Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - The Defense Fiscal Year 2005 Authorization Request

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: THE DEFENSE FISCAL YEAR 2005 AUTHORIZATION REQUEST

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR JOHN WARNER (R-VA)

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD; GENERAL PETER PACE, U.S. MARINE CORPS, VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF; DOV ZAKHEIM, UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE AND COMPTROLLER

BODY:
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, in your testimony today you have a whole section entitled "Mass versus Capability". And you state, and I quote, that, "critical to success in military conflict in the 21st century is not necessarily mass as much as it is capability.

But the fact is, whether we're talking about troops or weapons systems or body armor or ships, numbers still matter. And for that reason, I want to talk to you about the shipbuilding budget.

Our naval fleet now consists of only 294 ships, and there are some projections that say that as cruisers and destroyers are decommissioned, that the number may drop to as low as 180 ships. The chief of naval operations has testified many times that a more appropriate fleet size would be approximately 375 ships. And I realize that these ships of the future are going to be far more capable ships, but nevertheless the chief of naval operations is still saying that our fleet size is considerably too small.

There are also reports that the Navy is slipping construction of a second DDX destroyer by one year, from fiscal year 2006 to 2007. If that occurs, it will be the first year in more than 20 years that our military will not be procuring a major surface combatant. That threatens to exacerbate what is already a shortfall in the number of ships that would ideally be maintained in our fleet, but it also raises serious questions about the impact on our industrial base.

I'd like you to discuss the shipbuilding budget in light of the chief of naval operations' belief that we are significantly underfunding shipbuilding, and also with regard to the possibility of the DDX destroyer construction slipping.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yes, Senator Collins, this is the chief of naval operation and the secretary of Navy's proposed budget for shipbuilding. This is their recommended budget. You're right; the ships at the end of fiscal year '03 have dropped below 300 to 296. You're also correct that in the case of ships, capability is important to be sure, but numbers do also matter because of presence, and I agree completely with that.

The DDX situation. As I understand it, they delayed a gap year-they provided a gap year, a delay of a year, to allow lessons learned from the first ship to be applied to the following ships. That was the judgment that was made in the Department of the Navy.

With respect to the total shipbuilding program over the forward year defense plan, the numbers go from seven to nine to six to eight to eight to 17, the 17 being because the ships in the latter year of the FYDP are ships that are of a smaller nature, the littoral ships that you can do more of them. But we agree that with the program that the Department of the Navy has put forward, it is a less manpower- intensive Navy, it is a-important that what they have arranged is a surge capability so that they're going to be able to provide greater sea power in more places at more times than had been the case in the past.

General Pace, do you want to comment on it?

GEN. PACE: I can. Let me just take, for example, ma'am, aircraft carriers, which in the past had been one-third on deployment, about four on deployment; one-third coming back and reconstituting and changing out ships' crews; and one-third getting ready for the next deployment.

So you've had, generically, about four that you could get to a battle right away.

What Admiral Clark has done is, in his transformation of the Navy, has made it so the he is going to be able to provide to any combatant commander anywhere in the world six of these carrier battle groups on demand. He's doing that by things like integrating Marine and Navy aviation, so he has the wings that fly off the carriers working together as a unit and trained up.

And I won't take more of your time, but --

SEN. WARNER: Thank you very much, Senator.

SEN. COLLINS: We're going to have to have further discussions on that.

In closing, let me just say, very quickly, that I'm also very concerned about reports that I'm hearing from federal employees' representatives and from OPM on the progress with the new personnel system. I will be following up in writing with some of those concerns.