MIL-OSI Security: Defense News: House Armed Services: Department of the Navy FY2024 Budget Request

Source: United States Navy

MIKE ROGERS: [Off-mic] These hearings have helped provide the information we need to mark up the FY ’24 NDAA next month. I also want to thank our witnesses for being here and for their service to our nation. The President’s requesting a 5 percent increase for the Navy and a 3 percent increase for the Marine Corps. Unfortunately, with today’s record level of inflation, these increases don’t go very far.

We are seeing that very clearly in the request for shipbuilding, the President is seeking to build a paltry nine force, nine battle force ships in FY ’24. At the same time, he wants to retire 11. The several of these ships have years of service life remaining. The retirement represent a loss of capability, especially for the Marine Corps.

The President plans to slash the number of amphiibs by 10 percent, leaving the fleet below the statutory minimum of 31. We put 31 into law because that’s what the Marine Corps told us was the bare minimum. They needed to successfully carry out their mission going below that number invites a tremendous amount of risk.

That’s clearly why General Berger included in, included a new amphibian his number of the unfunded priority list this year. I think you’ll find support for that request from this committee. But even if we fund the NFB, the Navy still plans to reduce the number of battle force ships by 11 over the next five years.

Forget about the 500 ship Navy, many say we need to counter China at no point over the next 18 years. Does the size of the fleet even reach the statutory goal of 355. While this administration dithers the CCP is rapidly growing and modernizing its navy. It already controls the largest navy in the world. Our fleet of 296 ships was eclipsed years ago by a Chinese fleet of over 350. In two short years, the DOD predicts the CCP will control over 400 battle force ships.

I don’t understand how this administration can conclude reducing the size of our fleet will somehow deter China. Making matters worse is confusion surrounding the Navy’s shipbuilding plan. It’s not one plan, it’s four plans, each of them with different force structures and total numbers of ships. Our shipyards can’t plan make investments in properly operate with this uncertainty.

It is an — it is the absolute worst signal to send to our adversaries, especially the CCP. Finally, I’m going to — I’m also concerned about the strike fighter gap. It’s not forecasted to close until 2031, but that assumes Congress grants the Navy relief from the statutory requirement to field an air wing for each deployed aircraft carrier.

I would inform the Navy that it is highly unlikely we will grant that relief. The Navy should focus on mitigating the fighter gap in the short term by accelerating planned upgrades to existing fighters, especially the F-35s. They should also expedite the fielding of unmanned collaborative drones and pair them with our existing fleet to enhance capabilities.

The point is we should be modernizing and expanding our naval capabilities. We absolutely should not be cutting them. Finally, I want to commend the commandant on the progress he’s making with the Force 2030 Design. Preparing our Marines to be successful in a conflict with the CCP is critically important.

Force 2030 will do just that. I look forward to further updates on the progress he’s making to transform the Marine Corps into a 21st century fighting force. Finally, this will likely be the last time Admiral Gilday and General Berger will testify before us in their current capacity. I want to thank both of you for your decades of service to our nation and for your dedicated leadership to the Navy and the Marine Corps.

With that I yield to my friend the ranking member for any comments he may have.

ADAM SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start by echoing your last comment and thanking General Berger and Admiral Gilday for their leadership in these current positions. It’s not been an easy time to be in the positions that you’re in. You’ve both done an outstanding job. We’ve always appreciated working with you.

And I also want to echo the chairman’s comments at the start about the posture hearings that we’ve gone through. It’s always an interesting and challenging time, but I think it really helps inform this committee about the decisions that we have to make as we put together the NDAA for this year and as we work on the budget going forward.

And I think the chairman’s done a really good job of pulling those hearings together. We’ve learned a lot, had a lot of good solid debates, and I think it will put us in a good position to do a good bill again this year. I lose track, I think it’s the 63rd consecutive year could be the 62nd, somewhere in there.

It’s over 60, let’s put it that way. And it’s only happened because of strong bipartisan support and I appreciate the chairman’s leadership and getting us started on doing that again this year. And I think he correctly points out the problem. We have this large logical challenge here in terms of here’s what we’d like to do. Here’s how much money we have.

And you gentlemen, have to somehow deal with what I referred to yesterday as our cognitive dissonance here in Congress. At the same time that were beating you up for not spending enough money, the House majority is passing a bill to cut the overall amount of money that we spend on the discretionary budget.

And you’re just supposed to somehow figure that out. I used to have this analogy about 10 pounds of manure in a 5 pound bag, but I’ve discovered that most people don’t like that analogy, but I think I nonetheless think it is apt and that’s what you’re trying to do and it’s not easy. And one of the things that we could do here in Congress is just pick the number all right.

You know we spend all of our time complaining about how we’re not spending enough money and then we spend all of our time complaining about how much we spend too much money. You kind of got to pick a lane on that one or you’re going to put people like the Department of Defense like all of these fine gentlemen in front of us in an absolutely impossible position.

So you can’t both vote to cut the discretionary budget and then complain at the DOD for not spending enough money. Well, that’s not true actually you can, but it’s just not very consistent and certainly not very helpful when it comes to setting policy. I do believe that the challenge beyond that, even if we were clear on the money, is as has been mentioned many times, you have to both modernize because rapidly changing technology, whether you’re talking about hypersonic, missiles, you know different vulnerabilities space, JADC2 that we’re working on, modernization.

I believe, is the most critical thing that we need to do to make sure that we have the joint all domain command and control that we have systems that can get us the information we need and be protected so that every aspect of our warfighting machine is working and is ability is able to deliver what it’s supposed to deliver.

But in modernizing, you also have to make sure that we have a force right now today they can meet our national security needs. And that’s where you get into the difficult balance of decommissioning ships now so that you can have the money to build that modernizing force. I won’t get into an extended debate on that except to say that part of the challenge here and I think the — the cruisers are a good example is, yes, you have a ship all right, but that ship spends the overwhelming majority of its time in drydock — drydock first of all.

So you don’t have a useful ship. And second of all, you have to spend an enormous amount of money just to keep that ship in dry dock. Yes, you have a ship, if you were to look at your little chart, you’d say well, we got one more. Is that actually helping us If it can’t be in the fight and if you’re having to spend a lot of money, even while it can’t be in the fight.

Tthose are the decisions that we have to try to make, and I think the gentlemen before us have done a pretty good job of doing that. General Berger, I know several years ago you launched the effort to modernize the Marine Corps. I’m sure you’re aware, not everybody liked that and you get a fair amount of criticism for it. But I think you made the right decisions, you showed leadership and you put the Marine Corps where it needed to be to be an effective fighting force today for the world that we face.

And I greatly appreciate your leadership on that. When it comes to the Navy, we are battling with the expense of building ships, but I also think that in the last couple of years we’ve started to make the right decisions about what the future of that Navy should look like. So I appreciate the leadership.

I appreciate the difficult position that you all are put in and look forward to working with you this year to get a good budget to get the NDAA done. And I want to put — stop one final point. We also need to pass appropriations bills.

I’ve heard — I’ve heard a lot of my colleagues talking about how we’re just going to do a CR this year that would be a complete and total disaster for the United States military for the ability of this country to defend itself. I also like to point out that the other 45 percent of the discretionary budget, it would also be a disaster for all of that as well.

But sitting here on the Armed Services Committee, let’s not kid ourselves about the impact that that would have on what is supposed to be our paramount duty to defend this country. If we passed a continuing resolution, it would be devastating and with that I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the ranking member now to introduce our witnesses, the Honorable Carlos del Toro, Secretary of the Navy, Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations and General David Berger is the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Welcome to the witnesses secretary Del Toro will start with you. You’re recognized.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith, distinguished members of this committee. It’s an honor to appear before you today alongside General Berger and Admiral Gilday to discuss the posture of the Department of the Navy. Today, our nation faces challenges in every region and domain.

We operate in from the seabed to the stars. We do recognize the People’s Republic of China as our pacing threat. Executing a strategy that’s aimed at upending international order. To preserve our way of life, the National Defense Strategy calls upon the joint force to deter aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict.

A strong Navy and a strong Marine Corps are the foundation upon which the successes of the joint force rests. The President’s 2024 budget sends a strong signal to the American people of the value that President Biden and Secretary Austin placed in maintaining a robust Navy and a Marine Corps team to confront the threats that we face today.

This year’s budget request supports our three enduring priorities. Those are strengthening our maritime dominance, building a culture of warfighting excellence and enhancing our strategic partnerships around the globe. With your support over the past year, we have made major strides in modernizing our fleet and our force.

I know that we often talk about the negative, but allow me to focus on the positive differences that we’ve made over the course of the last two years. 2022 saw the first deployment to the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, providing the Navy with lessons learned that will benefit future Ford class carriers.

Construction of high end surface combatant continues including the first Constellation class frigate, USS Constellation and the first of our Arleigh Burke class Flight three destroyers, the USS Jack Lucas, which brings significant advantage to sea. We continue progress on our first Columbia class ballistic missile submarine, the USS District of Columbia, while pre-construction activities on the second Columbia SPN, the USS Wisconsin have also begun.

On the innovation front, Task Force 59 in Bahrain continues to test a wide range of unmanned surface vessels and we are looking forward to expanding this effort now to the Fourth Fleet as well. When we consider the composition of our fleet, we seek to strike a balance between readiness, modernization and capacity with an immediate emphasis on readiness to be able to fight today and tomorrow.

This year, our divestment request includes three amphibious ships and at least two cruisers that are in tremendously poor material condition that offer very limited warfighting capability regardless of how much more investments we put into those ships. Our decisions to divest or extend the ship’s life are based on a hull by hull evaluation.

For example, we recently announced the modernization of the destroyer Arleigh Burke DDG 51 to keep it sailing through 2031, five years beyond its estimated service life. We hope to be able to continue that trend with other ships when possible. The USS Alexandria just came out of drydock in San Diego as well, two with a three year extension.

We hope to continue this trend on other Arleigh Burke destroyers and even on Ticonderoga class cruisers, where we actually have the ability to extend them for perhaps 1 or 2 more deployments. We owe it to the American people to be responsible stewards of taxpayer, dollars, investing in platforms that have limited capability conflicts with that responsibility.

Our naval forces are more than just platforms and systems, however. Our sailors and our Marines are our greatest strength. This year’s budget request contains multiple investments to support them and their families with services, benefits, housing and education, all that are critical to combat readiness.

In addition to our commitments to our people, we are reinforcing our international relationships significantly, including those with our Ukrainian partners as they defend their sovereignty and response to Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion. In the Indo-Pacific, we continue to play a leading role in the AUKUS security partnership.

Our Navy will be critical to this initiative success as we support Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed, nuclear powered, fast attack submarines. We continue to hone our skills with allies and partners in the Arctic as well, ensuring we are prepared to operate in this challenging and very unforgiving critical environment for the future of our nation’s economy.

Along with our partnerships abroad, we are committed to strengthening our relationships here at home. We value your support and recommit our leadership toward refueling and remediating the Red Hill bulk fuel storage facility spills. We are committed to doing what it takes to address the concerns of service members, their families, the people of Hawaii and all other communities throughout US. As I have said before, we build trust one day at a time one action at a time.

Finally, I’m grateful for the trust that you have placed in me personally to lead this department. I look forward to discussing how best to support our sailors, our Marines and their families and defense for our nation, and I thank you.

MIKR ROGERS: Thank you very much. Admiral Gilday you’re up next.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith, distinguished members of the committee., good morning and thank you for the opportunity to appear today alongside Secretary Del Toro and General Berger. I’d also like to thank my wife, Linda, who’s also here with me this morning. For more than [Applause] Thank you. For more than three quarters of a century, The United States Navy has been an anchor of world stability.

Deterring war, upholding international law and ensuring access to the seas. Today, our Navy’s role has never been more expansive or more consequential. At this moment, we have about 100 ships at sea, reassuring America’s allies and partners that we stand watch alongside them and remind the world that we seek to preserve peace, but we’re prepared for any fight.

We are America’s Away team. Constantly present in contact, with allies, with partners and potential adversaries every single day. Operating forward defending the rules based international order our United States Navy flies that operates and we sail wherever international law allows, so that others can too.

Our fiscal year 2024 budget request remains consistent with our Navy’s enduring priorities. We are prioritizing readiness first with an emphasis on sailors who empower everything that we do. Next, we are modernizing our current fleet, 70 percent of which we will have a decade from now. And third, we are continuing to build capacity, ensuring we have lethal platforms to achieve warfighting advantage.

It fully funds the Columbia class submarine ensuring the on time delivery of the most survivable leg of our nation’s strategic deterrent. It keeps our fleet ready to fight tonight, dedicating the resources required to train and educate resilient sailors that can outthink. They cannot decide and they can out fight any potential adversary.

It funds private and public ship maintenance to 100 percent, increasing capacity and retaining highly skilled labor to get our ships back to sea faster with full magazines and spare parts in their storerooms to be prepared for any contingency. It invests in modernizing our fleet, procuring weapons with range and speed along with integrated systems to improve fleet survivability and a resilient cyber secure network infrastructure.

It invests in capable capacity, building towards a larger distributed fleet, fielding a ready fleet today while modernizing for the future. Meanwhile, our competitors are also investing heavily in warfighting capabilities of their own and the oceans we operate in are growing more lethal and more contested every day.

This means that we can no longer afford to maintain ships designed for a bygone era, especially at the expense of readiness and modernization or at the expense of buying new ships that are relevant to tomorrow’s fight. America cannot afford to feel the hollow force. We have been there before and we have seen the tragic results.

It is a mistake that we must never repeat. Ships, submarines and aircraft are no doubt expensive instruments of national power as are the costs of maintaining them. But history shows that without a powerful navy, the price tag could be much higher. As we enter this critical decade passing the budget on time is absolutely essential.

We have no time to waste. Certainly our adversaries are not slowing down. For the first time in history the threat of a year long continuing resolution seems like a real possibility. Let me be clear, a year long CR would be devastating for your Navy and for America’s national security. It would set back delivery of Columbia class submarines.

It would delay construction of our attack submarines and our surface combatants. It would postpone the modernization of our most crucial weapon systems. It would adversely impact our sailors and their families who are trying — who are we trying so hard to retain. And it would be disastrous for our industrial base America’s arsenal, which depends upon steady, predictable funding to deliver the naval forces that America needs.

I urge Congress to pass the budget on time. Failing to do so would damage our maritime superiority at a time when command of the seas will determine the balance of power for the rest of this century. Thank you again for inviting me to testify this morning. Thank you for your enduring support for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps, and I look forward to answering your questions.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you, Admiral. and General Berger you’re up.

DAVID BERGER: Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith, my wife Donna is also with me, and she’s been beside me for more than 40 years and she sent two of our sons into the Marine Corps, so it’s sort of family business for us. So, thank you. I’m a little nervous because she’s sitting behind me where I can’t see her right now.

UNIDENTIFIED: As you should be, yes.

DAVID BERGER: Three years ago, I appeared before you and described how change, a rapid change was required in order for the Marine Corps to meet our statutory requirements and the mandates of the National Defense Strategy. With the bipartisan help of this committee and the support of my civilian leadership in the Pentagon, I’m here to tell you that as ranking and chair mentioned, force design for the Marine Corps is no longer and future aim point, it’s a reality today.

