support you give us. the strength of our nations our army. the strength of our army is our soldiers. and the strength of our soldiers is our families. and this is what makes us army strong. thank you very much and i look forward to your questions, mr. chair. >> thank you, very much. general, mr. secretary. last year, we passed the deficit reduction act that was the -- took a two pronged approach to attack the hunl deficit problem that we have built over decades over making promises that were difficult to keep and spending money that we had to power to spend. the first prong was the almost trillion dollars that came out of, was supposed to come out of

discreti discretionary spending and there was appear call after the last election that everything should be on the table. and i understand that defense was a big target and i repeatedly said, if we cannot find some savings within a budget of $600 billion plus, shame on us. and i think you have done a great job on that beginning with the hundred billion dollars of efficiencies and then the $78 billion and then the -- what we find now is $480 billion, the second part of that, we had through the legislation assigned the super committee to come up with savings, hopefully out of the entitlement programs, because if we do not address the entitlement programs and eliminate the total discreti discretionary budget we still

run a deficit of a half billion dollars a year. so we can wipe out the discretionary budget and not solve the problem or attack the real problem. but we are facing that now. you have done a great job working for months on coming up with the strategies and the -- using the money that you have remaining after these cuts to get us through this problem. the second part of, the second prong of that attack, when the super committee was unable to perform its work is known as sequestration and that is another $1.1 trillion or on $1.2 trillion, half of that comes out of defense. now defense only accounts for 20% of our budget, but the first

traunch, is going to come out of defense and so is the second, so we could look out ten years and be talking $100 billion a year cut out of defense over what has been projected in previous budgets. to me, the most from pressing need right now is we need to fix the sequestration, if we allow it to move forward and hit us next january 1st the way it's currently drafted, just across the board cuts of 8%, 12%, depending on if personnel are taken out of the equation, thinking of all of the multiple contracts, i don't know how many contracts you have out mr. secretary, but i'm sure it's in the hundreds if the not thousands. that would have to be rewritten.

renegotiated. i just see total chaos on january 1st of next year approximate if approximate this has not been fixed. i would like to ask you, general, what you're doing, what you're contemplating doing, and what planning you may be doing to prepare for the problem that m may, confront us if we do not address this issue before january 1st. what will you be doing? >> mr. chairman, first, we will continue on wait for guidance from the secretary of defense to on move forward on very specific planning for sequestration, as i through this and the potential it can have, what i will tell

you is it would result in us having to relook fundamentally how we do business. the reductions that would be required in both our active component and reserve components would be significant. our readiness profiles would be effected and so how to sustain readiness so we can void task force smiths would be critical as we move forward and then finally it would significantly delay any modernization efforts that we have that could fundamentally keep us from providing what we believe is necessary to properly modernize the force. >> mr. chairman, may i add, a few words. we are not doing as of yet any hard planning that would happen later in the summer, would it go to that extent, some back of the

nfl ma envelope math will tell you, if the army receives a share of the cut, it would be about 26%, that is probably best case scenario for us, that is $134 billion through 2017, to take that kind of additional cut through the fit up would leave virtually no activity that the army undertakes untouched. the army has 96,000 in number contracts at the moment. not all of them would be effected but a great number of them would. in some cases if we interrupt the program we have to pay closeout costs on those. i worry about, as i know you do, what do the manufacturing interests, what do our industrial base interests do the further we get into the year.

they have empl they have employees, they have to plan. some have shareholders. the uncertainty, i think, is something that the sooner it can be cleared up the better it will serve all. >> thank you, thank you very much. mr. smith. >> thank you mr. chairman. i share your concerns and these gentlemen's concerns about sequestration, i feeling it's important that we a void it and the big problem with the budget approach, there's three pieces, man tory spending and discretionary spending and the revenue, all the money that comes in this. in all areas we have seen spending go up significantly in mandatory and discretionary and we have seen revenue go down significantly in the last ten years by over 30%. because of the shear number of tax cuts that we passed and the ups and downs of the economy.

