 for this early start and the floor has developed so that we can proceed as we typically do with opening statements and I want to thank all of my colleagues for the last few days for making special arrangements, being brief and concise so that we could ensure we could get to the floor. Good morning. The committee meets today to receive testimony in the President's budget request for the Department of the Army for fiscal year 2025. Witnesses today are Secretary of the Army Christine Wormarth and Chief of Staff of the Army General Randy George. I would note that this is General George's first posture hearing before the committee. Welcome General. Thank you both for your service and please convey this committee's appreciation of the men and women serving under your command. This is a challenging but important period for the Army. Even as the Army navigates the most difficult recruiting environment in half a century and the most dangerous global security environment since the Second World War it is also undertaking a thorough service-wide modernization effort. It is critical that this effort is successful as the threats before the Army are significant. We know that China seeks to challenge the United States' interests and leadership in the world. That Vladimir Putin views Ukraine as a stepping stone in his imperialist vision and that Iran seeks to exploit the war between Israel and Hamas to expel the United States and other countries from the region. The United States Army, the most combat credible ground force in the world, is fundamental to successfully deterring and if needed confronting these threats. It is worth knowing that each of these challenges I just mentioned can be addressed in part through the national security supplemental that the Senate passed more than two months ago. The bill would support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, provide humanitarian relief in Gaza, and replenish the United States Army with the stocks and resources it so urgently needs. And I urge the House to pass this supplemental funding immediately and indeed if we have to once again encounter that we do so immediately. In its fiscal year 2025 budget, the Department of Events has requested $186 billion for the Army, continuing multiple years of flat budgets for the service. And I'm concerned that inadequate investment in the United States primary land component may create vulnerabilities and complicate decisions about how to use the funding. We risk the Army's combat strength if we do not provide it with the resources it needs to continue full modernization. Secretary Wyrmuth, General George, I'm interested in hearing about the Army's view of its mission globally, especially in the Pacific, as well as how the service is adjusting its operating concepts and force posture within its budget constraints. To remain competitive with China and Russia, we must prioritize investments in the cutting edge technologies that will define future battle fields across all domains. The Army specifically has been pursuing modernization in key areas like long-range fires, air defense, vertical lip, and deep sensing among others. These are ambitious and far-sighted objectives. I'm also encouraged by the Army's efforts on its new cross-functional team focused on contested logistics. This team, under the direction of Army Futures Command, is addressing the need for more resilient and agile logistics in dangerous environments like the Indo-Pacific. I've recently visited a number of Army posts, including Graf Nevere Training Area in Germany and Fort Sill and McAllister Army and Amnition Plant in Oklahoma. I've been impressed by the work that these soldiers and Army citizens are doing to not only train and equip our warfighters, particularly for counter-UAS missions, but also the lessons and knowledge gained from our foreign partners, including the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have conducted training at Graf Nevere. I would like to know what lessons and tactics the Army is learning from the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and what resources are needed to implement them. As I mentioned, the Army's most valuable asset has always been its people. I am pleased to see this budget request places a priority on taking care of our soldiers by providing a 4.5% pay raise and committing more than $2 billion per year for the next several years to improve barracks and family housing. The Army is also making significant investments improvements to its recruiting enterprise. For the past several years, the service has fallen far short of its recruiting goals, but recent program initiatives, including a major new marketing campaign and expansion of the future soldier prep course appear to be gaining some ground. I would ask for an update on your efforts to recruit a broader pool of potential recruits and grow back and strength in the coming years. Finally, the Army must continue to improve its readiness in the context of long-term strategic competition. The Army's focused on increased training exercises, including Defender Europe, Pacific Pathways, and its leadership in the Project's Convergence series demonstrated commitment to broad experimentation and regional preparedness. I would ask for an update on how the Army is designing exercises to support its forces on our pacing threats to China and Russia. Again, I thank the witnesses for their participation today. Look forward to the testimonies. And as a reminder from my colleagues, there will be a closed session immediately following this hearing in room SVC 217. Let me now recognize the ranking member of Senator Werner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses for being here today and for briefing so many of us before this hearing. The chair mentioned that this is General George's first testimony before the committee in this capacity. It's noteworthy that Secretary Wormuth actually administered the oath of office to the general via cell phone while he was visiting the 11th Airborne in Alaska. Since then, these two leaders have worked together to reform their service branch. And I commend both of our witnesses for their shared leadership. In October, the Army announced a series of overhauls to its recruiting structure and strategy in an effort to combat the recruitment crisis. I hope to learn more about this today. When implemented, the entire Army recruiting enterprise will reside under a single three-star commander. This person will serve for four years and report directly to the Secretary of the Army. The service is now targeting prospective candidates in the college age range, embracing modern data collection methods and professionalizing the Army recruiter role. So I look forward to hearing an update from the Secretary about these reforms as well as current recruiting progress. These recruiting overhauls directly impact the new total Army analysis released in February. The Army rightfully reduced force structure to align better with the number of soldiers in its formation. The service plans to stand up a new counter UAS, some new counter UAS batteries, fire protection battalions, and multi-domain task forces to adjust to current trends in warfare. While I support these decisions, I remain cautious about the reductions in special operations forces. And we'd like to hear from General George about the services proposed for structure changes. All of the units and soldiers in the total Army analysis will rely on current Army modernization efforts. I'm encouraged that the Army's FY25 budget request contains more than double its purchase year over year of precision strike missiles, a critical capability in the Indo-Pacific. Further, the Army tripled its request for KOD counter drone interceptors to help protect our soldiers and overseas bases from Iranian attack drones. I also thank the witnesses for using congressionally provided multi-year procurement authority to procure both Gimlers and Patriot missiles. However, I must say it's disappointing to see additional Patriot and Stinger missiles on the unfunded requirement list rather than fully funded in the base budget. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has again done a disservice to the Army in the FY25 budget submission. When accounting for inflation, this year's budget is more than a 2% cut compared to last year. Madam Secretary and General George, the members of the committee, I appreciate the chairman of the committee just a moment ago expressing concern that we are not providing adequate resources to the Army to get the task done. General George submitted a list of over $2.2 billion worth of unfunded priorities the Army needs, including more counter UAS capabilities like Road Runner and Reconnaissance Systems. I think that's a low figure. I'm convinced the Army actual unmet needs far exceed this $2.2 billion. And so General, I'm going to ask you to comment on that. U.S. Army Pacific has 430 million of unmet needs of which only 100 million are covered in the unfunded list. Plus, we know that a significant shortfalls elsewhere such as nearly $1 billion missing to update the Army preposition stocks this year. The Army plays a leading logistical role in the Western Pacific. And I'd like to hear from both of our witnesses about what else we can do to improve our ability to operate there. Tell us what you need, please, and we'll try to get it for you. Congress must correct this budget request to ensure the Army has the resources to meet the needs and meet our nation's challenges. Thank you to my teammate, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Wicker. Madam Secretary, please. Good morning, Chairman Reid, Ranking Member Wicker, distinguished members of the committee. Thank you, first of all, for your continued support of our soldiers, their families, and our Department of Army civilians. General George and I appear before you this morning at a period of profound transformation for the United States Army. We are transforming our capabilities, our force structure, and our recruiting enterprise to ensure that the Army is ready and able to defeat evolving threats, keep pace with technology, and attract the very best talent. As we pursue this transformation, we're also taking care of our people, ensuring that our soldiers and their families have the quality of life they deserve to sustain our readiness now and in the future. This is my fourth year before the committee, and like last year, the FY25 budget continues to support the most ambitious modernization effort the Army has undertaken in over 40 years. We're making significant progress transforming our capabilities by staying consistent in our goals and meeting key milestones for development and fielding. The next generation squad weapon, integrated battle command system, the mid-range capability, and the precision strike missile are examples of just some of the critical new systems we've recently delivered. As we bring new systems into our inventory, we're also transforming our force structure to meet the priorities of the national defense strategy. We're building out new formations like our multi-domain task forces to make sure that they're equipped with the capabilities we need to conduct large-scale combat operations against advanced military powers. And we're shrinking excess force structures so that the units we do have are manned and ready. While these force structure decisions will bring down authorized troop levels by about 24,000 spaces, our goal is to increase the Army's authorized end strength from 445,000 to 470,000 by FY 2029. To meet that goal, we are working around the clock to overcome our recruiting challenges. Building on successful initiatives like the Future Soldier Prep Course, we are fundamentally transforming our recruiting enterprise to better compete in the 21st century job market. Most significantly, we are redesigning our recruiting workforce by creating new permanent talent acquisition specialties for both enlisted soldiers and warrant officers. And actually, the assessment and selection of the first cohort of warrant officers is complete, and the first group will be going out into the field later this summer. But while we transform, we can't afford to lose sight of our soldiers and their families and what we need to do to take care of them. A key part of that responsibility is providing safe, high-quality housing and barracks. And over the next five years, as the chairman, I think, noted, the Army is going to invest an average of $2.1 billion annually in the construction, sustainment, restoration, and modernization of barracks for our soldiers. This investment will include barracks' sustainment at 100% for the first time in years. We are also going to leverage the expertise of the Army Corps of Engineers to stabilize our project costs as much as possible, and we will be hiring civilian barracks managers so that our soldiers can focus on war fighting. Physically and emotionally healthy soldiers are more resilient, higher performing, and less likely to engage in harmful behaviors. To build resilient soldiers, we are expanding our health and holistic fitness programs to 71 active component brigades. We're investing in financial counseling to make sure that our soldiers and families know how to manage their money, and we're encouraging programs in our divisions to focus on soldier well-being. Our goal has been and remains building cohesive teams that are ready to fight and win. Throughout this transformation, which we absolutely have to do because as you all know it's a very dangerous world out there, we're continuing to provide combatant commands with what they need, trained and ready formations. This year's budget seeks $1.5 billion for activities tied to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, and we've asked for $460 million for operation pathways, the series of exercises we conduct in the Indo-Pacific to strengthen deterrence and also build regional interoperability with our partners and allies. In Europe, our troops are demonstrating our commitment to deterring Russian aggression. The Army is leading support to Ukraine. We've trained over 17,000 Ukrainian troops, and we provided as you all know well, hundreds of vehicles, weapon systems, and millions of munitions. In the Middle East, our soldiers are mission focused and standing ready to provide further support for Israel's defense and to enhance broader regional stability. The Chief and I strongly urge the passing of supplemental appropriations that will maintain this critical support to Ukraine, support partners in Asia and the Middle East, and invest in our own readiness, all while creating jobs for Americans all around the country. With your support, we will continue to take care of our people and sustain the transformation that will keep our Army the best in the world. I'm proud of all that our soldiers and Army civilians do and look forward to your questions this morning. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. General George, please. Thanks, Chairman. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker, distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity today to talk about our Army. The world is more volatile today than I have seen it in my 36-year career, and there is clear cooperation between adversaries than we've seen in a while. A spark in any region could have global impacts. Meanwhile, the character of war is changing rapidly, which we see from what is happening on battlefields in the Ukraine and in the Middle East. Our Army is as important to the joint force as it has ever been. We must deter war everywhere and be ready to respond anywhere. So we are focused on providing the best Army with the budget we are given. Our soldiers deserve it, the joint team deserves it, and our nation deserves it. And that means making some tough decisions and finding ways to get better every day. As the Secretary already highlighted, our planned investments reflected in our FY25 budget will help our Army win the future fight and ensure that our soldiers and their families remain ready and resilient. Across the Army, we are learning from global events and continuously transforming how we operate, how we train, and how we equip. And I'd like to highlight a handful of things. We're learning that designs for things like unmanned systems must be modular, adaptable, and software defined. We are working to get relevant technology into hands of our soldiers immediately. We are learning that counter-unmanned systems must evolve as the threat does to protect our formations and critical infrastructure. We are also moving out on that while being mindful of the cost curve. We need cheaper solutions. We are learning that in some cases the right tech already exists to support transformation. For instance, the tech exists to make our command and control nodes more mobile, low signature, and more effective. And we are fixing our network. And we are building our magazine depth and modernizing our organic industrial base because we know that wars never end as quickly as we hope. They take a lot of ammo. We are also transforming how we recruit, ensuring that we have the right talent and right tech, and that we are getting the word out about how our army is a great place to serve because of our mission and our people. Finally, we are also looking at where we need to reimagine our processes and where we can afford to stop doing things that don't support our warfighting mission or building cohesive teams. I'm proud of what our soldiers are doing around the world. We appreciate your support and we look forward to your questions. Thank you very much, General. Both for the Secretary and Chief Staff, the obvious point is you're operating under a flat budget essentially, and that makes your decisions of how you spend the money more and more critical. Secretary Wormworth, the obvious has made some shifts in his priorities this year. Can you describe the overall guidance for building this ready and modernized army and the shifts you've made? Certainly, Chairman. You know, the Chief and I are very focused on spending every single dollar that we have in the most effective way, and I think the broad direction of our modernization program has remained the same. You know, we continue, as you said in your statement, to focus on investing in air and missile defense in long-range precision fires, in advanced aviation, and a number of other categories. You know, I think we did make, obviously, a significant decision in choosing to not pursue further the FARA reconnaissance aircraft, but in doing that, we basically came to the realization, looking at, you know, what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine, for example, what's happening with technology, we felt we could meet that requirement in a different way, and we also wanted to make sure we kept our aviation industrial-based healthy, and so that led us to the multi-year procurement of additional, but more modernized Blackhawks. But beyond that, I would say, you know, again, the broader goals of our modernization program are looking at the large-scale combat operation study that we did several years ago now. I think the things that that led us to invest in, frankly, have been validated to a large degree by what we see happening on the battlefield in Ukraine in particular, and so we're going to continue, I think, with all of those important portfolios, and they're going to give us capabilities that we need to be able to deal with challenges in the Indo-Pacific, but also in Europe and elsewhere, because as the chief says, you know, we're a globally deployable army, we're not focused on one theater. Thank you, Prime Secretary. General George, again, in the context of this budget, in the context of the strategy that the Secretary has laid out, how are you maintaining ready combat formations, which is essential to the mission? Yeah, Chairman, and that's every month I chair the readiness update, and there's nothing more important than having a ready army, and so we're completely focused on that. To carry on a little bit with what the Secretary was talking about, what we're, I mean, we owe it to get every, make sure that every dollar that we're spending, and so we're looking at processes. I give you a couple examples of, and I mentioned up front in my opening remarks about how we got to get after cheaper solutions, and I think unmanned systems is a good example of that. Countering unmanned systems as well, we can't keep, you know, we can't afford to keep lobbing very expensive missiles out of that, so we're working on those kinds of things through R&D and then getting stuff forward to do it, and then the battlefield is changing, is changing really quickly. So one of the things that I've been, that we've been talking about is, I think that what will help us in that is having more flexible funding that would allow us to make some of those adjustments as rapidly as the battlefield is changing. Thank you. The issue of recruiting always comes up. Can you give us an update, Madam Secretary? I think we're making a little more progress. We are. We still have six months left to go in the fiscal year, so the Chief and I don't want to be overconfident, but right now we are on a very good pace, I think, to meet this year's recruiting goal, which is 55,000 new contracts plus 5,000 in the delayed entry program. So that's, you know, that's very good news. February and March were very good months. The Chief and I actually just chaired yesterday a meeting with all of the senior leaders from our recruiting enterprise. You know, I think we continue to see very good success with the future soldier prep course, our advertising campaign. I don't know if you all saw some of the ads during the March Madness basketball tournament. We, as I said, you know, we we've selected our first cohort of new warrant officers. We are doing some things to leverage better data to give our recruiter stronger leads and we're looking at how to break into the college market. So I think we're doing well. We've also, I would say, we've we're selecting our existing recruiters in a different way that's more attribute-focused, looking at sort of personalities. And we're also, we've overhauled the curriculum in our recruiting college. About 40% of the curriculum has changed. And so the the recruiters that we surged kind of last late last year have gone through that and they're in the field now and I think they're part of the reason why we're seeing our contracts per month go up. One layer you just mentioned is focusing on college students. I've always felt that junior colleges are an excellent place to recruit. You have people who are mature more so than high school and then, I hope, and then you have also people who have made a decision not to go to a four-year school. Are you finding success there? Well, I would say, Chairman, we are absolutely looking at junior colleges, community colleges. You know, we're looking at kids maybe who did a couple years of college but then dropped out for whatever reason. I would say candidly, Chairman, we're still in the early days. We, what actually Chief and I just talked about this yesterday, we really need to do some more market research on that some college, college market. We just haven't been focused on that market for so long so we really need to dig into that more and we're actually gonna engage a private sector company to help us with that. Thank you very much. Senator Walker, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General George, you said, I believe, this is the most volatile international security situation in, did you say, 37 years? In my 36 years. 36 years, okay, and also your your prepared statement with the Secretary since the Army must transform quickly. Chairman Reed said that the budget that's now been proposed is essentially a flat budget. I think he might not take issue with my statement that it's a two percent cut when you, when you consider inflation and purchasing power. I understand what the Secretary said about using every dollar carefully and making sure that it's, that we squeeze every bit of value but we're not going to meet this threat simply by being more efficient with the dollars that have been asked for either in your budget submission or the unfunded requirement. There are 430 million dollars in unmet needs in U.S. Army Pacific and only 100 million of that 430 million is covered in the Army unfunded list. We need a, we need almost a billion dollars to update Army preposition stocks this year. This budget is not adequate for this most volatile situation in 36 years is it General George? Senator, what I was focused on in the unfunded priority list first and foremost was everything that we could potentially execute. So there was two things in the unfunded priority list that we put in there and it was very extensive process that we went through. One was a lot of things that were in our base budget but we next on the list to maximize production. So there's some of those that took us out to production and then the other example is facts of life changes. What happened on October 7th? Okay, well you know we're only, we only have a just a brief, brief moment but the the 330 million dollars that aren't covered of the of US Army Pacific, you're gonna need that aren't you? Are you saying you can't execute that in the next fiscal year? I know what was included on there was specific to to US Army Pacific was some additional campaigning that we're doing. But there's a 430 million dollars unmet needs and only 100 million covered in the Army unfunded list. You could use that entire 430 million in this next fiscal year, could you not? Senator, I'd have to go back and look, I don't know what the other you know additional funding that you're specifically referring to. Let me just say I do appreciate the fact that we have to be efficient. We've got to get the absolute value out of every single taxpayer dollar that we entrust with you but we're gonna need, if we're gonna keep the peace and have peace through strength which has always worked that we're gonna have to, we're gonna make sure that you tell us what you need. Let me ask you this General George. The secretary mentioned the things that we're doing to help the effort of our friends in Ukraine. What lessons are we learning that we that we can use later on? Should we be asked in another theater to go into combat? Senator, I could go on for a long time. I'd love to come over and talk to you about lessons. We have a big we're with formation that's over there we'll use to do this and I'll give you a couple of quick, I'll give you some really quick examples. We're learning the effectiveness of ground base long-range fires. We're learning that UAS unmanned systems and countering unmanned systems is rapidly evolving. We're learning that the EW landscape is changing everywhere between three weeks and three months and so that we need to be more flexible in our approach and this is why we're EWB electronic warfare so the battlefield is changing really, really rapidly. We're learning about how well additive manufacturing is going to work and reduce our, can help us reduce our footprint. We're learning that you can be seen anywhere on the battlefield and you're going to have to become more mobile, lower signature, that's why we're focused on our network because if you can be seen you can be killed and we're doing all of those things and training all of those things and we're taking those lessons and they're not lessons learned until we've actually changed how we trained, change how we operate, change how we equip and then change how we buy things. General there's no way to learn that other than actually watching actual combat. Is that correct? I think we're watching a lot of that unfold and we've got a lot of combat experience inside of our formation. We're doing that without any of our guys and gals having to actually be in combat. We're doing watching someone else use our passes. Exactly. Thank you sir. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Senator Werner. Senator Shaheen please. Good morning. Thank you Secretary Wormuth and General George both for being here and for your service to the country. Secretary Wormuth I'm sure you won't probably won't be surprised to know that I'm still focused on night vision devices. This is the second year in a row in which the budget has included very little for procurement of night vision devices and it makes it hard for me to understand what the army's plans are for the future. The budget for 25 suggests that the army plans to both to buy both L3 Harris's EMVGBs and Microsoft's IVAS systems but it doesn't really justify how it's going to sustain both. Can you give us some more detail on what you're planning? Yes Senator Shaheen. As you know we are planning to buy both capabilities and I think you know we don't see it as an either or. They each bring some different things to the table and if I'm not mistaken I think there's more in the budget this year for the enhanced night vision goggles than last year's budget. I think we have money in there for about 2,300 additional sets of goggles. We also have money in the budget for 3,000 of the 1.2 version IVAS you know hologram headsets. As you know very well because you and I have talked about this over a number of hearings you know we're continuing to work with Microsoft on that program. We have some additional testing coming up this year we're going to be doing a lot of testing on the 1.2 version. We did the the last test that we ran looking at IVAS was much more successful. The soldier feedback we got was much better you know the the form factor for the headset was more comfortable. They weren't having as much next strain and I think the resolution on the for the vision piece was better. So we are planning to continue with both programs but of course we're going to look and see what the results are for the 1.2 version later this year before we decide further on the IVAS. And according to the budget justification materials the IVAS system heads up display is designed to work within their network to provide situational awareness and synthetic training environment capabilities. I'm quoting so hopefully I'm going to get that correct. Are all army situational awareness devices interoperable with the IVAS network? Do we know that yet? Well what that means really and it's been a little while since I've actually worn IVAS but the you know one of the things that's unique about IVAS is that it allows our