A couple of examples. In INDOPAYCOM under Admiral Aquilino Task Force 76.3, designed to put together advanced information webs. And they support maritime domain awareness that he the COCOM so desperately needs. And they took what they learned during the experimentation and he put it right into application in an exercise in the Philippines, in Japan, right in China’s backyard, which is where we ought to be. In Europe right now as they were last year, Task Force 61 using new technology and reorganized in a different way, they’ve created both air and maritime domain awareness for six fleet working for the fleet commander, primarily focused on Russian air and naval capabilities.

They’re in Estonia right now, marines are in Estonia doing the same thing. They’ll be there for the next three months. And in Central Command under General Carrillo, Marine Corps, MQ nines, they’re providing the ISR that he needs the awareness over the key maritime terrain, and that’s exactly what we should be doing.

This week there’s a major exercise in the Philippines, exercise Baluchistan. Our new Marine litter regiment out of Hawaii is in the Philippines and they’re applying the new equipment and the new techniques that they’ve developed with the Philippine military and several other militaries right alongside our counterparts, I think that’s what you expect.

A couple of months ago, Japan that announced when they came here their senior leaders came to the US that they would host the next Marine Littoral Regiment forward in the first island chain, and that’s where they belong. In short, in other words, your Marines are forward where it matters and that’s where you would expect them to be. Three years ago, I described how the Marine Corps would not just modernize quickly, but we would self-fund the changes we had to make.

We had to get leaner, we had to get lighter and we had to get more naval. And three years later, your Marines are doing just that.

MICHAEL GILDAY: The results are in the field now because we are not waiting for 2030 or 2027 or even 2025. We have to be ready today. The major divestments that the Marine Corps made, they’re the right ones and we are done. We are at our fighting weight right now. Now we have to sustain the modernization efforts while focusing on the quality of life effort issues that are most important to Marines and sailors and their families.

People, just as the secretary and the Cal mentioned people. They’re the real source of our competitive advantage as a nation and as a corps. And I ask for your help now to invest in their quality of life. We’ve got to invest in where they live, where they work, where they eat, where they work out, all of that, they’ve earned it. We have to deliver.

I think restoring and modernizing our infrastructure is directly tied to recruiting directly tied to retention. That’s how we support families, that is readiness. So on behalf of all Marines, I ask for your support now as we bring our facilities up to par with the Marines and sailors who — who work from those platforms.

I also asked for your support for the amphibious fleet. That’s how this nation projects power. The CNO and I agree on three key principles here. There’s no difference between the two services, the absolute minimum operational requirement is 31 L-class ships. Second block buys. They do two things: One, they save the taxpayer money; and second, they give the industry what the CNO calls headlights in front of them.

And third, I think divesting without replacing I think that’s a dangerous approach as several of you all have mentioned. Amphibious ships is how we respond to crisis. They’re critical. That’s how we evacuated citizens out of Lebanon. That’s how we went into Afghanistan in 2001. And today we’re asking them to do all that plus deter plus contribute to, to campaigning.

Here’s my concern, the first time this nation can’t respond to a crisis and one of our adversaries can probably the last time we get asked. And I’ll just finish up by saying in my last years Commandant, thank you. Thank you, sincerely thank you for the support of your Marines and your Marine Corps and I look forward to your questions.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank all of our witnesses and I wanted to advise the members we’re going to be called for a vote, a single vote at about ten. So I’m going to urge members just to roll through and go over there and vote and come back and we’ll continue to hearing throughout that process. I recognize myself for questions.

Admiral Gilday you did a stellar job of explaining why a Chinese resolution is not a good idea for Congress to pass by not getting their business done. General Berger, can you give me one shining example of what a continuing resolution, aka a China resolution, would mean to the Marine Corps?

DAVID BERGER: A month ago, Chairman, the Chinese announced that they would increase their budget to 7.2 percent, 7.3 percent from the year before. Last year it was 7.1. So from my perspective, China is the strategic pacing challenge, but I’m a military guy, so they’re the — they’re the threat. So over two years, they’ve increased their budget by 14.5 percent.

We would go to zero. We cannot keep pace. It’s almost like right now the NFL draft, it’s on the news. It’s almost like we would pull ourselves out of the draft on purpose and everybody else would pick better players and have a better roster next year. Yeah, we can’t — we can’t modernize. We can’t take care of our people just like the CNO said, unless — unless we get a budget on time, we’re tying our own hands.

MIKE ROGERS: And I appreciate the fact all of you recognize that we have a real challenge in quality of life and we’re going to all get after it together. Secretary, give me an example of what you think a CR would mean to your operation as a as a whole.

CARLOS DEL TORO: [Off-mic] our submarines because we didn’t have the necessary funds to move forward with their training and the investments that we also want to make in the programs of their training to advance those technologies as well too. And finally on the shipbuilding side, it would have negative effect on Columbia would have negative effect on just about every major platform that we have in the Department of the Navy.

MIKE ROGERS: Yeah, and I want everybody to know that that we get into a conflict in INDOPAYCOM, these folks in front of us are at the tip of the spear. We cannot let them go without funding in a timely manner. General Berger, if we drop below the statutorily required 31 amphibious ships, what does that do to your ability to meet operational requirements and project strength?

DAVID BERGER: A couple of things. First, we would have gaps during the year when we would not have an at sea capability for the combatant commander when something happened. We would not be deterred. We would not be in a position to respond. Here, places like Turkey or last couple of weeks in Sudan, I feel like I let down the combatant commander because General Langley needs options.

He didn’t have a sea based option. That’s how we reinforce embassies. That’s how we evacuate them. That’s how we deter. So one, the crisis part two, the deterrence part, it opens up risks for the combatant commander. We have to have 31 at a minimum, nothing less.

MIKE ROGERS: Okay, Mr. Secretary, how long is your strategic pause for AMPHIBS planning to be?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I hope it’ll be as short as it can possibly be. There is unquestionably a need for heavy lift when it comes to fulfilling the Marine Corps responsibilities in INDOPACOM and — and crisis situations around the world, I support the 31 amphibious requirement. The question we have is that we have some LSD platforms, for example, that cannot be made operationally available to fulfill the requirements that we need in the ARG/MEU combination.

Therefore, we need to retire some of those LSDs, so we can use those moneys more wisely and the investments of future LPDs in the future.

MIKE ROGERS: Okay, thank you. I yield to the ranking member.

ADAM SMITH: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, one of the things that comes up frequently is the survivability of Navy platforms that I’m interested in, actually all of your answers on this. But as we’re building aircraft carriers, destroyers and all of that, there’s a lot that goes into survivability. But can you reassure the committee that even in a — in a China fight, even in a fight against a pure competitor with — with sophisticated missile technology, sophisticated jamming technology, that we are moving towards a modernization plan here that will enable our Navy to be survivable in that type of fight and how that plays out.

And I guess the second piece of that, what’s most important for us to invest in to make sure that that’s the case?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman first, let me state that we obviously in the construction of our naval ships and all our platforms for that matter, try to make them as survivable as possible in every way. And I think if you look at the — the Ford aircraft carrier, for example, and the testing that was done on Ford with the explosions to test out, its material readiness, prove that out.

That the investments that we made in technologically speaking and its and its hull to strengthen its hull and all the weapon systems and on the aircraft carrier itself truly paid off. And the CNO could talk about that more in detail, but that’s a worthwhile investment. But we should also consider the fact that today, given the long ranges of weapon systems of our adversaries and you know we are going to operate in the high threat area and the weapons engagement zone.

It extends out to the west coast of the United States right now, for example. And so we have to continue to develop weapon systems that are going to be effective in masking themselves within that weapon engagement zone so that their ISR capabilities can’t detect them.

ADAM SMITH: Thank you, Admiral Gilday.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, thanks for the question. I think it’s an important one. I think maneuvers are really important and the question is how do you enable that? I think you have to leverage all domains, particularly we can’t talk about it in detail, but cyber and space. And so what the operational commander wants to do is to — is to blind the adversary so that we can put ourselves in a position of maneuver and a position of advantage to deliver effects.

The — you spoke to modernization, I’ll talk about a few investments that we’re making that I think that are worth doubling down on high powered microwave and directed energy. We already have lasers on board, seven of our ships. We are slowly — we are slowly increasing that and need to pick up the pace electronic warfare systems advanced systems.

In fact, in my unfunded list, I’ve added on there for both destroyers and for the carriers because we know that that has an effect with respect to deception of the — of the adversary, the extra power capacity that we’re putting into frigates that we put into the Ford Carrier allows us to back fit with these modernized systems that will make us more survivable.

And the last thing I’d add is that the — the potential here with unmanned, particularly a medium unmanned vessel that you put a power source on and then you can outfit it with a high powered microwave or directed energy. That’s the way of the future for probably broader area survivability.

ADAM SMITH: And just following up on the AMPHIBS question, So there’s sort of two possibilities here because the basic reason you’re not going to hit the 31 is you’re the mothballing, wrong word, you’re shutting down a couple of them before you build build the new ones. Is that the case that you’re doing that because you just don’t have enough money to keep them going and fund the things going forward?

Or is it the case that those ships are no longer worth the cost of keeping them going?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, let me give you a personal example I visited the Germantown, which is in San Diego and walked her decks. She has a crane. Her main crane on the Germantown has not operated in six years. We’ve even had the OEM over to try to fix the crane and we can’t get it to work properly. She’s the ship with the oldest, actually wood deck, which is also deteriorating.

It would cost approximately half a billion to replace that deck, replace that crane. And the best that you could do is actually perhaps if you’re lucky get one additional deployment out of her. I would much rather use those funds on a brand new LPD that could have capabilities that last out 20 plus years and be far more effective and provide a greater return on investment for the Congress and the American taxpayer.

ADAM SMITH: That certainly makes sense. And then what we have to do is to make sure that we provide you the funds to, to do that and make sure that we can build that new and that we can deliver it on time, because that’s where we really get into trouble here in all of this is as programs move to the right as they say and then it falls us what makes us fall further behind.

So thank you very much. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: And I recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson for five minutes.

JOE WILSON: And thank you very much, Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking member Adam Smith. It’s great to see the bipartisan support for our extraordinary persons who are here testifying today. And I appreciate so much your service to the country. I was grateful to have 31 years of army service, three of my sons joined the army and then one went astray and joined the Navy.

And I’m just really grateful that he’s currently orthopedic surgeon at Buford Naval Hospital, gluing, Marines back together. And so it’s a — we really appreciate his service and then of course we appreciate Parris Island, which of course is an extraordinary location just north of Hilton Head. And so everybody needs to visit.

And with that General Berger, we appreciate 17,000 Marines annually come through the Marine Corps Depot at Parris Island. It’s been so inspiring to me to see young people talking to their family members, explaining at graduation, um, the slug and human debris you sent here. They don’t recognize them, so it’s a positive transformation.

Additionally, I’m really grateful for the activation of Camp Blaze at Guam, the incredibly strategic territory of our country. It indicates, of course, the forward posture we have of the Indo-Pacific and again, the patriotic people of Guam are so supportive as they work for peace through strength. With that in mind, General, the Marine Corps has shifted their focus toward forward persistent presence throughout the Pacific to deter strategic attacks against America and our allies.

And of course, yesterday was extraordinary, we had the opportunity to have an address to Congress by his Excellency, Yoon Sung Yul, the President of Korea. He cited the miracle of the Han River where his devastated nation had an income after the Korean War of $67 and now it’s over $30,000 per capita. And so how incredible due to free market democracy and working with the United States.

With that in mind, how are we general being prepared in the Indo-Pacific?

DAVID BERGER: I think as you would expect the — the role of the Marine Corps and the Navy as an expeditionary force forward creates the depth that Admiral Aquilino needs. So essentially you want your Marines forward persistently 24/7 every day of the week. To do that, you have to have the amphibious ships and the training and the people and all to make that possible.

And they’re integrated into a whole combined force. Guam is the foremost hub, as you said, critical to project power forward from it. I think for the next 10 or 15 years, you’re going to see that grow in strategic importance to the US and the importance as Admiral Aquilino says to defend it. I would say for us we have to work hard on the ability to distribute which the carrier talks about all the time and then the ability to sustain that force logistically because we have protected lines for decades now it’s going to be contested.

So we have work to do, but I think the role of your Marine Corps, I know the role of your Marine Corps is forward all the time persistently.

JOE WILSON: Well, again, I appreciate so much you’re really giving opportunity to young people to serve and I was grateful my late father in law was one of you. My late brother in law was one of you. So we appreciate Marines. And Mr. Secretary, the ability of the United States to maintain US shipbuilding repair is critical and geopolitical issues have demonstrated how important it is. What are your industry concerns about ensuring the rapid production and replenishment of the US Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO: There are multiple concerns, Congressman, it starts with the labor force. We need a really strong blue collar labor force in this country to actually support our shipbuilding interests across the shipyards around the country. We obviously don’t have enough of them. We’ve shut down too many in past years, but we’ve got to rebuild those.

And so we’re — another concern I have is working with smaller shipyards, for example, so that they can actually come on board and do Department of Defense work and work as subcontractors to the larger shipyards so that we can increase productivity. So labor force across all shipyards getting smaller shipyards to work with larger shipyards.

The case in Austal for example, that is now building steel to support our Columbia class program in an electric boat is a perfect example of that. I think I believe Austal is looking at hiring close to 1000 more people over the course of the next year. So we need more labor, we need more legal immigration.

We need more work visa programs that can bring the types of folks to this country that allow us to work in the shipyards. That’s my primary concern. Of course, I meet constantly with the CEOs of all the shipyards to understand how well they’re moving in there with regards to their production rates. I believe on the destroyer side, we’re getting a lot better now to the point where we can build 1.8.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. I recognize the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Courtney for five minutes.

JOE COURTNEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I want to join my colleagues again in congratulating Admiral Gilday and General Berger for your amazing service. I think it’s worth noting that during your tenure you had to deal with a global pandemic and but the mission of your departments didn’t come to an end because — or pause.

And you were able to, to balance all of the operational challenges and public health challenges so successfully. And I think that certainly should go down in the annals as a sort of bonus points in terms of your service. You also served at a time in the last administration where there were five secretaries of the Navy or acting secretaries of the Navy, which is a record, which hopefully this country will never experience again in terms of the instability of civilian control.

And — and again, I want to thank both of you for really being pillars of stability during that time period. Secretary Del Toro and Admiral Gilday again, we had the honor of being at Navy Base Port Loma back in March when the AUCUS announcement was rolled out, the optimal pathway. Three heads of government, three navies together with the USS Missouri in the backdrop.

Really announcing what I think David Ignatius called the most significant security agreement in decades. Which is again to give our great ally Australia the undersea capability to again be part of an effort to deter in the Indo-Pacific region. Admiral Gilday right after that announcement, the Minister for Defense and Industry for Australia, Pat Conroy, announced that Australia will be investing $3 Billion directly into the US industrial base.

