field organic littoral connectors. Thanks to your support and oversight, we've made significant progress in the area, in this area, with the procurement of the Medium Landing Ship, or LSM. And we need to continue to move forward with a sense of urgency in both areas, amphibious warfare ship availability and littoral mobility. Despite these challenges, your Marines remain ready. Once again, the Marine Corps has made its recruiting mission in FY twenty-five, and we are ahead of mission for FY twenty-six. It's a testament to the quality of the Marines that we select to find the next generation and the critical resources this committee helps provide. This success in recruiting is the essential first step. Our institutional commitment to standards-based training and achieving built brilliance in the basics is what forges our war-fighting edge, And this relentless focus on fundamental excellence is precisely what enables us to remain the world's premier fighting force. We also recognize that taking care of our Marines and our families and their families is a war fighting necessity that directly impacts readiness and retention. Our Barracks twenty thirty initiative is making tangible progress, thanks in large part to the continued support from this committee. In the last fiscal year, we completed four new barracks, began construction on eight others, awarded renovations for an additional twenty-seven, and outfitted one hundred and fifty-nine barracks with new furnishings. We're also tackling child care challenges head-on. We have implemented key recruiting and retention incentives for our direct care employees. These incentives include a hundred percent child care discount, increased salaries, and a priority placement transfer program that allows military spouses to seamlessly move between installation child development centers when their service member executes permanent change station orders. Finally, I'm proud to report that for a third consecutive year, your Marine Corps has earned a clean audit opinion. This is a direct reflection of our commitment to fiscal stewardship and demonstrates our accountability for every taxpayer dollar. In conclusion, the Marine Corps appreciates the continued congressional oversight and support for the commandant's priorities, which remain essential for building enduring readiness across the total force. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. And I look forward to answering your questions.

Chairman Bergman, Ranking Member Garimendi, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the readiness of your United States Air Force. As General Wilsbach testified, the most important thing the Air Force does for the joint force and for the nation, is to fly and fix aircraft so that we are ready to answer the nation's call. The Air Force's lethality depends on the professionalism of our airmen, the capability of our equipment, and the skill at which we bring them together. Airmen are our most precious resource. The active duty, Air National Guard, reserve, and civilian workforce are why the United States Air Force is effective at a moment's notice. We are investing in them to keep the Air Force the most capable and lethal Air Force in the world. We updated our fitness policy to push our Airmen to new levels, and ensure they are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with our joint partners on the toughest battlefields. Additionally, the Air Force is on track to train fifteen hundred pilots per year to expand our capacity to support operations worldwide. We strive to make the Air Force an unmatched place to serve. We are increasing our airmen's quality of life by updating dormitories and child deve- child development care centers. We are repeatedly meeting our recruitment goals, bringing in talented men and women from across the country. Moreover, we are seeing strong retention numbers across the force, indicating that we are living up to our commitments. The second aspect of readiness for the Air Force is having the right equipment in good working order. Our outstanding airmen need the right logistical support to do their job. To that end, the Air Force is leveraging the Weapon System Sustainment account to increase aircraft availability, which are allows our aviators to get the reps and sets that they need. While we are working to be more ready today than yesterday, we are modernizing to be even better tomorrow. We are recapitalizing our ground-based strategic deterrent, fighter, bomber, and tanker aircraft, as well as the command and control architectures that coordinate the fight. We appreciate the acquisition reforms supported by this subcommittee that are allowing us to develop capabilities faster. The B-twenty-one, F-forty-seven, and collaborative combat aircraft will present our adversaries with dilemmas they cannot solve. The lethality of your Air Force is the highest when we exercise our well-trained airmen with capable equipment. The Air Force takes this aspect of our job very seriously. At the tactical level, our airmen are practicing agile combat employment and practicing to fight in exercises like Bamboo Eagle. Last summer, the Department of the Air Force employed more than four hundred aircraft and fifteen thousand personnel across fifty locations in the Pacific to improve our ability to fight. As demonstrated over the past several months, our airmen are ready to respond to the nation's needs. Operations Midnight Hammer, Absolute Resolve, and Epic Fury demonstrate that in coordination with our joint partners, your Air Force is the most capable and lethal Air Force on the planet. We will focus on taking care of airmen, sustaining the fleet, and developing capabilities for the future. Your Air Force will fix and fly aircraft to deter potential adversaries and win our nation's wars. I look forward to answering your questions and partnering with you to improve your Air Force.

Chairman Bergman, Reiking Member Garamendi, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about the United States Space Force. Recent events around the world clearly demonstrate the importance of the Space Force as part of the joint force. With guardians both in garrison and deployed in harm's way, our need to generate readiness remains critical. The Chairman recently noted our guardians prepare for the fight before a single shot is fired or a plane takes off. That is how readiness is built, in the barracks, on the training fields, and on the bases at home and across the globe. In the past year we've closed on many items to meet these readiness goals. We put on orbit two global positioning system space craft to enhance our navigation and timing, two geosynchronous space situational awareness program space craft to increase our domain awareness, and forty-two data transport layer space craft to build the backbone of our missile warning capability. Along with our commercial partners, we've executed over a hundred and seventy launches in the last year. The launch enterprise counts three new entrants as significant progress. And your Space Force has authorized the early use of a new radar, has upgraded optical surveillance systems to track adversary activity on orbit. We have operationally accepted additional systems in domain awareness and electromagnetic ag- electromagnetic warfare, and missile warning. that enhance our capabilities in those mission areas. We stood up our officer training course to baseline all of our officers in space cyber intelligence and acquisitions. We built a program to provide initial qualification training specifically for our acquisition workforce. We activated three mission deltas, eight system deltas, two service components, and we have already met our fiscal year twenty twenty-six recruiting goals. We anticipate continued robust growth across all these areas, as Congress considers our seventy-one billion dollar request that is included in the President's budget. As Secretary Mink recently noted, the President's budget enables the Space Force to address both readiness and future growth challenges, positioning us for success in the years ahead. Our priority is clear. We must protect the joint force from space-enabled attack. To do this, Space Force Guardians have participated in a variety of readiness-producing activities designed to ensure space superiority. Exercises like Flashpoint, Resolute Space-twenty-five, and Space Flag have been particularly helpful in generating readiness. As my colleagues here know and joint doctrine will attest, training is an essential component of readiness, and the Space Force is organizing to ensure we train our forces for combat. We're doing this by using the Space Force's forced generation model, or SPA-four-gen, to deliberately carve out time for advanced training, so that our guardians are always ready. Rapidly evolving threats and our responsibilities to the joint force mean that the Space Force must aggressively increase its end strength and infrastructure. Achieving these goals will require increased focus on the sessions, as well as building out training infrastructure and key enablers needed to develop guardians of the future. We will need to double in size in the coming years to meet the identified operational needs and the twenty-seven budget currently before Congress will enable the Space Force to grow by two thousand eight hundred personnel. The Space Force continues to provide tremendous value to both the joint force and the nation. General Saltzman said recently on nearly every mission around the globe the Space Force delivered on our promises to the joint force. providing unmatched combat capability from space to ensure combatant commanders can project power and meet our national military objectives. With your continued support, that value will grow as we work to build the service to meet rapidly expanding requirements. Thank you.

OK, thank you all for your uh your articulate and thoughtful and timely testimony. Um We're gonna use the five minute clock here to maximize everybody's time. So, thank you to my members for staying within that five minutes. Um, so, I'll start. Amphibious ships, General Goering. The Marine Corps has advocated for a three point O amphibious readiness group worldwide presence. In your best profici- professional military judgment, do you think the existing amphibious fleet is sufficient to meet this three point O goal? And if it is not, Can you provide us with a number of ships that we should pursue to realize this goal?

Uh, Chairman, uh, thank you for the question. Um, recently the Secretary of the Navy has directed that we establish the Amphibious Force Readiness Board that I co-chair with Admiral Kilby. Um, and one of the objectives of that board is determine ultimately what would be the right number of amphibious ships, and it's really a a three different phased approach. Uh, one is a selective surface life extension. Uh, the other is optimizing. our maintenance and how we force generate and the third is uh procuring new ships uh i think the v. c. n. and i are in agreement that that number is north of thirty one uh this board owes more detailed analysis to the secretary of the navy uh initial indicators that it's pro- probably somewhere in the vicinity of forty, but there's more work to be done there so thank you for the question chairman.

yeah thank you i look forward to hearing when the meeting is gonna be when the board meets and some uh you know do out results uh quickly admiral kilby I particularly support the Navy's goal to obtain an eighty percent surge ready uh forced posture. What steps is Navy taking to arrest the continued amphibious force structure decline and deliver on the CNO's goal to make the amphibious force's eighty percent surge ready?

