Source: United States Navy
JACK REED:
I’d like to call the hearing to order. Good morning. The committee meets today to discuss the recruiting challenges facing the United States military. I would like to welcome our witnesses, Mr. Gabriel Camarillo, Undersecretary of the Army; Mr. Erik Raven, Undersecretary of the Navy; and Ms. Kristyn Jones, performing the duties of the Undersecretary of the Air Force.
Thank you for your leadership and for joining us today. The United States military faces the most challenging recruiting environment in the 50 year history of the all-volunteer force. As America continues to recover from two decades of war and a global pandemic, the military service are having significant difficulties filling their ranks.
Last year, the force fell tens of thousands of recruits short of its goals and the same appears likely this year. There are several factors contributing to the situation. To begin, America has seen record low unemployment for several years. Even in the best of times, a strong economy and low national unemployment have always made military recruiting difficult.
Further, the number of young Americans qualified or interested in military service is declining. Only 23 percent of Americans age 17 to 24 are eligible to serve. As among other things, national obesity rates continue to rise, and standardized mental aptitude test scores of individuals continue to fall. To compound this issue, less than 10 percent of the population have a propensity to serve, the lowest point in decades.
Additionally, unlike the days of the draft when virtually every American knew about the military, today, most young Americans do not know anyone personally who has served in the military, and they are unaware of many of the benefits of military service. The military services are starting to look like a family business where children of service members and veterans enlist at far higher rates than their peers who do not come from a military background.
Also, as our military facilities are inclusive based in fewer and fewer states, our personnel have become less geographically representative of the nation. The smaller the military’s footprint becomes, the greater perception grows of a divide between civilian and military cultures. Our military should reflect all of America and society, not stand apart from it. Last year, the Department of Defense conducted an extensive survey of young Americans to better understand why they were overwhelmingly uninterested in military service.
By a wide margin, the top three reasons the respondents cited were the same across all the services, fear of death or injury, worries about PTSD and separation from friends and family. We know that our service members have sacrificed much in the defense of our nation, but we also know that widespread fears of death, injury and PTSD are out of sync with the experience of most veterans.
Survey and census data show that the overwhelming majority of veterans report positive experiences in the military. Americans and veterans are more civically engaged, earn more money and have more education than those who have not served. In short, military service is a social good. It benefits the nation, and it benefits those who serve.
Currently, the service is our challenge to convince young people to join the military. Once they don the uniform, however, service members are more likely than ever to re-enlist and stay in the military by choice. Retention is at an all-time high, even as recruiting faces significant headwinds. The many benefits of military service are the results of a decades long campaign to attract and retain the best talent our country has to offer.
The military services offer education and training in emerging fields like cyber and artificial intelligence, unparalleled family support programs, comprehensive health and wellness benefits, pathways to higher education, both in and out of uniform and the best leadership training and experience in the world.
And I want to briefly return to the issue of young Americans propensity to serve. As mentioned, the vast majority of the population chooses not to serve due to concerns about perceived physical and mental risks and separation from loved ones. But in an effort to understand more about the current recruiting environment, the Army has been conducting frequent pulse surveys to gather more opinions for potential recruits.
In its most recent study, one issue that did not deter recruits from enlisting [Inaudible] numbers was the idea of the military being woke. I mentioned this term only because it was used in the survey, but I have yet to hear it defined as an actual policy or articulated position. Only a small fraction, five percent of respondents said that they felt the military places too much emphasis on wokeness.
And let me be clear, diversity and inclusion strengthen our military. By every measure, America’s military is more lethal and ready than it has ever been. It is also more diverse and inclusive than ever before, and this is not a coincidence. Our military looks more and more like the nation it represents whether in race, gender, creed, sexuality or any other measure.
This is the right direction as America’s strength is its diversity. But greater diversity requires greater understanding within the ranks, and understanding requires learning and regular training. The fundamental bond that ensures unit cohesion is the commitment by every member to protect his or her fellow service members, whoever they may be. This is a state of mind and heart that must be nurtured by training and example.
Our greatest military asset is its people. We cannot succeed if we do not have adequate numbers of men and women of sufficiently high character contributing to our national defense. During today’s hearing, I would like to know our witnesses’ ideas for increasing the number of young Americans eligible for and interested in service.
And as a side, I think we all know around here, as we talk to every business in our community, their major complaint is they can’t find good workers, which is the complaint the Department of Defense has right now. And in addition, as I talked to police departments around my state, they’re having a very difficult time recruiting police officers.
In many cases, it’s similar to our military. There is a fear now that they could be harmed as a police officer, and it would disrupt their family significantly. So this is not a unique issue with the military. I want to thank our witnesses again. I look forward to your testimonies. Now, let me recognize the ranking member, Senator Wicker.
ROGER WICKER:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our witnesses for being here and I look forward to this hearing. Since October 1973, we have referred to the US military as an all-volunteer force. To put it another way, for the past 50 years, our armed services have been filled by recruits and today recruiting is not going well.
The military must devote considerable resources to attract young Americans to wear the uniform. Recruiting success is not easy, nor is it guaranteed. Without sufficient numbers of high quality recruits, the modern American military cannot maintain its high readiness standards critical to our national security.
Although the military has experienced intermittent recruiting problems in its history, today’s challenge is unprecedented. The previous low watermark for recruiting occurred in the late 1970s when the services collectively achieved 90 percent of their goals. This year, if trends continue, our armed forces are projected to achieve roughly 75 percent of their goals of active duty recruiting goals, some 15 percentage points lower than the 70s. And these goals are much smaller than they were in 1979. The three largest services will all miss their individual recruiting objectives, and the army will miss the target for the third time in five years.
During the Carter administration, in order to preserve manning levels the military lowered recruitment standards and retained people who should have been let go. This resulted in a predictable erosion of military readiness. The only thing that saved the volunteer military was the increased defense budgets during the administration of President Reagan.
We should not repeat the mistakes of those earlier years during this administration. The recruiting challenge today is complicated, as the chair just outlined. A small and shrinking minority of young Americans are both qualified and interested in military service. Interest in military service has never been especially high, but today, only about 10 percent of young people consider putting on the uniform.
This is the lowest rate on record. There are no easy solutions to this problem, but we know what does not work. Lowering recruitment standards today leads to morale, discipline and readiness problems tomorrow. The Army learned this lesson in the 1980s and again in the early 2000s. Despite this history, the Navy seems intent on reducing standards to increase recruiting.
This year, 20 percent of the Navy’s recruits will come from the lowest category of scores on the Armed Forces qualification test. I would like Mr. Raven to explain why the Navy is following this path. The Department of Defense must put at least as much effort into solving the recruiting crisis as it has into other initiatives like extremism, diversity, equity and inclusion and abortion.
These initiatives are at best a distraction. At worst, they dissuade young people from enlisting. They suggest to the American people that the military has a problem with diversity and extremism. In truth, the military is the greatest civil rights program in the history of the world, and the data support this claim.
A recent peer reviewed study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics finds, and I quote, Army service closes nearly all of the Black White earnings gap, unquote. The distinguished chair of this committee just said, and I agree with him, that our military is more diverse than ever before. A recent peer reviewed Quarterly Journal of Economics found enlisting in the Army increases cumulative earnings, post-secondary education, attendance, home ownership and marriage.
I’m looking for a quote that I — okay. Here’s a quote from this study, the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The report finds that Army service closes nearly all of the Black White earnings gap. And also, General Colin Powell, some 20 years ago, talked about the great diversity accomplishments that military service has given to the United States of America.
And so I think the evidence is that despite the good news, the military has decided to address a problem that doesn’t exist, military extremism. The Secretary of Defense created a special Countering Extremism Working Group and instituted a military-wide stand down day. To make the military more equitable, the Department of Defense created a new federal advisory commission and a defense equity team.
This team published this publication, The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Strategic Plan consisting of some 27 to 30 pages including the attachments. And I just wonder, where is the same urgency of the Department of Defense when it comes to the very real recruiting crisis? Where is the recruiting strategic plan?
Is one of those soon to be issued by — or to be ordered by the department? So I hope our witnesses will reassure the committee that the services are taking the recruiting crisis seriously. And I hope they will speak to why all the emphasis on a lack of diversity and a problem that apparently does not exist at all since we’re the most successful civil rights organization in the world.
And I hope we will have readiness implications at the top of our agenda, rather than items that seem to be politically correct at the time. So I want to thank our witnesses. I look forward to a good discussion. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Wicker. Secretary Camarillo, please.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker and distinguished members of this committee, thank you for your ongoing support for our Army and for providing us the opportunity to discuss our efforts to confront the present recruiting challenge. As Army leaders consistently observe, our greatest asset is our people and the unmatched talent that our soldiers bring to the mission every single day.
Their training and their expertise set us apart from other forces worldwide, and our success in maintaining that decisive advantage depends on our ongoing ability to attract, recruit and retain talented people to serve in our army. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer force, however, we face a significant challenge in sustaining this talent pipeline.
In FY ’22, the Army fell short of our recruiting mission and as the Army has made clear, today’s recruiting landscape did not emerge overnight, and it will take more than one year to solve. We need to address a combination of challenging long term problems and current market trends that are together having an acute impact.
Like the rest of the department, the Army is in a fierce competition for talent with the private sector. Separately, we’re recovering from school closings during the pandemic, which limited recruiters access to students and faculty alike, coinciding with a nine percent decline in performance on military entrance exams.
And we also know, as we’ve heard today already, that only 23 percent of young Americans are eligible and only nine percent are propensity to serve. These factors have combined to generate a challenging recruiting landscape that will likely persist for a few years. But still, the Army is undertaking a full court press to revitalize Army recruiting and this has the direct attention of every army leader.
As an enterprise, the Army is working to reform and modernize recruiting for today’s landscape. In addition, we are using this moment to reintroduce the Army as a career choice with significant opportunities for America’s youth. I’m happy to expand more on our initiatives during my testimony today, but I offer here only a few examples.
To change how we recruit, we’re incentivizing high performers to become recruiters in the Army. We’re improving their training, assigning them to communities where they have ties. And additionally, the army is experimenting with turning every soldier into recruiting through our Soldier Referral Program, which offers our junior enlisted soldiers a promotion for referring prospects who actually ship to basic training.
This new program has already generated 4,900 referrals and 68 recruits this year. The Army is also improving how it engages with potential recruits. We created a future soldier prep course that invest in young people to improve their academic and physical fitness so that they can succeed in joining the army.
In the program’s first year, we’ve had 3,300 graduates and a remarkable 98 percent success rate. As a result, we are now creating two additional training units at Fort Jackson and at Fort Benning and we have surged resources, marketing, events, recruiters and even members of operational units to 15 high potential focus cities nationwide.
And finally, the Army has updated its brand to re-introduce itself more broadly to young Americans as a place where you can be all you can be. Fortunately for us, once soldiers joined the army, they want to stay. We hit 104 percent of our retention goal last year. But even with this success, we are investing heavily in improving our soldiers’ quality of life to ensure that we care for our people and help the army remain an employer of choice.
With this Congress’s help, we surged funding in FY ’23 and requested $1.3 billion in FY ’24 to improve the Army’s housing inventory, including new builds and major and medium renovations. We plan to invest $10 billion over 10 years to improve barracks throughout the Army. We’ve prioritized our efforts to confront the recruiting challenge and we’re doing everything we can to improve our enterprise and reintroduce the army and more importantly, the notion of military service to the American public.
This is a national security issue, and we can’t do it alone. We need your help. Each of you has a unique voice, an opportunity to promote the benefits of service, to connect with soldiers and their families, to encourage veterans, influencers and educators to invest in the next generation. And I want to thank you and I look forward to answering your questions.
JACK REED:
Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Secretary Raven, please.
ERIK RAVEN:
Good morning, Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker and distinguished members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the current and future state of recruiting and retention within the Department of the Navy. The Department of the Navy’s most important asset is our people.
Our high quality force provides us with a warfighting advantage in relation to our strategic competitors. It is essential that we maintain this high quality motivated workforce to meet the needs of our nation. While the Navy did not meet 100 percent of its active duty officer targets for 2022, our retention exceeded all goals, enabling the Department to achieve our end strength requirements.
