Month: May 2024

Source: United States Navy

OKINAWA, Japan – Okinawa Japan, Camp Hansen, Dr. Robert Eberly, Department Head and Family and Sports Medicine Physician recently took the time to talk about some of the new technology he is using to get our fighting force back in the fight and rehabilitated sooner.

Source: United States Navy

A third LCAC rendered immediate assistance and transported all 38 Sailors and Marines to USS Wasp (LHD 1) and USS New York (LPD 21) for evaluation and treatment. The total number of Sailors and Marines who received medical care for injuries was 35, which is updated from the 30 previously reported. Sailors and Marines with minor injuries were treated aboard Wasp and New York. Five Sailors were medically evacuated for further care at Savannah Memorial University Medical Center. Four of the five Sailors were released from the hospital after treatment.

After further evaluation, one of the five Sailors treated in Savannah was transported on May 3 to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) via an alert aircraft as part of Project Caladrius. This is the closest military treatment facility to the Sailor’s home station of Norfolk, Va. The Sailor is in stable condition. Treatment at NMCP allows the Sailor to receive further care and recovery close to their family and support system.

Sailors and Marines assigned to the Wasp Amphibious Ready Group and 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) were conducting a training exercise when the incident occurred.

The incident is under investigation, and more information will be provided by U.S. 2nd Fleet once available.

For inquiries, contact U.S. 2nd Fleet Public Affairs at c2f_pao@us.navy.mil.

For questions on Project Caladrius, contact Bureau of Medicine Public Affairs at jessica.l.mcnulty.mil@health.mil.

Source: United States Navy

NORFOLK, Va. (May 3, 2024) – Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti traveled to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to meet with Navy leaders and engage with Sailors, May 3.

The visit provided the CNO the opportunity to discuss her warfighting priority with Sailors and help them connect their efforts to the Navy mission. It also enabled Sailors to speak directly to the CNO about their quality of service.

“It’s a very complex world, and our Navy team is making a difference wherever we go. We have an amazing mission – our nation is a beacon of hope and democracy for the entire world,” said Franchetti. “We are forward deployed, flexible, and provide options to the Secretary of Defense every day, and that’s the important value of the Navy and Marine Corps team.”

Franchetti first met with Rear Adm. Doug Verissimo, Commander, Naval Air Force Atlantic, and major commanders at Naval Air Station Oceana. She emphasized how one of her priorities for America’s Warfighting Navy is to empower leaders at all levels to evaluate how they operate in uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing environments.

“It’s important that our Sailors understand every day how they connect to our mission. Whether they’re deployed today, whether they deployed in the past, whether they’re going to be deployed in the future, or whether they’re supporting deployed forces, it’s all part of our business.”

She expressed her pride in the work being done throughout the naval aviation community, noting that the U.S. Navy is able to operate forward like no other nation, pointing to the recent efforts in the Red Sea by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 3 team.

“I could not be more proud of everything that our aviation community delivers. Whether it’s from our airwings, helicopters, MPRF or our new Tritons, there’s so many things you do that make a difference for our Nation every day,” said Franchetti. “The People’s Republic of China, Russia, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Violent Extremist Organizations desire to rewrite the global rules-based order for their own political, military, and economic interests. It is our job to deter conflict and to work alongside our Allies and partners and with the Joint Force to fight and win our Nation’s wars should deterrence fail.”

CNO then hosted an all-hands call at Naval Air Station Oceana for more than 200 Sailors from commands around Hampton Roads. During the all-hands call she recognized Sailors, discussed quality of service improvements the Navy is making for Sailors, and emphasized Culture of Excellence 2.0 (COE 2.0) and Get Real Get Better initiatives.

“I’m focused on making sure that you have a good quality of service, which is your quality of work and your quality of life, and ensuring you have world-class workspaces and all the tools and resources you need to be able to deliver combat lethality every single day when it matters and where it matters,” Franchetti said. “That’s why it’s so important to be here today, so I can have a better understanding of what is going on out in the fleet and strongly advocate for you.”

On COE 2.0 Franchetti said, “We are all about building a culture that embraces everybody, that empowers everybody to do their job, and that builds great people, great leaders and great teams. It is through those great teams that we can do all the things we need to do as a Navy for our nation.”

Following the all-hands call, Franchetti visited with Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command (USFFC) and Vice Adm. Doug Perry, commander, U.S. 2nd Fleet, at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads and toured the USFF and U.S. 2nd Fleet Maritime Operations Centers (MOC). Fleet MOCs were developed as a warfighting capability belonging to the Navy component commander and numbered fleet commander, to support commander’s decision-making and set conditions for operational command and control of naval, joint, interagency and combined forces.

Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, director Joint/Fleet operations, USFFC, briefed the CNO on how the MOC manages the command and control of assets between Combined Task Force (CTF)-80 and CTF-20, and on their recent successful certification.

“Congratulations on your MOC certification. That is really hard work and I know you learned a lot of valuable lessons,” said Franchetti. “Fighting from the MOC is one of my top priorities because the battlespace is very complex. Understanding how we integrate into the fleet and the operational commands is essential to delivering warfighting advantage.”

This was Franchetti’s first trip to Hampton Roads as CNO.

Source: United States Navy

The christening ceremony’s principal address will be delivered by the Honorable Sean Coffey, General Counsel of the Navy.  Remarks will also be provided by the Honorable Scott Peters, U.S. Representative, California’s 50^th District; Master Chief Britt Slabinski, President of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and Medal of Honor Recipient; Vice Admiral Yvette Davids, Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy; Brigadier General Robert Weiler, Assistant Division Commander, First Marine Division; and Mr. David Carver, President of General Dynamics NASSCO. The ship’s sponsor is Ann Simanek Clark, Private first class Simanek’s daughter.

The first of its name, the ship honors United States Marine Corps Private First Class Robert E. Simanek, Ret., who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Korean War at Outpost Irene, Korea. Pfc. Simanek was presented the Medal of Honor by President Eisenhower on October 27, 1953.

The future USS Robert E. Simanek (ESB 7) is a highly flexible platform used across various military operations. When commissioned, the ship will be employed as a mobile sea-based asset. It will be a part of the critical access infrastructure supporting the deployment of forces, equipment, supplies, and warfighting capability. Specifically, ESB 7 will support missions such as Mine Countermeasures, Special Operations, Unmanned Aircraft Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Counter-Piracy, Humanitarian Aid, and Crisis Response. 

General Dynamics NASSCO built and delivered the following ships to the fleet: USNS Montford Point (T-ESD 1), USNS John Glenn (T-ESD 2), USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3), USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4), USS Miguel Keith (ESB 5), and USS John L. Canley (ESB 6). Follow-on ship Hector A. Cafferata Jr. (ESB 8) is under construction.

Media may direct queries to the Navy Office of Information at (703) 697-5342. More information on the expeditionary sea base ship program can be found at: https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2169994/expeditionary-sea-base-esb/

Source: United States Navy

MIKE ROGERS: Committee will come to order today. We complete our FY ’25 budget and posture hearings with the Department of the Navy. I want to thank the ranking member and all members for their cooperation, hard work and dedication as we work through 26 hearings in 13 legislative days. These hearings have helped provide the information we need to mark up the FY ’25 NDAA later this month.

I also want to thank our witnesses for being here for their service to our nation. Admiral, this is the first time you are appearing before us. Congratulations on your confirmation as the first female CNO and thank you for being here. General, it’s the first time for you as well and we are all thankful for your speedy recovery and are pleased to have you back leading our Marines.

And Secretary Del Toro is always good to see you back with the committee.

The president’s requesting a one percent increase for the Department of the Navy factoring in inflation. We all know that’s a two percent cut. Just as with the other services, a budget that fails to provide real growth means the Navy had to make painful tradeoffs and absorb real risk in their current and future readiness.

We ‘re seeing that very acutely in the request for shipbuilding. The president is seeking to build a paltry six Battle Force — six Battle Force ships in FY ’25. At the same time he wants to retire 19. 10 of those ships have several, several years of service life remaining. These retirements represent a huge loss of capability and they leave us with a fleet of 287 ships in FY ’25, That’s under the Navy’s plan.

The fleet will further drop down to 280 in FY ’27. Forget about the 500 ship navy that many say we need to counter China. At no point over the next 20 years does the size of the fleet even reach the 381 ships needed to support the National Defense Strategy. The budget also cuts the buy for the Virginia class submarine below the two — two per year needed to fulfill our AUKUS commitment.

I don’t see how cutting the size of our fleet and shorting AUKUS or AUKUS commitment will deter China. I also fail to see how it will provide the stability needed to revitalize our industrial base. I am also concerned about the recent findings of the Navy’s 45 day shipbuilding review. It is entirely unacceptable that nearly every single major shipbuilding program is experiencing significant schedule delays.

We expect the Navy to provide us with a detailed plan to address these delays as soon as possible. One possible solution would be for the Navy to stop piling on new requirements and changing ship designs in the middle of procurements. As we’ve seen with the frigate program, that only leads to ballooning costs and late deliveries.

Cutting the bias for new ships, delaying deliveries and decommissioning ships before the end of their service lives will place significant additional stress on readiness of the fleet. That’s a big problem for two reasons. First, the fleet is already suffering readiness issues. Maintenance availabilities are taking much longer than planned, inhibiting our ability to project power.

The Marines have experienced that firsthand when maintenance issues with the USS boxer delayed the return of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group earlier this year. And last year maintenance issues meant there wasn’t an amphibious ready group available to evacuate Americans from Sudan. The second problem is the Navy is currently carrying out operations at a much higher than planned tempo.

The Navy is quickly using up missiles burning through fuel and extending deployments as it defends the Red Sea and Israel from Iran’s terrorist proxies. I don’t see the security environment improving in the Middle East anytime soon. I’d like to hear from our witnesses how they expect to continue to carry out these operations with a smaller budget.

Finally, I’d like to hear from the Commandant on the progress he’s making with Force Design. Preparing our Marines to be successful in potential conflict with China is critically important. Force design will do just that and with that I yield to my friend the ranking member for any opening statement he may have.

ADAM SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to echo your comments in welcoming our witnesses and General Smith in particular is great to see you healthy and doing well. Great to have you all here. I think the chairman outlined very well the challenges that we face. I mean, certainly the budgets at the top of the list.

Now the one piece of it I always like to add is what are we doing with the money that we have, Where are we spending money that maybe we shouldn’t be spending? I know there’s always a desire to look at something and say, gosh, wouldn’t it be better if we had more money. I think that applies to just about everybody in every aspect of — of life, you know, business or government.

But we do have a fair amount where are we spending money that we shouldn’t be spending money And how can we get more out of what we’re spending? Because you know we are $33 trillion in debt. The deficit is pretty substantial, over a trillion. I don’t see a reign of more money coming any time soon. So we’re going to have to get more creative about how we — how we spend the — spend that money.

I like to use the Winston Churchill quote about how gentlemen we’re out of money now we have to think. I know that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I have found it to be more fruitful than — than you might think at first — at first glance.

And then second, the shipbuilding challenges without question. You know the chairman outlined those. I know a huge part of it is workforce, you know and I think there’s a major challenge we have in this country. In many instances, we just don’t have the workers with the skills necessary to meet those challenges and we need to get very creative about how we recruit and get more people into the shipbuilding industry.

You know, this is not not a great place to bring up an immigration debate, you know, but you know immigration is potentially one place where we could find some of those workers. And as we are all painfully aware, there are a lot of people who want to come here. seems to me that we ought to be able to match up those two problems a little bit better than we are.

And then on the requirements piece, I just really want to foot stomp what the chairman said and I don’t know the specific ins and outs about how requirements may or may not have shifted. But I’m very confident that we have too many requirements. I was out at a shipyard just next to my district where they were doing repairs on an LCS and some of the people explained to me and I could be getting this slightly wrong, but there was something like 1200 pages of requirements for how to paint the but the — the subsea part of the ship and the people working on it thought that was a little bit unnecessary.

I have sort of a standard joke about how you know, I wish if I had the power, I could do like a Thanos thing where I could snap my fingers and make half of all the requirements go away and I don’t really care which half, OK. If we could just start to look at it that way and — and requirements are also frequently used by various people lobbying from industry because they want the requirements to vector it down to where they get picked.

That doesn’t help us. We need to build in more flexibility in how we do these things. And along those lines, the modernization challenge. I know General Smith, your predecessor General Berger really took on that challenge. What is, you know, the current state of warfare and the future of it and how do we shift to make sure we’re accommodating that?

We got to get better at that Force protection is part of it. The chairman mentioned the pace and the tempo, the cliche of using a $2 billion missile to shoot down a $50,000 drone. We have new innovative technologies that could get us to a cheaper result. We have got to speed those up so that we’re spending less money and still getting the same result.

Directed energy, personally, I think the microwave approach probably is going to work better than the laser approach, but let’s make a choice and let’s start figuring out how we can build this and get us to a, you know, a better more cost effective way to meet our needs. Same true for unmanned systems. You know what — what are the systems that are really going to help us meet our challenges in the most cost effective way possible.

And then lastly, you know no posture hearing would be complete without talking about recruitment and retention. You know, our military is the greatest in the world because of the people who serve and the families that support them. I know this committee has taken on the task with our Quality of Life task force to say what can we do to really improve the quality of life for service members and their families.

That’s part of the equation. But I would love to hear from all of you about how recruitment and retention is going and what we can do to help it be more successful. With that I thank the chairman, thank the committee for going through another — another posture season. And I look forward to the testimony.

I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the ranking member. Now I’d like to introduce our witnesses, the Honorable Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the Navy. Admiral Lisa Franchetti is the Chief of Naval Operations and General Eric Smith, the Commandant of the Marine Corps. I’d like to welcome our witnesses and we’ll start with you, Mr. Secretary.

You’re recognized.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith, distinguished members of the committee. It’s an honor to again appear before you this morning to discuss the posture of the Department of the Navy. First and foremost, I would like to thank General Smith and Admiral Franchetti for answering again the call of our nation time and time again.

They, like all who devote their careers and in many cases indeed sacrifice their very lives in defense of their fellow. Americans represent everything that makes the United States a beacon of hope and freedom around the world. Together, our combined years of service to our country totals over a century. A century marked by multiple deployments, time away from home, sacrifices made by our families.

And as we gather here this morning, tens of thousands of our sailors, Marines, civilians and their families are either stationed or deployed all over the world, making the same sacrifices and enduring the same trials that myself, General Smith and Admiral Franchetti have faced throughout our careers. And the Indo-Pacific, our Navy and Marine Corps are sailing and operating alongside our international allies and partners in support of a free and open maritime commons.

One where nations are secure in their access to the seas and where their rights within their exclusive economic zones are respected and upheld by all nations, including the People’s Republic of China as they should. Across Europe, we in cooperation with our NATO allies are supporting our Ukrainian partners as they continue their fight to restore their territorial and national sovereignty as Russia’s illegal full scale invasion is now into its third year.

I commend Congress for passing the National Security Supplementals last month, allowing us to continue providing support to our Ukrainian partners as they fight to restore peace in their homeland and defend democracy for all free nations. And in the Red Sea today, our sailors and Marines have counted hundreds of missiles and drones launched by the Houthis these past six months targeting merchant shipping and the warships of both the United States and our international allies and partners.

We are confronting an adversary supported by Iran that has no respect for the innocent lives of civilian merchant mariners and one that is actively targeting our ships attempting to harm our sailors and Marines because we dare to defend the defenseless. And last month, the USS Carney, the USS Arleigh Burke, both operating in the eastern Mediterranean Sea intercepted several Iranian ballistic missiles heading towards Israel.

For those who question why the American taxpayer should provide for and maintain a Navy and Marine Corps look at what is happening today. In the Middle East where we are defending the free flow of international commerce and actively defending our international allies and partners. Members of the Committee we appear before you today to ask for your continued support.

Your partnership and your commitment to ensuring that the nearly 1 million sailors, Marines and civilians of the Department that we lead are ready on all fronts at all times when called upon. While the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 required us to make extremely hard choices, the $257.6 billion in the president’s budget request for fiscal year 25 for our department it deftly balances maintaining and modernizing the fleet and force of today against planning for the future force while also taking care of our people.