Chairman, thanks for that question. A another effort that uh I work with the ACMAC is maintenance of these ships. So I'm gonna give you some specific examples, But last year when I came to testify uh before you, we were at forty-two percent combat surge ready. Today we're at forty-five percent combat surge ready. A month ago we were at fifty-four percent combat surge ready. That number changes because ships enter maintenance and leave maintenance, so that number is a number that we predict and and when we achieve the number we thought we were gonna achieve great. If if we don't achieve the number we thought we were gonna achieve it's because there's been a problem with maintenance. so some of the areas we're working on and have it executed already is a a flag level review of any availability that has over ten percent of growth in it. We have found once you exceed ten percent growth in availability, the availability explodes. So that's thing one. There has to be a a a a governor there and that's provided by flag oversight. Uh the second thing is a second port engineer for every uh amphibious big deck um LHA and LHD that we have. That's to screen the work properly, make sure we order the material, make sure we have the job scope uh properly, so we're trying to uh match uh capacity to a very challenging ship in the case of our LHDs. Another uh area is to align specific and hard to find uh workforce and industry, and I'm talking about boilers on our LHDs, I'm talking about our cranes on our and I'm talking about the diesels out of our amphibious ships. So the Navy is pursuing single source contracts where we can provide those workers to those availabilities when needed and not con- not count on the private availability whether it be you know any of our contractors to obtain those so we're trying to lock down variance and make sure we achieve the end state in that avail. Another thing is improved material forecasting and ordering all that long. ma- lead material on time. And that means we have to we have to definitivitize the availability well before it starts. So right now we're up to five months. We'd like to get a year in advance to lock down the availability for our big deck amphibs. We're at a seventeen percent life cycle health assessment for our LHD class. And if we can execute uh this year, I'm predicting we'll be up in the sixties because we'll have done the maintenance we need to to make those ships uh sustainable and keep them around, as you said, for the entire service life. And finally, we've introduced a fifteen million dollar, uh, contract incentive fee for two ships, the Somerset and an Amer- and the America. Uh, that means you have to hit that date to get fifteen million dollars. No negotiation. So the contractor is incentivized to stay on schedule, and we're incentivized to - to help make sure we do that. Those are some of the things we're working hard And I meet with the ACMAC and discuss our progress across the board for amphibious ships, sir.

Okay, uh number one, my my time is up and I'm gonna recognize Mister Garamendi, but before I do that just know we're gonna do a second round of questions, so we don't get them all on the front end, so uh the bottom line is uh Mister Garamendi, you're recognized.

Uh thank you Mister Chairman and for the uh witnesses thank you so much for your opening statements. Uh there's much that was said and much more that needs to be said. Uh Admiral Kirby you were uh answering on the amphibs uh the questions that are there, the same issues apply to all the the other vessels. The reporting from the uh GAO and others is that um significant progress has yet to be made across all of your uh ships and for the army uh as well as for the air force and i suppose we'll see the same thing eventually for the space force uh that you are not able to maintain what you have. Uh for the army you've uh fallen behind the numbers tend to continue to decline for your uh major platforms the navy you just answered part of the questions there is obviously more uh the marine corps uh you've got some problems with your airframe Uh, and obviously for the, uh, Air Force similarly. So what I wanna do is to get down to, uh, the nuts and bolts of this. You're going to have to improve the maintenance of all of your platforms. Otherwise, we're gonna continue to buy more and get less availability, unless we improve the ma- the, the maintenance. In order to do that, you have relied in the past upon the developers of the platform. What I wanna go to each of you is the right to maintain, the right for the information. Uh do you, and an answer, a question for each one of you, is it important for you to have the right to repair? And are you attempting to get that in your contracts? So let's start right on down the line, each one of you, the right to repair.

Yeah sure, thanks for the question. A absolutely. Uh you hit on both of the key points of this uh i- in your uh in your opening, sir. So uh right to repair um in the technical data. So the technical data, uh we believe strongly we have to do this early on in the uh in the contracting processes. And and you've given us the ability to do that and we're moving out uh with that process. But it's also uh in our industrial base to get the em- and it's manufacturing up and running so our soldiers can repair this the gear uh that our supply chains just cannot keep up with so we can maintain our legacy system. Yes or no, sir.

Thank you, General. Admiral.

Yes, sir. Support the right to repair, support the ability to make parts in the Navy and not count on industry to do that. That can be through additive manufacturing and a number of things. Support the contract mechanisms to allow us to do that. Support uh additional training capability for the capability to repair for our sailors? Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you, member.

Um.

Thanks for the question. Uh, absolutely going forward through the contracting uh process, I believe intellectual property needs to be part of that contract to get after it. And uh what I'm most interested in also is now looking back to previous systems we've bought to see what it would take for us to get some of the capability to repair these components. I believe the department's leading this effort but there's numerous examples from the Marine Corps where this would make us better uh and increase our readiness, forward. So thank you.

Very good.

Mm.

Air Force.

I can remember critical issue, very important to us, I'd say the status of today is insufficient, right? We need data that gets down to the component and sub-component systems, so that our airmen can effect repairs. A lot of times today our airmen are having to make the same repair three times. For instance, if there's a repair on an aircraft power unit, and they have to go to another air the part's not on the shelf, so they have to get that part off another airplane, say it's a two hour job. two hours to get it off that airplane, two hours to put it in the second airplane, and when the part shows up, two hours to put it in the third airplane. A critical issue, uh, we very much appreciate this subcommittee's help.

Space force.

Hey sir, uh, I'll add on, I st- I started my career as a young enlisted maintainer, so near and dear to my heart in some ways. Uh, absolutely support with my colleagues here. Applies a little different from the space force as we think about systems in space, but our ground systems, absolutely, we have the same issue that the other services field, so. uh supportive of both.

I'm gonna let it go at that, uh this issue's been before this subcommittee it seems forever. We've not been able to push through to the um industrial base the reality that uh we're gonna not give up here. Uh insofar as policy is concerned we're gonna continue to push so that you have the right to repair and the opportunity for the um and therefore the opportunity to better maintain your platforms. With that I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Mr. Scott, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and um General and Abe, I don't envy the position you're in. We had a brief time to talk over the last week or so, but um as you know General George, extremely well respected, well liked by many of us. He and his wife Patty, thirty eight years of service to the country, specifically the United States Army. Um I've read all of the news reports about why he was dismissed. But I would like to hear from you. Uh, why was General George dismissed?

Sure, that's a question for Secretary Hegseth.

OK.

I mean, I've I've been the Vice for a couple months now.

OK.

We honored the service of uh General George and his wife and the generals that were dismissed.

OK. Well, um, um Well, th- th- thank you for that. I would I would like for Secretary Hegseth to answer the reason of why why they were dismissed. And I think that the way uh General George and his wife Patty were treated will have a chilling effect on the way our our services operate in the future. Um prior to this uh the Secretary of Defense removed four uh army officers from the O seven list before their nomination left the DOD is that correct?

Sir I I think the the list is still moving forward um I mean our our process the process has The army provided the list to the secretary of war's office and it has gone gone forward. Uh whether those officers have been split from the list, um you know, higher, uh I'm not sure at this time. Um there's civilian oversight of the processor, as you know. Uh there's multiple checks as it goes. And that, you know, as it goes from the White House to the Senate, there's uh opportunities for multiple uh reasons for for officers to be pulled off.

Okay, let me Let let me respect that because I'm I'm on I'm on I'm on a time clock here but my my understanding is that somewhere around three percent of colonels are selected to move forward to become general officers. Is that number at least approximately accurate?

Yes sir, approximately accurate.

So of all of the colonels out there they're selected by their peers and by their board, it's narrowed down to about three percent of the colonels that actually move forward to become a d- a general officer.

Yes sir.

And the the open the reporting is that Secretary Hegseth pulled indi- individually pulled four names from that list. I'm less worried about the race and the gender than if he did or he didn't do it. Did did he pull four names from the list as has been reported?

Sure, you'd have to ask Secretary Hegseth that. I

OK.

I've I've been the vice for a couple months.

Well, if if I could if I could get anybody over there to respond, I wou I would I would ask him, and I appreciate that. But I I would I wou I will say this, but I would like to know why. if those four names were removed from the list, I would like to know why they were removed from the list. There may be a legitimate reason. Um Let me, let me get, get to why this is important. The military expects its officers to provide truthful and honest advice versus being yes-men to their leadership chain. Is that, is that correct, gentlemen? Would all of you generals agree with me with that statement?