The Marine Corps met its goals, but risk continues within the delayed entry program, which remains a challenge in 2023. As the chairman has already asked, why are we seeing this challenging recruiting environment? The bottom line is that the Navy and Marine Corps are in a competition for talent like many other sectors of the American economy.
Like businesses, we continually adjust our recruiting strategies to attain success. This means looking at what we can offer Americans to prove that our nation values their service. The Navy and Marine Corps faced some recruiting challenges that other employers do not. While schools are open for students nationwide, military recruiters report challenges in getting enough access to tell our national service story.
We also have a variety of standards that private employers typically do not demand, yet fewer Americans are meeting them. Finally, the inherent value of helping our country be stronger and more secure does not resonate the same way as compared to the past. That is why Secretary Del Toro’s enduring priority of building a culture of warfighting excellence, has the department laser focused on every aspect of recruiting and retention.
Last summer, Secretary Del Toro established a task force to identify and address short and long term issues facing recruiting. I lead that task force. All aspects of recruiting are on the agenda, from learning best practices to thinking outside the box. I’d like to share a few examples of how the Navy and Marine Corps are improving our approaches in this competition for talent.
We are expanding our community and school outreach to maintain or reestablish strong relationships with high school partners. We are partnering with the Department of Education to promote the value of military service while at the same time supporting their efforts to recruit and retain talented educators and administrators.
We are employing new, creative and more personal approaches to our marketing campaigns to directly appeal to multiple audiences and better convey the tangible and intangible benefits of military service. We are also seeking innovative ways to expand the pool of eligible applicants such as our Future Sailor Preparatory Course, which will provide physical fitness training for high potential candidates.
Once accepted, we will work very closely with recruits to ensure their physical and mental readiness before they report to bootcamp. This physical preparatory course will be followed by an academic preparatory course with establishment expected this summer. For retention. Both services have talent management initiatives to invest in, grow and retain our talented sailors and marines.
These initiatives, this is our playbook. My Navy HR transformation and the Marine Corps Talent Management 2030 spanned the full military lifecycle from recruiting individuals with the right talents, matching those talents to organizational needs, to incentivize high performing individuals to remain in service.
Success in retention means taking care of our sailors, our Marines and their families. We’re investing in quality of life areas such as economic security and housing, permanent change of station challenges, childcare, spouse employment, health care and destructive behavior prevention, to provide our service members and their families a positive and supportive environment to work and to live.
With every challenge, there is an opportunity, an opportunity to learn, adapt and succeed. We will succeed. On behalf of Secretary Del Toro and the senior civilian and military leadership of the Department of the Navy, I want to thank this committee for its help to recruit and retain a ready and lethal force.
The Department is committed to working with this committee and all members of Congress to maintain that force. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Secretary Jones, please.
KRISTYN JONES:
Good morning. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Wicker, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. It is my pleasure to provide testimony on efforts to recruit and retain the best of our fellow Americans for service in the Department of the Air Force as military and civilian airmen and guardians.
This is my third week performing the duties of the Undersecretary of the Air Force, while also fulfilling my Senate confirmed role as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller. The Comptroller position is a privilege nomination and therefore, I didn’t have a confirmation hearing before this committee, so I wanted to briefly introduce myself.
I commissioned from West Point as a US Army officer and met my husband while we were both serving in Germany. I later supported him as a military spouse while trying to progress in my own career. My brothers also served in the military, and I have a son who will be commissioning this year. I’ve been on the other side of our policies, and I am committed to inspiring and enabling the next generation to serve.
Our people stand ready to prevail against the pacing challenge and execute our commitments in the National Defense Strategy. As we commemorate 50 years of the all-volunteer force, our air and space forces are trained and ready to perform their missions throughout the world. Military service offers an incredible value proposition, opportunity, community and purpose.
Our people embody the transformative nature of service, but we need decisive action today to meet our recruiting goals. As we compete with the lowest unemployment rate in a generation, the Air Force will likely fall short of enlisted active duty recruiting goals by over 10 percent. The Reserve and Guard are projected to miss their goals by even higher margins.
Fortunately, the Space Force is projected to meet its recruiting goal this year. Retention is faring far better than recruitment. About 90 percent of our force chooses to stay at key career decision points. In response to the recruiting shortfalls, the DAFF is launching marketing initiatives to better reach the public.
We appreciate Congress appropriating an additional $150 million for our marketing programs, which will enable us to reach a wider audience through targeted content across a fragmented media market. Recent digital initiatives have already resulted in more than 90 percent of new user traffic to our recruiting websites.
The Space Force also plans an aggressive brand awareness campaign. In person recruiters have dramatically increased their presence in schools and at public events. We’ve also established a centralized venue to virtually engage with recruits while relieving our recruiters of many administrative burdens. Further, we are expediting almost 30 lines of effort to expand opportunities to serve.
We are evolving our standards, not lowering them, to remove barriers to service. For example, the DAFF is modernizing policies on tattoos and body composition at accession. Recent Congressional appropriations to increase pay and allowances also make our salaries more competitive, in addition to incentives such as our initial enlistment bonus and the Enlisted College Loan Repayment Program.
We also recognize the entire family serves. The value we place on our people is shown in initiatives such as economic well-being, childcare, health care and spousal employment. We are optimistic that enacted legislation will further reduce expenses and obstacles to spousal employment. The hearing today provides the perfect platform to highlight the extraordinary opportunity for Americans to serve their country.
Members of Congress are uniquely positioned to support recruiting efforts by nominating talented future cadets to the US Air Force Academy. We appreciate you visiting our installations to meet with service members. Please continue amplifying their stories and achievements as we work together to recruit the best and brightest to serve.
Thank you for your time today, your partnership and your support for our airmen, our guardians and their families. I welcome your questions.
JACK REED:
Thank you very much, Secretary Jones. Secretary Camarillo, I was struck when I read the testimony of [Inaudible]. I think he put in perspective the emphasis that the military, and not just the Army but the Navy and Air Force puts on readiness and military skills, but also includes equal opportunity training, diversity training.
In his words, there is one hour of equal opportunity training in basic training and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training. And if you go to one station unit training, where you go from basic to your advanced training, there’s 165 hours of rifle marksmanship training and only one hour equal opportunity training, and that I think reflects the emphasis on readiness.
Would you agree?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Mr. Chairman, I do agree. I think it reflects the reality for our soldiers, their leaders, all the way up to the Secretary of the Army. We wake up every day and our top priority is readiness of our soldiers, their ability to perform the mission and our focus on what we’re doing to defend this country. I would note that we’ve got 50,000 soldiers right now that are stationed in Europe to provide reassurance to our NATO partners and allies.
We’re continuing to support the Ukrainians through our drawdown assistance. These are the types of issues that we’re focused on in making sure that we have a ready force.
JACK REED:
And in fact, with the Ukraine crisis, you were able to mobilize and deploy an Army infantry brigade in six days from basically no notice to get them at the front lines in Europe ready to go. Is that right?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
That’s correct, Mr. Chairman. There’s no shortage of wonder of what our soldiers have been able to do in the last year, as they do every year.
JACK REED:
Thank you. Secretary Raven, your comments about readiness.
ERIK RAVEN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. During the same hearing, we heard from Sergeant Major Black whose first words to that committee is that the Marine Corps is ready to fight tonight. That standard is being held through the Navy and Marine Corps. We have thousands of sailors who are forward deployed in key areas of the world, especially the Asia Pacific, to provide deterrence, perform important missions and better secure our country.
And they are on the job 24/7.
JACK REED:
Senator Jones, your comments.
KRISTYN JONES:
Thank you, senator. Our focus on readiness is both in the short term and the long term as we focus on efforts like flying hours and weapon system sustainment for our people today so that they’re ready to go, while also focused on the future for our research and development efforts so that we have the right equipment for the future fight.
JACK REED:
This is a generation, I have some clinical experience, my daughter is 16, that is focused on social media and I’m being mild. Focus is a — it’s even more intense. How are we integrating social media into our recruiting? I’ll start with Secretary Jones and ask everyone.
KRISTYN JONES:
Thank you, Chairman. That’s an important point that we’re focused on. As I mentioned in my opening statement, using digital media as a way to reach out to more Americans. We’re also looking at how to better utilize YouTube influencers. They’re out there. They’re talking about the Air Force. They’re giving many impressions.
As one example, we had some outreach for our Space Force in particular that involved 200,000 high school students, but 20 million influences through social media. And so we’re looking at ways to leverage that to help to underscore the value of military service for high tech jobs and education.
JACK REED:
Do you find access to social media expensive versus other means of communication?
KRISTYN JONES:
Social media is actually far cheaper than, as an example, a Super Bowl commercial or things like that. And so we’re able to use more cost effective ways to reach our youth through social media.
JACK REED:
Thank you. Secretary Raven, your comments.
ERIK RAVEN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you go back just a few years, both the Navy and Marine Corps overwhelmingly focused on television. We found that’s not the most productive way to reach the generation of Americans that you’re referring to. Right now, something like more than 98 percent of our advertising is on social media.
And I’ve recently been asked the question of, I pull up Facebook, why don’t I see the ads? Is because on social media we can more precisely target those in those age groups and demographics who are more likely to get an impression of what the Navy and Marine Corps can offer them and respond to that. If that message is going out to everybody, we’re not using our appropriated dollars to best effect, and so we’re focusing strategies on maximum impact.
JACK REED:
And the expense is something that is better than other medium?
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes. We are certainly finding that, along with the ability to target the audience that we need to.
JACK REED:
Secretary Camarillo.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I’ll be very brief. I agree with everything my colleagues said, Mr. Chairman. I would just also add, we’ve also invested in this last year in upgrading our tools that we have in digital platforms ourselves in the Army, like our Goarmy.com website, to be able to better interface with our Generation Z population, particularly as they are seeing the ads and the outreach that we’re doing on these platforms.
JACK REED:
Thank you very much. Senator Wicker.
ROGER WICKER:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me ask Secretary Raven and Secretary Camarillo. We’re not talking so much in the military now about equal opportunity, but equity. These are terms of art in compliance documents. Secretary Camarillo, what is the difference between equity and equal opportunity? Do you see a difference there?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Wicker, certainly we have a long standing policy, I think that is part of federal law regarding equal opportunity and making sure that all of our job opportunities, the way that employees are treated —
ROGER WICKER:
Absolutely, but how is equity different from that and why are they saying equity now?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
So if you’re referring to programs for diversity, equity and inclusion —
ROGER WICKER:
Right.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
My understanding is that those programs are designed to further promote an inclusive service in the Department of Defense and certainly within the Army.
ROGER WICKER:
Is it different from equal opportunity? Does it require a certain number of members of different groups?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
No, senator. We don’t have targets, or anything associated with that as part of our DEI programs.
ROGER WICKER:
Okay. So you do not have targets. Secretary Raven, does the Navy have targets?
ERIK RAVEN:
No, sir. And to your original question on the difference between equal opportunity and some of the initiatives that we’re working on, equal opportunity, again, there’s processes defined in law and defined in policies for how to reserve — how to address certain disputes. What we’re really talking about and what we are focused on is the process of building teams to perform the military mission.
And some of these initiatives that you’re talking about are focused exactly on that. This does not include quotas of any kind.
ROGER WICKER:
Okay. Well, I was searching for the quote from General Colin Powell during my opening statement, and I obviously didn’t mark it very well in my notes. But here is the exact quote of General Colin Powell. The military has given African Americans more equal opportunity than any other institution in American society, unquote.
In other words, military service improves the lives of almost everyone who puts on a uniform, most especially those that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. And I noticed, I was intrigued by this survey that the chairman mentioned. And yes, indeed, only five percent believed that wokeness was a problem.
Number two, overall barriers to entry, women and racial or ethnic minorities are discriminated against in the Army. That’s just not true. It’s not true according to to what General Powell says. It’s not true according to the extremism survey which spent a lot of time and a lot of man hours in a stand down, and come to find out, they only found 100 cases service wide of extremism.
And I just wonder if a two year campaign talking about diversity, equity inclusion and a strategic plan to overcome extremism has led to this 13 percent feeling. Of all surveyed, only 13 percent, but still a significant number. I wonder if it’s led to that, but let me ask you, Secretary Camarillo and Secretary Raven.
