and you outlined your numbers for in-strength, let me ask. do you think you're going to be prepared to deal with another theater of war that may open up in three years at those numbers? >> congressman, i do. i think with the size of the force we have, we'll be able to conduct combat operations. we'll have the capability to do that. where we have a little bit of risk is if it gets extended. so what we are not -- what we don't have is a force that could do long-term stability operations over a long period of time. so if that occurs, we're going to have to relook growing a force again. but we'll use the reserve component as a buffer in order to have them help us to give us the time to grow the force if we get engaged in another major theater of war. >> good. and i do hope y'all vigorously pursue the fms, because i think it's a great way for us to keep some of these lines hot.

thank you very much. my time has expired. >> thank you, mr. conaway? >> thank you, and gentlemen, thank you for being here today. appreciate that i want to make a fortuitous comment. we appreciate the continued commitment to the program because i do think those are important to leaner and more agile and all those kind of adjectives that we throw at it. but those are the tools that i think allow you to go that. following up on mr. rogers' comments, and perhaps page 7 of your summary listing army components, you list the reserve component as one unit. and maybe today or soon we can start that arduous conversation about why we have a reserve and a guard. not today, but it may make sense given the look at it. i was here in '05 and on and watched some of the struggles of converting the guard and reserve from a strategic force with a domestic mission to a tactical force that was used extensively

to today down range you can't tell, unless you know the patches and understand the work chart, you can't tell the difference between a guard unit and an active duty unit. general, over the next five to ten years, will you have in place the right readiness matrix to make sure that that guard reserve component stays ready for the fight, and how will you look at rotating the -- for lack of a better phrase -- quick reaction force. because if you the that extended deal, somebody's got to be first. and how do you keep those guys ready rotate that readiness issue through the system in order to make sure that we don't have those growing pains we experienced in the regional conversion? >> as we went through it, i think as most of you were, as we went through this process continuing to meet our commitments in iraq and afghanistan, we developed what we call army force generation model, which put both active and reserve component unit, national guard, army reserve, active through a sequence of preparing

themselves to get mobilized, to get ready, and then to deploy. we are going to adjust that process. we're not going to walk away from it. we're going to adjust it. and we're going to keep a process where active and reserve component units will be in a reset phase, a training phase, and an available phase. we're still working on it. >> when you said reserve, would that include reserve -- >> national guard and u.s. army reserves. >> okay. >> and what we will do is for an active unit, example, an active unit would be 24 months. 12 months available, whatever time. and for the reserve component it would be a bit expanded because maybe over a 60-month period, be allow them to rotate through so we would always have a portion of the national guard and u.s. army reserves ready to go. and what it also does is it will enable sustained readiness across the force over a long

period of time. so that's the intent of our process. we're working through the details of this and how it's funded and how we sustain them over time. and i think we're going to be able to do this. we're working very closely with both the national -- mainly the national guard, but also the u.s. army reserve on this concept. >> with the readiness reporting program that you have morph into something side of the table where we are at any one point in time with respect to those? >> it's going to have to. and it's going to have to do it for the total army. >> right. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you. mr. hunter? >> thank you, chairman. and thank you general and mr. secretary. there is one thing bothntio ofd. i want to run through a few things. the new requirements don't reque otecon to the same stringt

requirements that they were originally stated. the first question is why relax the requirements? i'm going to keep going if you don't mind. why did we relax the requirements? why did we relax the weight limit? if you go over 13,000 pounds, as you know, it makes you less mobile, whether it's air mobile or if you're putting them on, if you're putting these, because the marine corps is going to use them too. they're going to be on ships. they're going to be heavier on the ships as well. from what i can see from all of the different vendors that are applying for this, their vehicle come in around 13 to 16,000 pounds or more when you add their armor kit on, which makes them -- you can't carry them in fact in a ch-46. my specific question is about ford motor company. my dist there. i have no dog in this fight, no horse in this race. ford has offered to build the next humvee. they offered to spend their own money to do it. they have offered to come in

with multiple prototypes to give you to say here is what we have. this is the second largest car manufacture in the nation, a never that goes back, if you good back to world war ii and korea making american products for american military personnel. let me run through a few things on ford. they can come out at $225,000 per vehicle. and what is more important, ford's estimates because they make cars and trucks for a living, their estimates now, their original estimates will be within 4% of their actual production costs. so as we look at all these different programs, we all know it's pretty hard to get it within that 4%. ford can do that. what they tell you now is what will be the vehicle costs in the future. they can save us over $100 billion, taxpayers, congress, and the army and marine corps over life cycle cost and production costs over the life of this vehicle. the most troubling aspect of this is this. this is a quote from dod. talking about why the procurement date for this is set