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

If our top general officers are removed without justification from their positions for providing honest objective advice, which is something that I always knew General George to give, then I fear that it's gonna have a trickle-down effect that's gonna be devastating to the other officers and and especially how their spouses feel about continuing to spend their lives in service. This is a team sport. The officer and the spouse are in this together. And I think that that General George and and his wife Patty, I think they were very unfairly treated. And I would appreciate it if the Secretary of Defense would be forthcoming with whether or not four names were removed from the list. I'm less concerned about race and gender than I am why they were removed from the list. And if he has individually changed the way we're gonna handle the promotion and s- the selection and promotion of our general officers in the military. Um, I'll move to the Air Force real quick. I wan- I wanna ask with regard to uh combat search and rescue, the A ten general has provided that uh has been a big part of that mission. What the Air Force plans to retire the A ten, unfortunately. What is what is the Air Force doing to prepare for combat search and rescue when the A ten is retired?

Congressman, it'll be a mix of platforms, just like it's been a mix of platforms in the past with HH sixties and overhead, uh, folks doing that coordination role that the eight-tens have done very well over the years.

And and correct me if I'm wrong, but an HH sixty is a helicopter, correct?

For the CSAR, yes, I thought you were talking about CSAR vice CAS. Yes, sir.

Um. I yield.

Miss Strickland, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chairman Bergman, Ranking Member Girimendi, and thank you to all of our witnesses for your testimony today and your continued service. This hearing comes at a critical moment. US forces are not just preparing for conflict, they are actively engaged while continuing to meet global commitments across multiple theaters. The core question I have today is not whether the joint force can fight tonight, it is whether we can sustain operations. absorb losses and regenerate combat power fast enough to remain ready for a large-scale conflict. So I'm going to start with General Lineve. I want to discuss force allocation, health and long-term readiness. General Lineve, the Army is deploying high-demand systems like air defense systems across multiple theaters. Are these the same systems we would rely on in a large-scale conflict?

Uh, yes ma'am.

All right, and what risk does that create for our ability to respond to a second contingency.

Ma'am, uh you know uh my role as the vice is to man, train, equip, and uh certify and to build the force the COCOM uh commanders will utilize. We're supporting uh Admiral uh Cooper uh in team. If we have to surge to an- another location then we'll uh we'll have to look at how we balance that to be able to provide the resources necessary. Appreciate the question.

All right, this is about forced health and long-term readiness now. General Leneve, are sustained operational demands impacting retention, family stability, or overall forced health in ways that could degrade readiness over time?

Yeah, ma'am, again, thank you for the question. What we are uh not seeing a degradation in uh retention. Uh, you know, uh right now uh we will let you know if we if we see that. uh over time is something that we look at. Um we continue uh to assess where the force is, um but right now uh retention and recruiting is up.

All right, thank you. Now I'm gonna go to General Lamontagne to shift to aircraft capacity and the Air Force's role in sustaining operations. General, last year the Air Force testified it was operating the oldest and smallest fleet in history with elevated readiness risk. Since then, we've seen confirmed aircraft losses and additional battle damage. At an unclassified level, what concerns do you have that the Air Force has regarding its ability to maintain aircraft capacity and maintenance depth to sustain current operations while possibly preparing for a large-scale conflict?

All right, so, Mr. Reckling, thank you very much for the question, key issue for our United States Air Force, as you outlined and as we've testified previously. And so we are redoubling our efforts to invest in our ability to maintain the airplanes. Historically we've invested in our weapon system sustainment, which is largely spare parts engineering and a lot of other things that supports that, to about an eighty-five percent level. Last year it was an eighty-six percent level, so some improvement but not enough. This year's budget in twenty-seven takes us to ninety-three percent, an additional three point two billion dollars to help us sustain those airplanes over time. very important issue for your United States Air Force.

Great, thank you. And in closing, I want to just remind us that we're experiencing aircraft losses and damage, expanding munitions at high rates, operating within an industrial base that is constrained and placing sustained demand on the force itself. So really the question we should ask ourselves, are we maintaining readiness for a large scale peer conflict, or are we consuming the force faster than we can regenerate it? And to my colleague, um, Congressman Austin's question about what happened with General George um General George was in charge of First Corps at Joint Base Lewis McCord when I was Mayor of Tacoma. He and his wife have dedicated their lives to serving our country. And just to be clear, once the Secretary of Army clears an individual for promotion to General, the Secretary of Defense should not be removing them because their records have been highly vetted highly scrutinized and these people are qualified for the jobs. And we look forward to hearing an explanation from Secretary Hegseth when he meets with the full House Armed Services Committee. On April twenty ninth. I yield back.

Thank you. Mister Hibbenes, you're recognized.

Thank you. I'm gonna go with a little different uh line of questioning and um for uh Admiral Kilby um what is the size of our fleet today?

Two hundred ninety-two ships, sir.

How many of those are combat ready?

Uh it depends on the class, if it's surface ships, sixty-three percent, combat surge ready if it's submarines sixty five percent combat surge ready and if it's uh amphibious ships forty five percent combat surge ready

Um is every is every ship you have two hundred and ninety-two ships are all those fully billeted?

They are not all fully billeted we have as i said in my opening statement eighteen thousand gaps at sea So those gaps are spread across all those ships.

But are there ships are there ships that are not combat ready that have crews r for those ships?

Yes, sir.

How many of those do we have?

I I have to get back to exactly on how many ships are in in the in the depot right now.

All right, um General uh Lamontage I'm sorry I have a mispr mispronounce. How many how many how many planes do you have in the Air Force?

So I don't have the exact total with me here today. I have a detailed breakdown, can go plane by plane, but I'll come back to you with that uh with the total.

OK, what percentage of those planes are combat ready?

Uh sir, the the the so I'll break it up into two pieces and happy to come back to you at a higher level of classification. Uh the actual rates exceed the classification of this hearing, sir, but want to come back to you and your team, We can discuss them immediately following this meeting, but not in a public forum.

Are there pilots for all your planes?

Uh. So we're several, a couple thousand pilots short. Um, most of those are on the staff. The prior di- prioritization has gone to the flying units. Uh, but we are not a hundred percent across our United States Air Force.

So you got planes that don't have pilots. Is that what you're saying?

Uh, so I'm not saying that. Uh, uh, the the The line units are manned close to a hundred percent, the staff a lot less so.

Yeah, you, I don't know if you guys know, but you know, in my private previous life, I was a fire chief of the city of Miami. And um I had a certain number of firefighters. And I would have been fired if I would had had firefighters sitting in my fire station without a vehicle to get jump on to fight fires. and do other stuff that we had to do. And so I'm really concerned about the fact that we have sailors and maybe pilots and stuff that don't if we had to there's not a a a a combat vehicle either a ship or a plane or a tank that they maybe they may may not get into because the the expense a big part of the expense of the armed services or any any service actually is the personnel. And so The state of readiness is um is concerning to me. Uh and the state of readiness and the fact that that we have people who are paying for that we may not have the right equipment for the to be utilized when we need them. Um some people here are are you know they're they're they're saying that you know are are fighting men and women are stressed et cetera um and I and I appreciate that. But that's what they signed up for. Like somebody saying, " Gee, I'm really sorry, you have to fight a fire." All right? Well, that's what I signed up for, and gee, I had another fire, but gee, that's what I signed up for. All right? And so, I expect our our fighting men and women to be equipped, have the best equipment possible, but when the United States needs them, that they're a- actually able to fight. Um, and the fact that uh that uh our state of readiness, especially it looks like in the in the in the Navy, uh is so deficient is really alarming to me um and so uh I don't know what it is that we need to do in order to to get that readiness up maybe a new new way of doing things uh but uh it's really uh concerning to me. Um General uh again um have you looked at I know we have an issue with tankers um have you looked at commercial uh uh options for for supplanting your tanker fleet?

Congressman, there is a a couple of commercial contracts, commercial carriers that are doing air refueling today, uh that supplement the the team and that's funded by the user. And so, yes sir, there are a couple of commercial companies providing air refueling services today.

All right, fair enough. And my time is up and I yield back.

Thank you. Mister Sorensen, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, uh welcome to all of our witnesses who are joining us here today. Uh I'd like to thank uh General Lanive, uh General Lamontagne and General Bratton uh for taking the time to speak with me um ahead of this hearing I'm looking forward to continuing to work with all of you um the Rock Island Arsenal um the weather and uh and space are as you all probably know my favorite topics but um um I did wanna talk about a serious thing today the army is uh currently using management directed reassignments to move thousands of civilian employees across functions and locations across the country. Many of these employees are my neighbors who work at the Rock Island Arsenal. Many are veterans who have worked at Rock Island for fifteen, twenty, and thirty years. A lot of them have been working at Joint Munitions Command, the exact folks that we need who know how to scale up munitions production in desperate times, and it seems appropriate for the time that we are in now. Uh, General Leneve, I'm thankful that before our committee meeting uh here today. You mentioned an upcoming visit to the Rock Island Arsenal and I hope to stand beside you uh when you are there. Uh could you help me understand a little bit about why the army is executing a com command matching program, how you identify positions affected, and the timeline for completion, especially with such an active theater in Iran?