You have different approaches. Secretary Raven, the Navy is lowering its standards, no question about it. Why is that going to work in comparison to what didn’t work in the 1970s?
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator, vastly different. For sailors who are going into boot camp, we are allowing a certain number of category fours that you’re referring to, to enter boot camp.
ROGER WICKER:
Five times more than earlier?
ERIK RAVEN:
And that is to expand the pool of recruits. However, to be a machinist mate, to be a sailor, to be a fire controlman, you still have to meet the exact same standards as before. So we’re trying to increase the pool, but the standards for performing the job are what is key and what we need to perform our mission, and we have not changed that.
ROGER WICKER:
So of the five times more of this lowest testing group, you’re hoping somehow to initially train them to be more skillful?
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes, absolutely, both through boot camp, through a career in the Navy and also the future sailor preparatory course, which we’re talking about physical and academic standards. We’re standing that up this year.
ROGER WICKER:
Clearly, the Army disagrees with this approach, Secretary Camarillo.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Wicker, I think all of us in the Department of Defense are looking at creative ways to expand the pool of available talent. And we’re all taking steps, certainly you’ve heard from Secretary Raven, to try to invest in that population, to try to help them meet the standards. And certainly with the Army, we’re very pleased —
ROGER WICKER:
But you’ve elected to go to a different approach rather than lower the standards?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Our approach is focused on the future soldier prep course, where we’re taking potential candidates and recruits into Fort Jackson. We’re investing in them in academic skills and physical training skills to be able to meet our standards.
ROGER WICKER:
Fair to say it’s a different approach from the Navy?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
We have a different program, senator.
ROGER WICKER:
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you very much, Senator Wicker. Senator Kaine, please.
ANGUS KING:
Kaine or King?
JACK REED:
Kaine from Virginia.
ANGUS KING:
There’s a funny story about that, Mr. Chairman.
TIM KAINE:
This happens to us a lot.
JACK REED:
That’s my accent. I’m sorry.
TIM KAINE:
This is such an important hearing and I’m really glad we’re having it, and I appreciate the work that you’re doing. I have a lot more than I’d like to say. Or I have a lot more than five minutes so I’m going to try to be quick. The Army survey, I think the thing that interests me about this survey, and it would probably have some applicability to the other branches as well, is the chief barrier cited, and there’s no close second, really.
The chief barrier cited by 21 percent, and the next one is 13 percent is, I’d be putting the rest of my life on hold. So the psychology of that statement is important I think to understand. It suggests, and probably this in an all-volunteer military where so few people have the connection to military life.
People look at military services, oh, that’s something where I go and do this thing and maybe it’s good for the country, but I put the rest of my life on hold, and they don’t connect military service with this is a building block for the rest of my life. I mean, people who serve in the military gain all these skills.
My employers are all the time are telling me, I can train for the technical skill but what I can’t train for is an attitude of teamwork, flexibility, stay until the job’s done, mission focus, help somebody out. Those skills I can’t train for, and I can’t find them. And this is what our service members have and also what our military spouses tend to have.
But that answer, I’m not going to serve in the Army because I’d be putting the rest of my life on hold, suggests that the story that we need to tell about military service is that it’s a building block to the rest of your life rather than a time out for two, four or eight years. And so I wonder, as you’re thinking about telling the story in recruiting, how do you intend to get at that chief barrier?
Maybe start with Secretary Camarillo.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Thank you, Senator Kaine. You said it perfectly. So what our takeaway was from that survey result was that first and foremost people in that younger population set don’t understand the possibilities and career potential that they get from military service. That tells us we need to reintroduce ourselves, as I said earlier, to the American public as a career destination of choice that creates and expands opportunities for our young people no matter whether they stay in military service long term or they go off and take on different careers.
So that was part of our approach to not only advertise and highlight the different career choices you have in the Army. If you want to come in and be a cyber specialist, if you want to be a veterinarian, a doctor, a lawyer, you can do almost literally any career choice within the army for a set period of time.
Come do it as part of national service and we will give you the training. We’ll help you achieve your career aspirations. We’ll even fund some of your higher education, college and grad school in some cases. That is the message we’re starting to tell and that is how we’re trying to reinforce that people can be all you can be in the Army.
TIM KAINE:
Secretary Raven, then Secretary Jones.
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator Kaine, you hit it exactly on — the nail exactly on the head. And let me just tell a story about what it might mean for some young Americans. Highly qualified Americans coming out of high school have an opportunity to join the Navy. And if they meet the highest standards we have, they can go to nuclear power school.
They can serve on a submarine. They can serve on an aircraft carrier doing incredible things. And if they like what we offer, they can stay in service and have substantial bonuses and opportunities to go to college. It’s a great career. If they choose to move on, they will be in demand for the skills that we provide them.
So that’s what it means in real terms for Americans who might be considering this field.
TIM KAINE:
And Secretary Jones, before you answer, I was intrigued by your comments in your testimony that you’re doing really well at attracting folks to space force. So to me, that suggests people look at that, well, that’s cool and that’s probably connected to careers that are kind of aerospace careers. So people might see the connection between that and later and not think it’s just time out of their life.
But talk about how the Air Force is trying to grapple with this barrier.
KRISTYN JONES:
Yes, senator. The Space Force has an overwhelming number of recruits. It is a much smaller number we have to attract, but many people who aren’t interested otherwise in serving in the military are interested in the Space Force. To the points that were made by Chairman Reed earlier, we do have a situation where we have a family affair, so to speak, where families, including my own, have a history of military service, where certain parts of the country, regional areas have more military service.
So we need to expand our aperture in terms of who we are talking to about the value of military service. One point that I’ll make, often, folks think that military service is something to do instead of education and that is certainly not true in the Department of the Air Force. Our current force has earned 160,000 degrees from associates to PhDs since coming into the service.
And so we want to get that message out to people who aren’t aware of the outstanding educational opportunities as well as high tech careers as my colleagues have mentioned.
TIM KAINE:
Thank you so much. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Kaine. Senator Ernst, please.
JONI ERNST:
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses today. It’s good to have you. This is such an incredibly important topic. I want to associate what you talked about just now, Secretary Jones, about the family affair, just as Chairman Reed had, certainly. My father was an NCO in the Iowa Army National Guard.
I went on to serve in the Iowa Army National Guard. My daughter is now serving active duty in the Army. It is very much a family affair. We have to do better about spreading the word to others that aren’t exposed to the military. And I also want to associate myself with Senator Kaine’s comments about putting life on hold.
I found that truly serving in the military as a number of my family members, it was our life. And even though mine was part time, it was still such a significant part of my life. I’m very appreciative of the opportunities that it gave to me. So again, thank you all very much for being here today. And we do have to be united as a committee on finding solutions for recruitment and retention, and that’s how we’re going to build that more lethal force that we need for tomorrow.
And one thing that I’m diving into is competitive pay, and the promise of competitive pay is the foundation for that all-volunteer force. It does impact recruiting. It does impact retention. And the DOD Spring 2022 Propensity Update found that the number one reason to serve is monetary compensation, the number one reason.
So with that in mind, for all of you and we’ll start with you, Secretary Camarillo, do you believe increasing military compensation, especially for those junior enlisted grade would improve recruitment?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Ernst, thanks for your leadership on this issue And certainly something that we’re looking at right now. I think we have to examine the issue in the context of the recent 5.2 percent pay increase that just went into effect this year with Congress’s support, in addition to all of the recruiting incentives and retention bonuses that we provide.
We’re doing our best right now in the Army to calibrate those based on critical career fields, in addition to what we see as kind of the trends of what we’re going to require down the road as we continue to transform the Army. In addition, I would also note that we’ve, with Congress’s help, continue to revise BAH and some of the other factors that play into this equation.
And as part of the Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, the Army, looks forward to working very closely with the other services, OSD and certainly the Congress to address this issue more fundamentally.
JONI ERNST:
Great. Thank you. Secretary Raven.
ERIK RAVEN:
Thank you, Senator Ernst. Let me step back and say, for Americans who may be having the same concerns about compensation that you have raised, we have done reviews of this and found if you do an apples to apples comparison, if you do job X in the Navy or Marine Corps and you do job X in the private sector, that on average the people doing the job for the military earn more than 80 percent or more of comparative jobs in the private sector.
There are of course some apples to oranges comparisons out there.
JONI ERNST:
Very apples to oranges when you’re asking young men and women to travel around the world and be separated from their family.
ERIK RAVEN:
Exactly, but there remains this perception that they would be earning much less than their private sector counterparts. In terms of looking at junior enlisted ranks, we have and we can continually assess what bonuses, benefits, other incentives may apply to them. I would have concerns about pulling out several rates for a general pay raise because it could cause issues of pay compression compared to hire rates.
But this is something we look forward to working with you on and finding the right way forward.
JONI ERNST:
Yeah. Thank you. And Secretary Jones.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, I agree with my colleagues that this is an important issue. We look forward to working with you. We appreciate the support of Congress in enacting the ’23 budget. We have an even higher increase planned for ’24 and we’ll be hoping that we will get that budget enacted quickly. Right now, we are focused on our bonuses for targeted areas that we need to make sure that we can bring people in, pilots, cybersecurity, special operators, in particular areas where we feel those bonuses are most applicable as well as the enlisted college repayment program for loans.
So those are a couple of the areas in the short term that we’re working on and in the longer term, the Quadrennial Review will be taking a holistic look at the compensation strategy.
JONI ERNST:
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. It is an area I am very concerned about, and I understand that we do need to do some pay chart smoothing over time because our enlisted soldiers are being far outpaced by our officers. And I’m not saying officers make too much. They don’t, but we’ve seen that gap continue to widen through the years with the percentage pay increases.
And when we’re offering percentage pay increases that don’t keep up with the rate of inflation, our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors, they’re all suffering. So I hope that we can get some work done as we’re moving through this next NDAA. But I just want to state again, I do think there is a difference between job X and the civilian world and job X in the military, especially when we’re asking those young men and women to perhaps lay down their lives and suffer time away from family.
So I’d like to see those younger enlisted members receive a little bit more pay, but it is something that I hope to work on. So thank you very much, Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Ernst. Senator Warren, please.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So let’s be clear. The reason the United States has the strongest military in the world is because of our people. In February, this committee heard testimony from Dr. Bonnie Lin, an expert on China who served as the senior advisor to the Department of Defense in both the Obama and Trump administrations, that divesting in programs that support our military including violence prevention programs, quote, would definitely hurt us in having a competitive advantage over China.
Now, I understand there are a lot of politics at play whenever we discuss personnel policies in the military, but when common sense programs that support our service members health and their ability to do their jobs in a safe workplace get attacked, I worry about the message it sends to the people who are trying to do those jobs.
So let me ask, do any of our witnesses believe that programs to address racism or to prevent sexual assault are hurting our ability to recruit young people? Secretary Camarillo?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
No.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
Secretary Raven.
ERIK RAVEN:
No.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
Secretary Jones.
KRISTYN JONES:
No.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
Good. Thank you. You know, it is when these programs fail that young people question whether joining the military is a safe career path for them, not whether or not these programs exist in the first place. Similarly, the vaccine mandate made our forces stronger and healthier. Our military leaders in conjunction with the best medical advice available work to keep our troops safe and ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice in any crisis around the world, regardless of local health conditions.
I think it’s a real mistake to politicize one kind of vaccine and to undercut medical experts who are responsible for readiness. Undersecretary Camarillo, by the end of 2021, how many active duty soldiers had received the COVID vaccine?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Warren, We achieved a 94 percent overall success rate. I have to come back to you with the number.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
That’s all right. I’ll take percent. That’s just fine, but a 94 percent success rate. Secretary Raven, how about the Navy and the Marine Corps?
ERIK RAVEN:
We are currently standing at about 97 percent.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
97 percent. And Secretary Jones, how about the Air Force and the Space Force?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, for our active duty members, it’s 99 percent. For a reserve, 95.9 and 94.3 percent of the Air Guard.
