Chairman; it is Mr. Chairman this, Mr. Chairman that, and nobody has made any criticism of Admiral Crowe-he is the top cat, but in talking about the Vice Chairman, I sense a little animosity toward this guy, whomever he might be, that he is going to come in there and he is going to disrupt things. Is that warranted? Admiral TRAIN. It is a predictable position. I would be somewhat suspicious if the people who face the prospects of having someone put in the chain of command over them were happy about it. So it is a predictable reaction, but I think that establishing the Deputy Chairman or the Vice Chairman, whichever we decide to call him, as a No. 2 man in the Armed Forces of the United States is an extremely important aspect of this provision. If he is not No. 2, then he is not really the deputy. And what we are looking at is whether we are going to have a Deputy or Vice Chairman or whether we are not going to have one. If he is not No. 2 he is not the Deputy. Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Lally. Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral, you discussed the intimidation of the Joint Staff officer. Is there any way to overcome that intimidation? Admiral TRAIN. Quite frankly, the best way to overcome it is to put your best officers down there. It is normally the officer who is in over his head who is intimidatable, if there is such a word, that can be intimidated. In my own experience both as Director and as a CINC it was the less-than-top-quality officers that were subject to intimidation, people that had a lot of ambition but not too much skill. Mr. LALLY. On your recommendation that the chairmen havethat a prerequisite for nomination as Chairman be service as a CINC, I believe that the last, the present chairman and his two immediate predecesors all had such joint experience; is that correct, sir? Admiral TRAIN. No, sir. The only three chairmen who have ever served as a unified commander were Admiral Radford, Admiral Moorer, and Admiral Crowe. Mr. LALLY. Well, didn't General Vessey- Admiral TRAIN. General Vessey was not a unified commander. Mr. LALLY. Would your recommendation extend also to nominations as a service chief, they have prior experience as a Admiral TRAIN. No, sir, it would not. Because I think the flow should go both ways. It is just as useful that a service chief go on to be a combatant commander. I think the flow should proceed in both directions. Otherwise you would have an impossible detailing or nominating structure. Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Admiral. Mr. NICHOLS. Admiral, you say of all the chairmen you can recall, only two have served in CINC slots- Admiral TRAIN. Three, sir. Admiral Radford, who had served as CINCPAC, Admiral Moorer who served as CINCLANT, and Admiral Crowe who served as CINCPAC. Mr. NICHOLS. Are you talking about the Navy's standpoint? Mr. NICHOLS. As desirable as that might be, wouldn't that place some pretty severe limitations on the President and his appointing authority? Admiral TRAIN. It would indeed place severe limitations on the President until the system were established and working. Then I think it would give him much more flexibility once that cadre of very senior officers who serve both as service chief and unified commander starts to grow, then the pool of highly qualified candidates for the chairman's job becomes larger, not smaller. Mr. NICHOLS. The subcommittee is considering a number of proposals to strengthen the CINC's in several areas. Let me go down two or three of these and ask your comments. Would you support increasing CINC authority in areas of hiring and firing subordinates and court-martial jurisdiction? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Would you allow the CINC's to organize their commands and streamline that chain of command? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Would you give the CINC's influence on subordinate force training and employment? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Barrett. Mr. BARRETT. Along that line, Admiral Train, as you know, the law at present restricts support and administration for the CINC's to the services. The subcommittee is also considering relaxing that absolute prohibition to some degree and allowing the Secretary of Defense to shift some aspects of support and administration, if the CINC makes a recommendation to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Defense then agrees with that recommendation. Would you support that? Admiral TRAIN. Yes; I would. Mr. BARRETT. With regard to the joint subspecialty idea, the subcommittee is considering the question of how many joint officers, what percentage of joint officers should be in the joint specialty. Would you recommend that they all be joint specialists or— Admiral TRAIN. No, they need not all be. Of course not. But you do need a cadre or nucleus that could represent the corporate memory, if you will, of the Joint Staff. That is what really is necessary-some form of corporate memory and some form of momentum that can be sustained. I served three tours in the JCS organization and I was