Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Nominations
Statement
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SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to also extend a welcome to each of you gentlemen and thank you for your willingness to serve your country and to your families who also make great sacrifice in that regard. We appreciate their willingness to be a part and be involved in public service as well.
Mr. Young, I want to get on a line of questioning here dealing with a recommendation in the QDR. In the last QDR the Air Force set a goal of increasing long-range strike capability by 50 percent by the year 2025. That is a goal which I welcome. Our current bomber fleet is performing exceedingly well in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, I'm concerned that we are heading toward a gap in our long-range strike capability. The United States hasn't built a new bomber since 1997. To compound the problem, we've got advanced surface-to-air missiles that are being proliferated worldwide which are creating formidable air defenses.
And as we saw in Turkey during the mission -- during the invasion of Iraq, we can't always count on nations to allow us to launch attacks on our enemy from close range.
And while the F-22 and F-35 have excellent stealth capability, they will not, for example, be able to fly from Diego Garcia to a target thousands of miles away with limited fuel supply and limited payload to strike a target as effectively as a B-1 or a B-2 or a B-52.
Earlier this year the Air Force released the long-range strike white paper. The white paper quotes that a procurement spike for the next-generation long-range strike platform is expected to begin in 2011.
As the department builds the FY 2010 through 2015 POM, are you going to support the proposed 2011 funding spike for the next- generation platform?
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SEN. THUNE: The Air Force expects to have that sort of revolutionary long-range strike capability by 2035. Do you believe that the department will need a new long-range strike platform between now and 2035? Or do you think that the current bomber fleet can survive that long based on scheduled upgrades?
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SEN. THUNE: If we don't have that kind of a capability, what is the alternative? I mean, what else do we do to deal with the threats that we're going to be encountering if we don't -- if we're not looking at a next-generation bomber, what are the alternatives?
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SEN. THUNE: Okay. One of the things that I wanted to come back to you, too, and dealing again with bombers, the B-1 has played a vital role in the global war on terrorism. It's provided close air support to troops on the ground, convoy support for road patrols and acts as a significant show of force. The B-1 can also carry the largest payload of both guided and unguided weapons in the Air Force inventory and it is the backbone of America's long-range bomber force and rapidly deliver massive quantities of both precision and non- precision weapons against any adversary literally anywhere in the world at any time. And in addition, the B-1 and F-15E are the only weapons with the capability to fly low-altitude missions day or night in any weather.
Given those contributions, I was surprised by a recent decision in July of this year by your predecessor as the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Mr. Kenneth Krieg, to remove the B-1B from the list of those Air Force programs designated with a DX rating to be of the highest national defense urgency. Under the defense priorities and allocation system, the priority of the B-1 bomber was lowered to a DO rating indicating critical to national defense; however, DX takes precedence over DO programs, so the B-1B will no longer merit having the highest priority access to parts, materials and commodities.
Now, it is important I think to ensure that our most pressing military needs are met first, so based on my concerns, in August of this year, Senators Johnson, Hutchison, Cornyn and I sent a letter to your office requesting that the Department of Defense reevaluate that decision to remove the B-1B as one of their highest priority programs. It's been over a month since we sent the letter and we've not received a response, and so I would ask that as you -- assuming you're confirmed in the position -- that if you could get back to us on the status of that request, we would be -- greatly appreciate it.
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