ELIZABETH WARREN:
Wow. All right. In other words, I think it’s fair to say the vast majority of our service members have now been vaccinated. Now, I know a small number of service members refused the vaccine and they left the military, but my understanding is now that the vaccine is no longer mandated, only a very small handful of these individuals have even sought to re-enlist.
So it’s hard to see that the vaccine mandate was ever related to recruiting or retention challenges. Finally, I want to get one more point in here. There’s been a lot of criticism from my Republican colleagues of the administration’s actions post Dobbs to ensure that women who serve in uniform and their family members can get health care when they need it. We don’t have anyone here to represent DOD, but my understanding is those policies were heavily informed by groups of service members exactly as they should be. I understand that the issue of abortion is polarizing.
I’m not going to try to convince my Republican colleagues on this committee to support DOD’s actions, but I do commend you for developing policies that will support people who work for you and listening to what they need. So thank you very much for your work on behalf of our service members. It makes a difference.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Warren. Senator Cotton, please.
TOM COTTON:
Mr. Camarillo, there’s been some conversation this morning about the Army’s 2022 survey. You had received a letter from Representative Waltz and Representative Banks in late February about releasing the data of that survey. I have a PowerPoint slide in front of me. Is that the data that Mr. Banks and Mr. Waltz were seeking?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Cotton, my understanding is that the committees were previously provided a summary of the research and this slide deck that you’re referring to was what we released publicly.
TOM COTTON:
Have you provided the underlying data to the Armed Service Committee either here or in the House?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
We have not, Senator Cotton. My understanding is that that’s subject to additional approvals because it involves privacy considerations regarding the people that were interviewed.
TOM COTTON:
Have you responded to Representative Banks and Representative Waltz’s letter?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I do not know what the status is of the response, but I can certainly take that for the record and get you an answer.
TOM COTTON:
Could you, please?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Yes, sir.
TOM COTTON:
Okay. How many, or what percentage of young Americans are eligible to serve in the Army?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I think as —
TOM COTTON:
— I’m going to ask the other two as well, so you can start looking at your notes.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So we know that the eligibility has declined over 10 years, went from 29 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2023.
TOM COTTON:
Mr. Raven?
ERIK RAVEN:
I’m tracking similar numbers, sir.
TOM COTTON:
Ms. Jones?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we’re also looking at 23 percent.
TOM COTTON:
I don’t think that’s a good trend and I don’t think it’s a necessary trend either. Sometimes we have witnesses come in front of the committee, oftentimes, uniform witnesses who cite that data almost as if it’s a point of pride about how few young Americans are even eligible to serve because of academic standards or health standards or criminal records or character.
I think we have to fish in a much bigger pool if we’re going to address the recruiting crisis we face. And I just think it’s incumbent upon the services to find ways to expand the eligibility of young Americans to be recruits. I, and almost everyone else in this committee, could tell you a story about what we had to do to help some outstanding young man or woman overcome some supposedly disqualifying injury or condition.
You know, maybe a 14 year old kid got prescribed a mind altering drug for depression when his parents are going through a divorce and five years later, he’s had no indication whatsoever. Or kid gets a knee injury, has the knee reconstructed and continues to play football at a high level in college, yet the Army thinks he’s not physically fit to be a soldier.
Someone who can’t pass a colorblind test, even though they can identify a red, yellow and green thumbtack and they promise they’re not going to fly an aircraft, they just want to be a straight leg infantry. We should find ways to help young men and women be eligible for our services, not try to find ways to keep them out.
Do you agree?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I do, senator.
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes, sir. And if I may, that is exactly why we’ve opened up a dialog with the Department of Education to make sure that we are promoting those standards that feed into military service.
KRISTYN JONES:
Yes, senator. I mentioned that we have about 30 lines of effort looking to expand that aperture for areas that don’t negatively impact readiness but allow us to reach a broader population. Tattoos being one example. That was the third highest cause of disqualifications, so we made a minor change to our policy and we’re expecting over 2,500 additional recruits would be eligible.
TOM COTTON:
I think that — I mean, obviously, you can’t have people with gang tattoos or tattoos on their faces. But Obviously, if they’ve got a tattoo of a dragon on their back, what does it matter? I know lots of people who did. Or criminal records, you can’t have serious felons, you can’t have violent felons. You can’t have people prone to that kind of thing, but if they’re a juvenile delinquent who came from a broken home, who’ve turned themselves around, have a chance to serve, I think we got to make space for them.
Mr. Camarillo, you want to respond to that?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator, we have a robust waiver process that takes a number of these considerations into account, in addition to a whole person standard that we ultimately assess every candidate for.
TOM COTTON:
I just think it takes too — if it’s a waiver process, it just takes too long. Again, I think we could all give you stories of having to help a young American in our states get through that waiver process as opposed to something that’s a little more common sense.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I agree, senator, and that’s why we’re looking at —
TOM COTTON:
— And it’s a policy, not a waiver.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Understood, senator. I think we’re looking at that process to see how we can streamline it to exactly do what you said, is make sure that we’re covering —
TOM COTTON:
I had a drill sergeant who was definitely in the go to war or go to jail bucket and that was in the 2000s. And he went to war, and he turned out to be a pretty good soldier as opposed to wasting away in a jail for minor drug charges. Do all those 15 year olds and 16 year olds who lied about their age to enlist in order to, do you think they did the right thing or the wrong thing?
Mr. Raven, you’re nodding your head, so you want to put it on the record?
ERIK RAVEN:
That is my grandfather’s story, sir. He may have misrepresented some things to join the Navy and join the CBs in World War II.
TOM COTTON:
I think those stories are well put still today because — I mean, we love all our recruits who want to raise their hand and take the oath and serve our country in uniform. But the ones who will go the extra mile, who go through the arduous waiver process, who will plead with the doctor at the med board to pass them through the colorblindness test even though they are kind of colorblind, I think those are the ones that we really want to encourage and we want to go out and make it easier for those kinds of kids who are super motivated to join no matter what kind of obstacles the bureaucracy has put up in front of them to get in without having to resort to going through months of a waiver process or to call their Congressman or to call their senator.
We got to fish from a bigger pool. Thank you.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Cotton. Senator King, please.
ANGUS KING:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my family, Senator Cotton, the legend is that my father in law memorized the eye chart, so he could enlist two weeks after Pearl Harbor. Served honorably in Asia during World War II. And I want to follow up on exactly the question Senator Cotton is talking about. Cannabis is now legal in 21 states.
47 percent of Americans are in states where it’s legal. And again, like Senator Cotton, I’m not advocating lowering standards to the point where it endangers safety or the effectiveness of the army, but a lot of teenagers are suffering in part from depression coming out of the pandemic. ADHD is a common condition affecting about 10 percent of young people in our country.
They take medication. All of those things in the first instance are barriers. So I think what Senator Cotton and I are saying is the waiver process is fine except it’s a waiver process and it involves a lot of steps and a lot of time. And somebody might just say the heck with it, I’ve got a good offer over here in the private sector.
So give me your thoughts about — you mentioned streamlining that process, go a little deeper on that.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Thank you, Senator King. I think first what I’d say is we’ve got to maximize the flexibility within the waiver process and streamline it so that we can achieve the commonsense results that you and Senator Cotton were talking about.
ANGUS KING:
And streamlining entails or implies faster.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Yes, senator.
ANGUS KING:
Months and months are not going to do because this young person is going to say, the heck with this, I’m moving on.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Right. And I looked at the data in the Army and you’ll find that even in the last year, year to half, the biggest kind of request for waivers that we get are behavioral health, where somebody has sought out behavioral health care earlier in their life or they’ve been treated for depression or anxiety, ADHD, which are very common as we know in the target population.
So we’re seeing the number of those waivers being granted increase, but I think to your point, we’ve got to figure out how to get to the left of that. We’ve got to work more closely, which is step two across the department with how we’re doing our medical sessions and what those standards are to make sure that they’re updated with the latest science.
And most importantly, what the target population looks like.
ANGUS KING:
Well, I would commend you a RAND Corporation study from I think October of ’21 that studied what the outcomes were of people that came in on the waivers, vis a vis the other applicants. And basically, they found essentially no difference. In fact, some of these people did actually better in terms of making rank and retention.
Let me move on to another data question. Do you have data on the relationship between the unemployment rate nationally and recruiting? We’re now in one of the tightest labor markets I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Every — everybody that comes to my office, their number one issue is — is workers. This morning I had loggers from Maine, truck drivers, plumbers, doctors, nurses, retail, so I’m interested.
Intuitively, it seems to me that your — your job is going to be tougher when the labor market is so tight and there’s so many other opportunities. Is there any data on that Secretary Raven, do you know?
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes, we have that data. And we so — it shows a clear correlation between the labor market and — and newest sessions.
ANGUS KING:
Unemployment goes down, recruiting goes down.
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes, sir. But — but in fairness the challenges that we are looking at is more than what the — what the unemployment rate is here today. We have a real challenge in explaining the value of military service to younger individuals. And — and we are approaching this as a — as a multiyear initiative to reintroduce Americans to public service.
Whether that’s uniform service, civilian service working in shipyards, we need to have a national conversation about all of those.
ANGUS KING:
And I think you’ve touched on this point before, but one of the — I don’t know if it’s a problem, but something we have a — we’ve had — we have had testimony that 84 percent of the current members of the professional military are from military bloodlines. And that’s a — that narrows the focus. And one of the problems is geographically, for example, there are no military examples on the street in the Northeast.
In my town of Brunswick, Maine, we had a naval air station for 40 or 50 years. Kids got to know people from the military. They got to know them as their coaches. They saw them in — in town. That’s gone now. And I think part of what you have to do is reestablish intense recruitment in areas that don’t have a military presence.
Because that’s a fertile pool, but they just have lost contact. That’s one of the downsides of the professional military. One percent of Americans are involved directly in the military today. Talk to me about geography. We don’t want the military to be a geographic organization.
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, I’d say the Navy and Marine Corps have several efforts. One is to reconnect service members with their high schools. As they go back home to visit their parents, you know, talk to some kids about what military service means to them. On the Navy side, we have not only fleet weeks, but Navy weeks throughout the country.
We recently had one in Tucson, Arizona where again folks come out from California, tell the story of what it means to be in the Navy.
ANGUS KING:
The Navy in Tucson is a concept.
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes, sir. We are working on that. And we’re working on making sure that we have recruiters in all those areas of the country that are not represented by military installations.
ANGUS KING:
I’m out of time, but I assume you all are making similar efforts and to geographically disperse your effort.
UNKNOWN:
Yes, Senator. Yes, Senator.
ANGUS KING:
Thank you. Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator King. Senator Hirono, please.
MAZIE K. HIRONO:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the panelists because we have been talking about the challenges of recruitment and retention for quite a number of years. And I’m glad that the chair is focusing on this particular issue. I’m curious to know, is there a connection between higher enlistment numbers from states that have economic challenges?
Any of you?
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator I’d have to get back to you on that. I’ll have to look at that data for you.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, I don’t have that — that data either. We would need to do some research to analyze our recruiting trends against those with more challenging economic conditions.
ERIK RAVEN:
But ma’am, I would add that we are tracking very well that certain states tend to show up better in recruiting numbers. Hawaii is one example where the Navy tends to be able to tell its story and — and do quite well relative to the size of the population.
MAZIE K. HIRONO:
So, I think that would also be an — interesting aspect to consider. And if there is a relationship or correlation between enlistments and the — the awareness that perhaps there can be more challenges that — that can be met if they join up. Because you know, there’s not enough opportunities in their state — states.
That should be — that would be a concern. And I hope that if that does reveal itself, that we’re going to do something about it so that we’re not getting inordinate numbers of people from certain areas or states. Talking about recruiting women, women are and will continue to be integral to the United States military.
And increasing the number of women in the services will be necessary to meet each one of your recruiting goals. And I — I applaud efforts like the Air Force says Women in Sports campaign, an example of the type of creative marketing each service will need to employ to meet its recruitment goals moving forward.
But just as important are — as excellent advertising is supportive policies. In order for individuals to join and choose to remain in our military, they need to trust that the department will support them and their families. This is why I commend the Department of Defense’s policies to ensure access to reproductive health care, its expansion of parental leave and the funding the President’s Budget puts toward implementing the recommendations of the Independent Review Commission on sexual assault in the military.
