 Senator I will defer from giving my opening statement and submit it to the record. I believe that the ranking member will do so also so we can expedite questioning. With that General Cavoli let me recognize you. Thank you Chairman. Chairman Reed, ranking member Wicker, distinguished members of the committee. It's my honor to testify before you today on behalf of the brave men and women and families of US European Command. And before we start I'd like to publicly recognize our service members, shared sacrifice, and praise their devotion to the mission. And I'd like to thank you for the support you give them every day. They are represented here today by my Command Sergeant Major Rob Abernathy who I'm lucky to serve with and I'm delighted to testify next to my friend Jackie Vanovo. We're facing challenging times in the European Theater ladies and gentlemen. Russia's brutal, unprovoked war has ravaged Ukraine for over two years. Their forces are demolishing cities, destroying innocent lives on a scale we have not seen since the Second World War. Moreover Russia is turning to the People's Republic of China, to Iran, and to North Korea to sustain its campaign in Ukraine. Those countries are forming interlocking strategic partnerships in an attempt to challenge the existing order from which we benefit. This is profoundly inimical to US national interests. And it's important to note that Russia shows no signs of stopping, nor does Russia intend to stop with Ukraine. Russia presents to us a chronic threat. US UConn has responded to this threat by enhancing our deterrence posture across Europe. We've strengthened our Eastern flank with rotational force deployments. We've expanded preposition stocks. We've modernized our infrastructure to enable rapid reception of forces and we have demonstrated our ability to reinforce in all domains through dozens of multinational training exercises. So we are ready to defend. And this allows us to deter. And we have deterred Russia from attacking our alliance. US UConn is also proud to lead the international effort and support of Ukraine. We do this, as you know, through the security assistance group Ukraine, SAG-U, which is led by Lieutenant General Tony Agudo. In the past 26 months of war, the US and our partners have delivered vast amounts of critical munitions and equipment to our Ukrainian colleagues. SAG-U has been in the lead and they have facilitated a full range of training to promote unit readiness. We have ensured that Ukraine knows how to use their new equipment and just as important how to maintain it. Nevertheless, Russia persists in its vicious campaign. Meanwhile, Ukraine remains almost entirely dependent on external support to stay in the fight. The severity of this moment cannot be overstated. If we do not continue to support Ukraine, Ukraine could lose. So our efforts are great, but in all of this, UConn is not alone. War in Europe has also given our allies and our partners clear purpose and unity. They have seized this opportunity which has been presented by this catastrophe. And over the past year or two, there have been profound changes in NATO. We have new war plans for the first time in 35 years. We have new force in readiness models. They make 700% more European troops available to me as the Supreme Allied Commander than just a couple of years ago. We have streamlined and focused new command structures. We have new authorities that give me as SAC-U or the ability to respond to crisis in a timely fashion. And European governments are backing these organizational changes with a concrete uptick in investment. In 2024, at least 20 nations are expected to meet the 2% of GDP defense spending compared to only three who met it in 2014. Nevertheless, continued U.S. leadership is essential. Our allies are stepping up, but they require our leadership and our example. And by upholding our commitment to Ukraine and by demonstrating steadfast cohesion with the NATO Alliance, we provide a clear deterrent to our adversaries. Of course, should deterrents fail, USU-COM, along with our allies, is ready to fight and win. We thank you for Congress's unwavering support to USU-COM service members' missions, to their safety and to their well-being. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker, on behalf of the entire European Command, thank you for this opportunity today. I very much look forward to your questions. Thank you, General Kovale, General Vand Oost, please. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker, distinguished members of the committee. It's my honor to join you today with my senior enlisted leader, Chief Master Sergeant Brian Krozelnik, to represent the men and women of the United States Transportation Command as we defend the nation, take care of our people, and succeed through teamwork. I'm extremely proud of our team of logistics professionals who lead the joint deployment and distribution enterprise, continually exceed expectations, and ensure hope deterrence and victory are assured as we underwrite our nation's defense. From competition to crisis, the entire enterprise proudly deliver for our nations, our allies and partners. We know our success around the globe would not be possible without the steadfast support of this committee and the whole of Congress. The fiscal year 2025 budget request continues to make strides in closing gaps in our mobility areas as we prepare for global operations in a contested environment. A contested environment is the reality of today. Whether in the homeland or abroad, we cannot presume freedom of maneuver to execute our operations with full access to our lines of communication. Our organic fleets, coupled with the vital capacity provided by our commercial transportation partners, must continue to present credible capacity, meaning we must modernize our mobility capabilities to include cyber resiliency and digital modernization. A connected, aware, and survivable mobility fleet and network is needed to maintain our advantage against a capable and determined near peer adversary. My top readiness concerns remains sea lift and air refueling. Sea lift is the backbone of our ability to deliver a decisive joint force. However, the age of the fleet is dragging readiness to alarming levels. 17 of the 47 organic ready reserve force ships are 50 years or older. To address readiness and decrease in capacity due to the planned retirement of 27 ships in the next eight years, we must add younger ships to the fleet. Transcom supports Navy strategy to acquire used sea lift vessels from the commercial market and further requests to provide the Secretary of Defense discretionary authority to purchase foreign built U ships under favorable market conditions without restrictions. We acknowledge Congress's intent to include domestic new build sea lift ships to recapitalize the ready reserve force and we are working with the Navy and maritime administration to create an acquisition strategy for new construction that will complement the by used program. I greatly appreciate your support for timely, predictable, and stabilized funding to meet our sea lift requirements. Similarly, air refueling is foundational to our nation's power projection advantage. It is our most stressed capability. We must ensure continuous modernization and recapitalization of the aging fleet to meet the operational requirements of the modern battle space. Transcom supports the Air Force's strategy for the uninterrupted tanker recapitalization and accelerated fielding of the next generation air refueling system. Over the past year, we've made great strides in synchronizing global fuel management and delivery in collaboration with our key partners in the joint petroleum enterprise, leading to robust planning, posture, operations, and capability development to assure end to end fuel distribution in a contested environment. This includes diversifying our distribution and delivery posture by having an increased forward presence with fuel afloat in contracted maritime tankers and increasing capacity and access to the US flag maritime tanker fleet through the tanker security program. In addition, we fully support the maritime security program, the Jones Act and cargo preference laws that all work to ensure that we have the necessary US flag capability and US merchant mariners to move sensitive defense materials during a national emergency. Maritime stakeholders have been experiencing challenges with recruiting and retaining qualified mariners and we support Merrad and industry efforts to identify strategies that address the mariner shortage and ensure their readiness. To effectively sense adversary threats and activities in our logistics networks, the nation must utilize all available resources. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides me insights into adversary intent, capabilities, and activities to contest our logistics flows. The loss of this authority adds risk to my mission. Additionally, passing a national defense supplemental is vital for the health of the Transportation Working Capital Fund, which preserves essential readiness and ensures response options for the Secretary of Defense. I monitor Joint General Cavoli today where we stand firmly with Ukraine in its fight for democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity that in turn delivers success and stability for our allies and our nation. I'd like to thank you once again for your leadership and the support you provide our workforce. I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much, General Ven Ovos. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that we must stop at 10 a.m. for the joint session, so please limit your questioning to five minutes. And the closed session will begin at noon after the joint session in SVC 217. Thank you. General Cavoli, you indicated the severe consequences of failure to support Ukraine, and those consequences, I presume, are not localized, but global. Could you elaborate? Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. So if Ukraine fails in this fight, I think problems radiate outwards, beginning with Europe. So there will be the possibility, the probability that Russia will continue aggressive behavior. They'll certainly be emboldened. They're certainly building a military that's going to be capable of it. They're replenishing what they've lost so far, and they're working very hard to build a larger army. They've announced their plans for it, and they're on track to do that. There are other nations in the neighborhood that Russia publicly covets has publicly stated that they're not really nations, the same sort of rhetoric that led up to the invasion of Ukraine. Beyond Europe, which is critical to our security, beyond Europe, there are other places people are watching all over the world, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, the People Republic of China we know is watching very closely, and all other nations are watching very closely. First, to gauge what is the value of a partnership with the United States, and second, to see what happens if it fails. And those who would be our friends would be made nervous by a loss in Ukraine. And those who would be our adversaries would be emboldened by it, sir. I had the opportunity to stop in Gratvier, Ramstein, and several other places. And we are teaching the Ukraine's, but we're also learning a lot. So this effort has allowed us really to significantly increase our insights into the way Russia particularly conducts operations and also others who are aiding Russia. Is that fair? Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you, all members, for your visits to Grafembert and elsewhere. They help us a great deal, and we appreciate them. Yeah, absolutely. We're learning from the Ukrainians every day. We learn in a variety of different ways. First of all, just talking to them, we get their experiences. This is very valuable for our younger troops, especially because it keeps them galvanized. It keeps them focused on the mission. They understand the import of it. But in a more practical way, we practice tactics and techniques with them and refine them, things that they have developed under fire. We bring them out and we work on those things. These can be technical, specific things about electromagnetic interference and things like that. They can be tactical, how to negotiate new forms of Russian obstacles and defensive fortifications. We have both the incidental benefit of working with them, but we also have very specific focus structured programs to call out that information. We also have a couple of other programs, Mr. Chairman, that would be very helpful. I'm delighted to talk about closed session that are also extremely useful. But overall, yeah, we benefit significantly from this. We are watching them adapt to Russia's adaptations. So warfare, as it goes on, is a series of moves and countermoves, and Russia's military has evolved significantly during this conflict, and this is helping us to keep up with it as well. Thank you. President Ivanovich, you have already been delivering a substantial amount of material to our forces in Europe, which is trans-ship to the Ukrainian. So you've got a lot of money tied up in the supplemental of that accurate. Senator, thanks for answering that question. Indeed, about $550 million of the supplemental is earmarked for US transportation command, mainly in Ukraine, but it also wants to unreimbursed work for the Middle East after the events of October 7th. However, we work very closely with U-Com and the Office of Secretary of Defense to deal with transportation costs associated with Ukraine. And so if the supplemental doesn't pass, you have to find ways to pay for that internally, which would be very disruptive, I assume. Senator, that's absolutely correct. Not just trans-com, but all the services and combatant commands have costs that are unreimbursed at this point. The issue with transportation command is it comes out of our working capital fund. And a working capital fund is there in case we have an emergency where we have to go somewhere around the globe, and not having funds in there would slow down any response and certainly reduce the options for the Secretary. I'll yield that my six seconds to the ranking member, Senator Werker. Thank you, and I'll take it. General Cavoli, you just said if we don't come forward with assistance from the United States, Ukraine could actually lose this war. That implies that Ukraine could also actually win this war. I would remind you, and you don't need to be reminded, but anyone listening, that there were voices in the United States, well-intentioned Americans in the late 30s and early on in watching the European War that said there was no way that the United Kingdom could win the war against Germany, against Hitler's Germany, respected well-intentioned Americans like Charles Lindbergh, who's still held in high regard, said that there was no way we should help because the war was already lost. Can Ukraine win this war? Yes, Senator. Absolutely. And is it also true that while we're being asked, and our allies are being asked to help Ukraine, Russia's seeking help also from other countries on their side, is that correct? Absolutely, Senator. And those countries include countries that have a malign intent toward the United States. Who are those countries? Absolutely. First in line is the People's Republic of China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Iran, sir. Now, we have the Japanese Prime Minister in this capital city today, and I'll be attending, along with most of my colleagues, his joint address to the Congress. What does the Japanese leadership have to say, and what tangible indication have they given as to the importance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict? Senator, in my role as the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, I recently traveled to Japan about a month ago, sir, and met with their Chief of Defense in a number of highly placed officials there. It's part of NATO's burgeoning relationship with key Indo-Pacific allies. They are focused on the Ukraine question. They are watching it very closely. They understand that the stakes are high. Are they helping in a tangible way? They're helping in intangible ways and some tangible ways, yes, sir. And what about South Korea? What about Australia? Sir, they are all focused on this question, and all of them are rendering intangible help and some tangible help, and some of it... They're rendering help in terms of dollars and cents, are they not? Absolutely, yes. Well, Ukraine seems to have a lot of fight in them. Is it true that they've retaken over half the territory seized by Russia two years ago? Yes, sir. And how is it that they have been so successful in the Black Sea? How is it that Ukraine has been so successful against one of the most powerful countries in the world in the Black Sea, and how so? It starts with their determination to have access to the Black Sea, so they're determined. Secondly, they have extremely talented engineers and extremely talented scientists who have devoted this portion of their lives to the defense of the country. And some people in the audience may not be aware to what extent they have been successful. So what has their success in the Black Sea been? They've sunk more than 20% of the Black Sea fleet, but more to the point they've damaged critical infrastructure associated with its sustenance and its maintenance, and the net effect has been we do not see Russian surface ships west of Crimea ever anymore. Okay, well, let's talk about burden sharing. Are we being asked to do more than anybody else in terms of our capacity? No, sir. We are doing a fair share. If you measure by percentage of GDP, how much assistance we're giving, we actually rank well below 15. Yeah, we're down around 14 to 15. Yeah, exactly. Of our economy, as compared to all of the other allies who see the importance there, what do our friends and people we want to be more friendly with? What do they think about the likelihood of America keeping its word long term? Sir, they believe in America. They believe in America's leadership. They believe in America's consistent dedication to global security and to European security because they understand it's in our interests. However, when they hear things or see things from our country, they can get nervous sometimes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Wicker. Senator Shaheen, please. General Cavoli, General Van Oost. Thank you both for your service and for being here this morning. Senators Reid and Wicker have been very broad and expansive in covering Ukraine, which I appreciate their comments and your responses to that. So I want to focus on the western Balkans where we're seeing tensions rise and I appreciate your attention to that, General Cavoli. A persistent problem is ensuring that you four and K-4 missions are adequately prepared to respond to those security concerns. I think so far we have been, the missions have been relying on each other as reserve forces. I think this dual heading is concerning and especially as we see tensions increase in both Kosovo and Bosnia. So can you talk about how UCOM is engaging with our European partners to emphasize the need to establish separate reserve forces for you four and K-4? Yes, ma'am, absolutely because it's an extremely important question and as you know, NATO is not a one-problem alliance. We're not a one-problem country and so it's important to recognize that there are other things going on in Europe that are not good for U.S. national interests. They're also not unrelated to the conflict in Ukraine as you well know, Senator. The first thing U.S. UCOM did was get the UCOM commander to persuade the Supreme Allied Commander to do something about this inside of NATO with regard to the reserve forces and everything. So we have done a complete O-Plan review for K-4 specifically and it has revealed that we need not just more forces but we need heavier forces. We're in the process of sourcing that right now. Nations are being quite generous but we will put heavier equipment on the ground as well as more people. The second thing we're doing is we're untying the relationship between the reserve forces for the EU mission, Althea in Bosnia Herzegovina and the K-4 mission because as you pointed out and I agree that that was an economy that we can no longer afford to share the strategic reserve force there. I'd like to call out France for being especially generous. As you know, the commander of the Althea mission is a French Lieutenant General, Hubert Coutureau. He's also my Vice Chief of Staff at the Supreme Headquarters. And so in that dual-hatted role just like I can dual-hat, he benefits from his relationship with France. France has put the Charles de Gaulle offshore in the Adriatic and has recently deployed a battalion on an operational deployment for a medium term. So they have up their forces. What's really important right now is you understand because this week in particular the tensions are significantly higher. So I'm satisfied that we're in a good position right now, Senator, but it's always necessary to keep a very close eye on it. We have run at least two focus collection missions to increase our intelligence collection and understanding of what's going on in both of those countries. And I've supported that from USUCOM with aerial ISR and other things to talk about in close session, ma'am. Great. I have several other questions specifically about the situation there, but I'll save those for close sessions so I can ask General Van Oeve a question about the National Guard Bureau's decision to level Air National Guard units and the impact that that's going to have across the country. We're concerned about that impact on the 157th Air Refueling Wing in New Hampshire where we have the KC-46s. So can you... Have you been briefed by the Guard Bureau on what they're planning and are you concerned about the impact that'll have on TransCom? Thanks, Senator. You know, as you know, two-thirds of our Air Refueling Force are in the Guard and Reserve. They bring such a great capability, an absolute card. We could not do our mission without them. So this is an issue that's emerging that I am tracking. I have not been briefed by the Air National Guard. However, we've looked at... I have no immediate concerns, but as we look into the out years is how this is going to be leveled out and where the capabilities are going. We're going to track that very carefully for the Guard. Well, again, we're concerned that the 157th is going to be affected and they have major responsibility for refueling over the North Atlantic and they have been called in the past to help with missions in Europe. So I hope you will track that closely and that we can make sure that doesn't affect their ability to do their jobs. Yes, ma'am. The 157th has led the way for the Guard for integration of the KC-46, which is absolutely the future of air refueling. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Senator Shannes, Senator Fisher, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you both for being here today and thank you for your service. General Van Ovos, the California Air Resources Board has a proposal that would significantly impact the ability of the National Rail Network to support the movement of Department of Defense equipment and material deployment to the West Coast. This proposal would impose unrealistic commission standards and require zero emission locomotives, which do not exist because that technology is not even commercially available at this point in time. And this means that about 65% of the nation's locomotives would be prohibited from operating in California starting in 2030. What would the operational impact be if railroads could not service routes in California or had to divert cargo to other areas to meet the DoD logistics requirements? Senator, we rely every day on this nation's transportation network, whether it's sea ports, it's rail or it's roads. So when I think about the reduction in capacity across California, I think about I have 15 nodes in California that we use from two different railroad lines. And we have five ports, one of which is our only West Coast ammunition port for containerized ammunition, which is critical to our operational plans. And of course, we have close relationships with the railroad industry, and so we are working with them as this is emerging and they're understanding what the implications are. Initially, I believe that any increased costs will be passed directly on to the customer, but I am concerned about the technology and their ability to recapitalize between now, the readiness of now, and the readiness of future if they have to transition. Have you expressed these concerns to the administration? I have not. Do you plan to? In my normal course of action through the Secretary of Defense, if this is going to impact national security, I absolutely will. Thank you. When we look at the requirements that you have and the plans that you have, if we are seeing conflict take place in the Indo-Pacific, how would a surge of forces be impacted? We think about options every day and we run several planning events and several simulations that would occur around the globe, these globally integrated plans, should we have to surge for an event like the events after October 7th. And so we think about it and we run these simulations and we ensure that we have readiness for the fleet. The most important thing is to ensure not only do we have the capacity, but it's a credible capacity to operate in the environment we expect to be in. We expect it to be contested and an example right there is the Red Sea. Thank you. General Cavoli, I'm concerned about the increasing cooperation between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, which we're seeing the impact of in real time with Russia's war against Ukraine. How is UCOM altering its posture to address the strategic dilemmas created by these partnerships? Thank you, Senator. The first thing we've done is we've responded to the Russian aggression by bolstering our presence along with NATO's presence on the Eastern flank. We did that over the last two years. NATO moved very quickly after the invasion to establish new battle groups and to increase the size of the existing battle groups on the Eastern flank and to thicken the air policing. That is the air defense efforts that we were doing. US-UCOM was a part of that. In fact, US-UCOM led some of that with US unilateral deployments to sort of seed corn to get things going. We've continued that and we've actually regularized the procedures and those are going to become long term deployments that our allies have out there. The second thing we've been doing is tightening our air and missile defense. I'm under instruction from the 32 heads of state and government to tighten our air and missile defense. With regard to the connections among the countries, we work very closely with the that is these adversarial countries who have formed this network that's profoundly against our interests. We are working very closely with the interagency across all the instruments of national power to try to interrupt that and to hinder their ability to cooperate. We have, based on my intelligence section, my J2 section, something called Task Force Champion which focuses on this question, those relationships and feeds information to the interagency to take action through a variety of different means. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Fischer. Senator Cain, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our witnesses to General Van Oost. In your written statement, you say the DOD's ability to project military forces is inextricably linked to the commercial industry, what we like to call our fourth component. Transcom's relationship with the commercial sector is pretty unique. Talk about the importance of our commercial sector and challenges you have in working with commercial companies. Thank you, Senator. We cannot do our job every day without our strong commercial partnerships. In fact, 90% of our passengers flow through commercial operations and day to day, 97% of our sustainment goes through commercial sea lift. So it is obviously significant. And while that's the opportunity to use them and use their networks is significant and provides us an asymmetric advantage, the top vulnerability concern I have with them is through cyber, frankly. We have heard, even from the CIA director, that the PRC has infiltrated some logistics networks of our commercial partners. So we've been working with them on how to secure their systems through the no-cost cybersecurity collaboration center and the defense industrial base work that we've been doing. And they are paying attention at the CEO level. That's great. In your written statement, you also mentioned the Joint Communication Support Element, which is part of the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command in Norfolk. Why do you mention them specifically and how important is it that they be recapitalized? That Joint Communication Support Element provides deployable communications on air, land, and sea in support of standing up joint task forces. So if we go into a crisis mode, they need to have the modernized equipment to be able to support the Joint Task Force Commander around the world. And we have done that multiple times here, I would say, in the past couple of years. So we need to make sure that their equipment is modernized. Thank you for that. General Cavoli, talk to us a little bit about how Sweden and Finland are integrating into the existing NATO military structure. Absolutely. Thanks, Senator. So first, I think it's important to note that Finland and Sweden have been cooperating for years with NATO, not just in training, but in operations. They've also been very close, closely tied to the United States and bilateral agreements. They're also closely tied among the Nordic countries through multilateral arrangements that they have among themselves. All of those things made it extremely easy to integrate those two nations militarily into the alliance, sir. The Supreme Allied Command Transformation is formally responsible for the integration effort and the integration documentation that was completed in record time for Finland and will be for Sweden as well. They have already been incorporated into the regional plans that NATO has approved in the past year. In fact, it took less than five days for us to bring the inclusion of Sweden forward to the North Atlantic Council and register that as an amendment to the plans. So overall, it's all been extremely easy because we have such a long history with them and because they have invested in defense over the years. So, you know, defense investment has not been the strong suit of many nations in Europe over the last 40 years, but it has been in Finland in particular and Sweden has a radically stepped up defense budget right now. So both of them have maintained high capabilities and good capacity and they're really welcome in the alliance, sir. Well, I know everyone on this committee understands this, but for the public, if you'd gone back five years and pulled in Sweden or Finland about whether they wanted to join NATO, you would have been lucky to get to 25% yes. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused the scales to fall from folks' eyes about what the likely threat scenario is and the deep desire of Sweden and Finland to join NATO demonstrates a reality we have to be aware of and also demonstrates the vitality of NATO and other organizations of like-minded democracies. Let me ask you one other question. The Radford Arsenal in Virginia produces munitions that are critical to the battle in Ukraine, but I think it's also important that munitions be produced closer to theaters of war. Talk about your discussions with our NATO allies about munitions production ramping up in Europe. This is something we talk about a lot, Senator, as you might imagine. Right now Ukraine for 155 millimeter shells is mainly dependent on U.S. production. European production has just not gotten up and running yet. It is increasing, it's increasing, and there are certainly plans and investments to make it go faster, but they're still ramping it up. Some countries have converted former factories very rapidly. Slovakia, I would point to here, is producing a significant amount of 155 NATO standard ammunition right now, but really there's a lot of work left to be done. The EU and NATO are cooperating closely on lifting production and I believe they're going to break down some barriers and get that going. I do think it's going to be a few months before U.S. levels of production now. Related to that, Senator, is the... I'm sorry, Senator. Thank you very much, Senator Kane. Senator Ernst, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, General Vanovoost and thank you, General Cavoli for being here today. I want to thank both of you for your continued service and commitment to Ukraine. It has been a very difficult time and General Cavoli, I'll start with you because I did just return from a trip to Poland, Ukraine, where I spent three days with a delegation traveling across the country into many different areas and then on into Moldova, which is one of those other areas that's pretty tenuous right now. It's pretty darn clear that the American political system has been very ineffective in providing the needed support to a fellow democracy there in Ukraine. So as we await the House's finalized decision on a supplemental package, what more can you do in your role to leverage assistance from friends and allied nations in Europe or other areas to provide support for Ukraine? We work that very, very hard, Senator, as you know. First of all, I would point out that the principle coordinating mechanism for aggregating Ukrainian demand and presenting it to allies and partners and soliciting their help and their contributions has been led by Secretary Austin since the very beginning with the UDCG, the Ukraine Donors Coordination Group, sometimes known as the Ramstein Group because it sometimes meets there. Fifty nations, just over 50 nations come together about every six weeks and we coordinate at a ministerial level. That is preceded by weeks of hard work between our policy staffs and their policy staffs, and USUCOM with the SAG-U works very hard to get the specifics of the Ukrainian demand and their needs and consult with them about what they need to bring that forward. However, it's difficult. A lot of this is dependent on production levels at this point. How much ammunition we can produce, how many missiles we can produce. In that regard, I spend a lot of time working with the Secretary General and the Secretariat at NATO to work with National Armaments Directors to increase the amount of production we can do. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm glad that we do have partners that are stepping up and assisting. They understand how significant this is and what could happen to all of us if Ukraine falls. Oftentimes, Americans are very short-sighted. What is our immediate need today? What does our immediate want? I think there are very long-term repercussions to our country should Ukraine fall. I think we need to keep our eyes open as we're looking to the future and what will happen if we continue to allow countries like Russia, like China, like Iran, like North Korea to continue to spread around this globe and the pressures it puts on our own nation. So I thank you for being such a great leader in this fight. I know that in the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the intelligence community did declassify a number of reports which shed light on Russia's true intentions. It was a very proactive approach, and I'm really thankful for that, and it helped us counter a lot of that Russian disinformation that was being pushed out there, and we still see a lot of Russian propaganda. Can you speak to how various information-sharing programs are assisting us in pushing back against some of the common security challenges that are faced by Europe and our friends? Yes, ma'am, absolutely. First of all, in terms of collection, the variety of ways we collect, we rely on access and geographical access to other countries in order to be able to collect information. Nations have been very generous with us, not just allies, but partners as well, in allowing us to operate with and from their countries. That has been invaluable. Frequently, that leads to very high-level detailed information-sharing programs. We have allies who have accesses that we do not, and we have accesses that they do not, and so it's very much mutually beneficial. The last thing I'd say, ma'am, is that the interaction with Ukraine and their security services has provided us a vast amount of information as well. Well, and I will yield back my five seconds, Mr. Chair, but thank you both for being here today. Thank you, Senator Ernst. Senator King, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before beginning my questions, I'd like to ask unanimous consent to submit to the committee a graph which represents the contribution by GDP of the various countries that's been updated by the Kiel Institute. Without objection. Thank you. What this graph shows is that, in fact, Senator Wicker made the point we were 15th in the world in terms of contribution as a percentage of GDP. It's actually more like 29th now, according to updated data from this past January. And it's interesting to look at the countries that contributions. The number one is Estonia, then Poland, then Latvia. I don't think it's any coincidence that the two out of the first three are countries at border Russia, and they understand what the risk is. I commonly hear on the street in Maine, why are we doing this? Putin isn't really going to keep going, and my response is, ask the Finns. General Cavoli, what's the level of anxiety in Eastern Europe about Putin's intentions beyond Ukraine? Very high, Senator. Very high. You are correct, I agree. It's reflected in the number of donations they've given. So Eastern European countries have emptied their pockets for Ukraine. Many countries in Europe share that, and the contributions from nations in Europe are very significant. Some of them have given 100% of what they have in a given category. One nation has given 100% of its mobile artillery. Another nation has given all of its jet fighters and all of its tanks. Another nation has given 40% of its high-end air defense systems. So these are significant contributions. So the idea that the United States is the only person carrying the burden here is just absolute nonsense. That is correct. When Switzerland is giving more to the cause than the United States