up for this june. the main question is ford asked for an extra 12 months so they can compete for this. they were turned down by dod. dod said no. and here is what they told ford. ford could come in with more armor at less weight and provide more bang for the buck, basically. they said in source selection, no credit will be given for proposed performance above the threshold or at objective levels. what that translates to is if you make something that is clearly superior in protection, maneuverability and weight, we don't really care, we're going to do this anyway. the only reason that dod says to seclude 40 ford that i've seen from all the documents on this that the money may, may be taken out of the budget by congress. i think the senate tried to kill this last year. it was a fight. the money was put in there anyway. so the only reason we're doing this now this year, even though the vehicles won't be fielded until we're out of afghanistan is because the money may be taken out of the budget. i'm not getting this at all in

this climate with what is going on. we're going to be out of afghanistan. we're going to need to be more maneuverable. i don't see how we make a humvee in the future that doesn't have underbody protection and that can't come in under 13,000 pounds, which ford says they can -- and theirs is call the joint marine army vehicle, the jmav. all they're asking is for 12 months so they can compete. that's it. i guarantee you if you look at what was more people in this room, if you told them to just give us 12 more months and we'll give you something that costs a lot less and provides more bang future your buck, we can almost guarantee it because for god's sake, it's ford, ford. and i don't drive a ford by the way. my dog is even more out of this fight. i drive a chevy. i don't understand. and i guess i'm just asking for some clarification, explanation, or why can't we just work together on this and get it right this time and show how you can be a shining example for the rest of dod and the military procurement system and say here is how we did it. >> as you know, congressman

hunter, the program and whatever changes made in the requirements came about as a result of the discussions between the marine corps and the army. there was a back and forth as to levels of protection, weight trade-offs, et cetera. i certainly defer to the chief as some of the specifics on that. i do drive a ford. it's a great company. and has done amazing things in difficult times. and frankly, when this rfp first hit the street we were very -- i was very hopeful that they would choose to participate and to go ahead with the program. they chose not to. that was a disappointment to us. but we had set the groundrules. we had put out the rfps. every competitor, and we have i believe six companies now that are all very credible and have played by the rules that were set out. and from a general acquisition perspective, i think, and i can't speak for dod, it would be a very tenuous decision to pull

back an rfp based on a single manufacturer saying what they may or may not be able to do when they chose not to compete. now, ford can submit at any time during the process an unsolicited program that we'll fully consider. but we can't pull plugs on developmental programs where everybody else is playing by the same rules because a single competitor, as great as ford is says here is what we promise you we're going to do. it's just i think would be a bad precedent to set. and that was part of our problem. i'm not even sure, frankly, it would be legal. i don't know if the chief would want to add. >> i don't think we're going to resolve this today. let's call this kind of an opening gambit. mr. cough man? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you for your service, general odierno, secretary

mchugh. i am concerned about -- i agree with you in the bottom line in cuts. i believe the cuts can be made to the department of defense. i believe the sequester goes way overboard. i don't believe there is any disagreement on that in this committee on either side. but let me just say, express to you some areas that i would like you to look at. i'm concerned that we're cutting capability. and by cutting capability, we're increasing risk to our national security. one is i just think that there is -- there is a top-heavy nature to our military across the board. i think if we look at the ratio of flag officers or general officers to the number of soldiers, and this is in every branch of the service, i believe, that it's just -- we're too top heavy. and we really need to look at slimming that down. next, i know there is talk about that we ought to slow down pay increases.

moving forward as a cost savings measure. i disagree with that. but let me give you another area that i would like you to look at. that is slowing our promotion system down. i think that first of all, i think it moves too fast. i think that we would increase not only have a cost savings, but increase the professionalism of our military by slowing down the promotion system, allowing soldiers to spend more time in grade in their respective military occupation and specialties before they move on. when you have an organization that has the kind of quality that the army -- the united states army has today, which is extraordinary, and you have the retention with highly qualified soldiers waiting to remain in the army, it only makes sense that we do the math and we slow down the promotion system. next, i think garden reserve. i'm very disappointed that we have cuts in the garden reserve.

