Readiness At its most fundamental level, war is a brutal contest of wills. Winning decisively means dominating the enemy. To be dominant, we must be not only organized, manned, and equipped, but also fully trained. Today, the Army is ready for its assigned missions, but sustained support from the Nation, Congress, and the administration is required to ensure that we maintain our readiness. To do so requires that we pay attention to training, installations, force protection, and readiness reporting. • Unit Training Tough, demanding training which is supported by an infrastructure that allows us to train, sustain, and deploy is essential to readiness. History has taught us and we have learned that, in the end, armies fight the way they train. The Army is committed to fully executing our training strategy-the higher the quality of training, the better the leaders and warfighters we produce. The result is an increased state of readiness to serve our Nation. To this end, we must fully modernize training ranges, combat training centers, and training aids, devices, simulators, and simulations to provide adequate and challenging training. The Army has funded the integration of virtual and constructive training capabilities to achieve realism and cost effective ness. As we move to greater network-centric warfare capability, our forces will operate with even greater dispersion, and maintaining sufficient maneuver areas for training these extended formations will become even more critical. Thus, the Army is implementing a sustainable program to manage the lifecycle of training and testing ranges by integrating operational needs, land management, explosives safety, and environmental stewardship. This program will ensure the continuing viability of training ranges by addressing the multiple aspects of encroachment: endangered species and critical habitats, unexploded ordnance and munitions, spectrum encroachment, airspace restrictions, air quality, noise, and urban growth. As we transform to a future force with new systems, organizational structures, and new doctrine to achieve full spectrum operational capability, our training enablers and infrastructure, along with realistic and relevant training venues, must be funded to match the timelines we have established to field a highly trained soldier-one whose unit is poised to fight new and different kinds of conflicts while maintaining traditional warfighting skills. • Installations Installations provide homes, family and training support, and power projection platforms for the Army. They are the bases where soldiers live, train, and from which they launch on their missions. Worldwide, we have physical plants worth over $220 billion. For too many years, the Army has under funded long-term facilities maintenance in order to fully fund combat readiness and contingency operations; thus, we now have first-class soldiers living and working in third-class facilities. Commanders currently rate two-thirds of their infrastructure condition so poor that it significantly impacts mission accomplishment and morale. The major investment in Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization (SRM) in fiscal year 2002 will help improve only the most critical conditions in our crumbling infrastructure. Over the next 5 years, SRM shortfalls will continue to approximate $3 billion annually as a result of our aging facilities. Exacerbating this situation is the fact that the Army has more facility infrastructure than we need. The cost of operating and sustaining these facilities directly competes with funding our warfighting capability. The realignment or closure of excess facilities will free funds for installations and bring the recapitilization rate closer to the Department of Defense's goal of 67 years by 2010. The Army is divesting itself of mothballed facilities and examining privatization alternatives. For example, we are capitalizing on the success of the Residential Communities Initiatives by expanding the program to 24 projects to more efficiently and effectively manage installations. Encompassing over 63,000 family housing units, the program allows the private sector to remodel, build, and manage housing on Army bases in order to provide the quality housing our soldiers and their families deserve. In fiscal year 2003, we will institute a centralized installation management organization that will improve our facilities and infrastructure through consistent funding and standards that promote the equitable delivery of base operation services and achieve efficiencies through corporate practices and regionalization. • Force Protection The missions and training we assign soldiers are not without risks, and soldiers must be able to live, train, and work in safe, secure environments. We minimize risks by proactively protecting our force. For example, we reevaluated force protection security programs and adjusted over $800 million in fiscal year 2003 to further support controlled access to installations, in-transit security, counter-terrorism training improvements, information assurance, situational awareness, crisis response, and force protection command and control. An additional $1.8 billion is required for further force protection and security program requirements generated in the wake of the attacks on America. • Readiness Reporting Measuring readiness requires accuracy, objectivity, and uniformity. The Army is transforming its current readiness reporting system to achieve greater responsiveness and clarity on unit and installation status. The Strategic Readiness System (SRS) will provide senior leaders with an accurate and complete near real time picture representative of the entire Army (operating forces, institutional forces, and infrastructure). The SRS will be a predictive management tool capable of linking costs to readiness so resources can be effectively applied to near- and far-term requirements. A prototype SRS is being evaluated at selected installations, and its development will continue to ensure compliance with congressionally directed readiness