in terms of percentage of GDP, I think that makes a statement. Cyprus countries, just going down the list, Sweden, Croatia, Hungary, Finland, Romania, these are the countries that know Russia, and that's why they're in so deeply in this conflict. Correct? Yes. Going down some of the other arguments that I hear, Ukraine can't win. It really appears to me that this is a battle between industrial capacity and being able to supply weapons. Russia has vastly increased its capacity to generate, for example, artillery ammunition. Can the Ukrainians win if they have sufficient material to carry this fight? Absolutely, Senator. They have the skill, but most importantly, they have the determination to accomplish their goals. They need external support until they're able to generate their own industrial production. I agree with you that in a long war like this, it's in large part a matter of industrial production of output. Once that output is achieved, decide with the greater determination will win, and that would be Ukraine. And if we fail to pass the supplemental and essentially walk away from our commitment to Ukraine, that's exactly what Putin wants. Is that not correct? Absolutely, Senator, because we are now in critical areas, munitions, their main provider without our help right now, they will not be able to stay in the fight. And the Russians have an active disinformation campaign to convince our political system to essentially support Putin's war. Isn't that correct? Senator, the Russians maintain extremely active disinformation programs. They always have and they always do, and we strive right now and we know that definitively. Thank you very much, General. Your testimony is very important. General Van Overst, I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time, but one thing you, as you were testifying, I was writing, do we have adequate logistics for conflict in the Pacific? And you said we're at alarming levels. Perhaps for the record, you could give us more detail on the dangerous level of logistics. And I'm very concerned about the decline of the sea-left capacity, so I'm out of time, but if you could give us that on the record, I appreciate it. Yes, certainly. I take it for the record. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator King. Senator Scott, please. Thank you, Chairman. Well, first off, thanks both of you for being here. Thank you for your service. It's a tough time in the world. It's a scary time. I'm sure in Europe, and when I first came up here, I was at the meeting security conference and Germany basically said they're not going to meet their 2%. They don't have any interest in meeting their 2%. They're not going to ever meet their 2%. They didn't care about meeting their 2%. We still have a lot of our allies in Europe. They're not willing to meet their 2%. And so they're completely dependent on our troops. So do you think we have troops in the right places? Or do you, how do you deal with the fact that you supposedly have these allies that say they care about their own defense and they wouldn't actually in theory come to our defense, but they're not even willing to invest even the 2% that they're investing? Thanks, Senator. It's obviously an extremely important question. So there is, there remains a gap between say and do in parts of the alliance. However, that gap has been closing over the last couple of years. In 2014, there were three nations that met 2%. Last year, there were 11 nations that met 2%. This year, there are 20 as of today who meet 2%. Norway just dropped a letter declaring its intention to close that gap by June. And I believe there will be three or four more before June of this year who meet 2%. That's not everybody though. That's not everybody. Some of the biggest ones. And they should meet 2%. We encourage them every day to meet 2%. The secretary general is extremely active in that regard. And I believe they will, but they need to. When you look at the map and you look at where the Soviet Union is located and then you look at where our troops are, does it make sense where our troops are? Should we have troops closer to maybe in Latvia, Lithuania rather than so many troops we have in Germany? Sure. So we have troops in Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania and Romania and Bulgaria and Hungary and Slovakia and Poland so we do have troops in those. Specifically, the troops that we that we searched for after the invasion, they all went to the front as did large parts of the organizations that are already located in Europe. The ones that are already assigned to Europe I believe are the ones you're asking me about though. Guys like the Second Cavalry Regiment 31st Fighter Wing and people like that. Those organizations routinely get deployed from their home station to other places to include to central command. They're advantageous where they are right now because they're sitting on excellent infrastructure for training, readiness and deployment. So those are the forces that I can move to unpredictable points of trouble and they're centrally located on really good deployability infrastructure so it makes sense to me. However, the center of gravity of where our combat force in Europe is net-net has moved significantly eastward and that goes not just for US-UKOM but that's true for the alliance as well. What about Poland? Are you going to get more troops in Poland? Sir, we got a ton of troops in Poland right now. There's some place just shy of 10,000 which is up. As you know there's cooperation agreement with them. They'll build us infrastructure. They're in the process of building it right now and as it comes online, we'll push forces in there up to a brigade combat team. So the Air Force Marines have done a good job planning and recapalizing their reserve C-130 fleet, yet the Navy hasn't even started to recapalize their C-130 fleet. So what do you think about that? Do you think it's a mistake? Are we not positioned properly with that? Sir, I'm not really familiar with the topic and I think maybe the service could answer that a little bit better. If you'd like, I could take it for the record or defer to them, sir. I'll ask them. Thank you. Thanks both of you for your service. Thank you very much, Senator Scott. Senator Boone-Thaw, please. Good morning, General Generals. Thank you very much for your service and thanks for being here today. I know that you have a bit about the impact of the failure to pass the supplemental on the prospects for Ukraine and the likelihood of failure if the supplemental isn't passed. I wonder if you could look ahead a little bit beyond this supplemental and perhaps tell us in the longer range whether you think additional aid is necessary and what form it would take? Thank you, Senator. It will depend on production rates inside Ukraine and in other allies. So as this hearing has evolved, sir, I think it's become clear that really that level of industrial production is the key thing right now. Nations have given a lot from existing stocks, but as those go down production becomes more and more important not just in terms of capital items like large end items like tanks and things but also more importantly consumables like ammunition and missiles and things like that. So the rate of industrial production is going to be the real answer to that question. How much more will be required in one, sir? My understanding is that the attack last night or maybe it was last night in Ukraine showed again the real dearth of air defense and the impact of the ongoing reign of terror from the skies. Is there not any possibility of right away providing more patriot missiles, more air defense since as I traveled around Europe and in Poland there were a lot of patriot missiles guarding sites and obviously they need to be there but I'm just wondering whether three, four, five of those patriot missiles facilities would make a big difference. Sir, three parts to the air defense question. Radars, launchers and the missiles to shoot out of the launchers. We approach all of those sometimes together and sometimes in part. Right now the Ukrainians could use, their launchers aren't the most important thing. The missiles are the most important thing and we're soliciting those around the office of the Secretary of Defense is extremely actively looking for patriots right now. You're correct. The attack last night did was an illustration of why it's so important for us to keep funding. Right now the main source of high-end interceptors against ballistic missiles and high-end cruise missiles is the United States because we have the inventory and the production capability and therefore that supplemental is so important. Without it, the attack last night which included at least 10, Tu-95 heavy bombers launching everything they had simultaneously an attack like that last night would go totally, almost totally defended until machine guns tried to shoot down the cruise missiles. So this is vital, sir. Thank you. Separately I'm chairman of a subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation which is conducting an investigation of American chips, semiconductors, parts and components that are commonly found in Russian missiles, drones and I'm sure you're familiar with this issue. President Zelensky on my last trip the chairman was with me literally handed me a folder of photographs and charts showing the different components in Russian ballistic drones and missiles and we had a hearing yesterday in the Homeland Security Committee showing how porous our export controls are and we've had a hearing and data has come to our attention showing how American companies four or five in particular are selling goods with these parts and components that then find their way into Russian munitions. Is that your experience and do you have any suggestions for us as to what to be done about it? So we worked that very hard in the interagency, sir. I don't have specific suggestions for how to do it better but I can tell you that it is absolutely critical. If the current war is a competition of production our ability to handle the Russian threat in the future is going to depend on us being able to constitute forces faster than they can. Part of that is preventing them from constituting forces quickly and to the extent that they're using components that should be sanctioned and banned it's regrettable and we need to fix it, sir. Thank you. I really appreciate your answers to my questions and to my colleagues and your very excellent service to our nation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Tuvavel, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. Good morning, both of you. General, since the Crocus massacre, since I was in Moscow, somewhere around there, they picked, Russia's picked up their pace in Ukraine, is that correct? Yes, I'm not sure it's a consequence of that though, but yes, sir. Yeah, with Secretary Blinken coming out a couple of weeks ago basically saying that Ukraine will be in NATO I'm sure that didn't fly too well in Russia. So it's obvious to me just being in all these meetings and hearings, not just you people, we're getting ready to go to war with Russia. Have we got a game plan for that? For how many people we're going to need on the ground, young men and women from the United States when this war starts? Sir, we have standing operational plans around the globe for a variety of problems. I mean, you think it's going to take for us to beat Russia because Ukraine can't beat Russia? Can I take that in closed session, please, sir? What about the budget? $60 billion is going to be a drop in the bucket to the American taxpayer. We're $35 trillion in debt. What is this going to cost us? I know you've surely put the numbers to that of our conflict versus Russia when this all starts. Have we done that? Sir, the number I would have to talk in closed session about also, but I agree if we were to go to war with Russia and the money we're spending in Ukraine would be a drop in the bucket. Where are we going to get our energy from when this starts? Because they don't have any in Europe. The Saudis I don't know where they're going to help us out. We're going to have to buy from Ukraine, I guess. I ran because we're not pumping the oil and gas that we need. Where are we going to get our fuel for a war like this? Sir, that's outside of my air of expertise, but I'm sure I can get you the answer. Do we have enough right now to get a war started on the ground there for our troops? Yeah, we do, sir. Who's Turkey going to fight with when this war starts between the United States and Russia? Turkey will fight with the alliance is my prediction, but all nations have their sovereign right to make that decision when the time comes. Hungry? It's the same. Most everybody else will stick with us in this fight. I do. Everything that I read over the past few months is most of the militaries in the in NATO are boutique militaries. You agree with that? I'm