Yeah sure, thanks for the question, and it and I do look forward to going uh to Rock- going back to Rock Island, and uh going with you. Uh sure, what we're trying to do is uh match holes across our workforce with the talent uh that needs to be uh maintained across all of our uh sites, whether it's in the uh Industrial Base or it's in our headquarters to try to to match where the holes are. Um we got about five to six thousand across the workforce that we're working on doing this. We're we're trying to uh look as uh hard as we can at the at matching uh skills and attributes and experience uh to fill these holes. I know it's uh it is uh a uh I mean we're dealing with people and their lives and uh we're we're trying to do it with the the biggest care that we possibly can in order to sustain the workforce uh for the for the long term. Um and you know as we scale you know we hope to scale, we wanna have the most optimized workforce there uh to be able to do it, but w- it's not just done in a vacuum. So, you know, we're looking at at uh, you know, the skills and attributes that we're trying to plug. And we're trying to do it with much care. There's been some reports out there that people are being told to move without any compensation. It's not true. Anything over fifty miles are being uh, there's a compensation package associated w- associated with it. So we're we're trying to think through this and and we're trying to get it uh, accomplished, you know, in a relatively uh quick manner.

And I and I I appreciate appreciate that diligence, um but in the past ten days I have met with many folks um who many of them have done their service in the military but then they put roots down in the community for decades, and some of them come to me and they say, Eric, I I have done what was right here, um I I have a perfect record, there is no one anywhere that does the work that I'm doing so why am I surplused? And now they're given five days to decide to uproot families or they'll be terminated? Well, I'll tell you, most people spend more than five days to figure out which used car to buy or which dishwasher to get so how on earth do we think that this helps us meet a mission? Cutting people at joint munitions command? When we're going through munitions like water, it feels so short-sighted, but it's not just me saying it. The folks at Rock Island Arsenal, they feel like they've been sucker punched. Um, so why are they given five days to make the decision?

That's true. There was a a longer time that we've been working through the process. Um, so it wasn't just a a dropped on at the last moment. It, you know, uh, you have five days, uh, to make this decision. They've they've known that they've been going through the process, uh, for for a while now, um, across all of our commands. Now, there is a window for them to make a decision, do they wanna move or not. uh, so we can plug the holes and and and move forward.

Is this something that we can fix? To take care of them? I mean, a- a- and not to cut you off, but when Secretary Driscoll came to Rock Island Arsenal, we ended the visit with a handshake and a smile, and he said, " Let me know what you need." And I I need certainty, but across the entire workforce, whether that's Picatinny, Detroit, or Rock Island, we deserve answers. And most importantly, it's the support. There are six members of Congress looking over the nation's largest arsenal at Rock Island. You know, I have a copy of the declaration that proposed the arsenal to be put at Rock Island, and it is signed by Abraham Lincoln in my office. And it is so important that we take care of the people there. This should not be a dis- difficult task to support them properly, honorably, and effectively for the benefit of readiness and our country. And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Mr. Harrigan, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, it's great to see you. Uh, thank you for your testimony to this subcommittee. Uh, I'm gonna piggyback a little bit on what the ranking member talked about. I had some different remarks here prepared, but I think the ranking member went down a, a great line of questioning. And I think it was very clear that every single one of you support right to repair. And the ranking member said that this committee has worked very hard to try to get right to repair. I wanna make something really clear. We did get right to repair last year. Uh, myself, a former Green Beret, Tim Sheehy over in the Senate, a former Navy SEAL, uh, Elizabeth Warren and Maggie Goodlander, you probably couldn't find four different members of Congress that disagree more on various parts of policy, but we all agree on this. And we actually brought this across the finish line in last year's NDAA, both in the House Armed Services Committee and in the Senate Armed Services Committee. And magically through a very opaque process called a conference, a bunch of unelected bureaucrats kicked it out. of last year's NDAA and we didn't get it done. So I want everybody to understand that every single service wants this. This committee wants to give it to you, but for some reason there is some force that is out there that is preventing that from happening. That's a shot across the bow. I'm gonna start getting very agitated about this this year, but we have to deliver right to repair to the services. We absolutely have to have it. Particularly when we are looking at protracted conflict in a very far away place. General Goering, part of your testimony is that the Marine Corps at its core remains a naval expeditionary force and as we contemplate a potential conflict with China, in a far off contested environment where access to contractors may be limited and rapid organic maintenance is critical to mission success. Can you tell me how consequential not having right to repair

Congressman, thanks for the question. I mean, our ability to sustain ourselves in a contested environment will literally uh drive the pace at which we can operate. That will be the limiting factor. So the ability to maintain and fix our equipment at the leading edge uh I think is essential cuz that will really drive up tempo.

Thank you, and I know that the answer is the exact same from each and every one of our services, and so this is something that we owe to you this year. And it will, I will endeavor to get it done. Uh, I wanna switch gears over to General Neve. Uh, I think one of the, the greatest parts of Army transformation initiative and a lot of the work that's been ongoing is the concept of Army advanced manufacturing that we were able to get across the finish line last year uh went out and visited some of the ongoing work at um i- out out in Texas at Red River Army Depot uh some incredible folks out there, working at the cutting edge. Can you explain how Army advanced manufacturing is moving forward the mission of the United States Army as it continues to transform.

Yeah, sure. Thank you, thank you for the question. It's not only there, it's also at Rock Island uh with the team there. K, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use uh uh drones as an example if if I can. We we have got the scale as fast as possible uh making the parts and having this available for companies outside of our uh our department uh to be able to use this to build the drones. We but we have to be able to we have to have this in our system in our organic industrial base to be able to scale when needed and that's that's where we're lacking right now so with uh the ability to do this inside our gr- organic industrial base, it's allowing us to be able to produce at scale the the components that we need to have a healthy uh ecosystem for just that one. That's just one example where we could go and scale across uh all of uh our bases, to be able to execute this, all our organic industrial bases to do this. It is critical. So it's the technical data, it's the right to the repair, and it's the advanced manufacturing that we have in our in our uh depots and that we uh have within our our units as well to be able to produce uh parts.

Thank you very much for that. Gentlemen, thanks again, and best of luck out there. Uh, thanks for coming in today, and Chairman, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Thank you. Miss Elbreth, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mister Chair, gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I also wanna align myself with Congressman Scott's comments about General George. I've only been on committee fifteen months, but he was incredibly forthright uh and solutions oriented with this committee, and I think the committee, Congress and the American people deserve an explanation as to as to how he was treated. Um General Gearing, thank you for taking the time yesterday to come by the office. I really appreciate that conversation. Admiral Kilby, I wanna commend you both for the uh the amphibious force readiness board that you put together. I think it's a a long overdue, I hope we can we can acknowledge that, but responsible response to an acute frankly failure for too many years, but to have it elevated to the vice-level and have regular monthly meetings and deliverables I think is really healthy. But I'd I'd like to ask you both, you know, choose your own adventure when you're back in front of the subcommittee this time next year what progress would you like to report on and what standard uh, should we be holding you to this time next year?

Well, let me let me start and I'll turn it over to my partner. Uh, I'd like to be in a much better position on maintenance. I'd like to tell you that we're gonna do this fifteen million dollar incentive because it works and it's worked for the past six ships I'd like to tell you that the second port engineer has resulted in the following improvement process for us. I'd like to tell you that we're gonna expand our OEM contracts to certain gear because it's proved so successful for boilers cranes and uh and and diesel engines. So to me we've gotta run that uh a little bit to achieve what we're think we're gonna achieve, but I do believe we'll be able to say that next year.

Congresswoman uh thanks for the question and thank you for taking the time yesterday for the office call. I think uh both uh Admiral Kilby and I through this AFRB process of the secretary of the navy a plan on what it's gonna take to get there. Uh and I believe uh when that plan is approved that's what we should be held accountable to. So thank you.

I appreciate that. It's my understanding you might have a little more meat on that bone by late summertime, so I would appreciate perhaps sharing that with the subcommittee when appropriate. I don't think the chairman would object to that at all. Hope not. Um, I'm gonna move on. Uh, General Lamontagne. Um, on April thirteenth, my two days ago, my office was made aware of a pretty massive jet fuel leak at Joint Base Andrews. The state and the Air Force have confirmed that a total of thirty-two thousand gallons of jet fuel fuel leaked into the system. Um, this d- leak, uh, went directly into Piscataway Creek, which flows into the Potomac River, which then flows into the Chesapeake Bay and affects what happens with Admiral Kilby and General Goering at the United States Naval Academy. So, uh really important issue we're talking about here. I know that you, when we talk about every installation, you all prioritize relationships with communities, trust, um, relationships and honesty with our regulators, uh, in local and state government, yet state regulators were not notified when the fueling system failed a safety test on December eleventh, twenty twenty five. It's my understanding that the leak detection system failed every month, uh, from January to March, leading to the leak, uh, in early April. We tend to focus a lot of our questions in these subcommittee hearings on the urgent issues within our districts, when our, within our state, but I, I offer this question general in the spirit of trying to fix this so it doesn't happen in other communities and other critical waterways across this country. What actions were taken in December when the safety test failed?

