Month: March 2023

Source: United States Navy

JON TESTER:

[Begins in progress] committee meeting to order. Good morning. I want to welcome our witnesses Secretary Del Tora, Admiral Gilday, General Berger. Thank you for your service to our nation and thank you for leading the Navy and the Marine Corps. I look forward to discussing your fiscal year 2024 budget priorities today.

The FY 2024 budget request for the Navy and the Marine Corps is $255.8 billion, $11 billion more than in fiscal year 2023, and about $32 billion more than fiscal year 2022. This increase sounds robust, but it is irrelevant unless we enact a defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024. Our key priority this year must be to get the budget done on time.

Continuing resolutions kill military modernization and cause billions in wasteful spending and it is no secret that the Chinese don’t operate under continuing resolutions. I am encouraged by the work by Chair Murray and Vice Chair Collins have already put in to restore regular order to the Appropriations Committee.

Their commitment to writing bipartisan appropriations bill that addresses the critical challenges facing our nation have my full-throated support. This budget request represents continuity from last year’s budget by furthering implementing the National Defense Strategy and it reinforces what we already know.

Despite Russia’s ongoing unjust war in Ukraine, China remains our number one pacing threat. We must continue to modernize our military to stay ahead of that threat. The Navy and Marine Corps play an important role in defending our national and economic security by providing unparalleled maritime capabilities.

Every week, Senator Collins and I hear from commanders in the field about the varying threats facing our nation. So the question I have is are we spending taxpayer dollars on the right things. We look forward to hearing from you on where we’ve made progress in what challenges remain. And once again, I want to thank each one of you for your service to our country.

Before you make your opening statements, I want to turn it over to Senator Collins for her opening statement.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It’s been a great pleasure to work with you as we proceed as the chair and vice chair of this very important subcommittee. I want to echo the chairman’s thank you to each of our witnesses for your service. It is greatly appreciated, and I would ask that you also pass on our gratitude to the sailors and Marines that you represent.

I also want to recognize the department’s many civilians and their industry partners who build and maintain the ships, aircraft, and munitions that sustain the Navy and the Marine Corps. They make invaluable contributions, and I’m personally proud that so many Mainers have chosen to serve their country in these capacities such as by working at Bath Ironworks, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and the Naval Computer, and Telecommunications Center in Cutler, Maine.

The administration’s 2022 National Defense Strategy accurately describes the accelerating threat of China as the chairman has indicated and its unprecedented military modernization. However, in my judgment, the administration’s budget request does not fully reflect the challenges identified in its own national defense strategy.

For example, the president’s budget request would result in a fleet of 291 ships at the end of the next five years. That is smaller than today’s fleet of 296 ships and significantly smaller than the Navy’s own requirement of 373 ships. I’m also concerned with the contrast to the more than 440 ships that China is expected to have by the year 2030. The budget requests also inadequately accounts for the impact of inflation, investment and readiness accounts.

The Navy’s proposed budget increase of 4.5 percent, which includes the Marine Corps 2.6 percent increase would likely provide less buying power than the fiscal year ’23 enacted budget after accounting for inflation. For example, the budget request assumes a fuel price of $140 per barrel. Yet on the very day that the budget was rolled out, fuel was $169 per barrel.

That’s 20 percent more than budgeted. Why does this matter? It matters because the Department of Navy consumes roughly 24 million barrels of fuel each year and each $1 per barrel increase carries a $24 million cost. At $29 per barrel below current rates, this budget would equate to a $700 million unfunded cost just for the Department of the Navy.

It’s no surprise that Admiral Gilday and General Berger’s unfunded priorities, which highlights some of the shortfalls of this budget, totaled $5.7 billion. With that backdrop, Navy leadership deserves credit for redoubling its commitment to ship maintenance. This is evidenced by the $1.8 billion increase for ship repair and the continued full funding for the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan at the Navy’s four public shipyards, including the Portsmouth Navy Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

These investments are critical to keeping a greater portion of the Navy’s fleet available for operations. I also want to commend the Navy for pursuing a record number of multi-year procurement contracts for munitions this year. Ukraine’s war has taught us that we must transition from just in time stockpiles of weapons and munitions to just in case stockpiles.

If implemented well, these multiyear contracts will provide industry with the certainty necessary to make that transition a reality and deliver cost savings for the taxpayers at the same time and help with workforce challenges. I look forward to discussing all of these issues with our distinguished witnesses today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

JON TESTER:

Thank you, Senator Collins. You’ll each be given five minutes for your presentation. Know that your full written testimony will be a part of the record and we’ll start with you, Secretary Del Toro.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Collins, distinguished members of the committee, it’s an honor to appear before you alongside General Berger and Admiral Gilday to discuss the posture of the Department of the Navy. Today, our nation faces challenges in every region and domain we operate in from the seabed to the stars.

We recognize the People’s Republic of China as our pacing threat. Executing a strategy aimed at upending international order. To preserve our way of life The National Defense Strategy calls upon the joint force to deter aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict. A strong Navy and Marine Corps are the foundation upon which the success of the joint force exists.

The president’s 2024 budget sends a strong signal to the American people of the value of President Biden and Secretary Austin and myself place in maintaining a robust Navy and Marine Corps team to confront the threats that we face. This year’s budget request supports our three enduring priorities: strengthening maritime dominance, building a culture of warfighting excellence, and enhancing our strategic partnerships around the globe.

With your support over the past year, we have made major strides to modernize our fleet and our force. 2022 saw the first deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, providing the Navy with lessons learned that will benefit future Ford-class carriers. With the support of our partners in Congress, we are proud of field capable aircraft carriers as part of our fleet with a lower service life cost than their Nimitz class predecessors.

Construction of high-end surface combatants continues including the first Constellation-class frigate, USS Constellation and the first of our Arleigh Burke-class flight three destroyers, the USS Jack Lucas, which we are scheduled to commission just this fall. We continue progress in our first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the District of Columbia, while pre-construction activities on the second Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the USS Wisconsin, have also begun.

On the innovation front Task Force 59 in Bahrain, continues to test a wide range of uncrewed surface vessels. We look forward to bringing the capabilities that these platforms provide us to additional regions that we operate in around the globe. When we consider the composition of our fleet, we seek to strike a balance between readiness, modernization, and capacity with an immediate emphasis on readiness.

This year, our divestment request includes three amphibious ships and at least two cruisers in poor material condition that offer limited warfighting capability. Our decisions to divest or extend the ship’s life are based on a hull-by-hull evaluation. For example, we recently announced the modernization of the destroyer, USS Arleigh Burke DDG-51, to keep it sailing through 2031, five years beyond its estimated service life.

We hope to be able to continue that trend with other ships when possible. We owe it to the American people to be responsible stewards of our taxpayer dollars, as you have stated, Mr. Chairman. Investing in platforms with limited capability conflicts with that responsibility. The Navy and Marine Corps are not just about platforms and systems.

However, our sailors and our Marines are our greatest strength. This year’s budget request contains multiple investments to support them and their families with services, benefits, housing, and education. In addition to our commitments to our people, we are reinforcing our relationship with our allies and partners around the globe, including our Ukrainian partners as they defend their sovereignty in response to Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion.

In the Indo-Pacific, we continue to play a leading role in the AUKUS security partnership. Just this month, President Biden announced the optimal pathway for Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed nuclear-powered fast attack submarines. Our Navy will be critical to this initiative success as we support a very important ally.

In addition to our partnerships abroad, we are also committed to strengthening our relationships here at home with industry. We value your support and recommit our leadership toward defueling and remediating the Red Hill bulk fuel storage facility spill as well. We are committed to doing what it takes to address the concerns of our service members, their families, the people of Hawaii, and all of the communities throughout the US. As I’ve said before, we build trust one day at a time, one action at a time and we are committed to doing the right thing.

Lastly, I am grateful for the trust that you have placed in me to lead this department. I look forward to discussing how best to support our sailors, our Marines and their families in defense of our nation, and I thank you, sir.

JON TESTER:

Thank you, Secretary Del Toro. Next, we have Admiral Gilday.

MICHAEL M. GILDAY:

Chairman Tester, Vice Chair Collins, distinguished members of the committee, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to appear today with Secretary Del Toro and General Berger. For the past 77 years, the United States Navy has been an anchor of world stability, deterring war, upholding international law, and ensuring access to the seas.

