a role, that is something we would want to pursue very anxiously. >> well, we want the thank you both for your service, but also for the great men and women you constantly turn out that serve our country. and with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you. >> mr. davis? >> thank you, chairman, and mr. secretary in general for being here and for your service. i want to go back to the sexual assault question for a second, because i don't know if you had as much time, general, to respond to the chain of command issue. and perhaps mr. hugh, you would like the weigh in as well. as you know, there are -- there are a lot of victims and people who are concerned that the chain of command has not allowed victims to have the kind of access to help that perhaps they have needed, particularly in the past. but even today. could you -- could you comment on that a little bit more and why you feel that it does serve

best? i would say for myself i think this is a leadership issue. so i think it's very important that leadership take responsibility and accountability. but on the other hand we know that there are quite a number of instances when that has not worked. >> thank you. and i don't disagree with your statement. it absolutely is a leadership issue. it's a commander's issue as we would call it. and it's something that we have to continue to work. again, it's even with our -- it's about continued education. it's about making sure that we have a message that goes through the chain of command that this is something that is incredibly important to the welfare of the army, the welfare of profession. and we'll continue to do that. what i have found over my years of experience with these types of issues is first off, you have to have a couple of things. you have to have the ability for victims -- some victims do not -- it's about the victims feeling comfortable how they report and who they report to.

you have to have a variety of ways for them to report. that's why it's important that we continue to have them, if they want to, not use the chain of command to report and report outside of the chain of command. and we're establishing -- we have established and will continue to emphasize that, if that's what they feel comfortable doing. but it's also important for us to ensure that the chain of command that this is an important issue for morale. it's an important issue for our ability to execute our mission on a day-to-day basis. and it's also important for them to understand and help train them on what is available in the uniform code of military justice and other means in order to hold people accountable. and that in fact as we do, and in everything we do, we will hold our commanders accountable for the discipline and the morale of their units. it's important that they will understand this as we go forward. so what we have done, we're increasing emphasis in our judge

advocate general court to help train our commanders to ensure they understand what they can do. and also it's important for us working through the chain of command to emphasize the importance of this. we now talk to every battalion and brigade commander at ft. leavenworth. they come through every month. we have added a portion specifically dedicated to this subject so they understand the importance of this. and in fact the vice chief of staff of army is headed out there next week to talk about a variety of subjects, this being one of the main subjects that we talk about. and so i think it's things like that will help us to emphasize in the chain of command their responsibilities. the other thing is to make sure that we have enough oversight where we disconnect a bit, be able to look at it from a little higher level from the chain of command. in other words, people who are not so close to the incident,

and we have ways to do that. and we're working as well as using that as a technique as well so, again, we're focused on this, ma'am. >> can i -- i want to thank this committee and this congress, because i think you passed some very important legislation in the last session that set some requirements as to sexual assaults, response coordinators, sarcs and victims' advocates. the army had already started on that. but you raised the bar as to a requirement that the sarcs be at the brigade level and the victims advocates. we have two vas at every battalion level and company level. that provides the kind of alternative that the chief had just spoken about. if the victim feels uncomfortable going into their chain of command. but that really, as you noted, ms. davis, that's the critical part of fixing this more fully, making those commanders sensitive.

making them understand that if they don't get it right, they're not going to be in this army much longer. as the ucmj, it provides the prosecutors the opportunity to take action against people who are perhaps not violent sexual offenders, but inappropriate touching. the kinds of actions that probably in the civilian sector nothing is done. and we take action against them as well. there is an article 15 or a holding off a promotion or pay cuts. >> thank you, mr. secretary. my time is about up. i did want to make one comment if the chairman would let me. i think one of the things i've heard is that if women are surveying up and down the commands and across the spectrum of the services, then in many ways we'll have less of this. so i just wanted to share my somewhat disappointment, i think with the latest report that came out in women in combat, and hope we can work together to make sure there is a process in place to be able to really determine the physical standards that are needed and how we're going to

get to that, particularly for women who want to serve in those commands. >> thank you. mr. wilson? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you both for being here. as an army veteran, i'm particularly happy to see the venue today additionally, i am very grateful to represent fort jackson. i soon will be having a geographic presence adjacent to fort gordon. and so it's really exciting. and then i have got three sons serving in the army national guard. so i appreciate your service. and mr. secretary, i'm very grateful to be seated in the john mchugh seat, chair and so it's a great honor to follow you in supporting military personnel. so thank you so much for your service. and general odierno, one of the highlights of my congressional service, we knew of your success in iraq. but when we came to be briefed and you came up with a diagram of what appeared to be the state of virginia, and you explained

