for force protection modifications contribute to the vulnerabilities. In the short term we have used Joint Staff Combating Terrorism Initiative Funds to install blast walls and mylar coating in limited areas to protect our most critical facilities. Our Land Partnership Plan addresses some of our long-term weaknesses. This plan will shift many of our installations and training areas from urban centers to rural areas and allow us to move more of our people onto our installations.

Access to our installations poses another significant challenge. We have taken positive steps to improve our access control through implementation of a fingerprint scanning identification system and reducing the number of non-U.S. Forces Korea persons who can be sponsored onto our facilities. The Army currently fully funds our contract security guard force that maintains installation access control and perimeter security without diverting soldiers to this task. Continued funding is vital. We are conducting a complete study of off-post housing and temporary lodging to assess our vulnerability and determine appropriate protection policies. Our longterm goal is to substantially reduce the number of personnel being housed off-post through increased construction of on-post quarters. In the near term we execute a very proactive force protection public awareness program for those living or traveling off post.

We have routinely conducted force protection assessments for all high profile offpost activities and events. We have expanded risk assessments to assess our vulnerabilities with regard to the lower profile activities such as inter-camp bus routes and personnel attending college classes on local campuses. We continue to look for and implement innovative ways to mitigate our vulnerabilities and educate our personnel and their families on threat avoidance. We believe force protection funding shortfalls will be significant for fiscal year 2002, and we need your help to ensure our American personnel are properly protected.

Future Force Development: As technology advances we must constantly seek innovative improvements to our capabilities through force development. We support the efforts of the research and development community, and would benefit most from improved intelligence analysis capability; ability to locate and track weapons of mass destruction; protection against nuclear, biological, and chemical attack; ability to defeat hard and deeply buried targets; and missile defense.

We are excited about the Army's transformation concepts and I am pushing for the stationing of one Interim Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) in Korea to replace one existing brigade. This will provide the maneuverability and combat power necessary to operate in the mountainous and increasing urbanized terrain of Korea. It will also prepare us to refocus the Army's forward deployed forces in Korea to a regional role. The IBCT provides a rapidly deployable ground force to complement Air Force Aerospace Expeditionary Forces, and Marine Expeditionary Forces, and Navy Amphibious Ready Groups and Carrier Battle Groups as U.S. Forces Korea's role transitions to that of northeast Asia regional security.

Quality of Life: Quality of life, our final command priority, is a basic element of overall readiness and is critical to our mission. As stated in President Bush's A Blueprint for New Beginnings. "we cannot honor our servicemen and woman and yet allow substandard housing and inadequate compensation levels to endure.” The Korean peninsula faces shortfalls in both areas. The investment philosophy of "50 years of presence in Korea. . . 1 year at a time" has taken a severe toll on our housing, infrastructure, and morale. Personnel tempo is 365 days a year in this "hardship tour" area. Our servicemembers wake each day within artillery range of our adversary knowing he will be the one who decides if we go to war. Our intent is to make a Korean tour the assignment of choice for our military personnel by providing the best quality of life possible. Our goal is a quality of life that is comparable to other overseas assignments. This is clearly not the case today. A Korea assignment today involves the greatest loss of pay in the military, the highest command declination rate, the highest “no show” rate in the U.S. Army, and the poorest quality of life of any permanent change of station assignment in the military. We have a plan but we need help. To attack these problems, we need to address Pay and Morale, Housing and Infrastructure, and MILCON.

Even with the great assistance we received from Congress last year, we continue to face grim conditions regarding housing and infrastructure throughout this command. Nearly 40 percent of the servicemembers in U.S. Forces Korea live in inadequate quarters. Overcrowded facilities force us to billet many unaccompanied personnel off-post, increasing their personal risk and cost of living. Unaccompanied housing and dining facilities suffer from rapid deterioration and excessive wear through overcrowding and lack of real property maintenance and repair (RPM) funding. Some military personnel still live in quonset huts and Vietnam-era pre-fabricated buildings. However, if funded, by 2008 the barracks will be upgraded to an acceptable standard. Fifteen percent of all buildings in the command are between

40 and 80 years old and 32 percent are classified as temporary buildings. In 1999 and 2000 alone, the command suffered 295 electrical power and 467 water supply outages from decaying infrastructure.

The lack of adequate family housing is the most serious quality of life issue we face in Korea. It contributes to high personnel turbulence and discontinuity, degrades morale and productivity, resulting in high assignment declinations and retention problems for our services. Indeed, Korea's uniqueness as a yearlong unaccompanied tour has been purchased at a price. We provide government owned and leased housing for 1,987 personnel-less than 10 percent of our married servicemembers—compared to more than 70 percent in Europe and Japan. Our goal is to increase the command-sponsored rate for Korea.

The solution is to raise the quality of life for personnel that serve in Korea, and we have a plan. This current plan includes new construction and leasing local housing units. We intend to apply more than half of this cost from our host nation construction funding to build 4,200 of the 6,300 units needed over the next 20 years, but we will need your help to fund family housing construction. In addition, we need leased housing (800 units authorized by Title 10 now, and add an additional 2,000 units to expand the command sponsored population). This year's "New Housing Project" budget includes 60 new units at Camp Humphreys. This project must not be cut. A total of 6,300 units across the peninsula are required.