Today, our Navy’s role has never been more expansive or consequential. This past year, our Navy Marine Corps team executed more than 22,000 steaming hours and nearly 1 million flying hours. We participated in roughly 100 exercises with allies and partners across the globe. And at this moment, we have nearly 100 ships at sea, reassuring America’s allies and partners that we stand to watch alongside them and reminding potential adversaries that we seek to preserve peace.

But we are prepared for any fight. The United States has always been a maritime nation. To preserve our security and prosperity, America needs a combat credible naval force to protect our interests in peace and to prevail in war, not just today, but for the long run. Our fiscal year 2024 budget request remains consistent with the Navy’s enduring priorities.

And to your point, Mr. Chairman, about whether or not the taxpayers — whether or not we are being consistent for the taxpayers in these investments. We are prioritizing readiness first with an emphasis on the sailors who empower everything that we do, ensuring that we are always combat ready. Next, we are modernizing our capabilities, ensuring that our forces today stay combat ready now and into the future in a rapidly changing world.

Third, we are continuing to build our capacity, ensuring that we have relevant lethal platforms to achieve warfighting advantage with a hybrid fleet of manned and unmanned platforms on above and below the sea. Our budget request reflects the Navy’s commitment to deliver and deploy and maintain our fleet.

It fully funds the Columbia-class submarine is — as the Secretary stated, ensuring the on-time delivery of the most survivable leg of our nation’s strategic deterrent triad. It keeps our fleet ready to fight tonight, dedicating the resources necessary to train and to educate resilient sailors that can outthink, that can out decide, and that can outfight any potential adversary.

It funds private and public sector ship maintenance to 100 percent, increasing capacity and retaining highly skilled labor to get our ships back to sea faster, with full magazines and spare parts in their storerooms to be prepared for any contingency. It invests in modernizing our fleet, procuring weapons with range and speed along with integrated systems to improve fleet survivability and a resilient cyber, secure network infrastructure.

And it invests in capable capacity. Building towards a larger distributed hybrid fleet fielding a ready fleet today while modernizing for the future. Our competitors are investing heavily in warfighting capabilities of their own and the oceans we are operating in are growing more lethal and more contested every single day.

Failing to modernize to meet those threats would erode America’s maritime superiority at a time when command of the seas will determine the balance of power for the rest of this century. This means we can no longer afford to maintain ships designed for a bygone era, especially at the expense of readiness, modernization, and new platforms, and buying new ships most relevant to today’s fight.

America cannot afford a hollow force. We have been there before, and we have seen tragic results. It is a mistake we must never repeat. Ships, submarines, and aircraft are no doubt expensive instruments of national power as are the costs of maintaining them. But history shows that without a powerful navy, the price tag could be much higher.

Thank you again for inviting me to testify and I look forward to answering your questions.

JON TESTER:

Thank you, Admiral Gilday. Next up we’ve got General Berger.

DAVID H. BERGER:

[Off-mic] Thank you. Three years ago, [Off-mic] the change — rapid change was required to meet our statutory missions and the mandates of the National Defense Strategy. And with the bipartisan help of this committee and the support of my civilian leadership in the Pentagon, the Marine Corps force design is no longer a future aim point, it is today.

It’s a reality And in INDOPACOM, for example, Task Force 76.3 creating advanced information webs to support maritime awareness. They took what they learned in experimentation and turned it into kill webs during exercise in the Philippines and in Japan earlier this spring, right in the Chinese backyard. And a EUCOM task force 61.2 found ways to create greater air and maritime domain awareness for the six-fleet focusing on Russian naval and air activities.

In CENTCOM General Carola has Marine Corps MQ-9s, providing persistent ISR that he needs to monitor the key maritime terrain. Next month our new Marine Littoral Regiment, third MLR will demonstrate some of its newest sensing and lethal capabilities in the Philippines during an exercise called Balikatan, right alongside our allies and partners.

And in January of this year, a couple of months ago, Japan agreed to host our second Marine Littoral Regiment, which is 12th MLR, that will be forward in the first island chain where persistent Marine Corps presence matters most. So, in short, your Marines are where it matters most today just as they always have been.

Three years ago, I described how the Marine Corps would not just modernize quickly, but we would self-fund those changes we had to make. We would get leaner, lighter, and more naval. And in three short years, your Marines have done just that. Marines are in the field and those changes are in the field today.

We’re not waiting for 2030 or 2027 or 2025. Your Marines are ready to handle any crisis anywhere now. Our major divestments are done. We are at our fighting weight. Now we have to sustain our modernization efforts while focusing, as the secretary mentioned, on the quality of life issues most important to the marines, sailors and the families.

People are the real source of our competitive advantage and I ask for your help now to invest in their quality of life. We must focus now on where Marines and families live, where they eat, where they work. Marines and sailors expect that from us and they deserve it. Restoring and modernizing our infrastructure is directly tied to retention, supporting our families, and generating readiness.

So on behalf of all Marines, I ask for your support now as we bring our facilities up to par with the quality of Marines and sailors operating from those warfighting platforms. And I’d also ask for your support to our Naval Expeditionary Capability. The CNO and I agree on three key principles when it comes to amphibious ships.

First, the absolute minimum of L-class amphibious ships the nation needs is 31. That is the warfighting requirement. Second, block buys save money, and they give industry predictability. And third, divesting without replacing creates unacceptable risk. Amphibious ships are critical to crisis response for this country.

That’s how we evacuated citizens, US citizens out of Lebanon. That’s how the US made initial entry into Afghanistan after 9/11 from the sea. And when DOD sends its lifesaving support after hurricanes and typhoons and earthquakes around the world and — and here in the US amphibious ships with embarked Marines were the only practical option.

Today we didn’t get to do all that plus directly contribute to campaigning and integrated deterrence. Here’s the bottom line from where I see it. The first time we can’t respond to an ally or partner in time of crisis will probably be the last time they depend on us for help, and we cannot let those partnerships erode.

In my final year as commandant, I’d finish by just saying thank you. Your Marine Corps wouldn’t be where it is today without your oversight, your guidance, your unwavering support. And with that, I welcome your questions. Look forward to working closely with this committee in the months to come. Thank you, sir.

JON TESTER:

Thank you, General Berger. It’s also fair to say the Marine Corps wouldn’t be where it is today without your leadership. So, we thank you for that. I’m going to yield my time to Senator Murray who is the —

PATTY MURRAY:

— Go ahead if you want to —

JON TESTER:

— No, no, no. I know where the bread’s buttered. I’m going to yield to Senator Murray, the chair of the full committee.

PATTY MURRAY:

Thank you very much, Chairman Tester, Vice Chair Collins, really appreciate it. And we really are fortunate to have two really tremendous leaders steering this subcommittee. So I’m grateful to both of you and I’m very glad to join today’s hearing with you as we continue to work towards regular order here in the Senate for the first time in years.

And as Senator Collins and I have made very clear, we have no — we have a responsibility to work in a timely fashion to write the bipartisan bills that will fund our country, build us as a stronger country and make our communities safer, and ensure that we stay ahead of our global competitors. And the conversations that we’re having today, including this hearing really help us show how we are going to make those investments decisions here in DC that will help strengthen our country and protect our families, which as we all know is especially important when China and others are making significant investments in their own navy and military right now.

And if we’re going to keep pace with those countries, we have to work together to get a bipartisan funding bill done. So, I’m really glad to have this opportunity to hear from the witnesses today about the president’s budget request for the Navy and Marines, particularly how we can make sure we are supporting our service members and their families.

And we need to remember that includes making sure that our military families, as you just alluded to, get things like child care and mental health care and good housing and schools and a lot more because at the end of the day, our best naval ships can’t go very far without the brave men and women who are willing to put themselves on the front lines to keep our country safe.

So, with that, I do have some questions for you today and Admiral Gilday, I’d like to start with you because in February, seismic deficiencies were found at three of the dry docks, as you know at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, and the Delta Pier at the Trident Refit facility in Bangor, two very critical facilities in my home state of Washington.

And as a result, six — as a result, submarines were prohibited from using three of those six dry docks at Puget Sound and the only dry dock at Bangor. Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is the primary location for attack submarine and aircraft carriers maintenance, as we know, on the West Coast. So I wanted to ask you today, how exactly is the Navy working with Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Trident Facility to plan and implement the near term mitigation?

And what resources do you need to have to accomplish that?