all three of the pieces have been on the table to deal with it. as the chairman points out the budget control act dealt with one and sort of on a wing and a prayer said we hope the super committee figures out the other two. that did not happen t depth of denial in the country, not just in this town about where the deficit is at and what is going to be required to respond to it is unprecedented, what we do, every elected official has their part of the budget that they care about and they will fight to defend it and they will say yes, the deficit is a problem, deal with it someplace else. that is why we need a comprehensive approach that looks at revenue, mandatory spending and discretionary and it's not happening. all we are hearing, you know, defend our portion of the budget. we hear it on this committee. defense is our thing, we defend

it. you do not hear people saying, this is what we should cut, except for me and others saying let's raise the taxes. that is the key to this. if we want to protect defense from sequestrasequestration, we put proposals together that helps us out. we have got a bill coming up here in about a half hour, that is going to add an hundred some odd billion dollars. and we are going in the wrong direction. it's our responsibility, just to complain with about the cuts that are happening to defense, but look at the other two pieces of the equation, the revenue and mandatory spending to make sure that the spending is protected and it's our responsibility and not yours.

if we want to protect defense we have to change. i want ask about the sexual assault language that has been in previous legislation and your efforts within the army to step up and deal with what is a fairly sizeable problem and concerns about how sexual assault charges are handled. we passed legislation with the leadership of ms. davis and others on the committee, to you know, try to, you know, better address that issue. there are proposals to go further, i think the biggest proposal is taking sexual assault outside the normal chain of command in terms of charging. if you could do two things. tell us about the progress that has been made with the changes that were done and explain your concerns about going outside the chain of command for sexual assault cases, but to accept that second one, we have to make sure that the first one is

making a real difference. >> we deeply appreciate the concerns that members on the committee have brought to this. i want to assure you having worked on this member, there are few things that are more in contrast to the basic army values and few things that happen within our ranks that we are more concerned about. and that we are not trying every day to become better. as to our responses, as you no mr. smith, we have taken a wholistic approach to thris. encouraging victims to come forward and provide them the assurances necessary within their command and within the larger army that they will not be victimized again. that coming forward and talking about these things will not be a career killer for them. but beyond that, what we are trying to do also is bring

sensitivity to our youngest soldiers and responsibilitity to our nco core and our leaders. we have instituted constant training programs from the basic levels to the basic officer leader course, we have instituted training courses into the jag schools so our army attorneys understand the special way in which the matters need to be handled both socially as well a as legally. with we tried to, in fact have greatly increased the resourcing that is necessary to provide lab examiners, we have hired more. we hired special investigators and hired six highly qualified experts to come in and guide us both in terms of program development and also, to help our prosecutors and help our investigators make sure that they are up to the latest

developments that come about. we have mobile training teams that go out and go to every unit in the army, conducting specialized training for our on post camp and station investigators as with well. i think if you look at the data, they are still too high and unacceptable. but we have a glimmer of progress. report rate is 38%. i view that as abysmal, but we report 68% of our sexual assault cases to court-martial. and not everyone of the data points has similar data point within the civilian sector. but we are doing better. and in some cases better in the civilian sector. better is not good enough.

we have to get to the point that one instance is too many. >> it's worth noting that this is not just a problem in the military. and i hope we do understand that. general? >> i would just like to add that as i mentioned in my opening statement, there's institutional and operational capabilities that we have to establish approxima and the secretary covered most of those. i want to talk about the cultural and institution a issues here. we get soldiers from all different parts of the country and society. it's important for us as we bring them in to ensure that we foc foster a climate of trust and respect that we expect within our institution. and that will start early on. we now have courses when you are going through basic training, whether you go to the first officer courses or officer development training and it will be in everything that we do. because that is how important it

is. our female population plays an incredible role in our army. we have to ensure that they have the environment that they can operate in properly. so we take it seriously. if i can take a short comment about the uniform code of military justice. i think it's important that we work carefully with the ability to provide ourselves flexibility. so it's important that we continue to have sks an discuss about this and with hard work we will ensure that the chain of command will be able to use the administrative and ucmj authorities that they have to enforce this program. thank you very much. >> thank you mr. bartlett? >> thank you, our chairman mentioned the task force smith regarding the lessons learned