This budget directly supports our department’s three enduring priorities of strengthening our maritime dominance, building a culture of warfighting excellence and enhancing our strategic partnerships around the globe. We are acquiring the most lethal agile and capable warships, submarines, aircraft weapons and systems our world has ever seen.

We are also finding the research and development transformational technologies and fielding them more quickly to make our fleet more lethal and persistent within the current setup. We are investing billions of dollars in the industrial base that supports us while encouraging them to invest more in resources themselves.

At the same time and as responsible stewards of taxpayer funds, we will enforce accountability to ensure our sailors and Marines have the platforms and capabilities that they need on time and on budget. Above all else, we’re taking care of our people, our personnel, their families by focusing on improving housing, expanding child care capacity and increasing access to mental health resources amongst other critical areas.

We are clear eyed about the challenges that our nation faces today in the maritime domain, both commercial and naval. And as a maritime nation, we must confront the challenges of today and prepare for the potential conflicts of tomorrow by investing in a strong Navy and Marine Corps. Again, it’s an honor to appear before.

Were you this morning and we look forward to discussing with you how best to deliver the Navy and Marine Corps that our nation requires. Thank you.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you. Mr. Secretary. Admiral, you’re recognized.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith, distinguished members of the committee, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to testify on the posture of the United States Navy on behalf of our sailors, Navy, civilians and their families deployed and stationed all around the world. Thank you for your leadership and your continued support and providing and maintaining the Navy the nation needs.

I ‘d also like to thank my teammate, General Smith, for his exceptional partnership and collaboration as we guide our services under the leadership of Secretary Del Toro, flanked by two oceans. The United States is and always has been a maritime nation whose security and prosperity rely on access to the sea.

And for over 248 years, the US Navy has guaranteed that access operating forward, defending our homeland and keeping open the sea lines of communication that fuel our economy and underwrite our nation’s security. The events of this past year and the actions taken by your Navy Marine Corps team in the Indo-Pacific, in the Mediterranean and the Red sea and beyond underscore the enduring importance of American naval power.

With an average of 110 ships and 70,000 sailors and marines deployed at sea on any given day, the Navy Marine Corps team is delivering power for peace, deterring potential adversaries and standing ready to fight and win our nation’s wars. If deterrence fails, I could not be more proud of this team. No other Navy in the world can train, deploy and sustain such a lethal combat.

Credible force that operates from the seabed to space at the scope, scale and tempo that we do. This year’s budget request supports the National Defense Strategy and my priorities of war fighting warfighters and the foundation that supports them. It enables the Navy to continue to meet our Congressionally mandated mission in both peace and war.

It is strategy driven, maintaining our focus on the People’s Republic of China as the pacing challenge and the acute threat of Russia and other persistent threats like the DPRK, Iran and videos. Given the discretionary spending caps prescribed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act and a top line increase of 0.7 percent, the Navy had to make tough choices, favoring near-term readiness, investing in our industrial base and prioritizing our people while assuming risk in future capabilities.

Within this fiscally constrained environment, the budget request fully funds the Navy’s top acquisition priority and the most survivable leg of strategic deterrence, the Columbia class submarine. It provides funds for six Battle Force ships and incremental funding for two Ford class aircraft carriers and FY ’25. And it continues our support to Marine Corps force design by maintaining 31 amphibious ships: procuring three Lpds: one, LHA and eight medium landing ships.

In total, the budget request procures 57 ships and submarines across the fit up. This budget request prioritizes war fighting by funding, operations, training and readiness accounts. It invests in our foundation with funding for our installations, for our Shipyard Infrastructure optimization program and for the broader defense industrial base, sending a strong signal to our industry partners on the need to increase our capacity to meet the growing demands of the present and the future.

And it continues our strong commitment to our warfighters and our families through pay raises for our — our sailors and Navy civilians investments in quality of service initiatives such as unaccompanied, housing, education, child care and sailor resiliency. These initiatives as well as others enabled by your steadfast support have helped us maintain historically high levels of retention, which is imperative given the current recruiting environment.

And while this environment remains challenging and our manning requirements have increased, we are about 2500 recruits ahead of where we were last year at this time. And I remain optimistic that our marketing and data analytics investments will show additional progress throughout the year. I would also like to thank this committee for your commitment to our sailors’ quality of life.

The Navy is in receipt of the Quality of Life Panel report and we look forward to working closely with Congress and the office of the Secretary of Defense to ensure our sailors and their families have all they need as they support our nation’s security and prosperity. As Chief of Naval Operations, I am committed to pulling every lever available to me to put more ready players on the field platforms that are ready with the right capabilities, weapons and sustainment and people who are ready with the right tools, skills, training and mindset to defend Our nation’s security and prosperity wherever and whenever it is threatened.

I thank the Committee for your leadership and partnership in ensuring the world’s Premier warfighting force remains ready to preserve the peace, respond in crisis and win decisively in war, if called. I look forward to your questions.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you, Admiral Franchetti. General Smith, you’re recognized.

ERIC SMITH: Good morning, Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to represent your Marines today. I’d like to start by sincerely thanking this committee for its enduring support and your advocacy for a timely, predictable and sufficient budget that enables the Marine Corps to remain the first to fight.

I’d like to express my deep gratitude for the partnership between my shipmate, Admiral Franchetti and me as we lead our respective services under the leadership of Secretary Del Toro, whether deterring responding to crisis or in conflict. It will be the Navy and Marine Corps expeditionary forces who make first contact with partners seeking help or adversaries seeking a fight.

Our partnership, collaboration and integration is a decisive advantage. Recently, I published my updated guidance to the force entitled Maintain Momentum. I chose this title as I firmly believe the Corps is on the right path, under force design. A few points from that document. First, I believe that the Corps must continue to strike a balance between high end modernization and our commitment to persistent forward deployed naval expeditionary forces that campaign and respond to crises globally.

This effort is represented by our Marine Expeditionary Units. Second, we must prioritize our operations with the Navy and its amphibious ships and we must provide Marines with the organic mobility to rapidly maneuver from shore to shore, ship to shore and back again. Third, on recruiting, our performance speaks for itself.

We will continue to make mission without ever diminishing our standards. Additionally, our top performing Marines are reenlisting at historic rates and we must sustain this trend. Fourth, we must maximize the capability of our reserves to ensure that our nation has the ready bench of warriors that they relied on have relied on since the founding of the Marine Corps Forces Reserve in 1916. And fifth, I’m dedicated to ensuring a quality of life for our Marines that matches the high demands we place on them every day.

That means nutritious food, high quality and accessible gyms and a safe quiet place to recover from a hard day’s work. Our barracks 2030 initiative is our most consequential barracks investment ever and it is sorely needed. While aggressively pursuing these priorities, I commit to you that our Corps will always be frugal and accountable with the resources that you and the American people provide.

I’m proud of my Marines and civilian Marines who enable the Marine Corps to receive an unmodified audit opinion earlier this year, the first of any service to do so. They told us what we have long known that when you entrust us with the taxpayers money, it is money well spent and fully accounted for. All these things are critical to maintaining the strength and dominance of your Marine Corps.

This year marks 249 years since the founding of our corps. That is 249 years of battles won and peace upheld in the name of democracy and prosperity for our nation and for all nations who abide by the international rules based order. But increasingly, world events demonstrate that this order is being challenged.

Free trade, unrestricted access to the seas, peaceful cooperation between nations, big and small are under assault. Our nation’s prosperity is underwritten by a strong Navy and Marine Corps who maintain a global presence and keep malign actors at bay. Thank you again for the opportunity to represent your Marines today.

I pledge to continue to work closely with each of you to ensure your Marine Corps remains the most lethal fighting force on the planet and I look forward to your questions.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you, General. Before I recognize myself for questions, I want to acknowledge the presence of a special guest today. We’ve got a former long term member of this committee, and also a member, a classmate of mine and a retired Marine Colonel John Kline with us today. Good to have you John. Now I recognize myself for questions.

Admiral Franchetti and General Smith, the Navy and Marines FY ’25 budget has $4.5 billion in unfunded requirements. It’s clear you’ve had to leave some important programs on the cutting table. I’d like to ask each of you to speak to some of the trade offs that you’ve made trying to make this budget number work.

Admiral, I’ll start with you.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, thank you, Chairman Rogers and I said in my opening statement you know we really prioritized you know, Columbia first and then readiness and then our people, quality of service and everything that they need to be able. What could you not make? The things that I couldn’t really get after is, you know, we took a risk in our future procurement.

If you look the things that you know we weren’t able to do in the future, really the air wing of the future, you know aircraft carriers, SSNX, DDGX. So really we prioritized on the current readiness that we need and did not prioritize the future. So if there were additional resources available, certainly my EUPOL has items on there that either came up after our budget was submitted.

But the things that are on there are things that we need to accelerate or to get some more funding advantage. The last thing I would mention is although I have prioritized investment in our foundation, which is installations and everything associated with our infrastructure, about 60 percent of our MILCOM budget is going into the PSYOP program.

And so I think there will always be opportunity to provide more investment in our installations.

MIKE ROGERS: General Smith.

ERIC SMITH: Mr. Chairman, our EUPOL does two things. It accelerates modernization against the pacing threat who is moving at an alarming pace. It accelerates quality of life improvements. Our barracks 2030 initiative and frankly the risk if not funded is we will remain capable and ready, but deferred funding will eventually be paid for in blood by our Marines in crisis or in combat or in training.

In the near term, our success in recruiting and retention is jeopardized because we won’t be able to fulfill commitments to Marines and their families.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, the review found every major shipbuilding program is experiencing significant delays and challenges. Can you speak to how you plan to correct that?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. First let me say that these are concerns that I’ve had from the first month that I became Secretary of the Navy trying to address the most difficult challenges in trying to make improvements to get us to a better place. I’m pleased to say that due to the support of the Congress and the administration, we are now pumping nearly $18 billion into the submarine base, $1 billion into the surface industrial base as well too.

And just in ’24, some of the advancements that were made establishing an additive manufacturing center down at Danville, 9700 workers hired across both GD Electric Boat and HII Newport News, installation of additive manufacturing parts. Groundbreaking on the submarine manufacturing facility at Newport News, for example.

Strategically outsourcing 3,000,000 hours of work from the prime vendors to the sub vendors, something that I had been encouraging them to do from the very beginning. And we hope to actually double that in fiscal year ’25 along with increasing other strategic sourcing as well to scaling of attract — attraction, recruiting, training and retention efforts.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, we’ve had, again, thanks to the support of Congress, $25 million retention money that’s been passed to Fincantieri, for example, so they can retain more people. We see another $25 million added to the ’25 budget. So there are a lot of good news stories that are trying to be executed upon in order to get the state of these production lines up to where they should be.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you. We used to execute a heel to toe amphibious deployments in two hours. Now we struggle to maintain one deployment in one hour. Can you talk about what you’re doing to correct that?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, Mr. Chairman, in fact, if my memory serves me right, I think some time in the 2017, 2018 time frame, we actually had a heel to toe deployment of an ARG. Since then, we’ve — we’ve unquestionably have been challenged by maintenance problems with our amphibious ships. And there’s no question in my mind that we should have been buying more amphibious ships earlier.

The age of our amphibious fleet is excessively high. We need to continue to invest in new ships to replace these old ships. If you take the Germantown, which we’re proposing decommissioning this year, for example, she is our oldest LSD. She has wood decks on her that are corroding. She has a crane that hasn’t been able to be fixed in the past six years and that’s with help of the OEM, the original manufacturer.

So it’s time to actually replace these older LSDs with new ones in order to be able to meet the missions that face us tomorrow.

MIKE ROGERS: Great, thank you. I yield to the ranking member.

ADAM SMITH: Thank you Mr. — Mr. Chairman. I’ll continue along those lines in terms of the — the shipbuilding challenges and particularly focus on the — on the workforce piece of it and I don’t know exactly. So I’m curious how big a factor is that in not being able to — to keep up and having so many of our ships behind?

CARLOS DEL TORO: It is a significant chapter, a factor Mr. Chairman. The blue collar workforce in this country has actually decreased significantly over the course of the last decade. I would argue. And we actually need to take measures in a whole of maritime statecraft effort, quite frankly to try to recruit more people to the shipbuilding industry.

Our country doesn’t have a commercial shipbuilding industry either that significantly hurts the status of naval shipbuilding in the country and that’s what we’re trying to get back to try to go after the low hanging fruit to try to retrain more people. My members from my office just came from Ohio just a few days ago for example.

I’m meeting with the Boilermakers Union of Ohio to try to get them to be able to retrain people at Bartlett Shipyard for example. And so that they could actually go into the shipbuilding industry. There’s about 4000 boilermakers in the — in the.

ADAM SMITH: Is there a way to quantify this or are we like we need 10,000 workers? We need 20,000 understanding that it’s going to differ special specialty, but in general, is there a number that either you or the admiral could give us on how short while we are here?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Think we — we’re going to need upwards of 50,000 and more ship — shipyard workers into the future to be able to constitute the demand signal that we’re putting in.

ADAM SMITH: Have we worked at all with high schools on, you know, beginning to show people the, you know, basically career and technical education to say because I know there’s been a bit of a pivot certainly in my area and we have a robust, you know, shipbuilding industry there. We’re building a maritime high school which focuses on a number of different issues.

But you know, an effort to take people in high school and say, hey, this is a career that you could pursue.

CARLOS DEL TORO: So we’re taking a significant amount of investment from the submarine industrial base and the ship industrial base. And Chairman Courtney knows that up in Connecticut, for example, we’re pumping that money into retraining programs so that we can actually take high school students, tournament certified welders and put them right into the shipyard.

We’re doing the same thing with community colleges as well too. I just visited a community college up in Maine and Bath, Maine, for example, where we’re trying to do the same thing.

ADAM SMITH: And on the requirements piece, what can we do? I mean, it just seems to me like that does drive cost and then to the chairman’s point requirements shift for a variety of different reasons in the middle of a project. But even before we get to the shifting, just the set of requirements that are thrown up as a starting point, has anyone taking a serious look at that?

And I’d be interested in all three of you, just giving a quick comment, how can we shrink that down so that we can be more nimble in how we meet our — our manufacturing needs?

CARLOS DEL TORO: It’s a complicated — it’s a complicated situation. Yes, it’s — it’s made even more complicated over the years because every time you have a new operational requirement, it adds additional requirements to the factory as well, too. When you take it just as one example, we want to operate more in the Arctic.

Right, well, our DDGs, for example, are only designed to operate a set number of days in the Arctic. But if we’re going to operate more in the Arctic, we’ve got to reinforce those holes on our flight threes, for example. And our DGXs in order for them to be able to do so. So there are times when there are legitimate growth and requirements to support an operational mission.

But in many cases it’s also telling the shipyard how to do their job. And we shouldn’t be doing that. We should be setting the overall requirements and letting them build to those requirements as well too. Sometimes safety factors are at play as well too and lawyers get involved. And and so you know, one lawsuit drives 100 different additional requirements to the — to the process as well.

ADAM SMITH: Absolutely just very quickly in time I have Lieutenant Admiral — General Smith. Do you want to offer thoughts?

LISA FRANCHETTI: I would just offer that it’s really important, you know, as we are designing the ships initially and setting the requirements both you know as we just did with the landing ship medium. You know, to really think through that work very carefully with the concept of employment that we’re going to use and make sure that we’re basically saying exactly what we need for those capabilities when we release that RFP.

ADAM SMITH: General just.

ERIC SMITH: I would echo what my shipmate said that our War Gaming and Analysis Center is vital to that to war game through what actually you need before you set the requirements. And then our requirements officer, Lieutenant General Heckl is there to keep those requirements on pace and to keep them steady.

ADAM SMITH: OK, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: The chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson.

JOE WILSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and indeed we are so grateful to have with us today. Congressman Colonel John Kline of Minnesota, he served with such distinction and still does. And so it’s so good to see his bright face here today. Thank you. With that too, I want to thank each of you for your service.