MICHAEL M. GILDAY:

Thank you, ma’am. We’re making good — good progress right now on repairs in three of those — three of those facilities. So, the first one at TRF Bangor will be complete in June. That’s the most substantial work that we’re doing, essentially repairing both sides of the — the entire dry dock. The — the two other docks will be finished in April and May. And so they’re progressing well and we’re focused there on those portions of the dock that are closest to the — the nuclear power plant in the submarines.

We actually put them up — put them up on — put them up in — in the dry dock. There is a $300 million request in my unfunded list. As you know, that was a late add that that didn’t make it into the budget. And so, I request your help there. Longer term, we’ll be looking at other upgrades that we need to make in order to ensure the seismic resiliency of that facility.

As you stated, we really count on it in terms of providing submarine maintenance for the fleet.

PATTY MURRAY:

So, the $300 million is for the short term, that’s your request?

MICHAEL M. GILDAY:

Yes, it is.

PATTY MURRAY:

And then longer term?

MICHAEL M. GILDAY:

So longer term, too early for me to state what that requirement is. We are right now scoping the long-term repairs in conjunction with the PSYOP work that we’re planning up there as well. So we want to make sure that it’s seismically resilient.

PATTY MURRAY:

Okay, and you will stay in touch with us on when that’s done?

MICHAEL M. GILDAY:

Absolutely, ma’am.

PATTY MURRAY:

Okay. Secretary Del Toro, back in 2021, it was announced that Naval Station Everett had been designated as the future homeport for 12 Constellation-class frigates scheduled to be delivered in ’26. That’s great news. The Navy’s long-term commitment to effort in Sonoma County, my state, is really clear. But as we get close to that date, we need to make sure that not only the Navy has the resources they need, but the Everett community also has the support it needs to accommodate the influx of sailors and their families.

Are those still on track to arrive in 2026?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

We’re currently looking at the lay down plans, ma’am, for all of our ships given the increasing Indo-Pacific threat that we face. I myself have visited the Puget Sound area and looked at all the different infrastructure issues that are at play there. And we’re looking and discussing with the CNO exactly what investments need to be made over the next several years, so that we can move in the right direction including greater support for the hospital in the Puget Sound area as well too.

And if I could just briefly comment and thank you for your leadership as well as the collaboration that we’ve had with the community of Puget Sound as we actually moved very aggressively to affect the repairs to the dry docks very expeditiously. It’s been nothing but a great relationship.

PATTY MURRAY:

Thank you very much. And just really quickly, Mr. Chairman, if I can just ask Secretary again about the Navy suicide rate. Nearly 17 deaths per 100,000 sailors. That’s just devastating. Does the president’s budget request support any additional mental health?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Very much so, ma’am. And the Department of the Navy’s budget, we actually have additional funds upwards of $200 Million that are dedicated to this. And in addition to the actual human element of actually trying to bring everyone together to try to solve this very, very grave problem that we face as a nation and as a Navy as well too.

PATTY MURRAY:

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

JON TESTER:

Senator Collins.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral Gilday, the fiscal Year ’22, NDAA sought to empower the CNO by requiring the CNO to submit his or her fleet size requirements directly to Congress. In July of 2022, the first such requirement was submitted and called for 373 ships compared to 296 in the fleet today. Your navigation plan which was released that same month called for 96 large surface combatants like those built at Bath Ironworks in my home state.

Two questions; first, when do you anticipate that your analysis will be released so that we have the benefit of your guidance in drafting the bill? And second, is it likely that your updated fleet requirement will be greater than the 373 ships in light of China’s modernization?

MICHAEL M. GILDAY:

Ma’am, on the first question, I’ve committed to Congress to deliver that report by the 10th of June this year and I will make that deadline. We are on track with our analysis team to do that. Secondly, with respect to — to not only the size but the composition of the fleet, I would expect that to change from the last report, particularly in terms of composition.

It’s too early to tell the respect to size, but quite honestly, ma’am, I can’t see it getting any smaller than 373 manned ships.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Thank you and that’s quite a ways from where we are today.

DAVID BERGER:

Yes, it is.

SUSAN COLLINS:

General Berger, as we were sitting here, a headline came across my phone and it says Pentagon comes out against law requiring military wishlists and it came across just as you were explaining why you need more amphibious ships and that that was your number one unfunded priority. Isn’t it important for Congress to know what your chief unfunded priorities are?

DAVID BERGER:

From my perspective, it’s been useful I think to submit it from each of the services and you to have visibility on what’s not in the budget for whatever reason. So from my perspective, it seems useful if it’s useful to members and it has been in the past.

SUSAN COLLINS:

It’s definitely useful to us and I don’t think that Congress is going to take the Pentagon’s advice on doing away with the unfunded priorities list. Admiral, let me return to you. Could you explain to the committee why our surface Navy is so important as a deterrent from a deterrence perspective?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

So the — the destroyers, the cruisers that we have at sea today are really the backbone of the fleet along with our aircraft carriers and our amphibious ships. You just can’t replace forward presence. It’s there to not only ensure that US interests are looked after, but that we’re also poised in case any crisis comes up. We reassure allies and partners that we’re there, 24/7/365. A full third of the Navy is forward on any given day.

A second third is in maintenance and the remaining third is either just returned for deployment or is ramping up to go. That’s where we belong out forward. The secretary of Defense has directed readiness levels to us and those are ships that are — that are ready to respond within ten days. Those ships are all at sea now.

And so what we’re trying to do in order to take advantage of the firepower that we have today is to improve our maintenance cadence as an example to send more ships to sea. The more the better. The bigger fleet, the better.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

JON TESTER:

So we’ll start with you, Secretary Del Toro. Last — last year Congress accelerated investment in weapons so that our weapons magazines are loaded up for future contingencies. In this year’s budget, the department is proposing to lock in procurement quantities for nine different weapons programs over five years.

This would provide significant predictability and stability to the industrial base. However, I know that in some cases such as the naval strength missile quantities requested this year are lower than appropriated last year. Further, it is not clear what the private sector investment will be in return for this procurement predictability from the government.

So, Secretary, could you explain how multi-year procurements can help stabilize the industrial base? And furthermore, what investments are you expecting in return from this predictability?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Mr. Chairman — Mr. Chairman, I believe that multi-year procurements are critical to growing the size of the fleet in terms of buying individual platforms and ships and such as critical as it is also to invest in munitions. And we appreciate the support of the Congress in being allowed to use these multi-year procurements for the purchase of — of missile systems as well too.

Our budget in this year’s fiscal president’s budget submission increases the investment in munitions by 50 percent, investing in Tomahawks SM-6, Mark-48 torpedoes, LRASM across the entire threshold of the missiles that are needed actually for the Navy to be able to accomplish its mission. I’m also a big supporter of the naval strike missile just on the LCS class of platforms.

We’re looking to put them on all our LCS platforms moving forward. So I wasn’t aware of the slight decrease in the numbers of NSMs. I thought that the numbers had actually gone up, but I’ll go back and validate that and get back to you if there’s been a small decrease in the numbers of NSMs. But I believe we’re — we’re purchasing over 99 across the entire fit up.

JON TESTER:

Okay. And what do you expect in return from the industrial base with long-term predictability?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Well, I expect their commitment to recapitalize in order to be able to provide these missiles at the pace that we’re requiring them for both the challenge that we face versus Ukraine as well as the potential need to be able to deter China and the Taiwan scenario as well, too. And these missiles will be required in the numbers necessary to be able to get there.

So industry has to do as parts with a consistent signal being sent by the Department of Defense that we will be purchasing these missiles for a long period of time. They should feel comfortable in their confidence that they can invest in their own capitalization and their workforce to be able to produce these missiles and systems that are needed.

JON TESTER:

Despite repeated investments in the defense industrial base and the shipbuilding industrial base in particular, we don’t really see improvements towards ships being delivered on cost and — and on time. In fact, your annual report to pay for cost overruns on new ships is about 2 billion bucks or close to it. It seems like I asked this every year, but what else can we do to support the shipbuilding industry to be able to get ships out on time, in particular, and under cost?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Well, Mr. Chairman, I think that our investments in the P2P plan that the CNO has been committed to for the past several years actually is starting now to make some advancements in being able to get ships out of shipyards are far faster than than before, whether they’re ships being repaired or new construction ships for that matter as well too.

With regards to the increased cost of the ships, much of it has been due to inflation and certainly the negative impacts of the CR and the workforce shortage that we are all existing. But I’d like to — I’m hopeful that as we actually come out of COVID and and start fixing some of these work shortages that we have will be in a better place.