that this indicates a high level of violence where northern virginia would be the height. but then the surgery and it led to the eastern shore. so it was a diagram that could be understood by anyone. so your success is just greatly appreciated by me. with that, though, i'm really concerned about the administration's budget. and in particular, mr. secretary, the extraordinary fee increases in regard to tricare. we have commitments to our service members who are veterans. and the service that our young people make is just extraordinary, and their families. and sadly, the administration is proposing a tricare fee increase fy '13, 30 to 78%. and then over the next five years, from 94% to 345%. to me, this is a great concern

for the people i represent. and in fact i'm very concerned and i would like to know how you feel this will affect recruiting, retention, and then what message does this send to our young people who are in the field today? >> well, i think you have to remember, as to recruiting and retention, none of these increases would affect those who are currently serving. so the increases would only be affected on those retirees under the age of 65 who are out of the military, obviously, and working. by and large. this was not an easy decision, but it is something that this committee has talked about for a good number of years. and it is simply the fact that the health care system within the military services, just as it is within the civilian sector, for a price perspective is out of control. while the percentage of these

increases over time in some of the categories sound to be quite large, the fact of the matter is a, these are the first increases since the program was put into place in the mid 1990s. and b, from a comparative perspective, as in relation to the civilian community, the tricare program will still be very, very beneficial, and in most cases, a far nor generous program than you can find in the private sector. the interest here, and it's shared amongst the ncos, senior ncos, my fellow service chiefs and all the service secretaries is that we have to do something now to ensure that this program remains viable for those great men and women in uniform and their families who have served. and the reality is the longer we wait, as in so many of the other problems that this congress is attempting to deal with, the answer gets harder and harder, and the increases get larger and

larger. so we think the time to act is now. maintaining a highly generous program and certainly those great men and women in uniform have earned it. >> and tricare is so appreciated. a concern i have is hollowing out of the military. first of all, i want to thank you both for your courage in regard to speaking out and regard to sequestration. there are different definitions of hollowing out. my concern is for senior ncos and junior officers who have combat experience. this is invaluable. how are we going to address this? is there a preference? is there protection? what will we be doing to maintain people with combat experience? >> well, first off, that's why for me, as we come down in size, it's about the length of the ramp over five years. that's what is so key to that. because if we can do it over a five-year period, as we have asked for, that enables us to keep the best, to ensure we keep the combat tested, the combat

experienced officers and noncommissioned officers we have. if we're asked to do it more quickly than that, then we will lose many of our combat-tested and noncommissioned leaders, both commissioned and noncommissioned officer. that's why this five-year period is so important for us as we look at drawing down the army. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. mr. loebsack? >> thank you, mr. chair. and thanks to both of you for your service. as i've discussed with both of our public-private

partnerships and that will be key to maintaining the readiness for our arsenals. however, i also believe the army must do its part. and i do believe the army must actively support the readiness of our organic industrial base. and specifically, my question then regarding this particular issue is what is the army's plan to work load the organic industrial base, including the organic manufacturing base through the arsenals to ensure, really, that its capabilities are maintained in order to respond in case we do have another oco at some point down the road. and if there is a plan, how will it be implemented to ensure that these critical capabilities are maintained? >> thank you for your concerns on a very important area. generally, when people talk about so-called reversibility, i think they perhaps naturally think about reversing our in-strength numbers. that's something we spent a lot of time on. and i think one of the more

important components of the way in which the army has shaped itself through this budget is we retain those nco, senior nco positions, and particularly field grade officers who would be so critical to expanding our numbers. but there is another component to that reversibility as well, as you noted, sir. and that is our ability to produce the products, the weapons, the platforms that are necessary to when we send our war fighters out to do the hard work of freedom. i mentioned earlier one of the critical components of how we're going forward right now are the various analyses that both the army and department of defense are conducting, a tier by tier analysis through dod and a baseline analysis trying to both identify where our major risk lies, where the single point of failures exist. and also, to try to establish a strategy where we can do as much as we possibly can, whether it's through ppps, as rock island i

think has done very, very effectively, or through increased fms to keep those work lines busy and open. this is going to be a very difficult challenge. these are in large measure highly skilled workers. that's certainly true at rock island. i've had the pleasure of visiting there. we have a similar hard metal facility in albany. and those two do some pretty important things. this was an ongoing effort. we recognize it, and frankly, if all of our locations were as aggressive and forward leaning as rock island has been, to go out and develop partnerships, we'd be a little less challenged. i appreciate yours and senator durbin's and the entire delegation's vigilance on that matter. >> if i could, if you have stated, the organic and industrial base is key to our ability to continue to be