not sure what a boutique military is, sir. Small shout of what it used to be. Haven't been preparing in terms of... Sure, I would agree with that. This army is now 450,000. When I joined it, it was 785. Yeah. So, with Ukraine fighting right now as they are, do we have any count of numbers of how many soldiers that they have actually fighting that they have in their military against Russia? Yes, absolutely, senator. Do you have a number of that? Yeah, it's between 900,000 and a million right now. Ukraine. Yes, sir. How about Russia? I mean, they have deployed within Ukraine, not on the borders, but how many do they have deployed in Ukraine? Inside the country, 470. Outside the country, more. And then they have the rest of their military. Yeah, my understanding is after the massacre they have been growing at 40,000 soldiers a month that are volunteering for the military. Is that pretty good intel or not? I'm tracking 30,000, but yes. 30,000. So, growing more than it was. More than it was before the massacre. Is that correct? The size of the Russian military is bigger today than it was when the war started, and it's bigger today than when the massacre started. Yes. In fact, I think what you're pointing to is they have initiated their annual spring conscription, senator. That is, they do that every spring. This year they did 150,000 they announced that they intend to take in under the draft. That's right about average for a spring conscription. The differences this year, they are offering those conscripts after one month of service the option to sign a contract get paid in exchange for being able to be sent to Ukraine to fight. Do you feel a sense of urgency in our supply chain now of building the munitions that we need because they have not been there. I know in my state of Alabama there's been a lot of sense of urgency of building javelins and things like that. Now we're building them as fast as we can, but there's no sense of urgency. Sir, I sense an increased urgency and demand. I can't speak to whether there's an increased urgency in the base itself to produce. Thank you, general. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, senator Tuberville. Senator Kelly, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with senator Tuberville's remarks about building munitions that we need. I mean, it's critical that we restock our supplies of the munitions that we've shared with our Ukrainian allies and we've depleted stockpiles and by passing the emergency supplemental we have an opportunity to resupply our forces with new munitions some of which could be made in Alabama. What I don't agree with is the definitive language about we are getting ready to go to war with Russia. I don't feel that is the case. And using language about when this war starts. My view is that we should do everything we possibly can to avoid going to war with a near peer adversary like Russia or China. It is not in our best interest to do that. So, General Cavoli, first of all, thank you for your service. I'm interested to hear just a little bit more about what you feel the best way in Europe right now is for us to avoid a conflict with Russia. Thank you, Senator. And yes, I agree. My job is to deter both in my NATO role and in my U.S. role. My primary job is to deter aggression and to avert a war not to fight one. Now, there's the paradox of course that historically we deter by preparing you know, C.V. Spachin, Parabellum and we are certainly prepared militarily to fight whoever we need to. How to do it? First of all, by training but secondly, I think inside the Alliance the most important way to deter is by doing it together. And so the comments from members of the committee about the lamentable the lamentable fact that some very wealthy nations inside the Alliance are not yet spending what they should be is an important fact and we have to close that because we have to have a capable Alliance that will fight together. The Alliance fighting together is far greater than the sum of its parts because of the political unity and the representation of such a mass of humanity and its will. So it's the most important thing is for us to deter as part of an Alliance and that Alliance has to be fit in order to do that. I have been charged by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to make the operational force of the Alliance fit for the purpose of collective defense of large scale defense of Europe. We are well along on that. We have produced the plans necessary, the requirements necessary and we're going through the process to get nations to fulfill those requirements. I believe that that process is one of the things that is stimulated at least 10 additional countries to meet 2% this year compared to last year because they have a list now they have a blueprint. This is how to get ready. This is the things we need to do to get ready and they can bring tangible things back home to the political leadership and say these are the things we need to go by. So that's what we're doing to get ready and that's I think the best way to do this, sir. What is the best thing, the most appropriate thing that we can do here as members of Congress right now to deter, to continue to possibly deter Russian aggression into another country? I think the first thing is to continue the discussion about the malign intent of Russia, sir. I think it's important for the members of the U.S. Congress to recognize the malign intent of Russia and to talk about the malign intent of Russia. That's the principal thing to do. After that, funding the various different programs that we have and authorizing us to do certain things will be necessary but I think the primary thing is to help us all recognize and keep our eye on the real threat. And how significant is the emergency supplemental in the list of things that we could do to deter Russia? It's vital. I think if Ukraine fails and Russia succeeds it will be a big setback for deterrence. Russia will be emboldened. They'll be geographically in a better position from a military perspective. So there are many things that will be damaged in our ability to deter. One of the things that would be damaged in our ability to deter is it's likely that the number of nations who want to side with us could shrink. And so I think it's absolutely imperative for all of those reasons. Thank you, General. And Mr. Chairman, I'll have a question to submit for General Ben Ovest on maritime security. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Killink. Senator Ovest, please. Thank you, Chairman. And thank you both again for being here. General Van Ovest, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, horrible. But it highlights the larger issue I think that we need to address. And that's how a single piece of destroyed infrastructure can shut down multiple modes of transportation. If I'm not mistaken, a number of critical military supply ships, they're stuck in our harbor in addition to road traffic that's been diverted. So how resilient are ports to the embarkation? And for instance, like in North Carolina, military ocean terminal Sunny Point in the event of a conflict, and if our adversaries should decide to conduct cyber attacks or sabotage infrastructure. And then if you would follow that up with how we can be helpful here securing these critical nodes. Yeah, thanks for that question. As I mentioned, we cannot do what we do without the substantial private infrastructure here in the United States, roads, rails, and sea ports. With respect to the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a tragic event, but we think about how do we recover very quickly, and the fact that we had a few ships that were essentially blocked in. But that's why we have so many ports. We can afford to lose a port and some capacity, we can't afford to lose them all. So we do many efforts to ensure the resiliency of the ports. We work directly with the port managers on all of our strategic ports on our alternative plans. Should there be problems there? As well as in a state of emergency, how would we use their resources? But it also comes to fact that some of the ships that were behind the lines that couldn't get out, actually we wouldn't use them anyway because they're in such a state of disrepair that we wouldn't call upon those ships. It goes back to how old these ships are and how we need to continue with the recapitalization program, which is one of the number one things we can do here is to ensure the readiness of the force, not just the capacity, but credible capacity to fight in the incontested environment. Thank you. Slightly different topic. In your opening statement you argued for the need for a supplemental. Correct, General Van Halves? Correct. Here's what I'm trying to reconcile. For the third year in a row, I see that you didn't submit a single unfunded requirement. Why was, even though that's required by 10 USC 222A, why are you asking for supplemental and then yet didn't submit unfunded requests? Certainly. Supplemental is critical for the Department of Defense and for U.S. Transportation Command. It's critical because we have not been reimbursed for funding associated with the events after October 7th in the Middle East. And that is eating away at our reserves or there, our working capital fund is there to be able to respond in a moment's notice to meet our nation's most critical priorities. So that is associated with authorization to spend transportation funding in that area. With respect to the unfunded list, we worked very hard with the Department of Defense to balance the resources to meet today's requirements and be able to transition into the future. And this budget directly addresses our recapitalization requirements and begins to address our contest logistics requirements to include posture forward and cybersecurity needs. Thank you, General. General Cavoli. Last week Deputy Secretary of State Kirk Campbell he said that Russia had almost completely reconstituted its military. Do you agree with that assessment and what can you tell the committee about the current state of Russia's conventional and industrial capacity? If you'd speak broadly here in as many details and also in the closed session, if you could add to that. Yeah, absolutely, Senator. I will add to it in the closed session first of all. But generally speaking Russia has been working extremely hard on reconstituting its forces and they're being quite successful, especially in the ground forces. So the attrition that they've suffered so far has been very significant, but it's been localized. It's been mainly in the ground forces. They lost a couple thousand tanks in the ground forces. They've lost as many as 75,000 killed from the ground forces, but they've replenished those. They've got tank production going on. They've got tank refurbishment going on and they've got tank repair going on and they have managed they still have as many tanks functioning inside Ukraine as they introduced at the beginning of the war. So if you looked, General, at their capacity February of 2022 as a percentage 0 to 100 where would you say they are today? If they were 100 in February of 2022 and it's been diminished and then they've reconstituted according to Kirk Campbell, where are they now? The numbers of soldiers have increased. No, just in total capacity. Well, that's a really hard thing to do. Are they back where they started? Are they more? Are they less? They're a little bit behind where they started, but not by too much, sir. But it's really hard to give a numerical answer to something like that. I could go function by function or I could go arm of the service by arm of the service and give you a good rich answer. They gave you a good feeling. But the overall message I would give you is they've grown back to what they were before. They've got some gaps that have been produced by this war, but their overall capacity is very significant still and they intend to make it go higher, Senator. Thank you both, Chairman. Senator Byrd, Senator Peters. Mike Issue there, so come over here. Well, welcome both of you. Thank you for your service. General Cavoli, the state partnership program has an incredible history of building trust and capability with important allies over the past 30 years. I know you're well aware of that. Two key Arctic allies, Finland and Sweden, will soon join the state partnership program to be paired with National Guard units. These state partners will certainly play a critical role in integrating these countries into NATO. And in particular I would argue that pairing Sweden with an experienced Yukon partner like the state of Michigan National Guard would facilitate a seamless transition into NATO. Well, my question for you, sir, is with us in mind, how is Yukon planning to take advantage of the expansion of the state partnership program into both Sweden and Finland? And are there certain capabilities that would be particularly helpful to you as you