I grew up with a great appreciation of the Navy and the holy city of Charleston, South Carolina with the Navy base there. I was a sea cadet and so I saw firsthand the great work. And then I’m also grateful to be a today, a Navy dad and my son is a orthopedic surgeon in the Navy and then for everyone in military service can be so uplifting.

I now with his service in Naples, Italy, I’ve got three grandchildren who speak perfect Italian and so who would ever imagine the ripple effect of military service. And then General, I’m really grateful. I previously represented Parris Island Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort and I saw young recruits come and to be totally transformed from what they were into Marines having very meaningful lives.

And so it’s just a — an extraordinary opportunity that you provide for the young people of our country as we defend our country and Secretary Toro. The Missile Defense Agency’s budget request for fiscal year ’25 cuts to procurement of Standard Missile three or SM three block one B interceptors, which is our Navy’s primary defense against tactical ballistic missiles for the Egis ballistic missile defense weapons system.

This deviates from last year’s budget request, which set procurement of these interceptors through fiscal year ’29. I’m concerned that this proposal was drafted prior to the commencement of the outrageous and illegal attacks on Israel by Iran and its puppets on October 7th, 2023 and beyond. Where these SM block 31B interceptors have been expended to protect American troops and freedom of navigation in the Red sea.

With the current trajectory to end production of this proven defense against the threats in the Centcom region, will this create a gap of defense capability and what is the department going to do to address the gap?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, thanks for that really important question. I truly believe that SM3s will be needed in greater numbers in the future given the operations that took place in defense of Israel, here recently where some were fired and very effectively. So I think given the future threat and our deterrence, mission and the inter Pacific, we are going to need more SM3s in the future.

And I think that those decisions were made before recent operations. I think we’re going to have to relook that in order to add more SM3s in the future.

JOE WILSON: And thank you, Mr. Secretary, because it really is shocking to me. Here we are at 21st century with the Iran missile attacks on the — on the citizens of Israel. And then you have the Houthis. Puppets of Iran, with their capabilities, underwater sea capabilities. That of nomads no — no. Hey, we’re dealing with dictators with rule of gun invading democracies’ rule of law.

Whether it be war, criminal Putin, whether it be the regime in Tehran, whether it be the Chinese Communist Party, we’ve just got to be prepared and address the changes that occur. Additionally, with the hearings that we’ve had on the integrated air and missile defense ballistic systems that we have, there has been a dialog between the departments of integrating the unmanned aerial systems with the Egis ballistic missile defense architecture. Is that proceeding?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I’m sorry, Congressman, can you repeat it? You’re talking about integrated unmanned aerial systems with the — yes, yes, sir. So as one example, we’re very excited obviously by you know the current operations associated with MQ4, MQ9 and in the future MQ25. We are very much planning the integration of MQ25, for example with the integrated air missile defense system, so that we can recognize that the MQ25 is operating out there as an unmanned F-18 refueler while we’re actually protecting the entire carrier strike group.

JOE WILSON: Well, again, as we face the changes, it’s just so startling again in the 21st century, this shouldn’t be occurring. And finally, Admiral Lisa, I’m really grateful. There’s a future sailor preparatory course at Fort Jackson giving young people an opportunity to serve as the Navy looking has been successful. You need to contact General Kelly. Is that being pursued by the Navy?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yes, Congressman Wilson, we have also a future sailor prep course modeled on the Army’s course for both physical, fitness and academic and it is having a really positive impact for our future sailors.

JOE WILSON: I yield back. Thank you.

MIKE ROGERS: Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Courtney.

JOE COURTNEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. Secretary Del Toro, we had good news last night on orcas where the State Department issued their Itar regulations to implement the optimal pathway that you and I witnessed out in San Diego. It’s great to see Admiral Franchetti.

Congratulations on your first hearing and really want to, you know, welcome General Smith back into the fray. And really glad you’re back in the saddle leading the Marine Corps.

Mr. Chairman, before I begin my question, I request a unanimous consent to enter into the record two letters from the Machinists Union and the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. Urging sustained investment in the two per year cadence of the Virginia class submarine.

MIKE ROGERS: Without objection so ordered.

JOE COURTNEY: They represent the welders, electricians, painters and boilermakers who are hard at work right now, delivering three Virginia class submarines in this calendar year and on track to deliver two more in 2025 and are part of that job training initiative that the secretary mentioned in New England. 5300 hires last calendar year with an 86 percent retention rate.

I also request unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter that myself and 119 other House members submitted to the Appropriations Committee last night in support of restoring the second Virginia class submarine. Without objection, thank you. Admiral Franchetti, we’ve had our posture hearings in over the last month or so as the chairman mentioned.

We heard from Admiral Aquilino at INDOPACOM, General Guyot from Northcom and General Cavoli [sp] from UConn that their requirements for attack submarine missions extend beyond what the Navy currently has in its inventory. Again, the Navy’s shipbuilding 30 year plan has a requirement for 66 attack submarines and at this point we possess about 50, maybe 51 with the new Jersey that was delivered last week.

Is that still the Navy’s position that that’s the target in terms of what should be an adequate attack submarine fleet?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yes, I can’t speak highly enough of our attack submarine fleet, really our asymmetric asymmetric advantage. And as you said, yes, 66 is our — our requirement.

JOE COURTNEY: Thank you. So Mr. Secretary, during the budget briefs back in March, Navy officials said, quote, “we were going about the submarine cut in a strategic way because we’re simply not taking a submarine out. We’re also continuing investment in advanced procurement to make sure that the supplier industrial base is fully funded”. Unfortunately, committee staff has dug deeper into the budget books and it’s clear that many, many suppliers are not included in the advanced procurement phase of construction and are not protected by this strategic way.

Our staff determined that it would cost an additional $1 billion to achieve the goal. That was stated with the Navy’s budget brief when this enormous shortfall was raised at the Seapower subcommittee two weeks ago, Assistant Secretary Guertin replied well, we’ll have to take a closer look and see what we can do to help.

Does the Navy today have an answer to these supply chain companies, which again the analysis shows are not going to be protected the way it was intended?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first also reaffirm our complete commitment on the part of the entire Department of the Navy to the 66 attack submarines. We currently have 50. We have 11 that are actually under construction and four additional ones under contract. And I’m confident with the ’26 budget will eventually get to the 66 that are required.

Of course we need to have them built faster and have those production rates increase. Regards specifically to these vendors, we’re in constant contact with these vendors. The purpose of advanced procurement money however, isn’t to fully fund all the vendors that are in the supply chain. It’s to fund those vendors that are most critical to the supply chain.

I don’t think there’s ever been a confirmation that we can support, you know, full funding of all the vendors across the entire spectrum.

JOE COURTNEY: Mr. Secretary, if I could just say my time is running out, I know some of those critical supply chain companies, they are left out OK with the plan that was submitted by the Navy there. They are picked up through full — the full funding phase of the submarine program, not advanced procurement long lead items.

And — and again, this is a real problem, which again we now have dollars and cents in terms of what it would take to fix that. Not a penny of that would go to the general contractor of that $1 billion. That was all again to — to make sure that all these, you know fabricators and parts manufacturers are actually going to be protected as Mr. Raven had indicated in his — in his opening statement.

And again at some point to really protect them, we should — we should just go forward with what was in the plan, the fit up last year to have two submarines included in this year’s budget. We are going to work really hard with — with your team to try and accomplish that goal. We’ve done it in the past.

We did it in 2013 when the Obama administration eliminated a submarine and in 2020 when the Trump administration eliminated a submarine. Sometimes it was in the list, sometimes it wasn’t. But we using our constitutional duty article one section eight clause 13 to provide and maintain a Navy, we stepped forward and filled that gap and it’s a good thing we did with that I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank the gentleman Chair. I recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Wittman.

ROB WITTMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to thank our witnesses for joining us today. Secretary Del Toro, I want to begin with you. We know that in the Indo-Pacific in order to deter conflict, this is the tip of the spear effort. It’s a Navy Marine Corps fight. In order to do that, we have to have ships. Listen, our sailors and Marines are great, but until they can walk on water, we better be building them ships.

We know that the entire effort there needs to be about the existing navy and building new ships. president’s budget comes over this year, build six retire, 1910 of those before the end of their expected service life. I’m not a mathematician, but it seems to me you can’t do addition by subtraction. We know that there’s continued cost growth and schedule movement to the right in building new ships.

So if we’re not going to repair the ships we have and we’re going to be delayed in getting new ships, it seems like to me the Delta will get even bigger and I’ve warned for years that there are real consequences. Even bigger and I’ve warned for years that there are real consequences to this. If you look at what’s going to happen just in the Hampton Roads area, one of the — one of the — the great places for ship repair from FY ’18 to FY ’28, we’ll have a reduction in workload demand there by 50 percent employment levels.

There will go from 7800 ship repairs to 3800 ship repairs. We know once those people leave, they’re not coming back. So, Mr. Secretary, what do you have in mind for the capacity of our US repair yards? How do — how do we maintain a Navy? How do we make sure that we as members of Congress who have a constitutional responsibility, the Constitution says to maintain navies.

How do we maintain them if this demand signal goes away and we have this massive decrease in the number of ships that we’re going to keep on when we need them, how does that work? Tell me what’s the Navy’s plan going forward to sustain our Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. First and foremost, as you know, the debt discussions that took place here on Capitol Hill led to the Fiscal Responsibility Act that actually puts excessive downward pressure on the United States Navy. And part of that is actually then having to make the choice to decommission legacy.

ROB WITTMAN: I hate to interrupt, but it’s — it’s I know, but this is a complicated discussion broader, it’s the broader constitutional responsibility that we have to defend this nation. I understand about the Fiscal Responsibility Act, but it is about making priority decisions on the resources that.

CARLOS DEL TORO: But I have to make those priority decisions based on the law. The law does not allow me to spend more money than the one percent increase over last year’s budget. I then have to make really tough.

ROB WITTMAN: Our navy’s maintain our navy ‘s what the Constitution says.

CARLOS DEL TORO: But the laws are what I have to follow on a year to year basis and so I have to actually take a look at retiring legacy systems so that we could actually build new ships and we’re building 58 of them across the fed.

ROB WITTMAN: None of those come into operation though inside the future year defense plan. So all of our dreams are going to come true outside. You’ll be long gone and somebody else is going to be saying, well, I’d have gotten to the Navy if I didn’t, didn’t have to deal with what was given to me prior to.

CARLOS DEL TORO: And to the chairman’s point, I’m trying to work with industry to increase the production rates. For example, the USS new Jersey for example, was delivered just last week and it was delivered almost three years late if all the submarines that we had ordered actually had been delivered online because of the challenges to the production rates, we’d actually have five additional submarines in Our fleet today to be able to meet our operational needs across the nation.

So we have to work an entire whole of government maritime statecraft to actually try to bring these production rates back up so that we can get the ships delivered on time and on budget and so that we can keep them operational at sea and actually free up Those shipyards, so when they do need to come back and be repaired, they could be made available.

We’re also making historic investments in the PSYOP program, for example, $20 billion, thanks to the support of the Congress over these last ten years and those programs are moving along very nicely obviously. But these are programs that haven’t been invested in, in over 75 years. And so those are the investments that we are making that I think are truly historic that hopefully will get us to the right place.

But it’s going to get — it’s going to take time to get us there and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t snap my fingers and have these ships built faster.

ROB WITTMAN: But I understand about new construction, but we got to — we got to have the maintainers if we’re going to let the maintenance side atrophy when you do get those new ships where the repair is going to come from. So then we’re going to be in a situation of being able to maintain a 355 ship navy if and when we ever — ever get there.

So there is the maintenance side of the formula that I think is critically important. I would argue probably today even more important than the build side. I understand the delays in the build side. All those things are reality. Let me — let me — let me ask you, Admiral Franchetti. I want wanted to get your perspective on where we are with SSN projections building one submarine.

Now the Australians look at that and they go, whoa, wait a minute. We thought we had an AUKUS agreement here. We thought we were going to build two a year. We thought we were going to be able to buy some from the United States. How do we — how do we sustain the fundamentals of the AUKUS agreement. If you were in Australia and you looked at this and go, is the US really serious about this?

They’re going down to building one submarine this year when they say we need to have a pace of 2.3 and they look at it and go, I thought we were going to buy some submarines from them. I thought we were actually going to have a cooperative agreement there. How do you see this as being able to sustain?

MIKE ROGERS: The gentleman’s time has expired. I recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Garamendi.

JOHN GARAMENDI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So many things here. Money, money or not enough money. We had $4.5 billion of unfunded priorities. I think you mentioned that, Admiral. I would point out to the committee that the Sentinel program has been Nunn-McCurdy stopped four and a half, $4.6 billion is expected to be spent on it this year.

Maybe that could be delayed and spent on the Navy. Maybe if this committee decides what should be done, we make choices here about prioritization. The fact of the matter is we do not need the Sentinel for at least another decade and a half, but this is the Navy. You do build Columbia class submarines, don’t you?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir.

JOHN GARAMENDI: At about $7 to $8 billion a copy. Sentinels $137 billion over the next decade, plus that’s about eight Columbia class submarines if we had the shipyards, which unfortunately my colleague, Mr. Waltz is not here. He’s — He And the Subcommittee on Readiness has developed a Interim national Maritime strategy that speaks to the commercial side of it, which is also the shipyard side and the ability of our shipyards to produce ships on the commercial side, but also to repair naval ships.

So there’s an overarching strategy that we’re working on here. General Smith, welcome back. Delighted you’re here. Delighted you appear to be in great health.

ERIC SMITH: Thank you.

JOHN GARAMENDI: You’ve always fancied and you’ve told me and I’m sure others that the Marine Corps is fast and light, capable able to operate independently as part of an integrated joint force. What capabilities is the Marine Corps pursuing to enable that mobility and contested environments? What do you need to carry out that goal?

ERIC SMITH: Well, Mr. Garamendi, thanks for the — for the warm welcome. It’s — it’s good to be back, what we need is a landing ship medium. The request for proposal is out for industry now and we can’t go fast enough landing ship medium built to commercial standards, and I’m pleased with the FY ’25 shipbuilding plan, which is 11222I’ll use the Ford F-150 analogy.

It’s based on existing commercial standards and the requirement for this is 35 with the initial purchase of 18 and they will provide more lateral mobility for the stand in forces. They ‘re low signature, they’re rapid and they can carry with them our medium missile batteries, which are a requirement to deter the People’s Republic of China.

JOHN GARAMENDI: Very good, you mentioned commercial standards. Unfortunately the ranking member stepped away, he’s way into standards right now. I was listening to him early on. I assume those commercial standards would relieve part of the problem that he was talking about.

ERIC SMITH: I believe they would, sir.

JOHN GARAMENDI: Admiral Franchetti, one of my favorite subjects and I know you’re aware of it, has to do with the ability of the shipyards to actually conduct their work in order for those shipyards to be efficient and effective, they have to know well ahead of time what the incoming  availability that is ship needs to be done.

Could you help me understand how the Navy is in real time keeping track of what every ship needs to be done in an availability?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thank you, Congressman Garamendi. You know our shipyards do need that information ahead of time and one of the things that we’ve been focused on through the Navsea enterprise is identifying all that work along the way through the port engineer, the type commander and working with all the different program Executive offices on whatever modernization needs to be done in the shipyard to develop that full package.

Our objective is to have that package locked in 120 days before a deployment or before a shipyard availability begins. So the shipyard can plan so we can get the materials that we need to be able to do that. So we don’t have unnecessary delays or growth work because that’s where you start to see the delays.

JOHN GARAMENDI: Thank you very much. Secretary Del Toro, thank you for visiting Mare Island and I would point out to the committee that the privately owned shipyards have the — have a program available through Marad to upgrade their shipyards. However, the amount of money that is available through the ongoing budget is minuscule.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. DesJarlais.

SCOTT DESJARLAIS: Thank you, Chairman and thank you all for being here. Secretary Del Toro and Admiral Franchetti. The next questions will be for you. The US Navy has been tasked with the critical mission of keeping Red sea commercial shipping lanes open by neutralizing Houthi missile and drone attacks. Could you briefly describe this mission for the committee?

