overseas, but also in our remote locations. but this is something that i know the congress through their nwr activities, oversight activities going back as far as my time on the hill had been looking at this and it's significant savings to be made can dothink that we both. certainly, in a way that does not unduly impact our junior enlisted soldiers unduly impact our junior enlisted soldiers. i would just note because of the fiscal challenges we face, these kinds of efficiencies, economies have already been budgeted in. so if we have an order to stand down while some commission looks at it, we'll certainly respect that directive. but we'd have to find the money have else. generally for all of these kinds of initiatives, we have to go right back to the kinds of accounts that we've already hit

hard over the last two years. so there will be significant challenges of not going forward. >> the a-10 sole usefulness is being of close support, discounting capabilities in forward air control roles. while there are without question other assets that can perform the cas mission, none can do so with the same maneuverability of the a-10. could you give us your sense from an army perspective as whether or not the air force's decision to stand down the entire a-10 fleet is in the best interest of the national security? >> so as we talk to our sell jo -- soldiers, they will tell you that they support and have been getting great support from the

a-10 aircraft. a lot of it has to do with the visual deterrence that it provides low-flying visible both to us and the enemy itself and the exacts that it has. so the a-10 is a great host air support aircraft. the close air support aircraft. however, as we've done in afghanistan, there is an amount of missions being followed by other platforms such as the f-15s and f-16s. the air force has come to us and told us that they believe this will be able to meet our needs in close air support. so we are working with them in the future to develop those techniques and procedures that will be necessary to provide us the proper support of f-16s. so we have had several discussions about this. and we are supporting their effort. but a lot of it has to do with this visual piece. and we have to work with the air force in how we replace that

once the a-10 goes away. >> was there a recommendation from the army with respect to retirement of a-10s? >> we did not make a recommendation to the air force to retire them, but they have worked with us to ensure us that they will continue to provide us the best close air support. >> okay. my time is -- has run out here. this is not in the form of a question, but just to let you know i do have a concern relative to competition or lack thereof on the bae bradley track vehicle which i know there is consideration being given to as to how we approach that weapon system. i may submit a question for the record to you on that. thank you. >> thank you, senator chambliss. >> may i say one thing? i hope i get the opportunity to say something about another member who's dear to us. this is the last of army posture

hearing for senator chambliss. i just wanted to express my personal appreciation for all that he's done. saxby and i go back quite a ways. we all wish you all the best in the future. thank you. >> thanks very much. been a great relationship. >> thank you both. i can't say that i'm going to miss saxby chambliss, because i won't be around to miss saxby chambliss. but if i were around, i would miss saxby chambliss. senator udall. >> good morning, gentlemen. we all have heavy hearts this morning as has been discussed over and over again. in colorado our thoughts and prayers go out to you and our soldiers and all the army families at ft. hood. i think we've also been in all the heroes among heroes who responded to the tragic events of yet, the valor of those first

responders comes as no surprise to many of us. my home state of colorado, we've just been in awe as our soldiers have deployed to combat over and over in afghanistan. they've trained our allies. they've tracked the enemies during the counter-resistance operations in africa. and they've saved many lives in much of what we hold dear in colorado while battling the wildfires and floods over the last year. they've been great neighbors and friends to say the least. we're just so lucky to have these heroes living amongst us. we're forever grateful what they do day in and day out. i've got great respect for the brave men and women in your sister services and air and sea power. the simple fact is the missions i've just described require soldiers who bring boots onto the ground. and that's why i'm worried about the potential cuts in the armies

and strength and effect that would have on our soldiers to project power in our very communities. i'm also increasingly disturbed between the active component and the national guard. if there's one thing we've learned over the last several years, it's that we need a well-trained, well-equipped multi-component army. we've also been talking about the situation for significant budget reductions if congress doesn't get its act together and we don't stop sequestration from kicking back in next year. in light of that, we literally can't afford a delay in the critical decisions that are before us while a committee conducts months or years before conducting a study. if we free structures for the guard, we have to absorb cuts through different. in my mind that's not a responsible compromise. this is a complex and

