National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Alaska. I appreciate that.

I rise today to speak in support of the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, which we are currently working on. The NDAA is clearly one of the most important pieces of legislation we take up in Congress because it authorizes vital programs designed to keep our Nation secure and our people safe.

We have worked very hard to make sure the bill upholds the nuclear missions at our missile bases, as well as unmanned aerial systems--the UAS missions--that have emerged as a vigorous part of our Nation's defense.

I commend the chairman and the ranking member for their good work in bringing this bill to the floor. It is a massive undertaking. In particular, I thank them for their support on some important priorities.

This bill fully authorizes programs to sustain our strategic forces, including plans to upgrade the Minuteman III ICBM, the venerable B-52 bomber, and our nuclear cruise missiles. The bill also fully authorizes the Global Hawk program, which is proving its worth every day and demonstrates the value of unmanned aircraft in performing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

The Appropriations Committee, on which I serve, approved the National Defense Appropriations Act last month, putting in place the funding to support our armed services. As soon as we pass the authorization bill that is now before the full Senate, I understand we will work to bring its companion bill, the appropriations bill, to the floor for a vote as well. Both are vital for our armed services.

Together, these two bills--the National Defense Authorization Act and the National Defense Appropriations Act--will provide our armed services with both the blueprint and the funding they need to defend our Nation and the American people.

As I have said, I have filed several amendments that I believe will strengthen the bill and our national security, and I wish to take a minute to talk about them now.

First, I have filed a measure that requires the Air Force to procure, in a timely manner, Black Hawk helicopters to replace the Vietnam-era Huey helicopters that currently provide security to our intercontinental ballistic missile fields. These fields are located near Minot Air Force Base in my home State of North Dakota, as well as at missile bases in Wyoming and the State of Montana.

The Air Force uses helicopters to provide security for missiles that are in transit, as well as to move security forces quickly to any missile field site that could come under any kind of threat.

I love the old Huey helicopters. They are great. I have flown in them for many years, on many occasions, and it is certainly an iconic aircraft and one that has served our Nation's military very well through the Vietnam era and through today. But the reality is that it is no longer able to do the job that we need done.

I spent some time with pilots at Minot Air Force Base earlier this year and heard about the challenges they face. For example, the front panel of the Huey sometimes will not light up. Remember, these are aircraft that were manufactured in 1969. The pilots flying these aircraft are a lot younger than the helicopters they are flying, but they do a remarkable job. The mechanics do an amazing job in keeping them going.

For example, sometimes the front panel of the Huey will not light up. When they are flying at night, they stick a portable LED light on the dash so they can see their gauges. Think about that. We have amazing young men and women in the military flying these helicopters that are much older than they are--helicopters from 1969. Some of the gauges don't have lights on them, so they put LED lights on as a makeshift way to see the gauges in the dark when they are flying to the missile fields performing their mission. If they hit some rough weather, guess what happens. The jostling knocks the LED lights off the control panel, and now they are in the dark. They can't even see their gauges.

Think about being out there flying helicopters on a military mission, and it is dark. You may be in rough weather, and you can't see your gauges. Obviously, that doesn't get the job done. That is not something that is acceptable for our men and women in uniform.

The Air Force acknowledges this, and they are working on getting an upgraded helicopter. To their credit, the Air Force wanted to move this as fast as possible, but under the plan DOD had approved, it would take 5 years before we would get new helicopters.

Think about the situation I just described. Here are these air men and women flying in this makeshift condition, in a situation where the Air Force has acknowledged that this equipment does not meet the mission requirements--does not meet the mission requirements. That is why we have to accelerate this timeline, and that is what this amendment does.

Specifically, my amendment instructs the Air Force to get Black Hawk helicopters on contract by 2018, which accelerates the Air Force's current procurement plan by approximately 2 years. It would enable them to acquire Black Hawk helicopters under the Army contract. The Army is already buying these helicopters. It has been fully bid. They have been doing it for some period of time. It would allow the Air Force to piggyback on it and buy the Black Hawk helicopters they need. It saves millions of dollars, I think somewhere between $80 and $120 million. This is commonsense stuff. I think it is a win all the way around.

This provision is coauthored by Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana. Obviously, he is well aware of the problem, too, because they face the same difficulty across our border in Montana. It is cosponsored by the other members of the Senate's ICBM coalition. It is bipartisan. We have a number of Senators on board supporting it.

Also, it is a companion bill to the amendment that Senator Tester and I included in the fiscal year 2017 Defense appropriations bill. We have already put $75 million in the Defense appropriations bill to start the acquisition. The dollars are there; this is the authorization that goes with the dollars. We worked very hard on this. We set it up the right way, and it is something we need to do.

The second amendment I introduced will help to meet the challenge of training enough pilots to fly RPAs, or remotely piloted aircraft-- unmanned aircraft. I don't know that there is any mission in the Air Force or perhaps the whole DOD that is more in demand right now than RPAs, unmanned aircraft. All over the world, we are using this amazing tool--Global Hawk, Predator--and it is in tremendous demand right now. That also creates a tremendous demand for pilot training.

Chairman McCain and Ranking Member Reed included language in the base bill that requires the Air Force to make the transition to using enlisted pilots to fly RPAs, so we would have both officers and enlisted pilots able to fly RPAs. It is needed because of the incredible demand for pilots, which results from the incredible demand for this mission.

I want to make sure that if the Air Force is going to make this transition, it can guarantee that pilots in the Air Guard, who use separate personnel systems and different training schedules, are able to receive training at a rate that is commensurate with their Active- Duty counterparts. Obviously, we rely heavily on the Air Guard, and they need to have the necessary access to training. This amendment directs that the Air Force is able to use contractor services to ensure that there is enough training capacity to train Air National Guard pilots to fly RPAs in order to keep pace with Active-Duty pilot training.

We know that the Air Force has had difficulty training RPA pilots fast enough to meet operational demands. One way to correct that deficiency is to use the private sector to augment the training the Air Force provides directly.

In North Dakota, General Atomics--the manufacturer of the Predator and the Reaper--is building a training academy to train pilots. It is at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. It is in a technology park on the Grand Forks Air Force Base. They are going to train pilots for their foreign military sales. So for aircraft that has been purchased by our military allies--France, England, Italy, Netherlands, I think maybe Australia--there are a litany of our allies who are now using RPAs, and General Atomics will conduct that training at Grand Forks Air Force Base. There is no reason our own Air Force can't leverage that incredible resource as well or resources like it at other locations. Clearly, it is something we need to help leverage our pilot training.

With that, I will wrap up. Again, I want to emphasize the importance of this and the National Defense Authorization Act. I thank both the chairman and the ranking member for their work.

I encourage all of my colleagues to join together in a bipartisan way and pass this important legislation for our men and women in uniform.

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