soldiers to have sort of a virtual training environment so that they can plan you know tactical missions for example wearing the headsets and also to use that for training. That's not a capability that we have right now on any of our other systems so it's that's why it's a bit of a pathfinder and wearable technology for us and one of the reasons why we're interested in it. Well I certainly look forward to seeing more of what the experiment and the record shows that IVAS can do. General George in your opening comments you talked about wanting more flexibility for budget. What specifically I know we've we've done a lab the multi-year procurement but are there other things that you're suggesting that you need in order to better manage the funding that you have? Senator yeah first the multi-years for one five five Gimler pack three have been extremely helpful to us on the there's three areas and I kind of mentioned these briefly with senator wicker but how we're changing in unmanned aerial systems or unmanned systems overall and encountering those and EW is it think the battlefield is changing in in weeks and months and so the the point is for systems and I'll give you an example when October 7th happened Hamas attacked Israel situation changed in the Middle East and we needed to do additional things with counter UAS we we did not have the flexibility because of a continuing resolution to move money make adjustments go from R&D to procurement for for certain systems and so I do think in those three areas just is how fast and we're not talking big systems that we need more flexibility in those areas because how things are are changing and I'm I'm confident that we could do that in a way where we would notify and wait and to tell in inside those systems so those are the three areas that I think we would need the flexibility but just to clarify the fundamental problem there is budget certainty and making sure that you're not operating on a continuing resolution that's on an ongoing basis right that was we could not make adjustments and we couldn't up our production level for coyote for example and had to go through things but I do think in those three areas that we we do need some flexibility for counter like counter UAS systems we were in R&D and have the ability to procure some of those I think it's also going to help for a lot of the small technology firms that are doing great things here in the in the States thank you thank you Mr. Chairman thank you center change center Fisher please thank you Mr. Chairman thank you both for being here today general George your unfunded priority list included several counter UAS systems that you just touched on with senator Shaheen can you tell us why it is important to acquire these systems in fiscal year 25 if not sooner um senator I think that you've seen what just what happened last weekend with a number of you know systems and unmanned systems in one way attack and loitering munitions I think every formation out there is going to have to operate um these unmanned systems inside of our own formation and we're going to have to be able to counter them and so we we need to I think that's one area where I think we're going to have to speed up and we're attempting to do that wanting to do that inside the army well I appreciated that you put it on your unfunded priority lists because it is extremely important extremely helpful as you said we just witnessed some of that last week general and madam secretary we've seen the unmanned aerial systems we've seen the counter UAS systems to be used at a great effect and we've seen them particularly in Ukraine so how is the army taking what it has learned specifically in that conflict about drone drone welfare and incorporating those lessons learned into the development of new tactics techniques and procedures for soldiers sure senator fischer um we first of all we we are um aggressively collecting lessons learned from what we're seeing in Ukraine across the board I was actually in graffin veer in February and saw some of the training we were doing with the Ukrainians and frankly I felt like our soldiers might have been learning more from them than they were learning from us um what we are doing is you know taking all of those lessons and infusing them into our combat training centers so at fort urwin and at fort johnson and you are actually seeing the what we call the op for you know the opposition force that our brigades train against they are attacking our brigades that are in the box with drones and with drone swarms so we are we are already you know testing our brigades um against the kinds of things that we're seeing in Ukraine and they are that is causing them to adjust their tactics techniques and procedures as the chief said they're having to move their command posts you know more frequently they're having to camouflage them we're having to find ways to reduce the footprint both physical and sort of signature but we are very much trying to learn those lessons as someone said you know a lesson observed is not the same thing as a lesson learned thank you um also all of the data that we're seeing indicates that military recruiting remains a challenge you also touched on that in your openings um i do appreciate the efforts that you have made those ongoing efforts and and to help create solutions so that we can maintain our all volunteer force madam secretary your joint written testimony outlines the army's plan for transforming the recruiting enterprise in part through a focus on innovation how will the army work to quickly take the successful approaches and incorporate them into a wider recruiting enterprise well we're creating an innovation essentially cell or directorate that will be part of us army recruiting command and they are doing everything from helping us you know figure out how to develop the pipeline to train the new what we call forty two tango that will be the kind of specialized enlisted recruiters that will come in so they're involved with the curriculum development they're involved with helping us figure out how to apply um artificial intelligence and machine learning to again looking at large data sets of potential prospects and really trying to um help our recruiters focused on the most uh the best leads if you will they're helping us uh look at basically what we would call the recruiting station of the future we really think we need to sort of fundamentally relook everything from sort of the storefronts to kind of how our recruiting stations operate so those are just a few examples of how the innovation cell will help us you know i'm really concerned about what i perceive as a growing distrust of institutions and in our society and especially with our younger generation are you looking specifically at ways to address that as well and and to be able to communicate better about um the strength of uh of a commitment and dedication and how important that is and and just the value of the institution we are senator you know i share your concern about the decline of trust that our young people have and frankly a lot of americans have in our uh institutions you know i think what we can do in the army is um you know continue to do more to talk about the value of service and what it means to be part of an institution that's about something larger than yourself and about protecting this great country but that i think frankly it's something that we need your help on all of you because i i think we need more voices in leadership talking about the value of service it can't just be you know the fact that 83 percent of our recruits come from military families that's wonderful in many ways but it's also a little concerning you know we need to we can't rely on just military families to give their kids to the army so the more all of you i think can talk about the value of service that will help us thank you thank you mr chairman thank you senator fischer senator hirono please thank you mr chairman thank you both for your testimony senator wormeth the army is negotiating renewals for several training very important training area area land leases in hawaii particularly pohaka loa on the big island in that training area that would be the army and the the marines not to mention our our civil our civilian people so anyway we're in the midst of negotiating although those those leases do not expire for a number of years but we do need to be already in the process the lands that this training area particularly pohaka loa hold cultural significance to the native Hawaiian community and it is imperative that you and your team conduct frequent and respectful engagements with the local community leaders especially the native Hawaiian community because truly we need to avoid a situation where that there is major conflict in terms of our ability to extend these leases so i included a provision in last year's ndaa that requires a secretary of defense to designate an official responsible for coordinating these negotiations has that individual been identified and could you provide an update on the lease renegotiation efforts and community outreach certainly senator harono i am tracking that requirement in the last ndaa i do not believe that osd has yet hired that individual i know that you know we have had discussions with them about the attributes that would be helpful in that kind of person you know obviously someone who has deep ties to the community and relationships with all of the different stakeholders but i think osd is still working to identify the right person for that you know we certainly think it would be helpful to have someone be a single belly button if you will what we're doing in the army is really to try to have exactly the kinds of conversations that you're referring to with all of the different stakeholders so general flinn has been very engaged my assistant secretary our assistant secretary for installations in the environment rachel jacobson we've had our general counsel carry richie has been out to hawaii to have conversations and you know as you said the leases don't expire until 2029 but we need to be having discussions about what the options are and i think there are discussions informally with the department of land and natural resources for example so we're we're trying to continue to stay focused on that i cannot overstate the importance of finding the right person to be that that liaison with the community let me give you an example the mawi wildfires has resulted in the family of what i could describe as the family of federal agencies there over a thousand federal people have been there on mawi and femo of course is very much there and as femo is conducting his cleanup operations and all of that they have hired dozens dozens of cultural advisors to be there when they are actually cleaning out individual lots that is how critically important the sensitivities are and i would say that if we do not renegotiate these leases successfully that is going to have a major impact on the continuing presence of the military in hawaii and therefore our national security so we've talked a lot about recruiting and all of the services are having recruiting challenges except possibly the air force so some of the new things that you are doing is this something that is being shared with the other services because they're all facing recruiting challenges yes i'm proud to say the army is leading the way in this space and our sister services are are taking you know a page from our playbook so i believe the navy for example has started their own version of the future soldier prep course secretary austin has regular conversations with the service chiefs and secretaries and we're we're sharing our lessons learned and what's working for us and what's not working in some cases well when you noted that we can't continue to rely on the recruits coming from military families over 80 percent and that the value of service needs to be something that all of us talk about and express our support for civic education is i would say a very much a part of all of this and as you are recruiting i assume that you're recruiting from a diverse population so frankly diversity equality inclusion those are important aspects of what i consider to be the military's approach to how they're going to how you are going to successfully recruit even as we are facing challenges to exposing our military people to DEI so i am among those who very much support the DOD's efforts to expand to the to populations who are underrepresented i would say one more thing i've focused very much on the the need for our repairing our frankly crumbling infrastructure in the military and the Indo-Pacific region US Army Pacific estimates the total cost of repair of all of their facilities runs in the billions and while i'm encouraged to see the army's overall budget for military construction has increased by one billion this year there's still obviously a lot of a lot more work we have to do so what is the army's long-term plan to replace our and repair our crumbling infrastructure in hawaii and the Indo-Pacific very briefly senator we have 200 billion dollars a year in this year's budget request for infrastructure specifically in hawaii as you noted that is a down payment i would say and the you know the army has an enormous inventory of infrastructure worldwide and so we don't have the resources to tackle everything everywhere all at once and we use our facilities investment planning process every year to try to help us prioritize and that's a 15-year plan but we are we do have a focus on infrastructure in hawaii well one of the things i noticed thank you senator room i'm sorry i will send some questions for the record thank you very much senator morrow senator urnce please thank you mr chair and thank you general george and secretary warmeth for being here today and and i do appreciate your leadership and your dedication maintaining the readiness of our great united states army we know we're in a very tough security environment so thank you both for being here general george i will start with you and it's going right back to iowa as you know the iowa army ammunition plan means a lot to our iowans and we are proud of the men and women who serve their daily they continue to indirectly support our efforts alongside those of our allies and partners all around the globe including ukraine and israel and as we recently discussed the army introduced a significant modernization plan to the facility in middle town iowa how confident are you that these initiatives will adequately meet the armies and our future needs and serve as a foundational step in enhancing our domestic industrial base from iowa senator i think if there's a silver lining in all the what's been happening in the world it's that we've realized that we needed to improve our organic industrial base and we're we're moving out on that i have been to the iowa ammunition plant we're gonna it's planned to invest 280 million to modernize it's a good example of what we need to do and i was i was recently down in radford the same thing you can modernize have the same workforce but you can greatly expand your production which is what we need to be able to do and i we're really proud of our oib workforce everywhere we go