No service members should have to choose between their service to this country and their health and well-being. So, as these kinds of policies have been implemented, have you seen an impact of these policies on recruiting question mark. And we can start with Secretary Camarillo and go down the line.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Secretary Hirono, taking care of our people is our top priority and everything we do. No question about that. I think it’s too early to tell what the impact will be of some of the more recent policy changes on our recruiting trends. But I can just say that, for example, the parental leave policies that were recently announced by the department just in feedback from individual soldiers at different units have been highly positive, both male and female soldiers.
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator, very similar. We haven’t seen an impact that we can directly correlate to these policies. What we do have is looking at social media and what service members are posting and talking about. There does seem to be positive reflections on many of those policies that you mentioned.
MAZIE K. HIRONO:
Any particular one, such as parental leave?
ERIK RAVEN:
Parental leave certainly comes to the top of the mind. Yes, ma’am.
KRISTYN JONES:
Ma’am, similarly, we don’t have the information yet on the impact to recruiting. What we are seeing is improvements for retention of women as we look at things like parental leave, the ability to fly and maintain readiness longer, while pregnant the ability to apply to go to the officer candidate school for moving into officer ranks while you are pregnant before that was a barrier.
So that’s part of what our efforts are looking at, what are those barriers that are impacting recruitment and retention.
MAZIE K. HIRONO:
So, in line with some of these comments that you’ve made, I — I would encourage each of you — your services to examine the feasibility of covering the cost of cryopreservation for service members as it relates to — as it could be another way, particularly to encourage female recruits and their retention.
I would ask each of you to contemplate whether or not that would help. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
KRISTYN JONES:
Yes, Senator.
MAZIE K. HIRONO:
I have some other questions for the record.
JACK REED:
I thank the — . Well, thank you, Senator Hirono. Senator Scott, please.
RICK SCOTT:
Thank you, Chairman. Thank each of you for being here. Can each of you just tell me what your pitch is? I joined the Navy at 18 and when I joined the Navy, the pitch was that I wanted to defend the freedoms of the country. I wanted to be part of — the most aggressive fighting force in the world. My dad joined the Army.
I think he was — I think he lied about his age. He was under — under 18. He did all combat — all the combat jumps with the 87th Airborne. Only 3000 people did that. He joined because he wanted to defend the freedom of the country, so what’s your — for each of you, what’s — what’s your — why should — why should a kid like me 18 years old, why — what is the pitch?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Scott, I’ll start. I think it’s very similar to that. The first thing we want is you to serve your country. Come be a part of something bigger than yourself, be a part of our national security and be a part of the greatest fighting force in the world. In addition, serving in the Army provides you whoever you are limitless possibilities for your career.
RICK SCOTT:
Can I just stop you for a second? What’s your favorite ad that says that?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I’m going to be partial and just say our recent Be All You Can Be ads.
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator, thank you for the question. For the Navy and Marine Corps team, it is a team that does incredible things around the globe every day, 24/7. And whether it’s serving in the Indo-Pacific aboard a ship on a — on an airplane, on a submarine, if you’re a marine doing the most incredible things that Marines can do, the opportunities are amazing.
And you know, just think about this. An individual can come out of high school, joined the Marine, become a certified cyber operator and do things that they cannot do in the private sector. They can be a world class hacker with — with the missions that — that Navy cyber — or Marine Corps Cyber Forces carry out every day.
And that’s something you cannot find in the private sector.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, similarly, we focus on opportunity and a sense of purpose. And all of the things that my colleagues mentioned about the ability to serve our nation to help with our national defense, but also the opportunities for high tech careers in cybersecurity in — in data and analytics as a doctor, a nurse, a pilot, the educational opportunities.
I mentioned earlier, 160,000 degrees have been given to our current workforce since they became part of the active-duty Guard and Reserve for the Department of the Air Force. So those are all things that we think are not getting out in terms of the messaging currently and that we’re continuing to emphasize in our marketing.
RICK SCOTT:
So, if you’re making the same pitch as you made when I was there, it sounds like why is it not working? I mean, we didn’t have — when I — when I served, we didn’t have a problem getting people to — to show up. Why — what do you — what’s not — what are you guys doing this not working?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Well, Senator, as we talked about earlier in the testimony, there are some factors that come into play here. First of all is the labor market. So, in periods of time historically where we have a really tight labor market and low unemployment regardless of pitch, it can be very challenging in terms of facing recruiting headwinds.
And also some of the changes we’ve made in the Army fairly recently to recalibrate our messaging to reintroduce the Army as an employer of choice with those career opportunities that we just talked about, that’s only been done in the last several weeks. And we look forward to continuing that — that effort.
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator, the Navy and Marine Corps are in a competition for talent. And I saw a banner the other day that said, you know, join this business, make a good salary, get college paid for, get retirement benefits, get health benefits. Ten years ago, that would have been a Navy or Marine Corps recruiting banner.
That’s a banner for a big box store where you’d go work retail. So, we are in a competition for talent. The world is changing around us. There are Americans who are less prepensed to serve. We need to get at that with a — with a real campaign of what it means to serve our country, not only for our country but for the individuals who agree to do that.
So we need to attack this on multiple fronts.
KRISTYN JONES:
And Senator, we need to tackle this misperception that joining the military is putting your life on hold. I think one of the ways that we didn’t do that particularly well in recent years was because of COVID and the lack of the ability for our recruiters to get into the schools and help them to understand some of the benefits.
So that’s opening up now. We have a lot better ability to do that. We’re using digital marketing to get that message out. I also think that partnering with this committee to figure out ways that collectively we can get that positive message out instead of some of the coverage that people hear through the media that might be more negative and focused on the things that are some of the challenges that are leading to misperceptions about military service rather than the benefits.
RICK SCOTT:
So, I think in a conversation you guys had with Senator Wicker before I was here, you talked about the — I think were you talking about the difference between equity and equality. How do you deal with that? What’s — what is the difference in y’all’s mind between equity and equality? And — and how does that play into your recruiting efforts?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator, our — our approach is we’ve talked about is to cast the widest possible net for talent anywhere It is. So, that includes, you know, for us geographic diversity, diversity of perspective, different parts of the country that we haven’t recruited in before. We need to cast that wide net for talent and make sure that the Army is the place where everybody sees that they have a role.
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, there is a toolbox of different initiatives, but they’re all aimed at — at a similar thing. That’s building teams to achieve the military mission. General Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps was recently asked about this and he views as two of those tool boxes in his toolkit to build the team that the Marine Corps needs.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we want diverse powerful teams that are engaged and connected. And in some areas we’re seeing where we have lower retention. We have lower promotion rates. We have higher non-judicial punishment rates among different areas of our workforce. And we want to understand the root causes for that. Is there something better that we can do to help make sure that everybody feels engaged and is ready to serve?
RICK SCOTT:
Thank you.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Scott. Senator Kelly, please.
MARK KELLY:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, thank you to all the witnesses for being here. Secretary Raven, I spent 25 years on active duty in the Navy. And both in the Navy and at NASA, I’ve had the privilege of serving with people from all over the country, and at NASA all over the planet to some extent in support of a bunch of different missions.
You know, the diversity of our crew, especially at my career at NASA, it made us stronger. But that’s also true for the military as well. You know, each individual’s background and perspective made a team more resilient, more ready for whatever challenges we faced, whether it was in the air, at sea or even in space.
So, I want to thank the witnesses for the work that they’ve done to make sure that our service branches represent our country. You know, the young people who choose to serve are the best that our country has to offer and we need all of them. And I’ve always found that when you have people from different backgrounds, you get different perspectives.
Your ability to solve problems increases when you have a diverse team. You know, the demands that we place on our military members are really significant. And since 2012, when many of the initiatives being discussed today here when they began in the Pentagon, we have fought two wars since then. And we’ve worked to counter a rising China.
And we’ve conducted raids and strikes on Bin Laden and other terrorists and extremist groups. And this has stretched our forces really thin. I think we all understand that. You know, there have been extended deployments and a lot of stress on military families. So Secretary Raven, some argue that our military isn’t focused on the right things, but I don’t think that’s true.
You know, because when we’re asking this much of our service members, we need to ensure that they see a place for themselves in the United States military. And that’s the only way we can recruit and retain the best and brightest. So Secretary Raven, I’ve said before that many of the initiatives that we’re discussing began in 2012 or before that, just a year after the Bin Laden raid, so I want to ask you.
Have these initiatives detracted from the readiness of the United States Navy? Would our Navy SEALs be less likely to succeed in conducting a mission like the one that killed Bin Laden today if we needed them to do that?
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator, the answer is no. There’s been no detraction from the primary mission of both the Navy and Marine Corps to defend our nation and do so in a forward deployed manner. And I would also say that General Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps was recently asked a similar question and he said there was “zero evidence,” that’s a quote, “zero evidence” that all these initiatives have impacted our readiness.
MARK KELLY:
And of the dozens of no fail operations our service members have conducted over the last decade, do you have any evidence, any evidence at all that these initiatives have adversely impacted our success anywhere?
ERIK RAVEN:
No.
MARK KELLY:
Okay. And are our service members as ready as they have ever been to fight the enemy right now?
ERIK RAVEN:
They are.
MARK KELLY:
All right. Well, thank you. And thank you again for all of you for being here. And I yield back even though my clock doesn’t work.
JACK REED:
You’ll yield back one minute and 18 seconds. It’ll go on your account. Senator Sullivan, please.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll try not to steal from Senator Kelly.
JACK REED:
Yeah, you don’t get the extra minute 18.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Oh, sorry. All right. I just thought maybe you were giving that up for me. Well, I appreciate the panel. It’s a really important topic. Let me — let me go into an issue that I think might be impacting recruiting, but I want to hear from you. The national media, unfortunately some in the administration, after January 6th, started trotting out this narrative that we have all these extremists in the military.
Okay, I’m looking at a bunch of Washington Post stories. The Washington Post used to write this about once a week. By the way, it was ridiculous. Okay. Those of us who have served in the military know that, of course, you have knuckleheads in every organization, right? But the vast majority, vast, vast, vast majority of the men and women who serve in the military serve with honor and distinction.
They’re the best and brightest. We had a Senator here who once said he thought 10 percent of the military was quote, “extremists.” Idiotic. Okay. That’s hundreds of thousands of members of the military wrong, right? He was clueless when he made that point. In the NDAA last year, I got a provision in there that was supported by Democrats and Republicans saying to the secretary, hey, no more witch hunts.
We’re not funding any more — want — not $0.01 for this so-called witch hunt on extremists in the military. That passed. That’s in the NDAA. You can’t do it anymore, so. But it’s out there. And unfortunately, it’s in the media with some officials in this administration. And don’t you think that that impacts recruiting?
That for the last year we’ve been saying that we have all these “extremists” in the military. If you’re a young mom and your son wants to join the Navy, she’s kind of doesn’t know a lot about the military. I’m not sure I want my son to join the Navy. It’s got a bunch of extremists. Has that hurt us? Does that hurt us? Is that one of the factors hurting us, this self-inflicted nonfactual — by the way, the secretary, to his credit, did a study and found that less than 100 members of a 2.1-million-member force were conducting extremist activity.
That’s 0.005 percent less. There are probably more extremists in the Congress than that. So what do you think about that issue as hurting recruiting? Anyone thought about that?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Sullivan, I’ll start. I’ll agree with you that, you know, first and foremost, the vast majority of soldiers in our Army serve honorably.
DAN SULLIVAN:
But we don’t have an extremist problem in the military, right?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
The overwhelming majority of our soldiers are very — serve honorably as I said earlier.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Of course.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
We do not believe that that’s an issue for them.
DAN SULLIVAN:
So, is this hurting recruiting?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
So, we do not have any evidence that it’s impacting our recruiting. But what I will say is we’re focused on making sure that we’re building cohesive strong teams in the Army. And to, you know, publicize that so that whenever we’re talking to educators, parents, grandparents, influencers about their sons and daughters joining the Army, they understand that they are joining a highly performing — you know, a performing team that builds positive command climates.