I mean this is Australia investment into the industrial base of the United States, which is again unprecedented and certainly shows the level of commitment of that nation to this undertaking. You and I were at the shipyard about a week and a half ago talking about the fact that you know, integrating the industrial bases, which is key to successful execution of AUKUS is going to require some work by Congress in terms of making sure that the restrictions In terms of foreign nationals being able to — to be even in the shipyards or also have access to different points.

Maybe and we have to fix that in Congress. So I wonder if you could just sort of talk about again how that is really so instrumental and required for — for this alliance to work?

MICHAEL GILDAY: So I think when I look across the three nations advantage AUKUS, particularly Australia and the United States, I think about Manpower as the biggest challenge that we all have. And I think with respect to getting the Australian experts into our shipyards into — into our submarines without any restrictions, this is a fellow five eye nation that we trust with our most sensitive intelligence and they do and they trust us with theirs.

I think that we need to look at, look at where the constraints are and I think bring those to the right level that might be the Congress, it might be the White House, but to break those down so that we can, so we can truly make this optimal path a reality.

JOE COURTNEY: Thank you. And another sort of issue that causes I guess some heartburn and you know for with good intention is that some people in terms of the acquisition of three Virginias and possibly up to 5 they seem like a, you know detraction or diminishment in a zero sum game in terms of our own undersea fleet.

Can you talk about again the value of that type of transfer which will be paid for in terms of again the, our own undersea fleet and our own sort of strategic position?

MICHAEL GILDAY: First thing, based on our — well informed by our visit just a week ago up to Groton, in an electric boat, I have a high degree of confidence that industry is responding. They understand that they need to hit the accelerator with respect to their production rates and whether it’s Newport News, Shipbuilding down and down in Virginia, we’re up in electric Boat in Connecticut.

I think they both have that clear message. I do think that the forward deployment of submarines as a first step in in, in Australia is a game changer. And so the chairman in his opening comments mentioned deterrence and deterrence is all about capability and intent. You bring it up to an exponential level when you leverage allies and partners in PRC’s backyard with the best capability in the world, operating it in — in and around in and around China.

So I think there’s so much there with respect to potential, not just for the United States, but for all the nations that intend to sail and use the maritime Commons around the PRC.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank you. I thank the gentleman chair, now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Wittman for five minutes.

ROB WITTMAN: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for joining us. General Berger, Admiral Gilday, thank you also and thank you both for your service to our nation, what an incredible impact you have had. This will probably be the last time that you testify before us in your current positions, but we look forward to continue dialog in the years to come.

And again thank you. Secretary Del Toro, I want to begin with the scenario that we have before us. The request from the administration on building nine ships retiring 11 ships. From last year’s request building eight ships retiring 24 ships. The 30 year shipbuilding plan that gives a choice where the code says 355 ships.

All of these things to me are very frustrating and Mr. Secretary, I’m not a mathematician, but I do not know any laws of math that allow you to do addition by subtraction. Here we are — today we’re taking five cruisers out of the weapons inventory and I say weapons inventory because each of them have 120 VLS tubes.

So we’re talking 600 tubes, there is no replacement between now and 2027. And for that matter, even in the near term, beyond. We see we have a 31 ship floor now in the code for AMPHIBS. Now we’re going to retire three LSDs. Early by the way. With the Navy shrinking and ship building capacity as you spoke about in a crisis mode.

We see ourselves at a tipping point in the history of this nation’s Navy Marine Corps team. And I appreciate the conversations that we’ve had. I look forward to working with you. I do think there are things that we can do together that help us get on the plus side of where our Navy needs to be and we can talk about our ship capabilities but capacity is by itself critically important.

Quantity has a quality all its own. I’d love for you to share with us what your plans are going forward to make sure we get both sides of the equation right, to make sure we hit the gas pedal on the build side. But also make sure we do everything we can to make sure that the ships we have get to their expected service lives.

You know, we cannot afford anything less and the maintenance side is also critical and Admiral Gilday, I appreciate you meeting with me at some of the maintenance yards and I take your commitment to and the maintenance side being an all hands on deck call. Thank you for doing that but Mr. Secretary I’d love to get your perspective on that.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your leadership on this position and I do very much look forward to continuing to work with you very collaborative collaboratively on solutions that are going to get us to a better place. At any given time. The three of us are always concerned about readiness, modernization and capacity without question.

We don’t want a hollow force, we put an enormous amount of investments in readiness. Over the course of the last ten years, this Congress, previous Congresses, and previous administrations have all been focused on modernizing our Navy because we’ve essentially inherited John Lehmann’s navy. And the fact is that ships get old.

And once they reach a certain point, even if they’re below their ESL’s but they’re not in the correct material condition to be able to continue to operate those ships, we cannot deploy those VLF cells, for example, if they’re stuck in a maintenance pier and they can’t be fired from ashore. So the real key to success is trying to get them operationally available to the fleet to fulfill the missions that they have to fulfill.

So out of those five cruisers, for example, there’s nothing more that I would love to do is to invest resources into three of those to actually extend them by one or two deployments. And I think that’s achievable as you and I have spoken about in the past. In the case of both the Vicksburg and the Cowpens, those ships will never see another deployment regardless of how much money we put into them.

So I think it’s a far better strategy to — to allocate the monies that are dedicated to those ships and apply them to say the LSD’s for example, so that we can get the Tortuga out of its maintenance availability and operational again to support the commandant. And I think those are the types of solutions that we could work together on in the future in this year’s budget and next year’s budget to get to a better place.

ROB WITTMAN: Very good. Thank you. General Berger, thank you so much for your vision for looking in the future for taking some bold moves to make sure the Marine Corps is in the right place. Force Design, 2030 pushes those issues, asks our Marine Corps to — to experiment to look at what the path is forward. Can you tell us from your perspectives, tell us the lessons learned about the things you’ve learned that didn’t work, but the things that you’re finding do work and especially as we relate to these challenges in the Indo-Pacific?

DAVID BERGER: First of all, I think if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have spoken more earlier on about the things in the Marine Corps that would not change, which is most of the Marine Corps. This is an evolution and we have — we have modernized the Marine Corps several times in our history when we sensed if we don’t will fall behind.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. Chair now recognizes gentleman from California, Mr. Garamendi for five minutes.

JOHN GARAMENDI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My good fortune was my tenure as chairman of the Readiness Committee coincided with the leadership that General Berger and Admiral Gilday had. I was very fortunate we dealt with shipyards, we dealt with ship maintenance, training, housing safety depots and on and on. I thank you gentlemen for being there all the time on all of these issues.

There’s much to be said, I’ve had the good fortune of working with you. I’ve also had the good fortune of working with Ms. Sherrill who I will now yield the balance of my time to.

MIKIE SHERRILL: Thank you, Mr. Garamendi. Gentlemen, and with this department, it’s always gentlemen. I’ve spent most of my life dreaming of being a naval aviator, training to be a naval aviator, flying in the Navy or proud of my service as a naval aviator. And this year marks the 50th anniversary of women in naval Aviation.

And today is the 30th anniversary of Secretary Osmond’s order that allowed women into combat aviation. So imagine how thrilled I was when I was a second class midshipman or a junior at the Naval Academy to hear that order to know that in really the horrible aftermath of Tailhook and with the lifting of combat restrictions, I would be headed to Pensacola to earn my wings in a new more fair era.

Sadly, we know that that hope has not become a reality. In fact, the stories I’m now hearing out of Pensacola could just as easily have been stories coming out of the Tailhook conference in Vegas in 92. Women’s flight suit, zippers being pulled down. Calls of, “are you headed to your gynecologist appointment” in the halls.

Rides, home being offered by flight instructors only to have those women taken to that instructor’s house and forcibly kissed before she escapes.

MIKIE SHERILL: But you know the worst part about it and the part that makes me see red and the part that truly speaks of the dearth of leadership in the Department of Navy and in our Marine Corps is when that woman, those women step forward to report these things, they’re shut down. Punitive measures are being taken against the women that report it and their careers are ended or being put in jeopardy.

So is this the price that women are expected to pay to serve our nation in our Marine Corps? Is the message after a shoddy command investigation that failed to even interview witnesses that the price of entry into aviation is hazing, harassment and sexual assault? It should really come as no surprise today that we have a recruitment and retention disaster when it comes to women in naval aviation — aviation.

There is a significant gap between the number of women aviators and the number you would expect to see after three decades. And the problem is particularly acute in the Marine Corps. 2021 Statistics show that women made up just 9 percent of our United States Marine Corps. By far the lowest among the services and I think it’s safe to say that the USMC has a problem recruiting and retaining women.

I think it’s also safe to say that with a 480 person tactical pilot shortfall, the USMC has a problem recruiting and retaining pilots and the statistics just get worse. Zero four star female general officers in the history of the Corps. Less than 15 female general officers in the Corps ever, and I’m sure you’re aware, there are significant problems with sexual harassment, sexual assault, retaliation and a toxic workplace climate at flight school in Pensacola.

The training environment that sets the norms of conduct for all the rest of our Navy and Marine Corps fleet squadrons. It was recently brought to my attention that three, active duty currently serving female USMC aviators in training have been retaliated against for reporting their military sexual trauma.

All three in the last two years. And all three instigated or condoned by Navy and Marine Corps instructors. All three initially faced administrative separation, not just from aviation, but from the Marine Corps. Now after an overturned investigation, one has to restart an entire flight syllabus after two years in limbo.

MIKIE SHERRILL: This should really come as no surprise because it is in fact well understood at NAS Pensacola, where 81 percent of respondents strongly agreed or agreed with the statement quote “In my unit military members, employees who file a sexual harassment complaint would be blamed for causing problems”, 81 percent know that to be the case.

So, after almost two years of pain with investigation dogged with inconsistent testimony and a shoddy investigation, these young women are now facing separation for standing up to their sexual harassers. And this is just three women who’ve been brave enough to share their stories. I’m sure there are many who have been silenced or unable to come forward.

MIKIE SHERILL: So gentlemen, my time is about to expire. I’m sure we’ll continue to discuss this. I sincerely hope we have a better command investigation coming and I look forward to hearing your responses to the questions. I’ll submit for the record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentlelady chair. I recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Gallagher, for five minutes.

MIKE GALLAGHER: Last week in this room, the Indo-Pacific commander, Admiral Aquilino told me that he was not concerned about the number of long range precision fires pre-positioned in the region. Just for the sake of Congressional clarity, secretary Del Toro, do you think we have sufficient stockpiles of long range precision fires west of the international dateline?

CARLOS DEL TORO: No, we do not, we need more and I am concerned about the fixed long range precision fires that PRC has and is continuing to build in the region and I’m confident that Admiral Aquilino is as well too.

MIKE GALLAGHER: I think we have a huge opportunity to fix this and start to rebuild our stockpiles. I hear your lesson two years away from having a ready for EL regime for example, but where are we with the missiles? What’s the planned buy rate? What’s it been our average over the last five years and how do we get the unit cost, not just for LRASM but for SM six and maritime strike Tomahawk down?

CARLOS DEL TORO: So just in last year’s and this year’s Presidential budget ’24, we’ve increased the amount of funding by 50 percent, putting in $250 Million for 103 anti-ship missiles, naval strike, missiles themselves, which are needed across the both the Marine Corps and the Navy. We’re putting in $1.6 Million for the Standard missile six, 125 of them, the advanced medium range air to air missile $1.2 billion for 831 missiles.

In the case of the LRASM $1 billion for 108

MIKE GALLAGHER: What does that buy us though? What’s our target?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well it — it would advise us it actually is, it sends a very strong signal to industry as well too that they have to get their production rates up. So that we can actually build these missiles faster.

MIKE GALLAGHER: I think at least for me, I think we need like a target for a number. I think we’ve averaged about 40 a year over the last five years. There’s claims that we can get that above 200. I think we should test those claims. But as for getting there and getting the unit cost down to me, the solution is obvious.

We need — we have multiyear authority; we need multiyear appropriation. Admiral Gilday, you look like you’re chomping at the bit.

MICHAEL GILDAY: So as the secretary is mentioning, we have four multiyear contracts in this, proposed in this budget. Naval standard missile with the Marine Corps, SM six with the Marine Corps, LRASM and AMRAAM with — with — with the Air Force. Sir, I’ll get back to you on — on precise numbers, but what we’re trying to do is absolutely maximize the production output of those factories.

And we did it last year and last year the bill that I submitted essentially was for extra weapons to maximize those — their production rate this year. That’s what we’re trying. That’s what we’re trying to do. In terms of savings for those four categories I talked about 15 percent savings doing a bundle buy.

MIKE GALLAGHER: Well, I would say if we can’t get the — the appropriation that we need a multiyear appropriation, I just would suggest, I know we got a little bit, we but it’s well below the authorized number. I would suggest we, you know, put the relevant members of Congress on your airplane, take them down to Troy, Alabama, take them to Huntsville, take them wherever they need to go to see.

I mean, these companies should not be coming to us saying, hey, we can do more. We should be testing the limits of what’s possible and if we can’t do it now in light of what’s happening in Ukraine, we’re never going to do it.

You have to assume you’re fighting with what’s already in theater just given the geography of the Indo-Pacific. And so now is the time, it’s almost as if we need a war footing now when it comes to critical munitions in order to avoid the war. And that’s — that’s what we want to partner with you all on. In the time that remains, when can we expect to see a maritime strike tomahawk on surface ships and what’s your plan buy rate for that?

I don’t know if that’s Admiral Gilday.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, I don’t have the plan by right at my fingertips. I don’t want to give you the exact date. I would say very soon maritime strike, Tomahawk in terms of integrating that capability.

MIKE GALLAGHER: Well, we have unmanned surface vessels with launch tubes ready this decade.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Yes, we will.

MIKE GALLAGHER: And then how do we — you can elaborate?

MICHAEL GILDAY: So right now we’ll begin procuring our first large unmanned vessels in ’25. We have five. We’re looking at five in the FYDP. The intent is to outfit those with — with missile tubes, essentially give you a missile arsenal with our — with missiles with range and speed.

MIKE GALLAGHER: And then my — my colleagues mentioned our inability to even get go in the right direction towards the goal of a 355 ship Navy. In order to do that, you’ve got to — you’ve got to build more frigates. I know I’m a homer on this one, but Admiral Gilday, give me your assessment.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Right now sir, we — across — we only have seven shipyards. And so just a touch of context for 20 years the Navy hasn’t been a priority for obvious reasons for the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve turned the tide now, 57 ships in construction and others, 77 on contract. Again, we’re trying to maximize the output of those facilities.

I do think we’re on a path with frigate to two a year up in Wisconsin and open a second yard with hopefully

MIKE GALLAGHER: Eventually four year.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Four year.

MIKE GALLAGHER: And my time has expired.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank the gentleman, I would inform members that we have been called to floor to vote. We have only one vote so I would urge you to move over. We’re going to keep the hearing rolling and if you have a question you need to get vote, get over there and vote and get back. With that I recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Norcross for five minutes.

DONALD NORCROSS: Thank you, Chairman, appreciate it and to the witnesses for being here, particularly Admiral Gilday and General Berger for your service really appreciated working with you over the years. General Berger, I want to talk about the Humvees. We’ve seen the reports on the news of the turnovers and the loss of life.