much better off for having done so when I became Director than had I jumped into that job without any previous experience on the Joint Staff. Mr. BARRETT. That is another aspect that we are consideringhow many tours. We are considering for example, requiring that roughly half of a joint specialist's tours would be in the joint arena and the other half, as you indicated, would be back in his own service. Does that sound right? Admiral TRAIN. That coincides with my own view. Mr. BARRETT. What type of military education should joint subspecialists be given? Admiral TRAIN. When you come in at the lower level, I can think of no finer education to prepare someone for a tour in a Joint Staff than the Armed Forces Staff College. I think it is optimized for that purpose. Mr. BARRETT. You have talked about the choice of CINC's. Do you think that the future CINC's should have been joint subspecialists in order to qualify for the CINC position? Admiral TRAIN. No. Mr. BARRETT. With regard to protecting officers from intimidation, the subcommittee is looking at some proposals to give the joint arena service promotions-with as little disruption as possible with the current system. Do you think the joint side should have a voice in service promotions? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, I do. Mr. BARRETT. Should, for example, a joint representative sit on service promotion boards that are considering officers for promotion, who have had joint assignments? Admiral TRAIN. I think that is one option, probably an attractive option. Whether it is achievable or not I'm not prepared to say. Mr. BARRETT. Even more far-reaching is a proposal to allow the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review the results of promotion boards with the idea of ascertaining whether joint officers have gotten consideration by their service. What do you think about a proposal along those lines? Admiral TRAIN. I think it is entirely reasonable to give the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the same prerogatives that a service Secretary has when looking at officers that support his own joint organization. And if a service Secretary can review the results of boards, the Chairman should also be allowed to review the results of boards that affect people upon which he depends for his staff support. Mr. BARRETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you, Admiral. We appreciate your testimony. Off the record. [Discussion off the record.] Mr. NICHOLS. Very good testimony. Thank you, sir. Our next witness is Vice Adm. Thor Hansen, U.S. Navy, former Director of the Joint Staff. Admiral, we are pleased to have you with us this morning, and we will hear your testimony at this time. Do you have a written copy of it, sir? Admiral HANSEN. I have it basically printed. I'm going to depart from it a bit. Mr. NICHOLS. Would you like it inserted in the record? Admiral HANSEN. Yes, I will do that. If he is going-if you will take the notes there, I'm going to say a few things not in the statement. Mr. NICHOLS. You may proceed. STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. THOR HANSEN, U.S. NAVY (RETIRED), FORMER DIRECTOR, JOINT STAFF Admiral HANSEN. I am pleased, as well, to have this opportunity to testify on defense reorganization. Actually, several of my assignments during my career, three in particular-Director of the Joint Staff, which you mentioned, and also Military Assistant to Secretary of Defense and Executive Assistant Naval Aide to the Secretary of the Navy-convinced me that the change in the organiza tion is needed. I'm thus most interested in addressing and perhaps influencing some of that change. On the subjects you are emphasizing, I would like to comment briefly in this statement on three. First, personnel, and particularly the need for incentives to attract top and qualified people. And I want to emphasize the qualified part, for joint duty assignments. Second, I want to talk about the unified commanders and the need to strengthen their roles, and third, the organization of the military department headquarters staff. To introduce these comments in some perspective, I would begin by applauding your House bill 3622 for strengthening the role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and assigning him a deputy chairman as the second ranking. I would like to reinforce what Admiral Train just said, by stipulating that the Joint Staff should report to the Chairman and his Deputy rather than to the Joint Chiefs as a committee. Although I personally would prefer a chief of defense staff and deputy arrangement, I do feel that the strength of the Chairman in the House bill is a very significant change for the better over the system we have now. The strength, however, is providing him and his Deputy a staff of top officers, the best qualified for the service, and I would say the present practice does not really do this. It doesn't because present service practice does not reward personnel assigned to the Joint Staff with the fastest promotions and best assignments once they leave the joint arena. As a consequence, the joint