And that’s what we want to continue.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Anyone — any of you — any of you guys seeing this as it — we’ve — you’re highlighting in your testimony some of the recruiting challenges, but this one seems to me a self-inflicted wound. Again, our national media, which is pretty clueless on what goes on in the military, love this narrative, post January 6th. It was wrong.
The narrative was wrong, factually wrong. The secretary proved it. Any of you seeing that as a problem? And how — how do we counter that?
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, I would echo my — my colleague’s comments that the overwhelming number of sailors and marines serve honorably. I think there is a perception on a range of toxic behaviors that I believe are a very small but very important to get at that Americans are concerned that they may join the military and be faced with — with unacceptable behaviors ranging from sexual harassment to other behaviors.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Right. But — but it’s really important for you guys to get the word out that that’s not the case. Of course, we don’t want any of that in our military, but it’s not an epidemic. It’s certainly not 10 percent of the force, correct?
ERIK RAVEN:
I have no evidence to suggest it’s near 10 percent.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Let me ask another question. This is access to recruiters, so I’ve had a long history with certain elite universities, colleges. My alma mater had booted ROTC off campus 50 years ago. And it was a struggle to get some of the top universities in America to accept ROTC. Ridiculous. Congress finally acted and said, hey, you’re not going to accept ROTC on your campus, you’re not going to get federal dollars.
I’m hearing a lot of stories, particularly from some, no offense, but woke school administrators, that they’re not letting recruiters onto high school campuses to just recruit. So what I’d like to do for the record and first ask if you’re seeing it, but I’d like for each one of you to come back and give us any anecdotes to where high school — high schools are not allowing recruiters on campus.
And if that’s the case, I believe the Congress should look at ways to say all right, you’re a high school, you don’t want to bring the Marine Corps recruiter on your campus, your federal funds are cut off. What do you think about something like that? And are you seeing access on campuses as a problem for high schools?
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, I have no examples of being denied access but Secretary Del Toro recently wrote to more than 260 high schools asking for better access, just — just, you know, more regular access to students. And happy to follow up for the record.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Anyone else?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we met with the Department of Education just recently and talked about this as one of those issues. And there was a feeling that the military recruiters were targeting certain schools based on racial minorities and things like that and not going to other schools.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Okay, and do you think that’s true?
KRISTYN JONES:
I don’t have the data on that, Senator. But I think the important thing is that they thought that we were targeting — their children to go into the military instead of getting an education. And again, I think we need to have that narrative that the military is a way to get an education. And it’s also a way to get a high paying job.
And so, it’s not a negative thing to have the recruiters show up to your school. But we can follow up to see if we have any specific examples.
DAN SULLIVAN:
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Sullivan. Senator Manchin?
JOE MANCHIN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank everybody in uniform and everybody who’s ever been in uniform previously or is in uniform today for their service. I always thought that the person wanting to put a uniform on is willing to take a bullet for me or my family and I can’t express my gratitude more than that.
With that being said, I come from the state of West Virginia and we have a high percentage of people who serve in the military. On the Vietnam Wall, we have more — more names per capita than most any state. And they continue. I always say we’re — we’re always ready to fight. And we’re willing to answer the call for our country.
And if — if there’s not a good war going on or a fight, we’ll fight each other until we get ready to be called. I mean, we’re always prepared, so. [Laughter] With all that being — with all that being said, off of what Senator Sullivan just said. I — I was at a time when I went to WVU and my family, my grandfather was in the military and my father and my uncles were all military.
But you know, I had not been exposed because of the time element in 65, I go as a freshman at WVU and automatically I’m in ROTC. I’m in — I’m in — and I’d pick Army or Air Force. And I — I chose Army. And I was there for two years. And I really, really enjoyed it. I learned so much. And I guess it was taken out after the Vietnam War. I think that brought it to a head is what I understand when it came to culmination.
But it’s something we should — it was a land grant school. I understood that all land grant schools were mandatory to have two years of ROTC. A lot of our officers came through the program. Even today, I see some that came through from the two year. They got their scholarship was paid, education, everything.
It was unbelievable. And then, I go into colleges — to campuses around high schools, again with Sullivan — president — Senator Sullivan said, and I see a lot of the junior ROTC, ROTC — Junior ROTC, which is extremely, extremely important. It is so — so needed for structure and stature in this and that.
But it gives a kid confidence. And then that child and I’ll ask them, are you going to go into ROTC when you go to college or are you going to go in the military? Some will say yes, and some will say no. But they said the experience I’ve received, I’ll never be able to — to replicate. I’m thinking that — that — when — when I was drafted in Vietnam and we were taking 300 a day, 300 a day out of my university in 1967. I had just got hurt playing ball, so they wouldn’t take me. And I was scared to be four Fs. I finally got a one Y, in case of national emergency.
But we were all — we were going there to defend our country. We were going there basically to serve. And we all knew that we would be in combat. And — and today, I’m not sure. Someone said how would we react if we were Ukraine? What would be — what would be our stature, what would be the military stature to be able to go into a militia, if you will?
So, the AUMF, we’re just going to be voting on AUMF to do — basically to put a limit to where we’re going to have to have input on any wars. Would that be helpful? I mean, are people losing confidence that we’ve entered into wars that didn’t make any sense? I got to be honest with you. Our support of Ukraine is the only just war I’ve seen in my lifetime.
I was told about Vietnam. We had to stop the communists there. I’ve watched Afghanistan. I watched Iraq. I watched all of these things.
UNKNOWN:
You are right.
JOE MANCHIN:
This is truly a just an intervention that we’re involved, and I hope we stay and basically become victorious in that. So, I don’t know how that’s helping you or hurting you and what your sales pitch might be. I don’t think it’s the same. And I don’t understand the wokeness at all, so it doesn’t — it doesn’t affect in my state at all.
And we’re — I mean, we’re still ready to go. Just — just call us. We’ll be there. Appalachia has basically been a real fertile ground for the military. The whole Appalachia. There are 13 states in the Appalachia. And so, I’m just — I’m curious to see what we can do to help. What can we do to help? If it’s education, let us know.
If it’s ROTC, you again, let us know if it’s the support, you know, and — and we have the — I can tell you that the National Guard has been invaluable, what they’ve been able to do in our states. So, tell me what you all would think the greatest one thing that we could do to help you.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Manchin, I’ll just start by saying that creating a conversation nationally about a commitment to public service, Senator Reed spoke earlier, law enforcement professionals first responders, we’re having a hard time getting America’s youth population to consider those types of careers in addition to military service.
So, rebuilding that spirit of national service and reintroducing the military as an option would be number one.
JOE MANCHIN:
Now a Marine, I understand also you all had testified that you you’re recruiting your numbers but the Marines are the anyone hitting their targets?
UNKNOWN:
Yes, sir. The Marines hit their targets last year and —
JOE MANCHIN:
Air Force, Army did not?
KRISTYN JONES:
The Air Force active did. This year, the Space Force will, but the Air Force is expected to be 10 percent below our target.
JOE MANCHIN:
So again, what were you going to say we could be of help, the same?
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, about a week or two ago Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Troy Black testified before the House Armed Services Committee and brought up the point that if you’re reading something about the military in the newspaper, all the bad news goes to page one. All the good news goes to page six. We know we have challenges.
We know we need to do better at supporting our service members and our — and our families. But the extent that we can pull the conversation onto what’s right with serving our country, that is the biggest help we can have.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, I would agree with my colleague. Since you asked for one from each of us, I’ll add a new one is passing our budget when it comes before you, because that’s critical for making sure that we have the resources we need now and in the future.
JOE MANCHIN:
That’s very, very good. I’ve been told also — I’m passing a budget on time can save anywhere from five to ten percent of the budget we have now. So if you’re talking $850 billion, that could be anywhere from $40 billion to $80 billion or more just by doing it on time. For us to do our job on time is that much savings to the military.
Unbelievable.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Manchin.
JOE MANCHIN:
Thank you. Thank you for your service. God bless the United States of America.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Manchin. Senator Tuberville, please.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
Amen, Senator Manchin, on that. Thank you. Thanks for being here today. Mr. Raven, I want to ask about some of the Navy’s training materials. In his first act as SEC DEF, Secretary Austin ordered a stand down for training on extremism in the ranks. Each service had to give this training, correct?
ERIK RAVEN:
That’s correct, sir.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
How many Navy sailors received that training do you think?
ERIK RAVEN:
I believe that was force wide, so all sailors, all Marines.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
Okay. Active and Reserve?
ERIK RAVEN:
I believe so, sir.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
That’s about 350,000 people in the Navy alone. Are you familiar with the training overall?
ERIK RAVEN:
Generally, I’m not familiar with each product, sir.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
Okay. Our office obtained a copy of the brief that was given to every single sailor officer in the US Navy. One slide says and I quote, I come from a very conservative religious family and have views on marriage, abortion and LGBTQ rights that are often not considered mainstream. But are in keeping with my religious beliefs, I often discuss these issues online and on social media forums maintained by my church.
Will I get in trouble for my post? Are you familiar with this Navy training that went out to all of our sailors?
ERIK RAVEN:
I’m not familiar with that part, sir.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
Okay, I’ve got a little slide here I want to submit for the record, Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Without objection.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
Thank you. You know, mainstream media means normal, so the Navy is implying here that conservative religious people are abnormal. That kind of concerns me. Mr. Raven, 65 percent of the American population identify as Christian. And another 4 percent of Americans are Jewish, Muslim or Hindu. The vast majority in this country, the Navy’s recruiting pool is religious.
The Navy spending millions of man hours on a training that blatantly calls many of its service members abnormal. And then being surprised that recruiting numbers are down would be like a college football coach walking to a recruiting house and calling mom’s wallpaper ugly. I mean, that — I mean, it just doesn’t work.
I know a little bit about recruiting and I think we’ve got to do a lot better job than that, so. Mr. Camarillo, the total Army and Active Reserve and National Guard has a recruiting challenge. I think we all agree with that and we’re all watching it. The active component missed its target by the largest margin in American history in 2022. There are a lot of reasons for that and we all understand that.
Many of my colleagues have hammered that home. I won’t repeat that. Everyone in this room along with most Americans want to see you and the Army succeed. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. I want to shift gears here for a moment. A new recruiting ribbon is not going to cut it, okay? A promotion point scheme that has very little conversion rate, it’s not going to get enough.
We have got to find new ways. We have got to think bigger. In June 2021, the Supreme Court opened the door for the Army and every service to marry national service with participation in collegiate athletics. Private tech companies have demonstrated repeatedly to Army senior leaders the capability to identify, access and assign America’s high school student athletes who wish to continue their education in athletic careers collegiately in exchange for national service.
I think we’re missing the boat here if we don’t look at that. It’s not ROTC. It’s a 21st century pathway to service. It’s a strategy and a tactic guaranteed to produce a well-educated, physically capable, coachable and aspiring fighting force every year. 45,000 men and women, at the Division one level alone are eligible.
Can I get your word today that you will investigate this pathway?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Tuberville, I just want to say first of all, the number of efforts that we’re undertaking in the Army to address the recruiting challenge are far greater than just the recruiting ribbon. A number of efforts to improve how we track people, the recruiting workforce where we stationed them, how we train them in addition to surge of marketing and advertising, other incentives for people to join, it is a whole of Army approach to try to address this significant challenge.
But certainly, I’d be willing to work with you and look forward to discussing that proposal.
TOMMY TUBERVILLE:
Thank you very much. Imagination, we’ve got to start using it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Tuberville. Senator Shaheen, please.
JEANNE SHAHEEN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to each of you for being here today and for the work that you’re doing on a daily basis. You know, I’m — I’m not surprised, frankly, that we have a recruiting challenge in our services because we have a workforce challenge everywhere I have been in the last two or three years.
Every company I’ve been to in New Hampshire has the same concerns about not having an adequate workforce to do the jobs that we’re creating. I was at the Kennedy School in the early 2000 where the dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard was a workforce expert. And I remember he showed us charts of what was going to happen to the workforce in the United States at the end of the teens.
and the early 20s. And it was very clear that we were going to be — because of our birth rate, we were going to be relying on older workers and immigrants to — for filling the workforce needs that we have in the country. Now, over the last six years, we have the — had the lowest legal immigration rates in my lifetime.