And the Army is very much getting at using the new technology to avoid those rollovers. I think the Marines have somewhere in the 17,000 Humvees. Two part questions, how many of those would be eligible for the upgrade and why haven’t we started to upgrade those to avoid what we’ve seen the reality of young men and women being killed?

DAVID BERGER: Thanks, Congressman. About 2000 of our Humvees would be the ones you’re speaking of that we could upgrade. Though in weighing the benefit of should we put the money into the Humvees to upgrade them as old as they are or should we buy new JLTV’s It was an easy decision for us. So we’re putting the money instead of investing into the old Humvees, we’re going to retire them and buy new field new JLTVs. They are built from the ground up, safer.

DONALD NORCROSS: No question about it and I agree with you. So does that mean those 2000 will not be used until the new ones come on, they’ll be?

DAVID BERGER: They’ll be fielded they’re still in the field right now, but they’ll be retired as we bring on the JLTVs.

DONALD NORCROSS: So I understand that. They will cross at a point that we can do it on some of those because it will be years and if they’re actively being used for the small and it is relatively small investment, we believe it is absolutely worth it or take them out because we’ve seen those young men and women being killed.

And I urge you to look at that a little bit deeper.

Admiral Gilday, we’ve heard the challenges we have in our industrial base and that goes across the spectrum from materials, critical materials, especially in munitions. But there are many parts that go into that. But we talk also about making sure that we have the required number of ships, submarines. We’ve heard the secretary talk about labor being the number one issue in supply chain and I agree with that because quite frankly it takes the longest to build.

What is the Navy’s plan to address that labor shortage, those blue collars that the secretary talked about?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, in this decade, we’ve increased the manning at our public shipyards by 10,000 people. Most of that in the trades. Industry is working to do the same thing. representative Courtney, And as we mentioned, we were just up in just up in Connecticut where they were looking to hire 4000 this year based on the workload that they have.

I was just up in Bath, Maine, they’re looking at hiring. I was in Bath earlier this week, another thousand at Bath Ironworks. The money that the United States government is putting into the industrial base in terms of workforce development, I think is absolutely critical. And I would urge the Congress to continue to make those investments.

Mr. Courtney talked about the fact that the Australians are helping us invest in that very thing.

DONALD NORCROSS: Mr. Whitman and I were down in Australia last year talking about the upcoming agreements and their number one issue is labor also. It’s imperative when I say us the parents of America to make sure that we explain to our children that going to work with your hands and your head is just as important as getting a PhD in physics.

We need all of them. And the dignity of having a job and working for your country is paramount. So with that I yield back.

TRENT KELLY: The gentleman yields back. I now recognize myself for five minutes. Admiral Gilday the 30 year shipbuilding plan provided Congress with three options. Although all three of these have the same profile in the next five years. Each is slightly different starting in ’29 and out. I don’t believe that having three options in a report to Congress is helpful to either Congress or to the industry.

What is your best military advice to this Congress on which of these options are required to allow you to meet the missions being placed on the Navy now and in the future? Because to me, this is just like answering a question with a question or repeating back to me what I’ve already told you. We need more finality in that.

And before you answer, I just want to recognize both the outstanding military spouses that are here in support of you. It is a family business and we cannot do it. They serve just as much as those in uniform. And thank you all for your service.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Yes, sir, thanks for those comments. My best military advice would be alternative number three. Alternative number three is not limited by funding, it’s only limited by the capacity of the defense industrial base, which I think over time only increases with respect to efficiencies and their ability to produce more ships.

TRENT KELLY: Thank — thank you, Admiral. Mr. Secretary, the CNO and the commandant of the Marine Corps both agree that the amphibious ship requirement is 31 ships as codified into law. I think we can all agree on the importance of having these strategic platforms in the inventory. Although the 30 year shipbuilding plan does not outline any procurement of LPDs, You have previously testified that you will revisit this in the 2025 budget submission.

Can you tell me what the impact will be to the industrial base if we do not fund the LPD either this year or next year in the strategic policy that we’re talking about that I don’t think will happen?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, Mr. Chairman. It’s hard to completely hypothetically predict what the impact will be, but at a minimum you could expect losses of jobs in the realm of 1500 to 2000, for example in one particular shipyard. So it is a negative impact. More importantly, I think it’s important to provide consistency of messaging in terms of being able to do these multi ship procurements.

It is the unique way for the American taxpayer to save money as well too. So if we can get to a place where we’re doing a multi ship, multi year procurement for three to five additional ships. It does save money and it’s proven way to save money. We’ve seen it on, on constellation class frigates, we’ve seen it on destroyers.

We’ve seen it on numerous other platforms.

TRENT KELLY: Absolutely and I just want to point out, it’s not just the loss of jobs, it’s the loss of that workforce that we are saying we don’t have. And then we’re doing away with the workforce making their skills atrophy and then coming back a year later to build the same thing and losing that skill, which costs us more and takes longer.

Admiral Gilday, with the plan ship decommissioning this year is the Navy able to maintain appropriate amphibious — amphibious readiness to meet the Title ten requirement of 31 operational amphibious warships. And when you’re considering readiness, how do you define an amphibious warship as ready and after you’ve answered?

General Berger, I want your definition on readiness as well.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, we have different stages of readiness all the way from one to four. And so readiness levels one and two are our highest and those are the ships that we are considered ready to deploy. So they’re manned, they’re trained, they’re equipped, they’re certified for combat operations. We do that with our teammates in the Marine Corps together in terms of the certification exercise.

And then we push them out the door. With respect to, you know, with respect to numbers, no, I’m not satisfied with where we are with respect to maintenance and readiness of the force. It does need to improve. That’s why readiness remains our top priority and maintenance. The proposed funding is at 100 percent.

TRENT KELLY: And — and General Berger, I’m at a little to yours. Coming out, you recently stated there’s been a 20 percent decline in marine serving aboard ships since 2018, which you attribute to a lack of amphibious ships availability. Has amphibious ship readiness impacted the Marine Corp’s ability to contribute forces across the world as well as your definition with the remainder of my time?

DAVID BERGER: Sir, it has concisely, yes, it has affected the readiness and availability has affected our ability to be on the water to respond. Absolutely yes. As far as the definition, we share the same definition because we’re a naval force, a ready vessel is one that’s manned, trained, equip material conditions ready to go and the Marines are trained aboard that ship because it operates as a system.

That’s a — that’s an available ship.

TRENT KELLY: And in my final comment, in my last 20 seconds, I just want to say when we talk about decommissioning ships, sometimes we get the product that we try to do. If we say something’s going to be broke the entire time and make sure that it’s broke, it’s going to be just as broke, but we have to get the ships.

When they’re told to be seaworthy, we have to get them to sea regardless of our personal view on whether it should or not. And I yield back and now recognize my friend Mr. Gallego.

RUBEN GALLEGO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Berger, you’ve outlined an ambitious plan for redesign 2030. However, new threats are emerging each day that won’t wait until 2030. The need to modernize and potentially deter advisories. As we’ve seen in Russia’s continued war of aggression against Ukraine and increasingly provocative behavior from the Chinese communist Party toward Taiwan.

How do you balance immediate needs and long term planning and how are you ensuring that we have a modern and lethal force to meet the immense challenges of today?

DAVID BERGER: Thanks, Congressman. First, I take probably a little bit different view on an either or decision. In other words, you can either modernize or you can have a ready force. We’re both of us, all three of us are responsible to do both. As you accurately point out. We have to be ready today. The Marine Corps is America’s crisis response force by statute.

So we don’t — that’s not — that’s not an option, that’s not something I cannot do. We are ready very ready. But if we stay stagnant, if we don’t change, if we don’t stay in front of the threat, then four or five, six years from now, if China — if Russia continues on the trajectory they’re on, they’ll have advantages we can’t tolerate.

We have to do both and I’m very comfortable that we’re there because the forces that are deploying right now Congressman aboard ship and unit deployment program. They are very ready with what they have right now, but they are also leaning into the future, testing new concepts, testing new systems. They — they sense that if they don’t move now will be behind.

And that’s — that’s not acceptable.

RUBEN GALLEGO: Thank you, General. Admiral Gilday, your testimony highlights the incredible speed with which the CCP has increased its Navy tripling in size and only two decades. This dynamic makes it all the more important that we maintain the technological and intellectual edge. How is the Navy ensuring that we maintain this advantage?

And are there any particular gaps where we need to focus more attention? And how is the Navy prioritizing those areas?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, thanks for the question. Just briefly in this budget proposal in front of Congress in the undersea, we’re investing in an upgrade to our visionary class submarines, the block five with 28 additional missile tubes. We’re updating — we are increasing the capability of our torpedoes, including our heavyweight torpedoes.

We are deploying unmanned vessels, unmanned robotics out of torpedo tubes of our submarines. We’re investing in advanced electronic warfare systems on our surface ships. We’re investing in Standard Missile six. We’re putting hypersonics on the Zumwalt class destroyers and we’re investing in maritime strike Tomahawk.

For aviation F-35s with with a — with a fifth generation capability. Our fourth generation F-18 Super Hornets, we are right now taking them through mid-life modernization to bring them from six to 10,000 hours with an advanced combat systems. We’re investing in weapons with range and speed like LRASM. We’re putting that weapon on P-eights.

We’re investing in MQ 25, the drone that will be able to do refueling and more. And so those are the modernization efforts that we have ongoing not to keep pace with China, but to stay in front of China with a fleet, 70 percent of which you’ll have in the water a decade from now.

RUBEN GALLEGO: And Admiral, the goal is obviously a deterrence and — and that’s obviously what we’re always trying to do here. But is there a — a level of technology that is below what we have right now that is also that we could create denial? For example, are there things currently in our armory that we could be using or retrofitting right now to help deny Taiwan, China’s invasion of Taiwan?

And this could also go to Secretary Del Toro. Because at the end of the day, if we stop China from invading Taiwan, it’s over and it doesn’t necessarily mean we need the most sophisticated weaponry to do that. We just need the — the weaponry that can do the job, is there something that where we have in our armory right now that we should stock up on more that would actually do that?

MICHAEL GILDAY: So one of our requests is for additional mines, but also our first large undersea vessel is in the water right now off the coast of California, in testing, that testing is going fairly well. There’ll be five more additional UVs that follow that one. That platform has a clandestine mine laying capability and that will be a game changer for us to your point about making an investment in something that will change it, secretary.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Just adding very quickly Congressman, I think the investment that we make in counter five ISR as well to Operation Overmatch, which we can’t talk about publicly, but that has significant impact on their ability to do what they wish to do on day one.

RUBEN GALLEGO: Excellent, thank you. I yield back.

TRENT KELLY: Gentleman, yields back, I now recognize the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Bacon.

DON BACON: Thank you, Mr. Kelly. We thank all three of you for being here and I just had to run a vote comeback, so catch my breath here real fast. But we thank you for your leadership. My first question is to Admiral Gilday. I’m looking at a quality of life panel here we’re going to start up. It’s a subcommittee that’s gonna start in June.

We’re focused on a lot of different areas that try to improve the quality of Life.

One of the things I hear about the Navy is that a significant number of our junior sailors who are not married have to stay on the ships when they’re in port. And that’s even in the midst of like maintenance. And the loud noises are going to repair a ship to get it ready to go up back out to fleet and that’s that the quality of life for those sailors are not good.

Is there, first of all, what’s your take on that? Am I hearing this correct? Two, do we need to be investing in more barracks at our at our ports?

MICHAEL GILDAY: To your last question, we are with respect to barracks significantly across — across the FYDP. If I could give the example of San Diego right now we’ve got three carriers in port and so E one to E threes by law are not allowed to have basic allowance for housing if they’re in a — if they’re on sea duty.

So they have to stay on the ship unless that ships in maintenance. What we’ve done with what we’ve done with — with those three ships is to the maximum extent possible. We have put those sailors in the barracks to ease the strain. We have taken E-fours that have less than four years of service and we have the ability to waive the requirement or to waive the restriction for BA and to actually allow them to get a housing allowance to, to get them in the ship.

So based on the constraints that we have in the law and we are — and the available housing, we’re trying to do the best we can to get people ashore. We’ve cut a deal with landlords in San Diego as an example, and we’re working this in other places, where they’re giving our sailor’s below market price deals on their properties.

We guarantee a steady throughput, so they won’t be vacant and they also waive the security, the security deposit. So we are trying to get at that very piece with respect to quality of life.

DON BACON: Just to follow up, I hear like in our facilities in Japan, that’s some of the worst conditions for a lot of our sailors. Are you hearing the same thing?

MICHAEL GILDAY: So I’d say that in the commandant spoke about this in his opening comments, it’s an area that we have not put sufficient focus on for the last several years. And that’s why you see significant increases in both our Milken and our restoration and modernization budgets. And it’s reflected in our — in our unfunded list as well.

It’s among the top priorities of the secretary.

DON BACON: Thank you, Admiral. Secretary Del Toro, you know we’ve had a requirement for 355 ships for a while and but we’re under 300 and that number is going down, I understand it. Do we have the right number at 355? Should we be rethinking our strategy? It seems to me the strategy is right, but we’re not funding or building towards that goal.

CARLOS DEL TORO: So Congressman, I do believe 355 is the right number. As you know, there’s a battle force strategic assessment and requirements review going on right now that will be completed by June. That’ll — I don’t want to assume what the outcome of that will be, but I suspect it won’t probably change much from the three 355 ship number and also looking at 150 unmanned ships as well too, which is really important for the future.

The question is modernizing the fleet now, getting rid of those ships that don’t have the greatest capability for us to be able to defer to deter against China and other adversaries around the world. So we can use those resources more intelligently and more valuably in the future to get even more ships for the future.

DON BACON: The image I’m getting not just for the Navy, I see it in all of our services right now. We know we have to grow for the future, but we’re all shrinking and yet we know this vulnerability with China is imminent. And so it’s — I just feel like as a — as an Armed Services committee, I just think we need to sit back and just make sure we are — we’re funding you appropriately, so we’re not falling backwards.

But I just got one minute if I could ask you, what’s your number one quality of life issue that we can help you out in the Marines?

DAVID BERGER: Overseas I’d say you’re probably hearing the same thing as me, medical care. After that family housing, after that child development centers. Here in CONUS, more family housing and medical care and child development centers. All three of those are pretty common refrain here in the US and overseas both. But medical care, huge right now.

DON BACON: Well, we appreciate those inputs. Thank you to all three I look for to tackle and tackle on all these issues on the panel. Thank you. I yield.

TRENT KELLY: Gentleman yields back. I now recognize the Representative from Hawaii, Ms. Tokuda.

JILL TOKUDA: Tokuda, thank you sir. All right, Mr. Secretary, I definitely appreciate your affirmation and for their commitment to Red Hill. I think we both agree this is something that will be a continuing earning and earning back trust every single day. On that note, there’s been some concern among community members in Hawaii that the Navy’s consideration of reuse options of Red Hill could pave the way for future fuel related uses.

