Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) calls for Strengthening Military Readiness in CSIS Speech

Press Release

House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee Chairman delivers major address on national defense at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Key quotes from Chairman Wittman's remarks:

"People have to understand what is the impact of sequestration. That's going to be significant. What's the impact of reduction of end strength? How do we reset our force? One thing we've done with a one hundred percent certainty in the past is we've gotten "reset" wrong. I want to make sure we get 'reset' at least closer to some semblance of right."

"We have to think about not only what we're doing today. We've been engaged in a ground war for 12 years. How do we structure the force into the future to make sure that it can meet challenges?"

"The whole picture needs to be how do we have ground forces that have the capability on a broad set of missions. You look at where we are today and you see that we have artillery officers that haven't been firing artillery pieces as part of brigade level exercises...

"If we look at it in a myopic way and we believe that somehow we can just have a force that does ISR through unmanned platforms and deploy special operators to little places around the world, I think that grossly underestimates the challenges out there."

"Non state actors like ISIS are going to continue to enforce their will in areas where they see and perceive weakness. The question is how do we deal with that"

"Unfortunately our defense budgets have been disproportionately affected by sequester, and by budget cuts going all the way back to Secretary Gates, and then the BCA in 2010 and 2011, We know that those additive effects are now having a significant impact. We want members to understand that so that when they are faced with tough decisions in the future, they understand what we must do and the obligations to our military…. You can't balance the budget on the backs of our men and women in the military. We need to look at the autopilot spending programs"

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