where i think what we ought to be doing is increasing the size of the guard and reserve quite frankly through reductions on the active side. secretary of defense gates, before he left warned this committee repeatedly of the trajectory of personnel costs and how it was eating into acquisition costs, irrespective of the cuts that are before us now. and so to me, we can retain capability and do savings by looking at our force structure and more aggressively transferring units to the guard and reserve that we don't need, say, expeditionary forces or forces that truly need to be on active duty. you know, next, i'm concerned about we're going to go through a brac round, a base realignment closure commission. at the same time that we're still retaining permanent bases

overseas without adequate participation of our allies. in nato, most of our nato partners are spending less than 2% on gdp on defense. we're at about 4.7% right now. yet we're -- we have 45,000 troops in germany. 79,000 troops i think in europe altogether. we are moving to brigade combat teams, heavy brigade combat teams i understand out of germany, out of that 45,000. but i think we ought to look at if they're not involved in the prepositioning of forces, if they're not a expeditionary nature, they ought to come out of europe. we can demonstrate our capability by doing some of the things you mentioned, having protational forces, and certainly doing joint military exercises demonstrates our commitment to the north atlantic treaty organization. in south korea, you mentioned

20,000 soldiers in south korea. there are some substantial, and this is obviously dod, military construction programs going on. i think -- i believe some of it might be suspended in terms of looking in bringing dependents over. but at a time when south korea is spending 2.7% of their gdp. so we're looking at closing bases down in the united states and yet retaining overseas permanent military bases for our allies that are spending much less on defense than we are. we need to get them to do more. and so let me leave it open to you on those points. but i'm disappointed in the direction of these cuts and i think they compromise capability where i don't think we need to. >> first of all, and i'll try to go as quickly as we can. we agree with you on general officers. in fact, that was an initiative that secretary gates had already gone. general odierno can speak eloquently of closing down of a

cocom and jifcom. we downgraded the four star to a three star army europe and on and on. pay increases. >> i would love to see what ratio you would come up between flag officers and soldiers at the end of that. and i'm sorry that we're out of time. >> time has expired to me. >> if you could get to me on the record on any of these questions, i would really appreciate it. >> mr. west? >> thank you, mr. chairman and mr. ranking member, and also i want to thank the panel, secretary mchugh. and i would like to publicly recognize general odierno and thank you for the privilege and honor of serving as a battalion commander under your command and my brother red leg, colonel thompson, it's good to see you again. questions i have. we have been down this road before. mr. wilson talked about task force smith. but when i look in the decrease of the combat brigade formations that we're having, can you talk to us about the ramifications you see as far as the combat

tours of duty? because i really believe some of the second and third order effects we see with some of the social issues we had just talked about relates to the amount of tours that our young men and women are having to serve in these combat zones of operation. so have we looked at the ramifications of what could happen with maybe increased in combat zones? >> congressman, thank you very much. in terms of -- we have looked very carefully at this as we have decided where to take force structure out. because we're now out of iraq, it has made a significant difference in the op tempo of our combat forces. and now that we're starting to reduce our presence in afghanistan, that's also impacted that. so we feel that as we grew the army in the mid 2000s to meet those requirements, now that they're going away, we now have the right force structure to be asked to do what we currently are doing.

as i said earlier, where we might incur some risks is if we got involved in two major theaters that were extended over a long period of time. for initial combat operation, more than enough capability. we will have the competence to conduct those operations. so i feel comfortable with that. if they get extended again, that's where we run into some risk of the things you talked about, increased op tempo on our soldiers and all the other things that go along with this that we're dealing with today. so we're very cognizant of that. and that's why it's important to build some reversibility into what we're doing so we can, if necessary increase immediately the size of the army. one of the things we'll do is we're going to maintain officers, noncommissioned officers in our institutional army. we have migrated them out over time so we have more in the training base. we have -- so if we have to expand, we'll be able to keep the expertise and then use them to help us expand if necessary as we move forward.

>> second question. we had a briefing earlier this week about operations in afghanistan. and one of the things that i think is a very key lesson learned we finally got to was the vso program, the village stability operations program. and of course right now they're looking to expand that vso program. so when i look at the fact that we're talking about putting more responsibility and burden on our special operations, you know, our special operations forces in the united states army going to be capable of expanding and extending to vso operations in afghanistan, as well do we see possibly our conventional forces having to augment the vso programs? >> thank you, congressman. we are in fact continuing to increase our special operations forces throughout this budget. we will go up to 35,000 special operations forces. we've increased in every area. we've increased rangers. battal

the companies involved. we're increasing their logistics capability. but as we're increasing operations, we're building on the relationships that have been built between the special operation and conventional army. as we do that, you'll see conventional forces pick up a piece of this mission and you'll see we're using conventional capabilities to help with these operations. i think it's important. we've learned we can do that and it's a good partnership to best utilize our forces in conjunction with the capabilities of our conventional forces in these key operations. >> last point, being from down in south florida, i will tell you that i'm quite concerned about the -- the fact that ahmadinejad was visiting cuba and we have hezbollah training camps in south america. so i would hope that we don't