I want to thank the Congress and you particularly for your investment in over $2.3 dollars in workforce and industrial base investments last year. The number this year is equally significant, $1.7 billion. We will continue to make sure that those dollars get used wisely with a return on investment on behalf of the American taxpayer with the right oversight that’s necessary to create these programs that hopefully will provide far greater numbers of workers to the shipyards themselves.

JON TESTER:

The two senators to my right and to my left have made it clear that they intend to follow regular order and get a budget up by the end of September. I think that’s good news. The other side of that coin is, is that we do need to do our job, but also the industrial base needs to deliver on time. Is there anything that we can do to help you make sure that they’re delivering our assets that we’re having them build on time?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Well, I, as secretary of the Navy, have held them accountable actually for delivering ships on time. I’ve had numerous meetings with all of the CEOs. I’ve walked all the shipyards myself to take a look at exactly how engaged they are in the construction of ships and providing the quality of materials that are necessary.

I think from the Congressional perspective, your continued commitment to invest in the industrial base, not just in the submarine community, but as the vice chairwoman mentioned in the surface warfare industrial base as well too is critically important. Those are measures that I think Congress should continue to take in order for us to get to a better place.

JON TESTER:

Senator Moran.

JERRY MORAN:

Chairman, thank you very much. Welcome to our panel. I appreciate your service and your presence here. General Berger, let me begin with you. Both the Marine Corps budget submission and unfunded priority list, invest heavily in CH-53 King Stallions. Explain why this particular aircraft is critical to the force design 2030 and the Marine Corps mission, if you would.

DAVID BERGER:

Last — late last fall, went down to North Carolina, Senator, to fly on that aircraft. Having grown up in CH-53Ds and Es. This is a state of the art aircraft. It has a glass cockpit. It’s a fly by wire digital airframe. It doesn’t fly itself literally. But it is just exponentially years ahead of where anything else that we have.

Around the world, it is one of a kind. It has range, altitude capability, refueling, lift. It’s marinized to go aboard ship like we do. It is one of a kind. To your question on how does it fit into force design, both the CNO and I believe strongly that we will need to operate in a distributed manner. That means you’re going to have to move troops and supplies around the 53-K is critical for that, especially in regions where you have long distances where you got to do that over water.

It’s just — this is the — this is the machine built for that. And the price which I’m glad to see happened, gone down from 117 to 113 in the most recent lot. That’s the — that’s the direction you want to see costs go as they learn how to build an airframe. So the cost is headed in the right direction.

And lastly, I’ll just say it’s scheduled to deploy later this fall. I’ll be pretty excited to see what it does aboard ship when it’s actually deployed.

JERRY MORAN:

Thank you. Gentlemen — or Admiral Gilday. P-8s, advancing technology, submarine capability of our adversaries. The P-8 Poseidon, I assume, continues to be critical to deal with those threats. I notice that — I visited SOUTH COMM last month or a few weeks before that. And the commanding general in our conversation, but also in a conversation with Senator Shaheen indicated that the drug flow coming across our southern border is at an all time high.

SOUTH COMM’s allocated resources to see this situation, her ISR assets, quote, “are at an all time low.” The Navy’s procurement has stopped short of meeting the original risk-informed requirements for the 138 aircraft. What risk assessments went into this decision to halt the procurement of this critical capability?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Sir, right now the — our estimate is 127 and we’re sticking to that. So this is based on evolving wargaming analysis that we’re doing on an annual basis. The same thing goes into our ship numbers and our ship mix. As you said, P-8s are vitally important. So I’ve never had to have to ask a combatant commander twice if they needed another P-8. They are in very, very high demand.

They’re not the only asset out there that we — that we rely on for ISR, but particularly with respect to an ASW mission, which is what they were really designed for. They’re less optimum for SOUTH COMM as an example and more against, let’s say, a Russian submarine threat coming from the high north and they tend to come out with more frequency these days as well as a growing Chinese threat.

And so our focus has really been on both of those primary global threats as outlined in the National Defense strategy.

JERRY MORAN:

Thank you and let me turn to you Mr. Secretary. Last year’s PACT Act was signed into law. It provides benefits to veterans exposed to toxic substances. The law included a provision allowing for individuals impacted by contaminated waters at Camp Lejeune to file for damages in court — federal court. The PACT Act required claimants to present their claims to the Navy before going to court and this is certainly additional burdens on claimants.

The Department of Justice, the federal court system, if the Navy can’t find a way to provide an administrative remedy in these cases, would you explain where the Navy is in its effort to set up an administrative claims process? How many claims have been filed with the Navy since the law became — took effect on August the 10th, How many claims is the Navy acted on and can you provide a reasonable timeline for the Navy to process and respond to those claims?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Thank you, Senator. And we’re very grateful for the support that was given by the Congress in order to pass the PACT Act in order to take care of our — of our troops, our sailors, our Marines, and their families as well too.

JERRY MORAN:

Thank you.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

We have stood up an outward facing website at the processing unit. It’s my understanding that we have received over 20,000 claims. We are obviously going to have to increase the personnel assigned to the processing unit to be able to address those claims. I’ll have to get back to you on an exact number of claims that are — have already been addressed.

I believe this is just beginning and there’s much more work to be done. But we are committed to actually being able to process the claims and responsible manner in order to move — move down that path.

JERRY MORAN:

Does the president’s budget request reflect that additional personnel?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I have to get back to you. Senator. I don’t believe it does right now.

JERRY MORAN:

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

JON TESTER:

Senator Schatz.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. Secretary Del Toro, just very quickly. Are we on track for defueling Red Hill?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Senator, we are very much on track for defueling Red Hill. As you know, we have also submitted our closure plan for Red Hill. We’ve submitted addendum number one and we’re working on addendum number two as well too that will be submitted later this year.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Do you have any reason to believe that defueling will adversely impact the DOD’s ability to support military operations in the AOR?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I do not, Senator. And all my conversations with senior leadership at the Pentagon and looking at the strategic lay down plan for the fuel afterwards. I don’t see any challenges whatsoever to executing that plan over the course of time. Absolutely not.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Thank you. And do I have your commitment to make sure that the Navy works with state and local partners on the health care aspect of this as well as environmental remediation?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Senator, you’ve always had my commitment on that subject and you will continue to have my commitment on that subject, working with the office of Secretary of Defense and DHA, in particular, to ensure that the service members and also the people of Hawaii have the services they need from a health care perspective moving forward.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Thank you very much. Admiral Gilday, given that the INDOPACOM unfunded priorities list includes military construction, joint training with regional partners, and logistics, can we be confident that — this is a delicate question, so I wish you luck with the answer. Can we be confident that member driven priorities aren’t crowding out our more foundational budget priorities?

I’m talking about divestment here and we’ve had some good conversations and even on the committee, we’ve been talking about divestment. But everybody talks about divestment every year. And as I look at these priorities, it seems to me that these are the things that should be not on the unfunded priorities list, but on the list that is — that we’re planning to fund.

So can you reassure me that we’re not accommodating all of the members and all of their hometown business interests in contradiction of what the Department of Defense needs?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

I think, sir, the — the friction point with divestment, specifically ship divestments directly butts against those members that are interested in ensuring that repair yards have a sufficient throughput going through them. Right? And so if I look out to 2026 with a high degree of confidence, I can tell you that as an example, in Norfolk, throughput through those shipyards will increase by 10 percent.

In San Diego, it’ll increase by 9 percent. There’s a bit of a dip there in ’24, but it does stabilize. If I could just draw a parallel and to our shipbuilding plans. So with our submarines, you can look out for 20 years and you know that we’re in a cadence to build one SSBN and two SSNs. Likewise, that gives stability to the force in terms of what you’re going to look at in terms of a battle force you’re going to field under the sea and what those repair requirements are with a high degree of fidelity.

We’re just now getting to that point in the surface build production lines, destroyers, LPDs. We want to keep — we want to keep that line — we want to keep that line going.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

I get all that and —

MICHAEL GILDAY:

— You get that and so that gives a higher degree of fidelity in terms of what the future looks like for those repair yards.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Sure, and I’m obviously supportive of keeping the industrial base up and running and also the predictability and probably the price predictability of long-term contracts and long-term investments. But I just worry that we are giving short shrift to the kind of boring stuff, making facilities more resilient, funding our partnerships in the region, sewer, water, housing, all of it.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

I get your point, So if you — if I were to take our investment strategy with respect to infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and I have another billion and then another .5 billion on my — on my unfunded list for infrastructure. Most of that’s in the Pacific and it’s completely aligned with INDOPACOM’s plan for bases in places that we need to expand in the Indo-Pacific or to shore up because we’ve not done any work there in a while.

