Opening Statement (As Prepared)

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Thank you, Chairman Waltz and thank you to our witnesses for your decades of distinguished service to our nation.

If I were to summarize the challenges we face on the readiness subcommittee in one word, that word would be “sustainment.”  As I often say, other subcommittees get to buy the “new and shiny.”  Sadly, the day that brand new weapon is fielded, or the ribbon is cut on that brand new barracks, is also the day the Department starts under-investing in its sustainment.    The readiness accounts are the ones that fund maintenance and modernization, training, fuel, and resiliency initiatives.  They are also the accounts that get raided to pay for “new and shiny” to the detriment of our service members.  When I say things like that, everyone nods their heads in agreement, but then time and time again on both sides of the river we underfund sustainment or take from the accounts that fund the training of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airman and Guardians.  

In previous subcommittee hearings we have talked about the link between the poor condition of quality-of-life infrastructure and recruitment and retention of the service members we need.  I would argue that underfunding sustainment writ large fuels that problem.  According to the Comptroller General, who has analyzed the readiness of our weapons systems over the course of years, the majority of the systems in our inventory still fall more than 10 percent below the Department’s own mission capability rate goals.  Unfortunately, I feel that we have become so accustomed to failure, that these statistics don’t scare us anymore.  They should.  If we are struggling this much in peacetime, what does that tell us about how we will do in a contested environment?  As the replacements for our legacy systems get more and more expensive, there is an even bigger temptation to sell out sustainment and make it a problem for tomorrow.

Finally, I want to talk about aviation safety.  This has been a particularly bad 18 months for aviation.  We have had an alarming number of fatal accidents.  I have been in this business long enough to know that there isn’t a single easy answer that will immediately arrest this trend.  But, I believe it can at least in part be traced back to sustainment.  We are losing our experienced pilots to airlines (retention), we have aging platforms with low readiness rates (sustainment), and the operations and maintenance budgets that fund training are underprioritized often so that we can buy whatever new thing is on that year’s wish list.  

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on these issues and more and with that, I yield back.