forget that. i believe that the enemy is seeing that we are not portraying a very strong presence down in the south comoar. so with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you very much, mr. gibson. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for being here today. let me just say from the outset that i'm generally supportive of what you're doing here in the budget, particularly some of the major pieces of it. notable exception, i associate myles with mr. kaufman, a lot of his remarks with regard to positioning of our forces. what i would like to explore here in the next few minutes is the nesting of operational concepts, interested to know to what degree we use modeling and

simulation as we went through the strategic review and particularly here at the joint operational concept that drives the army operational concept, because so much of this leads to requirements. last time the army operational concept was published in 2009, very aware of how all the ins and outs to make that happen and certainly have no expectation there's a new document on the street. but as you went through the process of the strategic review, if you could share with me the notable points with regard to the 2009 document that you think may need to be readdressed in the current process of operational concept. and then other deductions and risks that you see in the force in relation to what we think we're going to need.

>> as we looked at the last ten years, under the operational concept document, one of the key things is what with see the threat will be in the future and how we must respond. it's the concept of the hybrid threat, the concept of the fact combination of an adversary conventional, unconventional, regular terrorist activities, criminality. and that we have a force tha de that spectrum of conflict. and by the way, different pieces of it from the lowest end combined up to the highest end. and that we don't believe we'll ever see a straight conventional conflict again inhe that's one of the key pieces as we move forward. training and doctrine command is currently running a series of seminars as to how to develop leaders for this environment, how we develop tactical and

operational concepts to operate in aut we incorporate lessons learned. so after we get the results of this work done, we'll then look at updating our operational concept and look at where we want to go. and the last point, this relationship between conventional and special operations forces and the been f -- benefits we've gotten, i think those are some of the things we'll focus on. >> so as you look left and right to your sister services and you think about it in view of the joint force, i'll just share that the concern i have is that as we look at the joint operational concepts and look at the potential pl just concerned that we haven't,

and for good reason, we've been very involved in achieving these objectives, but we've actually done the detail planning, have done the math to look at what's required to move the force, and as i look at 301 platform, united states air force, and i consider the navy's dimension in this and then i think about the joint force delivery, we pray it isn't the case that we have to deploy for a major war, but if we're ready, there's less chances we'll have to, particularly when we demonstrate to the war that we have that capability. i'm just concerned we haven't done the detailed plans and the exercising that's rird, the information ops that would go with that and look to assuage those concerns.

>> no, i don't disagree. in fact, let me just add, as i look back, it's about unity of effort, about understanding the different dimensions of war ware. i didn't get into cyber warfare, all of those things that must be incorporated. it's about understanding and how we train our headquarters at all varieties of levels and that's all part of this. i concur with what you said. >> thank you. i yield back. >> mr. scott? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to talk about tri care and the proposed rate increases. currently our families are paying about $460 for the tricare prime. by 2017, that would move to $2,48 under the proposal. and this past year, we asked that those rate increases be limited to the increases in the

retirement plan, is that not correct? >> you have to restate -- i'm sorry, could you say that again? >> the rate increase for the tricare prime, you asked us to go from $460 to $2,048. that's a significant increase to people who have earned that benefit. quite honestly, i come from a risk management back ground. to me that seems like if industry did that, that would be an indication that they would try to push people out of it and shut the program down is. that the intent or the significant rate increase? >> absolutely not. one of the critical parts of this to consider, if you will, even after the full increases are in effect at the end of '17,

that rate will, by every reasonable projection, still be a very generous rate compared to an equal policy in the private sector, if you could obtain such an equal policy. this is not something that we were particularly happy to do, and it was not something that we did do without a great deal of thought and consideration. after we talked about this amongst ourselves, all the service chiefs, all the service secretaries, all the command sergeant majors, master chiefs of the navy, we decided that this was absolutely essential to preserve the benefit. as we tried to do to tailor it and layer it in a way that only those people who are under the age of 65 and are likely to be working and based on their rank would receive the greater of those increases. >> mr. secretary, i only get five minutes, so i don't mean to

interrupt. but it amazes me that in this time that we're in that we continue to take and take and take from the military under this administration and yet for somebody who hasn't paid their dues, if you will, like our military service members have, there's no proposed reductions for food stamps and in fact, there's no meaningful reductions for any of the entitlement programs that truly are driving this country off a fiscal cliff. with that said, for the retirement changes that are proposed, you propose to go to a straight up or down vote by the congress and would essentially not allow for the individual input of the members of congress. why do you believe that is a better route than to go through the normal committee