Even after the Joint Task Force, Red Hill completes its fueling efforts. Recently, Assistant Secretary Burger stated that the Navy will not pursue any beneficial reuse options that would contain potential contaminants. Can we confirm and commit to this committee and the people of Hawaii that there is no future after fueling in which Red Hill will ever again be used for fuel related options.

CARLOS DEL TORO: For as long as I’m secretary for as long as this administration is in power, madam Congresswoman, I can tell you that there is absolutely zero intent to put fuels back into Red Hill.

JILL TOKUDA: Thank you. I definitely appreciate that secretary. Red Hill was designed for fuel storage though we know it was definitely an engineering marvel and feat back in the 1940s. So it retains all those properties necessary for fuel related operations. And while we have your affirmation that would never take place on your watch, there still is a lot of anxiety that even after the fueling closure and yes, for the time being no potential fuel related operations, it’s still basically one degree away from potential fuel storage over our aquifer going ahead into the future.

And I know right now, outreach efforts are underway to engage community and other individuals in the future of this facility and looking at different options. But has the Navy considered physical modifications to Red Hill that it could take as part of the closure process to completely eliminate the possibility that it could be used for fuel related uses going forward?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, the intent is not to continue to maintain Red Hill in the future once the fuel is out of there in a manner which actually would still allow it to hold fuel in the tanks themselves. So over the course of time, those tanks would deteriorate and you wouldn’t be able to put fuel into them in any effective manner.

And so again, I overemphasize the fact that part of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, there is absolutely zero intent to put fuel back into Red Hill.

JILL TOKUDA: Okay, you know and I definitely would just reaffirm that part of that earning trust back one action one day every day is to continue to reinforce that message and show that through actions that we will never again have fuel hanging over our aquifers and impairing the — the Drinking water of the people of Hawaii and our military servicemen and women.

Switching subjects, a little bit, joint base Pearl Harbor Hickam Wastewater Treatment plant has, as we both know, continued to spill and discharge untreated or partially treated wastewater for — for many, many years now. Most recently on March 7th, approximately 14,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater was released into our state waters.

There’s a long trail of problems with the wastewater treatment plant at Pearl and after the state imposed a fine on the Navy last year, it sounds like these problems are being taken seriously through corrective actions, although details are hard to come by. Again, Mr. Secretary, looking at that earning of trust and looking at the actions being taken, what is the Navy doing to address the unacceptable state of Pearl Harbor wastewater treatment plants and the impacts that it’s had on our state waters?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, Congressman thank you for your support of this incredibly important issue because it does have a negative impact on the health and welfare of the people of Hawaii, our service members and all other tourists that come to Hawaii obviously. So it’s very important to us. When I came in as Secretary of the Navy, probably less than 1 percent of the budget was dedicated to infrastructure.

Since I’ve been secretary, those numbers have gone up significantly actually and I’m committed actually to a 30 year infrastructure plan that takes a look at the worst of the entire Department of the Navy both in the Marine Corps and the Navy to figure out exactly where it Is that we need to start making greater investments in infrastructure today.

We’ve begun that process actually by taking a look at the utilities in Hawaii, the electricity, the wastewater, the fresh water in across the bases in Hawaii, actually to see where we can make greater investments that take care of them because it’s old infrastructure that it hasn’t been maintained properly over the course of years.

And we need to have those investments now so that we can prevent these things from ever occurring again.

JILL TOKUDA: Absolutely, thank you very much and I absolutely share your commitment and dedication to infrastructure repairs. We are in the middle of an ocean. Things tend to deteriorate a lot faster. The useful life is a lot shorter. But as you know, we have tended to act well beyond those useful lives for many of our utilities and infrastructure facilities.

I know I’m about to run out of time, but we’ll put forth some questions. Obviously, my side of the Island County Marine Corps base, we do have some water reclamation facility compliance projects that I’m very interested in and appreciate all of your support for that from the Corps. Thank you. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentlelady Chairman. I recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Gae,tz for five minutes.

MATT GAETZ: Mr. Secretary, you know that Pensacola is a Navy town and I want to thank you for coming and spending time at our naval museum. In so many of these hearings I focus on the things that I am concerned about as downward pressure on our recruiting. But in my time with you, I’d like to focus on something that is a really positive thing that can drive recruiting.

So many of these naval aviators I meet in my district, they were inspired by Top Gun or they went to a Blue Angels airshow and they got that spark in them that got them to take that extra engineering class or physics class or aviation opportunity. And this museum that you’ve been to is a gem. We have recovered aircraft out of the depths of Lake Michigan.

We put on displays about the greatest moments of heroism and our military. And my challenge right now is I got, I think the best naval museum in the world and I’m having a hard time getting people to it because the way my base is configured, our bases configured folks are not able to have ingress and egress.

And I know it sounds like a real small problem from a real small part of the country. But what I think is if — if we could have leadership and focus from your office and others and we could get hundreds of thousands of people back onto the base back into that museum, it’s not going to solve all of our recruiting challenges, but it’s one more spark that we can have out there getting excited in a positive productive way.

Will you work with me on that so I can get better access to this to this great gem?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, I’ve been working with you and your staff and local politicians and the leadership of that museum actually to try to get the throughput through that museum open as quickly as possible. We’ve come up with some near-term solutions, but we’re also focused on finding the long term solutions that actually bring it back to maximum throughput for that museum for all the reasons that you just stated because it is an extraordinary museum.

MATT GAETZ: So you’ve where I at times struggle with folks is seeing the museum not just as a morale and welfare tool, but as a recruiting tool, do you see it as a recruiting tool?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I Absolutely, see it as a recruiting tool. I saw it from the first day that I stepped in it and we have actually been very energized and we’ve come up with some near-term solutions to increase the throughput that are already paid off dividends. But we’re also looking at the long term solutions that are a little bit more costly to be able to provide a direct access to the outside world without having to have folks come in through the base itself.

MATT GAETZ: Well, thank you for casting it in that lens because if it’s a matter of dollars and cents and I have to ask my colleagues to support such an endeavor in the NDAA. I’ll certainly cite your testimony that this isn’t just a museum for the sake of recreation. But it is a way to engage people in naval aviation in a place that’s the home of the Blue Angels, the cradle of naval aviation.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Absolutely.

MATT GAETZ: So — so Admiral Gilday, I had another question. Hopefully this is — this is easy. We can disclaim it. There’s this entity called the Uniform Services University and they come up with a lot of ways to engage in medical treatment throughout the force. They do some stuff at Walter Reed and a group of these physicians got together and they wrote a very strange and concerning report entitled, Caring for Military Affiliated Transgender and Gender Diverse Youths A Call for Protections.

And in this report, we got folks that are working at this university talking about gender affirming care for seven year olds. And in the report it cites that seven year olds ought to be able to participate in the decisions about whether or not they get puberty blockers or any of this other kind of treatment?

I don’t expect to have the Navy own the report of a few people that wrote it of their own volition. But I’m just hoping with our time together, you can say that the Navy has no plans to adopt the recommendations in this report to see things in this way.

MICHAEL GILDAY: So we have to follow the law. I’m not familiar with that training, but I share your concern, I’ll commit to looking.

MATT GAETZ: It’s not training just so we’re clear, it’s not training. It’s a report a group of DOD folks got together and wrote about what they’d like to see. And — and they’ve made like — I wouldn’t be asking you about it, but for the fact that they’ve made specific policy recommendations about gender affirming care for seven-year-olds.

So I appreciate your answer. You have to follow the law. You don’t believe there’s any part of the law that requires you to have military physicians involved in giving puberty blockers to children. Do you?

MICHAEL GILDAY: So I’d be surprised if there were — I just — I don’t know the law in that area well. I’m not trying to be evasive actually that that university is actually run by DHA. I will get back to you with DHA with a firm answer.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, and it just sort of goes one of two ways. If you guys can say to us in these hearings that you’re not going to do this stuff, you’re not going to move people because of this. You’re not going to administer this care that that probably is sufficient for most of us. If it’s something that’s unclear, we’ll probably put in the NDAA prohibitions so that these adoption, these recommendations are never adopted.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank the gentleman chair. I recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts Mr. Moulton for five minutes.

SETH MOULTON: General Berger, you proposed an ambitious, politically risky modernization plan, that created a fair bit of concern. It included a lot of investments, a number of divestments in particular. As a member of Congress on the House Armed Services Committee I sat down with the critics, the chief critics of this plan and I listened to every one of their concerns and I brought every one of those concerns to you and to the Marine Corps and you and your officers answered every single one.

Eight members of Congress after that signed an op ed in The Wall Street Journal fully supporting your modernization plan. Past commandants have talked about this. Other services are starting to work on it themselves, but you and the Marine Corps continue to lead the way.

And my advice to you sitting here this morning to borrow a Navy phrase is, “Damn the torpedoes damn the critics full speed ahead”. But it’s worth also noting the one concern that all eight of us shared in that piece in The Wall Street Journal and that is to quote, “the Marine Corps may not be moving fast enough”. You’re moving faster than all the services.

You’re leading the way for America, and yet we’re not confident that you’re moving as quickly as our adversaries. So I would encourage you to consider not just full speed but flank speed ahead as you continue this modernization. Mr. Secretary, will you continue to support the commandant and force design 2030 and whatever comes next to modernize the Marine Corps to meet this nation’s chief adversaries?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Absolutely sir.

SETH MOULTON: And Admiral Gilday will you continue to support Commandant Berger and what he needs to do to continue leading the way?

DAVID BERGER: Yes, sir.

SETH MOULTON: General Berger, one area where I think the Marine Corps might be able to focus even more is on artificial intelligence. By some estimates, a China is as a percentage of their overall defense budget spending three to 10 times as much on AI as we are. Repeated reports to the Department of Defense have encouraged the department to move faster in adopting AI, including the Future of Defense Task force.

A bipartisan report from this committee a few years ago, but the services are lagging behind. I think this is a great opportunity for the Marine Corps to continue to lead. Would you be willing to get us a report by this September for what the Marine Corps is doing today to integrate AI and what you can do to accelerate that to give that advantage to our Marines and warfighters in the near future?

DAVID BERGER: Congressman, I’m going to have that to you long before September. Absolutely, yes.

SETH MOULTON: Thank you. Thank you very much. Shifting topics, a bit, part of Forest Design 2030 is about retaining the best personnel and that means keeping them in fighting shape. I teamed up with a fellow veteran in Congress a few years ago and passed the National Mental Health Hotline 988, creating a three digit mental health hotline which should help reduce the number of suicides in America.

It was implemented in July. It’s already having a dramatic effect. Calls to 908 are up 50 percent. Text to 988 representing younger Americans are up 1,445 percent. But I’ve asked a lot of friends on active duty and I’m still not hearing about 988 being posted around our barracks, our bases so our service members know that number and can call it in a time of crisis and help you with a stronger force a. So what I would like to hear is will you be willing to get out by next Friday, May 5th, a standard poster that can be sent electronically and easily duplicated to post around Marine Corps barracks all over the world.

So that Marines know this number.

DAVID BERGER: We can do that.

SETH MOULTON: Admiral Gilday will you do the same so that it’s on all our — all our ships. Obviously, this is not something that will be used. I shouldn’t say ships that it’s on all our naval bases in the United States.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Yes, sir.

SETH MOULTON: And Mr. Secretary, will you commit to making sure that the other services not represented here today will do the same by Friday, May 5th?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, Congressman, I’m not going to commit to Friday, May 5th. I know how tough the bureaucracy is in the Pentagon to get something printed by the gentleman on your left hand. But I will commit to doing this expeditiously as quick as we possibly can to get the poster made and get it distributed to where it needs to go.

SETH MOULTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MIKE ROGERS: Chair now recognize the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Banks.

JIM BANKS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Last fall before the Supreme Court, the Solicitor general argued in favor of continuing to use race as a factor in university and service academy admissions. Secretary Del Toro if the Supreme Court as we expect strikes down the use of racial preferences in universities and includes the service academies in this ruling, will the Navy stop its affirmative action practices for military academy admissions at the naval academy.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman. The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis has used a whole multiple approach in picking it’s candidates to become midshipmen at the Naval Academy. And that is a methodology that has been successful for decades and it takes into account race, it takes into account many other factors whether you played sports, you know what job you had, where you came from, what hardships you might have suffered through.

JIM BANKS: Secretary, we make a commitment to this committee if the Supreme Court rules that at all if the Supreme Court rules [Crosstalk] and says to stop using race — race as a — as a part of the admissions standards at the military academies will the Naval Academy abide by it?

CARLOS DEL TORO: As a member of the executive, the Department of the Navy and me as Secretary of the Navy will always follow.

JIM BANKS: Have you had any discussions at all with the Naval Academy, about what that transition plan might look like if that Supreme court ruling happens?

CARLOS DEL TORO: There’s no need right now for me to have discussions on a transition plan for a law that hasn’t been passed.

JIM BANKS: So how quickly could you change those standards if the Supreme Court says to stop?

CARLOS DEL TORO: As quickly as is reasonably possible to fulfill the law.

JIM BANKS: But no — no planning at this point, no discussion.

CARLOS DEL TORO: No plan to change the whole person multiple approach that the Naval Academy has used for decades very successfully to create great leaders across the Marine Corps and the Navy as the two that are sitting here before me no.

JIM BANKS: Okay, well — well understood. This month the Vice CNO Lisa Franchetti said that the Navy will likely miss its recruiting goals for this year by 6000 sailors, falling 16 percent short of its target. admiral Gilday, how is the recruiting crisis harming the Navy’s Ability to fully manned or deployed vessels?

MICHAEL GILDAY: It’s going to have an impact, sir, in terms of being able to man every billeted, see what we’re trying to do to mitigate that. Well, first of all, we’re — we’re very focused on recruiting in terms of attracting talent. But in terms of what we’re going to have to do to mitigate that, we — we are trying to incentivize sea duty for those that have moved ashore as we owe them that that kind of shore duty but to get them back to sea in leadership positions.

And we’ve had a lot of success in doing that. We’re trying to — right now our manning at sea is over 90 percent.

JIM BANKS: You would say, you would agree that the falling short of recruitment puts more pressure on our sailors?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Absolutely. We can’t afford to have gaps out there and have people doing twice the work.

JIM BANKS: You did tell me before though that while recruitment is off. Below our target retention is strong in the United States Navy is that, is that right? It is and what can we learn from that?

MICHAEL GILDAY: So, so a few things, I think — I think the work we’ve done to empower people to allow them to have more choices in terms of where they’re going to serve next inside it has to meet their professional development in terms of requirements. But to — to be for the system to be more transparent to give sailors and their families the ability to plan ahead.

I think we’ve — we’ve given them that type of — we’ve empowered them to make — to be — to have a greater — do you have greater leverage in making those decisions.

JIM BANKS: Secretary Del Toro, last month in the Bahamas, you said that fighting climate change was one of your top priorities as a secretary. This comes as the Biden administration proposes to further shrink our Navy. And while China continues a massive expansion of our fleet, where do you rank climate change among other priorities of yours as the secretary?