think about this expansion? Thank you, Senator, for the great opportunity to talk about the state partnership program. You'd have to look pretty far and wide to find somebody who's a bigger fan of state partnership than I am. In fact, Rob Abernathy, my command sergeant major here, routinely visits those troops and goes back to the states to talk to their senior leadership about this program. It is expanding, as you point out, but not just among our allies. As you know, the state partnership program has been vital to our ability to bring partners into the alliance and to take countries that didn't consider themselves to be partners and make them partners. This has been especially valuable lately. Austria has become a state partner this year, a nation that's had a post-World War II tradition of neutrality, so it's a big step forward in terms of their understanding of their responsibilities for collective defense. You can't just sit in the middle of a bunch of safe countries. You have to be part of that. Switzerland also, in fact, this morning I received an email from Ambassador Miller telling me that Switzerland had sent its letter to me asking me to endorse their state partnership request. I've talked to Dan Hockinson about that and I think we're going to go forward with that. Specifically with regard to Finland and Sweden, Michigan and the various other states have very broad-based capabilities and we would just like them to continue to pull Sweden and Finland toward the alliance. As you know, both of those militaries are quite capable and they don't need coaching on this or that. They just need continued partnership, Senator. Yeah, great. Thank you, General. General Van Voest, as you know, contested logistics and sustainment during a potential conflict is clearly a significant challenge for our forces in the Indo-Pacific. And despite our forward position units, pre-position stocks and regional allies and partners, our ability to refuel, rearm and repair under fire will be severely tested in any conflict. In preparation, I believe that we would argue we need to do more exercises like Talsman Sabre with large-scale sustainment rehearsals and major fuel offloads to test our contested logistics. So my question for you, General, is what role does Transcom play in rehearsing contested logistics as part of large exercises and is it your intent to make sure that logistics plays a central role in all future major exercises, particularly in the Indo-Pacific area? Thanks for that question, Senator. Across the entire joint deployment distribution enterprise, we've seen how everyone has mobilized to support our partners like Ukraine with fuel ammunition, equipment, supplies. And so when I think about the lessons we have learned in the Middle East and in Europe, we're absolutely translating them out into the Indo-Pacific with respect to posture. We've had a number of initiatives in the Indo-Pacific forward stationing of equipment, more resilient bases that we're using and seaports, as well as more fuel forward and an ability to distribute that fuel forward. So again, this is not merely about moving supplies forward like we have done with unfettered access. We work very closely with our allies and partners to ensure that we have multiple resilient ways to come at the problem to ensure that our geographic commands will be successful in any future fight. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Mullen, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And to the both of y'all, thank you so much for taking the time to come visit with us. I know it's important to us, and I know we give you an important mission to carry out every day, and I don't take it lightly that you take the time to come up here and visit with us. General, Ben, Oberst? Is that how you say it? Ben Oberst. I'm sorry, we don't pronounce that often from Oklahoma. I understand you're familiar with Altus Air Force Base, and we really appreciate that. They speak very highly of you. As someone who's commanded various aspects of manning, training, equipping, and mission of air mobility, I just want to know are you getting what you need from the Air Force to carry out that mission still? Thank you. First of all, Altus is a really important base for us. It's the home of mobility, of our training. And of course, you have our assets there to include our new KC-46, which is really critical when I think about transitioning and the future of air refueling in that type of airplane. So I support the Air Force, we are on a journey to try to ensure that our assets are able to communicate. They have battle space awareness, and they're survivable in the environment where we are expected to go into. And so as we embark upon that journey, we are providing the requirements to the Air Force to ensure that we can continue to maintain credible capacity. Is there anything we need to be doing on our behalf from Congress to help with that? Certainly supporting the Air Force's budget with respect to modernization and recapitalization. It's just not an error feeling, but also of the airlift fleet. We have 275 strategic aircraft, and we will consume all of that should we have to go into a large scale combat operations. So the work done there to modernize those and frankly to think about the future and where we're going with that, we're supporting the Air Force as they look into the future of strategic airlift. So specifically dialing down on that, when we're looking towards possible conflicts. God forbid that actually happens, but you know, we're doing what we can to prevent it. However, we need to be strengthened and preparing for it. What's the biggest hold back? Is it the DOD defense contractors? Is it requirements? Is it regulations? Is it the slow flow of money? What is it that it's the biggest hiccup? The biggest thing we think about is the aging fleets that we have, and we have to modernize them to ensure that they can survive out into the future. So just looking at the capacity ensuring that it remains credible and that is, it is an ability to fund it and have a stable funding that we know that we can count on to lay in those contracts to gain the capability. Moving forward, if something comes up that we can be assistance please all of us and let us know how we can help. So looking looking towards, you know, some of our biggest adversaries, especially in geopolitics you know, China is obviously playing a big role in that and ever strengthening their relationships with Russia and obviously Iran. How are we seeing that play out in Ukraine? Thank you very much, Senator. Yeah, so we see direct military support from some of those countries that goes to Russia and then the Russians employ that material in combat. A great example is the Shahad 136 drone. It's a one-way attack drone. It was created by Iran. It was developed by Iran. It was produced by Iran. It was given to Russia. It was used with great effect and Iran helped Russia build a factory for them in Russia and Russia now produces them and they call them the Geron 10 and those are used they were used early this morning to strike Ukraine. That's just one example. Sir, I could go into dozens of the examples like this enclosed session with you. Some of what we know about this is classified but some of it's very visible right out there just like the 136. Are you able to talk about the cost of what in this session and what it costs them to produce one of those drones? Sir, I could probably talk about it in this session but I don't have the money figure right off the top of my head. I can take that for the record gladly. Really speaking, the cost of the drones is far less than the cost of defending them which might be your deeper question. It is. The defense that we're using in the Phantom Plus looking at what we're producing in the United States and the cost of what it costs us because obviously what they have is being fairly effective and the cost ratio to me, I see that Russia's they're adapting and we've got sanctions on Russia. I don't see that they're being effective. I'd love to hear your comment on that. It seems like their economy is growing. Their economy is going to grow by 2.4% which is a full percentage higher than it was last year. It seems like they've actually adapted to their techniques and as you're saying they're almost back to full capacity so the sanctions we're having that we put on are they seem to be effective? So obviously this is outside my field of expertise, the sanctions how they work and how effective they are in some things as noted previously during the discussion today there have been instances where clearly sanctioned components have still gotten into Russia weapons systems with regard to the overall cost ratios between the sorts of drones we produce and the sorts of drones that we see else there. It's a complicated question I'm not the expert on it but I can certainly talk to you about it. Yes, sir, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you, Senator Moran. Senator Rosen, please. Well, thank you, Chairman Reid, for holding this hearing and of course I'd like to thank and welcome General Cavoli and General Vanovost of course for your commitment, your passion, your service to our country and for being here to testify this morning. So General Cavoli we are working to provide Ukraine with critical air and missile defense capabilities and my concern is that defense alone is not going to solve this conflict or win this conflict so can you speak to how the integration of additional long range systems would impact the operational effectiveness of Ukraine forces and what strategic advances that these capabilities might provide them? Sure, Senator. The additional long range capabilities for Ukraine would clearly allow them to reach farther back and to hit and destroy systems that are shooting at them. Of course, you know, the Russians carefully measure the ranges of the things they believe are available to the Ukrainians and then move their important stuff outside of that range. The ability to move in and out of the farther range would be an important addition to Ukraine's capabilities. When we think about long range fires though, you know, there are really three components to effectiveness. The first is the range itself. The second is the precision with which it can strike and the third is the survivability of the munitions so that you know it gets to the target. And so as Ukraine goes around trying to work on its longer range capabilities, they have a lot of drones, for instance, that they're using longer range, they try to balance those things and get the sweet spot for the given target that they're looking at. Thank you. I just think offense is important as defense. Speaking of offense, General, we're going to talk a little bit more about General Sir, excuse me. How are you working with Cybercom? Because cybersecurity is so important to provide that cybersecurity support to our NATO allies. Particularly there's some nations with lesser capabilities and we have, they're vulnerable from the cyber attacks from Russia, China and Iran and can you share to us the real value to the United States of the multilateral cyber exercises with our European allies such as Locked Shields? Absolutely, Senator. You know, it raises an ancillary question, by the way. So Tim Hawk at Cybercom runs a lot of that. I feel to all the Russia questions it seems like, but there are so many people working on this problem. Jackie, I mean, I wouldn't be giving anything to the Ukrainians if it weren't for Jackie's splendid ability to deliver. Tim's the same with Cybercom. He has sponsors and co-sponsors with us these multilateral exercises that allow us primarily to illuminate vulnerabilities in networks in our allies and our partners and for the alliances own proper you know, the networks we own as an alliance proper. They're very, very valuable. But then we follow up with cyber protection teams that go forward and do what Tim calls hunt for operations and we help them defend their networks forward. It's been tremendously successful, not just with allies, but with partners as well and with commercial enterprises. As you know, a lot of our transportation works on unclassified systems and they can be vulnerable. So it's a very valuable thing, ma'am. Offensive stuff we could talk about in a closed session if you desire. Thank you, and I fully support the idea that Jackie's can deliver. So general Jackie Manovos welcome. I want to ask you about logistic operations in the Pacific. Because from the Berlin Airlift in 1948 to the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan by air, history really has shown us the extensive resources that we really need to undertake a complex airlift operation even in a relatively permissive environment. So how is Transcom, are you actively testing the forces to conduct a long scale, a large long logistical operation? Should there be a blockade of Taiwan in the future, especially given the threats we know, regional threats in the Indo-Pacific? Well, thanks. That's one of the key things we do in exercises around the globe as well as in the Indo-Pacific scenario agnostic. Our ability to deliver the time and place of our nation's choosing is a strategic advantage. I think about the differences between the Middle East and Europe and Indo-Pacific is we're going to rely more upon the airlift because of the dirt of ground lines of communication. And so as we do analysis on the intra-theater movement necessary to get those supplies to the last tactical thousand miles, we are exercising sea lift capacity which is shallow draft sea lift running essentially a network below the network of airplanes because it will fully consume our airlift fleet if we fly everything. So that's an important part of what we're exercising and I think like Talisman Sabre where we're moving around with ships and moving preposition around is very important. Prepositioning capability to include fuel forward is important as well as ensuring resilient ports and airports for defense and our ability to survive essentially to aggregate to fight and disaggregate to survive and regenerate. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Cotton, please. General Cavoli, General Venovost, thank you both for your appearance. General Cavoli, you've been asked on occasion to include by the chairman's very first question about the lessons that other nations might learn from Ukraine like China in particular, if American will falters. I agree with that because we underpin global stability and security if American will falters anywhere and there's everywhere we'll take lessons from it. One thing you haven't gotten asked about is what's happening right now in the Red Sea and outlaw gang of brigands and rebels is shooting at US Navy vessels on a routine basis. Dozens of times now. Now fortunately our air defenses have intercepted those. That's the only thing that stopped our sailors from being killed. Yet all we're doing is shooting down those drones and missiles in the air or maybe when they're on the launch pad. What lessons do countries like China or for that matter Russia learn when we just let our sailors sit in the Red Sea and become sitting ducks for an outlaw band of rebels. Thanks Senator. So to be clear that that's not my area of responsibility. Not your area but you commented Chairman Reed that people outside your area take lessons from what's happening there. So what lessons do people in your area take from the fact that again we're doing nothing. Sure the lessons that European nations are taking from this. Vladimir Putin is taking from it. Well I don't know what Vladimir Putin is taking from it sir because he's got his hands pretty full right now inside Ukraine where he's learning some of the same lessons right. The lesson is that President Biden can be deterred from taking decisive action to protect our interest. For two years he pussied footed around and didn't provide Ukraine what it needed to stop the invasion earlier and to roll it back and now we're at this unsatisfactory moment in time. Okay let me come to that. So Ukraine's a pretty big country compared to some countries. It's small compared to Russia. Some people say like well Russia's always going to win, Russia always wins because Russia's a big country. Is it the case in history that smaller nations always lose to bigger nations? No it's not the case. Especially if the smaller nation can make sure that they accomplish their objectives in the fight quickly. I think over time as we see in history as we see conflicts get protracted, typically that favors the larger nation. I agree that's why it was such a terrible mistake for President Biden to pussied foot around for two years and not provide Ukraine the weapons it needed when it could have had a decisive advantage. But it's not even case in Russia's history right. Russia lost the Russo-Japanese war. Russia lost the war in Afghanistan. I guess you could say Russia won the Winter War against Finland in 1939 and 1940 but it got very little for an extraordinarily high cost. So it is not the case that just because you're a bigger nation you're fated to win a war against a smaller nation. But as you say, the smaller nation has to be more nimble and aggressive maybe take risks that it otherwise wouldn't. One thing that Ukraine needs to do therefore in my opinion is conduct more strikes against the facilities and the sites and the resources that Russia is using to wage this unprovoked war of aggression. So for instance what's the military value of striking refineries on Russian territory for Ukraine? The military value of that is producing a deficit in fuel available for the fielded force that is for the combat force. Some place downstream of the strike right. So there's a time lag in its effect senator as you well know. And the military value of striking drone factories on Russian soil? The same. It has an effect. It is a downstream effect, but of course it has an effect. The military value of striking the Kurch Strait Bridge? That would have a downstream effect that took effect sooner. The administration has urged Ukraine not to launch these kind of strikes though. In your professional military judgment would Ukraine be more likely to win or at least get a satisfactory outcome in this war if it was striking those sites and other sites that right now are safe haven for Russian military? So I think Ukraine would be very well advised to strike the operational level targets that are supporting the fielded force. They have some urgent challenges right now on the front line as we've spoken about. The fighting is active along the forward line of troops. And so those things that contribute most directly that have the shortest downstream effect right now should be struck feeding the wolf closest to the sled I think is what they need to do right now. Is it your military judgment that we should provide Ukraine with more and more variance of the Atacums missiles than we have already? It is. One final question on this small and large point. It's been reported that Russia has about a three to one advantage in artillery production right now over Ukraine. Is that accurate? We have a three to one production advantage over the North Atlantic Treaty organization. Ukraine and the good guys have put it that way. But isn't it also the case that Ukraine is destroying four Russian houses for everyone that Russia destroys? Something about like that. It's a pretty big mismatch. If Russia can make three times as many big rounds that we all can make yet Ukraine is able to kill four times as many guns as Russia has. What explains that? What explains their ability to kill more because the Russians are not as precise in their targeting? So it's not just a matter of having a lot more stuff although it's nice to have more stuff and we should certainly have more stuff and be able to make it faster. It's also that you got to be able to use it or to put it in simple terms. You got to be able to hit the targets that you shoot at in a timely fashion. Of course. Ukraine is doing that much more effectively than Russia is doing that. Typically, but not uniformly. So why the 3-to-1 production advantage is unsatisfactory and needs to be reversed? It's also not the a sign that Russian victory is inevitable. There is no such thing as you know of inevitable victory, sir. If your question is can Ukraine win this war? They can win this war. Can they win it without achieving Russian levels of production? Sure they can. But right now they're in a very critical moment. Well what would be best is if we achieved Russian levels of production and we maintained the 4-to-1 advantage on targeting. So let's try to get there. Thank you, Senator Cotton. Senator Schmidt, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Cavoli, thank you for being here. A couple questions about NATO and then I do want to ask about the guys up here. There's a lot of discussions today about lessons learned in the Ukraine war. One of the lessons I suppose that we could all learn is that our European allies in NATO have come very accustomed to us subsidizing their social welfare programs in Europe because they refuse to meet their 2% obligations. There's only 11 countries that do it. And I think we represent American taxpayers. That's who we represent. And I want to ask about that. So what in so 2% why is 2% the target? Why not 3%? Sir, because that's what was agreed to at Wales some years ago. Is it an appropriate target? Is it an arbitrary target? I leave those questions to somebody else. What I can tell you is that I know what the alliance needs to do to modernize that fit for its collective defense. It's new purpose. It's re-established purpose in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. And it is at least 2%. That's why the alliance at the last summit adopted the phrase floor not a ceiling. I think over time we'll see our allies realize that it is 2% is inadequate for the cost, at least in the near and mid term. I'm glad that they make these announcements, but our allies and NATO allies but they don't seem to ever meet the obligations. And so I guess at what point when you only have 11 countries doing it, and by the way many of them fudge these numbers they're not dollars related to military readiness. And so here we are now the taxpayers are again being asked to spend another $60 billion on COP of the $112 billion we've been told there could be another $100 billion request although that's not reflected in this budget. So we don't really know. This is an ongoing war and a blank check. And I believe my job is to try to find out what does victory look like and what is the cost going to be because I feel like we're in this mode now where this dominates discussion but there aren't really a whole lot of details. So again whether 2% is even enough for our European allies I don't think that it is I think I hear you saying that but we also only have 11 of them meeting those obligations and again I think those numbers are being fudged. I also have come to learn that is it your understanding that Hawaii is actually not included in Article 5 obligations under NATO? Sure, so the number right now is 20 are meeting 20 allies are meeting 2% as of June they will be projected. Norway just sent the Secretary General a letter on Monday saying that and there are a couple more coming up but the point Senator your point that the rich countries of western Europe that are not at 2% are in the wrong place I agree with absolutely and fundamentally but I would point out that the trajectory is moving very rapidly in the right direction and it's doing that because our allies have learned the lesson of the invasion of Ukraine as well we still do need to close the say do gap however yeah so with regard to Hawaii if Hawaii is attacked by China Article 6 defines of the Washington Treaty defines what the territory covered in the treaty is South of the Republic of Cancer is not included so French Polynesia is not in there the UK's Pitcairn Islands are not in there Hawaii and Guam are not in there however, Article 4 gives any nation that has been attacked the right to call consultations with other nations and to say I want you to do something about this and Article 5 gives them all the same sovereign right to decide on that it's just not automatic but Article 6 one would believe that our European allies would have no objection to Hawaii being included, correct? I would expect not, Article 6 what about Guam? Article 6 can be amended, the United States has never asked to amend it I'm deeply troubled by Macron's comments I guess about a year ago that Europe doesn't need to be dragged into a war in the Pacific and follow the United States something to that effect in America's strategic interest China is by far and away our biggest threat do you believe that our NATO allies if Taiwan is attacked would join us in that cause? I believe that many of them would, I do not believe that NATO as an alliance has that purpose right now it could adopt that purpose but it's not part of the purpose is anyone in this administration talking to them about that? this administration talks a great deal about that specific issue to our allies about being active in the Pacific I guess I'll just close with this because I'm out of time I'm very concerned that our NATO allies don't meet their obligations depend on the generosity that it's very concerning to me and when you hear comments from the leader of France that they don't want to follow the United States into potentially a war in the Pacific potentially with our chief adversary China that raises a lot of concern so anyway I appreciate your service in what you do but again I just don't feel like our European allies have stepped up thank you Senator Schmidt Senator King requested additional time one brief question we talked a lot about air defense are there and perhaps this has to