We work our budget with respect to that sort of hand-in-glove with the combatant commander.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Thank you. Just one final question for — for Secretary Del Toro. Red Hill is not the only aging infrastructure in Hawaii, that’s for sure. And like you to speak to the sort of more basic, more mundane needs regarding infrastructure in the state of Hawaii.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Very much, Senator. We’ve actually dedicated in this year’s budget over $1 billion above last year to investments in the infrastructure. And they’re going to have to continue. Historically, we’ve invested less than 1 percent of the budgets over the last ten, 20 years actually in infrastructure. And it’s as critical to combat readiness as the readiness of our ships and our aircraft, etc.

With regards to the infrastructure and on the island of Oahu throughout Hawaii as well too, it is challenged. It’s very old. It needs to be replaced. I believe the CNO has actually executed Three recent assessments to take a look at the water, the sewage, and — and electricity actually on the island in order to support the infrastructure and the ships that are there and the families that are there as well too.

And we have to continue that investment moving forward. We cannot ignore it. I myself have called for a 30-year infrastructure plan for the Department of the Navy. It’ll take us, you know, a year to sort of get there and get it in the right direction. But both in the Marine Corps and the Navy, all three of us are actually paying a lot more attention to infrastructure because it’s the right thing to do.

BRIAN SCHATZ:

Thank you.

JON TESTER:

Senator Murkowski.

LISA MURKOWSKI:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This morning in Alaska, there is a 500 speakers that are lined up to participate at the Arctic Encounter Symposium, the largest arctic gathering here in the country. We’re talking a lot about the Arctic nowadays. One of the principal issues of discussion will be the China-Russia intersect and the interest in the Arctic.

I am all eyes on the Arctic all the time and I was a little concerned, Mr. Secretary, as well as, Admiral Gilday, in–in going through at least your written testimony this morning, some — some 50 pages of text between the two of you. There is zero mention to resourcing your department’s Arctic strategy or defending America’s Arctic.

That worries me. We have seen Arctic strategies released by each one of the services. That’s greatly important, but we all know that just having a strategy is nothing if we do not resource it and resources are reflected in the budget. So, Mr. Secretary, can you explain to me why you haven’t been conducting more overt operations in the Arctic?

And just more generally, if you would like whether or not you think that this budget properly resources the Navy’s Arctic strategy?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Senator, let me say that I deeply am concerned about what’s happening in the Arctic. Obviously the United States is an Arctic nation just like Russia as well too. Unfortunately, they have been investing far greater resources than we have historically in the Arctic, whether it be icebreakers or troops or etc.

We need to do a better job of our investment in the Arctic. I think we’ve been challenged obviously with the current situation in Ukraine. As well as challenged by the current increasing threat of China as the pacing threat and the scenario with regards to Taiwan, which has demanded additional resources to be able to address those significant challenges.

But nevertheless, the CNO, myself, and the Marine Corps, and General Berger are looking at trying to increase the number of operations that we have actually in the — in the north and also taking a look at future deepwater ports that perhaps we could reinforce in terms of what appears and etc. I myself am planning to go to Alaska in June to address some of these issues myself.

So I look forward to that continued conversation with you and the rest of Congress as we — with a need to address these significant threats that are evolving.

LISA MURKOWSKI:

Good, well, we’ll certainly welcome you in June. Any time you want. General Berger, let me ask you the same, whether or not you feel this budget appropriately resources the — the — the issues as they relate to our Marine Corps and the footprint in Alaska?

DAVID BERGER:

It gives us the thanks for the question, ma’am. It gives us the resources we need to train there, yes. Both in exercises that are regularly scheduled, like you mentioned, Arctic Edge being one of them, where we go up and frankly can train to a level we can’t in inside the rest of the United States, both because of the airspace and the sea space.

And the — and the — in the force-on-force opportunities that you have in Alaska that is really difficult to generate down here. And there’s also the unit deployments that we do to Alaska. And I took my battalion to Alaska because you can — you can build readiness there and get your — it’s a regular deployment.

You can do things again that you can’t do at home station. It does provide us the resource — the Marine Corps, the resources to do that right now.

LISA MURKOWSKI:

Okay. Well, it is something that again we — we recognize that this is a matter — this is an issue when it comes to Arctic and Arctic readiness that we’re not there yet. I think we would all recognize across all the services. We are not there yet. You mentioned — you mentioned icebreakers and I’m sure you know this, Mr. Secretary that we’re sitting here still at one and a half icebreakers on a good day.

Compare that to Russia’s 56. China is moving forward, Even India is talking about building an icebreaker. So we are — we are well behind in — in the construction of — of how we’re going to facilitate our icebreaking fleet. I have two questions and I’m probably not going to be able to get to them. So I’d ask that you both take these for the record and this is to you ,Admiral Gilday, and to you, Mr. Secretary.

And they relate to World War II munitions and explosives of concern, unexploded ordinances that were left near — near — on Alaska at the end of the Aleutians. There — there have been several areas identified where these hazards can be. It’s been concluded that risks to public safety are present in many of these areas.

It is — it’s a concern amongst the people in — in the region, most notably. Now we’re told that Navy says it does not plan to conduct another survey until 2027 until more advanced underwater search technology is developed. I want you to be aware of this because I’m going to include language in the — in the defense appropriations bill to conduct a more thorough survey in 2024. I think the people there deserve it and it’s an — in addition to the unexploded ordinances, I’m also going to inquire about the — the chemical weapons, the mustard agent, the Lucite that was deposited off of Attu.

And again, the survey of that chemical weapons dump site. So just put that on your horizon, if you can get back to me earlier than that it might obviate the need for — for language. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

JON TESTER:

Senator Baldwin.

TAMMY BALDWIN:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Del Toro, building on this committee’s prior shipbuilding investments, I’m advocating for additional funding for the frigate industrial base and workforce in fiscal year 2024. The ship will be a central part of the future fleet and as a new class will undoubtedly face workforce, supplier, and shipyard infrastructure challenges.

Last year, Congress provided $50 million for the Frigate Industrial Base and Workforce Development Program. I want to thank you for noting your support of this funding during last year’s hearing. First, can you share your thoughts on how the fiscal year ’23 funding will be executed to benefit this program?

And then secondly, please follow up with — because I believe a sustained and robust investment is required to continue supporting the ships production ramp up. How do you see sustained industrial base funding helping the program?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Thank you, Senator. And first let me thank you for your commitment to ensuring that the Constellation gets built on time and on track. And I’m pleased to report that she is on time and on track right now for — for delivery. And we want to make sure that we continue that, that — that record. And the industrial base investments are necessary.

Most of the monies that I believe will be dedicated towards Constellation will go into the force of workforce development programs to try to help the shipyard recruit additional and train additional individuals in Wisconsin to train them to be able to support an increasing need for that workforce in — in the shipyard itself.

I think that will be the best use of that — those monies. The shipyard itself has invested a lot in CapEx and has reinvested a lot of its own profits in its own capitalization as well too to try to keep the frigate on track. So I’m hopeful that the monies in ’23 are going to be better used in workforce development than actual CapEx-like investments in the shipyard.

TAMMY BALDWIN:

Okay, thank you. General Berger, the Marine Corps listed LPDs, that is the amphibious transport dock ships, as their number one priority on their unfunded priority list. However, the Navy has halted its pursuit of the transport dock line, citing the program’s growing costs. Can you explain why supporting the LPD project is important to the Marine Corps and what the second and third order effects would be if the LPD project is not funded?

DAVID BERGER:

Senator, in my opening comments, I tried to highlight the operational and the statutory minimums both mandated by Congress and what I see, what we see as the warfighting requirement. And that’s a floor, not a ceiling. And it consists of ten big decks, LHAs, LHDs, and 21 medium or smalls LPDs. So that’s the — that’s the bare minimum.

This budget proposes early decommissioning of three of those LSDs with no construction, no acquisition of an LPD. So from my role as defining what the requirements are and the statutory minimums of 31, there’s no plan to get there. So from my perspective, I had — I didn’t see any other way than to put it on the — on the unfunded list in order to reflect that there’s no plan to get to the minimum requirements.