emotionally charged issue and we're not going to solve it by going to war with ourselves. i think of winston churchill, he said we're out of money it's time to start thinking. so with that in mind, i've got some questions. mr. secretary, let me start with you. i want to thank you publicly for agreeing to my requests to withdraw the army's requests for land acquisition waiver for the pinion canyon area. with that, we put to rest our soldiers will be able to continue the training they need while farmers won't lose their land. it's our win/win scenario. i was honored to work with you and your team to make it a reality. i know the people of ft. carson will make good use of that training area. i know they will continue to protect the land for themselves and future generations. with all that in mind, would you describe the types of training that our soldiers need to conduct to prepare for full

spectrum operations? and what are your main concerns about the threats facing the current and future force? and then if i could on that note, access to quality training areas factors into the assessment? >> first of all let me return the compliment to all of us in the army grately appreciate the leadership and courage you showed on resolving the pinion canyon issue. it's win/win. and we can all get back to what it concerns us most. in our case training those soldiers in the case of farmers and ranchers doing god's work out on the land. so thank you for those efforts. as you noted, suggested in recent years our focus on training has really been on the counterterrorism initiative

that's recently been switched to a train and assist mission. and that coupled with the fact that we just have had dwindling resources has really caused us to greatly diminish the complexity of our training and to by and large not have the funds to do decisive action training. we are utilizing our return of course out of iraq but also out of afghanistan to now return to decisive action training. a more complex training. the type of mission sets that the chief spoke about earlier will have 19 ctc rotations this year, 17 of those will be for decisive action training. that is in no small measure thanks to the relief that congress provided through the

bipartisan budget. but as the chief said, if we go back to 16, those buybacks will be immediately lost and we'll have to do the best training we can at a much lower level of proficiency and complexity. the chief went into some detail about how the more complex missions require larger troop formation sets. require the integration of fire and infantry, and overhead close support. and in the case of our attack platforms, for example, we are integrating on manned aerial platforms of great eagle which adds more complexity. so the ability to do that kind of training, you need land. you need clear air space and while the major portion of those occurs at ft. folk and out of the ctc and california, obviously the training opportunities at pinion canyon

have and remain vital. and the stability that the recent agreement brings, i think, will obviously be a consideration should we get to a point where we begin to evaluate bases for possible drawdown. as you know, it's a very complex system and it's interrelated, but every asset can bring to the table is something on their side. >> again, i think this is a great example of everybody sitting down and listening and working out a way forward. so again i want to thank you. general, let me direct a question to you you can answer for the record because my time's about to expire. i want to return to the national guard structure comments i made. if the army were prevented from making those changes pending the finding of the independent submission, what would the ripple effect be? am i right in saying there would be active effects on the army reserve?

>> there would be. up to $12.7 million over the entire period. >> you answered the question. we don't need to ask for the record. so thank you. thanks for your service and being here, gentlemen. >> thank you very much, senator udall. senator ayotte. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank you both for your leadership and service. yesterday and first of all i share the sentiments of all my colleagues in offering my thoughts and prayers to those who have been affected by the tragedy at ft. hood yesterday. and in the readiness subcommittee yesterday in the morning we actually talked about the issue of insider threats. and there have been a number of reports, i know secretary mchugh, that you've been working on with other services and also the homeland security have been working on it. along with the secretary of homeland security jeh johnson.

so it is my hope that we will all really get together, the work done that you're doing along with what homeland security is doing. to review not only yesterday's incident but the most recent incidents to make sure that you have the tools that you need whether it's reviewing security clearances and other issues. i look forward to working with you on that. general odierno, i wanted to follow up. we were in afghanistan and i was glad to hear you say that you often hear feedback from those that serve underneath you in terms of their support for the a-10 because i wasn't even raising it with people on the ground and they were pulling me aside and saying to me the a-10 is very important to us. in fact, i had had a guy pull me

aside and tell me a story about how the a-10 had helped our special forces on the night before on an incident they were dealing with in afghanistan. so i believe that there is a strong feeling on the ground towards the close air support mission of the a-10. and this was reaffirmed for me in afghanistan. and again, it wasn't an issue. people were actually pulling me aside telling me this. and one of the concerns i hear -- i appreciate what you said that the a-10 is the best close air platform we have. in answer to senator chambliss you said you'd be working with the air force to develop the close air support tactics, techniques, and procedures for other aircrafts that the air force wants to use for this mission including the f-15 and the f-16. here's my concern. my concern is that we already have the ttps for the a-10, don't we?