they're just so patriotic and those communities are so patriotic and and we need them absolutely and it's for those that that might be watching or catching this later on the iowa army ammunition plant produces the 155 munitions that are so talked about through the news today general george i'd like to focus on commercial technology as well so we just recently saw the cancellation of the farra program our future attack reconnaissance aircraft and that came as a big surprise to a lot of folks but the lessons that we are learning in ukraine are really demonstrating the significance of embracing a much lighter more agile and cost effective aerial reconnaissance solution and again for perspective what we're seeing in ukraine with smaller unmanned drones it it makes sense and this is one of those times that i know we have spent a couple billion dollars on this program but i'd rather see it stop right there if it's not going to meet the needs of tomorrow so general george can you describe innovative ways the army partners with the commercial sector to field and leverage commercial technology technology that will work for us tomorrow senator there's a lot of examples and i think what we're seeing in the world today is that there's a lot of areas where commercial tech is what we're doing in the military you look at unmanned systems and amazon home depot people that are building these things the network is another example and of how we can do a transport and satellites so we're trying to embrace all of that i think the biggest changes that we're doing are with our network what we're doing to reduce the systems that we have make sure that we're more mobile more low signature and we're doing that with a lot of commercial off the shelf capabilities because you can now have a tablet with apps and software it's also cheaper than to update that unmanned systems is another one that we're doing and i think we we're getting to the point because other people are out there you can also 3d print so we want modular open system architecture systems that we can adjust sensors with and we're a lot of that is happening you know the actual bus or the uas commercial technology is moving very rapidly on that so i think we can learn a lot from that and pull that into our formation right i appreciate that and i i think it's important that we take a look at the constrained budgetary environment that we operate in today and try and do more with what already exists out there and we're seeing this in many instances with the constrained budgetary environments that we see in in ukraine in israel and other places around the world so um i am running out of time but secretary warmeth too i really appreciate you asking all of these great folks to be a voice as well um there are a lot of really incredible young men and women that are out there we need to be able to reach them and encourage them into service um but thank you both very much for your service i appreciate you thank you thank you mr chair thank you senator urn senator king please thank you mr chairman i'd like to start with three data points ten thousand dollars four point three million dollars and twelve dollars ten thousand dollars is the high end estimate of the cost of the uh drones that iran and the houthis are using four point three million dollars is the cost of one sm6 missile four million for the patriot twelve dollars is the cost of a directed energy shot that can take down one of these drones and yet the entire defense department has cut its directed energy budget in this budget the army has cut its directed energy budget in this budget every agency and department of the art no defense has cut its directed energy budget in this budget what in the hell are you people thinking senator king as we talked about um we are pursuing directed energy why is the budget cut i will have to look at the specifics of whether we've made cuts i know you know we've shifted money from rd t and e into procurement because in many cases a lot of our systems are coming online now and so we're not this year's budget doesn't show as much in rd t and e but we are our four prototypes for our directed energy m shore ed system are out in cent com right now general carilla is testing them in that environment for exactly the reasons that you allude to you know they have a lot of promise in terms of being much more effective thousand dollar drones with four million dollar missiles they they can drain our bank account on that ratio if not too long the same thing with the uh in uh in in israel i mean the three of the conflicts we're observing right now are indirectly engaged in ukraine iran and the hoothies are all about air defense and yet i just can't understand the defense department not having its hair on fire about directed energy and and since 2023 the directed energy budget has declined department wide and i appreciate that you are testing some of these units but this ought to be one of the highest most urgent priorities both in terms of cost but also in terms of effectiveness general would you be able to effectively use directed energy if it were available to take down some of these aerial attack vehicles i think what what we're looking at senator is a lot of different options to include high powered microwave lasers i mean we're looking at it's going to be a layered defense of what we're doing as the secretary mentioned we put we put the prototypes that we have we're sending everything that we have available over to the middle east and testing it in those kind of environments and we're still working through i will tell you you know some of this unfortunately there's directed energy in san diego instead of in the red sea i just don't understand why this isn't a higher priority and and and budgets are policy and if the budget for directed energy in the department has gone down substantially over the last four or five years that's an indication of of a policy that i just don't understand let me move on to to a couple of other topics more specific i hope that you will continue research on the effects of blasts on your people we had a tragedy in lewiston main last year and it turns out that the fellow was a was a munitions test instructor he experienced blast after blast after blast analysis of his brain indicates that it was severely damaged so please attend to that risk because it is it is now clearly contributing to the tragedy that we had but also suicide and long-term damage to our soldiers senator i'd say a couple things on that one starting this june we will be doing a cognitive assessment on every new soldier coming into basic training so that we have a baseline to set a baseline exactly to what you know to where they are before they start getting exposed as they go to train high school football teams have been doing that for years by the way it's nice that we're well we're going to start doing it this june again every single new soldier we are also looking at what additional personal protective equipment we can provide to our folks especially instructors and others who are routinely exposed to blast pressure we are also looking into wearable gauges that would allow us to continuously track what soldiers are being exposed to the challenge we've had to date as we haven't been able to find sufficiently ruggedized gauges so we need to do some more work on that but i if the gauges can't stand the blast what does that say about the soldier's brain well i it's more that the gauges as i understand it you know didn't do very well in in sort of field environments but i know special operations command has um some wearable gauges on their uple list and i think we'll be looking at sort of what they're um hoping to invest in but we are very attentive to the brain induced injury issues i'm very delighted to hear that thank you very much and keep up that emphasis thank you mr chairman thank you senator king senator tova bill please thank you very much mr chairman thanks for both of you for your service um i'm worried more about our people you know i came i came from a team oriented uh background and we're going to have the weapons uh we're barring eighty thousand dollars a second right now to pay for all those weapons so i don't know what our our kids are going to have to do in the future but we need to protect us our country and our allies but i'm very concerned about uh the people that are within our military uh i've had a chance to go to bases all over in country and out of country all the world and i try to ask for a uh kind of a group session with officers and non-commissioned officers and talk talk to them a lot of good things a lot of things that are not so good uh a lot of concern in the last few years about some of their fellow service members that uh didn't make the cut because they didn't take the vaccine uh secretary warmeth we we've lost we lost eighteen hundred and sixty one service members uh and two hundred people that basically were mechanics in the military or did we have a backup plan for that uh especially for the mechanics that we've lost uh going you know that that we're very desperate in the need in times like this senator i think um you know again one way we try to deal with shortfalls in any particular mos is to increase our recruiting in that area you know obviously none of us anticipated the pandemic none of us anticipated uh many of the different effects but the percentage of soldiers who were released from the army because they didn't take the covid vaccine was very very small out of our formation yeah well two thousand people would there's a lot of people as we look at it today in recruiting um and i think it's important we need we need to look at our shortfalls when it comes to that also talk to a lot of our service members that are out of the military as we speak a lot of special ops a lot of rangers a lot of them are very disgruntled about the things that they were being taught at the end of their service DEI if i had to use DEI when i was coaching i'd have been fired a long time ago uh i don't think you can run a military off of diversity equity and inclusion i think you do it the best the menace the people that are that we need to train to fight to defend this country what's your thoughts on that you know george um senator i would be honest about this now yeah we're gonna we're in trouble i will tell you and you can ask any of the formation we go out and i'm talking to them we're focused on building warfighting you know increasing lethality in our units and building cohesive teams so as you know from being a coach when you're bringing everybody together to you also bring every you got we got people coming from all over the country so i've been talking talking about building cohesive teams since i was a brand new private when i was instructed on that coming right out all the way of being a leader so i think that those are the two things that we're focused on it's obviously different in uh in every form you know in different formations that i've been in different levels but that's what we need to be focused on yeah yeah and you're finding out that it's hard to bring people from different backgrounds put them together to make a mesh as a unit as a team and their lives are on that state uh it's not a football player you know playing to win or lose a game it's you know their their loss in the military is losing their life uh and i just want to make sure we you know we live in a dangerous world as we all know uh i i think that uh i would love to be giving y'all this hundred billion dollars that we're getting ready to send overseas to our military uh to the people to try to get more people in the military i think we need to look more at us than we do at other people i can understand why we're doing this but i think we're going to have shortfalls in the long run uh when it comes to that uh us general are we taking uh illegals into our military in the army um i think what we're taking it you have to be a legally um legal permanent resident or a resident of our country to enlist um in the army senator do you know mr secretary are we taking illegals in our most in our in the army as the chief said uh you have to be a lawful permanent resident or a resident of the united states to join the military resident or a citizen uh lawful permanent i'm you know i'm not the state department but lawful permanent resident i think is a is a immigration status that is not full citizenship but it is certainly not an undocumented person yeah well i would just hope that we would take people that love this country i know there's probably a lot of people come across a border that's going to end up loving our country uh i can understand that but uh you know having people that really understand you know what that flag means is pretty important in our military so i would hope that we would really consider the options you know if it came down to that so thank thank you thank you both thank you senator toleville senator kane please thank you mr chair and thank you to our witnesses general george i appreciate our visit to radford a couple weeks back looking at that world war two era old facility but cutting-edge workers being done there you spoke with senator urns to bit about this but talk about the need to increase our capacity to produce munitions general cavoli was here the other day was talking about european nations upping their production capacity to talk about what we're doing in the army to increase munition production um senator uh same as in iowa what we're you know down the patriot patriots that are down there um and radford for example what it does down there just with uh energetics and explosives is critical not only just to the army but really the joint force so that all of our base organic industrial depots and arsenals are critically important and it's important a lot of what's in the supplemental is actually going to go back to improving those facilities which we need to do so we're we're investing in our own base i think we have 640 million that's in there to get after projects and i know there's one down at radford but we have to modernize those and and we're starting to do a little bit at at radford but we got more work to do you raise a good point the supplemental is in just about overseas support about 130 million dollars in the supplemental is going to radford for munitions production and there are similar investments being made at munitions facilities around the country i do want to start by recognizing the men and women of the seventh transportation brigade a joint base langley eustace in virginia they are on their way to answering the call and deploying into the metadata training in support of the humanitarian aid efforts on the peer construction in the eastern meta-training and i just wanted to mention them um future soldier i want to ask you secretary warmeth we've talked about this before share a little bit more about this program as i understand it and you really are the army is leading in this way taking folks who want to be in the military but who may not meet some of the physical criteria but you are doing good work in designing this pre-course that enables somebody to meet the physical criteria enter the army what are you finding out about their ability to not just