 The defense subcommittee will come to order. Today the subcommittee will receive testimony from Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, General C.Q. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike McCord, the Under Secretary of Defense for Controller. The Department of Defense is requesting $833 billion within the subcommittee's jurisdiction for fiscal year 2025. This is 1% higher than fiscal year 2024, an active level, and would keep defense spending within the cap imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which is an interesting number considering the non-defense discretionary request is about $23 billion over the same cap. President Biden frequently reports a quote from his father, don't tell me what you value, show me what your budget, and I'll tell you what you value. It seems this administration will continue to value its domestic agenda over national security. I, on the other hand, agree with the former Secretary, Jim Mattis, who advocated for annual 3% to 5% real growth and defense top line to both fight tonight and adequately invest in capability to deter and win in tomorrow's wars. That said, the subcommittee will closely scrutinize the request to ensure that we provide a strong military as we develop fiscal year 2025 defense appropriation bill. Our job is made more difficult when our enemies are emboldened to act with impunity. Secretary Austin, with the deteriorating global security environment as a scorecard, I assess that your emphasis on integrated deterrence is failing. China is positioning itself to realize Xi's vision of building the force capable of taking Taiwan by 2027, reducing capability at scale and bullying our allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific. Russia is in the third year of an unjust war of aggression against Ukraine, with no signs of stopping its ongoing invasion attempt. Putin is not deterred. China is waging asymmetric warfare against the American people, providing base fentanyl components to Mexican drug cartels. The fentanyl products flowing across the porous southern border killed 112,000 Americans last year and devastating communities across the nation. The Chinese suppliers and the Mexican drug cartels are not deterred. And over the weekend, Iran for the first time launched a direct attack on the state of Israel. The Iranian barrage included over 100 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles, 150 attack drones launched from Lebanon, Yemen, and for the first time, Iran itself. 99% of their missiles and drones were intercepted, but make no mistake, Iran is not deterred. Unfortunately, the department is plagued by bureaucracy that impedes the actions necessary to restore deterrence. This is most notable over the cost and significantly delayed weapon system acquisition. Pick a service I can point you to systems that fit this mold. The Navy's Columbia and Virginia submarines are both delayed despite being dubbed the service's number one priority. Air Force Centennial experienced none McCurdy breach. The Army spent over $2 billion developing FARA only to cancel the program. The Space Force GPS ground system is more than $3 billion over budget, more than seven years late, and is still not delivered. And of course, there's the department's entire hypersonic program, which has cost over $10.5 billion so far and produced not a single fielded system. Our warfighters need modern technology now. A part of the solution must be a true commitment by the department to embrace and adopt an agile and innovative approach to acquisition. In fiscal year 2024, Defense Appropriations Act, I invested in this solution by ensuring that Defense Innovation Unit received $1 billion along with the flexible authorities necessary to rapidly identify, contract, and deliver innovative technologies to the warfighter. Including in this funding is $220 million for combatant commanders to procure and rapidly feel their capabilities they need most urgently. The Hedge Portfolio investment is critical to addressing the emerging, dynamic, and materializing threats I discussed earlier. This funding is separate and distinct from the replicator effort. Fiscal year 2024 Appropriations reinforced this fact, providing $1 billion for DIU and more than $200 million for replicator, Tronch 1. Additionally, to achieve an effective and efficient military, the department must also re-optimize its workforce. I'm pleased to see that fiscal year 2025 request includes a net reduction in civilian full-time equivalents. And I'm encouraged by the progress the department is making to incorporate artificial intelligence and process automation to eliminate manual business processes. More must be done here. And finally, our people are an asymmetric advantage that our adversaries could never replicate. They deserve the best from barracks to business systems and from livable wages to robust family support. We as a committee have long championed significant boost in pay for our junior enlisted service members. And I'm happy to note this seems to be a popular initiative in Congress this year. Together with our families and our service members are the foundation upon which our nation's strength is derived. Supporting and investing in them is a priority. And I know we can all agree on that. Before we hear from our witnesses, I'd like to recognize the distinguished ranking member, Ms. McCollum, for any opening comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Secretary, General Brown, and Under Secretary McCord, thank you for testifying before us today. General, we welcome your first appearance before the committee as the chairman of the joint chiefs. For fiscal year 2025, the president has proposed $823 billion within our subcommittee's jurisdiction. It conforms with the enacted level in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed the House by about 314 to 117. This allowed for a $7 billion increase above fiscal year 2024 and active levels, even though it is below the rate of inflation. I voted for the Fiscal Responsibility Act, not because I agreed with the spending levels in the deal, but because this country could not afford to default on its debts. Mr. Secretary, as you know, the department has received criticisms from its authorizers for the top-line budget requested. I think that criticism is unfair and unjust, especially from authorizers who do not have the responsibility for allocating the funding. Mr. Secretary, you personally did not impose the Fiscal Responsibility Act on the Department of Defense. Congress did, and I think those of us who voted for that law, we need to remember that when talking with you. I hope Congress has learned a hard lesson that we should not hold our national debt limit hostage over arbitrary spending caps. The department and the administration are conforming to what the law of the land is. Asking the department to ignore the law is not advisable. I know each of you and the service chiefs have made difficult choices this year to follow the law. As I said last year, Congress must be better about making hard choices when it comes to the defense budget. We need to continue to train, equip our servicemen and women, and to support them and their families here at home. We must prioritize modernization of our force and support investments which will support future modern combat. And most of all, we need to meet the requirements included in the National Defense Strategy. Every dollar allocated in your budget request represents an increased effort to defend our nation and to deter threats. As you know, we finally enacted the school year 2024 bill on March 23rd, six months after it was supposed to be completed. This delay triggered multiple continuing resolutions and impeded your ability to start new programs. None of this should have happened. Now, turning to the security supplemental, the Senate passed it over two months ago and it's deeply unfortunate that it has not been brought directly to the floor for the House for a vote. Funding that bill would provide much needed support for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and it will make sure that we have the critical munitions we need here at home to protect the United States. The supplemental will support our military and provide them with the ammunition necessary to defend us here at home and support our allies abroad. And it also includes much needed humanitarian assistance, which is long overdue to the people who need it. As the Chair mentioned, evidence by Iran's actions this week and Israel will require more interceptors to defend itself from Iranian missile attacks. Last week, our subcommittee was briefed by U.S. European Command on the prognosis for Ukraine without American support. As you know, it was chilling. Without the United States assistance, Ukraine will literally run out of ammunition and more civilians in Ukraine will be murdered by Russia. For these reasons, the supplemental must be enacted as soon as possible. While the hearing today will cover a range of topics, I wanna highlight a few that are very important to me. First, I'm concerned about our nation's ability to address emerging threats. Many of the major systems that we rely on from each of the services are delayed. And require additional funds from their original stated contracts. This needs to stop. Our industrial partners seem to be losing workers right and left after they've been trained, particularly in the shipbuilding industrial base. This is unacceptable. And it is extremely concerning to me. The department, Congress and industry must work together to ensure that there is consistency because of those jobs and the people in them are important to the national security of our nation. Second, the subcommittees heard from the Army and the Navy about how they are addressing recruitment and retention issues. I'd like to know what you think the progress of the services have made in recruitment goals from the past year. And do you believe this will get us back on track on the near term future? And finally, given the focus on the Pacific, which is important and the recent visit of Washington by the Japanese Prime Minister, I'd like to hear your thoughts on our relationship with Japan. How can the department work with Japan to better utilize maintenance and repair facilities in Japanese territory that our forces can execute their missions more effectively and efficiently? And what are some of the ways that the department has worked to strengthen our relationship with allies, such as the Philippines, Australia, and South Korea? Again, thank you to the service for our witnesses who are appearing before us today and those who serve and work under you. We appreciate your testimony and answers to our questions. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the courtesy and I yield back. Thank you, Ms. McCollum. And now I'd like to turn to the chairman of the full committee, my good friend, Chairman Tom Cole. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Chairman Calvert. And good morning to our witnesses, certainly Mr. Secretary General Brown, Under Secretary McCord. It's great to have you here this morning. Iran's missile and drone attacks on Israel and the persistent and aggressive actions of China and Russia are reminders that we need a strong military to deter war, protect U.S. interests, and when necessary, win in conflict. We are witnessing an evolution and warfighting through the proliferation of technology. Small, cheap, and autonomous systems provide regional actors with the ability to threaten their neighbors and endanger the global order. With that backdrop, the Department's fiscal year 2025 request makes tough choices to stay under the Fiscal Responsibility Act Caps. It trades long-term modernization of capabilities to preserve near-term readiness of force. Frankly, like my friend, Chairman Calvert, I'd like to see an increase in defense spending to more completely address these threats. And I certainly, as my good friend, ranking member McCollum said, support the supplemental book for its immediate impact and its long-term assistance in developing, sustaining our own industrial base. However, additional funding would not absolve the Department of its responsibility to deliver capabilities on time and on budget. In that regard, I certainly associate myself with remarks of my good friend, Chairman Calvert. From hypersonic programs to shipbuilding to aircraft like the E-7, I continue to be concerned by the Department's inability to deliver weapons to the warfighter in a reasonable timeframe. Successful weapons system acquisition requires clear standards, adequate funding, competent program management, and a trusting partnership between the Department and industry. It also requires constant communication and transparency with the Congress. These are some of the areas, there are, excuse me, there are some areas, such as munitions, where the Department is working directly with this committee in providing the funding and demand signal necessary to ramp industrial-based production. I'm interested in your thoughts, Mr. Secretary, on how to go a step further and develop surge capacity across the industrial base. This would increase our readiness for whatever the global security environment throws at us. I want to note that the Department is enduring the most challenging recruiting crisis since the creation of the all-volunteer force. The junior enlisted force is the lifeblood of the military and this committee is committed to recruiting and retaining the best America has to offer. There's no shortage of challenges for this department and I look forward to hearing how the fiscal year 2025 budget request addresses those issues. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, Chairman. Gentlemen, your full written testimony will be placed on the record. Please give a brief summary of your statements. Secretary Austin, the floor is yours. Chairman Kellberg, Ranking Member McCollum, distinguished members of the committee. And thanks for the opportunity to testify in support of President Biden's proposed fiscal year 2025 budget for the Department of Defense. Chairman Cole, I look forward to continuing to work closely together as you take the gavel of the full committee. I'm pleased to be joined by our outstanding chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown and by Undersecretary Mike McCord, the department's comptroller. Let me start by thanking this committee for all that you do to support the U.S. military, our troops, and our military families. We began seeing the exceptional skill and professionalism of our forces after Iran's unprecedented and reckless assault on Israel. Alongside Israel and our allies, we had enormous success in defeating Iran's attack. We will continue to stand ready to protect our troops in the region and to support the defense of Israel from attacks by Iran or its proxies. And our commitment to Israel's security is ironclad. And let me be clear, while we've not seen renewed attacks on U.S. forces or facilities, as President Biden has said, we will not hesitate to take all necessary actions to protect our people. Now, let me turn to this year's budget request. Meeting will be suspended. The committee will be in order. The chair notes the disturbance of the committee proceedings. The chair reminds our guests to disrupt the demonstration of the audience in violation of the House rules. Any additional disruptions to the hearing will require law enforcement to remove protesters from the room and restore order. And I will do that. Mr. Secretary, please continue. Thanks, Chairman. As Secretary, I've always been guided by three priorities. Defending our nation, taking care of our people and succeeding through teamwork. Our budget request for fiscal year 2025 will advance all three of these priorities. The committee will stand in recess until the Capitol Police can restore order. Capitol Police, please remove the demonstrators from the room. Committees in recess. Please remove, please remove all protesters from the room. Please remove all protesters from the room. Any additional protests, all protesters will be removed from the room. Committee will come back to order. Mr. Secretary, please proceed. As I said, Chairman, our budget request for fiscal year 2025 will advance all three of the priorities that I mentioned. First, the president's request will invest in cutting edge capabilities across all domains. This includes $48.1 billion for naval and shipbuilding capabilities, $61.2 billion to reinforce U.S. air dominance and $13 billion to bolster Army and Marine Corps combat capabilities. Our request will also provide $33.7 billion to strengthen our space architecture and $14.5 billion to develop and field advanced cybersecurity tools. It will direct $49.2 billion to modernize and recapitalize all three legs of our nuclear triad. And it will sharpen our tech edge through a $167.5 billion investment in procurement and a $143.2 billion investment in R&D. Second, this budget request will support our outstanding troops and their families. That includes raising base pay and housing allowances, investing in better housing, making child care more affordable and funding vital work to prevent sexual assault and suicide in the military. And third, this request will help the department further deepen our teamwork worldwide. Our network of allies and partners remains a strategic advantage that no competitor can match. And you can see its power in our strengthening ties across the Indo-Pacific, in today's expanded and United NATO and in the 50-country Ukraine Defense Contact Group that I convene. Our budget remains rooted in our 2022 national defense strategy. Our request positions the United States to tackle the department's pacing challenge, the People's Republic of China, with confidence and urgency. It will help meet the acute threat of Putin's increasingly aggressive Russia. It will help us tackle the persistent dangers that we've just seen from Iran and its proxies in their attack on Israel. It will help us take on the threats from North Korea, the global terrorists, organizations, and other malign actors. And it will help us continue to deter aggression against the United States and our allies and partners and to prevail in conflict if necessary. Now today I wanna underscore three key messages. First, even as our budget requests abide by the mandatory caps set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, it is aligned to our strategy. We made tough but responsible decisions that prioritize near-term readiness, modernization of the Joint Force, and support for our troops and their families. Our approach dials back some near-term modernization for programs not set to come online until the 2030s. Second, we can only fully reach the goals of our strategy with your help. And I'm grateful that Congress passed the fiscal year 2024 appropriations in March. The single greatest way that Congress can support the department is to pass predictable, sustained, and timely appropriations. My third and final message is that the price of U.S. leadership is real. But it is far lower than the price of U.S. abdication. As the President has said, we're in a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. And our security relies on American strength of purpose. And that's why our budget request seeks to invest in American security and in America's defense industrial base. It's also why the administration has requested nearly $60 billion in the National Security Supplemental for the department. And that supplemental would support our partners in Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. And it would make key investments to increase submarine production. In fact, about $50 billion of this supplemental would flow through our defense industrial base, creating good American jobs in more than 30 states. Now, we are more than two years into the Kremlin's war of aggression against Ukraine. And Putin is betting that the United States will falter, abandon our friends, and leave Ukraine in mortal danger. If the Kremlin prevails in Ukraine, it would embolden would-be aggressors around the globe. And we know that China, Iran, and others are watching what Putin does and how we respond. So we look to our partners in Congress to help us make the investments needed to strengthen American security through both the supplemental and the President's budget requests. The United States military is the most lethal fighting force on earth. And with your help, we're gonna keep it that way. I am truly grateful for your support for our mission and for our troops. And I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. General Brown, you're recognized. Chairman Calford, American member McCallum, Chairman Cole, and the serious members of the committee. I'm honored to join Secretary Austin and Honorable Mike McCord to appear before you today. On behalf of the Joint Force, Department of Defense civilians and our families, I wanna thank Congress for your steadfast support and the opportunity to testify on the fiscal year 2025 defense budget requests, which reflects our shared commitment to national security. The global security environment is increasingly complex. The 2022 national defense strategy identifies five key challenges. The People's Republic of China, our facing challenge, continues its risky behavior around the globe. In newly aggressive Russia, with its unprovoked war against Ukraine, the reckless Iran, who as we saw just this past weekend, attempts to escalate regional conflict with unprecedented attacks in support of proxy forces. It is stabilizing North Korea, which threatens regional security and violent extremist organizations which leverage instability to advance their cause. These challenges are interconnected, which demands a strategic approach addressing the immediate threats, while also preparing for future contingencies. Days after becoming the chairman, I laid out three expectations in my message to the joint force. Learning our war fighting skills has primacy in all we do. Modernizing and aggressively leading with new concepts and approaches and trust is the foundation of our profession. Our military exists to fight and win our nation's wars. We train every day to ensure we are so good at what we do that we deter any adversary from engaging the U.S. in conflict. This budget requests $147 billion to sustain readiness and ensure the department can counter near-term threats. We're also focused on better integrating our allies and partners in our planning and operations by investing in critical programs and capability, expanding security cooperation, exercises, training and interoperability. Our investments in readiness ensure the joint force can respond when the nation calls. While we are focused on our readiness for today, it is critical to modernize and lead with new concepts to prepare for tomorrow. The department continues to invest in capability and capacity to outpace our competitors while transforming from costly legacy platforms that are no longer relevant to the threat. This budget strategically invests in a $1.6, $167.5 billion in procurement, underscoring our commitment to equip the joint force with unparalleled combat capabilities across every domain. This budget also invests $143.2 billion in research, development, tests and evaluation of future capabilities that will retain our strategic edge. Following this budget invest significantly into uniquely modernization, digital innovation, multi-year procurement of critical munitions and a strengthened defense industrial base. With rapidly evolving threats and technology accelerating our modernization is crucial. Lastly, trust is the foundation of our profession. Joint force must build upon and uphold trust in each other, trust with our families, trust of our elected leaders and trust of our nation. Enhancing the quality of service and the quality of life of our personnel is not just a moral obligation, it's a strategic imperative. This budget includes investments in quality of service efforts such as advanced training, educational benefits and career development, while also investing in quality of life projects like housing, medical clinics and childcare facilities, as well as funding spouse employment initiatives, enhance mental health resources and robust programs to combat sexual assault. We must create an environment where all can reach their full potential. Trust that our joint force stands ready, ready to defend our national interests, ready to deter aggression and ready if necessary to fight and win our nation's wars. I thank you for your support and collaboration and our shared commitment to face the security challenges of today and prepare for tomorrow. We are living in consequential times and there is no time to waste. Thank you and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, General. I wanna make sure that each member has a chance to ask questions, so each member will have at least five minutes, five minutes to answer their questions. When your time returns shallow, you have one minute remaining. First, I'll recognize myself. Innovation and rapid fielding to the warfighter has been a number one priority of mine since coming to Congress. There are many efforts underway and I'm encouraged by this momentum. However, as stated before, and I support the Replicator Initiative and no way should Replicator cannibalize from the hedge fund established in 19 and FY24. General Brown, the transition of requirements to capabilities to a program of record is low, not well understood and opaque to warfighters. An industry alike. How will you address this issue during your tenure? Chairman, I appreciate the question and I would also offer I have the same focus on being able to accelerate capability to our warfighters. Part of this dialogue is really the collaboration that I try to do. I know it with the service teams, but how we get engaged with our requirements through our acquisition and through industry to best accelerate each of these capabilities to go from a prototype to production. This also has been very important about the defense and structural base so we can actually make sure we can be able to deliver a capability once we do to identify the innovation and be able to move it much more quickly into the hands of our warfighters. And so it's gonna require leadership, which I'm happy to do, but it's also gonna require for us to have on-time resourcing, constant demand signal, and to build that trust across the spectrum to make sure we bring the capability forward much faster. Well, I look forward to working with you on that. We can make sure that we deliver the funds on time. Secretary Austin, last week under Secretary Hsu inaugurated the transition tracking action group, which will employ advanced analytics to track how the department delivers capability to the field. Will you commit that this effort will be collaborative with Congress and that you'll support its success? Absolutely, Chairman. Again, I commend Ms. Hsu or the honorable Hsu on the things that she's done since we've been together. I think she's done a number of things to include things like Raider and OSC, as you know, to help us bridge the Valley of Death. And the programs that you mentioned or the initiatives that you mentioned are really mutually supportive. And we're gonna continue to do everything we can to move capability as quickly as we can across the Valley of Death and get it into the hands of our war fighters. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Secretary General Brown, under Secretary McCord, the Senate passed is supplemental and it includes funding for allies and partners in UCOM, SENTCOM, and INDOPECOM. As well as much needed humanitarian assistance. Mr. Secretary, I'm gonna ask a couple of questions together. Could you please let this committee know how our allies and partners are reacting to our delays in the enhancement of the supplemental? General Brown, please share with us your military assessment of the situation in Ukraine today and what it looks like for tomorrow. Mr. McCord, we know that the services are utilizing base funds to cover the cost of deployed personnel operating in UCOM and SENTCOM. If we do not enact a supplemental, how will this impact the services, FY24 base activities? So in general, why do we need to pass the supplemental right away and is the United States losing stature in the world community? Thank you, gentlemen. So we will recess and have the disruption removed. Mr. Secretary, you're recognized. Well, thank you, gentlemen. You know, delaying the supplemental sends a terrible signal to our allies and partners and they will question whether or not, you know, we are committed to this cause and whether or not we are a reliable partner. And we have, as you know, we have led every inch of the way in terms of making sure that security assistance is provided to Ukraine. We've united NATO, been instrumental in uniting NATO in ways that we haven't seen. Actually, NATO has expanded. And so I think that American leadership in this endeavor has been really, really important. I think that it's also, you know, the supplemental is also important to us for our security as well. This supplemental invests in our industrial base. As you know, we don't provide funds to Ukraine. The Department of Defense doesn't. We provide materials in terms of weapons, vehicles, munitions, and all of those things are replaced by us and the replacements are designed and built in our industry. And so that means good jobs for people in America. So if that supplemental was passed, when it gets passed, some $50 billion or so would flow through some 30 states here in America. And I think that's really important. And again, the supplemental not only provides support for Ukraine, but it also provides much needed support for Israel and also for Taiwan. Committee will stand in recess until the Capitol Police can restore order. Please instruct the Capitol Police to remove the disruption. Lloyd Austin, you're a liar. You lied to your nation about the genocide of anything. You're a liar. You are a liar. Disregarding U.S. federal court, you say that genocide is good for American jobs. Shame on you. Shame on you. So to sum it up, this supplemental is really important for a number of reasons. And again, it's important to us for our security as well. And it's really important that we have the ability to replenish the stocks in our inventory that will be critical for us going forward. Riki, remember calling me. You asked about my military assessment on Ukraine. And I'll just tell you that Ukraine right now is facing some dire battlefield conditions. And that's partly because they're capability from a resourcing standpoint, from whether it's munitions, whether it's vehicles, whether it's platforms. They're not being outmatched by the Russians. They've had some pretty, the Ukrainians have had some positive gains in the course of the two-plus years that they've been in this conflict, regaining more than 50% of the territory that the Russians seized at the beginning of the conflict. Those hard-fought gains can be lost without our support. And so it's important that we continue to provide them the capabilities that they require. And so why, when I think about this, I think about the supplemental does three things. One, it supports Ukraine's ability to defend itself. It shows, it puts money into our defense industry base, not just for Ukraine, but for many of our allies and partners, because the U.S. equipment is valued around the world. And last, it shows U.S. leadership. I've been in this job six months and I've had about 115 engagements with my counterparts from around the world. And they often talk about U.S. leadership. I can tell you it's wants, it's desired, and the actions we do are sending a message of where our commitments are, and it also is a message to our adversaries. And I think it's important that we continue to show leadership like we've done throughout my entire career, we're in this uniform. And I want to make sure that we do that. Thank you, Member, thank you. Well, the security assistance is, of course, the most urgent, time-sensitive part of the supplemental and cannot be replaced with anything in the base budget. You highlighted the lesser-known part is that the Secretary and the President, of course, can deploy forces quite legally where they choose to, and we've searched forces in Europe the entire fiscal year to date. Navy, in particular, and Centcom the same way. We have incurred over $2 billion in counting of operational costs that if we can't get the supplemental, we'll have to be absorbed in the base budget. We would have to work with this committee and the other committees to try and reprogram funds, hopefully not from direct readiness, but from, if not that, readiness enabling things like facilities maintenance and equipment maintenance. So there is an impact on our forces and our readiness as well if we cannot get the supplemental approved. Thank you, Mr. Cole. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Secretary and General Brown, I wanna ask you if you would. First of all, I wanna compliment you. Thank you for the performance of our forces and your leadership in the recent attack by Iran on Israel. Our personnel were just outstanding and that reflects well, certainly on both of you and our military. What additional things in your professional opinion do we need to do to provide Israel with what it needs to defend itself in the short term? Thanks, Chairman. The most important thing that we can do right now is to pass a supplemental and that will provide us the opportunity to continue to provide security assistance to Israel in terms in the form of air defense interceptors, munitions and things that it critically needs to be able to defend itself. But that supplemental, I would say, Chairman, is truly the most important thing that I would highlight for you. General. Chairman, I'd echo those comments and as I have a chance to talk to my Israeli counterpart and my other counterpart's region, it's important that we provide that capability through the supplemental. But I also think about what it does for us and for our forces and I'll just also highlight, I mean, I couldn't be prouder of the work done by our forces over the course of this past weekend. It shows the professionalism of our force and that's why we had the most combat credible and the most expected force in the world because of events like that. I'd also ask you both, obviously, when we employ our forces in this way, they're exposed themselves to being attacked and we've certainly had plenty of incidents from Iran attacking. So where are we at in terms of force protection for our men and women on the ground that are engaged in these activities? Force protection is of utmost importance to me and to the department and to the president. And we have done a lot in the last several months to reinforce our force protective posture in the region. As you know, we deployed a number of additional assets over the last several months to ensure that we accounted for just about any contingency that could arise and we, as I said earlier, while we know that we haven't seen any additional attacks from Shia militia groups over the last several weeks, we know that that could change in a moment's notice. If it does, then you can expect that we will do what's necessary to protect our troops and we will respond at a time and place of our choosing. Again, I agree with exactly what the secretary said. It's very unfortunate we lost three service members back in January, but the tremendous work by our forces or force protection to be able to respond like we did back at the beginning of February, sent a pretty clear message that we will defend ourselves and as a secretary of the law, we'll continue to do so. Obviously this supplemental has a lot of different components to it. We've talked a lot about Israel and Ukraine, the importance of both of those and I certainly agree and hope we can get that done literally this week, but there's another component portion, of course, and that's directed the Western Pacific, both to our own forces and to Taiwan. Widely known that Taiwan has ordered billions of dollars worth of weapons from our country that haven't been delivered. Can you give us some insight as to the difficulties, why we have not been able to help a country that literally is under enormous pressure from China received weapons that it's actually paid for? This has been an area of focus for us, Chairman. We, from the very beginning, I asked my team to bore into what was causing the delays or is causing the delays and there are a number of things that come together to create those delays and we are working hard to make sure that in every way possible, we do everything we can to speed the process up. I agree with you that this is critical capability that's very much needed by Taiwan and so we're gonna continue to work on this, but it's a complex picture, but nonetheless, we're gonna make sure that we're doing everything we can to move as quickly as possible and we can continue to communicate to our allies and partners where we are in terms of getting them the needed capability and again, I could not agree with you more, this is really, really important. One last question and I'll direct this to you, General Brown. You're very familiar with Tinker Air Force Base, we've talked about it a lot over the years. As you know, the AWACS wing is primarily based out of Tinker and those are really old Airframes E3s. We know we're beginning to try and address that problem, but this is something I've raised in this committee for many, many years. Tell me where we're at in terms of the E7. I am a little disturbed, I think in the department budget we're zeroing out that line. Again, I know you're under a lot of pressure or money for that right now, but let me know where we're at because I do worry with the Russians, this is airborne early warning combat control capability. We have lost a lot of that as we've retired E3s, we haven't been able to replace them anywhere near as rapidly as we should, so give us an update on how we're doing there. Well, Chairman, I'm a little bit removed from my time in the Air Force, but I'll defer to the Air Force to get you some specifics and we'll do that. I'll have that opportunity next week with us. Okay, but one of the things we were really trying to do was first of all, as you know, you gotta buy the green aircraft and then convert it over. And we were looking at the long lead items to make sure we were able to do that, but also at the same time, working with our allies and partners, particularly the Australians who have the platform today and we have airmen in Australia that are training. So not only it's the aspect of getting the capability like you described with the prototype, but also mirroring up our service members so they can operate it as soon as it becomes available. And we'll continue to work very hard to make sure we bring that capability forward as well. Well, I look forward to working with you on that, but I just want to highlight as a matter of real concern. I think this really relates to Chairman Coward's larger point about delivering weapons system on time and on budget. And I think we've got a problem across the board. We've used a lot of, eaten up a lot of our immediate capability on the assumption certain things would be ready at certain time and it hadn't happened. So we have a gap where the capability's gone and we haven't got the replacement online. Worry's me a lot. With that, yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Laura. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, welcome. Sorry, we're kind of hearing hopping this morning. So, I welcome you to the committee. Mr. Secretary, it's well known that the Navy is experiencing significant issues related to shipbuilding and in particular submarines. We know we need more ships, more subs, but we lack the infrastructure and the workforce to stay on track. I want to be clear that the private sector could do more to help. There are delays in several programs, including both the Columbia and Virginia class submarines and a future aircraft carrier. We also have a significant backlog of ship and submarine maintenance, all of which have a footprint in my state. These delays will impact the Navy's readiness and the Navy completed a 45-day shipbuilding review to address some of these issues. And I noted in a recent article here's Sea Air Space and it says that the Secretary of Navy says 45-day shipbuilding review will be followed by another review. Can you share with us your impressions of the findings of the first review, particularly the delays in the Columbia class submarine and how this might impact the shipyard industrial base and what this committee can do to assist you? Regarding the delays, I share your concern. I, as you know, we're requesting to invest in one Virginia class this year versus two. And the reason that we're doing that is because there's a backlog and rather than increase that backlog, the right thing to do in my view is to invest in the industrial base in terms of giving the industrial base the means to expand capacity by recruiting and retaining the right people, making sure that they can strengthen their supply chains. And so in 23 and 24, we asked you for $1.9 billion to invest in the submarine industrial base. And this year we're asking you for in this budget for some $4 billion, excuse me, for the industrial base, for the 25 budget. That's in addition to the 3.3 billion that's included in the supplemental. So as you can see, there's some pretty significant investment in the industrial base. And I think we have to do everything we can to put those resources to good use. Now I met with the CEOs of General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls here recently. And we talked about what their challenges were in terms of workforce challenges and supply chain challenges. And we talked about how we could best use those resources that you are allowing us to invest in. So certainly they are doing things on their own to invest in increasing capacity. And I think the right things are gonna happen is it's gonna take a bit more time. And as you know, because of AUKUS, Australia is also investing in our submarine base. So