we don't have to develop procedures on how to deal with close air support for the a-10. and so, you know, when i hear talk about that it's the best close air support platform, we know that their pilots are very focused on the close air support mission. that they perform not only in afghanistan but in iraq as you know from your service. the very fact we have to develop new ttps for other aircrafts to really look at this issue, i worry about this in terms of our close air support capability gap and that we're going to be putting ourselves in a risk situation. you know, we already have it in place and we know it works. so that worries me to think we would take this on. do you have a comment on that? >> senator, i would just say clearly the a-10 has been supporting ground force for a

long time. as you said and i have said, we're incredibly confident. this is another example, though, of the impact that budget reductions are having on our military. >> right. >> we have to make hard decisions. and they're just really tough, difficult decisions. in fact, i know general walsh would tell you he flew a-10s. he's a big supporter. but we have to make difficult decisions. that's why we have to figure how to deal with multi-wall aircraft. and they have been providing close air support in afghanistan with those platforms. but there's some things we have to adjust because it is not quite the same as the a-10 is with ground force. >> right. exactly. because the f-15 and f-16 they have to come in much faster. and one of the benefits you described is the visual but the ability to go at a slower pace because, you know, it's a huge -- we know.

it's got much more survivability, just the nature of it. it's a beast. in a good way. but, you know, i worry about this because close air support to me shouldn't be a secondary function. it has to be a number one function when we think about our men and women on the ground. would you agree with me on that? >> it is critical to us. in fact, the army has made decisions in the past because of our reliance on close air support and kind of systems we develop. and so it's critical. we rely on it completely. it's very important to us. >> well, i thank you. i wanted to ask you about, general, you spent years serving in iraq. i appreciate your leadership there and everything that you did in iraq. i wanted to get your thoughts on where we stand in regard to

post-'14 force in afghanistan and our continues involvement in afghanistan. are there any lessons you see in terms of what's happening now in iraq that we should be mindful of as we look at our commitment in afghanistan? >> i would just say that as we have recommended, the joint chiefs have recommended that we believe it is vitally important that we have a force that remains in afghanistan. there's nothing that shows commitment like having people on the ground there every day. and i think that provides confidence not only to the military but confidence to the political leaders that we are going to stand behind them as they continue to improve. and i think that's important. and i think not only that, it's important for us to be there in order for us to continue to build the institutional capacity that's necessary for afghanistan to sustain stability over the long-term. >> and don't we also -- we've seen unfortunately a resurgence

of al qaeda in iraq. don't we face a similar risk in afghanistan if we don't have a follow-on commitment there? >> my experience tells me is when they sense a level of instability, they will do everything they can to exploit that instability. >> thank you, general. i wanted to add my support for the chairman's comments earlier having just gotten back from afghanistan, i believe it's very important that the president announce what our follow-on commitment will be in afghanistan consistent with general dunford's recommendation. it's important that we do so now. obviously that would be c contingent on the signing of the bsa and more responsibly handling the detainee issues there. but the commitment now, we need to send that signal to the taliban. with the elections coming up this weekend with the fighting season beginning there, that we remain committed to ensuring the

security of afghanistan in a way that will not allow the resurgence of al qaeda again to make sure our country is protected. and so i really appreciate the comments on that and i would like to support the president in his follow-on recommendations. and i look forward and hope he will make that announcement soon. thank you. >> thank you very much, senator ayotte. senator manchin. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you secretary and general. again, my deepest sympathy to all of our men and women in uniform and all of you that support the military directly. general odierno, i recognize and appreciate the need to modify the structure of the army to better fit the operational requirements and fiscal constraints. getting cost savings by retiring low priority are a good way of