meet but then sustain the physical capacity as they have enlisted thanks senator kane uh yes there's there's first there's two tracks in the future soldier prep course there's an academic track for young people who haven't quite scored high enough on the test that we use and then there's a physical track if you're not quite within the body fat standard so young people can take one or the other we now have expanded it and they can take them in parallel we've graduated i think almost 18,000 young people out of this program it's like a 95 success rate uh they often are going into basic training and taking on sort of leadership roles in basic training so uh it's been very very successful so far and we are doing a longitudinal study to follow graduates from the prep course you know as they go to their first duty station and have their first set of assignments to see how they perform but right now it's been a very good program at both fort jackson and fort more excellent um we had a hearing about a year ago sticking on the recruiting and the army had done a really good survey of reasons people will join or not and one of the things that surprised me was the sort of top listed reason why someone might not join the military is the fear of falling behind their peers um there's sort of an attitude of okay i'm an 18 year old i've got some friends maybe going off to college or others that may be starting careers i'd like to serve my country i i i i see that has a patriotic advantage but i worry that five or ten years down the road when i exit the military or 20 years down the road my peers will have moved farther ahead and i won't and so making the case to young people that a military career isn't a cul-de-sac or detour from life success but it enhances possible future careers seems to be really really important as you're approaching retooling recruiting how are you kind of factoring that in well one of the things we're trying to do is really get the word out in part through our marketing about you know how that that is basically a myth that you're going to be left behind i mean we we have the gi bill we have certification programs so that soldiers can own can earn you know certificates that are marketable when they leave and what we've really tried to do is to have some of our marketing efforts really focus on that and kind of getting that information out there and that's obviously something that we make sure that our recruiters are well versed in so they they can talk to young people and frankly their parents and other important influencers about all of the benefits to joining the army great thank you i yield back mr chair thank you very much senator kane uh senator rounds please thank you mr chairman uh secretary warmeth general george thank you for being with us today we appreciate your service to our country secretary warmeth the army will play a pivotal role in the western pacific as the department lead for the contested logistics problem set congress has been providing bipartisan support and funding for project paylay micro nuclear reactor does the army have any plans to transition the paylay technology and regulatory approach for either operational or installation energy resiliency solutions well we certainly are very focused on energy and resilience at our installations and being able to operate in a more resilient manner we are interested i think in the potential of micro nuclear reactors and i'm familiar with the project paylay project i i think you know we are looking at and i think we'll soon be entering into some discussions some informational discussions with industry to learn more about what might be possible because certainly to the extent that we're able to have a reliable source of energy if we have you know if the electric grid and many of our communities goes down for some reason it certainly would be appealing to have something that's dependable and reliable so we're interested in exploring that but i would say we're still in the early stages thank you general george can you describe for the committee how the fy 25 budget request takes into consideration the army's lead role in addressing the contested logistics problem for the department and the joint forces sustainment needs i'm thinking particularly with regard to the year 2027 um i'd like your professional military opinion do you see do you believe that the army will be able to fulfill its role and meet those requirements um senator i do obviously this is something that we're working on very diligently we're increasing we just stood up a a watercraft company for example over in japan throughout this next taa total army analysis we're looking at two additional we're investing in the lsv you know some of the same capability that's getting ready to go over that's out in the Mediterranean right now i will say that this is a joint mission that we're you know that we're getting after with that just like we're doing that mission we have rehearsed those so that's i think the other thing that we have to do um we've uh are in this next budget 200 increase in our exercising obviously testing doing all these things to exercises is where we learn we're going to be also doing it with partners and allies and then we're also taking a look at overall what we need to do with uh for example on watercraft what can unmanned systems provide what can we do with leasing um preposition stocks is a part of this so i think we're looking at this holistically and we have a stood up here this justice last fall um a contested logistics cross functional team that is really focused on that for the whole army how about with regard to the different nations involved in the status of forces agreements and so forth are those coming together are you are you talking senator like where we would maybe station something or what our forward posture would be yeah and i'm curious whether the uh with regard to the agreements themselves and so forth uh the army takes a role but does the state department participate in those in those discussions as well um obviously that would a lot of that is going to be led by the by the ambassador by the state department it's going to happen across the uh interagency and i think um you know a good example of um you know great partnership that we have right now um is what's you know what how we've expanded with the philippines or what we've continued to do but those with those partners but those particular agreements and so forth are in line for being able to to meet the needs by the year 2027 i'm obviously that's that's our focus is is moving out quickly and all of those and i think that's an i know it's a department led um and indopakam and but really it's the the whole interagency senator very good thank you um secretary warmeth the army established the joint counter small unmanned aircraft systems office back in 2019 to coordinate counter uas development across the force the top two items on your unfunded priorities list are the counter uas items now senator king makes a really good point when he talks about the costs involved can you share any information about the jco's role in general browns counter uas task force sure uh first of all i want to say you know since 2020 the army's invested about three billion dollars in counter uas so we are very focused on that we've spent more than any other service the the joint capabilities office is really their job is to go out for the whole department and work with industry to kind of bring forward what's possible so that we can start investing in sort of the best available technology and then each service decides what they want to buy uh but but it is playing a key role we're also standing up a joint counter uas university at fort sill in oklahoma again to help us learn uh and and i would let the chief speak to sort of the the uas is that are on his unfunded priority list yes senator so what we did um again i had mentioned up front on the unfunded priorities list it's stuff that's executable um and specific to the counter uas it's what's what we've seen change since um october 7th last fall and you know we've had some advancements in some of that um we know that that environment and those systems are changing very rapidly um so there was one system on there um specifically that we wanted was roadrunner um we want to there's additional missiles that we need like coyote missiles that we know are very very effective but we need to increase our magazine depth so those are the kinds of things that were on there thank you thank you mr chairman thank you senator around senator warren please so thank you mr chairman our military families sacrifice a lot uh to serve their country and to keep americans safe and one thing they shouldn't have to worry about is whether they're going to have a safe and affordable place to live we provide basic housing allowance and other assistance to make sure that military families have what they need but often that is just not enough for example a commander at fort carcin in colorado has 26 000 people working on post but he is able to offer only 3100 family housing units what's available off base is often very expensive or requires a very long commute to get there all because we simply don't have enough housing for our people so secretary warmeth you oversee everything for the army from personnel to equipment do you think that meeting military families housing needs is important both for recruiting and retaining a strong military absolutely it's very important okay i agree with you and that's why congress created the defense community infrastructure program to help communities address and i'm going to read deficiencies in community infrastructure supportive of a military installation now dcp provides grants to local governments for transportation building and other infrastructure projects secretary warmeth would you support using this program to build more housing in communities near bases in order to help us continue excuse me to attract the best and brightest to serve in our military um senator warm this is a program that's run by osd and like you said it's generally grants to communities so i know we we do use it for things like assessments of utilities and things like that in partnership with uh with communities where we have our installations uh you know i think additional authority for housing is is always helpful the the real challenge though with housing is money uh you know at the end of the day but you don't get what you don't ask for here so let's start with the idea of recognizing we are in a housing crisis and making this a priority in terms of getting funding in for housing for our military does that work for you yes and we're certainly trying to find you know for example with our privatized housing partners we're trying to find more ways to help get money into that portfolio okay i'm coming to them let me mention one other problem here i have concerns about safety of the housing we provide to service members and their families now congress recently adopted reforms to address housing deficiencies including requiring the dod to create a public complaint database to put a stop to government contractors acting like slum lords and then hiding settlements when they get caught i got that bill passed five years ago five years and today dod still does not have that database up and operational even worse these government contractors continue to muzzle military families by requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements so there is no record of the mold or the broken windows or the water damage or the rats or any other unsafe housing conditions that military families are forced to put up with secretary warmeth do you think it is appropriate for government contractors to ask military families to stay silent in return for those companies meeting their basic obligations to provide safe housing we encourage our soldiers and their families to use the dispute resolution process well the part i'm worried about are the non-disclosure agreements that come out of that the nda's what what i would say about that senator is i think you know we we appreciate the provision that you put in that basically requires that their soldiers have 10 days before they're even asked to sign an nda and what we do is offer a lawyer that the army will pay for to advise our soldiers and family members of their rights before they contemplate signing an nda i appreciate that that's better than it used to be but it's not as good as it ought to be last year's ndaa put in restrictions on the use of non-disclosure agreements i just think we're going to have to set a much brighter line no landlord should be able to make military families sign nda's in exchange for providing basic housing period no nda's on that before i close i want to say one other thing and i'll just say it quickly and that's to you general george there is a significant disconnect between army rhetoric and action when you were confirmed you told this committee quote i will make every effort to honor our commitment by providing quality barracks to our soldiers sounded great but on your unfunded priorities list the list of things that you were not willing to fight for for funding in your basic budget right near the bottom of your unfunded priorities list is money to repair the barracks in fort devins massachusetts you can't stand up and say you care about housing your people and then not make housing repairs a part of your base budget there's no surprise here it it was deteriorating and deteriorating over a long period of time so i want to work with the army on this i know i'm over time but we got to stop playing games on this and follow through we have to deliver better housing for our people thank you thank you mr chairman thank you senator warren senator budd please thank you mr chairman again thank you both for being here a secretary warmeth um a censure letter regarding the joint deployment warfighting complex in fort liberty you sent me a prompt response so thank you for that it was really about consolidating the 18th airborne corps headquarters into a single modern building the 18th airborne corps it's spread out over 26 facilities so 40 acres and it really wasn't designed to support the headquarters current mission to rapidly respond to contingencies around the world particularly not with the it systems of cyber resiliency requirements that we have today to understand this project it's slated to reach 35 percent planning and design over the next six months so my question to you is will you commit to keeping this committee updated on this project's timeline yes certainly senator budd thank you and i understand it's going to compete with other army requirements but this is a top priority not just to north carolina into fort liberty but from an operational and readiness perspective for the whole of army so if you would please thank you general george again thank you for being here i appreciate our discussion earlier in the week the army has selected fort liberty as home of its fifth multi-domain task force is that correct sir that's correct senator yes thank you can you elaborate on the capabilities of these multi-domain task forces and where we are in building these out yes um so we're at various stages um right now