And then the activity appears to have died down over the past month, but how do you assess the threat moving forward?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Mr. Chairman, it’s an incredibly important mission as you know, one that we’ve been conducting for six and a half months with close to 200 engagements with the Houthis of drones and missiles shot at our ships directly and also at innocent merchant mariners throughout the Red Sea. Regretfully, it has resulted in probably about a 70 percent decrease in merchant traffic through the Red Sea. It’s our responsibility to do the very best that we can to protect American lives and protect the lives of those innocent mariners obviously and to keep those ships from being attacked.

And I think our Navy has responded brilliantly in doing so without any loss of life on US Navy ships that have been attacked. We regretfully have lost three special forces operators obviously that were on the USS Puller, but perhaps the CNO can expand on that.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yes, thank you. I just — I also wanted to add, you know, through Operation Prosperity Guardian, it’s really you know US Navy leadership of a coalition of folks that are doing the maritime security mission through the Red sea and in the Gulf of Aden. We’re also coordinating with the EU mission, which is called a Speedy’s to make sure that we have an integrated plan, you know, with them to, to deconflict any potential, you know, both of us escorting the same things.

So I think this operation has gone really well, really proud of the team. You know, we’ve learned a lot through this. We’ve embarked on an expeditionary resupply, everything that we’re learning in the Red Sea and through this operation against a very challenging Houthi threat, is some things that we can replicate and learn from in other areas of the world.

SCOTT DESJARLAIS: When reviewing the fiscal year ’25 budget request, I was surprised to see that the number of SM sixes that you are procuring considering the heightened activity in the Red sea, the budget request just seems insufficient to meet the need. Would you agree?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, we’ve actually emphasized the growth in SM2 missile production, which is the majority of the missiles that we’re actually shooting. The SM6 are essential missiles as well as are the SM3. They take a lot longer to actually build, which is part of the reason why we haven’t invested more money into them until the production rates can come up to a point where we could actually invest more money to buy more, more — more SM6 and SM3 as well too.

SCOTT DESJARLAIS: OK, you mentioned — touched on it briefly earlier. Can you discuss the Navy’s plan to field directed energy weapons and high energy lasers to support maritime missile defense?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir, we’ve accelerated the development and the testing of the Helios laser program, which in many ways is a replacement, not a replacement, but it supplements the Seaway system. We also have six other laser projects and high energy projects, some of which are classified. And I can’t talk about openly.

But this is a high priority area for us. We obviously well into the future, cannot continue to shoot down drones which simply SM2 and SM6, we need to develop the high energy, high lasers and directed energy programs to be able to counter these air drones. That are being shot at us as well.

SCOTT DESJARLAIS: OK, thank you. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank the gentleman chair now recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Norcross.

DONALD NORCROSS: Thank you, chairman and to the witnesses for being here today. Secretary Del Toro, we were commissioning a ship down in Key West last year. And on the way down there, I sat next to a young lady who happened to be a teacher.

And I came up that what her children are going to do and she said, well, my one wants to go to college. The other one wants to, you know, become a mechanic and immediately went to the issue of what we’re talking about today. Where is our next generation of worker who work with their hands in their head come from?

And she said something that I will not forget, we need to give our children the permission to pursue an area that they’re interested in, whether it’s to be a lawyer, a doctor or an electrician. Permission to do that. Because the narrative in our country today is you got to go to college to make it. We — you know in the process of taking away debt for those who went to college, but for those who go to work in the shipyard, they get nothing.

I think we as a society have this wrong, whether you want to become a lawyer or you want to become a welder, we value those the same. And until we as a nation value those things the same way. We’re not going to get the people in the shipyard the way we need it. We look at them many times as a society as second class.

I know that and I see that. So when we talk about that next 50,000, we as a nation have to value that for what it is and do that. You talk about the blue collar workforce being reduced over the last 50 years and it has the number one reason is we offshored those items, that manufacturing that we did, we did that to ourselves.

Chasing the dollar instead of the capacity, so here we are trying to build it back up and wondering why we can’t get there. Well, I think we need to look in the mirror and saying we need to make sure that capacity goes on here. We need friends, we need allies and we need to work with them, but we need to have the capacity here long term, not just for two days.

So after that rant, we’re sitting here and I want to thank the admiral for visiting the Philadelphia, South Jersey yard, the capacity that we have there. And we had this very conversation when we were there, why can’t we get those people? The Philadelphia repair yard is literally talking about closing because they can’t get enough work.

The work that’s going on there today is with the USS New Jersey that we retired almost 25 years ago. They’re doing it. But after that, their work isn’t there. So Mr. Whitman talked about that repair, we have to send the demand signals. Why would I want to go to work someplace that’s going to shut down in two years?

So other than money, Secretary Del Toro and to each of the General and the Admiral, what can we do other than money to send the right signals to get that workforce that we value them? How do you do that?

CARLOS DEL TORO:Well, Congressman, I think you hit the nail on the head. and I’ve been calling for a call to National Maritime Service, not just to uniform service, obviously in the Marine Corps and the Navy and through our recruiting efforts, but also to increase the number of civilians that we have working in the Department of the Navy and in our shipyards as well too because it is honorable service as you know.

And we need electricians, we need plumbers, we need welders, fitters, we need everything to build these great ships. But in my call to a national maritime statecraft, I think resurgence of the commercial shipbuilding industry would also help tremendously so and it would help the economy. It would help create more jobs across the entire country.

We’ve essentially have given up on commercial shipbuilding and China and thank God our allies in Japan and North and South Korea have also invested heavily in shipbuilding. But we’ve lost that art here in the United States. We can’t even build our own LNG ships here in the United States, for example, when we should be building them.

So I think it’s also complicated by some of our immigration policies. We need to increase legal immigration. We need to increase work visa programs to allow other workers coming from other countries to come here as well and fill these jobs that are being unfilled. The good news is that unemployment is under four percent across the country.

The challenge, however, is that we need more workers, to — to continue to feed our growing economy. And so that’s the challenge that we have and I think a national call to maritime service is what I’m committed to.

DONALD NORCROSS: If I may, in addition to those leaving the service, recruiting them to go back to work because many of them continue to work for years after that and more importantly than that is the number one way other than telling them of their value is to pay them. The right wages and with that I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: In complete agreement with that statement. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi, the General.

TRENT KELLY: Yeah, I want to concur with a lot of the thoughts. Listen, we can blame it on money. We can blame it on budgets, but for the last three years we’ve asked to give away more ships than we’re bringing. So it’s not just that thing. And here’s what I will say: we have to have a consistent message to our shipbuilders that we’re going to build ships.

We can’t change that. We can’t change the requirements. We have to send a constant message that we’re going to continue because we will never get our workforce in place. If we continue to say we’re going to do a strategic pause on Amphibs, we’re going to do a strategic pause on Virginia class. You’ve got to let them catch up to get on schedule.

We never allow them to get on schedule. With that being said, Admiral Franchetti, what the heck is going on with the boxer. I mean she underwent a $200 million overhaul in 2022 and hasn’t been underway since. In fact, she really hadn’t been out of the dock in five years. So what is going on with the USS boxer?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thank you. Congressman Kelly. Let me give you an update on the boxer. So you know the boxer did actually go through all of her workups for a deployment. She headed out, but now she’s back in San Diego. She has a bearing on her starboard rudder. That is not — it’s not in good condition, so it needs to be replaced.

So we are basically right now she is there, we are evaluating the different procedures that will be done to repair her. It’s about right now about a four to six week repair. We look to be able to finish that repair pier side, the bearing is available and — and then get her back out on deployment. I would say that we’re still investigating the cause of the bearing, but it was either potentially installed improperly or the bearing itself was had some type of defect.

So we’re going to continue that inquiry.

TRENT KELLY: Thank you. Let me get to General Smith. How does the boxer’s unavailability impact the Marine Corps?

ERIC SMITH: Congressmen were designed to operate on a three ship amphibious ready group, one big deck LHD and two, two small boys, two Lpds. So when you lose your big deck, you lose most of your aviation assets and you lose your crisis response force.

TRENT KELLY: You also lose the ability to train and exercise those Marines also. Is that correct?

ERIC SMITH: That is correct, sir.

TRENT KELLY: All right, I want to talk a little bit. Without the 31 amphibious ships and 35 landing ships, can the Marine Corps fight, survive and meet combatant commander requirements? As a stand in force?

ERIC SMITH: Sir, we cannot — we need those agreed upon 31 Amphibs and the CNO and I have locked shields on that, and we’re determined to get there.

TRENT KELLY: And I want to talk a little bit about the LSM or the medium landing ship. We’ve got that we do not need, and I know you agree with me, Commandant, we do not need to turn that into the Navy’s version of Pentagon wars. We don’t need to create something that’s going to be so expensive and to — to be survivable.

The Marine Corps has asked for a requirement and I think we should trust the Marine Corps to build them the ship that they asked for because you know how to employ those. Is that correct, Commandant?

ERIC SMITH: Sir, that is correct.

TRENT KELLY: And all the considerations that other people are taking to create this into something different, those are those being asked for by you, Commandant or did you ask for the requirement that you need as the Commandant of the Marine Corps?

ERIC SMITH: Congressman, I asked for the requirement that is — that is required for them to be survivable, mobile and beachable.

TRENT KELLY: Absolutely and I guess, I think Secretary Del Toro, I think we’ve made some progress, but I do think that we need to be very careful about when we do a 30 year shipbuilding plan that the first ten years are locked in and we never move those Or five years, I don’t know what that number is, but what we do is we keep shifting year one and we can’t do that.

We have to send a consistent demand signal to industry or they will never be able to keep up with the maintenance or the shipbuilding that is required. So I hope that you guys will understand, we have to build what we’re building. We can’t change that, can — can I get a commitment to do that? Secretary Del Toro?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Mr. Chairman, I have — I’ve tried to keep that commitment since the day I came in as Secretary of the Navy. And for the first three years until this budget, I haven’t been able to — I’ve been able to do that where no numbers of ships have changed in the first ten years of the shipbuilding plan. However, it is the Fiscal Responsibility Act that was passed by the Congress and again in response to the very difficult negotiations that were done around the debt limit that forced our hand this year to be able to have to remove that one submarine.

In a situation where it simply could not be delivered by the shipyards. And that’s opportunity cost opportunity cost.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Maine, Mr. Golden.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you. Last month, Admiral Pitts testified that one flight three DDG 51 To date only one has been delivered to the fleet. He also expressed the importance of fielding the new capabilities that come with Egis baseline ten and the Spy six radar. Of course, before Congress passed an FY ’24 Approps bill, the administration requested two DGS in the [resident’s budget request.

Now that we have a ’24 Approps threw into law and it included $1.3 billion for advanced procurement, it seems to me like that’s a clear indication from Congress, not to mention just a lot of the work of the committee over the last several years that Congress wants to speed the delivery of flight three ships.

Is that — is that a priority that you agree with? Would you agree that Congress should be trying to speed the delivery of flight three to the Navy fleet?

CARLOS DEL TORO: To the extent that it doesn’t take away from other requirements that I have to meet across the Department of the Navy, Yes, I always welcome more DDG flight threes into the Navy.

JARED GOLDEN: More ships is good. All right, Mr. Kelly just stole the question I was going to ask you, but I guess I’ll just reiterate. I mean it sounds like what you’re saying is you would commit to adhering to the five year plan on the landing ships and procuring, procuring eight of them. Assuming Congress gives you the resources you need, it’s a priority for the Navy as well as the Marine Corps, right?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, I’ve been a big supporter of the LSM and I’ve worked to try to accelerate the LSM schedule as much as possible. We had to go through some very difficult survivability discussions. I think we’re in the right place supporting the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the requirements that are set forth, which the CNO agrees with as well too.

So we’re united in the future of the LSM. We’re committed to building the 18 LSMs initially eventually to get to 35. But we want to be able to get these first few out to have the Marine Corps continue to experiment, experiment with them and make sure that they’re the final design before we go to advanced procurement for the 35.

JARED GOLDEN: I think it’s no secret that some members of Congress are appropriators authorizers are out there talking about whether or not we should be adhering to these caps that you keep referring to, it’s not necessarily your decision, but, I mean, in a perfect world you would not be structuring a budget based upon these caps.

Does that sound right?

CARLOS DEL TORO: That’s correct. Congressman, obviously would — would spend to the amount that the Congress authorizes and appropriates.

JARED GOLDEN: Sure, and I think Mr. Norcross touched upon this, I mean there’s been a pretty good focus today on talking about the need to really focus on ship building, ship builders and developing a workforce that can meet the needs of the Navy and our national security. I’ve tried to do a lot of work on that through the years with reporting requirements.

It seems like maybe you’re actually benefiting from some of the reporting that Navy has done as a result of that and have a good understanding of where we’re at and where we need to be. I just want to reiterate again, my office is even hearing from shipyards in the Philly region who do repairs and maintenance that they’re — they’re getting ready to — to lay people off.

I know that we’re behind schedule on maintenance and repairs in general. So, I’m just, you know, hoping that the Navy will do a good job of spreading some work around to try and ensure that we’re not losing skilled workers at a time when we’re talking about having.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, we have robust conversations with all the shipyards, small, medium and large across the nation. And I personally have visited many of them, Maryland, Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. We would obviously try to keep them as full as possible. But our primary role is to keep ships — ships out at sea and to keep them operational.

Obviously, we need to maintain them on time when we have delays and how we maintain the ships because of extended operational periods that are driven by real life circumstances that creates problems obviously.

JARED GOLDEN: Has anyone from — from like Atlantic Ship Repair, notified the Navy that they might lay off members of their workforce in the near term future.

CARLOS DEL TORO: I — I’d have to get back to you, Congressman, we’d be happy to report back to your staff on recent conversations with regards to the layoff there.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: The gentleman yields back. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Banks.

JIM BANKS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Navy was the only service last year that failed to meet its recruit quality benchmarks and continues to fail to meet them again this year, FY 2024. For the first half of the fiscal year, the Navy is 35 percent short of its recruitment goal and in FY ’23 was 20 percent short of recruitment goals.

Secretary Del Toro, why do you think the Navy has had so much more trouble hitting its recruiting goals than the Army or the Air Force? I don’t like the Navy losing to the Army or the Air Force in anything, but especially when it comes to recruitment, why are we struggling so much more than the other branches?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, first and foremost, Congressman, thank you for your question. I’m concerned about recruiting for all our military services. It’s one team, one fight. Having said that, the Navy wasn’t the only service last year to me to fall short on its recruiting goals.

JIM BANKS: You fell much further short than the other branches.

CARLOS DEL TORO: We — last year we began the year at 17,500 thinking we were going to short — fall — fall short by 17,500. We were short by 7500. This year, we started thinking that we would fall short by 16,400 And it looks like we’re going to fall short maybe by 6200. But what we haven’t done is what we have done actually is we’ve increased the goal.

So we’ve actually increased the goal by 7000 to 40 is what it is. We’re striving to meet the new higher 40,000 goal that we have actually established for its — for ourselves.

JIM BANKS: So that we’re setting a goal and you’re not meeting it and the other branches are coming closer to to reaching their goals. What are we learning from the Army and the Air Force at the Navy.

CARLOS DEL TORO: This isn’t a numbers game, Congressman, I mean we hired — raised the goal to 40,000.

JIM BANKS: Secretary, you’re turning it into a numbers game.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, but you’re the one who brought this up, I mean, if the other services lowered their goals and met their goals.

JIM BANKS: I take it — I take it.

CARLOS DEL TORO: And we hired our goals and we’re striving to meet our goals. I think that’s an admirable challenge, right? It’s admirable to make — well, yes, we’re trying to make up for the shortages that we had in previous years because it’s all about filling billets at sea is what it’s all about and that’s what we’re trying to do.

JIM BANKS: I would love to have a Secretary of the Navy come before us and talk about how you’re disappointed that you’re not reaching your goals and what you’re going to do to reach them. So let me.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Ask you — I think you misunderstood what I Said. Let me ask you a different way, no, but I think it’s important for me to go on the record secretary, what are you, what are you doing to meet your — I said we raised our recruiting goals to 40,000, Answer my question, we’re striving.