from task force smith, one of the reasons that the army could not get enough soldiers and equipment in was because there were a limited number of transport aircraft t army has decided not to procure c 21. when it comes to providing support out to the last technical mile, are you convinced that the air force will be able to meet all of your needs and if they don't, will the army have to increase the use rate for other assets? i think that everyone knows that the air force was never very enthusiastic about the c-27 j, they did not want the plane. in a logic that i had trouble understanding, the pentagon assigned the plane to the air force and asked them to be at the beck and call of the army when the army needed that support. did i not think it was a

prescription for really a effective military. and i understand now, that because of limitations in air strips in afghanistan we do not have enough c-27 js and one said we are flying the blades off of others to meet the demand. how do you feel that the air force will be able to meet your needs? >> thank you, sir. first, in terms of our -- and you are touching on our -- lift, we are confident in the c 5-mikes and c-17s to meet our requirements. the subject up focused on, it is important that we have the capability to move. when i was the commander in iraq, we conducted the tests for

the c-130 that was attached to the army in order to meet its missions and we found it to be an incredibly successful program, where we controlled where it went and controlled the loads and it enabled us to get what we need, where we needed it on time and that is the understanding that is now between us and the air force based on the tests we conducted in iraq. we have had to fly a significant amount of ch-47 hours in order to provide support to our desperate bases but we have done other things like air drop. and we have significantly invested in our ability to more accurately air drop supplies and other things to other remote locations which has helped us solve some of the issues.

the c-27 has performed well in afghanistan, i visited them personally. they are at a high operational readiness rate, they have provided a capability that hasa with the choices that have to be made, one of the choices the air force made was to reduce that capability. so what we are now trying to do is continue to increase the use of the c-130 to support our intertheater lift and more precise air drop capability and we will continue to work on that as we move forward. >> another area of concern to me is lightening the load on the soldier. general, in your opinion, do we need to shift the balance in the operational requirements process from a higher priority in aircraft and vehicles to more emphasis on soldier focus? for an example, how can we help you speed up the rapid innovation process in initiativ

individual soldier systems in 120-degree temperature. they're carrying 150 pounds. that's just unacceptable, isn't it? >> we have actually made in my opinion, great progress in this area. what we now look at as a squad. it's about what the squad can carry together in a load. what's happened is we've made some significant improvements in reducing their weight of what they were carrying but now what we're doing is finding we're carrying more things. it gives them the capablity to have more and provide more capability in the squad as it moves forward. we have to now work through and understand what specifically we think a squad needs for it to be successful because as we lighten the load we've added more things to the squad. and so what we have to do is invest in deciding what are the absolute optimal loads that we have and continue to look at the technologies to reduce body armor. we've made some good progress there. but we still want to continue to look at decreasing the weight of our body armor while increasing the amount prove techs as you

mentioned. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. reyes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. jeptlemen, thank you for being here this morning. i know we've talked about the impact that these cutbacks can potentially have on the industrial base. i'm particularly concerned about the ground combat vehicle. this is a basic staple of the ability of the army to fight. the current plan according to the budget submitted calls for a total shutdown of the abrams, bradley and stryker production lines for three to four years which starts in fy '14. i just want to get it on the record. how can the army be sure that the production lines and, in particular, the skilled workers because in a recent visit to my

colleague's district that both chairman bartlett and i went to, that is a very real concern on behalf of industry that the killed workers and after such a lengthy shutdown. so after going cold for three to four years, how can we be sure that that capacity will be able to regenerate itself? >> it's a great question. it's one where we're very concerned about and very focused on as well. what we have attempted to do to this point is really two-prong approach. first of all, the department of defense is leading what's called the st2t. sector by sector, tier by tier process to try to assess those greatest vulnerabilities, the

things you mentioned, mr. reyes, and to figure a path forward for all the services jointly as to how we might lessen that challenge and burden on the individual locations. beyond that, the army itself is doing an industrial base line. our folks and our acquisition community are looking at those things as -- by way of example, you mentioned the abram shutdown in ohio. what we're doing with glds or gdls, general dynamics land systems, the contractor on site, is trying to ensure that through particularly their foreign military sales which they are beginning to line up and which the department of defense is attempting to assist them, provides that core ability for those particularly highly skilled engineer positions to retain employment until we begin our recapitalization program in