reporting. Transformation Transformation is first and foremost about changing the way we fight in order to win our Nation's wars-decisively. The 21st century strategic environment and the implications of emerging technologies necessitate Army transformation. The global war on terrorism reinforces the need for a transformed Army that is more strategically responsive, deployable, lethal, agile, versatile, survivable, and sustainable than current forces. Technology will enable our soldiers to see the battlefield in ways not possible before. See First enables leaders and soldiers to gain a greater situational awareness of themselves, their opponents, and the battle space on which they move and fight. Superior awareness enables us to Understand First, to assess and decide on solutions to the tactical and operational problems at hand faster than our opponentsto gain decision superiority over our opponents. Networked units are able to Act First, to seize and retain the initiative, moving out of contact with the enemy to attack his sources of strength or key vulnerabilities at a time and place of our choosing. The Army uses precision fires-whether delivered by joint platforms or soldiers firing direct fire weapons-to defeat the enemy as rapidly and decisively as possible. Army units will be capable of transitioning seamlessly from stability operations to combat operations and back again, given the requirements of the contingency. When we attack, we destroy the enemy and Finish Decisively. The Army is taking a holistic approach to transformation, implementing change across its doctrine, training, leader development, organization, materiel, and soldier systems, as well as across all of its components. Transformation will result in a different Army, not just a modernized version of the current Army. Combining the best characteristics of our current forces, the Army will possess the lethality and speed of the heavy force, the rapid deployment mentality and toughness of our light forces, and the unmatched precision and close combat capabilities of our special operations forces-adopting a common warrior culture across the entire force. Transformation will field the best-trained, most combat effective, most lethal soldier in the world. True transformation takes advantage of new approaches to operational concepts and capabilities and blends old and new technologies and innovative organizations that efficiently anticipate new or emerging opportunities. Transformation will provide versatile forces that have a decisive margin of advantage over potential adversaries and fulfill the Nation's full spectrum requirements. Transformed ground forces will dominate maneuver on the battlefield to gain positional advantage over the enemy with overwhelming speed while enhancing the capabilities of the joint force. This approach will contribute to the early termination of the conflict on terms favorable to the United States and its allies. Transformation will exploit networkcentric capabilities to enable rapidly deployable and sustainable Army forces to quickly and precisely strike fixed and mobile targets throughout the depth and breadth of the battlefield. Transformation consists of three interrelated elements-the Objective Force, the Interim Force, and the Legacy Force. We will develop concepts and technologies for the Objective Force while fielding an Interim Force to meet the near-term requirement to bridge the operational gap between our heavy and light forces. The third element of transformation is the modernization and recapitalization of existing platforms within our current force-the Legacy Force-to provide these platforms with the enhanced capabilities available through the application of information technologies. Several important initiatives that should produce even greater advances in 2002 are the production, testing, and delivery of the Interim Force vehicle early this year, and the development of mature technologies to achieve Objective Force capabilities. Digitization concepts tested and proved with the Legacy Force are being refined in the Interim Force and will be applied to the Objective Force. These efforts, along with planned training and testing and joint exercises such as the U.S. Joint Forces Command's "Millennium Challenge 2002"-will enable the Army to stay ahead of current and future adversaries by providing the Nation and its soldiers with unmatched advanced capabilities. To achieve additional momentum, we will carefully concentrate research and development and acquisition funding on our most critical systems and programs. The Objective Force The end result of transformation is a new, more effective, and more efficient Army with a new fighting structure-the Objective Force. The Army will field the Objective Force this decade. It will provide our Nation with an increased range of options for crisis response, engagement, or sustained land force operations. Instead of the linear sequential operations of the past, the Objective Force will fight in a distributed and non-contiguous manner. Objective Force units will be highly responsive, deploy rapidly because of reduced platform weight and smaller logistical footprints, and arrive early to a crisis to dissuade or deter conflict. These forces will be capable of vertical maneuver and defeating enemy anti-access strategies by descending upon multiple points of entry. With superior situational awareness, Objective Force soldiers will identify and attack critical enemy capabilities and key vulnerabilities throughout the depth of the battle space. For optimum success, we will harmonize our transformation efforts with similar efforts by other Services, business and industry, and our science and technology partners. By focusing much of its spending in Science and Technology, the Army will create a new family of ground systems called the Future Combat Systems (FCS). This networked system-of-systems-a key to fielding the Objective Force-will allow leaders and soldiers to harness the power of digitized information systems. The FCS will allow commanders to bring a