JIM BANKS: So doing, please answer my question, what are you doing to meet your goals that you’re not doing? What are you going to do to meet those goals?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, we ‘ve actually filled all we’re about to fill all our recruiting billets, for example, we’re taking a lot of lessons learned from the Marine Corps, for example, we’ve actually made numerous process changes actually to try to get us to a better place. And I’d be happy to have the CNO add additional details to that list.

JIM BANKS: I’ll stick with you, secretary, you said that fighting climate change is the Navy’s quote top priority.

CARLOS DEL TORO: No, sir, that’s not correct. I said it is one of the Navy’s top priorities, not the top priority, OK?

JIM BANKS: Is it still — is it still a top priority?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Absolutely, it’s still a top priority.

JIM BANKS: Where does — where does recruitment fall into your priority list? Is it above?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Recruitment is also a top priority as well too. I have numerous top priorities in the Department of the Navy that I have to worry about on any given day.

JIM BANKS: So what about delays in ship building, Is that more of a priority than climate change or actually we’ve?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Made significant changes in delays in and maintenance days at shipyards to actually try to get these ships out of the shipyards quicker.

JIM BANKS: Secretary, you don’t seem to be too concerned about recruitment, which is really bad.

CARLOS DEL TORO: I am significantly concerned about recruiting. We’ve actually made a huge difference. I just told you that we started the year off at 16,400 Secretary.

JIM BANKS: Are you worried that the — that the Navy is shrinking by another 5000 sailors could make it harder to deter Communist China? Are you worried about that?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Actually, I just told you we’re trying to increase our goal to 40,000 and recruit to that so that we have more sailors to close the gaps at sea so that we can be even more combat ready.

JIM BANKS: All right, I got one minute left. What are you going to do to meet the Navy’s recruitment goals in FY 2024?

CARLOS DEL TORO: It’s all hands on deck with all the processes and everything that we’ve put in place to actually shorten that goal and we’re actually 2500 ahead. We are actually 2500 ahead than where we were last year. So I hope that we get to meet our goals.

JIM BANKS: Are you — are you going to meet your goal in FY ’24?

CARLOS DEL TORO: We’re doing everything we can. I don’t have a crystal ball.

JIM BANKS: What is everything that you can — What does that mean? What are you doing?

CARLOS DEL TORO: That means that I’m putting all our resources that we have made dramatic improvements in how we recruit. We’ve taken lessons from the Marine Corps as well to — to meet our goals. [Crosstalk] This year than we were last year, So we have six months left in the calendar year basically to get to the fiscal year more or less and we will continue to actually decrease that gap until we get close.

But it’s all hands on deck.

JIM BANKS: You haven’t given me a single concrete answer to how you’re going to meet those recruitment.

CARLOS DEL TORO: I think I’ve given you many concrete.

JIM BANKS: A lot of hot air with that Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, we ‘d be happy to work with your staff to provide you even more answers, Congressman.

JEN KIGGANS: Gentlemen yields. The chair now recognizes, Mr. Carbajal, from California.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Thank you very much. Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. General Smith, welcome back. The GAO report from September 2023 highlighted there are major concerns with our military barracks. Some of these service members reported that the conditions of barracks affect their quality of life and readiness.

Your number one unfunded priority was $230 million for restoration and modernization of barracks for the barracks 2030 initiative. While the fiscal year ’25 budget request only appears to be for $65 million, I’m sure we both agree that our service members are our number one priority and our most valuable asset.

With barracks being such an issue, can you help me understand why your budget request did not include the $230 million for restoration and modernization in your unfunded priority list?

ERIC SMITH: Congressman, I can. Barracks 2030 is our most consequential barracks investment. We’re — we’re tackling it from multiple avenues. We’re attacking it from professional management, which returns 500 Marines to the fleet, from facilities sustainment, restoration and modernization funds maximizing those. That’s the fix washers, dryers, locks, windows, we’re doing material furniture, again, washers, locks and I’ve directed a rigorous inspection of over 58,000 rooms.

We’ve completed that inspection and we now know what is — what needs to be fixed and that’s why my number one unfunded priority request is the almost $450 million to accelerate barracks 2030.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Thank you. General Smith, the reduction in maritime prepositioning ships underway has significantly reduced the Marine Corps flexibility for crisis response operations in the Indo-Pacific Mediterranean and elsewhere. Today only two squadrons of maritime prepositioning ships are available to support Marine Corps global commitments.

How are the Marines compensating for this reduction and how much risk are we accepting strategically?

ERIC SMITH: Well, Congressman, I would argue that we’re accepting significant risks strategically, those missions and maritime prepositioning squadrons are — are — are ready base. They’re designed to flow forward and offload their cargo to — to complete such tasks as the Korea plan and they would be used as a — as a ready reserve if you will, of — of assets.

So I would offer that that’s a real risk when you don’t have the options available to replace the — the equipment that will be inevitably lost in combat and to speed the marrying up of Marines who deploy by aviation assets and then the seaborne assets that are on Those missions.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Thank you. Admiral Frachetti, congratulations on your finally being appointed as the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations. I — I apologize for you on for the two verbal national security breach. We — our country went through in delaying your appointment and I know we have many aspiring Senators in this committee.

I sure hope they understand the breach that was created by not allowing many of our appointments to move forward admiral. Can you speak to the Navy Sealift Campaign Plan specifically how the by use program will work with sealift preposition and surge assets?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thank you and you know sealift is critically important one of our core functions of the Navy and we’re really taking a three pronged approach to sealift. First, we are doing service life extensions on our existing platforms and then the buy used program that you mentioned, this has been very productive. And speaking with Transcom and and merit on these conversations, this is a very good program.

We’ve already bought a number of ships and we are projected to buy up to nine, which is our limit. So we have a legislative proposal in there to remove that limit. So we can continue to do that. We’re also in the process of designing a new sealift ship. And so again, working with all stakeholders to make sure that we have that capacity that we need going forward.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Thank you, Admiral and I’m out of time. So, Secretary Del Toro, thank you for being here. Thank you for articulating the good answers to the bad questions that sometimes you receive. Thank you very much for your service. Ms. Madam Chair, I yield back.

JEN KIGGANS: The gentleman yields. The chair now recognizes Mr. Waltz, from Florida.

MICHAEL WALTZ: Thank you, Madam Chair, Secretary Del Toro and General Smith. We just talk very quickly about the Abbey gate families from the disgraceful Afghanistan withdrawal, Mr. Secretary, I sent you a letter requesting that the 11 Marines killed at Abbey gate during the withdrawal be posthumously promoted in accordance with ten US code, section 1563. It authorizes member of — members of Congress to initiate a recommendation for an honorary promotion.

And I’m — I’m grateful that less than two weeks after the bombing you posthumously, promoted Navy Corpsman Sovac to Hospital Corpsman third class, but it’s been nearly three years since these brave Marines were killed and more than six months since I made this request to you. When can we do what’s right and promote these Marines?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman this is a very sensitive issue, obviously. The corpsman was promoted largely because she had already was under consideration for promotion. I asked my staff to take a look at Medal of Honor recipients who received their Medal of Honor posthumously. Since the beginning of the Vietnam War, we’ve had over 50 Marines that courageously lost their lives in battle.

And received the Medal of Honor, none of them were promoted.

MICHAEL WALTZ: I have limited time we have huge issues. I get five minutes.

CARLOS DEL TORO: On behalf of

MICHAEL WALTZ: None of them were promoted posthumously. Can we — if when are we going to promote Or can you give me an answer of why you’re not going to promote these 11 Marines in three years?

CARLOS DEL TORO: It’s — it’s under consideration, but it’s very unlikely that they will be promoted.

MICHAEL WALTZ: It’s very unlikely.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir, because they were not under consideration at the time for promotion. So given the fact that we haven’t posthumously promoted 50 Medal of Honor recipients since the beginning of Vietnam.

MICHAEL WALTZ: Were they killed in action all 50?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Excuse me?

MICHAEL WALTZ: Were they killed in action? All 50?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir, they were killed in action. There are a number. We’ll come back to you within. As I stated in the letter, there’s a number of instances where — where soldiers, sailors, marines were not under consideration for promotion, including some that I lost in action. And yet they were promoted because their service secretary decided it was the right thing to do. You have that authority?

I have the authority and I’d be happy to conduct further.

MICHAEL WALTZ: But you ‘re making a decision to not execute that authority.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, like I said, Congressman there have been 50 Medal of Honor recipients that were not promoted, god bless, but in this case, and one has to take a look at that as precedence basically for actions moving forward.

MICHAEL WALTZ: Mr. Secretary, that’s if that’s your decision, that’s certainly, but I want also out there for the record that you have the authority to promote those Marines general should those Marines get promoted.

ERIC SMITH: Congressman as a rule, we — we do not grant posthumous promotions, that does not take away from the sacrifices of those Marines killed at Abbey gate, but even our posthumous Medal of Honor recipients have not been posthumously promoted.

MICHAEL WALTZ: I don’t think the level of award general necessarily should dictate whether you give a posthumous promotion. You look at — I mean, this was the worst withdrawal since Saigon. These Marines were put in an impossible position, defend an airfield, yet let people through by the hundreds, if not thousands, they were putting in impossible position.

So we also have to look at the mission, not just historic precedent and Mr. Secretary. And I would think with your recommendation general, you have the authority to do it. I’d ask you to reconsider and let’s at least give these families that closure given the entire nature of what happened in that withdrawal and that they were put in Mission Impossible, not by either of you, but by the white House.

But thank you. If we could just talk about, number one, Mr. Secretary, I told you we’re going to recognize the bravery and I want it loud and clear of those sailors in the Red Sea. They’re kicking ass and taking names, and we should absolutely pound the table. And please, I’ll be there in Jacksonville when they come back to Mayport.

God bless the carney. Thank you. But if we — we ate up my time here, but we have the Columbia, the Virginia, the constellation, our DDGs are all behind. We have a broader systemic problem here and it’s — and I know it’s an all of society. I have a maritime strategy that I’m releasing next week issue to get it workforce to get it shipyards and steel and materials and all that.

And I look forward to working with the legislative recommendations in it, but I think we have a systemic problem in the Navy as well. Can you speak to that In the time I have remaining?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, the major reasons for the delays on most of these ships is actually the delays associated with the delivery of major components from the vendors, particularly Northrop Grumman with regards to turbine generators and main reduction gears to their primary vendors. That is the root cause of the major delays associated with each of these.

JEN KIGGANS: The gentleman’s time has expired.

MICHAEL WALTZ: We’re running out of time Mr. Secretary of 2027.

JEN KIGGANS: The gentleman’s time has expired. The chair now recognizes Ms. Jacobs, from California.

SARA JACOBS: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much to our witnesses as the Representative from San Diego. Both of these services are incredibly important to my community and so I’m grateful for you all being here. I first wanted to ask about the USS Boxer. I know my colleague, Mr. Kelly already asked a sum of it, but you know what?

What one of the things I was interested in is just before it’s deployment. In March, it was reported that the ship won several awards, including the battle Effectiveness Award. I guess I — I’m a little concerned that that shows that we don’t actually have a good way to measure the readiness of our ships.

And you know that we’re awarding ships for mission readiness that clearly are not mission ready. How do we — how — how do you assess readiness and how do we make sure it’s accurate given these recent developments. Whichever of you would like to answer?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, thank you for your question and thank you for your support to our folks in San Diego. You know in the — in the boxer casualty equipment casualty that you’re having right now, this is a material failure. So you know, we have a very good set of standards for all of our ships in each one of their primary warfare areas and including engineering and all of the different things that they need to be able to do. They’re assessed by an afloat training group.

And then as the ship progresses from individual training to intermediate and advanced training, we have standards that each one of the ships is supposed to met with very rigid criteria and very well qualified inspectors.

SARA JACOBS: So then why was the Boxer awarded this readiness award when they were clearly not ready?

LISA FRANCHETTI: So the particular casualty was a documented casualty, it had an engineering assessment for some not related departures from specifications on the rudder, but they — this current casualty is a new casualty that was not part of those departures from specifications.

SARA JACOBS: Got it. OK, thanks. And then in terms of the sailors who are on the boxer, are they going to stay on the ship through the duration of the maintenance? And will the current maintenance period add time to their deployment schedule?

LISA FRANCHETTI: So the Pacific Fleet commander is the one who will make all the decisions about — about the Boxer. In fact he’s the one that approved the maintenance repair plan right now. The way that the current plan is, you know, we were optimistic that the repair will be done in about four to six weeks. He has several other branch courses of action.

If this one doesn’t work, the intention if it finishes on time is to get the ship back out on its deployment because we are, you know, a teammate with the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps also has a deployment, you know, when their deployment ends. So we’ll end that deployment on time after the Boxer gets out there.

SARA JACOBS: Great, thank you. And then, I wanted to ask, you know, the Navy has made tremendous strides in experimental and — and research regarding uncrewed systems and the digital tools necessary to enable their capabilities. I myself have been out to Bahrain to see some of the amazing work we do on that in San Diego, we’ve got some examples.

But I guess one of the things I’m wondering is, is why given all of that research, we haven’t procured those systems in sufficient bulk for the fleet, even though we’ve identified them as a high priority and why it’s dependent on an OSD Program the replicator initiative to fund and procure these systems rather than going through the actual naval procurement process.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Thank you, Congressman. First and foremost, we have been buying some of those unmanned vessels and the numbers that we currently need to be able to experiment with them as we continue to further operationalize them. So for example, in Task Force 59, we — you know, we had a set number of Sail drones that we purchased from the Saildrone company when we actually moved that to Fourth Fleet and conducting operations in the straits between Haiti and Cuba.

Taking a look at drug runners, for example, we bought additional sail drones as well too. So we’re purchasing them and the numbers that we currently need them. In the case of operationalizing them in the Pacific, we have four of them that we’ve been experimenting now with a good part of a year. I think what you will see in the next few years is actually more of those coming to fruition as we continue to bring more of them to work side by side our manned vessels as we operationalize them in the — in the Pacific as well.

So I think you’ll see a significant growth in the numbers. The Xluuv is a perfect example of that. Orca is in the final stages of — of testing for its IOC, for example, we’ll have additional four of those once they’re fully manufactured and deployed out to sea.

SARA JACOBS: Great, thank you. Well, you know, I just want to make sure that this approach outlives the current senior leadership at the Pentagon. We’ve seen great programs fail when leadership changes and that given the recent issues that have come up with the Air Force and the F-35 that we make sure that the Navy has control over the architecture and software of these kinds of programs.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentlelady’s time’s expired. Thank you. Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from South Carolina.

NANCY MACE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank Secretary Del Toro, Admiral Franchetti and General Smith for being with us here today. My constituents have a great appreciation of the importance of the US Navy and our Marine Corps. In the low country of South Carolina, we make Marines and we’re really proud of that.

Beaufort County is home to the Parris to Parris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. Our community is deeply supportive of the important work being done to train the next generation of Marines and to defend the homeland. I would like to use my time today to highlight the importance of these installations and their capacity to play an even greater role in our national defense.

The Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort has the support of a local community. It has excess capacity and room to grow. The number of squadrons has shrunk from — shrunk from 9 to 5. While the infrastructure to support a larger number of squadrons remains from my understanding, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort’s location also provides among the largest training areas anywhere on the Eastern seaboard.

So General, my first question for you this morning is, is do we have plans to expand the mission set or number of squadrons stationed there?

ERIC SMITH: Congresswoman, we don’t have plans right now to expand the number of squadrons there, but we will modify the number of aircraft and those — those aircraft will increase squadron sizes from 10 to 12.

NANCY MACE: And then what’s the timing of that implementation?

ERIC SMITH: I’ll get back to you on that Congresswoman to give you the exact details and dates.

NANCY MACE: OK, my understanding is it starts in a few months delivery of some of the newer aircraft on that installation. Currently, Parris Island lacks the on base medical facilities personnel and capabilities required to efficiently treat recruits who are injured in training. Under the current model, the Naval Hospital in Beaufort provides only ambulatory care and so many of the recruits are required to secure outside treatment.