system does not attract the best qualified officers, especially those in the middle grades, from any of the services, although it varies in my opinion. I will talk more about that later. Nor does the present practice encourage the repeat joint tour so necessary to produce officers who understand and are schooled in joint matters and procedures. I want to reemphasize repeat tours, because although there are some-and this varies among the services-it was my experience that the majority of the officers that come to the Joint Community, not only the Joint Staff but also the unified command staffs, are there for one tour, and they turn over pretty rapidly. The average length of tour for middle-grade officers is 30 months on a one-shot basis, and more interestingly, for the flag officers and general officers on the Joint Staff the average length is about 2 years. It is exactly what mine was as Director of the Joint Staff 2 years ago. That leaves for little corporate memory, the sort of thing Admiral Train was talking about. I know the law now says you can stay for 4 years and that you can be recalled within 2. What I am saying is that the practice and the culture of the service is such that officers want to come in and do their-punch their ticket, get there and get back to the services where they really get rewarded and make the record they feel will get them promoted. So present detailing of joint duty assignments varies widely amongst the services. In my 2-year tour as Director of the Joint Staff, the Air Force and the Army sent more officers for repeat tours, not that many, but more than the Navy and Marine Corps. They also awarded them with better promotion opportunity. I know snapshots can be misleading, but these examples from my tour I think are interesting. In those 2 years I was there, we didn't have one lieutenant commander or commander on the staff, on the Joint Staff, who was selected below the zone for promotion. Almost every Air Force and Army list had at least one, and in a few cases a couple of early selectees from the Joint Staff. In fact, although it was unusual, one year we had four Air Force majors who were selected early to lieutenant colonel from the Joint Staff. In the primary selection zone, during those 2 years, Army and Air Force Joint Staff selection percentages to lieutenant colonel and colonel almost always equaled their Army and Air Force headquarters staff percentages. It was just right about on what they would have gotten if they had stayed in their headquarters staff. Navy Joint Staff selection percentages, however, were far behind, not only the Navy headquarters staff and CNO staff in Washington, but also the overall fleet average. And on the other point about repeat tours during those 2 years, I had three Navy O-7s, commodore-admiral rank, who arrived with no previous joint experience at all. They had been sent to be qualified for joint duty, because otherwise they had to be waivered for promotion to flag rank, because they had never had a joint experience before. My tour as director of the Joint Staff was my first on the Joint Staff. On the other hand, I had had two tours that were good, true qualifying tours for joint duty. I had been on the defense command staff, which is the subunified command of CINCPAC, as a lieutenant commander, and in the systems analysis office, which is very much looking across service lines and doing joint kinds of duty. But interestingly enough-when I mention that these O-7's came who didn't have any qualifying experience behind them-a lot of the people who are considered "qualified," who arrive for flag rank or general rank, are qualified by very, very slim means. I will give you an example. My tour as naval aide to the Secretary of the Navy was counted by the Navy as a qualifying tour for joint duty, which is, it seems to me, very silly. I had two other qualifications anyway, so it didn't make that much difference. I think also, as a matter of fact, when I was a lieutenant and had been on the OpNav staff and worked on Joint Paper 61, that was considered a qualifying tour too. I had to work with the joint system, yes, but I was certainly arguing very strongly for Navy positions and not joint ones. So what I am saying here is that over the years the services have tended to try to qualify all kinds of things that really aren't joint duty, to help someone get to be selected for flag rank, to be qualified for selection to flag rank. But my point is that there are problems in the present system of producing qualified, repeat-tour officers in this joint arena. Now, the solution in my opinion to solving those problems is to provide a viable career pattern for officers in the joint arena. By that I mean a fairly radical proposal here. I would propose-and I would agree with Harry Train, that an officer who has got the joint duty specialty should go back in every case for his fleet duty in the Navy, for his troop duty in the Army, his aircraft duty in the Air Force, to his parent service for those tours. But I would say that whenever they go to a staff job, that staff job should be in the joint arena. |