Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - The Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2005 and the Future Years Defense Program

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: THE DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005 AND THE FUTURE YEARS DEFENSE PROGRAM

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR JOHN WARNER (R-VA)

LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES:

LES BROWNLEE, ACTING SECRETARY OF THE ARMY;

GORDON R. ENGLAND, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY;

JAMES G. ROCHE, SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE

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

Secretary Brownlee, like many of my colleagues, I have heard repeated concerns expressed by the families of our Guard members and Reservists who are serving in Iraq about the shortages of body armor and fortified Humvees.

In fact, one soldier was home on leave in December and called me personally to talk about this and the consequences that he feared for the members of his unit. I am very pleased therefore to hear from you this morning of the progress that has been made.

But when I look at your chart in your testimony, it indicates that, a year ago, only 12 percent of the soldiers in Iraq were equipped with body armor and only 500 Humvees were fortified. Why were we so ill-prepared? Why didn't we have more body armor and more fortified Humvees available to protect our troops? There seems to be such a discrepancy. I am pleased with the progress but I'm wondering why it was so misjudged.

MR. BROWNLEE: Yes, ma'am. Quite honestly, we were not producing this body armor at a rate that would allow us to equip all the soldiers with body armor before we went in. What we did was use what we had and equip those soldiers that were infantry and frontline soldiers that would be most likely to come under attack. The requirement for up-armored Humvees proportionally had never been that great because most of these kinds of Humvees were not viewed as favorably for tactical situations because their performance is somewhat degraded by the heavy weight of the armor.

So there was not a feeling that all Humvees should be up-armored. It was when we got into the operational environment in which we found ourselves in-that began in June or July, last summer, that we realized that all soldiers were being exposed to these kinds of attacks and that convoys in particular were exposed to these kinds of IED attacks. That's when we began to ramp up to provide those as soon as we could and we've redistributed from all over the world. The up- armored Humvees that we've had in other places, we've moved. I think the last ones we're just moving in there now should all be in there in April.

And we began a crash program on the body armor. We're now producing at the rate of up to 25,000 per month. I also regret that we were not more farsighted here. We simply were not prepared for that kind of a counterinsurgency that attacked our convoys, our soldiers in the rear as it has proven to be.

SEN. COLLINS: Secretary England, I know that you're expecting, of course, a ship building question from me and I'm not going to disappoint you in that regard. I very much appreciate the commitment that you've shown in your budget to fully fund the construction of three DDG destroyers this year. And we've certainly made a lot of progress. When I look back at 2000, the year 2000, I think we were spending only $4.8 billion for shipbuilding and conversion budget. It's now more than twice as much as $11.1 billion. That's a significant and much needed improvement.

I remain, however, very concerned about the department's future shipbuilding plan particularly as it affects the transition from the DDG to the DDX. The Navy appears to be slipping the construction of a second DDX destroyer by one year, from Fiscal Year 2006 to 2007. If this occurs, it would be the first year in more than 20 years that our Navy will not be procuring a major surface combatant.

My concern is twofold. One is that it will exacerbate the already significant problem with regard to the size of our fleet and we have the (CNN's ?) recent testimony on the ideal size of the fleet of being around 375 vessels. But it also has a significant impact on our industrial base, our ability to keep the skilled workers that we need and to keep some competition in the shipbuilding industrial base. So I would ask that you comment on what are the Navy's plans to ensure that we keep moving toward increasing the size of our fleet, something study after study has demonstrated we need, and also the impact of the stability of our industrial base.

MR. ENGLAND: Thanks, Senator. Two comments here. First of all, for the DDG to DDX conversion you're right, we do have a void in one year. My hope and expectation is we can fix that as we go along because that is an out year. That's a plan, it's not an actual at this point.

Our issue, of course, is affordability. You know, we are required to fully fund this ship at the very beginning, and of course that's very difficult for us to do. I mean, it would be better if we could partially fund. But we have to fully fund so in this case we literally had to move the total amount of about $2 billion to the right rather than to the left. Now, hopefully we can fix that as we go along.

On the other hand I will tell you the industrial base is always of a concern. We do not want voids in the industrial base. That's not good for our industry, and it's also not good for us cause it's costly and disruptive. We do have a study underway. Assistant Secretary John Young has been conducting a study on the industrial base. That is finished, I believe, now and will be briefed to you very shortly. It could be today, tomorrow, but I mean this week I believe we will be briefing you.

And as part of that we have worked with the leadership of all the major shipyards to make sure we do understand their issues and problems, because it's in our issue not to have those problems in our shipyards. So we are paying attention to it. We do not want breaks in our production line and we will continue to address that so it's not an issue for the industry. We don't want that to be an issue in the industry.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Secretary Brownlee.

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SEN. WARNER: We'll accept that because there has been some concern-my understanding, the senator might wish to elaborate, about the Office of Personnel Management, a separate entity within our federal system, and their coordination, collaboration, whatever you want-partnership I would hope in this implementation. I correct in that, Senator?

SEN. COLLINS: You are correct. The OPM under law is supposed to be involved in the development of the new system, and that's very important because OPM has unique expertise in the federal government that I think can be very helpful to the department. And I think it's very important that even at these very initial stages that not only the department go forward, but that it engage in a collaboration with OPM and with the federal employee unions.

SEN. WARNER: Well, I thank you, Senator.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you very much. That's good news.

MR. BROWNLEE: And one other issue. With respect to priorities to Reserve components versus activities, just so you'll know, we are-we have mobilized and will deploy three separate brigades from the National Guard Enhanced Brigades: 30th out of North Carolina, the 39th out of Arkansas, and the 81st out of Washington state. The chief of staff of the Army and I made a decision that they would have first priority over the active components in equipping them with the Rapid Fielding Initiative equipment, which also includes the body armor. So they will get all the array of soldier items that each-about $3,000 per soldier. It includes sunglasses and kneepads and all these things. And they have a higher priority on that for this deployment than any of the actives.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.