substantial, perhaps even exponential, increase in combat capabilities to the joint force without a large logistics footprint. Newer technologies will be inserted into the FCS as they become ready. We owe our soldiers the best tools and equipment so they are not put at risk by obsolete or aging combat support systems. The Comanche helicopter, the Objective Force Warrior system, and Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) initiatives are integral components of the network-centric operations of the Objective Force. They are the infrastructure that allows soldiers to do what they do best-fight and win our Nation's wars. Comanche will provide an armed aerial reconnaissance capability critical for gathering intelligence for coordinated attacks against targets of opportunity. The Objective Force Warrior system will provide quantum improvements over our current soldier systems in weight, signature, information exchange capabilities, ballistics tolerance, and chemical, biological, and environmental protection for our individual soldiers on the battlefield. Terrestrial systems alone will not enable full spectrum dominance. Space is a vertical extension of the battlefield and a key enabler and force multiplier for land force operations. Objective Force commanders will access and integrate the full spectrum of C4ISR and Information Operations capabilities, to include national agencies, strategic and operational units, tactical organizations, and joint or multinational forces. In short, commanders will draw upon a wide array of capabilities that enable not just overwhelming force projection, but the ability to out-think our adversaries. Transporting and sustaining the Objective Force will require capabilities that are cost-effective, that adhere to rapid deployment timelines, and that have a smaller logistical footprint over longer distances without jeopardizing readiness. Materiel readiness will be maintained at reduced costs by increasing inventory visibility, eliminating artificial ownership barriers and integrating automated systems. • The Interim Force The Interim Force is a transition force that bridges the near-term capability gap between our heavy and light forces. It will combine the best characteristics of the current Army forces-heavy, light, and special operations forces. Organized into Interim Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs), it will leverage today's technology with selected capabilities of the Legacy Force to serve as a link to the Objective Force. Most importantly, the Interim Force-a combat ready force-will allow exploration of new operational concepts relevant to the Objective Force. The Army will field at least six of these new, more responsive brigade combat teams. These units comprise an Interim Force that will strengthen deterrence and expand options for the field commanders. Over the past 2 years, we have organized two brigades at Fort Lewis, Washington, and additional IBCTs are programmed for Alaska, Louisiana, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania. Leaders and soldiers of the IBCTs at Fort Lewis, Washington, along with an Army coordination cell, have been working closely with all supporting agencies to develop wide-ranging iterative solutions to doctrine, training, logistics, organizations, material, and soldier systems required to field the Interim Force. The first IBCT has completed brigade and battalion level headquarters training with the Army's Battle Command Training Program and company level maneuver live fire training across the spectrum of conflict. The IBCT is training extensively for restrictive and urban terrain, and the force has used special operations training techniques and procedures for the development of night and urban fighting techniques. Training of the Interim Force is proving that the practice of combining heavy, light, and special operations cultures results in a more adaptable and capable leader or soldier. The Army has learned from experimentation that technology such as digitization allows the integration of intelligence data with tactical and operational information and gives our leaders and soldiers the ability to seize and retain the initiative, build momentum quickly, and win decisively. The Army is accelerating the development and fielding of the Interim Force and studying the viability of fielding an additional interim capability in the European area. • Legacy Force As the Army transforms, the Legacy Force-our current force-will remain ready to provide the Nation with the warfighting capability needed to keep America strong and free. Through selective modernization and recapitalization, the Legacy Force allows the Army to meet today's challenges and provides the time and flexibility to get transformation right. Effectively managing risk without sacrificing readiness, the Army is focusing resources on systems and units that are essential to both sustaining near-term readiness and fielding the Objective Force while taking prudent risk with the remainder of the force. Recapitalization rebuilds or selectively upgrades existing weapons systems and tactical vehicles, while modernization develops and procures new systems with improved warfighting capabilities. The Army has identified 17 systems-its Prioritized Recapitalization Program-and fully funded them in selected units. Among these systems are the AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Black Hawk, and CH-47 Chinook helicopters; the M1 Abrams tank; the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle; and the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile defense upgrade. Modernization provides the linkage to facilitate the fielding of the Interim and Objective Forces. The Crusader self-propelled howitzer will provide combat overmatch to our commanders until at least 2032 and serve as a technology carrier to the Objective Force. Recent restructuring initiatives have reduced Crusader's strategic lift requirements by 50 percent. Technology improvements have increased its range by 33 percent, increased the sustained rate