the amount of money and the amount of resources that we're putting against expanding capacity I think is material. It's real capability. And we have to make sure that we're putting it to good use. I know that industry is serious about it. And again, it's just gonna take a bit more time. I understand and if we could speak offline but the findings of the 45 day review, I understand that and I think the committee has tried to provide resources. But then I just read that we are then looking at additional review to deal with ordering another review to take a deep dive into the opportunities for improvement. I don't know how many dives we need with regard and that's with regard to submarines, how many dives are we going to accommodate here? But I would like to know, I hope the committee would like to know the results of that review, where you think it takes us and what is going on with an additional review of this. And I appreciate your working with General Dynamics and others in getting their view and the Australians. If I can ask you a question about continuing resolutions, I appreciate your comments and your testimony regarding about the importance of passing government funding bills on time to ensure our nation's safety. Keep the industrial base strong, out compete our adversaries. Many of my colleagues speak at length about wanting to achieve these goals, yet as you know, we passed the defense spending bill this year over five months late. I repeat, five months late. I hope that we do not continue to play games with our federal spending process this year. Can you elaborate on the negative effects of continuing resolutions for the Department of Defense, American manufacturers, the industrial base, and for our readiness generally? What would be the consequences of another CR this year, Mr. Secretary? I hope General Brown and Mr. McCorke can chime in as well. Well, the effects of the CRs are significant, especially if you have CRs that last that long. You obviously can't initiate new starts. You lose a lot of time on initiatives. And the one thing that you can't buy back is time. And so over the course of years, these things compound and they add some of the friction that we've been discussing. But again, I think the best way that we can help ourselves is to make sure that we receive an on time budget. And as you know, the budget, our budget request is directly linked to our strategy. So without a budget, we can't execute the strategy to its fullest. And I've been pretty deliberate in asking my staff to maintain course on making sure that everything that we ask for is directly linked to the strategy. And we've done a good job of that over the last three years, but if you don't get a budget on time, you're not executing to your full capability. So it has a significant impact on our ability to do a number of things, but you can't buy back time. Thanks for the question. I'll tell you, I've been a general officer for about 15 years and we spent about a third of that in continued resolutions. And the challenge we have there is, and I'll use this as an example, there's about four hundred things we couldn't do, whether it was new Starks, change our levels of procurement or to do MilCon. And so the concern I have there is that what it does to us is it drives uncertainty, it erodes trust, particularly when we work with our defense industrial base, and then it increased cost and increased time. And we've talked earlier about when we want to deliver capability on time, the best way to do that is have a resourcing on time. But I think the same thing for us as a department is that we have a consistent dimensional, which is why multi-year procurement is another piece that helps that demand signal. It allows the defense industrial base to do their supply chains, have a workforce that has a consensus in employment. And so it's important, all that comes together for our national security, it's really, it's hugely important. Thank you. Of course. As the secretary noted in general roundup, we have now emerged into a pattern over many years of spending about a third of each fiscal year in a CR, which is much more problematic on the acquisition side to go back to Chairman Cole's comments about trying to deliver things on time, our contracting gets delayed. We have a better time managing on the operating side than we do on the acquisition side. In this year, the particular issues were the difference between our request and the CR was about 25 billion. So think about losing $2 billion a month falling behind, hoping that you'll catch that up. But also just given the way that the fiscal responsibility act was written, there was a chance, however, have a remote of a full year CR and full of a sequester. And so myself and others spent considerable time planning for things that didn't happen, which was also a time that could have been used on other, you know, more productively. Just as final comment, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it's, and the ranking member mentioned it a moment ago, this winds up being a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars. And people who care deeply about that should think about this as well as people who care about our national security and are being able to do, you can't buy time. I think that's a critical comment, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. And I think that we would all agree no one on this committee enjoys continuing resolutions. And I hope that we can talk to some of our friends and colleagues over in the other side of the building in the United States Senate. We got our bills done relatively on time. And unfortunately the Senate seems to have it of not passing appropriate. Well, Mr. Secretary. On both sides of the aisle. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, I think we have to talk to people on our side who proclaim that continuing resolution would be great. Even shutdown of the government would be great. I don't think that was. We know and I know and others know that ain't the truth. That's not anybody on this committee. No, hey, I'm not talking about this. Please people shouldn't feel threatened, but it's out there. Thank you. Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, welcome to the subcommittee and General Brown, congratulations on your elevation. First time in front of us. You're with us as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So congratulations and welcome. Let's talk a moment about the ramifications of what we do in Ukraine. Obviously, our most severe noncombatant is absent from the scene, but the ramifications of what we do there or don't do there is heavy. Mr. Secretary, would you care to tell us what you think is the bigger picture, the strategic and moral importance of the situation in Ukraine as it relates with us? You know, what we said from the very beginning, sir, is that we want to see at the end of the day a Ukraine that is a democratic, independent, and sovereign state that has a means to defend its territory and deter aggression. And Ukraine is not asking for us to fight the fight for them. They are asking for us to assist by providing some of the means that they need to protect themselves and defend their territory. And we've done that over the last two years and that's why they are in the place that they are now. I mean, they've defended against a much superior force and not only held their ground, but also taken back some 50% of what Russia, the ground that Russia occupied initially. And I think for a much smaller force, I think that's commendable. But unless they have the, you know, the air defense interceptors, the artillery munitions and other things that they need, it's gonna be very difficult for them to sustain their efforts. Now, if they are not successful to your question, it has ramifications not only for Europe, but for the United States of America. Because we all know that Putin won't stop in Ukraine. This will continue. And, you know, our allies on the Eastern Front there are very, very concerned about that and rightfully so. It will also signal to other autocrats around the globe that the United States is not a reliable partner. And so all of the alliances and partnerships that we've worked hard to develop over the years will be in question in terms of their eyes. So it has significant ramifications. But again, I think Ukraine has done an incredible job of inflicting significant damage on the Russian military with a much smaller force. And they've done that with our help and the help of some 50 nations that we've rallied in their support. Well, with Mr. Putin saying very openly and repeatedly that he wants to restore the old Soviet Union and all of the nation states in Eastern Europe especially, as you have said, are looking to us. And if we fail them, I think it fuels further the belief that Putin will try to succeed in restoring the old Soviet Union. Do you agree with that? Do you agree with that? I absolutely agree, sir. And I think Putin believes that he can wait us out. He believes that the resolve of the Western countries will soon fade and our coalition will fracture. But Putin's wrong. And we're gonna continue to try to find ways to support Ukraine. Let me quickly ask you about landmines in Ukraine. 16 minutes on CBS last week. Did a story about the landmines that have been sold all through Ukraine by Putin and his forces. What can you tell us about that problem? The Russians have made extensive use of landmines and we saw the Ukrainians go up against that last spring as they launched their offensive. And they've done that. The Russians have done that in every place they fought. But in this case, the territory, the terrain is littered with landmines and it will take years to police us up, to clean us up. We are, we've stood up a capability coalition with countries who are volunteering to pool together their capabilities to assist Ukraine in acquiring the right capabilities to address this problem going forward. But it's gonna be something that's gonna require a lot of countries to work together on in the future. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, gentlemen. I recognize Mr. Cole for an announcement. I think probably good news on all fronts. Just want folks to know that the three component bills of the supplemental have been filed. Three, one for Israel, one for Ukraine, one for the Western Pacific. My understanding will be a fourth bill that relates to border security, but those will be the component parts of the supplemental will be considered independently. So just want people to be aware of that. I think that's good news all around. You're back. Thank you, gentlemen, for that announcement. Mr. Rupersberger. Yes, thank you. First thing, thank you all for being here today and for your service to our country. This is a very important time and honorable record. Thank you for all you do and your expertise. You know, we're going through the President's budget and the supplemental. I share your concerns about the current global security environment and the multi-face challenges that we face. Just last weekend, Iran directly attacked Israel for the first time in decades. What happened in the Middle East this past weekend is a snapshot of what happens every day in Ukraine. But right now, Ukraine is running dangerously low on ammunition and other equipment, as you stated before. Without additional aid, I don't see how much longer they can hold out. And amidst all these conflicts, there is China. The National Defense Strategy identifies the PRC as our pacing threat. And while the global security environment is rapidly changing, we continue to be in a great power competition with China. So in that vein, General Brown, can you please describe how China is helping Russia reconstitute its military since its invasion of Ukraine? How is the PRC strategically exploiting the conflict to gain advantage in its great power competition with us? Excuse me, thanks for the question. And so how the PRC is helping Russia is, you know, it's very low level, but by and large, it's by not condemning the acts of Russia invading another country. And how that has impact is the, how the PRC is watching what Russia is doing. They're watching what we're doing. They're doing things to prepare themselves should they decide to pursue any type of conflict in the Indo-Pacific. And so it's hardening their capabilities from an economic standpoint, but also looking at their military capabilities and what they can learn as they watch the current events there in Russia, in Ukraine. Excuse me. Well, thank you for that. It is apparent that it is not helping Ukraine. We are helping China. Now, in March, the Senate passed a national security supplemental that provides foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. It sounds like we're set to consider some version of that in the House, hopefully. Now, Secretary Austin, why is it critical to our own national security that we get additional military aid to Ukraine as soon as possible? If we care about the threat of China, why does it follow that we should also care about Ukraine and whether it wins or loses? Well, thanks, sir. Again, in terms of our own national security, we know that, well, we believe, I believe that Putin won't stop it with Ukraine. I mean, I think he will continue to seek to pull back in some of those countries that were in the former Soviet Union. And I think we can look for significant turbulence in a region going forward if he is successful. We have provided a number of elements to Ukraine and we hope to continue to do that in terms of security assistance. We have to replenish what we've provided. And so having the means to do that, I think, is really, really important for our readiness and our security. And you mentioned China. China, Iran and others are watching what happens in Ukraine. And if the United States proves to be an unreliable partner, and not only will it erode the confidence of our European allies in NATO, but it'll also encourage players like the PRC and Iran to do the kinds of things that they would want to do anyway. So I think this creates more discord