We know in the military, we know when you make one thing a priority, you have to acknowledge that other things might be less of a priority. So we’re just climate change factor into the priorities that you have is the Secretary of the Navy.

CARLOS DEL TORO: As I said then it is a top priority. Let me give you an example. When I was commanding officer of the USS Bulkeley and I tied up to one of our new piers in Norfolk that two double decker pier, actually all the utilities were on the lower part of the double decker pier. And — and now we appreciate the — I appreciate the anecdote.

I appreciate the anecdote on our earlier. [Crosstalk]

JIM BANKS: It’s my time. Where do you rank climate change with say recruiting, what’s more important?

CARLOS DEL TORO: They’re all equally important. They all have an impact on our combat readiness or growing our fleet. Everything that I do as Secretary of the Navy. [Crosstalk]

JIM BANKS: Make climate change your top priority then recruitment is a lesser priority. So where does it rank in your priorities as Secretary of the Navy?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I stated where my injury priorities are strengthened maritime dominance, strengthened our cultural warfighting excellence and improve our relationships with our allies and partners around the world and climate is included in all three of those.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired and I recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Carbajal.

SALUD CABRAJAL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome to all the witnesses. Admiral Gilday and General Berger, thank you for your service. I wish you the best in your next endeavors and certainly our country is better because of your service, so thank you. Today, I’m going to focus on our most precious resource, our personnel.

I want to start with the focus on recruiting on the recruiting challenges of our Department of Defense, the Navy and the Marine Corps are facing today.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Secretary Del Toro, your testimony highlighted a demand for a more aggressive recruiting approach. How are you getting after it? And can you touch on any strategies and metrics? Because oftentimes, we talk about a lot of programs, a lot of interesting concepts, but do we have metrics to measure how well we’re doing?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Yes, Congressman and we actually pay a hell of a lot of attention to our metrics and our data and how we recruit obviously. You know, when I’ve traveled the country, talking to recruiters both in the Marine Corps and the Navy, the number one complaint that they actually have is getting regaining access to our high schools.

And this is largely because high schools have been closed largely to COVID. We haven’t been able to actually talk to the instructors, the guidance counselors, the students themselves. So we’ve got to regain that credibility with all our high schools, be able to get back in there and talk to our marketplace.

We also need to recruit from the entire marketplace, right? So we need far more women in our Navy and our Marine Corps. I’m looking for tough women to join both the Navy and the Marine Corps. And inspiring them in ways that proves to them that despite what Ms. Sherill said actually that there is actually hope for women that they will be able to advance to the highest ranks in both the Marine Corps and the Navy and that’s what this leadership team is dedicated to doing, And Admiral Franchetti is the perfect example of that as our current vice chief of naval operations for example.

So that’s the message we want to send. It’s a positive message we need you. We need you to come join our service and serve in our nation’s national security.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Thank you. Is there anything Congress can do to assist in boosting recruitment and retention other than badgering you about silly things?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Continue to send a positive message to all of Americans that service in the armed services is an honorable thing. Despite whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent. Where you may come from. This is about serving our country. This is about protecting the Constitution of the United States and that there are many things that can be drawn positive lessons, lifelong lessons that can be drawn from a service in uniform.

SALUD CARBAJAL: Thank you. As we work to increase recruitment for our military, it’s important the new recruits and service members understand the life changing potential opportunities the military presents. It most certainly helped me. As I looked at the DOD 2021 demographic report, it shows an increase in minority group representation in the office of ranks from, ’01-’06. However, all the general officer ranks showed decline across the board with the Navy showing an unfortunate decrease of 4.2 percent.

What are we doing? What are we doing to change that? To make sure that the demographics of our military represents the demographics of our country at all levels? For instance, the Marine Corps one in every four Marines are from Hispanic descent. So when it comes to warriors, who do you think is at the front of the spear fighting these wars?

So what are we doing to address this serious issue with metrics and what is this telling young recruits and service members that we don’t take enough action to correct that misrepresentation?

CARLOS DEL TORO: So from the top, let me say that we recognize this challenge. Our enlisted corps needs to have individuals that they see like themselves so that they can continue to advance as well too. We’re putting in a lot of resources in trying to recruit more Hispanics, African Americans, people of Asian backgrounds, everyone across America, people from all over the Country of all types to come into our services so that we can actually build the banks that are necessary to eventually get people to rise to the general and the admiral levels as well too.

And we’re taking a very close look at how we select folks and making sure that there’s proper representation on those boards that will take into consideration everybody’s capabilities like a meritocracy actually should in terms of making those selections. But there is positive news when you take a look at the advancements from ’06 to ’07 in the last couple of years.

For example, we see increasing numbers of minorities across the board that are actually being selected from ’05 to ’06 and ’06 to ’07. So I think it is trending in the right direction, but allow the commandant and the CNO to further comment.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, we’ve seen positive trends ’01 to ’06 across every demographic in the last five years. I can give you specifics on all of those.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. I recognize gentleman from Florida, Mr. Waltz.

MICHAEL WALTZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And — and as much as I respect my colleague, I don’t think these conversations are silly at all. I think they’re fundamental to the type of fighting force that we have. And when I continue to have cadets, military members or family members calling me and reaching out with what I think is — silly and things that divert them from their warfighting focus and ameritocracy that the military should be. It’s incredibly concerning.

I just received a call from a senior cadet who’s decided not to join the Air Force because he was number one in his ROTC program, but he was told by his department that they’ve never had a woman at the top. And so he was going to be number two, because they weren’t meeting their diversity goals. So I think these conversations are actually fundamental in how we maintain the best fighting force.

And I think black, white, brown, man, woman, you name it, they need to see their leaders as the best that they absolutely can be and they can transcend whatever background or whatever held them back through the United States military. Which has been the tradition and I hope that we can stay focused on that.

In that regard, a lot of conversation on recruiting, I asked all of the senior enlisted leaders, which service actually is collecting data. Are they polling or are they talking to influencers or are they talking to folks who are initially interested? But then said no. Only the army is a system — a system wide polling program.

Mr. Secretary, is that accurate? Because none of the senior enlisted leaders said besides the Army that they can point to data. We have narratives, COVID, wokeism, extremism, what have you. We have a lot of thoughts on narratives. Do you have data that you can send the committee?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I’m pretty confident we have data coming particularly data coming into the — the — the recruiting commanders themselves.

MICHAEL WALTZ: Have you seen polling?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I personally have not looked at polling data, no.

MICHAEL WALTZ: So we’re short, we have a huge impact on the force, but you’re testifying today, you haven’t seen any type of polling data.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, I’ll leave that to my chief recruiters, both in the Navy and the Marines Corps.

MICHAEL WALTZ: I would think it would be a key — key priority for you, Mr. Secretary.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, I’ve had meetings with, I meet with them once a month. But I myself have not looked at the raw polling data coming out from the recruits themselves.

MICHAEL WALTZ: I would encourage — I would encourage that obviously, but also if we could have a follow up, if you could share that with us because we’re putting measures in place or authorizing measures it needs to be based on data, not what we think is going on. Fair?

CARLOS DEL TORO: No, it’s fair. I mean, I think there’s a wide recognition that we’re struggling to recruit across the board and we’ve got to do better.

MICHAEL WALTZ: And we need to have empirical data to understand why. Admiral Gilday, if we can just talk about — ASW for a minute, anti-submarine warfare. Key thing that obviously the PRC is investing in to get it our — our advantage. I know we have a significant advantage that they’re trying to catch up with. The Chinese have surpassed us in numbers of submarine, not in capability, but at least in numbers coupled with the Russians.

I’m concerned that there’s no additional procurements for P-8. I understand there’s a validated requirement for 138, but we’re going to sit at 128. If you could speak to that briefly, but also in my visits out there I mean, the P-8 is a great — great platform, but it’s burning through about 50 percent more sonar buoys than — than the P-3 did.

I worry in general about our stocks forward, but I’m particularly worried about our ASD capabilities. Can you speak to that please?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Yes, sir, on the numbers and 128, So the initial — you’re right, the initial requirement was up in the mid 130s. We dialed back to 128 just based on what we were seeing out there with respect to real world missions or efficiencies with respect to sortie rates. And the also the results that we saw in WarGames.

MICHAEL WALTZ: Is the requirement lowered?

MICHAEL GILDAY: It is right, so — so — so we came from 135 to — to 128. With respect to sonobuoy usage. So, we have seen an increase in usage against certain types of submarines. I would sir, I don’t — I don’t mean to be evasive. I would like the opportunity to go into more detail with you in terms of the different capabilities that.

MICHAEL WALTZ: We’re breaking out the joint venture, right or we’re moving beyond that and I’m worried that we have a gap, and I don’t — I would welcome a briefing on how we’re going to address that gap moving forward to keep not only for our own fleet but for our Allies that are also purchasing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman and I recognize the gentleman from Maine Mr. Golden for five minutes.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chair and gentlemen. Thank you for being here today and for your service to the country. Admiral Gilday, as you know, getting the transition between the flight 3DTG51 production and the start of the DDGX program is going to be important for the large surface combatant industrial base. And Congress has taken steps to help this transition including a requirement for land-based testing programs for DDGX components as well as last year’s provision for a DDGX common design collaboration with the industry.

According to a reporting requirement, in a prior defense bill, the Navy projected an optimal overlap transition period for three years of additional DDG 51 procurement. Once the initial DDGX is — is funded and this seems to match up with comments you’ve made before such as last year at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Is that still your — your position Admiral?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Yes, sir, and I won’t speak for the secretary, but I know that our discussions have reflected that we need a sound transition plan for industry with overlap between Flight three DGS and DDGX. And that strategy is absolutely going to be informed by the two prime vendors HII, Ingalls and also Bath Ironworks.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you. Just a few days ago, China conducted exercises around Taiwan where it practiced blockading the island and precision strikes and in response to the Navy carried out a routine Taiwan Strait transit and the Navy has also recently demonstrated freedom of navigation by sailing near manmade Chinese controlled islands in the South China Sea, what type of ship conducted these operations, Admiral?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Destroyer.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you, sir. General Berger, what is the Marine Corps doing alongside the Navy to complement freedom of navigation operations to demonstrate to those in the South China Sea. That Chinese assertions that the entire body is their sovereign territory is actually not the case. And that freedom of navigation will be enforced.

DAVID BERGER: As you pointed out, and I’ll use AMPHIB ships as an example. The Chinese navy has 38 AMPHIB ships, building more. They’re exporting them. We have 31 and we’re going downhill. What do we need to be doing forward? We need to be married with the Navy as a deterrent force and that means evolving into in addition to what we normally do in joint forcible entry things like Expeditionary Advanced Base operations where we have naval strike missiles that can assist that can be a complementary capability To the ASW and surface capability that the Navy already has.

So, it’s a team approach with the stand in forces and embarked aboard amphibious ships, both anti surface and anti-subsurface, all of that.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you. Before the hearing started, you spoke to me a little bit about the importance of the Marine Corps mission at our embassies around the world. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about the importance of that mission, but also about some of the most recent actions taken by Marines abroad in service to the country.

DAVID BERGER: Thank you, Congressman he and I were talking about the — the Marine detachment that came out of Sudan a few days ago and they got back to Quantico day before yesterday. So, Sergeant Major Black and I went down there and met with them. Like the rest of the diplomats, they flew out with the small backpack and that’s it. But amazing when you listen to them, you ask them how the last two or three days go. You’re a marine.

You would know where I’m going with this. Just flat-out discipline, focus on the mission destruction of classified materials, protection of the embassy, they manned two post continued to man them until the ambassador went on the last aircraft. Handed, brought down the American flag, handed it to folded it up as you would expect handed it to the ambassador.

And through all this, all this is led by a staff sergeant, no officers a staff sergeant, because that’s how well trained, how disciplined they are. You would be incredibly proud of them. And that’s the case at every embassy that we provide a security detachment to. Small detachments led by noncommissioned officers, staff noncommissioned officers doing what you’d expect Marines to do.

JARED GOLDEN: Thank you. I appreciate that. I am proud of them. I know you are too, and I know that we all are. So, thank you for your time leading the Marine Corps as commandant these past few years. I appreciate it very much semper fi.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank the gentleman. I recognize this gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fallon for five minutes.

PATRICK FALLON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, Secretary Del Toro and Admiral, you’re both intimately familiar I’m sure with the water contamination aboard the USS Nimitz?

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, sir.

PATRICK FALLON: Okay, so last December I had a constituent reach out, her son’s, a sailor on the Nimitz and she was rightfully concerned about the jet fuel and her son being sick. And of course, we want to be good members of Congress. So, she said that they were told not to make much of a fuss and don’t bring it up and they were even nervous about coming forward.

So, I just want to get to the truth, so I wanted to hear the Navy side of the story so January fourth, we reach out to the liaison and ask for a report back and then it’s — we get nothing. So, three weeks go by into January, what was the exact date January 23rd, was January 24th, nothing January 23rd, nothing reached out again March 3rd, nothing now, April 28th, nothing.

Can you all help me out with finding out what the Navy’s perspective is and how you’re going to handle this? Because I don’t know what to tell this mom and I hate that wasting a minute of my valuable five minutes talking about this because it should have been done at a much lower level.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, we’d be happy to give you a full report on the conditions that took place there. I will tell you that the material conditions that were found at fault were all fixed and there’s no current issues at all on the Ike, but we will get back to the full detail.

PATRICK FALLON: Yeah, because we’re working in good faith here, absolutely. I just, you know crickets and it’s just — it’s unfortunate. So, getting to recruiting, we’ve heard now three or four members talking about it. I think it’s an absolute crisis and I would encourage you, Mr. Secretary, to hate to use baseball analogies, but as a Red Sox fan, we didn’t win the World Series for 86 years.

And then we had leadership come in and take care of this and they examine the data, not they didn’t delegate it down the general manager and the President and the owners looked at this stuff. So, I would really encourage you to be on the tip of the spear because we’ve got to figure this out and what specific plans do you have to increase recruiting so we can actually hit our levels.

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, let me assure you, this is an all hands on deck. I’ve been working on this for 18 months. I want to leave you with the suggestion that the data doesn’t matter. We aren’t looking at data. There are people in the Department of the Navy both in the Marine Corps and the Navy full task force that are looking at everything that actual potential candidate recruit does.

And we’re also trying to be innovative about what do we do differently that we haven’t done in the past in order to be able to recruit more effectively, right? And what’s standing the marketplace is one of the things that we did.

PATRICK FALLON: Specifically, what are we going to do?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, I’ll give you a perfect example. Just two days ago I actually went to the Saint John’s College High School for example, that’s a high school that had not been specifically targeted for quite some time. I met with the cadet corps there. There was a cadet corps of 300, for example, we had an enormous amount of minority candidates and specifically Hispanics and people who had come from Africa that have a desire to join the Navy.

So, we’re now linking our recruiting forces up with that school well, that’s a cadet school. We’ll do that.

PATRICK FALLON: With a recruit, we do that respectfully with a thousand several thousand.

CARLOS DEL TORO: That’s exactly right and we’re looking at expanding that model across the United States. We’ve also got an additional funding from the office of Secretary of Defense for our marketing perspective as well too. I actually even gone out to Hollywood for example, to try to engage their support and doing PSAs and reaching out to high schools and community colleges and others to sort of help expand them.