Yes, ma'am, very important issue. Uh, we take accountability for this and we failed to meet our high standards as teammates in the community and to take care of the environment on, in this issue. uh a little a couple points of clarification if I may. So in December and January there were a couple of valves that failed, but we don't think the leak happened until March.

OK.

We should have reported those faulty valves, no doubt about it, um but we have an accurate accounting of the fuel level that is in the tanks uh at the end of January, at the end of February. We do that reporting every month and it was within norms. So, you know, below one percent, which accounts for the fuel expanding and contracting with temperature changes. And so, uh, the responsibility is within two hours of having a leak, which was detected on the twenty-third, the team reported it to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Department of the Environment, uh, to, to be good stewards and to get on it as fast as possible.

Can I wanna, I wanna clarify if the spill has been contained and how we fine contained, does that mean that it is separated from any potential leak within a waterway, or does that mean that we have some outstanding to-dos and that a a good storm is gonna exacerbate this problem and that jet fuel will leak further into the creek and the, and the river and the bay?

Yes ma'am, I'd like to close the loop with you uh directly with this at the time and place of your convenience happy to do it now as well that we found uh the leak, the area, generally speaking it's on the west ramp Uh and a lot of works have been made to mitigate it to include you know soaking up about seventeen thousand gallons of water and oil contaminated areas, damming up the creek to prevent it from going any further as well as putting absorbent material down to prevent any further spread.

I appreciate that and thank you for your office following up. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.

Mr. Smith, you're recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I wanna thank uh all of our witnesses for being here today. I'm grateful for the conversations leading up to this and uh for your time and for your leadership. Uh, General, I'd like to have a conversation about the Air Air uh Air Force and uh in particular um about refueling. Um I mean the KC one thirty-five is a remarkable airplane and like a classic car it just kinda keeps on going as long as you take care of it but it is old. They're what, sixty, seventy year old air frames. Um, we had a policy discussion that's been ongoing for years about what the next generation ought to look like, and as a step either toward that or until that, depending on your point of view, we've got the KC forty-six's uh online and we've had trouble with them, and uh we you you all paused them and then we've started them and then I'm not quite sure, we're we're on at least yellow light right now I suppose. Um Oh, you know we talk a lot about uh, particularly outside of this room, we talk a lot about our extraordinary air capabilities to, um, find reach and do what needs to be done with the target, but you can't do that if you don't have the gas to get there, to stay there and to get home safely. So, uh, I, I'd, I'd just like to get your sense, big picture, before we get down any further. Where are we in terms of adequate tanker capacity? And do you have concerns about the age of the fleet and what I perceive at least to be a a a a a fairly clouded path forward in terms of replacement or next generation.

Yes sir, I I think we've had concerns about the age of the fleet for quite some time, thus the KC forty-six, uh, and just to clarify a couple of points on the KC forty-six, so we will not start the new contract until the those cat one deficiencies have been resolved. So that contract extension probably happens in about twenty-eight, everything will be fixed up. before then. That's our commitment to try and drive that forward. Uh, on sort of the next generation tanker, we have taken a look at analysis of alternatives that finished up last December, take a look at, you know, what kind of capacity we need, what kind of range, speed, uh, and survivability we need. Since then we put out a couple of requests for information to industry to get clarity on some of those systems that may help us be more survivable in more contested environments. Those systems could help us with the current fleet. We're gonna be flying KC- one thirty-fives for a long time. You know, if we recap KC- forty-sixes or something else to the tune of a squadron per year, we're gonna be flying KC- one thirty-fives for a longtime. So what can we do to those, uh, capable but very old airplanes to help protect them in more contested environments? A big priority for us going forward.

What about just the sheer number? Do we have enough gas tanks to do what needs done?

Uh. So the congressional uh threshold on that is four hundred sixty-six, going towards five hundred and two. We tend tend to fully comply with that. I think there's some also some analysis by United States Transportation Command, in conjunction with analysis on B-twenty-ones and other kinds of capabilities to figure out how many tankers we'd need going forward. So the intent in the near term is to deliver KC-forty-sixes. We were previously retiring a KC-one-thirty-five every time a

Uh in the Indo-Pacific, is there anything we ought to be um helping you with in terms of maintenance capacity? Uh I mean we've got old planes and that's a long way.

Mm-hmm.

Yes sir, so we've got a lot of work in the twenty-seven budget to look at infrastructure across the Pacific. Uh a big part of that will be sort of the hubs and the what do we need at the hubs, but we also need stuff at the spokes to facilitate, you know, a tanker drop-in from ref- you know, emptying its fuel to very capable receivers, filling up on the ground, and then getting right back in the fight. So we'll need uh, at each of the spokes we'll also need some capabilities there, fuel additives, uh, some aircraft ch- ground equipment, and more. And that analysis continues, and the good news is with a twenty-seven budget, a strong amount of funding's going exactly there.

Well, I appreciate it, General, and I know uh everybody here knows it's important, but it's not the sort of thing that makes headlines uh uh out there, and we'd like to keep it that way, cuz they only make headlines when the when the delivery system fails. So uh to the extent we can be helpful, and I would assure you I can be helpful, I would like to do that. I think it's a really critical link in the chain. It's obviously important to us in Kansas as well. Um and uh um we wanna make sure you've got what you need today and going forward. I'd yield back.

Congressman, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Tran. You're recognized.

Thank you, Chairman and Ranking Member, for t- having today's hearing. Uh, thank you to all the witnesses for being here today, and General Laniv, it was great to meet you earlier this afternoon. Uh, before I begin, I wanna take a moment to recognize the thirteen service members who have lost their lives in Iran, and the hundreds more that have been injured as a result of this war. Military readiness depends on our people, and every loss impacts our readiness. My heart is with the families and all of the families who have a one deployed. Readiness is the core of our military. It is more than just the latest weapon, weaponry and intelligence. It's housing, quality of life, health care, and training that truly improves our soldiers' readiness for the challenges of tomorrow. Readiness is also a means of making sure that our people and their families are taken care of when our base our bases update their equipment and missions. This is something my community is facing directly. I represent Joint Force Training Base Los Alamitos, a key training center for the Army Reserve and National Guard, and a strategic hub for military operations out of Southern California. Nearly two hundred soldiers and civilians as Los Al are assigned to the Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade which the Army Transformation Initiative plans to deactivate without any recapitalization plan. This means that two hundred highly qualified people could be out of a job, when we should be using their skills to meet our many readiness needs. Uh, General Lanive, thank you for committing to having more conversations about recapitalization plans at Los Al moving forward. You know, a few weeks ago I introduced the Combating Chinese Communist Party Influence Act with my colleagues Rep Harrigan Rep Strickland and Rep Bacon from Haas. This bill instructs the Director of National Intelligence to create a comprehensive inter-agency report about the growing CCP presence across the world and the risk that it poses to US national security. General Gearing, I'm gonna start with you. How might a report of the growing threat of CCP influence improve Marine Corps readiness for future conflict?

Uh, I'm sorry, Congressman. Can you repeat the last part of that question? How would the growing

How how might um the report uh of the growing threat of the CCP influence improve the Ma- Marine Corps in readiness for future conflict?

Uh, Congressman, I'm gonna take that for the record. I appreciate that.

OK.

Thank you.

I'm gonna ask your fellow generals, anyone have any, or an- and the admirals will uh any input on how a report on CZP's influence would help uh prepare your agency for readiness.

Hey sir, I I I'll the the thing that comes to mind, and I'm sure there's many ways that that would be helpful to us, but the thing that comes to mind is really as we work through these new acquisition programs and understanding where influence is happening in the industrial base, um where where we might be assuming some risk I think would be one area. There I I'm sure there's there's many others but uh we do see you know uh increased activity from the Space Force in particular but I'm sure for all the services um i- in the acquisition fields and working with the defense industrial base and so understanding what the landscape looks like there would be helpful. Thanks.

Thank you, Jaren Broughton. Any other comments from the other generals or Admiral?

I just think you know uh security is always on our mind.

Mm.

So, uh, that report is a fundamental thing that we can share with sailors in the Navy to kind of get everyone to realize that there's a threat out there. I think w- w- you know, people can get a little tone deaf from that, so that would be a useful vehicle to realign everybody.

Thank you.

Yes, sir, uh, two two things. Uh, first, I I just want to publicly thank you, uh, for recognizing, uh, all of our losses. Uh, and uh you know continued support of of the families and prayers for for the families. I think anytime uh on on your first uh part any anytime there's uh additional um look whether it's you know inside our organization or outside the organization help paint the the true threat the overall threat helps us to look at ourselves and look at our systems and how we can protect ourselves, how we can do uh uh training uh to be able to to protect inside the systems and I and I share uh all of the uh the other advices that that in our acquisition process is where we're really gonna be able to use uh use this to help us as we go forward.