doing this. however, i'm less clear about the value of moving army national guard apaches in the duty. i think we've all identified and recognized that. here's where my concerns would come from to try to understand the cost of a guard apache battalion is $32 million a year. so that we know the cost, we don't know exactly what the cost buys us. the difference of 32 to 75. and if any of you all -- general, if you could answer that. >> absolutely. it has to do with the amount of training. simple. with what we try to do with the national guard is we want to maintain proficiency which we do well. as i stated earlier, with apaches it's much more than

that. it has to do with collective training. it has to do with doing reconnaissance surveillance missions. it has to do with conducting combined arms training at the company, squad, brigade level. and so the active component does more days of training in order to develop those more complex entities. where the national guard simply doesn't have the time to do that. and if we did it would be like an active component unit. the other thing that's happening here -- excuse me, senator. you probably want to ask another question. but remember is we're taking out all of our surveillance reconnaissance equipment. we're taking the apaches to replace that. if we don't do that, we will not have a reconnaissance surveillance capability in the active component. and because of the amount of training it takes for us to be proficient at that, that's why we'd like to put it in the active component. and the bottom line is i would love to have a larger capacity of apaches where i could do both, but i can't. we don't have the money. we had to make the difficult

recommendation. >> i understand. but there's a $43 million per battalion difference. so when we're looking from cost, i'd not heard when i was the governor or senator i've not heard from anybody in the military that the guard was not able to perform whatever mission you asked when they were in the active rotation. >> right. >> so that's a hard one for us. >> it's a time issue. there's nothing the guard can do about it. they do the best they can with the time and resources we give them. but this takes much more time. and so when we use them, we have to give them -- we give them a lot of -- >> you're moving blackhawks over though, correct? >> yeah. again, the integration of apaches and the integration it takes to do that is a bit more complex than the blackhawks. the other issue is the blackhawk much better fits their homeland

defense and state missions than the apache. and it will help them to improve that capability that they -- >> there's a possibility i can sit down with yourself or whoever you would put in that position on the front, me and my staff would be happy to be able to work through that. >> be happy to, senator. >> and maybe secretary, might direct this to you. we talk about the tooth to the tail ratio to say how many front line soldiers and back office guys. right now we've been talking about the front line. are we having the same rapid reduction as far as our back line as we do the front line? >> proportionately, yes. you have fewer officers so you proportionately have fewer total numbers. we are very carefully and very closefully through howard

bromburg to try to ensure that we're taking down all of our ranks in an appropriate way so that we have the right numbers in the right places. it becomes very, very challenging particularly when the president has asked us to try to protect a reversal, a surge, if you will, that requires us to look very hard at some of the nco, senior ncos -- >> if i may, my time is going to elapse -- >> yes, we're doing what i think you would want us. >> the duck tail to that is the last time you told me one of the major issues is to diminish the number of contractors we employ. i've had a hard time finding out what that number really is and how much of a reduction you all have been able to make towards that reduction. do you have any numbers at all? >> you asked -- i'll defer to you. you asked me last year and i believe the year before that

what was the number of contractors in afghanistan. i can tell you at the end of the first quarter fiscal year '14, there were approximately 78,136 dod contractors of which 70,161 were army contractor personnel. >> and how many men and women in uniform did we have at the same time? >> at that same time the army boots on the ground were about 52,000. >> so we have more contractors in afghanistan than we do boots on the ground. >> our fights force has been less -- >> how much contractors are still in iraq, sir? >> we're not in iraq. >> i know. but i know we have contractors there. >> there are contractors -- i don't know the exact number, but there are contractors there that are supporting the equipment that the iraqi government is purchasing. and that's by fms contract. >> that means we're supporting

that from dod budget? >> no. that is the dollars they pay. >> and my final one for you all is if you could provide me a list -- and we've talked about this -- we want to make your job the best we possibly can, but if we have lulls, redundancies, things strapping you and holding you back no different from any of us that are requiring you to buy weapon or other support from our state that you might not want or need, we've got to get serious about this. we're asking you all and i really appreciate the military department of defense, secretary hagel, for putting a budget forward to try to address what the new modern defense department would look like. could you give me any list of any lulls you would like to see us try to help changes that will give you the ability to do your jobs? >> in fact, we're working on that right now. congressman thornebury from the

