Hearing of the Senate Committee on Armed Services - Global Posture Review of United States Military Forces Stationed Overseas
Federal News Service
HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
SUBJECT: GLOBAL POSTURE REVIEW OF UNITED STATES MILITARY FORCES STATIONED OVERSEAS
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR JOHN WARNER (R-VA)
WITNESSES: DONALD H. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE;
GENERAL RICHARD B. MYERS, USAF, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF;
GENERAL JAMES L. JONES, JR., USMC, COMMANDER, UNITED STATES EUROPEAN COMMAND AND SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE;
ADMIRAL THOMAS B. FARGO, USN, COMMANDER, UNITED STATES PACIFIC COMMAND;
GENERAL LEON J. LAPORTE, USA, COMMANDER, UNITED NATIONS COMMAND, REPUBLIC OF KOREA/UNITED STATES COMBINED FORCES COMMAND, COMMANDER, UNITED STATES FORCES KOREA
LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
BODY:
SEN. JACK REED (D-RI): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary, gentlemen.
Mr. Secretary, the Defense Science Board has reached a very startling conclusion: inadequate total numbers of U.S. troops, they briefed you; and also a lack of long-term endurance. They suggest some ways to cope with this: trade combat capabilities for stabilization capabilities-that, of course, impacts mission performance if there is a conventional conflict-depend on others like the United Nations or other nations-that has been a dispiriting process over the last several years. And even if we do all these things, their conclusion is extremely, I think, both provocative and startling. If everything we recommend is implemented over the next five years but we continue our current foreign policy of military expeditions every two years, we will begin two more stabilization operations without sufficient preparation or resources. They conclude by saying anything started wrong tends to continue wrong.
That brings us back to points that Senator McCain and others have raised. Iran and North Korea are provocative. They very well might cause us to take military action; one hopes not. And then, as you often say, there's also the surprises that we don't even contemplate at this moment.
It finds-as a result, I find it, again, puzzling why you have not supported an authorized end-strength increase; including those soldiers, particularly Marines, in the regular budget process; obtaining the funds for them by looking at other programs outside of the Army and the Marine Corps because if we don't do this, I think we're running into-running off the cliff, if you will.
Relying on supplemental appropriations is increasingly more challenging.
The Army, I'm told, has an $8 billion requirement for equipment resetting, $4.5 billion for maintenance, $1.3 billion for ammo, and a-in addition to personnel costs. But I think the major point, the one I think the Defense Science Board concludes with, is that we have put ourselves in a strategic position where we may not be able to respond to obvious threats that we're seeing today.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Senator, let me comment, and then I know General Myers will want to comment.
I thought the study was a good one, the Summer Study of the Defense Science Board. And I thought it was sufficiently interesting that I have had it briefed to the chiefs, and I believe the combatant commanders --
GEN. MYERS: Right.
SEC. RUMSFELD: -- and others in the department.
Second. You said we've not supported an increase in strength. We have, and we have an increase in strength under the emergency authorities. We have not supported an endstrength in permanent endstrength by statute. That is correct. And the reason for that, very simply, is we don't need to do that, and the Army prefers not to until they have a sense-General Schoomaker-until he has the sense of how he is able to transform the Army force from 33 brigades up to 43, and possibly 48. And he believes-he doesn't know, but he believes-that over a period of four or five years' doing that, he may be able to do that without a permanent increase in endstrength because of the 20 or 30 other things we're doing, several of which I've mentioned here today. Believe me, if we need more endstrength, we'll request more endstrength. We'll either do it under the emergency authority to start with, or we'll come before the Congress.
The senior managers of the department are doing, I believe it's 35 or 40 different things to relieve stress on the force. And it's having a payout already. We've been able to achieve things. We also, under General Schoomaker's theory, are going to move the spigot down on the rain barrel and be able to draw on more of the 2.5 million men and women who are-have volunteered, because we're only drawing on a very small fraction of them at the present time.
SEN. REED: Mr. Secretary, we've had these discussions for probably two years now. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that your response is simply avoiding the obvious. If we're in a long-term commitment in Iraq, and other places, if we have to be prepared to react to North Korea and Iran, we can't live supplemental to supplemental. The Army can't. The equipment costs are piling up, and we need an endstrength, because we've got to put the budget behind that-not in the supplemental in emergency capacity, but the money behind it. And that has to be done.
Your own Defense Science Board, individuals that you chose, individuals that you respect, individuals that you task to look at this, has come back and said-not for the short run, but the long run. I mean, it's their conclusion-this is a long-term problem of maintaining these forces. And relying --
SEC. RUMSFELD: It could be.
SEN. REED: Well, Mr. Secretary, you continue to say, "It could be." It's quite obvious it is.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, Senator, I'm not pulling this out of thin air, my answers to you. What I'm giving you is what the chiefs in the tank conclude, what the senior levels of the department have concluded, and we would be happy to sit down and walk through the entire process with you. And it is complicated. There's a lot of pieces to it. And admittedly there are uncertainties about whether or-what can actually be achieved with the new national security personnel system.
SEN. REED: Well, I --
SEC. RUMSFELD: There's uncertainties as to how far down that rain barrel we can get that spigot. But if we can't get it far enough, because we just can't manage better, then by golly, you're right, we'll have to go to an increase in endstrength.
SEN. REED: Mr. Secretary, a final question on this point. Did the Defense Science Board consider the changes that you're suggesting, modularity? Were they aware of them? Did they consider them?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know if they were briefed on the-to the extent of all the things we're doing in the department. I doubt it. But --
SEN. REED: So you had your experts study the issue of manpower, and they weren't aware of what's going on in the department?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, knowing what's going on in the department, it's a big department, Senator, as you're well aware. And these are part-time people who come in and are given a specific assignment and take a period and study it. And they do a terrific job. To what extent they-if we gave them a quiz on all the things we're doing in the department to reduce stress on the force, I just am not in a position to answer your question.
SEN. REED: Mr. Chairman, may I ask General LaPorte a question, because again, I like the way he talks. (Laughter.)
SEN. WARNER: If you wish to put a question to General LaPorte, please feel free.
SEN. REED: General, your comments about the adequacy of your forces in Korea I presume are related to your current mission, which is deterrence of a North Korean attack. Would those comments change if you were-had to take military action to disarm North Korea?
GEN. LAPORTE: I didn't hear --
SEN. REED: To take military offensive action to disarm North Korea, would your comments change with respect to the adequacy of personnel and equipment?
GEN. LAPORTE: Well, that's a difficult question to answer because --
SEN. REED: That's why I ask.
GEN. LAPORTE: -- because --
SEN. REED: I think that is the question, though.
SEN. WARNER: Why don't you, General, give us a brief response and then provide a more extensive response for the record?
GEN. LAPORTE: I will do that. The significance in disarming North Korea would require significant capabilities, not just ground component, but all our components. We have significant capabilities to address that threat from North Korea.
SEN. REED: Thank you.