General Lam- Lamontine.

Congressman, as the pacing challenge and threat in outlined in the national defense strategy, we spent a lot of time on China. I I have not seen this report, but my sense is it's probably another good place for our airmen to stay.

Thank you so much, and I'm about to run out of time, but I I wanna thank you all for your service. Um, you know, deeply honored to for that you're here uh speaking to us and and thank you for sharing. Uh with that, Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you, Mister Mesmer, you're recognized for five minutes.

Uh thank you, Mister Chairman, and thank you for the witnesses for being here today. Uh Admiral Kilby, uh we talk a lot about the muni- munition stockpile challenges, but I'm also concerned with the potential uh Spy-six radar fielding delay. What are we doing now to keep the fleet uh from taking a readiness hit as it relies longer on the Spy-one?

Hey sir, your uh crane Indian is super helpful for us here.

Mm-hmm.

Uh we are underway to establish a depot as well as engaging industry to help uh redouble their efforts here. Uh I'm not satisfied with the amount of no por- no bid parts that are returned on the Spy radar so we're in heavy engagement and Crane is helping us there. But I just think we need to really look forward to twenty sixty. What's it gonna take to maintain this radar until twenty sixty? A- and notwithstanding all the work that's happened in the last uh I would say two years uh in the Red Sea, in the in the Gulf of Oman, in the Eastern Med where our ships have performed, and that spy radar as you know is critical to close the fire control loop, whether I'm countering a ballistic missile or an anti-ship cruise missile. It is, it is the, the reason that ship exists, so we have to, we have to look at this from a fulsome perspective. And I also think we should look at it clear-eyed from a battlefield spare perspective. If we have a ship and uh God forbid we take damage, we've got some spare arrays in a warehouse that we can bring that ship back to line quickly, because we can't generate that um out of uh the organic system now.

Okay, do you have the uh Do your depots have the capacity, the parts, the technical data, the right to keep those radars combat credible?

I think we need to work on that, we need to do more in all those areas, sir.

K, uh tacking on to the ranking member and and uh Rep Harrigan's uh comments, um do your depots such as crane in my district have the technical data and the right uh repair rights that that they need to do that work efficiently?

Again, I think it falls across the board that we can do better there. So I I look forward to right to repair and and I made the comment about ability to repair.

Mm-hmm.

So one of the things we're doing in the Navy is uh returning to eye level maintenance that's intermediate level maintenance. We walked away from that twenty years, we put in our packages for our our maintenance availabilities for contractors, we're gonna pull it back and we're gonna man up depots at our fleet concentration centers where sailors can do whole mechanical electrical work as well as combat systems work.

Yeah.

So I think that's part of that, sir.

Thank you. If the uh organic depots are still working around incomplete data, proprior or proprietary repair restrictions, isn't that a bigger readiness problem now that the SPY-six delays are extending the life of SPY-one?

Yes, it is, sir.

Okay, thank you. Uh, General Gerling, I'd like to discuss the JLTV readiness issue. Uh, how many JLTVs are expected to be part of the Marine fleet? And can you highlight the importance of this vehicle uh to the Marines' uh ground mobility strategy?

Congressman, thanks for the question. The Marine Corps remains fully committed to the JLTV program. It's not only provides maneuver, but it also provides tactical level C two and fires. So we remain committed to an AO of twelve thousand five hundred vehicles and four thousand trailers. Um, we currently need to put under contract about another five thousand vehicles and two thousand trailers to meet that AO. Uh, and going forward, uh, based on program stability as a joint program, uh, areas we're interested in understanding is impacts on unit costs, life cycle sustainment, and program management. but we remain fully committed to the JLTV.

K. Now what policy actions would best best support the readiness of the Marine JLT JLTV fleet?

Uh, Congressman, as a joint program, this is something that I need to continue to investigate with our joint partners, uh, that are part of that program, and if there are any, uh, policy, uh, issues, uh, in the future that would help that along, we'll come back to you.

K. Uh, should the Army still house the program manager office for the JLTVs, or was would the Marines be a better landing spot for that?

Congressman, currently the Marine Corps is not outfitted from a personnel perspective, manpower, engineering, contracting to uh manage a joint program, so we're currently not structured for it. So

Got it. Thank you. Uh Admiral, in your testimony uh you described the maritime uh rejuvenation as a whole of the government and a whole of the nation effort from a fleet readiness perspective. What does that mean for expanding uh repair throughout and beyond traditional uh coastal uh coastal yard base?

Hey sir, I think um We want our whole maritime industrial base. It is part of the Golden Fleet initiative, not just new ships and existing ships, but the industrial base that supports them. So having other nontraditional vendors that can create modules or other parts for ships we're all about. And I think we uh welcome them as long as they can meet the standard and deliver it and it and cut down on our delays to build and deliver our ships.

K. Any consideration of places like the Ohio River, Ohio River Valley for

Yes, sir. Absolutely.

K, very good. I'll yield back.

Mister Delusio, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and welcome the witnesses, uh General Neve, I'll start with you, fellow Pittsburgher, if I've got my notes right, okay, welcome.

Sure.

Uh, the Pirates are in first place, we got the draft next week, the Pens are in the playoffs, things are looking up for us.

I I tell everybody right now, Steelers in first place.

We have we have some work to do in the off-season. All right, I'm at Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania is huge general to start with, uh as you know Uh, Pittsburgh is home to A one two C. It's the Army's artificial intelligence integration center. My understanding though, the president's budget uh has zeroed out this funding line, uh and I'm curious what that means uh for A one two C, its presence in Pittsburgh, where is the Army going here? Uh, look I think this is a pretty critical um function, but also Pittsburgh as a hub in robotics and AI and more. I think this has been successful for the Army and for the country, but Give me a sense, what's going on? Uh, what are we looking at potentially happening here in Western Pennsylvania?

Yeah, sure. Uh, thanks for the question. Uh, it has been uh incredibly successful. Uh, and uh I'm gonna have to uh go back and take a look at at where the budget is for that one and come back to you uh on uh the viability of it.

OK. Thank you. Please do. Um, look there's also, as you know, there's there's good research that comes out of the institutions in Western Pennsylvania which are among the best. Uh, so I'll look forward to hearing from that. I wanna shift gears, uh, and you heard from uh, Mister Messmer, I know Mister Harrigan, a ranking member, Garamendi on Right to Repair, uh, which, look, to me is pretty basic. It's about our service members having the power, uh, so they've got the know-how to fix their stuff and for public money to be protected. It's pretty straight forward. And so what I'm looking for, if - if each of you can indulge me, give me some examples of things that our service members can do that they can't. whether it's because of data access rights, whether it's agreements. Give me some examples because I know I'm not alone in wanting to help you get that fixed, protect public money, give our troops the ability to fix stuff. General, I'll come back to you to start, but I'll open up to all of you, just give me some examples of what you're seeing uh in your branch.

Sure, I'll give you.

I say if I say general, I'm looking at four of you. So whoever wants to jump in.

I'll give you a quick example from the Air Force.

Sorry, Avram.

So, the more data we can have at the subsystem level, at the component level, we could affect those repairs ourselves. We've been able to do that on some very old airplanes, some of their new airplanes, we don't have the data. And so what we have to do is take out the whole system,

Yep.

we turn around and look on the shelf, the part's not there, and so then we have to take that same system out of another airplane. What this does is it triples the manpower to take an air, a good system out of a bad airplane, put it in this airplane we're trying to fix, And then uh so that's you know two hours to take it out,

Yep.

two hours to put it in, when the part shows up another two hours whereas if we had the data to fix at the subsystem level ourselves we wouldn't have to take out the whole system.

Congressman I give you two examples for the Marine Corps with their amphibious combat vehicle uh so the engine control module on that vehicle is it's digital and occasionally it requires software upgrades which are cloud-based. Uh we currently don't have the ability to do that software We have to bring in contractors to do that. Second example with that same platform is the rebuilding of brake calipers. Uh, we have the ability to rebuild brake calipers, but we don't have the permission to rebuild those on that vehicle.

General, on both of those, Marines could do that work, uh, but for this access to data.

Absolutely, sir.

Mm-hmm.

Very good. Thanks.

Hey, two two examples, sir. One general, one specific. The general one I alluded to already about the intermediate maintenance. So if we can establish that shore duty for sailors to go become proficient in their and send them back the chips I think will have a world of good for us so I'm bullish on that.

Yeah. OK.

I uh I had breakfast with a uh uh information technology petty officer so an IT two in uh in Puget or uh uh sorry Woodby Island who said she was frustrated because she didn't have the authority to go work on her network. So she's a network person. So uh we're taking care of that but that's an example where she is frustrated in her you know professional life about not being able to do what she wants to do.