potentially in the future, but this is really important. Ukraine matters not just to Europe, it matters to the whole world. This is about the rules-based international order and making sure that a country, a leader of a country can't wake up one day and decide that he's gonna erase the borders of his neighbor and get away with it. I mean, there has to be some kind of international order. Yeah, I'm gonna make this comment. I'm very concerned that certain members of this house are acting as if China is our, I mean, Russia is our ally. And I hope that we can get the facts out that this is a very serious issue. And I wish more people who feel that way in this house would attend this type of hearing to realize how dangerous that is. Thanks, the gentleman for his question. Mr. Womack. Thank you. My thanks to the gentleman before us for their longstanding service to this country. I wanna follow up on the conversation that we were having with the ranking member, the full committee, Miss DeLauro on budget process and on continuing resolutions in this or anything. Secretary Austin, have you ever known Russia to operate under a continuing resolution? I have not, sir, and I've never known China to operate under a continuing resolution. Well, I'm glad you asked that question because my next question was to General Brown. Have you ever known China to operate under a continuing resolution? I have not. So if they have needs, they take care of those needs? Secretary McCord, Kim Jong-un, does he operate ever under a continuing resolution? He does not, Mr. Moa. And I won't bore you with the others. I had listed ISIS-K violent extremist organizations. The fact is adversaries to our way of life into the way of life of free nations all around the globe, they don't operate under continuing resolutions. And they don't threaten to shut their government down. And to me, it places a heavy risk on our men and women who serve in the greatest military on the planet that we would ever consider delaying a budget like we did this past year for five and a half months in the fiscal year, because I think that does endanger our way of life. I'll leave it there. Secretary Austin, the DOD budget request for 25 is capped at a 1% increase compared to 24 under the FRA. It's clear the DOD prioritized increased funding for some services more than others for example, the Army saw a 0.2% increase in funding. The Air Force got 1.1%. Can you outline the risks that we buy in this budget proposal to the Army if we adopt those top line constraints? We, because of the top line, we had to make some choices, but again, we linked our request to our strategy. And these were difficult, but I think prudent choices. And again, as we have worked with the services, I think that the investments that we've made in near-term readiness and modernization and in taking care of our people will pay significant dividends for us in the near to mid-term and in the long-term as well. And we also recognize that in the out years, the top line is gonna have to grow a bit in order to make sure that we maintain pace and speed with modernization. So it is something that we don't take lightly in terms of how we resource the entire force and choices have to be made. The services participate in our deliberations and so again, I think the risks are acceptable at this point in time. General Brown, both of you are keenly aware that joint multinational large-scale training, scale exercises enhance our forces readiness. Can you describe how these exercises help our formations in learning how to integrate at scale and across domains and how the continued repetition set the joint force up for success in the face of conflict? Every time we get to train with it, individually within our services, train as a joint team or train with our allies and partners, it just makes it stronger. And what that does, it allows us to work on our areas of interoperability. It also identifies some areas we can improve upon because we want to continue every time we have an exercise, it's a step away from that exercise and learn something about ourselves as a force that will be applicable to the threat. And so every time we do this, we try to take the lessons learned and they're not just lessons learned or observed, it's how we implement those to ensure that our joint force with our allies and partners can do what the nation asks for but also for our national security and security of our allies and partners as well. So if we were forced to make some decisions, buy some more risk because of budget constraints that we have, where would those joint exercises fall in the list, if you will, of candidates for either scaling back or doing without? Well, in this particular budget, we focused on readiness. And so as the secretary highlighted, we deferred some of the modernization to maintain that readiness. And so one of the responses I have as the chairman of working with the joint chiefs is to balance that risk between our readiness and our modernization. And we take a hard look at all the various exercises. I would also highlight the fact that now because of technology, we can do a fair amount through assimilation and alike, but we're trying to use every tool we can to ensure our readiness and take advantage of the exercise opportunities that we do have. Thank you gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member and to all of our witnesses, Secretary General and Mr. McCorre. Thank you so much for what you all do. I would like to bring your attention to the secretary and General Brown. Want to get your thoughts, what the department looks at sharing information and resources across combat then commands. And in particular, I'm talking about Northcom and Southcom when it deals with the Southern border, what's happening in Mexico. You know very well what's happening there. And I'm talking about drugs and criminal organizations, the amount of money they make, not only in passing drugs, but if you look at what is it, seven, eight million encounters at the border the last three years, multiply that by an average of 8,000 that the Coyote Charges are making billions of dollars to our Southern border. And we have Northcom that has Mexico and then Southcom has everything South, Central America and South. And I want to see how we can get Northcom and Southcom to work better in sharing information and resources because as you know, part of the work that y'all do is the national security and defense of our country also in that particular area. So just want to get your thoughts and we have already talked to both commanders of our Southcom and Northcom and we've asked them if they can align themselves because they're apart, they see Mexico very differently. Just want to get your thoughts on what we can do to get those two commanded areas to work better. Well, thanks, sir, and thanks for your interest in this topic. I do believe that we do a credible job of working together currently. Both commanders are great commanders and I have tremendous confidence in both of them. Having said that, there are always things that we can do to improve our collaboration. And I think this gets to your point. And from my perspective, what I see the commanders doing is just that, finding ways to support each other, finding ways to make sure that there are no gaps that can be exploited, but the environment's dynamic and there will always be a new challenge that presents itself that will require us to develop additional capabilities and also work with allies and partners to develop their capabilities so that they can control and protect their sovereign space. So to answer your question, I do believe that there are always things that we can do better and we will continue to focus on that. Thank you. Yeah, and if I could, I would add is it's not only as Secretary Allen, we've got tremendous commanders but it's also the work that happens between the staffs, between the joint staff, between the staff at South Com and North Com to work in the next level of detail and how things are interconnected and to flatten that communication and using some of the digital tools we have to be able to share information, to visualize, and then also the last thing I'd highlight is just the relationships, relationships within our agency, but also relationships with our partners within both the command commands to get their perspective as well helps us to raise our awareness and have those two commands work better together. Yes, sir. Because we need to see everything south of our border together instead of two, and they both commanders are fantastic. We just wanna see if we can push a little bit more on that. I would ask you also the unity of government is so important. China is just, you know what they're doing in Latin America, they're in almost every country and last night somebody sent me a video and I remember we had gone to El Salvador and the new president at that time wanted to work with us and say we wanna keep China away and whatever happened our relationship with El Salvador, you know, the video that they were showing was this brand new library and they were showing off this new library as you know, China gets involved and right next to them was the Chinese ambassador and some years ago when we went to go see him at a Kodale he was trying to keep China. I guess he felt that the US was not providing the support and guess who's right there with him and that I can name country after country. You know what they're doing down there. So, you know, just showing up and I know you all are doing that. We're working our guard also our state guard that, you know, we have our relationships but I just wanna make sure we got so many problems across the world but we cannot wake up one of these days and right across our southern border, you know, we see the, you know, the work that China and Russia to an extent but mainly China is doing down there. So we appreciate that and the focus that y'all can provide with that. To the point that you're making sir, it does require not only the tremendous efforts of the military but also a whole of government approach and so, you know, a few dollars spent in the right places or invested in the right places can certainly buy us credibility and goodwill access that it's very important to us and also display some other elements that would wanna enter that space as well. Yes sir. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll yield back to Mr. Chairman. Thank the gentleman. I would point out too to Mr. Coyar and we share the same concern on Mexico being in North com, the decision of putting Israel into CentCon turned I think to be the correct decision. Obviously the coordination between Jordan, UAE and other countries within that region approved very valuable during this last encounter with Iran. I think the same thing could happen if we could work out some kind of agreement to put Mexico into South com. With that, I recognize Mr. Carter. Thank you Mr. Chairman and welcome. We're very proud of the service each of you give to our country. General Austin, I understand you had a meeting with the Prime Minister or the Minister of National Defense for the PRC or a conversation at least yesterday. Can you talk about the call and how it went and are there plans to continue dialogues between our militaries and what efforts are we taking to address the unsafe frisky behaviors of the PRC military and prevent conflict in the region? Well, thank you sir. This is very important to us and I think we've seen across our governments we've seen a number of engagements over the past several months including Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury, my call, the National Security Advisor. So we are engaging at a number of levels. This is the first time that I've had the opportunity to engage the new Minister of Defense and of course it's predecessor. We never had an opportunity to talk and that was very disappointing even though we reached out a number of times. You've heard me say sir that I think it's critical that great powers continue to maintain open lines of communication because if we're operating in the same areas if there are a number of things that can happen that could quickly spiral out of control and the inability to talk to senior leadership and make sure that we have the ability to dial down tension I think is really, really important. So the initial engagement I think was really good and we spent an hour talking to each other and I hope to continue that at some point in the future and again the things that we are interested in are making sure that number one, we dial back the unsafe activity that we see in a region, the unsafe intercepts of our aircraft and ships and also the aggressive behavior that we see in a region against our allies and partners and a good example is what we just saw with the Philippines there at Second Thomas show. So we talked about a number of things during that conversation and it's been pretty widely reported but again the most important thing to me sir is that that dialogue is there. Those communication lines are now opening up again and we're gonna try to do everything we can to maintain those open lines of communication. And thank you for that. Your budget is based on strategy. The FY25 budget concludes $9.9 billion for the PDI. However, there are concerns that we are not investing fast enough in the region. Could we be moving faster with investments in that region or do you feel we're doing enough and our investments we are making are they gonna be enough to deter China? Thanks sir and let me again thank you for your support over the years for PDI. Your rights are we're asking you for $9.1 billion in this 25 budget. Over the last couple of years we've asked you for some $20 billion plus in support of PDI. We're investing in those things that are achievable, things that we can actually accomplish in a time period that we want to accomplish them in in the near term. So improving infrastructure, enabling our forces to be forward position in theater making sure that we have the ability to continue to conduct exercises and invest in the right things. I think there are