state of texas has asked a similar question. he's asked us to identify legal and internal regulatory burdens we've put on ourselves awith programs. we'd be thrilled. >> absolutely very active. and i'll finish this up with saying i know it's difficult when we ask the question for you to be able to tell us i don't need this, i don't need this, i don't need this. it's being produced in this state, this state, and this state. but there's some of us here who care about that. if there were something in my state that we're supplying that you don't need it, i'll be the first to say let's not do it. so i would appreciate, you know, the straightforwardness on that, too, sir. thank you. >> thank you. senator manchin, three things i'm going to make reference to senator manchin that you've

raised appropriately. this last issue you raised, we've met with congressman thornebury as a matter of fact, and congressman mckeon. and there's a letter that has gone out signed by congressman -- the chairman mckeon, congressman smith, senator inhofe, myself, and representative thornebury on this exact subject you've raised. the reason that congressman thornebury signed it is he's the likely successor to chairman mckeon. we will make a copy of that letter in the record. >> since i'm not a likely successor of you. >> at some point -- >> i appreciate the diligence on this. i think it's important for them to do their job. >> it's a very important point you've raised. next another issue you've raised on the apache issue and the

question of the blackhawk and apache and the funding that's involved in that and what we'll need for the record is the funding issues on that. the impact of that. senator manchin, we've been told this is part of an integrated aviation restructuring package which saved $12 billion. so we're all going to need exactly how that works, what those numbers are, why -- how it's integrated, where the alleged savings are. it's a very important issue. >> well, the cost of $43 million per battalion, and basically i've witnessed and basically seen the performance of the guard which has been great. >> we need to get these numbers. because that saving according to

general odierno is because the training is much shorter period and it needs to be expanded when they're active duty. whatever it is, we all need that data for the record. i think all of us are going to be looking very closely at that issue. thank you very much for raising that issue. and senator vitter. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thanks to both of you for your service and certainly my thoughts and prayers and condolences go out to all of the victims' families at ft. hood as to all of ours. general, you've consistently testified that the minimum in your opinion to maintain any sort of adequate readiness for the army is the 450,000 active component, correct? >> that's correct, senator. >> and that is still, as i understand it and as you have identified, the lowest level in

terms of army readiness since 1940. is that correct? >> the lowest number of soldiers. i have not said that, but that is, in fact, true. >> okay. i believe you have also said that that meets our minimum readiness requirement, but with a, quote, fairly high level, closed quote, of risk. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> in your army career, have you ever lived through a similarly fairly high level of risk? >> i would say that my assessment is based on the uncertainty in the world and the fact that we're not sure when we'll be able to respond. i do have some concerns about the readiness of our force especially over the next three to four years as we're transitioning and losing strength and that our readiness is decreasing. i have some concerns. what keeps me up at night is will i have enough troops ready

if asked to do that. >> i'm not trying to push, i'm just asking that fairly high level of risk, have you experienced that before in your army career to the same extent? >> no. >> okay. in light of this, general, can you speak to the benefit, necessity in my opinion of maintaining our joint training centers and the benefit they provide? >> if they are absolutely essential to what we are trying to do now as we rebuild our readiness to conduct decisive action and do combined arms activity and rebuild that in our force. the way we do that is center piece our combat training centers. specifically the national training center. those are critical to our strategy moving forward and our training. we are investing in them.

they will be the ones who certify and conduct that our brigade combat teams are trained in order for us to be prepared for future conflict. and they are critically important to us. >> thank you, gentlemen. i assume it's fair to say the nature of their training is particularly important and well suited to the types of conflicts we face today. >> we have, in fact, developed the scenarios there that represent not only the conflicts of today but the conflicts we will face in the future. it's a challenging development place where our leaders learn to think, adapt to current and future operations that are absolutely krital to us as we look forward to our success. >> thanks, general. general, we just went through, of course, a environmental analysis for reductions in the army. that was very recent. given that rigorous process the