capable of not only reversibility, but to sustain the force as we move forward. and it has been for the last several years. what we have done is developed core functions at many of these areas which will enable us to sustain what we need enabling these core functions. we will have to continue to assess as we look at our budgets in the future to see do we have to redesignate some core functions or combine some. but i'm confident that we have a good program in place to take advantage of these core functions that we have established at many of these arsenals, depots, et cetera. as you know, there will be some reduced -- for the next few years, i think we'll sustain a fairly high rate. but as we move forward and committee we continue to finish the reset coming out of iraq and afghanistan, we have to start to reduce some of the capacity. but we will try to keep the expertise necessary to sustain these core functions that we'll need over the long haul. >> and i think from a national security standpoint, i think we

can all agree too should we have another overseas contingency operation at some point, we don't want to be in a situation where it takes some time to ramp up the production of whatever it is the arsenals or whatever are producing at the time. make sure that we do provide for our troops when they go overseas and whatever mission it may be that they're trying to perform. i do have one question for the record i would like to submit, having to do with our reserve components, if i may do that as well. thank you, mr. chair, and i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you. the vote has been called. i plan on trying to get in two more questioners before, and then we will recess and come back as soon as we can. mr. lobiondo? >> thank you secretary, general for being here. i have a two-part question for you. i see that this year, in this year's budget, you submitted a request for approval to enter into a second multi-year contract for the ch-47 chinook

helicopter. since you have been using the multi-year for chinooks for the past five years, and i understand that one will expire this year, what have you seen as the biggest benefit for you and the taxpayer of having the authority that has led you to request a second multi-year contract? and the second part of it, mr. secretary, is the armed aerial scout program an army priority? >> as the ch-47, we found that multiair contract to be very efficient. we're very, very pleased with the product and the product l e line. and as we have looked hard at our acquisition strategies, both successes and failures over the last several years, the ch-47 contract as it is currently configured seems to have embodied a lot of the answers and a lot of the solutions to some of our challenges. we thought it was in the best interest both in terms of production line, but most importantly for the taxpayer and

for the army to extend that contract. and i'm hoping that that comes through to prosecution. as the armed aerial scout is still a priority for us, we're looking at an analysis of our way forward. as you know, for now we're dealing with the chinooks and the cockpit upgrade program as a bridge to that. and the chinook will be a part of our inventory probably until at least 2025. but we still believe we need an armed aerial scout program. and we're pursuing it as an important priority. >> if i could just add to the last piece. the armed aerial scout is important for us. it's an important capability that we have to sustain. as the secretary said, we're doing an analysis of alternatives that will be done in '13. and once we do that, we'll have to make a decision whether we go to a new aircraft or do we continue then to keep the kiowa warrior and upgrade the kiowa warria that will be a decision

that is made next year. right now we expect to have the kiowa warria through 2025. so this is an incredibly important program. we'll look at analysis and decide on how we want to move forward. >> i said chinook. obviously kiowa warrior. thank you. >> thank you, mr. secretary and general. thank you. general, can you tell us what you believe the status and readiness of the army's current inventory of prepositioned equipment is? >> i feel very confident with it. in fact we've just actually issued our predeployment -- our equipment in kuwait to the brigade that moved that air from iraq. and they've been exercising with it, and it's in very good condition. it's important for us to sustain our preposition flight in very good condition. now we are going to continue to review this. as we now look at this change in strategy, we'll look at do we have the make some minor adjustments in preposition fleets. and are they in the right place.

do we need some training preposition stocks to do multilateral training in the pacific, to do rotational training in europe? and we'll take a look at that. as we're downsizing, we have an opportunity here to use some of the equipment that were in some of our forces, potentially to use in these prepositioned sites that will be continued analysis that we will continue to conduct. it's a very important program, and it will be more important as we move to the future. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. kessel. >> thank you, mr. chairman, mr. secretary and general. thank you all for being here today. obviously time is an issue right now. i was wanting to hear a little bit more about the importance of a rampdown and attrition, but i think, general, you mentioned that that five-year plan is so important to what we're doing to be able to keep the best of the best. also i wanted to talk more about equipment and not -- and one of

our readiness hearings a while back we were discussing about where do we go with equipment. how tied down are we to equipment we might have versus what we think we might need. and some of the future challenges we have. so the two questions i want to zero in on. i'm going to be spending quite a bit of time next week with a lot of our reserve and guard components in north carolina. just what do yaw all anticipate the role of the guard reserve being, and how we're going to balance that out towards where the challenges we have. >> i'll take that first. in terms of the guard. the lessons we have learned here is that we have to have a total army. we have to have certain capabilities but we have to have ready capabilities in the reserve component for us to be successful as an army. especially as we continue to downsize. so we want to do is take advantage of the experience that we've gained in our active reserve component as they've