Congressional funding that you provided last year has enabled us to improve water distribution systems at Kunsan and Osan Air Bases, and improve existing barracks at Camp Carroll, Camp Hovey, and Camp Page. Nevertheless, chronic under-funding of military construction (MILCON) funding for Korea during the past 15 years and the interruption of MILCON dollars for our command between 1991 and 1994 has limited our ability to give our servicemembers the quality of life they deserve. We desperately need to execute a comprehensive construction program and begin to eliminate the unacceptable living and working conditions in aging facilities that U.S. forces in Korea face every day.

Aging facilities are also more costly to maintain. Under funding of RPM exacerbates an already serious problem with troop housing, dining facilities, work areas, and infrastructure. We hope to receive additional funding that will allow us to keep the doors open to our facilities and make emergency repairs only. It will still leave us short of our total requirement.

Finally, utilities costs are soaring. This is an area where increasing costs can no longer be absorbed. Oil costs are up 60 percent. Electricity is up 5 percent and scheduled to go up 15 percent more. Because of these increased energy costs, we anticipate needing additional funds.

In summary, we work our command priorities through a balanced readiness approach-carefully addressing combat readiness, infrastructure, and quality of life with limited resources. Our ability to fight and win decisively is tied to proper balance in all of these essential areas. Overall, our top priorities for fiscal year 2002 are as follows: (1) C4I architecture modernization and protection, (2) Combat readiness: air and ground battle simulation centers, (3) Anti-terrorism and force protection, (4) Environmental protection and damage mitigation, (5) Real property maintenance, and (6) Family housing.

CONCLUSION

We would like to leave you with five thoughts:

First, we want to emphasize that the support of Congress and the American people is vitally important to our future in Korea. We thank you for all you have done. However, we must also ensure that our resolve is consistent and visible so that North Korea, or any other potential adversary, cannot misinterpret it. We have an investment of over 50 years in this region. I believe we should continue to build on it to guarantee the stability that is so important to the people of Korea, northeast Asia, and to our own national interests. We urge committee members to come to Korea and see first-hand the importance of the American military presence and the strength and vitality of the United States-Republic of Korea alli

ance.

Second, the North Korean military continues to increase its nonconventional threat and conduct large-scale training exercises in spite of severe economic problems and a perception of a thawing relationship between North and South Korea. North Korea's continued growth in military capability and the intent implied, amounts to a continued significant threat. Now, more than ever, the strength of the Republic of Korea-United States alliance, built on a foundation of teamwork and combined training, provides both nations with a powerful deterrent as well as the readiness to fight and win. Make no mistake; there is no

"peace dividend" yet in the Korean theater at this time. The North Korean threat to peace and stability in northeast Asia will not fundamentally diminish until the North engages in tangible military confidence building measures, both now and in the future, that are verifiable and reciprocal.

Third, this is the second year of commemorations recognizing the significance of the 50th anniversary of the Korean War, viewed by many of our veterans as the "forgotten war." We are committed to honoring the brave veterans living and dead and hope you can join us in Korea for these commemorations to remember their sacrifice.

Fourth, now and in the future, the U.S. and northeast Asian nations cannot secure their interests and economic prosperity without credible, rapidly-deployable, air/land/sea forces in Korea. Presence is security, commitment to friends, and access into the region. As the only presence on the mainland of east Asia, U.S. forces in Korea will play a vital role in the future peace and stability of the region.

Finally, you can be justifiably proud of all the exceptional things the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Defense Department civilians continue to do with great spirit and conviction. They remain our most valuable asset. They sacrifice for our Nation every day. This is why we remain so firm that we owe all those who faithfully serve proper resources for training, a quality infrastructure, and an adequate quality of life. Again, thank you for this opportunity to share our thoughts with you.

Chairman WARNER. Thank you.

We will have a 6-minute round of questioning for each member. I am going to lead right off, General Schwartz. During the course of President Bush's campaign, he addressed the serious problems associated with retention of our middle grade officer corps and senior enlisted. One of the root problems was over-deployment. While you speak with great pride as to the number of times that you and your subordinates have served in Korea, nonetheless, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld and the team have to look to determine whether or not there are areas of the world in which we can reduce the U.S. presence which, in turn, hopefully will reduce the number of deployments. In our judgment—at least mine-the last administration was over-deployed with our Armed Forces and underfunded.

Now, is your AOR one in which the Bush team can look at and determine, based on your recommendations, that there is a basis for a reduction of the total number of personnel which, in turn, would reflect Army-wide fewer deployments?

General SCHWARTZ. I think my answer to that, Senator Warner, would be this. With the current situation like it is, with the threat as we see it, with the words that I used, "bigger, better, closer, deadlier," I would not recommend any cut or reduction of force in the Korean peninsula at this time. If, however, in the future we go down the path of reconciliation, if we go down the path of confidence-building measures that are verifiable and reciprocal, and we see that the north takes the actions-not the words, as you indicated in your opening statement, but the actions-to reduce the tension and to reduce the threat, then there could be a concomitant reduction of troops. But until we reach that period of time, I would not recommend to do so.