army just went through, will the army use the same fundamentally the same process, the same metrics, the same considerations in the next round of analysis? >> yes. we did that analysis to get us down to 490,000 as we continue to reduce the size of the army we will do the same analysis. and although we have to have more, we believe the criteria used was pretty good the first time. >> we, in fact, have issue of the environmental analysis stage two to the bases and we're beginning the process of collecting data. part of that frankly is because as we talked in a number of occasions this morning, sequestration remains the law of the land. and if we have to go down to the 420 that the active component would be directed toward under the bca, we have to know exactly

where this structure and force lies to make the best structure we can. the requirements and the determinations, the inputs we used the first time seem to work pretty well. we'll remain flexible, but those are pretty much the tracks that we remain on. >> again, not to pre-judge anything, but the basic analysis, the basic metrics, the basic test you used the first time will continue? >> basically. but, again, you come to different conclusions as your numbers change. >> yeah. i'm not saying where that leads, i'm just saying the basic criteria and metric should be the same. is that fair to say? >> it's fair to say. it's also fair to say at that point should we make additions or deletions or whatever, that obviously would be part of the public record and we allow the people to make comment on it. >> okay. just the last question.

the dsc clearly states that risks should not be taken in the capability to rapidly respond with ready forces but rather risks should only be accepted in the ability to sustain large scale ground operations and the regeneration of forces. general and secretary, in terms of this fairly high level of risk you admit we're accepting at 450, is it limited to that ability to sustain large scale ground operations versus to rapidly respond? >> i think the risk that we have is not for rapid response. the risk is not -- the risk over a couple years is readiness because it takes time to catch up as strength reduces to catch up. where the risk comes into play is in the size.

and if we have to do multiple contingencies which is what they require, it really has to do with the size plus the readiness. we will still have the rapid deployment capability, but our ability to do a major contingency and another one clearly is at risk based on the size and capability we have inside of the army as a lower level. >> okay. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator vitter. senator donnelly. >> thank you, mr. chairman and mr. secretary, general. on behalf of everyone in indiana, our sympathies to the entire army family, to those who were injured and lost their lives. please know our thoughts and prayers are with all of you in the army family. mr. secretary, as you know, dfas, the headquarters are in indiana. i know how hard those folks work, the excellence and quality of their work, the pride they

take in it and in serving their country. and i would just ask you that you keep us in the loop and keep us informed as you move forward in the dfas process. we would appreciate you keeping us in the loop. >> certainly. that's a reasonable request. i would note it's not our intent to nor do we control the processes of dfas. we're just trying to ensure within the army we're doing what we control as well as we can. >> understood. i was with ayotte when we were in afghanistan recently, and part of the discussion was about the equipment that's leaving afghanistan. and while we were in ukraine, the defense prime minister was talking to us about how desperately they need almost everything. communications equipment, other equipment. and i was just wondering if

there has been any discussions about whether there's a matchup between some of the things that are heading out that we have in excess and the needs of friends like ukraine and other places in eastern europe? >> so senator, what we do is we've identified excess property. what the process is we identify that, that is available for other nations. they have to request it. and they request it through our government and then we would make decisions and then provide that equipment. so we have identified all of that excess equipment. any country can ask for that equipment. the issue becomes if they have to fund it themselves or if we gift it. that would be a decision made based on the request that is presented to us. but we certainly have that list of equipment that anyone is welcome to look at.

we have not specifically, we have not been asked so far to specifically look at what could ukraine use. >> the reason i mention it is because in effect they said they basically had been stripped of almost everything they had. their navy was taken from them. and so they have in their conversations with us told us how much they appreciate the friendship, how much they look forward to continue to working with us, and how much they look at the u.s. army as a model for where they'd like to be at some point in the future. one of the areas i have been working on a lot over the past few years is jido, the impact it has had had on trying to figure out fertilizer formulas that are non-explosive. trying to figure out how to have

your young men and women come home without one more ied occurring. as you know jido is going to a smaller footprint. and i just wanted to ask what your plans are as you look at this so that we're not in a place where we're back to zero in effect and have to start and ramp up all over again. what are your hopes for jido and what are the continuances you plan to have? >> as we look at the future here, we all agree -- i'll speak for the army. the army specifically agrees we need it to sustain itself. because the threat of ieds is not going away. they are becoming more complex, more sophisticated. we need a process that allows us to constantly look at this so we can develop the tactics, techniques, procedures, and the -- and use the technology necessary for us to continue to