been a part of our deployments in iraq and afghanistan. so what we're going to do is set up a progressive readiness model that will enable us to attempt to sustain key components of the reserve component and continue to sustain an operational reserve. it will obviously be as big as it is now because of the requirements in iraq and afghanistan. but what we'll do is rotate units through and provide them more dollars in order to sustain a readiness level that will enable them to continue to contribute on rotational basis operationally. i think in the long-term that will help us to sustain a higher readiness rate within the reserve component. so we're very focused on that. >> if i could add, mr. kissle, we worked very hard over recent years to try to upgrade the level of equipment within the reserve component of the reserve and the guard. and i think the data points suggest we've come a long ways. for example, the equipment on

hand ratings right now for the active component is 87%. the national guard is also 87%. and the reserve is 86%. and based on this budget and the fit-up in which it lies, we hope to grow the ac to 94%, the guard to 92%, and the reserve to 90% by just the end of 13. so the challenge as the chief noted going forward is make sure we maintain that level both in the readiness side and the equipment part of that rating, and also of course the personnel. and how we do that is something that i want to give a tip of the hat to the chief and to leadership of both the guard and reserve components are working together to make sure we have a readiness model that works and everybody agrees upon. >> thank you, gentlemen. and one quick question. research and development. do you feel comfortable we have enough monies allocated for that

to keep us ahead of the fight in all situations? >> well, as mr. smith said, would i take more money, and the answer is sure. but within this budget construct that i think we all agree is achievable and is viable, the r&d line i think is sufficient to keep us where we need to be. >> thank you, sir. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. at this point we will recess, and maybe they'll just have one vote. anyway, we're going to expedite and hopefully the recess will be as short as we can make it. thank you.

>> committee will come to order. mr. rogers? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank the witnesses for being here. i appreciate you and your service. the budget that we just had proposed cuts army depot expenditures in 2013 by 50%. could you explain to me this drastic cut, how you arrived at 50%? particularly since the budget document itselves says we have a backlog of equipment that needs to be reset. >> well, we do have a backlog as we retrograde out -- we've retrograded out of one theater and retrograded out of another. we had to fit in that reset

program within our entire budget allocation. we tried to do it in a way that would ensure the rates are sustainable. so at least in the near term, we're not cause anything work disruption or work interruptions. so it was both a strategy, but also a budget decision that, you know, was one of those hard ones that i spoke about. we think it will keep the lines open and progressing as we go through this fit-up. >> 50% will be able to keep the lines moving? >> i think -- >> that's a steep hill to go off. >> in the base budget, we sustain 50%. but there is also a piece of oco that will also be used to fund this. i think that's where the rest of this will come as we come out of iraq and afghanistan. >> i share the sentiments of mr. reyes when he talked about not letting this base go cold and what it can mean to us. as you know, the army depot has

the largest public/private partnerships of any installation in the country. and we worry very much. we can talk about striker being one of those lines that would go cold, but losing those folks. >> i was just -- i'm sorry, i didn't mean to interrupt you, mr. rogers. but the chief makes a good point. a lot of what we need to do, a lot of what we hope to be able to do will be dependent not just after or up until drying out of the heater in afghanistan, but for two to three years afterwards in terms of sustaining oco. and it is not just in the kinds of things that people often think about it as critical for our depots to have those funds available for our reset of equipment as we draw out of afghanistan as well. >> based on this budget, this core budget and oco funding, do you believe you're going to be able to meet your requirements as outlined in title 10 for

combat vehicles? >> the issue becomes oco is a one-year -- we don't know we get from year to year. what we're getting in '13 we have enough to do what i think we have to do. what we don't know is what the oc would be in '14, '15, '16, probably through '17, two years after we finish coming out of afghanistan. we are making it clear that we need support for reset in those years in order to not -- it would not only support the depots, but it is also about the readiness of our capabilities. >> well, have i had several conversations with general dunwoody and general stein about my concerns over our depot network and our readiness. as the secretary knows, because he was on the committee at this time. when we went into iraq and afghanistan, our depots were not up to speed. and it took us 18 months. and general dunwoody assured me that y'all have learned the lessons and will not let that

happen again. but when i look at these numbers, it worries me. because y'all know we could be in iran or somewhere over there in the next six months for all we know. and i want to make sure that you're confident that you got what you need for a surge capability. nobody knows a surge capability more than you. and if these numbers aren't working for you, you got to tell us. this is our problem. that's not your problem. we count on you to tell us what you need to be ready. when you made your comments about being leaner going forward 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