Hearing of the Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Opening Statement of Sen. Kaine, Hearing on Current Readiness of U.S. Forces

Hearing

Thanks to all the witnesses for your service and for

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The opportunity to visit a bit before the hearing today.I want to thank the chairman, who I worked with in the past and look forward to more collaboration together in the bipartisan work that is the tradition of both the subcommittee and full committee.

And there is a limit to what we can discuss in open session today, but I echo my statement from last year's hearing and again urge all my colleagues to read the classified readiness reporting that is available to all
members, because that will amplify some of what we will discuss.

Do a closed briefing for any member that is interested in getting into some of the classified update material on current readiness status. And we may also discuss later whether we ought to An opening point would be I think we all took a step forward on the readiness issue by the passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.
there has never been one.

Way of thinking, the best part about it was it is forward- focused. Of you, about the problems of C.R.s for years.
Not a perfect budget, and We could find flaws. But to my Secretary Mattis has been warning us, as have all
And the ability to find a budget deal, which we will reduce to an appropriations deal that is forward-focused for a year and a half, I think it will be very, very positive in enabling you to plan and predict in a way that we have not been giving you the ability to do that in the past.

I want to make sure, as we write the NDAA 2019, that we take advantage of that deal to really make sure that this authorizing act helps us restore the spectrum of readiness.

We have heard all kinds of testimony and information from the various branches about readiness challenges.

The Air Force has informed Congress that it needs additional support in the areas of personnel shortages, operational training. Support infrastructure. Tackling personnel challenges, improving critical kinetic modernization capacities, and also enhancing training in full spectrum operations.

Through maintenance and modernization while trying to maintain readiness across its seven pillars.
Corps is on a path to balance global demand through five pillars of institutional readiness.

We see that at Langley in Virginia in The Army needs assistance in The Navy continues to cycle
And the Marine In discussions before this hearing with each of you, you kind of all talked about how you feel like we are on a path and we are making progress on the path.

Way to go, and giving you certainty on the budget will We have a longenable you to continue on the path.
We have a need, and I want to hear, hopefully, from each witness today about how the services will track progress toward readiness through the Readiness Recovery Framework, R2F, to ensure that we meet readiness guidelines.

I have said at these hearings before, readiness hearings always remind me of when I was Governor dealing with emergency preparation. Governor, if I dealt with unemployment, I could ask what the Most things I dealt with as unemployment rate is.

Ask what the high school graduation rate is. Dealing with emergency preparation, it is different.
You measure how you will do tomorrow?

Measures are kind of like that. Will do tomorrow? Kind of how you set them and then how you are tracking toward them. If I dealt with education, I have to When you are How do And readiness

How do you know how you And readiness measures, we need to know And I am also interested in, particularly, and I have stressed this before, updating from the Navy on the shipyard optimization plan, which is something that we included in the NDAA last year.

Finally, just one concluding comment that is sort of Virginia-specific and personal to me, but it is not just Virginia-specific. Submit, none of you address sort of climate- or weather- Inthe written testimony that you related challenges to our infrastructure.

And this is a big deal in Virginia. In Hampton Roads, and we are seeing sea-level rise, for whatever cause, sea-level rise really affecting our installations, making roads into the naval base subject to flooding, requiring resilience investments to raise piers and make other adjustments.

About this once down in Hampton Roads and had 500 people turn out to talk about it, and we were feeling like, is this The center of naval power in the world is

And I remember we had a hearing just us? Running a military base where there are water shortages, try running a military base where there are fire risks.

And one of our DOD witnesses said, hey, try So it is not just us. We are dealing with increasing
severe weather that then puts a cost burden in how you make a resiliency investment to maintain infrastructure.

May ask some questions about that as well. So I But I appreciate all your service. I appreciate the tradition of this subcommittee and our work together with the chair.

Will hand it back to you. Senator Inhofe: And with that, Mr. Chair, I And I would say to Senator Kaine that
I really appreciated the personal visit from you guys to be able to get into these things, because we are in a recovery mode right now, and it is going to take our interest to do it.

Let's start with you, General McConville. Opening statements would be great.

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