go to the closed session are there directed energy air defense facilities in Ukraine because the bullet on a bullet is a very expensive way to defend directed energy is a lot cheaper and I know there are systems now that are in development or actually in testing is that an option that we should be pursuing in terms of our support for air defense in Ukraine it is an option that we could pursue Senator and your points about the cost ratios and the reload speed of directed energy is very you know very important it's obviously a big part of the future of missile defense specifically and counter drone defense specifically there are some systems that we're working with out there there are a lot of power problems as you know associated with still we haven't fully realized its potential with regard to Ukraine it would be great to speak to you just a moment about that in closed session thank you thank you Mr. Chairman thank you Senator King yeah thank you thank you Mr. Chairman I did not get to the guys up here so I apologize general then almost I did want to ask you I know there's been discussion about this effort to gossip here for humanitarian aid I have concerns and I don't think they're alone I don't think I'm alone in concerns about what that means for our American troops or personnel that would be engaged in this activity what is your understanding of what this looks like what could be done if this is happening what can be done to ensure that American lives are protected yeah thanks I think about what we do at transportation command we provide transportation for these capabilities around the globe we have to exercise them we do it almost every year as we bring all of the elements together to do joint logistics over the shore or even airdrop for humanitarian aid we put processes and we exercise these things so we have a great understanding of what it takes to build a pier and a discharge facility to offload and to move for humanitarian goods we've done this actively for the earthquake in 2010 so when we think about the new what is the strategic environment associated with doing this in Gaza obviously I forward that to the geographic combatant commander to CENTCOM so we're working diligently with them on the planning and I can tell you that force protection is our number one concern and if I could add to that senator so obviously with the transfer of Israel from the UCOM area of responsibility to the CENTCOM area of responsibility we get a combined effort there now so the protection is combined between US UCOM and CENTCOM depending on which exact part of the operation we're talking about Eric and I Eric Carrell and I have been in very intense there's more importantly in our maritime components we've been very close planning on this it's not without danger but we know how to handle it sir well and I guess just to color in a little bit of detail to the extent I know it's just been the Gaza pier has been sort of talked about but what's your understanding of who's receiving the aid and I guess we've vaguely heard of NGOs but again this is in a very dangerous part of the world right now with a lot of people who don't like the United States of America so I guess what's your understanding of more the details as it stands today sir so that part is inside General Carrell as a side CENTCOM and I know that this is a fast moving story as we go forward and I'd hesitate to give you an answer I can refer to him for you we'll follow up on that thank you Mr. Chairman thank you senator Schmidt I've been informed that Senator Sullivan is on his way but I have an additional question there's been discussion back and forth in a very I think useful one about what happens if the Ukraine government fails and in my sense and I just asked for your opinion General Cavoli is that if we fail Ukraine Russia is more likely to conduct operations against other countries so if we really want to diminish a potential conflict between NATO, the United States and Russia succeeding Ukraine is a fundamental obligation or sir I agree I think the biggest single change we can make in our deterrent posture for the better is for Ukraine to win and there's been comments about the contribution of our allies but the reality is that in many other ways which are absolutely critical to the success of Ukraine our allies are far or pacing us in humanitarian assistance and absorption of immigrants very costly programs but without those programs Ukraine would not be able to concentrate on the battle is that accurate absolutely chairman the amount of humanitarian assistance the amount of support for the electrical grid which is under constant attack and on and on the not inconsequential act of taking on board at least four million refugees for two years without without a bump these are important contributions to some of them are less tangible sir but they are contributions inside the military sphere I really have to point out there are some things that we provide a lot of and in the aggregate we are certainly providing an awful lot but there are some things that are 100% provided by people other than the United States petroleum products for the use the fuel for the force 100% from allies all of it tanks more than 90% of the tanks that we have given to the Ukrainians came from allies not from us fighter jets 100% of them have not come from us and I could go on and on so it is really important for us to recognize the value of our contribution and to justify it is important for me to be able to justify to members and constituents the value proposition we have had for the country in the war in Georgia in these contributions but we should not lose sight of the fact that our allies are contributing as well in fact my impression it might be yours is that the European allies NATO and other countries in Europe have far exceeded any expositions we had when this fight began I agree with that, not just in terms of what they're giving to Ukraine and the support they're giving to Ukraine, but in terms of what they expect of themselves to contribute to the alliance. So both of those tracks, I would never have guessed this in 2021, Chairman. I was in the same sense of disbelief as you were, sir. Let me recognize, Senator Sullivan, we're trying to keep it to five minutes. We have to adjourn at ten. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Generals, good to see both of you. Thanks for your great work. General Cavoli, I want to dig into a little bit more about a couple issues. One is the extent to which the authoritarian regimes in the world, they're all on the march, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea are cooperating. I'm sure you're seeing this, but can you spell that out a little bit more? I mean, one of the things that I talk about with this national security supplement, I don't even like calling it the Ukraine Supplemental or the Ukraine Aid Bill, because it's actually not accurate. The more accurate way to pick that bill is we have authoritarians all working together, clearly aimed at us. They hate us. And we need to be strategic in our response. And we also need to recognize that our own industrial base is atrophied dramatically, it has. And so I like to call this National Security Bill the Revitalizing America's Industrial Base Act, because 60% of it goes directly into our ability, America's ability to produce weapons. For us, everything from nuclear subs, which Xi Jinping is scared to death of, to 155 millimeter how it's around. So can you talk a little bit more about how these dictatorships who don't like us, now we don't like them, are all working together and what that means in terms of strategy? Absolutely, Senator. First of all, I think the way you've characterized this is spot on. These are not our friends. These are countries, these are regimes that wish us ill and are taking active measures to deliver us ill. So there's practical cooperation. There's practical cooperation on an economic level that that is China becomes Russia's salvation economically, right? By absorbing its gas output. Other countries do the same. And oil. Other countries do the same. There's direct military support, right? DPRK loads up train loads of artillery shells and sends them. And those artillery shells are exploding over Ukrainian heads every day. And earlier we discussed the creation of a Iranian based drone factory to reproduce the 136 inside Russia. Those were exploding over Ukraine this morning early. So it's very practical. More distressing though is the fact that these countries seem to be forming an intensifying bond. That they intend to use geopolitically to weaken our position in the world, which will inevitably hurt our own interests and our own citizens. Let me ask a related question. You know, you read about it in some commentators, actually some of my colleagues have kind of come up with this new theory about deterrence being divisible. Let me unpack that a little bit more. So again, with these authoritarians working together, you could have a situation where Putin rolls over Ukraine eventually. But if we don't provide any more military aid, by the way, do you think that'll happen? I mean, if at the end of the day, the US is pretty much right now like, hey, sorry, we're going to build out our industrial base, which we need to do. But we're not sending anything else to you. Good luck. What do you think happens? If we don't continue to support Ukraine? Let's just say we stop. A couple of my colleagues just want to stop everything right now. Nothing. Yeah, sure. What'll happen? Sure, that's easy. They run out of 155. They run out of air defense interceptors. And, you know, as I said yesterday in the House, the side that can't shoot back loses. Okay. So, but there's this notion. It's out there. I don't think it really works with the facts on the ground. I don't think it works with history if you read it. I don't think it works at all, but the deterrence is divisible. You can let Putin roll over Ukraine, but we're going to, we're going to send that signal to Xi Jinping and the Taiwan Strait. We're going to be really strong with Taiwan. You think deterrence is divisible like that? Now, look, I don't think it, no offense to President Biden, but I think it's not divisible at all. His Afghanistan withdrawal signal to the world that, hey, game on, let the authoritarian regimes roll. What do you think about this idea that somehow deterrence is divisible? You can be weak in Ukraine, but still strong in the Taiwan Strait, particularly when all these authoritarians are working together. Senator, I think that every action or every inaction we take sends a message. And I think that people all over the world listen for that message. And those messages are always global. They cannot be sent to one audience at a time. So I agree. My final question, General, you are an undisputed Russian expert. One thing that always kind of, and I've pressed the DNI on this, I don't understand why we don't do this. These authoritarian regimes, one of the things that they're starting to do is messing with our most precious institution. And that's elections. We are a republic, a democracy. We elect our leaders. These dictators would never stand for fair elections because they probably wouldn't win. Certainly Xi Jinping, Putin, one of their biggest vulnerabilities, the Ayatollahs in Iran, is they fear their own people. But they come after us on elections with, you know, cyber and things like that. Don't you think that if Putin says, coming after our elections, trying to disrupt our elections when he won't stand for election, we should do everything we can to counter by getting out all the information we have on this guy. I mean, he's one of the richest people in the world. Literally. He stole $80 billion from the Russians. We probably have the Swiss bank account numbers to where he's stashed all the money. These poor Russians, you know, are starving and drinking vodka for breakfast. And Putin steals from them. Shouldn't we get that out to the world the way Navalny did? And say, all right, you want to mess with our elections? We're going to let the people, same with Xi Jinping. These guys are all corrupt. Shouldn't we do that when they're messing with the most precious thing we have in America, our elections? Senator, if you don't mind, I'll leave that sort of strategy to civilian policymakers. But I would like to agree with you strongly that Putin fears open elections. He fears them in his own country, and he fears them elsewhere. He fears them, and he therefore seeks to undermine them. And I also agree with your opinion that our elections, our ability to choose who governs us, our government by the consent of the governed, is the most precious thing we have in this country. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Sullivan. Thank you, General Cavoli, General Van Alvost, for your excellent testimony. This will conclude the open session. We will reconvene at 12 noon in SEC 217.