During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) discussed recent recruitment changes in the nation’s joint forces.
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NewsTranscript
00:00So I'm going to begin with just a line of questions.
00:03By the way, it's great to have our chairman
00:04of the full committee here.
00:06Shows the importance of this subcommittee
00:08and the topics we're tackling today.
00:11I will begin my questioning for all six witnesses.
00:16So please try to be brief.
00:19It's going to focus on bad news, good news, and flexibility.
00:24So what do I mean?
00:25You've already touched on it, General Spain.
00:27You did a good job.
00:28The CR, I think from a readiness standpoint,
00:35none of us think this is helpful.
00:37What would be worse, in my view, is a government shutdown.
00:41So the impact of the CR.
00:43And then very importantly, and General Mingus,
00:45you and I had the opportunity to talk about this yesterday,
00:48flexibilities that you would like
00:52us to provide you and the future NDAAs on budgeting.
00:58That's a topic that when we deal with these CRs,
01:01unfortunately it's been a way of life for our military
01:03for many years.
01:05It's a failure on the part of Congress.
01:07But what kind of flexibilities do
01:09you need to be more ready that you could use?
01:14And this could be very broad or very specific.
01:17And then the good news, very quickly,
01:21we've had a turnaround in recruiting.
01:24I think it has a lot to do with some of the comments
01:27I made in my opening statement, where the last four years
01:30our military was not focused on lethality and war fighting
01:33and why young men and women join to fight and defend
01:36their country.
01:37It was focused on other stuff, irrelevant stuff.
01:41And it hurt recruiting.
01:42Why do you think, where are you on recruiting,
01:45and why do you think there's been such a dramatic turnaround?
01:49So those are the questions I'd like each of you to answer.
01:52We'll start in the lineup here.
01:54General Mingus, if you can hit on all three of those.
02:01Thank you, Chairman.
02:03A full year-long continued resolution impact, yes,
02:08to the degree and the severity is unknown,
02:10as was kind of talked about earlier,
02:12based on the anomalies that come out of this.
02:14The puts and takes in the various lines in the budget,
02:17what is plussed up and not, will have
02:19to take a couple of days to kind of fully,
02:22if it is actually enacted before the end of the week,
02:25the true impact.
02:26But new starts, spending limits, spending power,
02:30and buying power, those are critically
02:32the ones that always rise to the top.
02:34And we've never had a year-long continuing resolution.
02:37This will be the first for the Department of Defense.
02:39So a lot to be determined in terms of what those impacts are
02:42going to be.
02:42Flexibility, sir, you and I talked about this last night.
02:45We all submitted a J-book in a budget almost 18 to 20 months
02:49before we actually see an enactment in an appropriation.
02:52A lot can happen in that 18 to 20 months.
02:55Every line of accounting, every piece of equipment,
02:58every radio has its own individual line
03:01within the J-books that come back in our budget line
03:04items on the back end of appropriations.
03:07For high-tech things, UAS, counter-UAS,
03:11high-tech command and control systems
03:13that evolve at a rate faster than our budget cycle,
03:15we would like to compress those lines
03:18to allow us to move in year of execution
03:20those monies to new things that come
03:21online in year of execution.
03:23If you can work with us, all the services
03:25with regard to language, those kind of flexibilities
03:29are really important, I think needed,
03:31and something that we could work on to get in the NDAA.
03:35Sir.
03:36And I yield my time to the others
03:38because I went pretty deep in recruiting.
03:40Just for the committee's sake, real quick here.
03:42I mean, we talked about it.
03:43But just on the record, I think it's
03:46important for lessons learned on recruiting.
03:50Who you recruit, where you recruit, how we recruit,
03:53more professionalization of our recruiting force,
03:55expanding the population, all those things
03:57that we've been working for the last 18 to 24 months,
04:00we believe are coming to fruition this year.
04:02We've seen momentum unlike we have seen in probably a decade.
04:05We're at 50% ahead of where we were last year, 73% omission.
04:10So as I said in my opening statement,
04:12just over 44,000 of omission of 61,000.
04:16I think, as you and I talked last night,
04:18we're going to have the opposite problem
04:19we did a couple years ago, where come this summer,
04:21we may have an end strength that's actually
04:23bigger than what we have an appropriations for.
04:26But we're very excited about it.
04:26Maybe we can work on that.
04:27Admiral, and again, I'll yield time back.
04:32These are important questions.
04:33But we'll get through all of them.
04:37Go ahead, Admiral.
04:37Sir, hey, two pit buckets.
04:39One, the CR.
04:40Major impact on us.
04:42We've gotten used to partial CRs.
04:44As General Mingus says, this is our first full year CR.
04:48So we'll have to figure that out.
04:50And we're looking forward to flexibility, anomalies,
04:53authorities to address the kind of things
04:56that General Mingus talked about.
04:58Let me just use one specific example.
05:01Two years ago, probably a little more than two years ago,
05:03we were thinking about counter-UAS.
05:06We weren't thinking about counter-UAS from the perspective
05:09that we've grown to appreciate in the Red Sea.
05:11So the ability to turn quickly and use money
05:15and have the flexibility to address those things
05:17as we're trying to do with the forward strike group
05:20where we're bolting on systems that are more effective
05:22for counter-UAS like Coyote and Roadrunner,
05:25those are all appreciated and hard to do in a CR.
05:28So I'd give you that piece, the flexibilities,
05:32and for us to work through it.
05:33There's a merge with the next topic, which is recruiting.
05:37We've made some progress in the Navy
05:39as the other services have.
05:40We have stormed the problem.
05:42We understand, and you and I went over,
05:45and Ranking Member Hirono and I discussed
05:48what we did in the Navy to break down the problem
05:50and understand what it takes
05:51to make a productive recruiter.
05:53So I think there's renewed focus and clarity on that.
05:56We've done the things General Mingus has described
05:58where we've spread to zip codes
06:00to get every available person into the Navy,
06:03and we're ahead of goal.
06:04Right now, our projection was 12,000 contracted
06:10we've contracted 14,000.
06:13We were supposed to have 12.2,000 shipped.
06:16We've shipped 12.7,000.
06:18So we're ahead of goal.
06:19I'm very concerned about the CR
06:21and the impact on that machine and slowing it down.
06:24So for us, we wanna maintain course and speed,
06:27accelerate, and bring in all the people we need
06:29to close down our gaps at sea.
06:31CR makes that a little more challenging.
06:33Great, I'm gonna yield back to Senator Hirono.
06:37I'll get through this line of questioning.
06:39I do wanna do a recognition, Admiral,
06:43to the sailors and Marines
06:46who have been deploying all over the world,
06:48and in the Red Sea in particular,
06:50remarkable performance in terms of shooting down
06:54all the incoming missiles and drones at your ships.
06:59My understanding, it's the most combat
07:01that the Navy's undertaken
07:03in terms of serious missile threats to our ships
07:07since World War II, and you've done it incredibly well.
07:11So to all the sailors and Marines
07:14on those deployed ships for the great job they've done,
07:17thank you from the entire United States.