i was actually the commander up at jblm we had the first mdtf so what um and the big piece that will go in and that we will build and i think will be important for 18th airborne core the 82nd really everybody that's there is the effects battalion that will go in that will have cyberspace ew so all lethal targeting and non-lethal that's a part of that which i think is critically important also part of mdtf so we're staging these in in in different areas but there's also long long range fires indirect fire protection capabilities and support battalion liberty is really important to us obviously what you were just talking about with what it it's does to support the joint force and rapid response and looking so having that capability there in the space that that you have and uh um we also get some economies of scale with all of the given it's a large base with all the other mls that we're going to put there thank you you know a lot on a different topic we've talked a lot about counter uas um so to add on to that clarify for me is it purely additional resources that you need general or are there new authorities there that would be helpful i know we talked a little bit about this on monday i i think well there's two aspects of this um for some of the authorities for us specifically is being able to um you know go from research and development to actually procuring things what i was talking about i think if you're coming back state side and you're looking at actually defending airfields and critical infrastructure there are some additional things i think north com right now is doing a study kind of on what that is because there's obviously a it's an interagency challenge when you're looking at um you know small uas's that are operating here um state side but um thank you for us and and forward i think we're in a good place thank you you know north carolina is also proud home of the 30th armored brigade combat team and i'm aware of planned upgrades to their abram tanks but also i'm interested in whether we'll see a replacement for bradley infantry fighting vehicles what's the status of the xm 30 program um i will i've had uh we just went through the you know the requirement and go into this it's uh i we do need to upgrade our infantry fighting vehicle we're going through the process of that i do think that that will be a significant leap forward um for us and i'll have somebody come over and kind of brief you the detailed timeline on on what we're looking at that if you would please thank you um and secretary i'd like to talk about munitions that are going to be critical in the conflict in the endo pacific i'm thinking the precision strike missiles and guided mlrs rockets my first question is have you identified any production lines that have additional capacity and if so which ones well we do you know we're using multi-year procurement authority that you all gave us for gimler so i think there's more capacity there precision strike missile we have funding in this year's budget for sort of the first wave of precision strike missile i think at this point we don't have additional capacity we're still sort of that program is is still in the beginning of its effort thank you jim thank you sir but senator kelly please thank you mr chairman uh secretary warmeth i want to follow up on senator budd's question about munitions but you know real really you know concerns we have with our defense industrial base and you know industry is struggling to produce enough to support even the limited conflict in ukraine in a conflict with a near period our adversary we will use munitions much faster than we are having to replace the ones we're sending to ukraine today that's clear it's also clear that more needs will be done to prepare our industrial base for possible future conflict and one of the keys to bridge bridging this gap is what senator budd mentioned which is the multi-year procurement which allows dod to send a steady demand signal to companies and leads to long-term reductions in acquisition costs the army has been taking advantage of multi-year procurement to help replenish stockpiles and ensure that we are well postured for future conflicts so secretary warmeth can you talk about a little bit more broadly about multi-year contracts and how the army is currently taking advantage of them to save money and invest in the future and and general please feel free to add anything to her comments certainly thanks senator kelly we have found the multi-year procurement authority to be very helpful for exactly the reason that you said which is essentially that it it sends a very strong demand signal to industry that there's a consistent need for that investment and they are more willing frankly to invest in their own facilitation when they have essentially a guaranteed buy you know over multiple years so i think that's been very helpful with both gimlers and the the pack threes and what what else are we buying in multi-year procurements right now if i'm not mistaken i think those are the two sets of munitions for which we're using the multi-year you know we're we're spending over three billion dollars a year on munitions more broadly but i think those are the two that we have multi-year authority we plan on expanding that to other munitions i think we've been in conversations at the staff level about a couple more places where that might be applicable if i'm not mistaken i think we have to demonstrate you know a certain amount of cost savings there's a threshold that one has to meet to be able to get multi-year procurement authority so i think that's kind of where the conversation has been with some of the professional staff and then general do you see our stocks going up at a higher rate than you would have expected without a multi-year on those two items i think senator the multi-years are definitely very helpful to us and we appreciate it i think one of the challenges and i'll just go back to the you know during the continuing resolution if we wanted to increase any you know new productions new starts we couldn't do you know we couldn't do any of that so we lost time with that it's why also for the army the supplemental is very important to them because we've got you know more than three billion dollars worth of munitions we need to put in there so i think it's a combination of all of those things that are going to help us move forward and then general another subject the army's working to modernize its airborne ISR capability divesting in older turboprop planes and investing in more you know some more modern aircraft the new heady system is going to be a significant increase in range and capability it's vital that this new capability is based at a location where the air crew can train for a in a threat environment that's similar to what they would face in combat the new sink signals intelligence capabilities will require that your pilots have regular access to ranges that can simulate the threat they will face in combat so general do you agree that access to electronic testing ranges will be vital to ensure that the continued ensure the continued development and success of Hades um yeah i agree with you 100 percent senator i was down i mean the john r fox range is one of those that has it's has incredible capability for us for the whole army and they the uh you know for wachuka um in southern arizona i mean is unique uniquely positioned to support this mission it already does rc-12 training it's got the electronic range the electronic proving ground and uh you don't need to go very far to train because it's right there you know it's not like you know other bases that i've been at you have to you know make a pretty long trek to the range um i just want to get your assurances from both you and the secretary that the army will consider these factors when deciding basing operations for Hades we will definitely consider all of those and uh just on the Hades it's from all of the co-coms are very positive about having that asset supporting them right secretary it's same thank you thank you very much thank you son kill me senator cotton please secretary wormeth i want to return to the line of questioning earlier about recruiting um you'd you've said that you don't want to be overconfident but you think we have a good shot at making that goal this year the goal being 55 000 but isn't it the case that you dropped your goal this year because not many people are joining the army since you joined or since you became the secretary it's true that our goal last year senator cotton was 65 000 general mcconville and i set that as a stretch goal that's how we characterized it so this year between 55 000 new contracts and 5000 in the depth it's 60 k last last year you forecast that you would need 62 600 for this year why did you cut that again we we look at what's possible and we set a goal that we think is both do you look at what's possible or what's needed well we general george was pretty low since you became the secretary actually question of what's needed for our army to defend our nation senator cotton the chief and i are both committed to growing back our end strength we are aiming to get up to 470 000 by 2029 and our recruiting is improving consistently well well if it's improving because you're throwing a dart at the wall and then drawing the bullseye around it and your first full year on the job the target was 60 000 you didn't even get 45 000 last year it was 65 you got 55 you had projected last year for it to be 62 600 this year and conveniently you decided to change the goal to 55 000 which is exactly what you got last year you don't you don't think that is a little suspicious that you're simply trying to avoid negative headlines once again for your failure to meet basic recruiting goals goals that we've met almost every single year since 2005 i'm not focused on headline senator cotton what i'm doing is doing everything possible to help the army improve its recruiting and that's what we're doing does the army need seven 7600 fewer soldiers than you expected this year than you expected it would need last year the army has been able to meet all of the requirements that the combatant commands have levied on us at our current end strength and our end strength is going to start going up what are the required what are the requirements that have changed in the last year from those combatant commands that allowed you to drop your goal not just from the 65 000 it was last year to 55 this year but from the 62 600 that you predicted last year that you would need this year what requirements have decreased on the army's uh the requirements haven't changed and we were able to think so since the world is going up in smoke because of joe biden's failed policies we were able to meet all of the combatant command requirements last year we've been able to meet them this year but we're still focused on growing our end strength i mean we we met our recruiting goals at the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 you can't meet your recruiting goals now without dropping them by 10 000 from what they were last year all of the services are facing challenges but i'm proud to say we have acute your challenges for your service are acute yes we have because we have the biggest force and we have to recruit the largest number but we are doing considerably better this year i'm looking at every single year here 62 5 68 5 76 5 68 61 2 this is not a systemic problem until you became the secretary senator cotton i don't think that there's a correlation between me becoming secretary and the recruiting headwinds that the entire department has been facing okay i want to touch on another recruiting matter i guess a four strength matter i noticed a story in stars and scribes from january that there's a shortage of about 250 officers in agitant general finance and signal core and the army was going to ask infantry and armor officers to transfer has that happened i'll have to take that for the record general george you know any more details i can yeah typically as you know senator we have typically have more combat arms yeah lieutenants so that's that typically we do v-tip we've this was done a little bit earlier that we knew because of our structure we're actually growing some additional mdtf which came up earlier signal is for example is one of them or mi where you typically have more captains and majors than you do lieutenants so that that was what that was and what we did is took volunteers we just put the message out because we want to keep talent and it's actually really good for us to infuse those branches with people that have experience in combat arms yeah normally things like signal and ag are donor branches at the lieutenant ranks to infantry but i is infantry officer ranks whatever the army is a whole infantry armor officer ranks are healthy right now at the company level they're help we're very healthy for for lieutenants senator we're doing okay well thank you one final issue secretary warmup the case on platoon the army just acknowledged that they're not on track to get case on operations back up at arlington national cemetery this has been an ongoing issue now for more than a year we directed you in the ndaa to make sure the case on platoon remains in existence you fought that tooth and nail last year what is the issue here it's horses pulling wagons it's been happening since before recorded time why can't these families who have a right to a horse drawn case on at their funeral expect that's going to happen senator cotton first of all we didn't have any plans to get rid of the case on platoon we've actually spent a lot of amendment tooth and nail about it so i don't know what i mean i don't know if you have a animal rights activist repeat on your staff handling this issue but why can't you get horses pulling wagons in the cemetery there's a range of challenges and we can come and talk to you and i did this for decades yes and the horses that did that for decades are now old and lame they've always been old they've always been retired from other activities well we are now trying to grow the herd we have we have been focused on this incredibly hard we're looking at additional pasture land we're going to have to rebuild the stables that you probably remembered but we are very focused on trying to get to a point where we're able to offer again the case on service with the funerals if the army under your leadership can't figure out horses pulling wagons it's not a surprise they can't figure out increasing munitions manufacturing or drone warfare thank you senator cotton senator peter please thank you mr. chairman secretary marmeth general george welcome to the committee and thank you both for your service to our to our country in response to a question asked by senator bud it seems clear that the army knows that the the future conflicts that we're going to face we're going to require some new units with example is the army's multi-domain task forces at the very center of those modernization efforts that you are undertaking now and when forward positions these mdtfs will ensure freedom of operations for us forces in what are going to be heavily denied environments as you stand up my so my question for both of you is as you stand up