always things that we, additional things that we can go after but I think we've made the right choices in investing in things that we can actually achieve here in the near term. Well thank you, I visited that region once I'm gonna do it again probably in August. I have real concerns so thank you very much. Thank you gentlemen. I'd like to briefly pause the precedence to recognize our newest member of the subcommittee and my friend from Tennessee, Chuck Fleischman just joined us. Chuck was chairing his own hearing over an energy and water subcommittee with the Army Corps of Engineers this morning. Good luck with them. So he couldn't be here this morning but Chuck welcome to the defense subcommittee pleased that Chairman Cole appointed you and look forward to benefiting from your dedication and knowledge. Thank you Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. That's to recognize Mr. Aguilar. Thank you Chairman Calvert. Mr. Secretary many of us in Congress are committed to passing this national security supplemental Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan giving our allies the security assistance that they need to combat the threats that you've discussed posed by Russia, the PRC and violent extremist actors that threaten global peace and stability. We've been asking for this vote for a number of months in light of what the chairman of the full committee said and I'd just like to offer to the chairman of the full committee it's our hope and our side genuinely hopes that we have an opportunity to vote on this this week and that other extraneous pieces of this aren't part of it. So from a speed perspective we can deliver this aid as quickly and as soon as possible. It would be unfortunate if that was held up with other additional votes that weren't germane to our national security and the importance of helping our allies. General Cavoli told the authorizers earlier this week in open session that the side that can't shoot back loses. If Ukraine cannot shoot back to take out drones they won't be able to hold the line and Putin could be able to take more land. The US is obviously the main supplier of air defense and artillery shells. Mr. Secretary is it fair to say if we don't pass the national security funding that we can't provide those artillery shells to help combat Russia and from a timeliness perspective can you put a finer point on what the next few weeks means for our ally in Ukraine? You know what we've done is try to invest in our industrial base to increase our capacity to produce artillery munitions and other things. And so what we've asked for in the supplemental some of that is focused on increasing capacity in the industrial base. And if we fail to do that then it's very difficult for us to keep pace with the requirements there. In terms of what happens going forward and how long Ukraine will be able to sustain its efforts. I think we're already seeing things on the battlefield begin to shift a bit in Russia's favor. We're seeing them make incremental gains. We're seeing the Ukrainians be challenged in terms of holding the line. They're doing a very good job, a credible job but in order to continue to do that they're gonna need the right materials, the right munitions, the weapons to be able to do that. So passing this supplemental is absolutely critical and our request is that we pass it as quickly as possible because time matters. And Putin again is trying to exploit this time period where there's doubt created about the US's resolve. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. General, I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of building off of what Judge Carter's question about the PDI aside from obviously the importance of the national security request that we've been talking about or pleased, all of us have been pleased to see the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the European Deterrence Initiative contained within this proposal. Can you elaborate on the effectiveness and how the department and how you plan to implement plans to execute funding for the PDI? As the Secretary described, the PDI is gonna allow us to build out capability within the region so we can posture our forces. So some of that's in mil-cont, military construction, some of it's in weapons capability but it's also things we can do to work with our allies and partners. And I'll just tell you I was the Director of Operations for the United States Air Force in Europe. I got there a week after the Russian won in the Crimea and watched how the European Defense Initiative came about to better posture ourselves for today's current events. I think the PDI will do the same thing and ensuring we're doing all the things to prepare ourselves for a potential future conflict and the key role there is to be so good at what we do that we deter a future conflict and this is where PDI is gonna help us to be able to do that. Thank you, thank you, General. Yield back, Mr. Chairman. Well, we'll all have a chance to vote on the supplemental on Saturday night. With that, Mr. Diaz-Ballard. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for your service. I really have one point and then two questions. So first point is that history is full of dismal failures that are never forgotten, you know, peace in our time. After Putin invades Georgia, that infamous reset by the then Obama, Biden, Clinton administration, and then recently, Mr. Secretary, I've seen a very catchy word that's been used to try to dissuade our adversaries and Iran's proxies. Don't, don't, don't. Unfortunately, that has been met by another, I guess our adversaries have been using another phrase, which is just do it and they've been doing it. It's pretty evident that they feel that they can do so with hardly any real consequences. So here's the question. And this may require maybe a skiff to talk about it. First question is, are there going to be serious consequences to those who did not listen to all of the don't, don't, don't, don't words from the administration and have done it? And including obviously we know that some of our GIs have died. Question number one. Question number two is this. At present, the current future years defense program indicates that the Air Force reserve plans is to divest in the F-16 program at Homestead Air Reserve Base through 2028. I don't have to tell you all of how China feels emboldened and they are making strides in this hemisphere, in our own hemisphere. While they don't have a base yet, they do have things that are starting to look like bases. You know, refer to Argentina as an example. And so Homestead is the closest defense against any potential future hostile action. So in light of this divestiture plan, can you confirm whether recapitalism, I can't even say that, recapitalization efforts are being considered to ensure that the continuity and enhancement of air combat capabilities at this key facility. Shouldn't we look at frankly Homestead's mission with F-35s rather than continuing with the older F-16 post block upgrades? Again, we use Homestead. We always think of Homestead Air Reserve as a place that's essential for emergencies, for hurricanes, et cetera. But I will argue that when you look at what's happening in this hemisphere, I think we need to be a little bit more concerned about what Russia, China, et cetera is doing in this hemisphere. So two questions and I appreciate hearing from you all. Thanks, sir. Well, first of all, Homestead is an important base because of its location and it gives us reach that I think is pretty important. And so Homestead's gonna, the plan for it is to be in the inventory for some time. So if you're asking as to whether or not we're closing down Homestead, the answer is no, that's not in the current plans. And then I'll let the Air Force speak to some of those specifics there in terms of what's planned for the future. Regarding consequences and what people have learned from what's happened here in the Middle East here recently. Iran did launch an unprecedented attack against Israel from Iran with an unprecedented number of weapons. What it should learn from that is that not only does Israel have the ability to defend itself against significant challenges, but its allies, principally the US, has significant capabilities as well. And so what you saw come together there in defense of Israel, I think was quite remarkable. And again, that doesn't happen at the 11th hour. That happens because countries are working together making sure that we have the right procedures and processes in place to enable us to do that. And the skill of our pilots and the ability to pass information between countries and share insights on balance rates. I think all of that came together the way it was supposed to come together. And General Carilla and others have been working on this issue for quite some time. And I think you saw some of the outcomes on Saturday night. But what Iran should learn is that number one, their assumptions are wrong. And number two, we're going to do what's necessary to help in the defense of Israel. Mr. Secretary, I get that I'm running out of time, but the key here though is that the administration, you, the president said, don't, don't, don't, don't. To a number, it wasn't just Iran, it was their proxies. And what they did is did, did, did, did, did, did. And what I'd like to hear from you again, it probably, this may not be the place. What are going to be the specific consequences for those who basically thumbed their nose at the president of the United States, at you, at others in the administration, when you said don't, they said did. And I hope that we were able to see some serious consequences. Because otherwise with all due respect, just like peace in our time, just like the reset, that's going to be one of those words that will be kept for history's sake as frankly a very sad joke. I'm out of time, I yield back. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being with us. Naval Hospital Bremerton in my district closed its labor and delivery unit in April of 2022. As a result of the military health system downsizing several military treatment facility capabilities in staff. In my neck of the woods, the local healthcare network has simply been unable to manage the additional patient load and it is unrealistic to have our service members travel all the way to Madigan Army Hospital which is 43 miles away, not to mention having to cross a toll bridge for consistent general and maternal care. Without continued pressure on DHA to expedite reassigning additional personnel to the Naval Hospital and reopening the labor and delivery unit, healthcare for our sailors and their families will continue to deteriorate. These shortages are unacceptable and dangerous at a critical time when the Navy plans to expand its missions and maintenance in the region and when the DOD recently announced the stabilization of the military health system by bringing patients and families from the heavily referred off base providers back to understaffed MTFs. With this in mind, have you discussed the impacts of these personnel shortages on our sailors readiness with DHA? We have, sir. And we've also discussed it with the services and to the point that you're making, we do need to make sure that we invest in our healthcare system by making sure that we have the right personnel on board and the right numbers to be able to provide that service that our service members and families expect. So with that in mind, do you plan on urging DHA to reassign personnel to Naval Hospital Bremerton to respond to the significant degradation of care in Kitsap County? We're looking at rebalancing our footprint across the board and of course that's a part of it, but we're taking a holistic look at this. And as you know, we complied with congressional guidance in terms of consolidation of resources and that sort of stuff. But as we look at this and as we endeavor to make sure that our families and our troops and our families are getting the right kind of healthcare, it requires that we relook some of the assumptions and relook some of the manpower allocations that we've made in the past and we're doing it. I am making a personal plea that you look at this specifically related Naval Hospital Bremerton and labor and delivery. I can tell you stories that I've heard from sailors and from their families that are heartbreaking and it is as a consequence of these decisions that have been made. I understand tough decisions have to be made and sometimes there's the wrong decisions and we can make this right. I will tell you we're also working on a bill called the Midwives Act, which would direct the DOD to establish a five year pilot to evaluate the use of professional midwives under the TRICARE program to help alleviate some of these challenges. I hope that we can work with you and your team to secure that bill through the NDA this year and just wanted you to be aware of it. The time I left, I wanted to talk to you about our public shipyards, obviously a critical part of maintaining the readiness of our submarines and our carrier fleets. Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is in my district. We've discussed the importance of the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, which is a multi-year, multi-billion dollar effort to upgrade our four public shipyards. Puget faced significant seismic risk and had to go to work quickly to repair three of the highest priority dry docks this past year. My question for you is, how can Congress provide the resources to ensure that the PSIOP remains on track while also addressing ongoing seismic mitigations and additionally, how close is the Navy to a decision point on the construction of the multi-mission dry dock M2D2, understanding how this is going to impact programming and planning for the necessary work? Well, in terms of what Congress can do to help us stay on track, I think we've already talked a great deal about that and that is getting the on-time appropriations. Even though, as you pointed out, we've invested, we've decided to invest billions of dollars into PSIOP. It doesn't matter unless you get those appropriations on time and you can start the construction and that sort of stuff in a timely fashion. So your help in supporting that, I think, would be much, much appreciated. In terms of the Navy's decision process, I'll let the Navy speak to where they are specifically and how close they are to a decision and I'll make sure that Secretary Daltoro and his team get up to brief you on where they are. Great. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and thank you, Chairman. I'll go back. Gentlemen, Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. Secretary Ross, I'd like to follow up a little bit on what my colleague, Mr. Womack, brought up before in just wondering what are the current industrial capacity limits for producing key weapons and equipment, including precision guided munitions and how quickly could industrial capacity for producing key weapons in that equipment be increased? Clearly, there are limits in each line of each munition, each weapon system is different and we have worked with industry for those, on those critical items, things like javelin, artillery munitions, artillery pieces to expand capacity and to increase production rate as rapidly as possible. Because of a number of challenges, this is not instantaneous and there are some clear lessons learned here. If we want to be able to expand rapidly in the future, we need to think about how we're doing things and whether or not there are certain processes in the overall system that we can compress where there are things that we can buy ahead to be able to have on hand so that we can rapidly expand production. Those are the kinds of things that we're working with the industry on, but it will vary by munition, by weapon system, but what you've done in terms of providing us additional procurement authority, multi-year procurement authority has been very, very helpful in sending the right signal to the industrial base. And again, I think we're gonna need support, that support that's baked into the supplemental to be able to continue our work in expanding the industrial base capacity there, but it is critical. This is work that me and my acquisition and sustainment undersecretary are focused on routinely and we're also working with allies and partners to get them to expand their industrial base as well. Our acquisition and sustainment undersecretary meets routinely with European counterparts to talk over issues of how we can consolidate efforts and expand lines of production and that sort of stuff. And that's having some effect, but again, it's not instantaneous, it's gonna take time. Thank you. And certainly as we do plead our resources to help our allies, we wanna make sure we have that readiness available for you at all times. General Brown, let's be taking place over in China. We continue to see them continue to make illegal and illegitimate sovereign claims over maritime areas in autonomous regions. In the South and East China seas, China has conducted island building campaigns to expand their exclusive economic zones and they've militarized those islands with new ports, airstrips, bunkers, radars and jamming stations that are deploying advanced anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. How are you working at concert with our allies and partners to counter China's continual steps and to acquire an increasing presence in areas where they have no legitimate or legal claim? Well, the best way for us to do this is challenge those claims and it's the operations we do throughout the South China Sea, the East China Sea with many of our allies and partners, a good example of that is how we support the Philippines in their resupply of the Second Thomas Shoal. It's the air operations and the maritime operations we do throughout the region. I would also highlight to you having spent time as the Commander of Pacific Air Forces and watched over the past really six years the growing strength of our partnerships with many of our allies and partners in how they are adjusting their visions, their strategies, international defense strategies to line to counter what the PRC is doing in the region and all that together is a way for us to push back and it's not only what we do from a military standpoint but also with the rest of our government and the other governments from an economic standpoint and how that plays into the counter what the PRC is doing in that part of the world. Thank you, I yield back, Mr. Chair. Thank the gentleman, Mr. Case. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I appreciated the dialogue you had with my colleagues earlier on the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. I've been asking questions in our hearings this year to try to figure out what PDI actually means and I have to admit I'm a little more confused than when I started. If it is meant as a itemization of or a confirmation of focus on China and the Pacific, clearly 9.9 billion is not that. So it's not supposed to be a summary of how good we're doing in terms of a budget against the China threat and our big picture response. If it's meant to be kind of a more of a short-term laundry list for things that we need, isolated things that we need to be doing in conjunction with Ancillary to a specific part of our budget, I can understand that but when I take a look at the PDI list that we have for this year are clearly some things I think fit into that category but others, for example, weapons acquisition, it seems to me should be kind of more of a base budget as opposed to PDI quantified. So it's not necessarily a question, just an observation and I'm not sure what it means nowadays and I'd love to work with, we've had some answers have been to the effect of, well, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, it's accounting, if it had an OCO style component to it, if there was more flexibility in the Indo-Pacific region to apply it to things like campaigning, maybe it would work better, but I think it's a kind of a work in progress and I'm not sure it's exactly matching what we're trying to achieve but that's more of a rhetorical statement. My question has to do with this comment, I think we all realize in spades that whether wherever in the world it is, we can't do this alone, we shouldn't do this alone, we're not going to do this alone and we need to have our partners and allies be full contributors along the way, full participants, we certainly have seen this in Europe as you pointed out in your opening statements and we've seen a real increase in the Indo-Pacific as well and an important component of that, I think we would both agree is, I guess what we euphemistically call campaigning, so the sum total of the connections that we develop with other militaries throughout the region, throughout the world, joint training exercises, interoperability, that whole range. I wondered if you might just give some comment to how that's going with specific regard to the Indo-Pacific, where we clearly have needs with key allies such as Japan and Korea and the Philippines, of course, here this week, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond, but also I was concerned with whether this budget does give sufficient attention to the overall area of connections between our military, strengthening those bonds, giving them the resources, the tools, the training, the incentives to undertake a greater share of the overall defense. I did note that, for example, in Indo-Pacom's unfunded priorities, they came in, one of their highest unfunded priorities was about half a billion for campaigning, so I just wondered if that's how Indo-Pacom feels about campaigning and I value their input, why didn't that get into the base budget or where does campaigning stack up? How do you think it's going and how do you think we fund it properly? I think, sir, as the chairman indicated earlier, you know, these operations and exercises are fundamental to our readiness and you see us investing some $147 billion into readiness. That's a decision that we made in light of the fact that there is a cap on the top line, so we chose to invest in readiness and some modernization and also taking care of our people. In terms of the kinds of things that we're doing in the region, you live in the region, so you're witnessing this firsthand. We probably have the best relationship that we've had with Japan in a very, very long time. We see Japan investing in a significant way in its own defense. We see them investing in long-range strike and other things and they're looking to work with us to co-produce certain items. We have a great relationship with the Republic of Korea and we're working with the ROK and Japan in a trilateral fashion to ensure that we can share missile early warning data and that's going really, really well and we saw recently two leaders of those countries conduct a summit with the President here in the United States, the Philippines. Three years ago, the Philippines were about ready to decide to not allow our troops to remain in the Philippines. You fast forward to today and we have probably one of the best relationships with the Philippines that we've seen in a long time and we just had President Marcos here and again we opened up four new sites where our military can work with his military on a number of issues and those sites are in addition to what we already had. Australia, we just put in place a generational initiative here that I think is gonna continue to provide tremendous capability to our allies in the region and to us, quite frankly, this is the office initiative. Again, this provides Australia with a nuclear-powered conventionally armed submarine capability. It will take years to put all the things in place but we are moving out and that's progressing very, very well and we're also working with Australia to do a number of things in terms of potentially co-producing long-range strike and some other things. India, we have a great relationship with India. We recently have enabled India to produce a jet engine in India and that's kind of revolutionary and that'll provide a great capability to them and we're also co-producing an armored vehicle with India. So all of these things when you add them up are probably more than we've seen happen in that region in a very, very long time and they all promote interoperability and they all help to increase our ability to respond to a number of different things but again, these are real meaningful steps that I think we've taken in a region that I think a lot of people are not aware of but we have made tremendous progress and we'll continue to do so. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you all for the gentleman for your service to our beautiful country, General Brown. Congratulations, pretty good for a Viper guy to be where you are right now. I see our biggest near-term tactical threat is our open Southern border and obviously the biggest strategic threat which I treat as an existential threat to our country being China as well as our debt but that's not your fault. I don't think we have a capability gap. I think we have the high-end exquisite technology in most domains but I do see us losing the lead or having lost the lead in several domains in terms of capacity and I'm encouraged by hearing that I think we're all aligned on the problem set and the challenges that we have. We have some obviously readiness and end-strength issues especially in executing and finishing this pivot to the Pacific that we've been talking about for almost 20 years now. We need to actually execute that, complete that and deter war before China gets aggressive against Taiwan. And I think the bottom line is that whether the number is 825 billion or 850 billion we've got to make it behave like a trillion dollars relative to what we are trying to accomplish here and get those efficiencies. I think any investments and your spot on, the CRs are the most deleterious move that we can do in that regard but I think beyond the CRs, if we're gonna make investments in our industrial base we also have to make sure that we're streamlining, contracting and valuing speed as a measure of merit out of the Pentagon and I don't think we have that right now. You all know my number one priority is our troops, especially our junior enlisted E1 through E6. They are the most precious, they're the most potent and they're the most powerful weapon system that we have. Without them the B21 is nothing, the Columbia class submarine is nothing and our nuclear triad is futile. So last year we missed our recruitment numbers, retention numbers by a net 41,000 personnel recruits to cross all the services. I was encouraged that the president signed my military licensing, spouse licensing relief act into law. I think that helps. And this committee did God's work last year. We passed out of Hack D, a bill that took the starting salary for an E1 from $22,000 to $31,000, which is the equivalent of $15 per hour. Unfortunately the Senate stripped that out and their version and the NDA ended up coming back to us without that pay raise. And so recognizing the challenges that we have, recognizing that our troops are our most precious weapon system and I wanna push on this issue of base pay again because right now even with the raise that we got in the NDA last fiscal year, the one we just signed, the E1 is now starting at $12.80 an hour. In California we just started a $20 an hour minimum wage. Okay, so for the DOD to be competitive in most states, but especially in states like California and Virginia, it's very difficult to keep up. BAH and BAS aren't keeping pace with the market values. And so I'd like to submit, Mr. Chairman, for the record or review of the basic pay table in support of the 14th QRMC without objection. Without objection, we're gonna stick to our five minutes because the Secretary has to leave. Okay, sorry. What I'm asking for, Mr. Secretary, is a commitment to help get our troops above the poverty line, above that $15 minimum wage. The President threatened to veto the hack D bill because of this pay raise that we put in our hack D bill. He was citing the QRMC as the reason he wanted to wait for that. The QRMC has come out and validated the findings and said that our hack D bill is the right path forward. Can we get a commitment from you that you will help us get our junior enlisted E1 starting salary above $15 per hour in the next year or so? As you would guess, this is a very important issue to me. And so taking care of our people is something that I'm always focused on. I wanna thank you and your colleagues for supporting 5.2% pay raise for our troops. That's the largest pay raise in 20 years. And before that, the year before that, we had a 4.6% pay raise. And in this budget, we're asking you 4.5% pay raise. So my goal is to reduce the costs that our troops and families are facing and increase the resources, whether it's childcare, whether it's prices in the commissary, a number of things that we've done. And you're right, BAH is a thing that we're focused on to try to make sure that we're coming close to keeping pace and keeping pace. But the market in certain areas is pretty dynamic. And it's no easy task to keep pace. But we will remain focused on that. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We can get a written response on that. I know you've committed to getting us a compensation review to us as soon as possible. We'd love to have it as soon as possible before we can review that for the FY25 proposal. That, Ms. Captain, recognized for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry to be late. We had our own hearing. Secretary Austin, great to see you. Welcome. Your written testimony rightly states the world of chaos and conquest that Putin seeks, one in which autocrats think they can rewrite borders by force, would leave the United States far less secure, unquote. You understand what is fully at stake at this pivotal moment in Ukraine, Central Europe, and indeed, the free world. Generations of immigrants from Central Europe sought security on our shores. I am a descendant blessed by the survival of our grandparents' struggle to escape Bolshevik Russia. Yet many Americans appear not to fully know the history of Central Europe and what is at stake today. What are you and the Department of Defense doing to better communicate to the American people the gravity of the current real threat to the free world represented by an armed Russia, the third largest military in the world? And then secondly, do you have any concerns that the defense medicine in your department could be compromised by the complete growing dependence of our country on imports of pharmaceutical ingredients from foreign countries, some of which are adversaries? Thank you. So in terms of what we're doing to communicate on this issue, we seize every opportunity to point out how important this is to us in terms of our national security, how important this is to us for our defense industrial base. And the fact that Ukraine matters not just to Europe, but to the entire world. And this is about the real space international order. And again, as I've heard me say a couple of times this morning, the rest of the world was watching. And they're watching to see whether or not the United States of America is gonna be a dependable partner or not. And if it's not, then that's gonna change their behavior. If it's one of our adversaries, they will feel emboldened. If it's one of our allies or partners, they will then question whether or not they can depend on us when times are tough. And so this is really important to us. But I think that Ukraine has done a commendable job in terms of protecting its sovereign territory, taking back some of the territory that the Russians have taken and holding their own. And they've done that because of the security assistance that we and 50 other countries have provided to them. They haven't asked us to fight for them. They just ask for help in terms of security assistance. And so I think the right thing to do is continue to do that. On defense medicine and the pharmaceuticals being used in theater by our own soldiers and the purchase by the Department of Defense of Pharmaceuticals, what are you doing to assure their purity? Well, the help of our troops, again, is important to us. And if there is a threat here of us not having the pharmaceuticals that are up to speed and certainly that's something that we will delve into. But I will get back to you on that issue. Thank you very much and thank you for your service. Thanks to General Lee, Mr. Elsie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you gentlemen for being here. He left, but I wanna point out that Steve Womack and I don't like each other very much on one day. And that's Army Navy Day. But we're very good friends other than that. I would argue with General Brown that my Super Hornet will kick your tail in a fighting Falcon. I know you like to call it a Viper. But for most of the days, and it is as it is today, we should all be united. Mr. Secretary, you and I on social issues probably don't agree on a single thing. But today is April 17, 1940 in my mind and I'm on your side because the winds of war are already blowing overseas in a way they haven't in 80 years. We have four dictatorships, all of which are involved in genocide, Iran genocide of the Jews, Russia genocide of the Ukrainians, China genocide of the Uyghurs, and North Korea wants to redefine their relationship with the South through armed combat. I wish it was April 17, 1946 when we could talk about cuts, but we can't. Furthermore, I would argue that we're already at war on our Southern border against the cartels because they're killing wartime numbers of Americans 200 a day from fentanyl poisonings, which in my mind is a weapon of mass destruction on a chemical basis aided by China controlled by the cartels. In addition, we're losing that many number of people that you're trying to recruit that need to be going to the police force, to the reserves, to teaching, to having families in this country. You're in a struggle against a group that is being killed at wartime numbers, not seen since World War II. We should be on a wartime footing in this country right now. So the border is an issue, but those four regimes that I just talked about make it look like it's April 17, 1940. And we've been fortunate enough to see a constellation of stars on shoulders this week. And what they've all told us from the Yukon commander, he says he needs EW and AEW. They're not building any 18 Growlers anymore. We need more of them. The Israelis need tankers. I talked about that in June when we went there before October and talked about that with the prime minister. Indo-Paycom and the Marines need contested logistics capabilities with C-130Js and their landing ship medium. In Ukraine, most of the money that we're going to spend goes to weapons for us. You know, we won World War II with Liberty ships. And this LSM that the Marine Corps needs 35 of and identified that in 2022 would have cost 100 million a piece. The requirements got in the way. And here we are two years later. We still don't have them. They've got ballooned up to $350 million because the requirements office. We won't get them until 2027. And that's assuming we pass these spending bills. If we go on a CR, now we're in 2028 when we've identified that Xi Jinping wants to act before 2027. So in the supply and manage equip realm I would say that our acquisitions process is broken. We need to be on wartime footing. We need to bypass some of the requirements that we have. Otherwise we would have had a presidential halo by now. We would have had an LSM by now. F-35 wouldn't have been so costly and our newest version of the aircraft carriers wouldn't be three years behind and billions of dollars over budget. Because I'm a little worried about what we have right now. We're not ready for the war that looks to be looming and I'm interested in preventing that. So I would like to hear from you, General Brown, how you feel about the EW need because they're not making any more growlers but the line is about to close on the Super Hornet. If we lose an aircraft carrier and we don't have any growler capability all that EW need goes away. We're losing our E3 capabilities. So how do you feel about the EWAEW need right now? Well let me start out with what you just laid out as far as the sensor energy that's required and understanding where the threat is. And EW is an area that we've watched that threat increase and we haven't had to deal with it for the past couple of decades and we need to up our game in this area. Doesn't necessarily have to be a growler but I do think we do need to approach this with seriousness on our focus on EW, on tankers, on munitions, the range of capability and capacity that we need in order to be able to address all the challenges you've highlighted. Thank you for that answer. And as far as the LSM goes, we need a high priority for that because that's specifically needed for the Marine Corps. The requirements office needs to drop its opposition and the raising of cost because we don't have the money to deal with that. We won on Liberty ships that didn't have requirements, didn't have shock trials. We need to move forward in the time I have remaining. If article five happens and we lose Ukraine and they step one foot in Poland, the FRA is out the door. The investments we're making in Ukraine are small for the return on investment that we're getting for the Ukrainians to fight on our behalf is a small amount of money. And they're doing it for us. The last thing I want is for Americans to die on a hill in Poland when the Ukrainians are willing to do it for themselves with our help. I yield back. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Fleischman. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you again for your kind words. Welcome to this subcommittee. I want to also thank Secretary Austin, General Brown and Mr. McCord for their testimony today. As the chairman alluded to, I chair the Energy and Water Subcommittee of Appropriations. Ms. Captor and I, she's my ranking member. We just had the Army Corps before us but we fund the Department of Energy and as part of that funding of the Department of Energy, the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration. We are responsible for funding our nation's nuclear arsenal for the ultimate customer, the Department of Defense. And I represent the people of the Third District of Tennessee, gentlemen, that encompasses the great city of Oak Ridge, birthplace of the Manhattan Project, Y-12 National Security Complex. We're also building the uranium processing facility. So I'm working very, very heavily in the nuclear sector. In that regard, I'm gonna address my one question today dealing with our nation's nuclear deterrent. Right now, the NNSA defense programs are intertwined with the defense department's programs replacing all legs of the triad. And I'm very thankful for that. It will come as no surprise that I have concerns given we see that Russia has essentially fully recapitalized its nuclear forces, China, rapidly expanding its numbers and fielding a triad of its own. And the looming prospect, sadly, of a nuclear Iran. We also face the termination of Newstart in less than two years. We're entering uncharted territory dealing with potentially two pure nuclear adversaries as we're in the middle of recapitalizing our entire deterrent. My question, gentlemen, is, given this troubling strategic threat picture, I'm interested in hearing your outlook on the current pace of recapitalization of our nuclear deterrent. Are there any ways we in Congress can better support the department's efforts to meet this increasingly tight deadlines? And with that, I will wait your response. Well, let me begin by thanking you for what you've done to date. As you know, over the course of this administration, we've requested to invest some $149 billion in the modernization of our nuclear program. It is a bedrock of our defense, our nuclear triad here. And I personally believe that all three legs are important. And I think that we should continue to invest in the modernization of all three legs. Now, because of the fact that we're now faced with two major nuclear countries or potential adversaries, conditions have changed. And whether or not we're gonna need to do more in the future is something that we're gonna have to consider. But I think following through with our current modernization program is the right thing to do. And again, I support you for what you're doing to support. I thank you for what you're doing to support us. And again, I think we should maintain course and speed here. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And I will say, we work bipartisan. We have the Nuclear Security Working Group. We work with the NNSA. We want to link up and work very closely with the Department of Defense so that we can have them make sure that our ultimate customer of you all are pleased with what's going on. We will continue to fund that, I think in a bipartisan and bicameral way. I will close by saying this again, thank you to each and every one of you all for your tremendous service to our country. I did mention I represent Oak Ridge. I'm very proud of that great city. But my home city, which I'm not native to actually, is Chattanooga, Tennessee. I would let everyone here know that we are going to be having our 75th uninterrupted Armed Forces Day Parade. Secretary, I know we have reached out to you. I will ask you to maybe contact me offline in that regard. Uninterrupted, I would maintain that Chattanooga is probably the most patriotic city in America. Our veterans are near and dear to us as our great men and women who are serving our armed forces today. And with that, I will yield back. I thank the gentleman and thank the general lady from Minnesota for her interest in this and doing the great job that she does. And I want to thank all three of you for your service. And before we conclude, I want to thank you for your testimony. And also if you have any members who have any questions for the record, I ask the witnesses respond in a reasonable period of time. With that, thank you. The subcommittee is adjourned.