of fire by a factor of 10, and utilizing robotics, reduced crew requirements by 33 percent. Modernized M1A2SEP tanks and M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicles are capable of the same situational awareness as the Interim Force, thus enabling soldiers and leaders to learn network-centric warfare on existing chassis. The advantage these information technologies provide our current force further enhance its warfighting capability. Army Aviation modernization efforts will reduce our helicopter inventory by 25 percent and retain only three types of helicopters in service, and the savings in training and logistics will be used to support the recapitalization of our remaining fleet. As part of its Legacy Force strategy, The Army terminated an additional 18 systems and restructured 12 in this budget cycle. • Revitalizing The Army Transformation applies to what we do, as well as how we do it. We are working with the business community to accelerate change across the entire Army, promote cooperation, share information, gain greater control over resource management, and adopt better business practices by eliminating functions or activities that no longer provide value. This initiative seeks to focus constrained resources on achieving excellence in areas that contribute directly to warfighting. Transformation of our business practices cannot wait, and we have started at the highest levels. The Army is restructuring the Army Secretariat and Army Staff to create a more unified headquarters for the conduct of enhanced policy, planning, and resource management activities. The goal is to transform the headquarters into a streamlined, integrated staff more responsive to rapidly changing operational and institutional missions and to push more resources out to the field units. This will streamline the flow of information and speed decision-making. The unified headquarters will seek greater integration of the Reserve components into key staff positions to better accommodate issues and concerns. To minimize turbulence in the workforce, we will reinvest manpower savings in other Army priorities. Realignment initiatives already underway will help us meet the congressionally mandated 15 percent reduction in headquarters staffs. With congressional support, the Army will apply these methodologies to the entire force. A COMMITMENT TO THE FUTURE The Army, like the American people, remains committed to preserving freedom. As we have for over 226 years, we will continue to win our Nation's wars. Contrary to the expectations of some, the post-Cold War period has not seen a reduction in the demands placed on soldiers on the ground. In fact, in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the international security environment has underscored the importance of ongoing commitments and highlighted new requirements for the Army. These increased demands have intensified the competition for resources and reduced needed investments in people, systems, platforms, and research and development. Unless redressed, risks incurred from this resources shortfall could undermine the Army's ability to satisfy national security requirements. At the same time, the war on terrorism, the requirement to secure the homeland, and the need to maintain readiness for possible near-term contingencies have validated the need for a new kind of Army-a capabilities-based ground force that can fight and win battles across the full spectrum of military operations. We are accelerating Army transformation to achieve these capabilities. The Army cannot predict what other changes the future will bring, but what will not change is the need for our Nation to have the best trained, best led and best equipped soldiers on the ground, deployed rapidly at precisely the right time, the right place, and with the right support structure as part of a joint military team. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, I thank you once again for this opportunity to report to you today on the state of your Army. I look forward to discussing these issues with you. Chairman LEVIN. Thank you very much, Secretary White. STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON R. ENGLAND, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY Secretary ENGLAND. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Warner, and members of this distinguished committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today and thank you especially for this committee's continued strong support for our sailors and marines and their families. Recognizing that you are all anxious to move on to the questions, I will keep my remarks brief and ask that my written statement be entered into the record. Chairman LEVIN. All the statements will be made part of the record. Secretary ENGLAND. Thank you. It is indeed a privilege to appear before this committee representing the finest Navy and Marine Corps the world has ever known. All of you have witnessed either first-hand or in compelling news reports the superb performance of America's Naval forces in the global war on terrorism. Never in my adult life have I seen a time in which the combat capabilities and mobility of the Navy-Marine Corps team have been more important to our joint warfighting effort. In my view, not since World War II has the inherent mobility of combat power at sea been so central to our ability to take the fight to the enemy and sustain that effort over time. Naval forces of the 21st century will continue to offer secure sea bases from which our sailors and marines will be able to operate both in peacetime and wartime alike. Such bases will offset the restrictions caused by sovereignty issues which increasingly limit or impede our national strategies, especially during crises. Naval carrier battle groups were on station in the Arabian Sea when our Nation was viciously attacked on September 11. These ships, manned by truly great sailors and marines who have volunteered to serve their country, were ready when the order was given to strike back at the terrorists and those that harbor them, and |