additional mdtfs i hope that the the army will pursue a similar force structure to the security force assistant brigades the s-fabs currently active duty s-fabs are aligned with combatant commands while a national guard s-fab is globally aligned so my question specifically to both of you is are you in conversations with the national guard about a guard-based mdtf and if so what additional analysis is going to be needed prior to making an informed decision on future mdtf force structure thank you senator peters right now our plan is to develop five multi-domain task forces as i think you noted we aren't currently thinking about yet having an mdtf in the guard the the mdtfs are very very new i think the first mdtf had come online right as i became secretary you know more than three and a half years ago we have it's been a journey we have been learning you know right now we think the five is what we're going to need but but we are very much a total army and we're always in conversation with our colleagues in the guard about you know changes to their force structure as well so i think it's something that will remain open-minded to but right now our plan is for the five in the active so there are no active discussions beyond that can can i jump in yeah i would not i think the secretary exactly on you know larger mdtf just because of what would require what we are have had some discussions and i would say these are initial discussions with a lot of the guard leaders is there is a lot of space capabilities cyber i mean we get you know a lot of capability from that not just for mdtf's but in the garden reserve and compo two and compo three how do we maximize that capability you know how could we have plugs for example when i went over to afghanistan as a division commander i took it there was a large number of national guard folks that were built out our intel and targeting just because of their expertise so that's what we're talking about and i would just say that those have been preliminary conversations because we know we have capability in the garden reserve how could they maybe augment some of the stuff that we're doing already yeah great and it's important that a lot of these members of the guard have extensive civilian experience and some very high level skills sets that they can bring to their duties so it's good to hear that that's happening secretary wormith last week the epa issued federal drinking water standards for six p-fast chemicals these standards include p-fast chemicals previously used by the army and national guard in firefighting foams at many installations across the country but one in particular that i'm focused on is a camp grayling in michigan where p-fast contaminated drinking water is a serious and real concern for the local community something that folks around the country are dealing with right now so my question for you ma'am is what is the army's plan and timeline for conforming with these new epa standards and when can impacted residents in grayling michigan in particular expect to see some action to conform to these new epa standards thanks senator peters yes i'm broadly aware of the new standards that the epa has set for p-fast and i think you know we've already been working closely with folks at camp grayling which is a great training area by the way to work on eradicating p-fast at the previous levels and i think what i would say is i'd love to send our installations and environment team over to talk to your office in detail about sort of how we'll be approaching the new the new raised level and what the timelines associated with that will be but we want to continue to be proactive with you all about getting into compliance with the epa standards well it's good could we arrange that meeting sooner rather than later yes happy to do that right please appreciate that commitment thank you mr. chairman thank you senator peters senator duckworth please thank you mr chairman good morning to both witnesses i'm glad we're having a conversation about the role of the guard and the reserve because i think they are an important part of our overall force and right now as you've already acknowledged national guard reserve service members have specific qualifications and specific skills that are highly needed and yet those who have specific qualifications are only paid a fraction of what their active duty counterparts are paid in incentive pay although they maintain the same skill sets i've consistently advocated for fixing this problem and past legislation addresses incentive pay disparities several years ago and we even updated it in last year's ndaa bottom line you get the same two paratroopers who make their three jumps in a single day the active duty one is going to get a full month's worth of incentive pay the guard of reservists will get one 30th of that incentive pay for the same three jumps that they took um this is fundamentally unfair last year's update section 612 of fy 24 ndaa was meant to clarify congress's intent that special and incentive pays should be paid equally to members of the active and reserve components if these pays are intended to encourage reserve component service members to maintain a skill or proficiency identical to that required of the member in the active component or to compensate the reservists for exposure to hazards or risk identified to hazards or risk faced by an active duty service member my update from last year requires the service secretaries to go back and review each type of special and incentive pay individually and certify that those pays that meet this criteria to be paid out to members of the reserve component equally if doing so will not hurt retention it's starting to feel like i'm being slow roll we need to get these pays i mean these folks have earned it they should get the same amount of pay as the active duty folks the pilots who go out there and maintain their minimum flying hour requirements that are the same as active duty pilots should get a full month's worth of pay those those those paratroopers need should get a full month's worth of jump pay just like active duty troops do secretary warmwith do you commit to completing this review to ensure the service members within the army reserve components are paid the same special and incentive pays as their active duty counterparts when they maintain the same critical skills or face the same risk and what is your timeline for doing so thanks senator duckworth yes uh we are working with rand right now to basically help us develop a framework to be able to assess you know as you know very well there are many different types of special pays and incentives there's also many different types of duty statuses for guard and reservists so we've been working with rand to come up essentially with a framework that is going to be a tool for us to to be able to determine which special pays and incentives may qualify for the full pay i will have to take for the record the exact timeline when the rand work will be completed but i can assure you we are not trying to slow roll you okay all right i will get back in touch with you in 90 days to get that timeline uh secretary warmwith in your opening statement you're communicating that you would continue to prioritize the endo-pacific the endo-pacific region is also a priority for me and as the army continues its modernization efforts i am ready and available to lend my support to ensure the army's resource and posture for any future conflicts in the region in fact along with senator solovan will be leading a codelle to the shanker law dialogues that are coming up in just over a month the army will need to operate in a distributed but connected manner for survivability placing greater demands on enablers such as logistics force protection and command and control the army's current backbone of its intra theater lift in the endo-pacific consists of army watercraft systems like the lsv and the msv but i am concerned that the army is not dedicating enough funding to these platforms in the fiscal year 25 budget which can only lead to a capacity gap in our intra theater sea lift secretary warmwith how does the army plan to fund and continue to modernize the army watercraft systems over the next few fiscal years thanks senator uh as you noted first of all we have a composite watercraft company in japan i'm actually going to get to see that in july myself we have money in the budget for the msv light version that i think will begin fielding if i'm not mistaken in f y 28 we also have a requirement for a heavy version of that and as the chief alluded to earlier we are exploring with army material command what we can do in terms of offshore supply vessels things that the commercial sector is using that may be more cost effective for us because we do see the requirement for contested logistics as substantial but as is the case with many things our challenges having enough resources to be able to do that but then also invest in air and mid missile defenses and other things that we need but that's broadly the outlines of our plan i'm all for buying off the shelf if it's cheaper and it can work and instead of keep our troops safe and accomplish the mission general george i'm going to pass it over to you can you can you describe the army's current capabilities for intra theater sea lift in indopacific and how is the army working with other services and combatant commands like transcom to develop a unified intra theater sea lift strategy for the indopacific thank you senator kind of summed it up at the end there are these anytime we're going to do any anything out there it's going to be a joint mission we're going to have to work with everybody just and i know the secretary got to see our the jailots when it went in for talisman sabre down in in australia so we are looking at at all the different aircraft or the watercraft and we're looking at how the oil industry for example send stuff that they do a lot of unmanned systems and leasing i also think this gets after also what are we doing to 3d print it's the whole contested logistics how are we doing tele maintenance what do we have for preposition stock where we're doing it and then the other thing i just wanted to highlight that you you kind of set up front as far as being distributed a big part of that too is is making sure on our network that we're also low signature all mean this is important for all of us and that will tie all of that together and our contested contested logistics cft and we'd love to have them come up and brief you on what they're doing in advancing all of these areas was stood up last fall and they're getting after all of this thank you mr chairman just one quick thing i'd like to submit for the record a question for on aeromedical evacuation in the indopacific thank you mr chairman thank you senator doctor it's uh senator schmidt please thank you mr chairman uh general george i do want to give you a shout out here um i think that um looking for those new and innovative ways to uh to recruit is sometimes a challenge but always welcome and i saw uh recently um that the armies entered into a partnership with the ufl which is the new spring football league i'm a little bias here the saint los battle hawks have the highest by far and away highest attendance numbers the average 35 000 people at these games and so i think that's um a smart way to reach a new audience i think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities there can you walk me through how this kind of came to be and what you expect from it sure um senator b uh and i agree with you we do think it will be a good audience um people love watching football i'm at top of that list um the part of this with the ufl that i like about um the comparisons or these are a bunch of last year i think there was a hundred that came out of the ufl that went into the pros i mean what we need to get out to everybody it's the same thing in the army you can come into the army and you can accelerate your life you're gonna advance your life and so um they were interested in this partnership with us and we studied it with our marketing um agency and we're in a one-year you know agreement to see how this works but so far it's been really good and we've had troopers telling their stories at at every one of these games across all compost i'm i'm sure we've had soldiers out there on the sideline doing that which i think is great that's good yeah maybe we'll um we'll have to follow up and get you the uh a t-shirt that call is the law which is the call is for the battlehawks anyway all right so um secretary warmeth i do want to ask you a question um you know enjoyed our our visit at fortland would i guess i was around a year ago it was in august maybe um as you know in last year's ndaa um it required certain criteria and certifications be made by you before the army can relocate um the army c id special agent training course or any of its training cadre despite that our office has learned recently that the army army is already in the midst of a comprehensive overhaul of c id training and in composition and maybe most concerning the army times reported that quote in the army the lowest retention job specialties for men were criminal investigation investigation division special agent with a retention rate of 38 percent for fiscal year 23 we also learned that c id agents are already flowing through pipelines in the federal law enforcement training center the fleet c so this was one of the things that we were trying to address in the ndaa and it feels like and i'd like for you to maybe give some explanation it feels like this is an effort to get around the law because um there's supposed to be a process before what appears to be happening is actually happening so i wanted to give you an opportunity to walk me through this because it feels like a work around certainly senator schmidt uh we we do not want to try to do a work around uh you know what i think as you know very very well we are in the process of transforming the criminal investigative division and it is our intent to have 60 percent of those agents become civilian that's that's a big change and i think i'm not intimately familiar with the retention statistics for c id but i think part of what you're seeing a little bit is change is hard i'm certainly aware you know i know that there is some anxiety um from our uniformed folks about the transformation uh but we want to comply with the law and what i'd like to do is make sure that we have director ford come and brief you on how he is proceeding uh you know certainly we continue to plan to have our uh mps and agents train at fort lennard wood uh there there is also i think some training they're doing with fletsy but what i'd like to do is have director ford come and talk with you in detail about what they're doing okay let's do that because that's a very important role that fort lennard wood plays and um i think one of the reasons why we wanted to to make sure before there's any real change that it's a it's a real process and it appears as though maybe some some things are moved being moved away um whether it's without those certifications or not so we'll work with you on that look forward to that briefing thank you mr chairman thank you very