Chairman WARNER. You were present before this committee last year and have rejoined us this year. Is your AOR in your judgment subject to greater tensions and threat or about the same as last year?

General SCHWARTZ. Sir, I have to tell you the threat has gotten identifiably better in those areas that I talked about, and I can be

more specific in a closed session. But the threat is better than we saw it last year. They are training at a higher level.

Chairman WARNER. When you say it is better, in other words, it places a more serious threat to our forces and those of South Korea.

General SCHWARTZ. Right, sir. I think the threat is more serious today than it was last year when I testified.

Chairman WARNER. Let us start off with your AOR, Admiral Blair. What about the threat condition last year when you appeared before this committee versus this year?

Admiral BLAIR. Sir, the concerns that you have about the strain on our people of operations I think are more true of other theaters than of the Pacific Command. I would, in fact, point to the East Timor operation as an operation in which we were able to come up with some very creative ways of working within an international coalition in order not to have large deployments of U.S. forces.

Right now we have 12 on-the-ground personnel in Dili, East Timor. That is down from about 500 last year. The rest of our presence is visits by Navy ships and often embarked Marine units. For instance, we have the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group with its embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit making a visit during its regularly scheduled deployment.

So, we are taking advantage of the deployment capability we have within the force to get the job done. All of our ships are within their personnel tempo (PERŠTEMPO) limits, and the same is basically true for the other services.

Chairman WARNER. Do you feel that within your AOR there could be some reduction in deployments, thereby reflecting on lessening the overall stress in the Navy on deployments and hopefully improving retention?

Admiral BLAIR. I do not think the PERSTEMPO is a factor in retention in the Pacific theater. I think we are in good balance, sir. Chairman WARNER. Returning again to the work that you perform-and it is a very valuable contribution to this most difficult decision that is facing our President with regard to how to structure this year's arms package for Taiwan-did you have consultations with our allies and friends, other nations in this region, and are their thoughts factored in? Because if we had the misfortune of an outbreak of hostilities requiring the presence or enhancement of U.S. forces to, hopefully, either stabilize or prevent it or, indeed, confront this problem, it would impact the entire region. Therefore, I think consultation with our allies should be a factor to be taken into consideration as we structure this package. All I need to know is procedurally, have you and your subordinates done that?

Admiral BLAIR. We did not have specific discussions on the particular Taiwanese request this year. It is something that we discuss in general terms with allies, but there is not a procedure for a specific consultation with them.

We do have specific consultations with the Taiwanese delegation itself. It comes to Washington to present the requests, along with rationale, and then it visits my headquarters in an unofficial capacity also to discuss it.

Chairman WARNER. As you look at the relations between China and Taiwan and compare those relationships today with 1 year ago, do you believe the tensions are about the same or higher?

Admiral BLAIR. About the same, sir.

Chairman WARNER. Now, as you look at the military situation with a trend in China of putting in place specific installations, missiles foremost, they are predicated presumably solely for the balance of military power between China and Taiwan. Given that I think I understood you to say that that trend is increasing on behalf of China and therefore places upon Taiwan the need to enhance its own defenses, will the arms packages now being constructed in your judgment result in a balancing of this trend brought about by the initiatives in China?

Admiral BLAIR. My recommendation is to take the actions necessary to maintain that balance, and I believe that balance is well attainable under current conditions. There have been improvements in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), as I said. It is a mixed picture as far as the advanced weaponry goes. There have also been improvements in the Taiwanese Armed Forces as they also bring new systems on line. So, what you are talking about is the balance here, and that is the way my staff, my components, and I evaluate it.

Chairman WARNER. But in simple language, given the trend of increases you see on the behalf of China in its defense, increased spending, and the placement of missiles, that balance will no longer be present unless there is an enhancement of the arms package to Taiwan. Is that correct?

Admiral BLAIR. There has to be an enhancement of Taiwan's capability through a combination of what they buy from us, what they manufacture from us, and what they buy from others.

Chairman WARNER. To bring that back in balance again.
Admiral BLAIR. To maintain the balance.

Chairman WARNER. Thank you.

Senator Levin.

Senator LEVIN. General Pace, one of the conclusions that Senators Reed, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, and I reached following our visit to Colombia was that-and here I am quoting "the continued strengthening, modernization, and professionalization of the Colombian military is the best hope for weakening the narcotraffickers' strangle-hold on Colombian society, advancing the rule of law to protect the rights of all Colombians, and ending the massive violations of human rights in Colombia." Would you agree with that?

General PACE. Sir, I agree with that 100 percent.

Senator LEVIN. Could you tell us, General, about your views as to how serious you believe the Colombian army leadership is to end the cooperation between the Colombian army units in the field and the paramilitaries?

General PACE. Senator, thank you.

I am convinced that the senior leadership is dedicated to do that. I have been to Colombia seven times, sir. I have had the pleasure of meeting, on various occasions, with President Pastrana; on almost every occasion, Minister of Defense Ramirez; and on every occasion, General Tapias, who is their chairman, and the service