And we know that if their treatment is prolonged and off the installation, they’re more apt to maybe not return back to training. And we want to make sure that they get the immediate care that they need. Would building an on base multi-purpose medical facility at Parris Island in a smaller clinic at Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort help our Marines get appropriate medical care.

What is your sort of sense of medical care for our marine recruits and their training?

ERIC SMITH: Well, Congresswoman, I’m committed to making sure that all of our recruits, East Coast and West Coast have adequate medical care. And I defer to our surgeon general, Navy, surgeon general on the allocation of resources and medical providers to — to ensure that our recruits have what they need because right now there is a lack of — of medical readiness at Parris Island.

And I acknowledge that.

NANCY MACE: And some of it are, you know, some of it might be related to chronic staffing shortages like at the Naval Hospital. Have you all had discussions about that and been aware of maybe some of the high turnover as well?

ERIC SMITH: Congresswoman, we have — I speak with Admiral Miller, who’s the Surgeon General for the Marine Corps on a literally right now almost on a daily basis.

NANCY MACE: Is there — are there plans to increase recruitment of medical personnel to — to treat our service members at this time?

ERIC SMITH: Ma’am, I’ll defer to the Navy on — on recruiting Navy personnel.

NANCY MACE: OK, I appreciate that. So Marine Corps I have a minute and a half left Marine Corps air station in Beaufort experience a housing — housing crisis we have a military population of around 12,000 in Beaufort County. There are only 1140 units housing units at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and approximately 960 of those units are occupied with the less the rest being unlivable or in disrepair.

I’m sure you’re well aware about these units. They were built in the 1960s. They have not experienced significant upgrades or increased volume since construction. So obviously this is an issue that I hear about day in and day out from folks in the low country and in Beaufort. What are we doing to ensure our Marines and their families in Beaufort have access to safe quality and affordable housing while they’re stationed there.

ERIC SMITH: Well, ma’am, to the on base housing is in need of refurbishment that there’s no doubt about that. Our budget calls for an update in our fizz room, which is our — our barracks facilities sustainment, restoration modernization and it calls for ensuring that there’s enough quality housing on base to — to satisfy the needs, which right now it’s not.

So the increased budget will assist us in — in improving the housing that is there and then others will live out in town based on cost of living allowance. OK.

NANCY MACE: And is there any movement afoot to look at the contractors and who we’re using down there to improve the quality of construction and maintenance?

ERIC SMITH: Yes, ma’am.

NANCY MACE: OK, cool. All right. Thank you so much. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentlelady. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Moulton.

SETH MOULTON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General Smith, the Marine Corps has attracted a fair number of critics for the speed of your modernization. Including even some from — from our own ranks, retired generals and whatnot. Why is the Marine Corps moving faster with modernization than the other services?

ERIC SMITH: Well, Congressman, there’s a couple reasons. One, we have a commandant and when the commandant says move, Marines move. But it’s not just based on my assessment, it’s based on a deep research, deep wargaming, deep analysis and constant compliance with the national defense strategy. So our modernization efforts under — under the name of force design are designed to make us the most lethal and most ready for the fight that’s coming, not for the fight that we just had.

SETH MOULTON: Well, some members of Congress got together and wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal some months ago when this debate was at its height. And it was extremely supportive, of course, of what you’re — what you’re trying to DOZ. But we did have one criticism, we had one criticism in the whole article. We said if anything, the Marine Corps should be moving faster.

Now your — your plan is to maintain momentum. That’s the title of your — of your current plan, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says we need to accelerate change or lose. What can the Marine Corps do to move even faster with modernization? And what can Congress do to help?

ERIC SMITH: Congressman, the steady, reliable funding is — is really important, frankly. When we go into — and this is not to criticize, but when we go into continuing resolutions, thank you. Mr. Secretary, when we go into continuing resolutions, we cannot spend at that year’s rate we have to spend at last year’s rate.

And in our — all of our advancements are in the current year. So it — it retards our — our process and it retards our — our progress and it slows us down.

SETH MOULTON: Well, I would just say that if there are any more specific things that you can come to us and say, you know, if we do this, we can move even faster. We can get rid of the old stuff more quickly. We can invest in the new things and field them to the troops even more quickly than we are today. There’s going to be a lot of receptivity for that on this — on this committee.

Admiral Franchetti, a lot of my colleagues talk about a 355 ship navy. Do you think that’s a reasonable goal?

LISA FRANCHETTI: I do — I think every study really that we’ve done since 2016 shows that we do need a larger Navy and you know we’re committed as we said through all of our investments in the industrial base. But it isn’t just about the numbers. It is about having ready ships with the munitions with the right number of people with the training, you know, that can fight as part of that joint warfighting ecosystem that we need to be able to do in the high end fight.

SETH MOULTON: I’ve heard nothing but good things about you. So it’s not really fair to have my first question to you, be a bit of a trick question, but I’m very concerned about 355 ship Navy because I think we should probably add a zero to that or maybe two zeros because if we don’t have a Navy That has literally thousands of autonomous ships.

I don’t know that we’re going to win the — the future fight.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yeah, I’m — I’m very focused on increasing our abilities in the unmanned space. You know, I think that as you look forward, we really need to have that complementary force that we’ll be able to expand the reach and the lethality of our conventionally manned platforms. That’s what we need to do in the future.

And I’m committed to focusing on that, growing that as quickly as possible.

SETH MOULTON: General Smith, one core component of your strategy with marine littoral regiments is being able to put these Marines on places like islands in the Philippines. So they’re spread out, they’re dispersed, they’re autonomous, they can — they can do a lot to disrupt a Chinese plans. But of course that’s dependent on having these agreements with nations like the Philippines, perhaps Japan as well.

What are you doing to foster those agreements and actually get Marines practicing what you preach?

ERIC SMITH: Congressman we’re exercising with our Filipino allies on a — on a regular basis. We just finished Balikatan, the largest one ever involving thousands of Marines. And so our ability to exercise throughout the southern Ryukyus, the Japanese home islands and the Philippines is without question. We have a very hospitable host in the Philippines.

SETH MOULTON: Finally, Mr. Secretary, you know how important mental health of our service members is to me personally and having worked with a fellow veteran to to pass 988, can you just tell me at — at — at this point is 988 Dialable from without a prefix. Without a postfix from all unclassified DOD telephone systems in the Navy and the Marine Corps.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, I can’t confirm that it’s doable for every single one. But what I will tell you is that the marketing campaign that we put into effect to actually have the 988 posters throughout every installation, is extraordinary.

MIKE ROGERS: And the gentleman’s time has expired. The gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. Kiggans.

JENNIFER KIGGANS: Thank you to our panel for being here. It’s certainly a privilege to be in the same room as the three of you. We’ve done a lot of talking today about the number of ships and how this — this fiscal year 25 budget takes us down to 287 decommissioning ships prior to their expected service life decommissioning more than we’re commissioning, slowing the aircraft carrier build.

You know, having the — having the submarine build, so I’m just worried about the — you know, that message that’s sending to our allies. We’ve got this great AUKUS agreement in place. We’re excited about it. Also to our shipbuilding partners. We talked today about the number of ship repair and I’ve got them in my district in Virginia.

Two, that — that message that that sends to them, they can’t keep their people. I know continuing resolutions is part of it. It’s frustrating to me too, and I know the defense budget is always inadequate, but — but what are we doing? Or what can we do to be more reassuring to partners like allies like Australia or people we need in the fight like our ship repair and shipbuilding industry.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Thank you, Congresswoman. I think the biggest thing we can do is actually reaffirm the commitment just in this fit up alone that we’re investing $18 billion in the submarine industrial base to actually try to increase the production rates to where they need to be. So that we can actually build more submarines and well into the future.

JEN KIGGANS: Along those same lines, just talking about messaging and getting our message to our — our partners like allies and — and ship repair shipbuilders for the recruitment retention side. I know we’ve talked about that today too. And I had the privilege of sitting on the recruitment, retention Quality of Life task force.

I hope you all have copies of the bound book that we put together and my ask yesterday to the Secretary of Defense was just to get that word out to the American public. I need them to know that Congress hears them that we’ve emphasized things like paying compensation and housing, child care, health care, spousal employment.

I need that message to get to them. So that’s a PR campaign or — and kudos to the Build Submarines.com. I’ve had multiple people in my district come up to me and say, hey, we’ve reached out to — we saw the ad. So. So I think those things work, so let’s get that message out to the American people that we heard them and we’re taking care of our military men and women.

CARLOS DEL TORO: 9000 new applications just this past year, ma’am.

JENNIFER KIGGANS: Awesome.

CARLOS DEL TORO: And retention is as high as it’s ever been in the Navy and the Marine Corps, thanks to your investments in all your life improvement.

JENNIFER KIGGANS: We need to keep — keep down that track. I want to switch gears to Naval Aviation subject near and dear to my heart as a former Navy pilot. But you know, I look at programs like the A-12, like the F-22 and we can — we can ask a lot of questions about if we should have done some things differently. I’m looking at the F-35 right now and yesterday we talked a lot about that expense and how it continues to grow.

We have quite a few that are still sitting on flight lines. They’re not — we don’t have pilots in cockpits yet. I want to put in my plug for Naval Air Station Oceana in my district and how — and I know Secretary. We’ve had discussions too about considering them East Coast Master jet base so that we can — can house the F-35 and the city of Virginia Beach is very welcoming to the idea and I look forward to pursuing further discussions about that along those same lines.

So thinking of naval aviation training and I get my — my son is now in Corpus Christi, very proud of him started the pipeline, but that wait, the wait for those students is too long. We’ve invested in them from Cessna training, they’re sitting there waiting for starting primary. But now we’re looking at the T-45, I know we had recent.

Compressor stall issues, this is the second time that we are now halting, you know, training in the t-45. So I need the Navy to have some foresight and to think about what that replacement aircraft looks like for advanced jet training because this is not our first go round with this. We have options out there.

So I want to hear from you all, what is the timeline for replacing that t-45?

CARLOS DEL TORO: So ma’am, as you know, we’re actually several years from replacing the T-45, but we’re accelerating the necessary work to actually try to move that to the left so that we can actually get the next generation of trainers out there and have it be reliable.

JENNIFER KIGGANS: It can’t happen fast enough because when those guys are delayed, then I got the — the Hornet right or Shannon delayed and I got fleet pilots that are — that are then being held up. So — so as much as we can expedite that. And then I also just wanted to close with a story. I had the privilege of traveling to Israel about three weeks ago meeting with military intelligence officers dining with just everyday Israelis and families and listening to them.

Thank me as a Representative from Hampton Roads thanking — thanking me and all of us for sending our aircraft carriers, the Ford, the Eisenhower, the Bataan over to sit off the coast of Israel. And our quick response after October 7th, they truly believe each and every Israeli I spoke to that because of our aircraft carrier presence.

That is why Hezbollah did not invade Israel from the north. I had Israeli families dining with their children. Skipping around the room saying I want to go on the aircraft carrier, I want to go on the aircraft carrier. So — So I was the Representative that received phone calls and we extended those deployments when they missed Christmas with their families when they missed the birth of their first child.

But because of those servicemen and women, because of our US Navy, you know, we maintain some stability and some peace in that region. I’ve shared that story with the ship repair shipbuilders with Navy leadership, but please take that story back to your men and women. We know it’s a sacrifice, but we appreciate their sacrifice and that’s what keeps the peace in the world.

So thank you so much for all that you do. Thank you. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentlelady and chair, and I recognize another lady from Hawaii, Tokuda, Ms. Tokuda.

JILL TOKUDA: Thank you, Mr Chair. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your continued personal attention to Red Hill and the significant work the Department is doing to get things right after the November 2021 fuel spill as the Navy assumes responsibility for the closure of Red Hill. I respectfully request your focus as well on the necessary work to remediate and restore the aquifer and ensure the long term safety of our water supply.

There’s a lot of concern among our communities and constituents that our department continues to view the Red Hill problem set in sequential order, moving from defueling to closure to remediation when elements of closure and remediation can and should be done. Concurrently, Mr. Secretary. In the interests of time, I won’t ask you to respond, but would strongly encourage the Department to urgently prioritize aquifer restoration and remediation efforts for Red Hill.

I will go on to say though that there continues to be gaps in community trust. Then this is a broken trust as we know in the department’s ability to guarantee the health and safety of their drinking water, especially given the uncertainty created by the Navy’s testing regime. The Navy recently released its data supporting the hypothesis that low level detections of TPA at the Pearl Harbor drinking water system were likely caused by issues with its testing methods.

Mr. Secretary, would you please explain why would the Navy use testing for waste water and solid waste analysis for drinking water? And why did it take two years and over 8000 samples to figure out that they were not doing the right test?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, ma’am, the conclusions that were made with regards to the testing procedures was a combined conclusion with the president of — of the Health Department of Hawaii, the EPA and the Navy. And collectively, they determined that chlorine was actually impacting the actual test results. With regards to.

JILL TOKUDA: I think it’s the first step to the question, so did the Department of Health and EPA tell you two years ago to use a test on these 8000 samples that were made for waste water and solid waste analysis, not drinking water?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Ma’am, the tests that we used at the time were the — the only tests that were actually available at the time to be able to use and they were actually off the — the off out they were on the mainland basically. So we had to actually send all those tests back to the mainland and actually just yesterday I signed a letter to the governor actually saying that we’re donating the necessary equipment for Hawaii to actually have its own water testing laboratory in Hawaii.

JILL TOKUDA:  That ‘s great, so you’re telling me two years ago when we were suffering from a situation where there was no trust in the drinking water because jet fuel had been poured into it, we were using the only test available. So there was no test available for drinking water. We were using a test on these samples to determine if there was any kind of contaminants in people’s home.

That was for waste water and solid waste analysis. That was the only one available.

CARLOS DEL TORO: I am not the subject matter expert on this, but I will say that we were using the test that was recommended to the Department of the Navy and to the Department of Hawaii Health Resources and to the EPA to test those water samples at the time.

JILL TOKUDA: So would you now say based upon your —

CARLOS DEL TORO: So if we had known of some better tests, we would have actually been using that test. At the time. I don’t think we understood that the chlorine and the water that’s used to actually chlorinate all the water across the United States, which actually have an impact on TFH detections in the test itself.

JILL TOKUDA: If I may just continue my question, I find it also hard to believe that we have the best minds in science and defense sitting in the Navy, also sitting in the EPA part of our Department of Health. And they were unable to determine or identify that two years ago when they started these samplings because your men and women and their families were seeing sheens in their drinking water, experiencing massive health impacts that maybe something wasn’t right there in that particular testing.

So I just ask you this hypothetical question, I’ll flip the switch on you a little bit. I’m assuming that suppliers of ammunition to DOD are required to do regular testing to ensure functionality and lethality. What if a series of their tests found flaws and then they later came back and said they’ve been testing the ammo in the wrong way for two years.

And now everything is OK. Would you trust putting ammo in a soldier’s gun knowing it could be the difference between life and death?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Ma’am, I’m not a subject matter expert on testing freshwater.

JILL TOKUDA: Well, I ‘m thinking you would want to make sure that what bullets in a soldier’s gun actually works. It should be no different when the quality of the water is coming out of a service member and their families. Water pipe. I’m quite confident much more in terms of rebuilding this trust and I will tell you that that was a big lethal blow to the trust of the Navy a few weeks ago when the public got this kind of response.

I’m running out of time here, but given these recent events, will the Navy consent to independent third party testing to help track and verify the Navy’s testing?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I believe we have had third order testing going.

JILL TOKUDA: And allow people to come in and drill holes, collect samples and do their own independent testing.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Those — those decisions that have to be made between the Department of the Navy and the Department of Health in Hawaii and you’re giving me consent.

JILL TOKUDA: That third party independent drilling and testing can take place so that it can be verified and I believe

CARLOS DEL TORO: We have had third party testing in the past.

JILL TOKUDA: OK. That is not the understanding I have, but I’m glad to hear that we have the consent of the Secretary to go ahead and allow them to.

