Opening Statement (As Prepared)
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Good morning and thank you to Secretary Driscoll and General LaNeve for appearing before the committee this morning. I look forward to your testimony today, and to hearing how you will organize, train, and equip the United States Army.
The Fiscal Year 2027 Army budget request is oriented around the Army Transformation Initiative. I agree with the thrust of this initiative – to move away from legacy and costly programs that are no longer relevant on the modern battlefield, and pivot to future capabilities that can be rapidly developed and fielded; and in some cases, procure proven off-the-shelf capabilities that require little to no development. Canceling legacy programs and divesting capability is unpopular, but these are the hard choices that must be made if the Army is going to field capability that is useful to our combatant commanders. I commend Secretary Driscoll for making some of these hard choices over the last year.
I also strongly believe that how we acquire is equally as important as what we acquire. The speed at which the Department of Defense has historically developed, tested, and fielded systems remains slow, bureaucratic, and completely inefficient. This committee worked very hard on acquisition reform in last year’s NDAA cycle with the aim to eliminate some of the barriers and enable our acquisition professionals to more rapidly field modern capabilities. Ultimately, under the leadership of Chairman Rogers, we passed meaningful acquisition reform legislation. I am pleased to see that the Army is moving out on this and attempting to remove the stovepipes and allow for cross talk among the various capability portfolios. Your Portfolio Acquisition Executives will be critical in more rapidly delivering meaningful capabilities over the next decade and beyond.
That said, I see one major area of concern with this year’s Army budget: capacity expansion for our most critical munitions. Deputy Secretary Feinberg and his team are working hard on this issue, but this year’s budget request includes most of the funding for the Army’s piece of the munitions acceleration effort in the mandatory request. In the event that a reconciliation bill cannot pass, Congress is now presented with a $25 billion problem for how to move this funding out of the mandatory side of the ledger, and into the discretionary side. There will not be easy paths to achieving this. And it’s my understanding that absent full funding and long-term contracts, industry will not commit to the capital expenditures necessary to realize our capacity targets. Secretary Driscoll – I’d ask you to brief the committee today on this effort and provide your perspective on the practical impacts if Congress cannot provide the full funding and authorities that the department is requesting.
Another issue I find concerning is the failure of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reimburse the Army and wider Department of Defense for support that was agreed and provided to DHS on a reimbursable basis. My focus today is not whether the Army should be supporting border operations but rather the impact of the lack of reimbursement is having on Army readiness. This will only worsen if this issue is not resolved soon.
DHS, like all parts of the U.S. Government, needs to pay its bills. It would be bad enough if DHS didn’t pay the Army back out of its regular budget, but it’s worse than that. The reconciliation bill last year provided DHS with $10 billion to address the shortfall faced by the Department of Defense for border support missions. My understanding is that the Army has not received any of the $1.4 billion it is owed by DHS, despite the reconciliation bill providing DHS funding to avoid this exact situation.
As a result of this delinquency, the Army will suffer from imminent reductions in flying hours, training rotations, combatant commands exercises, and resources for the Guard and Reserve--all direct consequences of uncompensated support. This committee needs a full accounting of readiness decisions being made because of DHS’s failure to reimburse. The Army should not be required to absorb the cost of another Department’s mission out of its readiness accounts and the well being of service members.
I’d like to conclude by expressing my thanks to General George, the Army Chief of Staff until about a month ago, who was fired without cause. General George was an exceptional military officer and was doing an exemplary job leading and transforming the United States Army. After so many years of faithful and honorable service, he deserved better. I remain extremely frustrated with this Administration for removing so many talented senior officers, like General George, for no reason at all. Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Guardians, and Marines deserve stable leadership that can remain in place for their full term.