Risk, readiness and a hollow force topped concerns on Thursday for the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing on the 2015 Army budget request and what senators heard from the two top service leaders reinforced concerns for the Army’s future without sequestration relief.
SASC Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) quoted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno, who has said without providing leaders the time and flexibility to shape the future force a hollow force will be created, and with sequestration caps the service would begin to go hollow within months.
So, Inhofe asked Odierno, “Are we hollow now?”
“We are in some ways, because we cannot sustain the level of readiness that we think is appropriate,” Odierno said. “We’re rebuilding it this year because of the bipartisan budget agreement so we’ll make some progress in ’14 and ’15, but in ’16 if sequestration comes back on line, readiness will immediately dip again. For a three- to four-year period until we can get our forces aligned, we will not be trained and modernized the way we need to be, which begins to create a level of hollowness.”
Photo: U.S. Army
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in the fiscal year 2015 budget the administration asked for an additional $26 billion to raise sequester caps for FY ’15, and will recommend additional revenues to pay for this spending above budget control caps. The Army share–$7.5 billion–would consist of $4.1 billion for readiness and $3.4 billion for the investment accounts.
If those funds were appropriated, Army Secretary John McHugh said 60 percent of the Army’s share would go to try to accelerate readiness.
Odierno said $1.8 billion would directly be related to operational tempo, or training for all components, to immediately increase force readiness.
Also, the Army has taken “a lot of risk” in base operations support, he said, so $1.5 billion would be invested in training facilities, for sustainment and maintenance on ranges. Money also would be put back into the installation support structure.
Some $200 million would go to institutional training, for such things as initial aviation training and other funds to high priority modernization programs, such as for the AH-64 Apache helicopter and UH-60 Black Hawk, MQ-1C Gray Eagle intelligence platform and into some engineering capability that have gone unfunded.
Also, a $3.1 billion in unfunded priorities have been submitted, Odierno said, most of which consists of carry-overs from the shortfall from the past couple of years..
Responding to a question from Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Odierno said constant access to training ranges is how the active force is able to deploy quickly and hit the ground running wherever they arrive.
Readiness has to do with complexity, Odierno said. As complexity grows, it requires more training.
For example, port opening is not a complex mission, he said, but for what a brigade combat team might be asked to do requires significant training to build the necessary collective capability.
That means integration, he said. “The integration of company platoons, the integration of air and ground, the integration of intelligence, the integration of fires. All of that takes significant amount of training because that integration is very, very difficult and complex.”
That is why certain capability is needed in the active component because they need to be ready, Odierno added. If they’re needed to deploy, they’ve had the training and can do what they’re asked.
As the service becomes smaller, readiness becomes even more important because “you don’t have the depth you once had.”
McHugh said training has focused on counter-terrorism, and recently switched to the train and assist mission.
“Dwindling resources caused us to greatly diminish the complexity of our training,” McHugh told Sen, Mark Udall (D-Colo.) The money wasn’t there for decisive training. Now, soldiers are returning and going into decisive action training.
This year, 19 Combat Training Center rotations are planned; 17 of them will be for decisive action, McHugh said. And that training is thanks to relief from Congress, the Bipartisan Budget Agreement for FY ’14 and ’15.
Odierno pointed out that if sequester kicks in again in 2016, those kinds of buy-backs will be immediately lost. Training will be to a lower level of complexity. In other words, training will not be collective at the brigade level, but more small unit training.
Getting in almost the last word in the hearing, Odierno reiterated what he’s said at previous hearings: “I want to be very clear…at 450 (thousand) I have defined the risk as significant in executing the Defense Strategic Guidance and at 420 (thousand) I have said we cannot implement the Defense Strategic Guidance. I want to make sure that is on the record.”
“Raising the (sequestration) budget caps to reduce their impact is essential, and is contingent on bipartisan congressional agreement,” Levin said in his opening statement. “I believe we must pursue just that, continuously and with determination in the months ahead.”