If we don’t have it, to your question, what’s the risk? The risk is our inventory atrophies to a point where we cannot deter, can’t campaign, can’t respond. And as I tried to highlight when we can’t respond when we have to then our allies and partners’ trust goes down, and in all likelihood, the way the Chinese navy is growing and they’re expanding, they’re liable to try to step in and we can’t afford that to happen.

I would say the last part of this of course is maintenance, which is the number one priority for the CNO for four straight years and recovering that maintenance and making sure we have the fleet that we need that’s ready as he points out is key also.

TAMMY BALDWIN:

You’ve previously cited that the buy now or block by acquisition strategy will mitigate costs by footing the bill upfront. Can you explain why you think this will be an effective way to mitigate costs such as inflation or if there are other methods to help mitigate those costs?

DAVID BERGER:

The CNO is better qualified to, to explain the variables here. But from my my perspective, a predictable pattern of construction on what they call centers is key, key for parts, key for labor. And for LPDs it’s two years. So we have to have a battle rhythm, a cadence that allows them the predictability that they need.

If we don’t have that, then they can’t hold the workforce, they can’t keep the supply chain working, and it starts to — starts to tumble downhill.

TAMMY BALDWIN:

I note that I’ve run out of time, but maybe for the record, Admiral Gilday, I’d like to give you the opportunity to respond on the topic of LPD sand feel free to submit that to the committee in writing.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Thank you, ma’am.

JON TESTER:

Senator Graham.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What’s the inflation rate today, Mr. Secretary, do you know for the nation?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Senator, I believe it’s approximately 4.6 percent or so.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

For the country?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Overall.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. Is the Navy budget equal to inflation?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

No, sir, it’s not.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay, What’s the Navy budgets? How far below inflation is it?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I believe it’s about 2 percent below inflation, sir.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. How many ships do we have in the Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

And when I mentioned the 4.6, that’s the predictors that were used.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

All right. What’s the actual inflation rate?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

It’s somewhere in the 6 percent range, sir.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. So the predictor was wrong.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Predictors are often wrong.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Yeah. Okay. Have you accounted for that?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Have we accounted for?

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Yeah.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Well, we’re very thankful for the additional $9 billion that the Congress provided the Department of Defense —

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

— My point is that you’re a couple of points below inflation. I think that’s my point. So how many ships in the Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

296, sir, as of today.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. How many ships in the Chinese Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

It’s upward of 300.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Like 340.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Yes, sir.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. By 2028, how many ships will we have?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

By 2028, we will have approximately 291 ships or so.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

That’s less than 296, right?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Yes, sir.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. How many will the Chinese have?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I — I can’t predict exactly what the Chinese will have, but estimates are upward of 440 or so.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Yeah. Okay.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I will add that our ships are extremely more modern than they ever have been.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

— Well, let’s hope so —

CARLOS DEL TORO:

— as well.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

— I believe — let’s hope so —

CARLOS DEL TORO:

— and lethal.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

If not, we’re a world of hurt. Let me — let me ask you this. CNO, how many ships do we actually need?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

373 manned and probably 150 unmanned [Inaudible].

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. So under this budget, the one — do you support this budget?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

I do.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. If we have 296 today and under this budget we’re going to be at 291 in FY ’28. How do we get to 373?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Sir, right now we have 56 ships under construction and another 76 that are under contract. We can’t buy back time. For 20 years, we were focused on ground wars and understandably so the Navy — the Navy wasn’t the priority. Sir, keeping old ships — keeping old ships that are not usable or workable is not going to make us a stronger Navy.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

I’m not arguing with you. I’m just asking, does the budget get you to 373 ships?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

If we follow the shipbuilding plan that — there’s three alternatives in the shipbuilding plan. The third alternative, assuming about a 5 percent increase above inflation above our top line.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay, you’re assuming 5 percent above inflation. The actual budget is 2 percent below inflation. How can you support a plan that requires 5 percent to get you to where you want to go? And the actual plan is 2 percent below inflation? I mean that doesn’t make sense to me. Does that make sense to you?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Well, sir, part of it gets that, what can the shipbuilding industry actually produce and so if —

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Do we have a shipbuilding industry problem or do we have a budget problem?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

We have a shipbuilding industry problem currently, Senator.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Okay. Well, let me just go back to the budget. He just said you need 5 percent above inflation Am I quoting you right?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

[Off-mic]

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

To get to that 373 number. You just said that the Navy’s budget is 2 percent below inflation. And when you look out over time in year ten, do you know what percentage of GDP we’ll be spending on defense?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I cannot predict that in 10 years, Senator.

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

Well, I can. I can tell you right now it’s 2.5 percent. How many times has this nation spent less than 3 percent on GDP for defense in the modern era? I know. I’ll just tell you —

CARLOS DEL TORO:

— Four times —

LINDSEY GRAHAM:

— four times. 1940, 1999, 2000, 2001. This budget is going to get us to 2.5 and FY ’28 it goes to 2.9. So your budget is taking GDP spent on the Navy and the military to historic lows. The budget you’re supporting is below inflation and you’re telling us to get to where we want to go we’ve got to be above inflation by 5 percent.

If this is a good budget, I would hate to see a bad budget. Thank you.

JON TESTER:

Senator Shaheen.

JEANNE SHAHEEN:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to each of you for being here today and for your service to the country. I don’t know, Mr. Secretary or Admiral Gilday, which of you would like to answer this question, but the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has done the first shipyard infrastructure optimization program, dry dock –dry dock modernization.

It’s a mouthful. Are there lessons learned there that you think should be applied to similar future projects in Hawaii and Washington? And what are they?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Very much so, Senator. And actually I’m pleased that the progress in Portsmouth actually has remained on track, but it’s been at the expense of many years of trying to understand exactly what we needed to do there from an engineering perspective. And those lessons learned are being applied actually in Hawaii.

I just signed the first contract out in Hawaii for $2.8 billion, my staff did. And we’ve applied those lessons to what we’re experiencing in Hawaii, although both shipyards are actually aren’t exactly the same nor are the projects themselves exactly the same. But I’ll ask the CNO to comment further on.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

I think one of the things — ma’am, one of the things that we learned because these — these projects are so complex and we haven’t done them in 100 years, is to bring the best in industry together in a group to inform how we move together. We didn’t do that as well in Portsmouth, We relied on a single contractor.

We brought together many more experts when we did the estimate for Hawaii and the contract was just signed two weeks ago. I think we’re in a better position with a design that will keep us on track. In a bit more challenging area in Hawaii than Portsmouth. But that said, the Portsmouth, we’ve learned a lot from Portsmouth in terms of how we both design and then move forward in execution.

JEANNE SHAHEEN:

Thank you. Well, thank you both for your support for that project and for coming to see it. I think it’s been very impressive. General Berger, the Marine Corps is in its fourth year now of force design 2030. What have you seen in the Nagorno-Karabakh war or the Ukrainian war that has validated your approach to force design 2030? Are there lessons there or are there changes that we need to make in response to what you’ve seen?

DAVID BERGER:

Boy, that’s — that could be a long explanation. I am patient —

JEANNE SHAHEEN:

— You have two minutes and 33 seconds.

DAVID BERGER:

I’ve got it. I’m patient in drawing long term lessons learned while there’s a fight going on because you can — you can make a mistake too early on thinking you’ve seen something and we should change everything. We need to be a little bit patient. That said though, I think we’ve seen enough to draw some conclusions as you point out because this is 10, 12 years observing this.

We can draw some conclusions first. The ability of a force to operate more spread out and empower authorized junior leaders to make decisions at speed matters. There’s almost ubiquitous sensing nowadays, everywhere. You need to count for that. And some of the counter to that is basics of camouflage and some of it is much more technical.

Logistics, logistics, logistics, logistics. And lastly I would say the ability of a force to adapt is huge. It’s hard to quantify, ma’am, but the fight that you’re in is never the fight that they taught you in school. And I am very — we should be very impressed by the ability of Ukraine to adapt over the past year all along the way and the failure of Russian units to do the same.

You have to adapt. The force has to adapt to what the environment they’ve got. And they’ve done a marvelous job of that. Outmanned, outnumbered, they have all the odds against them except for NATO and the US. But they have adapted. We need to be able to do the same.