much uh senator schmidt uh i've been informed that senator rosen also would like to return on ask a question so let me take this opportunity to uh continue the theme of congested logistics critical to that is in fuel efficiency of every moving uh platform uh together with uh improved maintenance uh general george can you comment on the progress you're making and the plans you have in that regard and then i'll ask senator warworth um yeah chairman i think uh hybridization is is important to us one for the reduce our logistical tail um for our formations so i think we're looking at hybridization for all of our vehicles um that are out there specifically any of our newer platforms we are the the other big advantage that you get with this is that you also get silent watch and silent approach so they all also these vehicles um are going to be more lethal on the battlefield so i mean that's really what we're looking at um in total with some of this effort we are looking at there may be some sensors out there that may be elect you know that would be strictly electric because then we could do the same thing on the ground get them out there um silent approach and put them out there um but i think all of those things combined are going to make us more lethal and um more mobile um on the battlefield and lower signature uh thank you and your comments mr. minister chairman the only thing i would add is two things maybe one i think an additional benefit of some of the hybrid vehicles that we're looking at is that in addition to fuel efficiency silent watch uh they offer in some cases the ability to power other devices that we have so we can actually hook you know other systems that we have up to those batteries and then the second thing i would notice just you know this is an area where the commercial sector has done a lot of work and so we're trying to partner with companies in the commercial sector to leverage all of the investment they've already made to see how it can benefit us in the army and one topic that's come up uh in your conversation and discussions is the notion of maintenance in the field uh employing 3d printing uh and also having the intellectual property to to do that to do that effectively uh is that a specific goal and program you have in place madam secretary we're certainly uh looking at everything we can do with 3d printing in terms of helping us with contested logistics helping us get you know parts much closer to the tactical edge if you will and we're looking at you know what we can do with that uh you know obviously one of the issues there with 3d printing is making sure that the components that are being fabricated meet our safety standards so there's some work that we have to do there uh i i think another thing that we're doing is tele maintenance you know that's something we've seen be very very effective in ukraine and so thinking about how we can apply tele maintenance for ourselves the other thing i would add again that we've also seen with the ukrainians is the importance of predictive analytics when it comes to logistics so we are now doing much more to be able to see where everything we need is and to be able to anticipate what future requirements may be uh general George have any comments sure i'll add on the on the 3d printing um the other thing that we can look at i think for the future is uas is something else that we're looking at so whether or not you producing kind of the bus or the body part of an unmanned system whether it was ground or air or that you could also replace it so much like the secretary said we're i think we're trying to look at this at scale to um out in rock island there's one of the largest you know additive manufacturing capabilities um that we have an army so you know we when we struggle with long lead time parts i think that that's definitely something that could fill that in thank you very much i just want to add a comment i was out at fort sill uh on friday and was at the university uh designed to develop tactics against drones and uh i was impressed but i think we have a long long way to go uh in terms of the devices to engage them and also uh just uh to tactics too but uh i will commend both of you for establishing that facility we're thinking ahead rather than reacting to something that is facing us so uh my commendation to both uh senator rosie oh thank you chairman reid i really appreciate you uh holding it open for me and i'd also like to thank secretary warm off and general george uh for testifying today and for following through following through on your commitments to meet a bill nevada's first certified small arms training range so that nevada national guard will no longer have to travel out of state to fulfill their annual weapons qualification and it's an average cost of half a million dollars per unit five hundred thousand dollars so it's saving money too and the inclusion of the range and the president's budget request is greatly appreciated because this range is going to improve the readiness of the national guard their ability to answer the nation's call at a greater convenience and like i said lower cost to the taxpayer and so we have cyber workforce development issues so in the f y 24 n d a a uh it included my bars bipartisan legislation authorizing the army to create a civilian cyber security reserve to provide cybercom with qualified civilian personnel to serve in reserve capacities to support operations in cyberspace so secretary warm off warm off is um what's the status of the implementation plan for the civilian cyber reserve thanks senator rosen uh and we're very pleased that we were able to get that range in the budget um on the civilian cyber core you know we we absolutely want to make sure we we are taking as much advantage as we can of all of the available cyber expertise i i think what we've been in discussions with with um u.s cybercom is to think of is to work with them first of all nsa does the badging and the credentialing that would be required for those civilians so we don't control that uh but i think what we can do is talk to cybercom about what are their requirements we can look at our requirements and see if there's a way to structure a pilot to think about exactly where would we need to have civilians fill in and sort of how to do that but i think we're we're a service that would like to have a pilot to look at what can be done as a former computer programmer i would have uh now i'm doing this but in my young younger days and in my uh even as i got into my 40s or 50s i would have liked to have been able to serve at this point to do what i did as a programmer so i think it's important to have that but i want to move on a secretary with the impact of the epa ruling on hawthorne army depot and so hawthorne army depot it's in northern nevada and we demilitarize one third of the department of defense obsolete munitions via open burn and detonation as you're aware the environmental protection agency recently proposed a new rule to revise regulations that allow for open burning and detonation of certain explosives like munitions and propellants the rule does not consider the national security implications for do d facilities or the lack of available technology for large-scale disposal and this could have serious impacts on hawthorne and so the rule is now open for public comment after going through interagency review process and from conversations that my office has had with your staff and with hawthorne i know the army has serious concerns with the impact of this rule on your ability to fulfill do these munitions demilitarization requirements should it take effect and so maybe you could speak to us about what would happen if the implementation is written as the way they want to do it now what challenges would this rule create for facilities like hawthorne to be able to accomplish the critical mission we have of ensuring the readiness of the munitions stockpile and also the impact on the workforce at hawthorne thank you senator and i'm i'm broadly aware of the of the epa rule that's out there right now for comment right now and i would agree with you i think it could have significant implications for hawthorne actually the chief and i were over on the house side earlier this week and one of your colleagues in the delegation raised it uh you know we we need to be able to dispose of the munitions that are there that are being stored at hawthorne there's a lot of important work that's done there and in some cases in the past we've been able to find alternative technologies that we can use to isn't alternative technologies for most of it yet so yes so what that's one of the concerns that we have so what i'd like to do is you know do some consultations with army materiel command and and look in more detail at what this might mean for hawthorne and then proceed from there but it certainly we need to have that that munitions disposal capability i think we need to be working with the epa because once they finalize this rule it's going to be much more difficult so i'm going to have my office contact you to see how we engage in this process while they're doing this before they make a determination and we have to find some other way around it that's going to have an impact on this important mission certainly um thank you i see that my time is up and i see senator sullivan is here so uh thank you thank you senator rovin as senator sullivan and if you could stay within the five-minute mark because we want to go and start a closed session mr chairman i i always stay within the five-minute your imagination okay just uh that's a little inside joke here with me and the chair um well madam secretary thank you general good to see you guys again let i'd like to get a um an update on the armies formalizing the 11th airborne mtoe i know that you um have been both really big supporters uh i think it's great we got another uh airborne division right probably the best in the army right now no offense the 82nd airborne division mr chairman about the 11th airborne division alaska is is gaining quickly on the 82nd it's just it's always good to have inner service or inner army competition but um i'm hoping that the mtoe will alleviate the self funding burden that the division has shouldered since it stood up a few years ago as you know uh some of the ops some of the training some of the elements of um operating in the cold weather in alaska cost more and i think we want to make sure that that unit is getting resourced in a very realistic way so they're not having to kind of undertake this self funding burden on them so can you give me either of you an update on that sure why don't i start and then turn it over to the chief who i know is very focused on this um one thing we're doing first of all i would note to your comments about the airborne uh as you probably know elements of the 11th airborne did a an airborne drop over norway i think just in february or march that was very successful and there was some very serious cold weather training it was done in february exactly yeah 40 below i mean people were getting on it's not easy to operate in 40 below zero yeah i can only imagine literally as someone who grew up in texas but we are doing two war games this year specifically to help us better understand kind of what are the needs of the soldiers in terms of their cold weather gear cold weather equipment so that's one initiative we have underway to help us look at the mtoe but let me let the chief build on that so having been up in uh alaska in february march i mean surviving is is tough and so we're really proud of the 11th airborne the big exercise that the secretary was talking about i mean not only surviving but thriving um and so there we've increased our training you know we have the joint um multipurpose training up there that you can do almost anything in alaska and that's a real advantage to us and so india for example was also out as our partners and and trained up in alaska we're doing an mtoe review right now as you know senator what works um in texas for systems doesn't necessarily work or won't work when it's 40 or 50 below up in alaska so um and the vice is going to under and i think you've met with him recently is going to go through exactly what we want to do is is make sure that they have the right equipment for operating in the arctic and then how do we kind of put set some aside because the other great thing about that unit they're very physically hard they can operate anywhere in the world and we have that capability to do that well i i general i appreciate you directly addressing this because as you know when you're looking at the difference in operational capability no matter what it is it's harder and more expensive to operate in that kind of environment and sometimes in the past i was worried that that was just got fairy dusted well you're going to get the same amount of money as the units down in lower 48 don't worry about it being tougher in the arctic but it is tougher you guys are seeing it so i think they need to be resourced in that way to that addresses that what would you agree i would agree in what we're trying to do as well like for resourcing make sure that they're also not taking care of equipment that doesn't going to work yeah so we're going to pull some of that out so i think it's a combination of things to make sure they're we've given them the cold weather equipment i think we're trying what we got to do now is make sure we have it it's sustainable that we can give it to them we're buying additional cat bees as you know that's what you need to be operational that's up there we're reviewing all of that great let me turn to the topic the three of us discussed in my office a couple months ago on the army force structure changes some big articles in alaska some people actually had some concerns about kind of the overall kind of top line numbers you know we went through that whole 425 issue where the obama administration was going to get rid of the 425 and that was actually us here in the congress who stopped that but in our meeting you too both mentioned to me that the force structure changes that the army is doing overall are going to mean a increase of 1469 more soldiers in alaska by 2030 can i just in this committee kind of in the hearing room can i just get your recommitment to that number senator i will say i don't have the number off the top of my head but we do have those numbers and i'm certainly willing to you know i am confident that what we explained to you before was accurate so we commit to that okay and i just was going to add senator i think part of it was to was that we have the force structure up in alaska we need to recruit now which were in we're doing better yeah um to fill out those formations which is what we really are trying to get after immediately great i had several more questions but being um uh true to my word to the chairman i'm gonna yield my time back senator we welcome you to join us in a closed session oh you may ask those questions there thank you thank you senator sullivan and thank you madam secretary and general george uh we will close the open session and reconvene svc 217 at approximately 1130 uh thank you very much with that i will deem the open session closed