And let’s not kid ourselves, that is affecting the workforce chain, whether it’s our military or the people who are building our roads and cleaning our streets. It is affecting us. And until we begin to address the immigration challenge we have in this country, we’re going to continue to have the same kinds of problems.
And I appreciate the excellent work that all of you are doing to try and be creative to attract people into our military. And I think the discussion about the importance of public service is a really critical one. And I think it’s been very helpful to have the public recognize the — the real responsibility that we have given to the men and women who are serving in our military and to appreciate that commitment.
But we’ve got to — we’ve got to also look at the broader picture here. And I recognize that you all aren’t going to change the immigration — the legal immigration policies in this country. But I think it’s really important for us to put on the table the fact that we’ve got to address this issue, if we’re going to address workforce, not just in the military, but across our workforce throughout this country.
So, having said that, can I — can I ask you about the retention success? Because I didn’t get to hear everybody’s opening statement, but I know that retention has been one of the areas of success that we’ve been able to rely on. Can you talk about how you’re trying to leverage that in terms of recruitment?
And what support we can give you from Congress to encourage that? I’ll open it up to whoever would like to answer.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Shaheen, we were very successful last year in achieving 104 percent of our retention goals. And we’re guardedly optimistic we’ll achieve similar success in FY ’23 but it’s too early to tell. I think what it shows is first and foremost, once people join the Army, they want to stay. They appreciate and value the experience they’re getting.
And it’s overwhelmingly positive for the vast majority of our service members. The thing that we need to do with that is make sure that we’re converting all of the people that are serving in the Army at every level into a full team effort to try to help build that propensity up in the rest of the country.
So some of the things that we’re doing, for example, is sending some of our units to local high schools to discuss and engage with administrators, teachers, parents in places that we don’t normally recruit or where you have a small recruiting workforce that has to cover a wide geographic area. So, we’re bringing more of our army into that effort to make sure that we’re covering more ground frankly across the vastness that this country has to offer.
JEANNE SHAHEEN:
And can you speak to — maybe each of you speak to the importance of recruiting women in order to ensure that we have the numbers we need in our military?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
There’s no question that’s a high priority for us. And certainly, we’re making sure that we’re making all the outreach that’s necessary to be able to attract — you know, the workforce from wherever we find it.
JEANNE SHAHEEN:
Thank you.
ERIK RAVEN:
Senator, absolutely. The Navy and Marine Corps is dedicated to building diverse high performing teams, and women are an integral part of that. As to retention, again, the Navy and Marine Corps continue to do well on retention overall. There are certain career fields where there is showing more strain and those are career fields that have a lot of competition from the private sector.
I would point out aviation and nuclear technologies as two of those where you can have some experience in the service and then be lured by a higher salaries, a different pace of life and so forth. And so, I — I would love to continue the conversation on how we target those specific issues.
JEANNE SHAHEEN:
Secretary Jones?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we’re at almost 93 percent retention for our officers. And just a hair under 90 percent for enlisted. And I think that shows, as my colleagues have stated, the value that we all place on military service once you’re actually in and serving and you understand those things that maybe aren’t getting the attention that they deserve for the rest of the country.
As far as women, that’s a priority for us. Our Women in Sports campaign is one way that we are approaching that. Also, looking at how we can increase the applications of women to the US Air Force Academy. So we’re focused on that in a number of ways because we think that having women understand the value of service will help to get those numbers up.
JEANNE SHAHEEN:
Well, thank you. As we — as we plan for our service academy applications in New Hampshire, one of the things that’s been really helpful is to do those with everybody in the Congressional Delegation and to have representatives from the military come and meet with those families. And that really encourages them as they’re thinking about their career moves, so thank you for that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Thank you very much, Senator Shaheen. Senator Budd, please.
TED BUDD:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The purpose and mission of our military is to provide trained and ready service members capable of deterring aggression and winning America’s wars should deterrence failed. I see some heads nodding, but let me just ask, would you all agree with that statement? Secretary Camarillo?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I would, Senator.
TED BUDD:
Secretary Raven?
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes.
TED BUDD:
And Secretary Jones?
KRISTYN JONES:
Yes, Senator.
TED BUDD:
Thank you. Millions of Americans right now are genuinely wondering how diversity, equity and inclusion, gender ideology and providing taxpayer funding to facilitate abortions increases the military’s readiness. They’re also wondering whether military service aligns with their values. So Mr. Raven, in your written testimony, you acknowledge that when you state today’s youth aspire to a lifestyle that maximizes work life alignment where a job in the organization they work for are not just a means to an end, but an expression of their values.
So other than the pulse surveys previously mentioned, have the services studied or even considered whether a hyper focus on DEI gender ideology and abortion is actually negatively impacting recruiting outside of the Pulse survey, Secretary Camarillo?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Our surveys were very comprehensive in terms of barriers to survey — or barriers to service, excuse me, Senator, and so the 16 that were identified on that survey were the ones that came up most frequently.
TED BUDD:
And that’s the Pulse survey, just to be clear.
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Yes, it was the one that was —
TED BUDD:
— Do you have data outside the Pulse survey?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Other than that done by the Army, no.
TED BUDD:
Secretary Raven, any data outside the Pulse survey that’s relevant here?
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, that Pulse survey was not conducted by the Department of the Navy, but I would refer you to some comments made by General Berger just this week in terms of how DEI and other initiatives relate to building combat effective teams. And he views that as essential to the Marine Corps future.
TED BUDD:
Secretary Jones.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we have a number of different surveys and climate surveys in particular that address areas like discrimination, racism, those types of things. And so, that’s a focus of our diversity and inclusion efforts to make sure that we don’t have parts of our workforce that feel marginalized, that feel like they aren’t able to engage and so that we can have high performing teams.
TED BUDD:
So, thank you for — for that. You’ve added climate to it, but there’s no data outside of this showing that climate, DEI, gender, ideology, abortion negatively impact recruiting?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, if I could clarify that, that statement climate surveys, that’s a term that we use to assess the climate of an organization. They don’t relate to climate change, so just wanted to clarify that.
TED BUDD:
Yeah, I appreciate you clarifying that. Thank you. Changing a bit. Mr. Camarillo, what are some of the Army’s learned lessons from its experience with reduced recruit standards back in the 1980s?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Certainly, Senator Budd, as we — the Army leadership has been consistent. Our efforts are trying to invest in America’s youth to help them to meet the standards that we’ve set for entry to service. So the best example of that is our Future Soldier Prep course, which we initiated last year where we’ve been able to bring in as many as 3700 potential candidates for entry into the Army.
We’ve given them the training both academics and physical skills to be able to meet our requirements. And we’ve had a successful outcome with as many as 98 percent coming through that program.
TED BUDD:
That’s great. I heard you mention that in your opening comments and elaborate on that just now. Secretary Raven, last month, we learned the Navy was giving a clean slate to sailors who failed their physical fitness assessments effectively lowering the standards. I understand we need to improve recruiting and retention numbers, but we can’t skimp on quality.
Can you please walk the committee through the — the process here, Secretary Raven?
ERIK RAVEN:
Yes, I appreciate that opportunity. So, the — the policy relates to giving commanders the option of extending enlistments or enlistments to sailors who had not passed previous fitness standards. This is an option given to commanders to assess on an individual basis can the sailor be brought up to the — the right physical standards to perform that mission.
And is that sailor performing a mission in the Navy that is needed? Again, this is an option being given to commanders not — not a — not a direction.
TED BUDD:
Thank you for that. You know, the way I see it, there are far too many threats facing America and the military is not a place to practice social experiments or push radical agendas. I appreciate your updates and the panel’s time today. And Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Budd. Senator Duckworth, please.
TAMMY DUCKWORTH:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the issue of diversity, I think it is important to note that greater diversity within the military does make our military more effective. I’ll just give you one example to have. In the Hawaii National Guard, a native [inaudible] speaking personnel who can blend in with the local population in the remote islands of the Philippines in the hunt for Islamic extremists is helpful.
The fact that the Illinois National Guard has Polish speaking personnel who can actually be in Ukraine, helping train Ukrainians because we have those language abilities is good for military readiness. I speak Thai. The fact that I could speak with my Thai military counterparts when I was wearing the uniform of this great nation was helpful to military readiness to have native Thai speaking and Indonesian speaking soldiers who can participate in Cobra Gold and in Garuda Shield is helpful to this nation and in fact, helps with our readiness.
I want to thank Mr. Chairman and thank our witnesses for appearing today. As you noted in your statements in response to my colleague’s questions, the services are struggling to meet their recruiting goals, in part due to a historically small pool of eligible recruits. And I appreciate your department’s efforts to address the many causes of this problem.
But I do think we need to also talk about other ways to expand that recruiting pool. This year I’m introducing the ENLIST Act. This legislation will allow the Department of Defense to expand its recruiting pool to include individuals like DACA recipients and other longtime residents in this country, who can pass a DOD background check and meet the service’s high standards for enlistment.
So, we don’t lower the standards at all. In fact, we require them to meet the standards. While maintaining the department Security Standards, the ENLIST Act will aid the service’s recruitment efforts by allowing a highly skilled and motivated individuals to succeed in the military, Who would be the people who could do this.
DACA folks. Dreamers. People who came here on an education visa and attended an American university and now cannot get a work visa here would be likely to be able to qualify for this. To all of our witnesses, I’d like to hear from each of you whether you think the ENLIST Act’s expansion of the pool of possible recruits would benefit military recruitment efforts, especially since it does not lower the standards and you must pass the background checks?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Duckworth, I’m familiar with the legislation. I’m committed to working with you as I am with the rest of the department to ensure that we can address the ultimate goal here, which is how do we expand the — the pool of qualified and interested and engaged applicants to join the armed forces. I will just say that, you know, certainly there’s ways we can work through the considerations that you identified in your question such as making sure that we provide the right background checks and that they meet our standards.
In addition, I’ll just note that how we engage a broader set of the population is also really important for us. So in the Army in this last year, looking at just lawful permanent residents, we’re undertaking a different campaign with Army Recruiting Command where we’re specifically looking for soldiers with those backgrounds to be able to engage with those communities often in their specific native languages to be able to attract them to come and join the Army.
TAMMY DUCKWORTH:
Thank you. Secretary Raven?
ERIK RAVEN:
Thank you, Senator. Same answer. Expanding the pool of candidates is very important to the Navy and Marine Corps. And let me tell you just one story. I visited a ship recently where I saw a sailor who is a little bit older than — than you’d expect. His — he had grown up in Nigeria, came to this country, got a green card and was just inspired by what the Navy could offer him.
And so, he joined and is now beginning his time in the Navy. It’s an inspiring story, especially for someone who grew up so far away. So I think offering these types of opportunities to more people is — is a very worthy goal.
TAMMY DUCKWORTH:
Thank you. Secretary Jones?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, I agree that any path to expanding the pool of applicants that can meet our high standards is valuable. So, we look forward to working with you to — to see how these types of efforts can progress. And within the Air Force, we’re also looking at a path to naturalization for those who come and serve.
We have a pilot that’s going on at our basic military training in that regard, and so I think that’s a similar intent to what you’re trying to achieve.
TAMMY DUCKWORTH:
Thank you. I want to pull a thread that several of my colleagues have raised related to the recent Army survey. When asked to compare different potential barriers for service, respondents weighed most heavily on the idea that they’d be putting the rest of their lives on hold if they joined the military. The Reserve components can give individuals opportunity to serve in the military while also pursuing a civilian career.
As a member of the Reserve component of my entire military career, I was working on a PhD, trying to join the Foreign Service, until an RPG changed my life trajectory. Like my colleague, Senator Ernst my Reserve service was an integral part of my life, but not an interruption. Yet, the Reserve components have largely also struggled to — to meet recruiting goals.
To all the witnesses, can you speak to your strategy for reaching potential recruits who may be interested in becoming Reservist as opposed to serving an active component? And what steps can you take to improve your marketing efforts and better message the specific benefits of a special role in the Reserve component that’s Reserve Forces and National Guard to our national defense?