My time is up, Chair.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentlelady’s time’s expired here and I recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Gaetz.

MATT GAETZ: Mr. Secretary, I want to personally thank you for your involvement in Naval Air Station, Pensacola to unlock the great potential of our Naval Museum with some changes to the gating system there. This was a sticky wicket for us for years and because you took the time to go there and really understand that mission, we were able to achieve greater success.

And I think it’s because you get it. I think you understand that unlocking the imagination in the minds of young people when they interact with our museums and with our demonstration teams, that’s a critical vector in the recruiting crisis that we’re all dealing with. So I’d love you to share your perspective on that with the committee.

CARLOS DEL TORO: No, thank you, Congressman, I always try my very best to get to the core problems that we face and try to fix those problems so we can make our Navy and Marine Corps a stronger team and actually trying to gain greater access to all of our museums. But particularly that museum, which is so very special to the community, the aviation community and to the entire Department of the Navy is critical.

So that young people, high school graduates, community college graduates, grammar school students can actually go and see what the Navy is all about is important. And I’m glad that we’ve been able to make progress in actually opening up the museum to a greater number of people in the region.

MATT GAETZ: And I must confess you may become a victim of your own success here because I have a similar problem that I think you’ll see in a similar way the Blue Angels as they travel around the country and travel around the world. They — they ignite a sense of optimism about the Navy and adventure and we are so proud in Pensacola to be the home of the Blue Angels.

But some of the conditions of our hangar systems have fallen into some disrepair following hurricane Sally. And so we’re working right now with your office to try to get the right — the right alignment of PA funds to get a new hangar system for the Blue Angels. But I wanted to make sure that you saw the Blue Angels similarly like you saw the naval, the museum promoting all that is good and right in the Navy to get more young people excited about it. Is that something we can work on?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Absolutely, Congressman, I think the CNO would agree that the Blue Angels brings tremendous value to our recruiting mission.

MATT GAETZ: Yes, great. And you know, we want to just make sure you know that they’ve got the right digs. I think Admiral, I’d invite you to come down and spend some time with us in Pensacola as the secretary has the cradle of naval aviation. But you would likely walk away from that experience, deeply concerned that there are buckets that are having to collect rainfall, which we occasionally get in Florida inside the hangar system, not outside.

And so I would encourage you to — to come join us because we certainly would want our greatest — our greatest demonstration of naval capability to be able to have the right accommodations to be able to do the mission.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thanks. I look forward to coming down and visiting.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, well, see and I’m inviting you to a beautiful place, you know not all the people on this committee are from beautiful places like Northwest Florida. So I certainly hope you’ll — you’ll take us up — up on that — on that opportunity. In my remaining moments. I want to talk a little bit about the LCS. The ranking member has sort of convinced me that the littoral combat ship may, sadly tragically in some circumstances turn out to be just an aquatic casket in a world in which we are unable to have sufficient air defense for those while China is shooting hypersonic missiles at them in the event of a Taiwan scenario.

I mean, is there a fight that we can imagine now in great competition or the LCS will even get in the fight Mr. Secretary?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Very much Congressman and actually we’re taking the necessary steps right now. We’ve added the Naval strike missile to six of the LCS, for example, by ’26. We — we hope to have them all on the independence class and then on the freedom class by by 2032. Actually, I may have those reversed right, it’s but we plan to.

MATT GAETZ: Provide hypersonic air defense.

CARLOS DEL TORO: No Hypersonics you won’t be able to put it on.

MATT GAETZ: Right. So that’s my worry.

CARLOS DEL TORO: But — but — but you can’t put — you actually can’t fire SM six from on mobile launchers off the — the decks and that’s something that we’ve already experimented with and have proven out successfully. So the fact that we could actually be able to fire an SM six from an LCS is actually very, very positive. We’re doing that.

MATT GAETZ: Now, yes, yes, sir, we’ve already expanded and we’re confident that that would be a sufficient capability to defend against an offensive hypersonic system from China. Well, it’ll make it that much more defendable. That’s for sure. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I hope that’s right. But I really worry that we’ve adopted this theory that just more is better on — on some of these platforms.

And if — if — if they’re not relevant to the fight, because they can’t get into the fight, I worry about how many of them we should buy and how many of them we should build. Did you have a perspective on that Admiral?

LISA FRANCHETTI: I mean the LCS performs, you know, pretty critical mission for mine countermeasures, you know, and we’re moving forward with that package. I think you know that is a very important mission that we do a lot of our allies and partners do that too. So being able to integrate that capability is critically important.

Again, there’s a lot of different scenarios that we might encounter. So having multiple tools in the tool bag is very important.

MATT GAETZ: OK, well, demining is a far more constrained concept than we’d originally had for the LCS. I don’t know that’s able to achieve all those goals. But thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman. Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. McClellan.

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to follow up on your discussion with my landlocked colleague, Mr. Banks, about climate change. And I want to talk about the impact that climate change has on readiness, operations, infrastructure, our forces and their families. Naval Station, Norfolk, is the largest naval installation in the world and is located in a city that has the highest rate of sea level rise on the East coast.

Recent projections show that it will face one major flood a year and a minor flood every week. Meanwhile, we are seeing record setting heat waves in the Pacific Northwest. Can you discuss how sea level rise, recurring floods more frequent and destructive hurricanes, record setting heat waves, discuss the impact that they all have and will continue to have on readiness, operations, our naval infrastructure, our service members and their families.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, ma’am, well, first and foremost, climate installation readiness is combat readiness. If we can’t deploy our — if we can’t house our ships safely in ports and deploy them safely, then we have a bigger problem, right? And so mitigating, making the investments in order to mitigate the negative effects of climate change are extremely important in all our ports across the entire United States.

And we’re seeing the dramatic challenges that that brings and so greater investments in moving the utilities to the right places so that – – that they’re not negatively impacted by the rising sea levels is incredibly important how you construct the piers themselves for example. And where you put the utilities on those piers is extremely important.

And so again, installation readiness is combat readiness and practice CNO can comment more so on the operational side as well.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yeah, I think you know one of the things. You know that we look for is we’re designing our new platforms is making sure from an operational readiness perspective that they, you know have the ability to operate wherever they need to be able to operate. And so again, having the right facilities where we can pull them in is critically important.

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN: And corrosion has an impact on metal and an impact on ships and ship readiness as well. And record setting heat waves have an effect on our sailors and our corpsmen correct and their ability to do their job and the health and their readiness.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Very much so Congresswoman, it’s had an impact on unaccompanied housing as well too. Look, we for decades have made — the Congress has made really impressive investments in family housing, but we haven’t invested in unaccompanied housing to the extent that we should. We’re correcting that now and we’re doing that moving forward.

And I think our sailors and Marines appreciate that given the high retention rates that we’ve seen in the Navy and Marine Corps. But it’s still a huge challenge in areas of high humidity. So whether it’s Key West, whether it’s Parris Island, other places like that, San Diego as well too, you know, these are the places we have to pay even more attention to quite frankly to be able to get them up to the standards where they could resist the Humidity?

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN: And to put a finer point on that, increased temperatures and increased flooding and increased moisture leads to increased mold in our thank you. Now I want to focus on the readiness of the Navy for a possible conflict in the Indo-Pacific region and discuss our overseas repair capability. My staff recently traveled to Japan to meet with security partners there who expressed concerns that shipbuilding and repair capabilities are located almost exclusively in the United States and that in case of a war or a conflict, this would severely restrain our combat capability.

If we have to send ships all the way back to Hawaii or San Diego for repairs, what is your assessment of this risk and what are the Department and the administration doing to ensure robust repair capabilities are available in the Pacific? Should a conflict break out?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, thank you Congressman for that question and it is indeed a combat related question. I mean, if we find ourselves in conflict and we suffer damage, which is inevitable, we will be able to have to send those ships back to the closest depot necessary to be able to repair those ships. So what we’re asking of the Congress this year basically is to authorize us up to six continuous maintenance availabilities of less than 90 days, so that we can then now go and assess which foreign shipyards will be able to do this work effectively during times of peace.

I hope we never have to go to war, but if we should have to go to war, we will then have full knowledge of which shipyards and what countries we could actually send these ships to be able to do the damage repair that’s going to be necessary.

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN: Thank you. Mr. Chair, I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the lady. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. McCormick.

RICH MCCORMICK: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

MIKE ROGERS: Sorry that I was out of line. I saw Mr. Fallon came in ahead of you. I apologize. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fallon is recognized.

PATRICK FALLON: Dr. McCormick, denied. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. OK so, Mr. Secretary, thank you and General, Admiral, thank you for being here. The thing that I get, I come back to and we had a discussion about this last year is recruiting crisis. So — and I apologize because I was up in my office and missed a little bit of this testimony.

But Mr. Secretary, do you believe that the recruiting crisis is an existential threat to the Republic?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I think it is across the entire nation. In fact, we need more blue collar workers. We need more young men and women actually who are willing to come into our armed services across the board and serve.

PATRICK FALLON: No, I think it’s ironically and oddly it’s a refreshing to hear that because if we’re not going to solve a problem, unless we really understand that the gravity of it and thank you for that. And so I was looking at the statistics and from all branches, but particularly obviously we’ll talk about the Navy today that we missed their goals last year by 20 percent, about seven.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir, we had a — we actually fell short the beginning of the year. We thought we’d be at 17,500. We ended the year at 7500. This year at the beginning of the year, we thought we’d be short about 16,500 And we’ll probably end it perhaps at 6400 or less, but we actually increased our goal this year to 40,000, which is important to note.

You know, we want to make up for the shortages from previous years so we can reduce the number of — of gaps that we have at sea.

PATRICK FALLON: Yeah, because this happens every once in a while where it’s — but it’s an anomaly and it’s just a year and then the next year and you can — you can mitigate some of it of course with retention as well. But what I’m alarmed about is when it’s year over year and it’s of course with at least with the Navy, it’s going to be two years in a row with the Army.

It’s been three years. But of course the Marine Corps always meets the recruiting goals. They have the best commercials, what are you going to do? But you know, look at the Navy slash Marine guy over here that was the Air Force One, this one by the way. But — so what can we do? What new innovative ideas can we use Mr. Secretary to mitigate this and really end it? Because I think that’s what we’re after here is if it’s been three, three unsuccessful years with the Army and two with the Navy, we need To do something differently.

And what — what do you think those things?

CARLOS DEL TORO: So please understand it’s been an all hands on deck effort across the board and the CNO can talk specifically to some of the measures that we have taken. But it is all hands on deck and we’re actually putting a call out to Maritime Service across the board as well too.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thank you and I agree recruiting is really an existential threat. So we’re just kind of taking a two pronged approach. One is first to approve the recruiting enterprise itself. So the Navy just put a two star admiral in charge of recruiting good. We have also adopted a thing that we use in aviation for aviation operations, maintenance, understanding what’s going on with each type model series.

We’re looking at. We have a recruiting operations center now to look at what’s going on with each one of our recruiting centers, each recruiter because it’s really about throughput per recruiter. And how do we need to improve their ability to recruit? The other thing, as the secretary mentioned, you know, we had taken 60 percent Manning, cut two man at 60 percent in our recruiting centers when we put more people at sea.

So we actually had reduced our recruiting force by the end of May. We should have that fully restored. So we’ll be able to do that I think on the other side.

PATRICK FALLON: And sorry, I don’t make it a habit to interrupt flag officers, so I apologize for that. But, I really want to emphasize we need it to be measurable as well. And also a question when we have excellent recruiters, are they allowed to stay within the recruiting command?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yup, we have a career recruiter.

PATRICK FALLON: OK, good. OK, so they can do it for because that’s the thing I don’t want is somebody highly successful and then they leave and I would generally gently suggest that we build everything around recruiting right now, make sure that they’re manned and then build that. That should be the first thing again, just right.

LISA FRANCHETTI: That’s how we get our seed corn. We really need to make those investments.

PATRICK FALLON: Yeah, and you know, I was thinking about as far as the Navy, you’re on all the planes you’re under the water, you’re on the water, you’re in the air, you’re on the ground, you’re in space. I don’t think any of that branch can say that. And always forward, yeah, right, but because of that, I would imagine that you would recruit the submarine, the submariner differently than you’re going to attract somebody to say go into the special ops and Seals or somebody to go into cyber or Intel or Surface fleet?

And I just want to touch on that a little bit and ask you what are — what field or expertise has been most hit by recruiting the recruiting crisis, Actually the?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Medical profession, we’re having a really hard time in the medical profession and also recruiting in the nuclear field as well too, because we just don’t have enough students and colleges that actually go into those studies. And so we’re having to work at a younger age. In the case of the nukes, actually trying to encourage high schoolers to actually go into the nuclear field.

And you know the problems that exist in recruiting health professionals.

PATRICK FALLON: And I just like to again gently ask and politely ask maybe with the recruiting stuff, a quarterly report given to this committee would be wonderful for us because there’s a role for us to play as well. And we want to give you the resources to succeed. We just want to measurable and think outside the box because we’ve got to take care of this.

None of us want to go, dare I say, to a draft and if we’re going.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired here. And I recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Davis.

DON DAVIS: Thank you so much Mr. Chair and to the witnesses. Good afternoon to you, Mr. Secretary. We spoke last year about expediting toxic water claims processing for those veterans as a result of the Camp Lejeune Situation. Mr. Secretary. What’s the estimated timeline now that you would forecast and getting claims heard, in particular, with the elective option been in place.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir, it actually depends on how quickly the claimants themselves actually completely fill the paperwork online. We’ve made tremendous progress and investments because this is very important to the Department of the Navy to — to the Department of Defense to the president of the United States actually.

And so we have 190,000 claimants basically that have now signed online, but many of them actually haven’t completed their full regiment of paperwork necessary to be able to process those claims. But we are moving extremely fast once a claimant actually submits all the necessary documentation, all the necessary paperwork to make them the authors that they so deserve from.

DON DAVIS: The time that a completed claim is submitted, what would you estimate?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I’d have to get back to you specifically on the amount of time we could do the analysis on those that have fully submitted their — their paperwork. And I do know that out of the ones that have fully submitted their paperwork, for example, some have actually taken time to consider the — the — the — the offers that have been made.

Um and so we can provide you all the specific statistics associated with each.

DON DAVIS: There was a report that was due in January on the first. When do you anticipate that report?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I’ll have to get back to you on where that report is, OK.

DON DAVIS: Congressman in eastern North Carolina, there’s a growing need for employment opportunities that can provide young people with careers. Recently, I facilitated a meeting between Representatives from the Newport News, Shipyard community colleges in North Carolina and workforce development officials from across our region to collaborate on these opportunities.

In our part of the state. Mr. Secretary, is there a pool, I mean we know there’s a pool of existing talent that’s going to exit the Navy in particular. They’re separating for whatever reason. How can we better assist in particular service members that we know are exiting through the transition assistance program in the certain critical areas that are important for our national security still.

CARLOS DEL TORO: So Congressman first and foremost, my goal is to keep them in obviously. So we’re trying our very best and actually retention has been the highest. It’s been historic actually for both the Navy and the Marine Corps. So we’re doing our job well and providing necessary quality of life quality of services necessary to keep them in, but I think you raise an important point.

And one of the things that we’ve been talking about in this call to maritime services for those individuals that do depart actually how could we actually guide them to work in our shipyards. As one example, you know, we have a very robust naval program in North Carolina, for example, that helps private industry in North Carolina work with the Department of the Navy.

And that’s part of that as well too.

DON DAVIS: Yeah, Mr. Secretary, obviously we want to continue to keep them in, but obviously there’s a point in time where we know the separation is going to occur and that’s what I was really highlighting. You know when we know it’s going to occur. Now we’re a matter of transitioning, so you know that’s definitely something I think we have to continue to think through in particular our transition assistance programs.

Yes, sir because that still can be the pipeline to secure our national security. So I appreciate that Elizabeth City State University is an HBCU in my district has a growing aviation program. The only four year aviation sciences program in North Carolina, that’s on track to growing and increasing its capacity.