Thank you Admiral.

Oh sure, sure thanks for thanks for the question.

General?

Every one of us can give you uh a bunch of different vignettes. Uh in every one of our uh services we have young Americans that can do this,

Yeah.

if we just give them the capability to do it. And I'll gi- I'll throw one out because there's a savings associated with this too. So a fourteen thousand dollar fin uh that goes on an external fuel tank for a UH sixty uh just to replace it fourteen thousand dollars uh you know our team uh reengineered uh reverse engineered it three D printed it it cost three thousand dollars to do it seventy eight percent cheaper and that's one small example that can be done by the incredible Americans that serve in our formations that can do this um if we just get the technical data and the ability to execute. I I know that you've given us a lot of the capabilities to do it uh in the NDA NDA but it's the technical data that we have to be able to go out there.

Yeah.

We gotta do more. As I I mean as you say, our service members can do this stuff, we gotta back you up. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cooter, you're recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Mister Chair, General Lanive, do you know how many months there are between now and August sixteenth, twenty twenty nine?

I'd have to do the math real fast.

OK, I'll help you with the math.

Yeah. Thank you.

That's forty months.

Yeah.

That's three years and four months, and that's when the leases expire at Pohakaloa. And given that we are far off into the distant future about that, I'd like to know, and I think it's important for the subcommittee to know, has the army made any actual offers to the state of Hawaii for a new lease? Length of time, as projected dollars, simple yes or no. Have I gotten anything? Has the state of Hawaii received anything?

I I know that the nego negotiations are going back and forth, but I'm not I'm not sure uh from the team forward uh where they are right now. I I do uh wanna assure you that we wanna do this and good faith, you're you're our neighbors,

OK.

we know we need th- we need the,

I I know and I appreciate that.

yeah.

Good faith doesn't mean ramming condemnation down our throat or holding it over our head as well.

Yeah. That's right.

I can tell you that publicly there has been no offer, no discussion of an extension of a lease at all or renegotiation of renegotiation of a lease. no dollar amount, there is nothing in this budget that you're putting forward to even indicate that it would have been a consideration to provide a financial offer for a lease renegotiation for Papahakaloa there is nothing right now we are forty months away from the expiration given the prematurity of even talking about eminent domain even threatening condemnation on a state and an indigenous people that has already sacrificed more land and spilled more blood as members of the armed services as well, will you agree to take that threat of condemnation, eminent domain completely off the table, and commit to real negotiations for what a lease could look like, as we talk about dollars, as we talk about length of time. Clearly you will not be squatting for a dollar for sixty five years as you did for the past sixty five years. But also talking about what it means to be that good neighbor. And I know you wanna be that good neighbor, so how are you gonna contribute? to the community benefit, how are you gonna respect Native Hawaiian rights, cultures, sites, how can we talk about even reducing footprints, all of these things that should be a part of a real true open and honest negotiation that should be made public so the public can comment, will you commit to take that threat, that gun to people's head, that condemnation and and and domain must be imposed while we are still forty months out that you will commit to a real solid negotiation.

Ma'am I I I uh commit to taking that back to the secretary of the army and and uh reinforcing um

So you're telling me that at the end of the day,

your position.

because I asked Gillis the same question, your civilian counterpart,

Ma'am. Yes ma'am.

I asked him to take that threat off, is the only one who can take the threat of condemnation in eminent domain, something that is truly, truly impacting our community back home. Secretary Hexeth is the only one who can say we will take that away.

Oh ma'am I I Taking that, I work for the secretary of the army. That's what I meant. I'm gonna take that back to the secretary of the army. I I don't know um where the threat uh came from. Um.

The threat came in the language that was offered to this committee.

Yes ma'am.

So I think we need to, and if you can take this back, tell this committee straightforward, we don't need to be talking about any kind of language provisions in this NDAA about condemnation or eminent domain, cuz we are still actively in the negotiation

Uh it it's not it's not within my authority,

Mm.

ma'am, but I will go back to the secretary and uh secretary of the army, uh, and and discuss this. Uh we, again, as I said in the beginning, we we wanna negotiate in true faith uh with the team.

So what's stopping you? Because right now I have only heard whispers, I've seen language from last NDAA to this one, of eminent domain and condemnation. We're talking about a community of people here and indigenous people, Native Americans are indigenous people to these islands that you've been bombing the hell out of for generations. They never relinquished their sovereignty, not once. You've taken their land already. The admissions lack. How do you think you got Pearl Harbor? How do you think you got Marine Corps Baseway? How do you think you got PMRF? You took it. You never even paid a dollar for that. So when we talk about trust, you're telling me relationships are so important globally, especially when it comes to crisis. How can you blow up the domestic relationship with a crisis like this?

Yes ma'am, I uh and I and I appreciate uh all of your concerns.

People are pissed.

I I Yes ma'am.

in Hawaii and they absolutely deserve to be because they've been mistreated, and right now they're being mistreated again and I look forward to further engage with everyone above you on this issue.

Ma'am.

Thank you, Mister Chair, I yield back.

Mister Davis, you're recognized.

Thank you so much Mister Chair, and to all the witnesses who are here today, we really appreciate your service to the country. Um, this past Friday, I had a chance of going to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina in the eastern part of our state. And General, uh, Gary and I just wanna let you know that it was truly a pleasure to get there, to um reconnect with the base leaders. Please convey if you would would, uh my deep appreciation for all the great work that's taking place there. Um, twenty-four seven air fi- air operations, the airfield staying busy, was there to see the work with the tower, and so much is going on um on the ground. The installation earned extinction as the Marine Corps Air Station of the year. Um, so, I wanna, with that, lead into this first question, um, to yourself and General Lamontagne, and that is, what can Congress do, looking across services in this case, to optimize the F-thirty-five mission readiness, and especially as we think about, um, Indo-Pacific deployments?

Congressman, thanks for the question and thank you for taking the time to visit our Marines at Cherry Point um the F-thirty-five i- is the most capable strike fighter aircraft in the world and uh I think we're we're showing that right now overseas. I think the biggest to greater for the F-thirty-five right now is spares. It spares posture and repairables. And the reason I'm convinced this is the case is because when we deploy an aircraft and it gets priority for parts it's meeting and or exceeding our readiness goals. So I know it is maintainable. It really comes down to sparse posture. And so I think you'll be see a big commitment uh towards that uh in the uh PB twenty seven submission.

Super. Thank you.

Congressman, thank you for a very important issue. Thank you also for the conversation a couple of days ago. I agree with General Gehring. It really is a h- spare parts a huge part of this. The Air Force has not prioritized this enough over the last several years. So we have basically invested about eighty five percent in our weapon system sustainment account. In twenty-six we raised that to eighty-six percent, previously eighty-five percent, this year eighty-six percent, in twenty-seven going to ninety-three percent. We've gotta prioritize this ourselves, and that's exactly what we're doing. Also working through the Jthirt- or Fthirty-five joint program office, uh, in accordance with that rule set and the global sustainment system reset, uh, to try and get those rates where they need to be in the twenty-thirty time frame.

Yeah. And and let me say too, thank you so much for the call. We covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. And also uh I really appreciate um you raising the topic on F-fifteens at Seymour. So thank you. Amazing thought.

Yes sir.

Um Admiral Kilby, um what are the most critical gaps we face in your opinion with respect to naval weapons systems and how do those interface with Marine Corps, land, sea, hybrid vehicle operations.

Well, a significant gap we have, uh, we've seen in the last two years is the ability to, uh, counter, uh, UAS aircraft cheaply and effectively. So two years ago we were using, uh, very expensive missiles to do that in the Red Sea and - and now we've come back with, uh, weapons like APG- KWS and other things. So we've gotta really have a rechargeable magazine uh a laser, a directed energy, high-powered microwave, something that could attract that thread. So I think that's a gap for us. We need to backfill that as quickly as possible so we can reserve our ca- most capable musicians for our most capable threads.

Yep. And let me ask as a continuation, how can Congress help um when we talk about accelerating ship building, um that pipeline? I have tremendous interest, especially um when we look at the capacity in Virginia and we have about eleven hundred or so North Carolinians who are relying upon work and going to the shipyard.

Well there's a couple things we're trying to do to to make our maintenance, the biggest thing for us is to get our ships out of maintenance on time and not have days of maintenance away so a couple ways to do that shrink the package size and then m- makes it more digestible and more likely that we can complete it on time. Uh, I also think, so, helping those workers that, that work f- you know, come from North Carolina and work in the Hampton Roads area and our private shipyards that maintain our ships in Hampton Roads, that's part of that. Another part is being able to build modules outside of

Let me do something. I have ten seconds left and we can definitely follow back up and I appreciate that.