JEANNE SHAHEEN:

Well, one of — one of the things that I understand you’re working to do and how does this complement that, but as it’s been described to me, you’re hoping to change from the Marine Corps historically young force to a more experienced force. So how does that help us in those kinds of environments?

DAVID BERGER:

It’s directly tied to it. If you’re going to empower, if you’re going to authorize junior tactical leaders to make really critical key tactical and operational decisions, they need the maturity to do that. By maturity, I don’t mean an age, I mean enough repetition seen enough, done enough to — to see a close semblance of what they’ve trained for before and make a very quick decision.

We have to — we have to mature the Marine Corps force to reach a better balance of a very, very young force versus a force that has enough experience in there to make those tactical decisions, which is at the root of what force designed for us is doing. Reach that right balance, retain more talent, and balance the experience that we’re going to need with the youth that we’ve always had.

JEANNE SHAHEEN:

Thank you. And, Secretary Del Toro, I’m out of time, but one of — we had a hearing last week in the Armed Services Committee on recruitment and retention and the challenges that we’re facing in our military. One of the issues that I think is very important to helping with recruitment, with retention, in particular, is ensuring that there is child care for families who are serving.

I’m going to submit this for the record, but I’d like to know what we’re doing to better expand our ability to provide child care for DOD families. We’ve done a really interesting Congressional Defense Award in New Hampshire between the shipyard and Pease National Guard who are doing a child care facility jointly.

Are there — are there creative ideas like that that we’re working on? But I will submit for the record.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Very quickly. We had two in the budget last year. We have three in the budget this year.

JEANNE SHAHEEN:

Great. Thank you.

JON TESTER:

Senator Hoeven.

JOHN HOEVEN:

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Secretary, in your testimony you highlight the significance that — of the challenge that China poses to our Navy and our Marine Corps. But last fall, the administration released a draft regulation that would require contractors to report on any greenhouse gas emissions linked to the work that they perform on DOD contracts and then prioritize emissions reductions regardless of the cost or impact on the warfighter.

If this regulation’s finaled, it will increase costs or discourage contractors from working with DOD and put green mandates ahead of operational requirements. And I would guess China would be pleased to learn that the US is willing to spend more to make weapons greener instead of getting more weapons or more lethal weapons to combat our adversaries.

Would you — can you — can the Navy afford to have contractors increase their prices and so forth and focus on how green their weapons are in the face of the China challenge? And will somehow reducing the emissions of our weapon systems help either the Navy or the Marine Corps to more effectively meet the challenge that China poses as you outline?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Senator, I’m not exactly sure that the relationship between green gas-gas emissions were tied directly to the weapon systems themselves. There’s a lot of other utilities that the United States Navy depends upon in which case green technology does make a lot of sense and we are investing a lot of green technology.

In the Marine Corps alone, we’ve actually taken Marine Corps Base Albany to zero essential emissions essentially and that pays off tremendous dividends and being able to provide us more resources to actually put into combat readiness and to be able to buy more weapon systems themselves.

JOHN HOEVEN:

Have you seen the proposed regulation that I’m referring to?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I’ll have to look — no —

JOHN HOEVEN:

–I encourage you to take a look at it because that’s not what it does. It requires additional focus on making the systems — weapons systems and so forth the contractors provide more green and it’s hard for me to understand. We’re talking about lethal weapons that that would be the focus or how that could not be costly and counterproductive to our warfighters.

So I’d encourage you to take a look at it.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

I promise to look at it and get back to you, Senator.

JOHN HOEVEN:

Thank you. Thank you, Secretary. And then, Commandant, let me ask General Berger, the US pilot training. In your testimony, you mentioned the Air Force probably does not have the capacity to train the number of MQ-9 officers that you need. So what are you doing to get that training, Have you — and, you know, are there enough trainers?

Have you looked at contract training? Have you looked at alternatives then to address it?

DAVID BERGER:

The way I captured it in the written testimony is as accurate as pictures, me and General Brown and CNO have. We don’t see any — any shrinking of that, you know, reduction to that demand. So the CNO — we’ve got a couple options here as you pointed out. One is contract, two is a naval skill school for unmanned pilots ourselves.

In other words, opening up a UAS school ourselves, which we are talking about. We don’t know yet what that would cost, where we would put it, the instructor base all that sort of thing. But it’s pretty clear that the relying on the Air Force as we have the last couple of years and they’ve been really — we wouldn’t be where we were without them, is not going to meet the requirement going forward.

So it’s probably going to be either a naval UAS school or a contract solution.

JOHN HOEVEN:

I’d like to talk to you about that. We put a lot of time and effort into working with Air Force at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, both to have a technology park, Grand Sky Technology Park, on that base as well as a test site. Great Plains test site, General Atomics is located there, the manufacturer. They are training their foreign military sales pilots.

They have the Brits there right now on the MQ-9. And so I would sure like to talk to you about that. Existing facilities, the ability to fly in the NAS without beyond visual line of sight aircraft. You know, manned aircraft having to chase., all these things that might give you a tremendous head start. I’d like to explore that with you.

DAVID BERGER:

Absolutely, sir.

JOHN HOEVEN:

Thank you, General. Admiral, number one, two and three thing — things you need to really advance your ability to address the challenge of China in the Pacific?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

One is to keep shipbuilding on track. Clear, stable, demand signal —

JOHN HOEVEN:

— I think Lindsey might agree with you on that one —

MICHAEL GILDAY:

— clear, stable, demand signal to industry. We haven’t always done so well in the past. We’ve been sinusoidal. We can’t afford to be like that anymore. A continued investment in readiness. So that investment and capacity cannot be at the expense of current day readiness. We have to be ready for today and tomorrow.

And then I think a continued focus on modernization, 70 percent of the fleet today we’re going to have ten years from now. So continue — continuing to upgrade those capabilities as well as well as taking care of the material condition of those ships is really important.

JOHN HOEVEN:

I think you made a really important point earlier. It’s not just the numbers of ships, it’s having the ships you need to do the job. And I think that was an important point that you did — did make. I’d like to thank all three of you for your service very much. I appreciate it and for being here today.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Thank you, sir.

JON TESTER:

Senator Capito.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank our Senator Collins as well. Thank you all for being here and thank you for your service. Thank you, Secretary Del Toro, for the visit to my office several weeks ago. Over the past year, you and other defense leaders have spoken about the urgent need to increase production, particularly in munitions to replenish our stockpiles and be ready for the future contingencies.

In particular, solid rock — solid rocket motors are a critical component in our precision guided munitions and we need to increase our capacity. I’m proud that some of these solid rocket motors for many of our critical munitions are — are made from a Navy-owned facility in the state of West Virginia. So I would first like to ask you to visit there or I don’t know if you’ve already been there, but I’d love it for you to have an opportunity to tour that facility in the future.

So I extend that to you. But, Mr. Secretary, how important is the production of these solid rocket motors to our national security objectives and readiness? And where are we on the pendulum here? I know we’ve expended a lot.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

First, Senator, thank you for your invitation. I will most certainly take you up on that. And not just to visit West Virginia because it is a wonderful state. But because of the criticality of these solid rocket motors and we are in a bit of an extremis in terms of being able to produce these at the rates that we actually need in the future.

And so we have to look for additional suppliers that can produce them. We have to make sure that we don’t have continued mergers of companies for example, so that we have more competition in the industry as well too because they are critical to most of our missile systems, whether it be SM-6s or some of our larger missiles as well.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Yeah, well, they’re maximizing their space out there, so they’re putting a little bit more space or a lot more space in. Let me ask you this, is the impact of this anything to do with the munitions that we’ve sent to Ukraine? Or is that why are we stockpiling enough there or or is it just hard to keep up with the production?

Which — which one of those would be true?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Well, I mean, we have a commitment to provide Ukraine the munitions that it does need —

SHELLEY CAPITO:

— Correct —

CARLOS DEL TORO:

— and will continue to need in the future. And so that obviously has expanded a lot of the munitions that we do have. Therefore, we have to make a commitment to increasing munitions across the board. The office of Secretary of Defense, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment has been completely devoted to this effort, working with manufacturers across the country around the world indeed.

Secretary of Defense himself has invested a tremendous amount of time to working with other nations to ensure that we bring as many munitions as possible to the support of Ukraine. And that of course has allowed or requires us to continue to refurbish those stockpiles that we have here in the —

SHELLEY CAPITO:

— Right —

CARLOS DEL TORO:

— United States in order to get to this better place.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Right. General Berger, could you speak to this the — the importance of a stockpile and where you see that right now where we are?

