Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Troop Rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Mobilization of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve

July 7, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: TROOP ROTATIONS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AND MOBILIZATION OF THE ARMY'S INDIVIDUAL READY RESERVE

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)

WITNESSES: DAVID CHU, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, PERSONNEL AND READINESS; LIEUTENANT GENERAL NORTON A. SCHWARTZ, USAF, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS (J-3), JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF; GENERAL RICHARD A. CODY, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAN C. HULY, DEPUTY COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS, PLAN, POLICIES, AND OPERATIONS

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

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REP. TOM COLE (R-OK): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's never a-never a pain to listen to my more senior colleagues. I always learn a lot, and a lot of history and a lot of insight, quite frankly. But I do want to pick up, and I want to make a couple of comments first on Mr. Reyes' line of questioning and Mr. Weldon's earlier line of questioning, and Mr. Skelton's line as well.

First I want to give a compliment. I think you gentlemen have done an incredible job in upgrading and modernizing the force, particularly doing it at a time of war. It's quite amazing. The use of force in terms of making it more efficient, getting more combat power out of the same number of people again is quite remarkable. And I think you're to be commended for it. I think you stretch these dollars a lot further than any of your predecessors have, and that's a compliment to the people that you lead and to yourselves for your vision.

Having said that, and without being critical of anybody in the 1990s-that was a Democratic president and a Republican Congress that arrived at those decisions, even though there were vigorous debates internally. And so it's a bi- -- if we cut too far in the '90s-and I think we did-it was probably a bipartisan failure. And we felt we were living in one kind of world, and we found out September 11th it's a very different world than anybody thought we were living in in the 1990s. But we do have a blueprint in 1992, as was mentioned in some of the debate earlier. And it is for a considerably larger force than we have today. And that was the force that we thought was the appropriate size moving into the post-Cold War era, an era that we thought was going to be more peaceful than it's turned out to be, an era where I doubt we thought we would see as many deployments, as Mr. Weldon pointed out, as we have seen.

Given the history of the last decade, that we are now deploying frequently, no reason to believe that's going to change, given the fact that we are in a war and we are stretching and using equipment and personnel, why don't we go back to that 1992 benchmark in terms of two more divisions, in terms of two more air wings, in terms of a hundred more ships, and at least work toward that? I think there's obviously a lot of sentiment on this committee to move in that direction. But, quite frankly, while I think the administration has done a terrific job, we've not heard that demand from the department or from the administration. We're doing a better job with what we have, without a doubt, but there is going to be a limit. And I think we're there.

You know, every-every officer I talk to off the record tells me the Army's too small.

Every retired officer I talk to, for whom I have great respect, tell me that we are stretching too much. We haven't gotten the administration to quite go that far. You've done a lot of marvelous things short of that. But I'd like to ask you, where do you see the size of the Army, in particular, but all the services evolving over the next five or 10 years, not just the next fiscal year?

MR. CHU: Well, thank you, sir, first of all for your words of praise. We're grateful for them.

Second, to your question, I think no one would want to use a 1992 blueprint today. And I think as General Cody has testified, the answer for the Army lies in expanded brigade numbers, not more overhead in terms of division structure, but more brigade strength, and greater interchangeability of that strength, hence the modular concept so that you could put brigades together on the battlefield without having the current interface issues that sometimes arise, and equipping not just the Army but all elements of our force with the cutting-edge equipment that enhances substantially their effectiveness.

So the agenda of the administration, I think, is very similar to the spirit of your question, which is to make our units more effective. That doesn't necessarily mean more people in every case. The Navy is an excellent case in point. Navy capabilities today are going to be higher than they were yesterday, and they're going to do it with fewer people, which again comes back to your point about using the taxpayers' dollars wisely.

REP. COLE: Without question, I think you're doing a great job of that; but I do think at some point there's a limit in terms of personnel, and I think you're there. I mean, is there no plan, no thought beyond, you know, again, a temporary increase? Because I don't think we're going to be in Iraq a very short period of time.

MR. CHU: No, sir. Across the board, although we've not talked about it this morning, across the board we believe that we can make better use of the uniformed personnel of the United States; that we have too many uniformed personnel doing things that civilian personnel, either government or contractor, could do. We've begun the process-the Army's been a leader in that regard-begun the process of taking some of the military billets that really don't have to be devoted to these tasks and using civilians instead. The Army has 5,000 in fiscal 2004, 5,000 again in fiscal 2005, converting them to head space, so to speak, that the Army can use. The same thing is going on in the other military services. So the constant here is the recognition that we will need an expanded set of capabilities to deal with the kind of world we have.

REP. COLE: Again, my time's about expired. Let me make one point, if I may. And not to disagree with you to augment. I mean, I really think you're wrong-not in terms of what you're doing, I think you're doing it brilliantly. I think you're using your resources superbly, I think you're maximizing your capability, but in the end, it does take people, and you are using people pretty hard right now. And I compliment those people. I mean, they're clearly great patriots. They're doing a wonderful job.

But I would urge the administration to begin to look at a larger military. There's support for it now. And there's nothing to-you know, suggesting that on the basis of a decade experience and the fact that we're in a war that three years ago none of us knew we were going to be in, including this administration, would suggest looking again at the basic numbers while you are achieving the efficiencies that you clearly are achieving.

But I think in the end it's too small a force for the number of deployments that Mr. Weldon laid out that we have had and we are likely to have.

But again, thank you, gentlemen, for your service. I appreciate it very greatly. But I suspect we will be revisiting this issue in this committee again and again and again. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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