Dan Sullivan Grills Military Officials: ‘What Do You Need? Money? Authorities? Both?’

14 hours ago

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) questioned military officials on their most pressing needs.

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Transcript

00:00I'm going to finish this line of questioning with you General Spain on the CR budget flexibilities

00:08and specific if you can get there and then Air Force recruiting and lessons learned and then

00:16Ms. Mauer I'd like you to answer the same question as well. Mr. Chairman thanks for the question.

00:23We talked a little bit in the opening statement about the the bad but echo the the comments from

00:27across the table on top line restrictions. Flexibility in my mind really comes down to

00:34treating our readiness accounts and quality of life accounts in terms of MilCon and FSRM

00:43with the same flexibility as operations. The readiness impacts within those accounts

00:48have the same deleterious effect across the force as as stopping current operations and so by

00:56allowing flexibility across the pillars of those readiness accounts that's manpower,

01:01infrastructure, flying and training and parts and supply we can mitigate some of that risk

01:08that comes along with the with the CR. From a recruiting standpoint the Air Force is above

01:14glide slope on our recruiting goals for the year. We increase the number by 20 percent and in fact

01:20we're still above the 20 percent increase and we have the largest delayed entry pool that we've

01:26had in 10 years and the most recruiting that we've done at this point in the year in the last 15

01:31years and so we're in a good position. Are there lessons learned from what you did to get over that

01:36hump? Yes sir so we we have increased the number of recruiters we've increased the training which

01:41reflects some of the things that were said before. I don't know if I was a recruiter when I first

01:46started out in the Air Force waiting to go to pilot training. It is a it's a it's a tough job

01:50and you need the right people doing that work and we're bringing the right people in and we're

01:55training them even better than we had before. Great. Ms. Maurer do you have any views on the

02:02in general the the line of questioning that I've been going through on

02:06CR but in in particular we've we've heard the challenges of that but in particular what I

02:11want to hear from you is your sense on flexibilities that I know that we could provide

02:18more in the budget to give our services the ability to address some of the challenges that

02:24you put in your report but also give them flexibility that if we have to you know and

02:31certainly I wouldn't advocate for it but another CR another kind of budgetary constraint issue that

02:38they have more flexibility to address them and then also if GAOs looked at lessons learned from

02:45the recruiting kind of challenge that we had over the last three or four years and how that's come

02:51about what are those? Sure thank you for the question Mr. Chairman. On the issue of CR

03:00you know talking about a full year CR makes me think back to work that we did over a decade

03:04ago looking at the impacts on sequestration. Obviously it's a little bit apples to oranges but

03:09we issued a report 2015-ish that looked at how sequestration impacted DOD and at that time

03:16we had a recommendation that DOD collect the lessons learned from sequestration and stockpile

03:21them in case they needed those lessons later on down the road. 2017 we reached out to the

03:26comptroller shop they said they had taken action to implement that recommendation so that's sort of a

03:31takeaway item for the department is to look back at what DOD did back in 2017 in terms of lessons

03:38learned on sequestration and see what if any of those lessons can be applied to today. In terms

03:43of flexibilities we've heard a lot in my teams I've heard a lot about the types of flexibilities

03:51that the generals and the admiral talked about today. Obviously GEO tries to stay a little bit

03:56agnostic in terms of specific flexibilities but what I will say is that whatever flexibilities

04:02are offered should be directed towards ensuring the ability of the services to meet the readiness

04:08challenges that they face. I talked about earlier in my opening statement there is a significant

04:13imbalance between resources and mission and so that anything that we've done to help bring that

04:18into better balance would be very helpful. In terms of recruiting we're very encouraged to see that the

04:25recruiting numbers have come up. We've issued a whole series of reports in areas where the services

04:30have critical shortfalls in the number of people they need so for example at the navy for every

04:35six sailors that they had that they need for the fleet they only have five assigned. We found

04:41deficiencies in the number of air defenders that the space force has a really good force generation

04:47model but they don't have enough guardians to actually carry that out much less than the civilian

04:52and the contractor side so that their improvements and the change in the trend line and recruiting

04:57can be helpful in that regard. In some of our work on recruiting we think it's important for

05:03the different programs the different services to get an understanding of what is working what isn't

05:08working and then double down on the things that are working and then share those lessons

05:13with each other that way you'll get a better outcome.

05:16No I'm going to submit questions.

05:18Okay great thank you on that and I still have a number of questions. Senator O'Hara do you want to

05:25do you want to do another round or you want to submit questions but I will I'm going to stay

05:30for a while since I have all these very important members of our military I think. I will be

05:37submitting sorry I'll be submitting questions for the record thank you very much Mr. Chairman.