PATRICK FALLON: I think you heard bipartisan concern absolutely. And if I could ask General Berger, the one branch that has met the recruiting goals during this crisis has been the Marines. Can you enlighten us as to — and I know the smallest force, but what is — what approaches are you taking to achieve these goals? Because I would love the Navy, Air Force and Army to learn from the Marines?

DAVID BERGER: It is a tough recruiting environment. I mean, one of our sons is on recruiting duty right now. It’s not easy, but the Marine Corps doesn’t have a recruiting crisis because probably two or three main reasons. One people high school, college just like they always have want to join something that’s a challenge.

Something that allows them to push to another level. And they view the Marines as sort of an elite force that would be hard to get into. You cannot — you can’t join the Marine Corps; you have to become a marine. So, part of it is the Marine Corps, more part of it is the quality of the recruiters. We hand select everybody who goes out on recruiting duty.

They go through tough training, they are our very best majors in 52, recruiting stations, the best majors we have, we put — we put the best people out there.

PATRICK FALLON: And just with the few seconds I have left, I think China in is the largest threat secretary respectfully and not climate change. Considering that the United States footprint carbon footprint has been reduced by almost 20 percent over the last 20 years. And China is opening two coal plants on average a week and their carbon footprint has increased by 300 percent.

CARLOS DEL TORO: I agree with you. I never said climate change was the number one priority. I said climate change was a top priority. I have always consistently said that China is the.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. I recognize the gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. McClellan, for five minutes.

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN: Thank you, Mr. Chair, secretary Del Toro, good to see you. Admiral Gilday and General Berger, thank you very much for your service. I really appreciate in your submitted remarks, you’re focusing on quality-of-life issues which are critical to recruitment and retention and particularly your focus on meeting the mental health needs of our service members and addressing suicide.

And I want to talk a little more on the systemic mental health crisis within our armed services and particularly at naval facilities in Virginia. Where at least five sailors assigned to the USS George Washington, which has been docked in Norfolk since 2017, have died by suicide in the last year, And I appreciate the briefing that was held for some of the members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee.

Unfortunately, these sailors are not alone, and several sailors assigned to other ships undergoing refueling and complex overhaul at the mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk have died by suicide within the past five years. I know for many of our sailors this seems like an unrelenting tragedy.

And I want to focus my questioning on this issue. So first, Secretary Del Toro, can you describe how acute the shortage of trained mental health professionals is across the Navy broadly? And more specifically, how acute is that shortage for naval bases where ships are frequently undergoing refueling and complex overhaul?

CARLOS DEL TORO: It is a significant challenge Congresswoman We’ve been trying to do everything else we can, trying to work with the office of the Secretary of defense, particularly the Defense Health Agency who often owns these professionals and assigns them to the locations where our sailors and our Marines work Globally.

But we are trying to get to a better place. The Secretary of defense is fully hyper focused on this issue and trying to recruit as many as they can from the private sector. I believe the solution quite frankly is to train them intrinsically from within. We need to actually train far many more corpsman and we’re moving in that direction.

It may take a year or two to get to the number of mental health technicians that we need, but it’s tough to compete with the private sector as well to where they’re also extremely shorthanded as well. At the same time, we’re also doing other things like putting more chaplains on our ships, for example. And that’s proven to be very, very effective where we have chaplains on our ships permanently stationed on the average, we get anywhere from 30 to 40 actually calls.

Where we don’t have them on the ships. It could be anywhere from zero to about five calls to chaplains if they’re stationed off the ship. So, a lot of it is helping with their life issues and not necessarily the most complicated of the mental health issues, but they’re seeking life guidance. There have been far too many sailors and marines and service members who we have lost due to suicide.

We need to do a better job across the board, and we’re committed to doing that.

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN: Thank you. And I would note, we’ve heard anecdotally from mental health professionals at the USS George Washington that they’re overwhelmed with the needs of the sailors there. So, the more that you can do to address this shortage and particularly focusing on the ships that are undergoing retrofitting the better.

At this point, Secretary of the Navy, I believe, has concluded its investigations into the series of suicides aboard the USS George Washington, the USS George H.W Bush and the USS Theodore Roosevelt investigation is still ongoing. In all of these investigations is the Navy noticing a pattern of what particular causes are for these suicides that we should be aware of and seek to address or is it a wide range of — of reasons?

CARLOS DEL TORO: It is a wide range of reasons, and our responsibility is to address as many of those reasons as we possibly can with different approaches, which is what we’re trying to do, mental health providers certainly, but also to make dramatic improvements in the quality of life, especially for those ships that are in shipyards, it’s hard duty.

Especially when you have so many young sailors there. They require actually a proper amount of oversight to the CNO’s point. Having those ships properly, manned with individuals who can provide that oversight as well to and help them through the problems that they face. We’re making investments for very specifically in at HII and three parking garages for example.

So, to try to relieve some of those stressors associated We’ve moved many of the junior personnel off the ship unless they’re on duty itself to try to ease with some of the stresses that come from living on board the ship as well too. But there’s many other aspects, negative aspects related to suicide as well to — that have to do with family relationships.

So, we’re taking an across-the-board approach to try to help to give people hope because that’s what we got to give them. Hope that they can get through the challenges that they face, whether it be a family challenge, whether it be a — a drug challenge, whether it be a performance challenge or whether it be a stressor challenge.

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired. I recognize gentleman from Georgia, Mr. McCormick for five minutes.

RICH MCCORMICK: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, it is an honor to be amongst your presence. I appreciate you being here today. I want to note that when — when I was in the service, it truly defined the rest of my life. I still identify as a marine and everything I do, whether I be a physician or a congressman or anything, I still think like a marine, like it or not.

I will say when I first joined it was P.X. Kelly was — was our — our common, God rest his soul. And then we had Al Gray, we had some legends. I actually had arguments with General Kulak on reorganization of the Marine Corps. When I was an anchor, he — he cut our program significantly and I remember having worries about the reorganization of the Marine Corps back when I was just a captain.

And those conversations aren’t quite the same as when you’re a congressman, that’s for sure. I will say as we’ve evolved and the nice thing to see about the Marine Corps still maintain its recruiting standards, whether it be from our stellar reputation, our fine uniforms or the handsome men that wear them.

It’s been — it’s been nice to see that continue. What I’m worried about is we continue in our mission. And you’ve seen that right now we have a humanitarian crisis in Sudan for example, and we’ll continue to see that throughout the history of the world where we’ll have to go in and rescue people from bad places.

Have we seen significant changes in the way we’re reorganizing and how we’re going to be able to do a mission in Sudan and other places when we have to go out and and maintain that mu stability for those cycles, especially with ship and personnel shortages. And and as we shrink to accommodate with technology with that deployment cycle, that’s very hard on families.

But still the same deployment cycle with fewer people because we’re more invested in technologies. How do we accommodate for that?

DAVID BERGER: Like first of all, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, amphibious ready groups that you remember, that’s — that’s the best chance you have of responding to a crisis immediately. And there needs to be one in the Pacific and one in the Mediterranean, Africa, CENTCOM area 12 months a year. That’s your — that is the most versatile tool that a combatant commander has because it’s sovereign territory and you can solve a lot of problems coming from your own sovereign territory from the sea.

The — the modernization of the Marine Corps is tailored and I would say in — in like the Marine littoral regiments that are in the Indo-Pacific, they’re focused on deterring a particular threat. The rest of the Marine Corps and the — and them are very versatile and can handle the problems that we need to handle.

I think the challenge is not being nearby when the problem happens as you highlight, and you don’t have three weeks to get there. You need, the nation needs something there in a week or three days.

RICH MCCORMICK: Do you think we still have more to do in Sedan?

DAVID BERGER: There are more Americans that are in Sudan from what I understand that want to get out. Right now, there’s at least one or two convoys moving overland. So, I don’t know how many eventually will want to get out. But the numbers that we understand are there’s — there’s still Americans in Sudan, some of them, some of them that want to get out.

Correct.

RICH MCCORMICK: You mentioned that some forces are dedicated towards a specific mission, some are more flexible like the model percentage wise. What do you think that the mission, how many people have a specific mission when you’re talking about the way we’ve reorganized?

DAVID BERGER: The two regiments that we are reorganizing, one in Hawaii, one in Japan, they’re still very flexible, very adaptable, but they are tailor made to be a forward stand in force. That represents all of probably a total of less than 5000 Marines out of the whole operating force, which is 100,000.

RICH MCCORMICK: Got it. Final question, I know this is probably a short because I only have about a minute left, but there’s been some controversy. Obviously we’ve had some generals from some legends weigh in on this and I don’t know how much. I’m just curious how much interaction have you had with these former commandants and former generals who have their own distinct opinions based on their unique experiences at that unique time?

How much interaction have you had with you, and do you think that’s going to continue to be a problem for future commandants as we develop this political climate of — of reorganization?

DAVID BERGER: It varies between them, some of them more frequently as you might imagine, some less frequently. Probably the more recent former commandants General Kneller, General Dunford I talked with very frequently farther back, you go less frequently and not because of anything other than probably time. Every redesign, every modernization document that we send out, every update on training, every update on talent management, I send to all of them first before we ever release it because I need their feedback.

RICH MCCORMICK: Got it. Well, I can for a second, say semper fidelis, Semper Fortis. Thank you, sir.

MIKE ROGERS: Thank the gentleman chair. I recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Davis for five minutes.

DON DAVIS: Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member Smith. I want to start today if I may, by extending A deep appreciation, especially to the wives who are here today, miss Linda and Donna, thank you so much. And too obviously you know staff members who are grinding it out every day to help your members and thank you for what you’re doing.

I was talking to one and I said I knew a little bit more about the Air Force and he forgave me today. But for the record, I’m going with the President to present the commander in chief trophy to the Air Force today. But let me say Admiral Gilday and General Berger, thank you so much sincerely for your service to this country and all that you continue to do. And to Mr. Secretary, thank you too.

General Milley came to this committee, and he shared these words as he spoke out losing men and women in combat. He said it was personal. And then it went on for me to express this personal when we see our members go, serve our country, come back, take their lives and I’m glad the work that we are doing there.

But I’ll tell you one other thing that’s personal today is when we inadvertently cause harm to our military families. So military families impacted by toxic wastewater at Camp Lejeune desperately need some level of certainty about how to process these claims that they’re bringing forward. And according to former US District court judge of the Eastern District of North Carolina, James Deaver, he said with the possibility of 1 million cases getting fouled, it could take more than 1000 years to resolve them without streamlining the process.

Now Mr. Secretary, I’m not sure if you’re planning on sticking around for a thousand years, but my question is how can we or can you give this committee just a sense of the timeline of how we can maybe get these claims process?

CARLOS DEL TORO: This is a very complicated issue and let me begin by saying how important it is actually in how pleased I am that the Biden administration has actually worked to ensure that we meet the commitment of these military families who have been negatively been negatively impacted by the toxic water at Camp Lejeune.

Having said that, there are an enormous number of cases that are now coming in and we in the military services across the Department of Defense have to gear up to try to handle these cases far more expedited manner. It’s going to take a lot of additional resources.

DON DAVIS: Secretary, if there’s not a clear timeline, then my question is how do we streamline the process?

CARLOS DEL TORO: We’ll have to look at doing both. Congressman, We’ll have to look at doing both, but each case has to be investigated. Each case has to be looked in carefully as a matter of law. Regretfully, there are steps that we may not be able to mr…

DON DAVIS: Mr. Secretary, let me ask, have we use for instance data a grid to group cases, have we given consideration that or settlement?

CARLOS DEL TORO: General counsel is looking into all these issues, Congressman and I’m more than pleased to get back to you and work with your staff to come up with better ideas on how to do it more expeditiously as well.

DON DAVIS: Well, Mr. Secretary, some believe and have conveyed to me been from North Carolina that they believe the Navy has delayed stonewalled and even tried to cover up perhaps what has happened at Camp Lejeune over 34 years. What would you say to those families?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I can’t speak to the ills of the past obviously, but I accept responsibility for what we do now. And you have my commitment that we will do now to try to expedite this process as quickly as — as I can to build to rebuild trust one action at a time one day at a time.

DON DAVIS: I would like to enter this is an article from WRAL in my home state titled Camp Lejeune Toxic Water Claims Get First Day in Court into the record.

MIKE ROGERS: Without objection so ordered.

DON DAVIS: I just want to end on this note. This is a note from Master Sergeant Jerry Inswinger, who’s retired now from the Marine Corps. He’s talking about his daughter, Janie, who died in 1985 at the age of nine of leukemia. I started this journey in August of 1997 and even then, it was 14 years after Janie had been diagnosed and 13 years after she died that I hadn’t heard anything about the water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

I would hope that we would do the right thing by just giving them their day towards justice and a fair process in a timely manner. Mr. Chair I yield back on behalf of all these impacted.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman now recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms. Jacobs, for five minutes.

SARA JACOBS: Well, thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all three of you for being here and in particular General, General Berger and Admiral Gilday for your service and your long career and — and also thank you, Admiral Gilday and Secretary Del Toro for all of your work on making sure we address the housing issues.

When while there have been three carriers in San Diego, I appreciate your creativity and the many conversations we’ve had over many meals on this topic. And I look forward to moving even further in this year’s NDAA on that issue. And — and I’ll be continuing to track the situation closely on the ground in San Diego.

As you know, while housing is a huge issue for us in San Diego, it’s not the only quality of life issue. One of the things I hear a lot from sailors and marines in our region is about child care. As of June Navy region, Southwest had 4000 children on its waitlist for child development center slots. And just last month Ranking Member Smith joined me in San Diego for a roundtable with parents and child care providers at Naval Air Station, North Island, where we heard a lot about these concerns.

So first, General Berger, I know the Marine Corps has had some success here, including the $37.7 million construction project at Miramar. And I have to say I’m a huge fan of Colonel Bedell and all of the work he’s doing on quality of life issues there. How are you planning to address the remaining unmet waitlist for childcare services at Marine Corps bases, particularly in the San Diego area?

And then Admiral Gilday, how are you planning to address your unmet wait list?

DAVID BERGER: Congressman like other people have said, you’ve mentioned it too, this is — we consider this a readiness issue. If you can’t solve health care, then people are worried about other things other than the mission. This is directly tied to readiness. Our average wait time right now is about 100 days. That’s not acceptable.

100 days is too long. What do we need to do about it? In most cases with the exception of Miramar, it’s not that we don’t have the building. It’s that we don’t have the childcare providers, we can’t hire them now. I think our learning over the past two or three years, that’s two problems pay, in other words, they could — they could make the same salary or better outside the gate or it took me too long to apply.

I applied it, took me four months, I had to get a job, sorry, but I couldn’t wait that long. We have got to cut down the application time and we — and we have brought up the pay now to be corresponding with outside the gate. But the wait time right now is a real challenge.