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
Senator Duckworth, I fully agree with you, And I think one of the first things that we did starting last year was to surge the marketing and advertising budget and the number of recruiters that are working on specific recruiting for — for the — for the Reserve component. I think another thing that we need to do in response to this specific issue is to address and identify and educate on the range of career options and flexibilities that a career in Army Reserve would afford a young American.
You know, whether you’ve had some college experience, you have experience in a certain career field and you want to learn something different, this is a place where you can possibly learn and get training to achieve your career ambitions even if you want to try something different.
TAMMY DUCKWORTH:
Thank you.
ERIK RAVEN:
Thank you, Senator. In the last year, we’ve stood up Naval Reserve Recruiting Command to focus on those opportunities for those who may want to serve in the Navy part time. You will also see more targeted advertising. Previously, the Navy — you know, Join the Navy, See the World. We’re focusing more on the opportunities to join the Naval Reserves.
And the Marine Corps has had a very strong Marine Reserve recruiting program for quite some time.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we also have launched new recruiting campaigns for both the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard. We appreciate the additional funding in ’23 that will allow us to continue those efforts. One thing that we have seen is a challenge that’s impacting our numbers is our high retention that is impacting those who previously served moving on to the Guard and Reserves.
So we’re having to expand the pool that we consider for the Guard and Reserve for those who have never previously served and looking for new ways to do that. But again appreciate the additional efforts from the Congress that allow us to do that.
TAMMY DUCKWORTH:
Thank you. As I yield back to the chairman, I also want to mention the Lionesses who demonstrated the importance of having diversity because to have that all female Marine Corps unit allowed us to gather intelligence and interact with women in Afghanistan in a way that all male units could never do. Thank you.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator Duckworth. Senator Schmitt, please.
ERIC SCHMITT:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suppose what you’re hearing today is a voice of frustration. That our military the most, you know, honored and respected military in the world, certainly among the American people, that this administration is hell-bent on politicizing that. That the offspring of identity politics, which is incredibly divisive, has now made its way through DEI trainings in these branches.
And I think you’re hearing that from a number of Senators which is reflective of what’s happening across the country and what we hear from our — our citizens. It is naive to believe that this is not divisive among recruits or people in the military. We have heard from members of the military who have said that they resent being subjected to this.
This totem pole of grievances. This oppressor versus oppressed. The military has been a shining example of what a meritocracy can mean. People from the humblest beginnings can rise to the highest ranks, do heroic things. Parades can be thrown, you know, in New York City for these heroes. And that this flippant desire to inject politics now is dividing this community.
It’s dividing this country. It’s completely unnecessary. You know, the United States of America is an idea. The American idea that, you know, everybody is born with certain rights and they can pursue their dreams. And we believe in equality of opportunity. This sort of obsession with this equity agenda that you all are defending here today with just sort of a word salad is — is — is divisive.
And the military literally has stood as this most respected institution where people can achieve like great things and protect this country. And here we are in a committee hearing when China is like militarizing islands, they mean business, and we’re having to spend time to talk about DOD’s $114 million budget request for diversity, equity, inclusion, training.
This stuff is nuts. I want to ask each of you, have you heard, is there any intelligence that you’ve heard that Communist China is somehow intimidated or deterred by our DEI initiatives? I’ll take that as a collective no. And so, our focus here is — is maddening I think to a lot of members as you’ve heard.
And I want to ask a couple of specific questions. Ms. Jones, specifically. The DOD has put out an equity action plan issued a few weeks ago that said the department is implementing a range of initiatives to ensure equity for minority service members at critical career touchpoints that include recruiting and a sessions progression and promotion at the senior leader level ensuring equity.
What — what does that mean? What does ensuring equity mean?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, I don’t know that it’s possible to ensure equity. But as an example, when we look at promotion boards, all of that information on demographics is hidden. But afterwards we look to see are there any trends that we think are challenging? Are there any groups that we feel like maybe we need to relook how we’re approaching training?
Or are there barriers? For example, the barriers that we had with women who were choosing to leave our service because of some of the policies that we had? So, that’s what we’re focusing —
ERIC SCHMITT:
— Okay, but how do you — what are you measuring, right? Because we — I think we all still believe, I hope in equality of opportunity. Ensuring equity or outcomes, the government really shouldn’t be in the business of that. So, I don’t know exactly what that means or how you’re measuring “success.”
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, retention is a key focus of that. And again, we’re not looking at any quotas. It’s based on meritocracy. But we are looking for where there are barriers to serve that are impacting certain parts of our population in different ways.
ERIC SCHMITT:
Okay. Well, I’m running out of time and I want to — I want to ask this to anybody who’s willing to answer this. Under — Undersecretary Cisneros testified to our personnel subcommittee last week that DOD continues to take steps to improve and increase [DEIA] and the department is working to further understand root causes in the area where we lack diversity.
And develop initiatives that have measurable outcome matrix, maintain appropriate data to inform and target efforts, ensure environments are inclusive for all who serve and foster strong governance structure, oversee these efforts. Look, I don’t think you’re going to find anybody in here and — across this country who doesn’t believe people should be treated with respect with dignity, no matter who you are.
And we want the best defending this great country, but I just am very concerned. I don’t know what develop initiatives that have measurable outcome metrics based on equity means. And by chasing this, it’s — it’s driving a wedge in the military. And it’s completely unnecessary. And by the way, we’re spending, like I said $114 million on that just in this one department, not government wide, but with DOD. Can anybody tell me what the metrics are for equity?
Because it’s an outcome-based measure, right? Like what is it that we’re measuring?
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, for the Navy and Marine Corps, the ultimate measure of how we are doing is our ability to deter and fight and win wars. And in close consultation with both service leadership of the Navy and Marine Corps, we have heard that developing diverse capable teams is essential to developing warfighting capability.
The Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps testified about two weeks ago at the House Armed Services Committee, pretty much the first thing that he said out of his mouth is that the Marine Corps is ready to fight tonight.
ERIC SCHMITT:
Well, real quickly, because this is it — this is all I got time for. Since you’re speaking obviously here in the capacity with the Navy, Anderson Air Force Base has a — has a memo that’s been uncovered that you can’t — you can’t refer to someone as him or her, yet they have gender identity trainings. How does that — and by the way the — the — the justification for that is to add to, you know, lethality.
How — how does that — how does that help us be a better fighting force by not referring to a man as him or her in a memo? Like does — how does that help us? And I’m happy to provide, if you’re not familiar with the document that was uncovered last summer, how does that help us? How does that make us a more lethal fighting force?
ERIK RAVEN:
Sir, I can say every day in the Pentagon, there’s yes, sir. No, ma’am. And — and so forth. So, I’ll have to take a look at —
ERIC SCHMITT:
Well, we’ll follow up. I appreciate it. Thank you.
JACK REED:
Thank you, Senator. Senator Rosen, please.
JACKY ROSEN:
Thank you, Chairman Reed. Thank you for holding this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses for testifying today. And I especially want to offer Secretary Raven and his staff my personal gratitude. You worked with me and the whole Nevada delegation on a consensus proposal to modernize the Fallon Range Training Complex.
And it was included in the FY ’23 NDAA, And we are grateful. And I just want to add that I agree with Senator Duckworth because most of our offices employ veterans, but I am proud to employ a few reservists and what it has added to our team is they get to serve their country in both ways, here in the Senate and in the military.
It is terrific. And I’m very proud of that. So, I’m all for the Reserve. But I want to talk a little bit about the impact of housing on recruitment — recruitment and retention. Because in addition to answering the call to serving our country, men and women enlist in the military to build their skills, learn a trade, set themselves up for success both during and after their service.
But it’s no secret to many recruits that support mechanisms that they’re promised at the time of enlistment are not always in place at their time of service. And so, Secretary Jones, junior enlisted service members, including airmen stationed at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, they’re averaging only 12 months in our barracks or dormitories before they’re being forced to move off base and into expensive private housing in the Las Vegas market.
And there’s an on base housing shortage, and so I’m pleased to have worked with DOD to update their joint travel regulations so that these troops now receive partial dislocation allowance so they’re no longer forced to cover all their rental deposits and moving costs before they begin receiving their basic allowance — allowance for housing.
So, Secretary Jones, can you confirm to me that our junior enlisted are now receiving their partial dislocation allowance to cover their deposits and moving costs? This was — I had round table after round table. This was very distressing to the young men and women and causing them to go into debt or other avenues to cover that.
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, I’ll have to get back to you on that specifically. I do understand the issue. I’ll actually be going out to Nellis in the next two weeks to see that area personally, but I’ll get back to you on whether that’s already in place.
JACKY ROSEN:
Well, good. When you’re there, I want you to — let’s talk about how we address the housing shortage at Nellis. It’s the crown jewel of the Air Force. And we want to have people there. And I think it has a negative impact on recruitment and retention as our young service members tell others that they can’t afford to — they can’t stay on the base and they’re having issues moving off the base.
So, I’m disappointed that there’s no housing request in the FY ’24 budget request, but let’s — I hope we can continue to work on that and maybe modify that. I’m going to move on and let’s see — well, my clock is broken, so I have to look over here, Mr. Chairman. Everyone’s talking about competing for a talented workforce.
It’s an acute challenge like Senator Shaheen said in the private service, I mean in public — public service, military service, private industry, all of that. And the 2022 National Defense Strategy places individuals at the forefront of our ability to maintain a credible deterrent. And so, to recruit and retain the most talented Americans, we believe we must reform, obviously how we do business.
And part of this reform requires DOD to fill specific technology gaps, including cyber, data, artificial intelligence domains. And so I have a few bills out there for civilian cybersecurity reserve and other things, whether it’s in DHS or here in the Department of Defense. But to each of you, can you address the specific steps that you’re taking to look at targeting those skills for our workforce so we can recruit that talent?
And we can start with —
GABRIEL CAMARILLO:
I’ll start, Senator, just really quickly. We are doing greater outreach with, you know, soldiers and civilians who have expertise in these areas to do more outreach to colleges, universities across the country and find an established talent pipelines. The second thing I’ll say is that we’re reinforcing those efforts on the civilian side by instituting in the Army a cyber accepted workforce that enables us to use much more flexible hiring authorities.
The idea is let’s build a team together of people that are ambassadors for this critical capability in the Army.
ERIK RAVEN:
Thank you, Senator. And your leadership on the Fallon Range expansion was critical to everything, so thank you very much for that incredible partnership. In terms of getting and maintaining the talent we need in all these high-tech areas, it’s both on the uniform side and the civilian side and also on the industry side.
On the civilian side, we have warfare centers across the nation that are really focused on making sure that we outreach to universities to get — to get graduates interested in coming to work for the Department of the Navy on really high-tech, exciting things that are being done across cyber and a whole bunch of other disciplines.
Where I think we see more challenges as you point out is on the retention side where there are attractive opportunities. Once you’ve worked in this incredible environment of innovation and moving things forward, you’re in demand. And so, we are competing for talent, and I’d love to work with you on some initiatives in that front too.
JACKY ROSEN:
Thank you. Ma’am?
KRISTYN JONES:
Senator, we have similar programs to our colleagues with targeted bonuses for some of these high-tech areas, also university programs. And we are doing a workforce study across our force to include civilian specifically aimed at that cyber talent that is also very hard to keep so, I’d appreciate the opportunity to work with you on that.
JACKY ROSEN:
Yeah, I really believe in some of the bills I have out there we’ve discussed. I’d love to work with you all on this, how nontraditional cyber reserve models based on the reserve model that you already have can help people who have advanced degrees and long-term experience in these very specific fields that can really potentiate what we do to defeat our adversaries, so thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman.
JACK REED:
Well, thank you very much, Senator Rosen. And I want to thank the panel for your excellent testimony today. I think you’ve really put this all in context that in order to succeed, deter, and in fact, I think one of the most significant differences from our enemies is recognizing that we have a military that is the most adept, the most talented, the best trained and the readiest force in the world.
And that’s a function of having training that not only just tactical, but also brings together people from different backgrounds, different experiences and make them one. And that’s — that’s our accomplishment that other nations are very envious of — about. We have to keep that up I think, but your excellent testimony today has given us a perspective that we need as we go forward.
And I want to thank you. And with that, let me call the hearing to adjourn.