Hearing of House Committee on the Budget House of Representatives - National and Homeland Security: Meeting Our Needs

HEARING OF HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY: MEETING OUR NEEDS

FEBRUARY 16, 2005

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Somewhat delayed, but it came on there, didn't it? Dan, thank you for your help.

Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for calling this hearing today, and, gentlemen, I appreciate not only what you have talked about to help us satisfy our goals today, to understand more clearly those policy issues related to the budget that we need to provide, as well as making sure we look at the future--future spending as well as the effects on the budget.

One of the questions that I have is directly related to the changes that the--I believe, the President and the Secretary have discussed about. I have not seen very succinct goals or time frames related to movement of troop activity in Europe as well as Korea.

I am interested in some discussion. I have heard what your recommendations are on homeland security, I have heard your recommendations about bluewater Navy. I have heard these other recommendations, but I have not heard that--specifically as it relates to what we should--Members should have in their mind about the gravity of this, as well as the implications on the budget, positive, negative, bringing people back home, moving people around, transferring the assets and resources, those sorts of things.

So I would welcome any opportunity that any of these panelists might have to answer that general question about bringing back a large number of people to the United States or taking them away from Europe and Korea.

Thank you.

Mr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Congressman. I will just quickly say that I am a fairly strong supporter of Secretary Rumsfeld's thinking on this point. I don't think it is quite as radically transformational of a repositioning as he sometimes wants to argue, but I think it makes good sense in the two theaters in question.

Just a couple of words on each one. In Korea, the South Koreans have gotten a lot stronger conventionally over the years. We are all obviously troubled by the North Korean nuclear program, as well as the continued amount of money they spend on their military. But in conventional terms, I think we can view the South Korean ground forces as providing much more of the bulwark against initial assault.

Whether it is two brigades or one brigade of the U.S. Army that is present in Korea at the outset of any crisis I don't think is nearly as important as the quality of the South Korean ground forces and the quality our air power, as well as our ability to reinforce rapidly to bring to bear hundreds of thousands of troops should war occur. And also removing the forces that remain farther south on the peninsula is very good alliance management, even though Mr. Rumsfeld hasn't been given a lot of credit for his alliance management, diplomacy in general, and, in fact, his relations with the South Koreans have been fairly mediocre.

Still in substance I think he is right on this one, that we want to get our headquarters out of Seoul. We have an amount of territory almost the size of Central Park in downtown Seoul. This is just no longer appropriate for the density of that city. So I think, again, the logic of his plan is generally very sound.

Going to Germany, you know, we get a pretty good deal in Germany. The Germans, like the Japanese, like the Koreans, help us with some host nation support. They let us do a lot of training. But, of course, the Germans have placed restrictions on our training. It is a very densely populated country, compared, for example, with much of our country, including your State, where there are big open Army bases and more opportunity for robust training.

Most soldiers I know don't mind being in Germany. It is not a hardship post, but still it requires them to have a greater likelihood of redeploying from one place, let us say in Texas, over in Germany, back to New York. Their spouses can't keep jobs; their kids have to move around in school.

The Army, I think, has a good program to try to keep people's life in more than one geographic zone for a longer period of time, which I support. I think the redeployment from Germany can help. So I don't see it as a big money saver. I don't see it as a radically transformational strategic concept, but I think in regard to both Germany and Korea, it makes generally good sense.

Mr. Sessions. And you believe it is wise that the Secretary move forward on these plans?

Mr. O'Hanlon. Yes, because I think it has to be linked to the base closure rounds. So we have to have some sense of what we are doing abroad.

Mr. Sessions. I do agree with that aspect, too. Thank you.

Colonel Larsen. As a retired military pilot, the one comment I would make is the terrible problems of training in Germany at--now when we can't fly at night. When we deployed the Apaches down to the war in Bosnia, and they had some accidents the first day--that helicopter is designed to fly at night. They had to train them how to fly at night. That helicopter is designed to fly at night and kill tanks, but they weren't doing that in Germany. I find that is true for a lot of fighter pilots. So the training there is not sufficient from that operational perspective.

Mr. Carafano. I agree with that. I am perhaps just a little frustrated that we are not moving faster. There are enormous opportunity costs involved in all of this. Every day we delay it, we pay for the additional inefficiencies, and we fail to gain the benefits of doing that. So I would really think that we could move as expeditiously as possible on this. I do agree with Mike.

Also, that moving in the background, it is also a good time to do it while we are involved in Iraq, because much as we did the drawdown in Europe, that we used that opportunity to make a lot of our base realignment decisions overseas and gain the efficiencies of not sending the guy back to Schweinfurt if eventually he is going to go back to Ft. Hood--anyway, that we take the opportunity, while we are in transition in the Army, in terms of modularity, while we are in transition in terms of moving forces around to meet needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, that we use these opportunities to implement whatever force structure changes we need to do.

So we should work--I think those should be on the fast track, and I think that would--in the end has actually saved money, perhaps more than just the restructuring itself.

Mr. Gaffney. I would just add very quickly, it seems to me that if you can do this in a way that preserves your ability to project power quickly, that is the critical thing. I mean, it has not always worked brilliantly, and there certainly are restrictions. We haven't seen restrictions, I think, on deployment so much as on training. But having the ability--and I think this is built into the Pentagon's plan--to ensure whether you are keeping a skeletal force in Germany or you are moving them even farther east, they remain available to you to go where you need them on short notice, which is the big advantage of having them there, rather than having them based in CONUS.

Mr. Sessions. Good.

Mr. Gaffney. That and getting their families back.

Mr. Sessions. I think it has to do not only with the quality of life, but the message that we send vis-a-vis the relationship with these other countries. But in particular, I am concerned about how that frees up, so to speak, the demands and the needs that we have from a growing perspective. So I appreciate that.

I yield back.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=98866.wais