MICHAEL GILDAY: Ma’am, broadly, we have two childcare centers in construction right now, one of them’s at Point Loma and three additional in this proposed budget. Our waitlist has gone from 8,000 last year down to 5,500 this year across the Navy. And one area that we’re trying to put more focus on is a program called Military Childcare in your neighborhood where we actually go out and we try to find additional spaces.

So, we’ve increased from 5,523 up to — we hope to beyond 6,000 in ’24 in this budget. With respect to the comment that General Berger made about childcare workers, that is — we are — right now our staffing is at about 80 percent. What we’re trying to do to attract talent is, is to offer above market median wages as much as $5 above — above that that median.

The last thing I would mention, we have gone out to a couple of colleges, one of them is NC State, the other is Utah Tech and they are providing us additional surge help during the high occupancy during the high usage months, particularly in the summer.

DAVID BERGER: If I could add just one, this is kind of a shout out, thanks. Part of it. Part of the challenge in staffing was people moving from one location to another and they had to start from scratch. The transferability part, huge. Also the ability, the flexibility like the CNO and I and the second that we’re talking about yesterday, where if you work in a — in a child development center and you have a child that you want cared there, you get half off and if you have two of them, another 20 percent, those huge positives.

CARLOS DEL TORO: And if I just — one last thing, we’ve increased recipients for those who choose to go to outside child daycare centers as well too. Thanks to your support.

SARA JACOBS: Thank you and also General Berger, thanks for your help in addressing the issue at Pendleton, where child care workers weren’t able to have their kids at the same childcare center. I know that’s been huge. I will just say I’m very supportive of increasing pay for our child care workers. Anything I can do to help with that?

We also know that, that can sometimes increase costs, and I know DOD recently raised parent fees for on base childcare. So, I just urge you to also make sure you’re taking into account addressing the affordability for the families themselves. While we’re working to make sure we’re getting childcare workers, a living wage.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

MIKE ROGERS: I think the gentlelady spoke was on that topic as the panelists all know this is a big deal for me that we deal with this quality of life issue and there’s no more important aspect in this child care problem. So, with that, we’ll recognize another member of the California delegation, Mr. Khanna, for five minutes.

RO KHANNA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for your service to our nation. General Berger would it be fair to say that right now, we have naval superiority and could thwart any Chinese invasion in Taiwan or any Chinese blockade of Taiwan?

DAVID BERGER: That’s an accurate statement from my perspective. Yes, sir.

RO KHANNA: Mr. Secretary, would you support that?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I absolutely support that statement.

RO KHANNA: My second question is what more do we need as China continues to put more money to build their navy? Do we have sufficient long-range missiles to be able to shoot down Chinese ships if that were needed? And do you think we should be having more long-range missiles in that area? Any — any of you?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, the answer to that is no, and that’s why we’re trying to do multi-year procurement, essentially bundle buy across four significant missile systems. One in order to — in order to a maximize production lines in the US, but also give a steady demand signal to those vendors. I would say it hasn’t come up. I don’t think in this hearing yet is that there are only two producers in the United States, a rocket motors for these exquisite weapons.

And so, we are at a — we are at a premium with respect to the capacity.

RO KHANNA: And Admiral, I think that is a excellent point because in World War Two, in addition to the bravery of our men who scaled Normandy, we won because we out produced Japan and Germany. We had double the production. And today one of my concerns is the state of our defense industrial base. The fact that we are already stretched to get weapons to Ukraine.

We need to do better in terms of building the defense capability so that if there were ever an invasion, we are capable of quickly mobilizing. Could any of you comment on the importance generally of building American manufacturing and a defense industrial base from a national security perspective?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I think you’re absolutely right, Congressman, I think this President’s budget starts to send the right signal, especially when you take a look at the doubling of the amount of funds available for missile production. And — and the shipbuilding plan over the course of the next ten years. It sends a steady signal basically on what the requirements are matched to the capacity that those shipyards can actually build.

And hopefully in the future, they’ll continue to make reinvestments in their own capabilities to build more ships faster across the board, more submarines, faster across the board, so that we can continue to commit to those numbers in greater numbers, actually those funds in greater numbers.

RO KHANNA: I’m obviously biased, I represent Silicon Valley, but I believe that a lot of the work being done there on AI, on quantum, on advanced cyber is going to be critical for our national security to prevent jamming of any of our communication systems to be able to accurately Identify and target, could you help explain from your perspective from a — from a Navy perspective what we can do to adopt the latest technology and why that’s going to matter for a future national security?

CARLOS DEL TORO: I think as you look across the Department of the Navy, we have a thousand projects alone that are committed through AI for future investments. We’re standing up to innovation Center. The Marine Corps Stand Up an innovation center in Newburgh New York and we’re standing up an innovation center in Monterey, California as well.

To further expand those investments, working closely with venture capitalists and others in Silicon Valley and across the country, quite frankly to make the necessary to transition the innovative technologies that are developing at such a high pace in the private sector to be able to more effectively integrate those into the military.

RO KHANNA: Well, I appreciate Chairman Gallagher on the subcommittee and I are very interested in helping work in a bipartisan way to even further improve the adoption of technology. And I know the chairman has expressed an interest and then I’ll look forward to working with you on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MIKE ROGERS: I thank the gentleman and I recognize the gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. Kiggins, for five minutes.

JEN KIGGANS: Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you so much to our — our panel here for being here today and with us. The average age of shipyard facilities and their supporting infrastructure is 60 plus years old, and the average age of dry docks is over 100 years. Old Norfolk Naval Shipyard was ranked as the worst 69th in regard to facility condition at any naval installation.

And we had in our office yesterday, you know guys great guys from Norfolk Naval Shipyard just talking to us not only about the condition of the dry docks and I know that what happened on the West Coast with those closures and we’re down really one dry dock That can repair an aircraft carrier in the East Coast, but also the condition of their office spaces.

They said they have charts that are red and green with different rooms and they talked about the crumbling walls and the leaking ceilings and the conditions that they described that they’re working are really — are unacceptable. And I’m sure there was a lot of discussion today about the number of ships and the strategy that the Navy has.

We’re trying to keep old ships at sea for longer and we’ve got to have our ship repair facilities there to do that. And we need the people that can repair these ships. They’re competing with places like Huntington Ingalls for Shipbuilding, which is great. We want to build ships too, but they were saying, you know, we can only offer this much money.

We are — they’re offering more money other places. So, prioritizing just our ship repair facilities is so important to me. So, in your — in your opinions, are you confident that God forbid we have some sort of — of conflict in the near future, our capabilities to repair ships, not just the regular maintenance but there will be repairs needed if there was a conflict?

Do we have that capability right now or what are we doing to prioritize that?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Well, it is a priority and we recognize the negligence that’s taking place over the past decades, basically in the PSYOP investments that we’re now making in this President’s budget alone, $2.8 billion, I just signed a $2.8 billion contract to upgrade the drydock in Hawaii, for example, and in Norfolk, we’re making great strides as well too, but more will be needed.

We have $10 Billion allotted over the FYDP actually to address the drydock problems and the shipyard problems as well too. More will be needed over the future to get these capabilities to where they need to be in the future for us to be able to maintain all the many submarines and ships that we are building today.

JEN KIGGANS: And I just ask that you prioritize their pay, for example, they said they’re offering $15 an hour that Norfolk — Norfolk ship repair whereas Huntington Ingalls can offer $20. So, they’re not able to attract the people that they need to do that. And then quality of life issues, I know we’ve made some progress there for them, but continuing to work on that.

Also just wanted to point out about the smaller ship repair industry as we look at the big ones, but I frequently hear from the smaller guys that are worried about them being awarded contracts to and we’re going to need everybody, you know if needed. So — so just looking out for those — those small businesses too is very important to my district.

And then I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend the last couple of minutes talking about base housing. It’s something that I’m passionate about any association and my understanding is that this year’s budget doesn’t have any money that goes towards base housing any association. And we have three condemned barracks.

The first day I had my staff in DC, I had them in my minivan that weekend driving around Oceana saying look at the conditions that we are asking our single — these are our unaccompanied sailors to live in. Think of any four-year college and university. You visit and the construction that goes on there, how beautiful those campuses are.

I have a senior in high school and drive around for college tours and taking pictures of the construction. It’s unbelievable how beautiful these campuses look. Think about what we ask those kids to do every night of the week in college. And what we ask these guys to do every night of the week, you know, standing watch for our great Navy.

So, it’s infuriating to me that we can’t do better for them and then sitting down with leadership and listening to their challenges of getting new living — living conditions and facilities for their sailors, we’re charging those guys for Wi-Fi at these barracks, we’re moving them into crappy barracks and then we’re charging them for Wi-Fi. So, what are you doing to prioritize living conditions?

I can’t wait to participate in the Task Force on readiness, recruitment, quality of life, but we’ve got to do better because you know as well as I do, all the ships and the aircraft don’t go anywhere without great people behind it.

CARLOS DEL TORO: We have to coordinate those facts, but we are making investments in our company housing in this President’s budget. And if you just take a look at the efforts that are going on in Key West, which is horrible, because Key West has suffered from the hurricane, challenges that they’ve had, but we’ve had to actually take down two unaccompanied housing barracks there.

We’ve had to work very aggressively to place those sailors in the community and other NWR facilities that were actually building. But you’re right, this is — I mentioned earlier in the hearing today that when I came in as secretary, about one percent of the budget was actually dedicated towards infrastructure.

Those numbers have now gone up dramatically. Just in last year alone, 7.3 percent increase in FSRM money that allows us to take care of the worst of those scenarios. And Mike, would you comment further on?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Just real quick ma’am, the money was spent on infrastructure has gone from 78 percent of the requirement to almost 90 percent of the requirement just in the last year and a half. I know that’s still unsatisfactory. We have a long way to go. We’re behind, we’re trying to get after these times expired and prioritizing exactly what needs to be fixed.

JEN KIGGANS: Thank you.

MIKE ROGERS: I can’t overstate how much that drives me nuts to hear things like she just described. I want you all to know it’s our job to get you the money. You got to tell us what you need to fix those problems. We should not have those problems at at our installations and and if we don’t give you the money, then shame on us. But you need to let us know what it takes to get after this in an expeditious way, not over a 10 or 15 year period of time.

Gentleman from Texas Mr. Veasey, recognized.

MARC VEASEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask you, Mr. Del Toro about the — the two operational deployments for the CMV-22. They had really unparalleled success when it came to conducting COD, mission, medical evaluation, Navy, naval special warfare support and search and rescue operations. And I was wondering if you could sort of enlighten us and let us know how the CMV-22 transform fleet operations and have they integrated well and improved the last mile of delivering critical spare parts to the fleet.

CARLOS DEL TORO: They have, Congressman. I think it’s been a tremendous success story. The concern I have obviously is with the combining gear beyond 800 hours that these particular planes have not have experienced quite yet. But what happens when they do actually get up there in ours and we’re working with the manufacturer to try to come up with a permanent solution to that problem set.

And they’re looking at actually designing a new combining gear in order to be able to fix that. But operationally speaking, perhaps you now can expand on what I said. I’m not aware of any problems that we’ve had.

MICHAEL GILDAY: I would just say we’re very bullish on CV-22. We ripped the Marine Corps off. It’s been another example of one service leveraging what’s been going right in another and at economies of scale, buying these aircraft craft as quickly as we can to replace an airframe. As you know, sir, that was designed and built in the 1960s.

MARC VEASEY: Yeah, no. Thank you. And I understand that the Navy is actually reassessing its concepts and operations for CMV-22 specifically concerning contested logistics scenarios. When do you anticipate completing that assessment and can you share anything with the committee?

MICHAEL GILDAY: Sir, if I could take that for the record, I’ll get back to you with an answer on that timing.

MARC VEASEY: Yeah, no. Thank you very much.

DAVID BERGER: Could I just add?

MARC VEASEY: Yeah, please.

DAVID BERGER: One extra thought. When we — when the US military evacuated the diplomats out of Sudan v-22s, Yeah, it’s the only aircraft that could do it. And two weeks ago, three weeks ago we flew MV-22s from Hawaii to the Philippines. No other aircraft in the world does that. It’s an incredible capability. Yeah, okay.

MARC VEASEY: No, no, thank you for sharing that. I wanted to move over and ask a question about mental health services to Secretary Del Toro. What is the Navy and the Marines doing when it comes to physical and mental health resources? And how is that — how are they leveraging that for retention efforts and also wanted to — for you to also think about an answer?

One of the things that we’ve heard from — from — from military service people is privacy. Because if someone has a mental health issue and they think that it’s going to, you know, inhibit them from getting a clearance or a promotion for another job they may not want to share that with someone on base. What are you doing in the area of mental health services?

CARLOS DEL TORO: [Off-mic] more mental health providers. Earlier in the hearing, I actually mentioned that though that continues to be a challenge because mental health providers aren’t out there in the private sector. So, we have to grow more of our own by training our corpsman actually to be mental health technicians that may take a year or two or three in order for us to intrinsically grow more of those to make them available.

We’ve also put more chaplains on ships, which from a family support life support perspective has helped tremendously in tackling perhaps not the most challenging mental health issues, but many life stressors that are associated with that. We’ve put together actually a mental health playbook that’s been distributed throughout all of the Navy for all our commanders and all our leadership to actually rely upon that actually points towards the resources that we have available and the teams that we have available, which we’ve also increased As well too.

It’s an all hands on deck effort and at the end of the day, it’s providing hope to our sailors and marines that whatever challenge they have, whether it’s a mental health challenge or a life challenge that their Navy family, their Marine Corps family is there to provide Them help and assistance along the way so that they do not feel as if they’re disconnected from the environment in which they work and live in.

MARC VEASEY: Yeah, do you think that in regards to their privacy, like if someone had a mental health issue and for instance, let’s say that the — that the person that they needed to meet with that the provider was in their chain of command. Do you think that that sailors and Marines feel like that they have enough privacy so they wouldn’t miss out on the next promotion or miss out getting that next level of clearance?

CARLOS DEL TORO: Congressman, our number one priority is the safe — the safety of that sailor and Marine. That’s the life is too precious. We need them to do the right thing to take care of their safety and their life. And so, we encourage them whether it’s under the Branding Act to go seek help on their own, for example, if they choose to do that.

At the same time, we also need to have a responsibility to know what’s going on with that sailor so that their military family can also try to help take care of them, right? So, it’s a dual edged sword. You have to be very, very careful with that. As well, if they’re seeking out mental health, you know, help on their own and they never share any of that with their military family, then how can we help them get to a better place with perhaps some of the life stressors that they’re going through as well too.

It’s time to remove that

MIKE ROGERS: Gentleman’s time has expired.

UNIDENTIFIED: Thank you. That issue all together.

MIKE ROGERS: I want to once again thank Admiral and Mrs. Gilday and General and Mrs. Berger for your decades of service to our nation. We cannot thank you enough for the sacrifices you have made to ensure that we remain a free great nation. So, thank you very much and I look forward to seeing each of you in the next chapters of your life, which I’m sure are going to be awesome.

Secretary Del Toro on behalf of Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, we’re going to submit some questions for the record on the status of the investigation into the death of Seaman Mullen and appreciate you responding to those when you receive them. Absolutely. And with that, we are adjourned.

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