DAVID BERGER:

A couple of thoughts, ma’am. First, based on what we’ve seen in Ukraine in the last year, the rate of expenditure of munitions, it’s probably a lot higher in some scenarios, some situations than than we recognize. It’s a good — in other words, a good reminder to the rest of us. War isn’t a 48, 72-hour kind of event all the time and every day, every week the expenditure amounts are very high.

We have a great process in place. I’m very comfortable with it in the Department of Defense for each request from Ukraine, getting analyzed and examined and who can provide what. But it’s very clear that our stockpiles for training and for war fighting, we need to reassess the — the assumptions in those to make sure that we have the depth because our — our to your to highlight your point.

Our industrial base, using a phrase from the vice chair earlier, can’t be just in time if we have to go to a conflict.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

No.

DAVID BERGER:

We’ve got to have it just in case. We got to have the depth and that industrial base to account for a big surge.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Right. Yeah, I mean I think that’s a source of concern. Admiral, do you have a comment on this?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

I agree with everything the general said. I think the biggest thing we learned was the expenditure rates. It’s caused us to go back to take a look in our own wargaming and analysis, what our predicted expenditure rates would be, and the questions of assumptions we made. So that’s why for the Navy and Marine Corps, you see for multi-year procurements of weapons in this budget proposal.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

So maybe your initial wargaming estimates might have been low or just used differently?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Yes.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Yeah.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

Yes. I think — I think that we all assumed that our expenditure rates would be lower. Weapons are more technologically advanced. That’s not playing out so well in Ukraine.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Yeah.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

So it’s informed our thinking.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Okay. Thank you. General, let me ask you a question on fentanyl use in the Navy and Marine Corps. It’s a national problem. It’s reflected in your force. I understand between the — the years 2017 to 221, 332 of our men and women in uniform succumbed to an overdose. Are you all focusing on this in the Marine Corps?

DAVID BERGER:

Absolutely, yes, I would say anywhere that you travel in the Navy and Marine Corps on any base, any station you’re going to find fentanyl is a top of the list discussion when it comes to the drug issues that are difficult to detect and readily available and affordable, absolutely. And it is — to your point, it is a killer.

Every commander, every leader, enlisted officer is focused on it. To answer your question, yes, ma’am.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Well, thank you. Yeah, and, Mr. Chair, I’m sure that would be the same. I’m out of time, but I would say it’s such a different substance and so lethal, You know, I think on the prevention and education side, you can’t over educate and over overemphasize just because you’re taking a little pill, doesn’t mean that this little pill is actually what they say it is. Mr. Secretary, I don’t — I’m out of time but.

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Senator, it’s a major crisis in our nation and we in the Department of Defense and the Department of the Navy are paying tremendous attention to it to ensure that our troops understand the — and they should never be using drugs to start with. But for them to understand the — the real danger and threat that this immediately presents to one’s life and that there is no second chance or it could be very little second chance when it comes to the use of fentanyl.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Thank you. Thank you all for —

MICHAEL GILDAY:

— If I could just.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Yes?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

We characterize it as a poison —

SHELLEY CAPITO:

— Good —

MICHAEL GILDAY:

— to your point.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Good it is.

MICHAEL GILDAY:

You don’t know what you’re putting in your body. It’s killing people, 107,000.

SHELLEY CAPITO:

Yeah, well, thank you all very much. It’s a tough fight. Thank you.

JON TESTER:

Senator Collins.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral Gilday, I was pleased that my colleague from New Hampshire brought up the Shipyard and Infrastructure Optimization Program. As she says, that is a mouthful, the SIOP program and that is well resourced in the budget, which I’m pleased to see, not only because the work that we both are interested in at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine is underway.

One phase has been completed, but there’s more to come. But also because I’m concerned about the number of submarines that aren’t operational because they need maintenance or refueling. And that’s a trend that we need to reverse. I’m told that nearly twice as many submarines as planned were not deployable in recent months because of maintenance or other issues.

Are the investments in this budget sufficient for us to try to reverse that trend?

MICHAEL GILDAY:

I think so ma’am. A lot of this is on us in terms of process. There were three areas that were really focused on. One is eliminating surprises for whether — for whether it’s a private or a public yard in terms of what they — what they need to do. It’s just like doing a house renovation. If surprises drive you — drive your budget up and they drive you off schedule.

So we’ve focused on that and I’ll talk about numbers in just a minute. The second thing is material. So you’ve given us a pilot using OPM money. So multi-year money to not only put private yard availabilities on contract across fiscal years, but to also use that money to front load the material so that the workers aren’t waiting to — waiting for that to arrive.

And it’s mitigating the risks that we’re seeing with supply chain — supply chain vulnerabilities. The third piece is the workforce. And I know you’re well informed about, you know, developing an experienced workforce and we continue to work with industry on that. Based on those three areas and the work that we’ve been doing, we’ve seen delay days out of shipyards come from more than 7,000 down to 3,000. That’s not good enough.

I predict that based on the track that we’re on will be less than a thousand a year and a half from now. So by the end of FY ’24, our goal is actually below 900 and I think we’re on track for that. But again, the — the investments really in the material side in terms of money, there’s a half a billion in Virginia-class submarine repair parts in this budget alone to address some of that.

So I think we’re on the right track. We’re not satisfied yet. But the more operational availability that we return to fleet commanders to your point about the submarines, the better off that will be in terms of having a Navy operating forward.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Thank you. With regard to workforce, let me just mention that the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has one of the best apprenticeship programs that I’ve ever seen. Each year they bring in about 100 new people into this apprenticeship program. They train in very realistic conditions and very confined spaces, for example.

And it really is a great program and that’s what I think we need to do more of in industry as well, so that we have a pipeline of experienced workers. Mr. Secretary, I just have — well, I have many final questions I could ask, but I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you, but not asking you a question today.

And I do want to go back to the point that I made about the budget’s assumptions on fuel costs in my opening statement, because the budget request assumes a fuel price of only $140 per barrel. And it was ironic that on the day of the presentation of the budget, the fuel costs as measured per — per barrel was 20 percent higher than budgeted.

So my final questions for this hearing is, will you work with us to make sure that we do have sufficient funding for fuel and explain to the committee what would be the implications if we’ve under budgeted for fuel in terms of flying hours, steaming days, training exercises, and other readiness activities?

CARLOS DEL TORO:

Yes, ma’am. It is a serious impact because as the CNO said earlier at any given day one-third of our fleet and aircraft are operational and therefore we use fuel quite a bit. And so we’re significantly impacted by the cost of that fuel. And so it is important to estimate those costs appropriately. And certainly, again, we thank the Congress for the support that it gave us in ’23 by putting $9 Billion towards inflation.

But it certainly makes it more difficult to be able to budget properly if we don’t have the budget perfectly aligned to inflation. But that’s a real difficult problem to do as well to — for OMB and others to be able to predict well ahead exactly what inflation might be next year. However, I think the greatest threat to our budget and the things that we’re trying to accomplish today actually is if the Congress were not able to pass an appropriations bill on time this year.

And that will unquestionably threaten all the things that we’ve talked about at this hearing today.

SUSAN COLLINS:

Well, I certainly agree with you on that and I know that the chairman does too. And that’s why the sooner we can get information back from you, including June 10th seems awfully far off for the — the plan. But the sooner we can get responses, the better off that we can be in getting our work done as well.

I want to sincerely thank all three of you for the time you’ve spent with me and also for your testimony today. Thank you.

JON TESTER:

Thank you, Senator Collins. I will echo — echo those remarks. We appreciate your service. We appreciate the folks that you represent and the commitment they have to keeping this country the country it is today. I appreciate your testimony. Senators may submit additional written questions and we would ask that you respond to them if you get them in a reasonable amount of time.

Look, I think predictability in the industrial base is really, really important and I think making sure we’re getting the biggest bang for the buck by getting — have competitive contracts and getting these out on time is also very important. And I look forward to working with all three of you, as does Senator Collins, to make sure that when this budget hits the ground, we all know what’s in it. And we all know what to expect the results of it are because I think it’s a critically important moment in time.

So thank you all for what you do. This defense subcommittee will reconvene next — no, it will reconvene on Tuesday, April 18th at 10 am to hear from the Air Force. We stand in recess.

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.