They’re looking to build additional aviation hubs, in particular at Marine Corps. Air Station Cherry Point been one of the locations this program could provide a pipeline of pilots to the military. So I’m trying to get them in too, not just concerned about the transition, but trying to get them in as well.

How can the Navy elaborate and leveraged programs like this universities like Elizabeth City, State University and other HBCUs to alleviate policy pilot shortages?

ERIC SMITH: Well, Congressman, I don’t — I’m not familiar with Elizabeth State University, but I’m going to be by tonight and my commanding general of Marine Corps Recruiting Command is going to be by tomorrow morning.

DON DAVIS: Oh, God is too?

ERIC SMITH: Because we are — we are looking for pilots, we are looking for pilots.

DON DAVIS: All right. Well, from this airmen to the Devil Dog, I say, hoorah. I yield back Mr. Chair.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman. Chair now recognizes the doctor from Georgia at this time for real.

RICH MCCORMICK: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate you. It’s interesting when you talked about recruiting just recently, I wasn’t planning on talking. About this, but a couple things came to mind when — when we forgive student debt, for example, and we have people who never went to college paying for the people who did go to college, who then had their debt forgiven.

Where’s the incentive to give away scholarships for the military when we’re recruiting, if they’re college has already paid for — for free, where is the incentive to motivate people to go into medicine or anything else?

When they don’t incur debt, otherwise We had to remember that this is an incentive driven society and that we are all volunteer force and I think we have to realize that in our recruiting force. Secondly, I think when it comes to our enlisted folks when we recruit, we always have to go after the Warriors, which means we recruit on the right stations at the right places with the right message.

The sergeant major, the Army, the former sergeant major still owes me 100 pushups because I told him he was barking up the wrong tree by — by going after the recruiting venues that they were using. I liked the Marines. I may be a little biased. I may have been involved in something like that, but when you talk about the few — the proud the Marines and it’s about a warrior ethos, that’s why we make our quota because we recruit the right people for the right mission.

And that’s what we should focus on. With that said, we do have a mission and it’s all over the globe right now. One of the things that we’re having a hard time delivering is our people to the right place at the right time with our amphibious shipping, which we’re obviously in a shortfall right now. I know we’re trying to reallocate for a mission all over the world, a diverse mission, which I understand we have limited funds for.

Do you think we’re going to be able to fix this or are we — are we shifting away from this amphibious warfare model? Or are we — are we going to reinvest in expanding our amphibious fleet so we can meet the needs of the Corps and the Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO: By no means imaginable Congressman, we are fully dedicated to a strong, robust amphibious fleet — just in this budget alone, we have reinserted three LPDs in 25, 27 and 29. We actually moved le ten to the left by two years, and so we’re fully committed and that commitment has to continue well into the future as well too with bringing on the — the, the LSM’s that the commandant mentioned earlier as well too.

Our Marines need to move around long distances in the — in the Pacific as well as island to island and we need to give them the capabilities to do so.

RICH MCCORMICK: Do we think that we’re on what kind of timeline before we start to catch up to that curve that we’re obviously behind on right now? We’re — we’re struggling to meet our needs.

CARLOS DEL TORO: I think as long as we — we can remain steady on — on LPD production, for example, we’re going to be OK. The production lines down in–in Pascagoula are not as challenged as they are and the submarine community and up north as well either. And so they’re being able to deliver these ships pretty much on time, on budget, a few months delayed, but not certainly years delayed.

RICH MCCORMICK: Great. I’m aware that the Marine Corps in fiscal year 2024 has, requested for to reinstate a couple 53 kilos — those beautiful magnificent birds that they are near and dear to my heart, what seems like just two helicopters. What kind of impact does that have on the fleet when we talk about two helicopters?

ERIC SMITH: Congressman, two helicopters is significant for us, and to answer your question, it’s about the CH 53 K, which is an incredible platform that can lift itself. It can literally lift itself. It is the only heavy lift true heavy lift helicopter in the DOD inventory in flight, refuelable and can lift itself.

It can lift 48,000 pounds external, which is stunning. So I’m committed to making sure that our fleet of CH 53 CS is robust and is fully outfitted.

RICH MCCORMICK: Thank you, and I love the picture recently of the 53 kilo with a slung load at 35 aerial refueling. Nonetheless, I hope to be on the next one of those ops, speaking of air, the Osprey still very concerned about the delays in getting them back up online. Obviously, we’ve seen what’s happened in Africom with the waving, you know, and I still think it’s a safe aircraft.

Incredible safety profile considering its new technologies, but where are we at in getting them back to work at full process, getting our pilots up to speed so they can be proficient at what they do best.

ERIC SMITH: Congressman, the MV 22, as you note is — it’s our workhorse. We’re always looking to modernize this asset, but we’ve been flying it in combat and in training since 2007. It’s got a safety record consistent with all other platforms. And it’s a return to flight has met the standard by nav air. So we are returning it to flight, we’re going through day checkrides, night checkrides and getting it back in the fight.

RICH MCCORMICK: AJ, with that, I have five seconds to say Semper Fi Welcome back to the Fight Row roster.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman chair, now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. LaLota.

NICK LALOTA: Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Secretary, good to be with you today, sir. Our Navy Marine Corps team is the most lethal fighting force for good the world has ever known. Would you agree with that?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, sir, absolutely.

NICK LALOTA: When he was Secretary of defense, general Mattis would say that the policy decisions made at the Pentagon made here should be made in contemplation of ensuring that we have the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known in general. Would you agree with that? I’m sorry, in general, Mr. Secretary.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were referring to the general, not in general. My wording, absolutely, sir.

NICK LALOTA: And of all the things that make our Navy, Marine Corps team the most lethal fighting force, we’ve talked about a few things today, one, two, three, six shipbuilding, some other equipment, amphibs and whatnot. But our people do, our people still remain the biggest component to our success.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Without question, Congressman.

NICK LALOTA: And I’m frustrated because my questions aren’t going to be about some of the infrastructure, some of the decisions about where our bases are and some of the technology we’re acquiring which are rightful endeavors to us for us to discuss. Admiral, do you remember meeting on the floor of the House two months ago or so during the state of the Union?

Do you remember our conversation, Admiral, I’ll remind you, it was about status of forces agreements. Do you remember who my guest was at the state of the Union?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yes, I think it was the Mrs. O ‘Connor’s.

NICK LALOTA: Lieutenant Ridge and his spouse, Brittany O’Connor’s. And I’m hoping that with the 100 years of collective naval service that the three of you have combat deployments command at sea command at sea. Even for you, Mr. Secretary that you could help with this issue because I think it does strongly relate to lethality.

25 years ago when I was a midshipman, the top of our class at the Naval Academy, of which I was not a part, would select ships in the seventh fleet for the most part because that was the most challenging tip of the spear assignments. And our best and brightest and from ROTC and OCS would pick the same because of the challenge of those assignments and the specter that, if we as a Navy, Marine Corps team were in the biggest part of the fight, it would likely be in that part Of the world?

And that was in the year 2000. Now 24 years later, it’s much more apparent that if our Navy Marine Corps team gets called into the biggest fight, it’s likely to be in that part of the world. And because of the weaknesses of our status of forces agreements, specifically with Japan, less folks are seeking orders to Japan because they’re inferior.

Our status of forces agreements, in the case of lieutenant colonels real briefly while traveling down Mount Fuji with his family. He innocently because of mountain altitude sickness, lost control of his vehicle. No drinking or drugs involved lost control of his vehicle. Tragically resulted in the death of two Japanese nationals.

The Japanese took custody of the lieutenant denied him a right to, a translator denied him any sort of attorney sleep deprived him and ultimately coerced him into a confession that resulted in him serving 507 days in a Japanese prison. That outcome would not have happened likely in Korea or any place else where we have status of forces agreements.

So my question is this Mr. Secretary, I realize this is not under your jurisdiction. I realize that status of forces agreements are generally negotiated between the Department of State and that friendly foreign nation. But Mr. Secretary, you are in the business of ensuring that we have the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known and the spectrum of conflict in that part of the world is more real than it’s ever been.

Mr. Secretary, can you commit to working with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the state and others to ensure that our status of force agreements and nations like Japan comport with our values contemplate lethality to ensure that if our men and women are called in to Fight in that battle that they can have the confidence knowing that if they’re out in town on liberty and find themselves accused of a crime by a friendly foreign nation that they have rights similar to what rights the everyday American citizen have would have in America.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Absolutely, Congressman, the safety of our personnel in the United States and serving overseas is incredibly important to us and those Sofa agreements are also incredibly important to protect their rights.

NICK LALOTA: Thank you, Mr. Secretary and can you commit to following up in due course 3 or 6 months to tell me what progress we’ve made as a Navy Marine Corps team to ensure that our sailors and Marines in the seventh Fleet in Japan have better protections. Mr. Secretary, absolutely. Congressman.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Thank you.

NICK LALOTA: And with the remainder of my time, on behalf of Mr. Waltz with the — with a unanimous consent, Mr. chairman, I’d like to enter into the record his letter to you, Mr. Secretary regarding his request that those service members at Abbey gate be posthumously promoted without objection. So ordered, thank you. I yield Mr. Chairman.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman, yields chair, I recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Lamborn.

DOUG LAMBORN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary Del Toro, the last time I saw you, we were under the ice up in the Arctic Ocean, ice, we were on an attack sub and that was quite an experience. Yes, sir, there’s some amazing capability that we field out there. Admiral French. I’ll ask my first question to you. Over the past several years, Congress has appropriated over $3 billion for the development of the conventional prompt strike CPS hypersonic missile.

Yet to date, that program has yet to successfully test an all up round. I understand these testing problems are driving a program replan that aims to field the hypersonic capability on USS Zumwalt by the end of 2025 and the Virginia class SSN five years later in 2030. Given the recently reported shipbuilding delays, are these platforms on track to accommodate hypersonic capability on this timeline?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, thank you for the question and you know, first let me say how important the CPS capability is. You know it’s extremely lethal maneuverable and it’s something that we need to have going forward and we’re in development with that program along with the Army. And so we’re committed to developing that, getting that out as quickly as possible and making sure that we are doing all the proper testing to move that forward.

As far as our platforms go, the Zumwalt entered the shipyard down in Pascagoula now and you know she — I went down to visit her just about maybe a month ago and they are moving fast to get her ready for the CPS alt. And I’m looking forward to getting her out. And so when she’s done that, that would be coincident with the missile being ready.

The Virginia payload, we’ve certainly seen some of the delays in our submarines and you know right now we want to invest in the submarine industrial base so we can increase the cadence and really set the conditions to meet the cadence and delivery that we really need going Forward and that will be part of that capability.

DOUG LAMBORN: Yeah, let’s talk about that. I understand that some critical flight tests for CPS are scheduled for later this year and I’m hopeful that they’ll be successful, but I think we’re not moving fast enough. Can you please tell us specifically what we can do to increase the tempo or cadence of the testing?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, I think you know, continuing to work with our testing community with Admiral Wolf, with everyone who’s involved with this and the Army, you know they are moving with a sense of urgency and they feel that every single day.

DOUG LAMBORN: Secretary Del Toro since the October 7th attack on Israel, we’ve seen a steadily deteriorating security environment in the Middle East. One of the hallmarks of that environment is the attacks by Iranian backed militias specifically using cheap attack drones. I applaud the US Navy’s performance in defending against this threat, but it comes at a significant and unsustainable cost long term.

You testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee that the service required about $1 billion to replenish stocks of air defense, missiles and General. Carrillo told this committee that he encourages the Navy to deploy directed energy, specifically ship borne lasers such as the Helios system to get on the right side of the cost per shot equation.

So Secretary Under Secretary Hsu recently said the department is working on a directed energy system for the Navy with three times the power of existing systems. Can you update us on what the Navy is doing to develop shipboard directed energy capability?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Thank you, Congressman. You’re absolutely right that we need to make even greater investments in the future. We should have been making them for a long, long time, but nevertheless we are continuing to make investments in order to get Helios deployable. She will hopefully be deployable here sometime in the next several months, but certainly by the end of the year, hopefully on USS Preble.

But we have six other programs including some of the one that Heidi Hsu is talking about as — as well to make added investments in high more high power lasers as well as other directed energy programs. Many of which are also SAP programs that we can’t talk about openly.

DOUG LAMBORN: And General Smith? I know that part of the force Design 2030 has been to rethink the capabilities of the Marine Corps and the needs in the INDOPACOM theater. Can you talk about the importance of systems like the medium range intercept capability which is a directed energy capability? And what we’re doing to speed up its delivery to the Marines.

ERIC SMITH: Well, sir, I can the medium range intercept capability is one of the backbones of our strategy. It paired with the TPS 80 Gator radar consents targets very small diameter targets at great range and can intercept them at again at great range and at a different classification level. I can discuss the range with you, but it is a critical part of our force design throughout the first island chain to disrupt a potential PRC attack.

DOUG LAMBORN: OK, thank you all and I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman and I thank the witnesses this testimony has been very helpful and we look forward to taking what you shared with us today and folding it into the National Defense Authorization Act later this month. And with that, I will yield to the ranking member for any closing comments he may have.

ADAM SMITH: I am good, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. We’re done. Thank you.

List of Panel Members and Witnesses
PANEL MEMBERS:

REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-ALA.), CHAIRMAN

REP. JOE WILSON (R-S.C.)

REP. MICHAEL TURNER (R-OHIO)

REP. DOUG LAMBORN (R-COLO.)

REP. ROB WITTMAN (R-VA.)

REP. AUSTIN SCOTT (R-GA.)

REP. SAM GRAVES (R-MO.)

REP. ELISE STEFANIK (R-N.Y.)

REP. SCOTT DESJARLAIS (R-TENN.)

REP. TRENT KELLY (R-MISS.)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FLA.)

REP. DON BACON (R-NEB.)

REP. JIM BANKS (R-IND.)

REP. JACK BERGMAN (R-MICH.)

REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-FLA.)

REP. LISA MCCLAIN (R-MICH.)

REP. RONNY JACKSON (R-TEXAS)

REP. PATRICK FALLON (R-TEXAS)

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FLA.)

REP. NANCY MACE (R-S.C.)

REP. BRAD FINSTAD (R-MINN.)

REP. DALE STRONG (R-ALA.)

REP. MORGAN LUTTRELL (R-TEXAS)

REP. JEN KIGGANS (R-VA.)

REP. NICK LALOTA (R-N.Y.)

DEL. JAMES MOYLAN (R-GUAM)

REP. MARK ALFORD (R-MO.)

REP. CORY MILLS (R-FLA.)

REP. RICH MCCORMICK (R-GA.)

REP. LANCE GOODEN (R-TEXAS)

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WASH.), RANKING MEMBER

REP. JOE COURTNEY (D-CONN.)

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CALIF.)

REP. DONALD NORCROSS (D-N.J.)

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-ARIZ.)

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MASS.)

REP. SALUD CARBAJAL (D-CALIF.)

REP. RO KHANNA (D-CALIF.)

REP. WILLIAM KEATING (D-MASS.)

REP. ANDY KIM (D-N.J.)

REP. CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA.)

REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D-MICH.)

REP. MIKIE SHERRILL (D-N.J.)

REP. VERONICA ESCOBAR (D-TEXAS)

REP. JARED GOLDEN (D-MAINE)

REP. SARA JACOBS (D-CALIF.)

REP. MARILYN STRICKLAND (D-WASH.)

REP. PATRICK RYAN (D-N.Y.)

REP. JEFF JACKSON (D-N.C.)

REP. GABE VASQUEZ (D-N.M.)

REP. CHRIS DELUZIO (D-PA.)

REP. JILL TOKUDA (D-HAWAII)

REP. DON DAVIS (D-N.C.)

REP. JENNIFER L. MCCLELLAN (D-VA.)

REP. TERRI SEWELL (D-ALA.)

REP. STEVEN HORSFORD (D-NEV.)

REP. JIMMY PANETTA (D-CALIF.)

REP. MARC VEASEY (D-TEXAS)

WITNESSES:

SECRETARY OF THE NAVY CARLOS DEL TORO

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS LISA M. FRANCHETTI

US MARINE CORPS COMMANDANT ERIC M. SMITH