Tommy Tuberville Advocates For The Use Of 'High Energy Lasers' To Cut The Cost Of Warfare

2 days ago

During a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing To Consider Pending Nominations, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) asked witnesses about the techniques the military can do to limit spending.

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Transcript

00:00Good morning, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, gentlemen. Mr. Duffy, I just got back from Huntsville, Alabama last week or so and watched the

00:07performance of high-energy lasers and

00:11Senator King had brought that up about spending all these millions knocking down these drones.

00:16What's your thoughts on high energy and and what you've seen the progress in the last few years?

00:21I've seen a lot in the last four years myself. Your thoughts? Well, Senator, thank you for the question and for

00:28the great state of Alabama's contribution to the defense industrial base. I agree with Senator King and with you.

00:34Directed energy and high energy lasers would provide a tremendous capability when we think through some of the threats that we face, whether it comes to

00:44counter UAS

00:48systems and

00:51really the threat we face, whether it's from

00:54adversaries that

00:56like the Houthis that are able to inflict

01:03low-cost

01:06kinetics at us, which require us to

01:11expend high-cost weapon systems.

01:13I think if we can get the technology where we need to be

01:17with directed energy and higher energy lasers that would provide us with the capability to have very low-cost response to those threats and

01:24in the future of a distributed warfare with swarms and that sort of things,

01:28I think that'll be critical for us to establish that capability.

01:31Thank you. And the progress we've made has been small private companies, as Senator King was saying.

01:37Sometimes they get bought out and they move down the line or can't make it because of funding,

01:41but I think they're doing an outstanding job.

01:43I'd like to, when you're confirmed, to come down and visit and see this for yourself. I look forward to it, sir.

01:51Dr. Mink and

01:54Dr. Michael, just a question for you here on

01:58on the future of

02:01engineering in your departments, both of you.

02:04We're gonna have a tough time keeping good engineers and people employed because of the

02:10private companies

02:12taking our good people away out of the military.

02:15What's your thoughts and your plan of hopefully keeping the best and the brightest in the military instead of taking the private route?

02:22Either one of you?

02:24Or both of you?

02:27I'd say it's twofold, Senator Tuberville. First,

02:32we have to have some successes that are well promoted inside the science and technology enterprise. If DARPA does something great,

02:40we need to get it out of the labs and into production fast, and that gives people motivation to be part of one people,

02:46want to be part of one of those organizations.

02:49The second thing is we should be working with private industry more. If you take artificial intelligence,

02:54there's a lot of money being spent and a lot of research and a lot of dollars.

02:58We shouldn't have to duplicate that in every area of the government.

03:03We should be leveraging where they're spending more and doing ahead and

03:07making and the things we have to do on the basic research side. That's not profitable for private industry.

03:12We got to get it out of the labs faster and into production sooner. Thank you.

03:17Dr. Mink?

03:18Thanks for the question, Senator, and just kind of to echo, I think it's not just money. I think it is the

03:27opportunity to do advanced research, do advanced engineering

03:32that has a mission outcome. What we found in my current organizations,

03:37it's a very highly technical workforce.

03:40We've done very well in recruiting and retention, and it goes kind of back to the quality of service

03:45I mentioned a little bit earlier, is when you bring in these really skilled, talented people,

03:50regardless of what that talent is, there needs to be an opportunity for them to be successful and

03:57to do what they love to do, because it takes a lot of work to get some of these skill sets.

04:01I think in many cases that's even more important than just pure funding or pure salary.

04:07Thank you. You know, we talk about machines a lot,

04:10but we don't talk about people enough, and people are what's going to get the job done for us.

04:15Mr. Bass, it's becoming more and more common for members of our armed services to be referred away from the military treatment

04:21facilities to civilian providers. The consequences are enormous to the taxpayer, the cost.

04:27We want to take care of our service members. How do we fix this problem?

04:33Thank you, Senator, and thank you again for meeting with me offline.

04:36We need to

04:38we need to take a look at

04:41medical readiness as our priority, and we want to make sure we meet the access to care standards for our military members,

04:47and it's a delicate balance between going to the direct care system and the MTFs and then to the private sector.

04:53We need to look at and

04:57encourage health care in the MTFs for both volume and complexity,

05:01but when necessary to meet medical readiness standards, we need to also send it out to

05:06to the community. So we have to look at the delicate balance between the both, and if confirmed,

05:11I'll work with the staff to make sure that we're meeting access standards, getting health care for our troops,

05:16and they're getting world-class care. As you and I talked about, you know, cutting costs.

05:20We need to involve the 21st century of AI in the things that we do between doctors and

05:26hospitals and drug companies and all the things that cut back costs. They're there,

05:30we just don't use them for some reason, but I would hope we would get involved in that. Thank you guys.

Tommy Tuberville Advocates For The Use Of 'High Energy Lasers' To Cut The Cost Of Warfare

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