05:42Well let me let me continue with some additional questions. General Mingus one of the things that I

05:49want to try to nail down is my understanding is the top line number for the end strength of the

05:58army was reduced because of the recruiting challenges we almost had to do it in a forced way

06:07um now that we've met these numbers again and you have almost a surplus will you be requesting

06:15um from us and do you have the flexibility to to increase your top line to a certain number

06:24what's your flexibility on that because I'd like to see it if you need more funding to get to that

06:32higher top line I think we'd all be certainly willing to provide it but what kind of authorities

06:39do you need to get back to a higher end strength when the reduction in your end strength was

06:46actually a result and function of the recruiting challenges now that you're going in the positive

06:53direction we want to take advantage of that to increase your end strength what do you need

06:58money authorities both thank you chairman um money yes in the MilPERS account because what

07:08we asked for in this year's budget was in appropriations for an end strength of 442,000

07:15what I believe will happen if the trajectories remain consistent with where they're at today

07:20we're going to end this year somewhere between 449,000 and 452,000 so almost 10,000 over what

07:29we believe will be appropriated from a military pay and allowance account standpoint so there will

07:34be a deficit there that we will have to come back and ask for for help okay on the authority I would

07:39strongly encourage you to do that nobody wants a smaller army and the fact that you had to shrink

07:45due to recruiting challenges nobody wanted that and now that you're fixing it we need to reward

07:52you in my view to get back to a higher end strength yes sir and for authorities the secretary of the

07:58army all the service secretaries can authorize a two percent deviation from what the NDAs so that

08:03would put you at about 451 okay so we think unless it goes above that we will be okay on authorities

08:09okay great General Mahoney I want to I want to go to a topic you and I and the commandant have

08:17discussed a lot that's where we are in force design and you know very innovative Marine Corps

08:24initiative started with General Berger but not without criticism and anytime you innovate you're

08:30going to get criticized there's no doubt about that I think the Marine Corps has gotten ahead

08:36of the curve on a lot of issues relating to drones and loitering munitions and you know

08:46light flexible forces that can move with weapon systems that can take out Chinese shipping

08:54all very innovative however one of the criticisms was that the divest to invest strategy

09:04divested too much combat power in the Marine Corps primary mission of a 9-1-1 force with amphibs

09:12to go anywhere in the world at a moment's notice to kick in the door with sufficient combat power

09:19was reduced and a lot of criticisms came from you know within the family retired four stars

09:26and retired commandants and retired very well respected Marines so that's a difficult balance

09:33I remember a hearing that we had a couple years ago on force design where you know I asked one of

09:40the top Marine Corps officers hey look you do an amphibious invasion and then you get three miles

09:47in wherever you are and you have to cross a river wait a minute Marine Corps got rid of all its

09:53bridging equipment how are we going to cross a river the answer I think if I remember was we're

09:59going to call on the Army now I love the Army but in the Marine Corps tradition calling on the Army

10:05was not something that we typically have done so where are we on the balance where are we on things

10:11like bridging and route clearing where are we on things like artillery infantry which we we cut

10:18the Marine Corps cut a lot and do you still think this criticism which came from some very

10:25very well respected Marines is legit are we recalibrating a little bit in terms of

10:35we want an innovative Marine Corps but we do not want to get rid of our 9-1-1 capability

10:39kicking the door anywhere in the world and bring significant combat power to bear

10:47anywhere and what's the balance and how are we doing on all those things General

10:53yes sir we've talked extensively about this and if you remember where the the force design

11:01journey started and that was with the statement that we are not manned trained or equipped for

11:06the future fight that's something tough for a Marine to swallow that's what generated the shift

11:13in some of the design elements of our force we believe that we're on the right course based on

11:19operations extant today based on experimentation that we've done based on what the COCOM's

11:25demand that having said our commandant is very his top priority in fact is to balance

11:33that modernization if we put that in the modernization bin although force design

11:38is modernization talent management training and education and logistics we'll put it in the

11:42modernization bin with the ability to respond to crises we've talked about the dearth of amphib

11:49shipping that's significant I believe it's strategic to the nation as far as organic

11:53combat power goes we divested of heavy armor we do not believe in the situations that we were faced

12:01that we need organic heavy armor for maneuver or maneuver support we believe we have enough

12:06artillery both rocket artillery and cannon artillery for the problems that we will face

12:11we believe that we have enough enough engineering and engineering support you brought up bridging

12:18what we have found at gap negotiation gap crossing is a shortfall and we have divested of bridging

12:25equipment frankly that was too heavy and unlogistically unsupportable so can Marines

12:30cross the river if they do an amphibious invasion and find themselves three miles inland and have to

12:36cross a river so there are other ways to negotiate a gap center you know that but as far as bridging

12:42goes we're looking at more expeditionary solutions and this circles back to your point of recalibration

12:50one of the things about force design I'll try to keep it short was that it immediately admitted

12:54to being wrong we were to challenge all the assumptions along the way if we found an

13:00assumption wanting or invalid then we had to adjust to satisfy and verify that assumption

13:08we have looked very closely through what we call the campaign of learning at those assumptions we

13:13have adjusted the size of a battalion we have adjusted some of the aviation capabilities we

13:18have we have adjusted some of the weapons that we have either bought or not bought

13:22and to your point we're looking hard at expeditionary solutions to bridging

13:27as far as joint support I'm frankly I'm less concerned about the army providing an m1 a2

13:35for us as I am about us as a joint force being able to project set a theater and sustain a

13:42theater from a joint perspective great thank you

Dan Sullivan Grills Military Officials: ‘What Do You Need? Money? Authorities? Both?’

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