Yes, sir. I'll follow up with you.

Um, but I would like to say in closing here, I'm General, I'm the um, had a, have a son, Fort Benning right now, infantry. Um, week five also, so look forward to family day. And I just want to thank you for all the work that's happened, the recruiters, the - everything that's taken place and, um, we really appreciate what's taken place at Fort Menning. Just wanted to say that.

Thank you, sir. Thanks for your service.

And yeah, I don't wanna leave space out. Um, we have a mission specialist that we're so proud of that just got back and, we've had great conversations about, um, space. So I do look forward to, um, continuing to make sure we do everything, um, to maintain a steady readiness posture. And thank you so much, Mr. Chair. You're back.

OK, we're gonna uh, uh, if anyone who wants to participate in a second round of questioning, uh, I think uh, unless uh, Mister Schmidt, do you have any desire to ask more questions? OK, Don? OK, so it'll be just be Mister Garamendi and I will do the five minute clock one more time. I've just got a couple of quick questions here. Uh, and General Linaev has two, the plight of the Army's ground vehicles Army reduced the number of overhauls from one thousand two hundred and eighty-five in fiscal year twenty fifteen to just twelve overhauls in fiscal year twenty twenty four what steps is the army pursuing to arrest the overall decline in ground vehicle mission capability rates and is an expanded overhaul workload in the organic dustri- industrial base part of this solution?

I- it absolutely is, sir. Um, i- in in the industrial base. We have to do it. We're also uh we have a great AMC commander that's doing uh you know a a pinpoint uh a look at organizations, especially our ABCT fleet uh that will get out uh and take a look at their OR rate and surge on them to try to get them up to a higher rate. This is a concern across all of our fleets, sir. Um whether it's uh aviation or our track fleets for our real world fleets, um Some of it has to do with the supply chain, some of it has to do with the ability to be able to to make our own parts to to repair it. Uh and uh we're we we just stood up at task force to take a hard look at the aviation um uh readiness with uh myself and the under uh you know taking this one on. Uh we're gonna have to do the same thing with uh with our ground fleet to be able to get the readiness up. Now there are there are uh organizations out there that are doing great. We just had a brigade that came out of uh NTC that they came back to home home station with an incredibly high readiness rate that they were able to uh work on while they were uh in the box there. So um we know that there is work to be done uh and uh we we are you know committed to getting after but you're absolutely correct uh overhaul inside the industrial base is one of the ways.

Thank you. Um uh finally uh General Bratton. The Space Force relies on civilian experts for over one third of its force particularly within the acquisition community, which this is crucial to the speed of to scale initiatives this committee prioritizes. However, in twenty twenty-five and twenty-twenty-six, the service faced nearly fourteen percent reductions in civilian staff. How has the Space Force been able to maintain operational readiness with these reductions?

Hey, sir. Thanks for the question. We we lost about three hundred and fifty civilians out of our acquisition workforce. um in twenty twenty five and so we have the authorities now in place to rehire and and hire beyond that number and so right now we're getting after bringing back the civilian workforce but in the meantime we've also reprioritized um our military assignment process in support of acquisition reform to make sure we have the acquirers in place um as you consider the twenty seven budget and we'll see we'll see where that goes but that we got the workforce in place to be able to execute both the twenty-six program and then future programs as we go. So we're building on the military side and bringing back the civilian workforce, sir.

OK, with that, uh, I'm gonna yield my, uh, uh, my t- rest of my time and - and turn it over to the ranking member, Mister Garimendi.

Uh, thank you very much, uh, Mister Chairman. It keeps coming back to, um, where we're going to spend our effort. what is important uh the hearing thus far has illuminated in in each of your services the um inability to maintain what we have many reasons for those and this committee will get into the detail uh in the days ahead and in the NDAA to really force solutions uh one of these things um the operational pace of the military in the last um sixteen, eighteen months has been extraordinary. We can lay out all of the programs, uh not sure all of us will have a memory for each one of them, but um how are you going to recover the readiness from the current operational pace that you have been under for uh the various deployments? the Middle East two or three uh and of course the Iran war um Venezuela on and on ships at sea so let's go down through this uh the army you've been talking about this and I'll skip you the navy issue you've got some real readiness questions that are out there because of the operational pace what are you gonna do about it

Yeah sir we have a uh model I wish uh represented him and his ha- had stayed around because we have a one third, one third, one third model. And what that means is one third of our ships is generally in maintenance, one third of our ships is getting ready to deploy in training f- in certification, and one third is deployed. So that model exists. What we have to do is not um perturb the model uh unnecessarily. So that means we have to get done those phases in the time allotted, or I create a pile jam as you indicated in your opening statement. So recovering that means we've gotta do bl let's take the Ford. Six month PIA. That's what she's supposed to get. I didn't plan to do this fire damage repair in that PIA. That's ongoing conversations I'm having now with Admiral Downey to make sure we can execute that in that time frame to allow that one third one third model to exist. So we've gotta have a discipline to go execute that and and we certainly have to do work and the Secretary of War is working hard at a munitions acceleration because we're using a lot of munitions as you know so the ability to kind of build back make a long-term investment where a company is willing to facilitize because they realize that they have a long-term contract and increase productivity beyond what we had those are a couple things that come to mind.

Very good. Other comments?

Uh, ranking member, thanks for the question. So uh any force we deploy forward, man organized, trained, equipped, certified, ready to go and they deploy. And upon their return there's a requirement to reset that force, just as part of our force generation cycle. And so long as we're able to maintain the d- deployment to dwell ratios for the time it takes to reset that force and keep we're we're in a good spot and in a good position uh and currently we're maintaining those ratios with the force, so this is just indicative of the force generation process.

That takes into account the current deployment into the Middle East. That's going on.

Uh, for the current sea base deployment, sir?

Yes.

Yeah, that that force was scheduled to deploy. They deployed and they ended up where they are today, uh, based on an allocation decision, but they were they were already certified and worked up and and deployed.

Air Force.

Ranking member, great question. Uh, similar to my counterparts, we'll need to work through the reset of those forces as they come back from the deployment. Also, I'll add spares, a really important topic and an important issue. I outlined how we've Previously invested eighty-five percent, this year eighty-six percent, next year ninety-three percent. That was before the conflict. And so we've got a lot of work to do to replenish our stocks. Whether that comes in the form of a supplemental reconciliation or something else, defer to the Congress. But there'll be some work to do to replenish the stocks that we're going through in support of the conflict.

Hey, sir, I I I just add for the Space Force. You know, it's less about the equipment for us, that the spacecraft for the most part are in space. Um. But for the crew force, the need to grow the space force so we have time to do advanced training with our crews that aren't on duty supporting the combatant commands you know just like all the services we generate that readiness we expect the combatant commands to spend it but we have to have that training time when they're not working for the combatant commands and so the these growth numbers you see for us will allow the space force to really train the off off duty crews if you will uh who aren't working for US space command at the time against those advanced threats.

Jack if I might take your one minute and thirty six seconds that you didn't take and ask another question thank you. Um the uh operational pace over the last several months has been extraordinary talked about munitions we haven't discussed that at all here it's questioned which subcommittee's responsible for the munitions, it is a huge issue and it's one that we're gonna have to spend some uh of our time on and I would uh and I'm sure other subcommittees and the full committee will also. Um there's a whole set of issues that have to do with your your basis uh and their uh readiness SIOP, we haven't discussed that in detail here for some time but we should. Uh we also need to uh be very very aware uh that the um burn rate of the munitions puts uh in jeopardy the readiness of our military. Uh and we're gonna need to hear from all of you um what needs to be done and the pace. You've said it's in the um reconciliation uh we're talking about one billion five excuse me, one trillion five hundred billion dollars request. And if there's ever an oh my god, that's it. My questions are gonna go is that necessary or do you have the capability in the base to address these readiness issues? Uh those are questions that are gonna be asked in the future uh I have consumed my addition I've consumed the Chairman's one minute thirty six seconds. And with that, Mister Chairman, thank you for your generosity.

All the pleasure and There's mine and of course there's then there's the Chairman's magic minute which I forgot to tell you about. Um number one thank you to all of you the preparation that goes into this testimony I guarantee I know from first-hand experience from a couple of decades ago sitting where you are, um thank you for that. Um is when we met bad news doesn't get better with time Sunil let us know what's going on. We can keep the brush fires from becoming forest fires. We count on that, cuz everybody here on the committee and on the subcommittee especially knows that you in the military you get to sign a mission, you plan the mission, you execute the mission, you do the after-action lessons, and you move on to whatever's next. Readiness is a continuous thread that runs through all of that. So what we've covered today, we need to keep keep the pressure on in a positive way so that we know we as in the members here know where we are, so we don't get surprised, minimize surprises. Thank you and with that uh this hearing is adjourned. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.