2017 of the m1a2 abrams. so this is something that is of great interest. it's something we've said we're looking at very hard. and there are no guarantees, but whether it's ppps, public/private partnerships or other kinds of approaches, as far as we're concerned, we're willing to pursue any reasonable path to ensure that those particularly critical jobs remain viable. >> is there -- i'm sure you've given it thought, but is there any way to keep a -- some kind of a minimum production capacity for the army during these -- >> every facility has a minimum sustain rate. for the abrams, i believe it's 70 tanks a year which is far beyond our -- not just our fiscal ability, it's far beyond our need. but as those minimum sustain rates are figured through, we try to meet them through other

means. public/private partnerships, fms and any other way by which we can assist. so those are part of the calculation. >> i would just add that with -- we are being aggressive with our foreign military sales programs and identifying potential suitors who need this type of equipment. and so we think there's some potential there. and that's something we'll continue to work very hard just to add to what the secretary said. but, for example, lima, it would cost $2.8 billion to keep that open. and we -- our tank fleet is in good shape and we don't need to, because of the great support we've gotten over the last few years. we're not going to start to recap until '17. so we have to fill that gap between the end of '14 and '17 and try to use fms to do this where we can. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you, gentlemen. >> mr. forbes?

>> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. secretary general, it's an honor to have both of you here today. we appreciate your service and as you know, we're often here very bipartisan committee and i agree very much with the distinguished ranking member when he indicates that we simply as a congress can't spend $800 billion on the stimulus package, almost twice the cuts we're now placing in defense, or pass a massive health care act without having consequences. two of those consequences are that we either have to ask hard-working taxpayers in america to spend more of their money to help cover our spending problem or we have to cut the defense of the nation that they love. and neither of those consequences are good. if we could consider all of that in here, then the sign outside would say house of representatives, but it says house committee on armed services. so i'm going to focus on our military concerns and, general, specifically for you, you've

been working, i know, to articulate the role the army can play in our asia-pacific defense plans. when it comes to maintaining operational access in the theater where the threat of ballistic missiles is growing it would seem to me the army could play a larger role in providing theater missile defense to our forward deployed personnel in facilities and provide a means of alleviate something of the missile defense burden on the navy. however in the fy '13 budget, there are cuts to the thad program and patriot programs. i'm concerned about the army end strength reductions and how they could affect this mission. could you just tell us and discuss maybe a little bit the role the army foresees for itself and providing theater missile defense in the asia pacific region and then the secretary might add something to that if he would. >> thank you congressman. first, we do play a significant role in the pacific region air missile defense command. we have our major command is in hawaii who manages air and missile defense for the region.

we have patriot battalions forward deployed in the asia-pacific region. and we have tactical operation strategic radars that are being deployed into the region to continue to supplement the current air and missile defense capabilities that we have. we are very focused on forward air and missile defense capability in our key theaters, both asia-pacific and other areas to include the middle east. and we will ton do and fund that. and we have the capability to do that. we have the force structure to do that. so i feel confident that we'll continue to be involved with that. i'd also say there's many other roles the army can play in anti-access capabilities as we look at ground opportunities for entry and other things. and our ability because of the large influence that the armies have in the pacific region, we can help to develop systems and capabilities multilateral systems and capabilities that would help us in our anti-access

campaign. and so i think in the joint operational access capability assessment that the joint staff is doing, the army will play a significant role in this as we move forward to build on the capabilities of the navy and air force. and i think it's that joint concept and joint operational concept that will help us to work the anti-access capabilities. >> mr. secretary? >> yes, thank you, mr. forbes. i think the chief laid down very well our current posture there. i would say from a budgetary perspective, while your observation is absolutely right there are cuts in the funding line to the entire program. all of the accounts in the asia pacific region for army were protected. we haven't diminished any of those. i get a little red behind the ears when i hear so many people -- you did not -- but i hear so many people refer to the