move forward. so we absolutely agree with that. we also in the army have established the asymmetric warfare group that will connect to jido and help us to help them identify systems. for us it's critical for the way ahead. we agree it should remain under the department of defense. we think that's the best place because they can resource it through all the different capabilities. this is not a single service issue. it is a multi-service issue. >> it's just you have as the army taken such a significant lead in this effort, and i remember some years ago when mr. mchugh and i were both congressmen that i had a constituent whose son was over there. he ran his own machine shop and he had had spent the last month and a half basically telling all his customers i'll get back to you when i can and created an extender who it can catch a line

that it was 30 feet, 15 feet, 5 feet. and he said, look, if i can't get somebody else to do this, i want my son to come home safe. he said i came up with this all on my own at night. those are the kinds of things that jido has been able to help improve on, develop, take to ten degrees further. we certainly don't want to lose the capability that we have there. when we look at the mental health screening that's going on and the challenges that we face in that area, do you think there's a way to try to have more mental health screening tools associated with the periodic health assessment that goes on every year? >> we're always looking, as i mentioned a number of times this morning, for ways in which we can do things better. the challenge we face

particularly as we look at what occurred just yesterday at ft. hood is that we are doing everything we can to de-stigmatize in the soldiers' mind the reaching out for help before it becomes a larger problem. we've really increased our behavioral health encounters within the army over 900%. we view that as positive. folks are reaching out more. they're asking for help more voluntarily. but then sometimes things happen like happened yesterday that we fail to understand. we have for a deploying soldier, five discreet points. within 90 days when they get to theater, 30 days after redeployment, 90 days after redeployment. then for every soldier regardless of your deployment status, we do have behavioral

health assessment each and every year. so we're trying to keep as close a watch on our soldiers as we can. but clearly we believe there are more things we can do to identify problems in the more discreet stages of their development, try to get soldiers added help where under our current tool kit it may not be so obvious. >> i'll finish with this. on that trip we also met with the israeli defense forces. and one of their folks in this area said what they also try to do is have their platoon leaders like they push it down so that they can help -- give them as much training as possible. so when they look they can try to pick something up, see something that's a little out of normal and report it back up. and i would hope we would take a look at that. >> absolutely the key. we didn't have that before. we've now done that. here's the biggest problem we

have. it's really a dilemma. and the problem is sharing information. and how you protect an individual's rights with sharing information so the commanders and the people at the lower level understand that maybe there was a previous problem. and so the secretary and i are really doing the best we can to come up with processes that allow us to share information. because in a lot of cases that's the problem. there's some limitations to what we can do and we're tryi ining o the best we can. that's one thing we should work together on is how we can better share information so that the chain of command as you have said has the ability to really understand when soldiers are having problems. and that's, to me, that's something we have to focus on. and i would make one comment. i know we're over time and i apologize, chairman. the other thing is behavior health, we've invested a lot in

the army. but there's just some times when they want to be off post. we have to look at how we abide behavior health off post and how we're able to do that and the funding that allows them to do that properly. and it's a combination of all of those things i think would help us in this area. >> thank you both. and again our sympathies to the entire army family. >> thank you, senator donnelly. senator sessions. >> thank you. thank you, all. our hearts and prayers go out to those who suffered a loss. the army family at ft. hood and the whole army family. mr. secretary, thank you for your leadership. you've been candid and effective leader, i believe. and general odierno, it's a pleasure to have you here again. i remember visiting you when you were doing some of the best work ever, i guess, was done in iraq. it was a very tough time and professionals credit you with

changing around what the actions on the ground in a way that was positive for america. and i couldn't be more proud of you and your service. i am a supporter of defense department. i believe that it has been disproportionately squeezed in our budget process. but i am not unaware of admiral mullens told us that the greatest threat to our future is the debt. and we're told, secretary mchugh, by cbo a few weeks ago that this week we pay $211 million in interest. and it will rise to 880 ten years from today. that's an annual increase in expenditure of our government discretionary spending by $650 billion. so i believe we need to maintain a vibrant effective mobile

hostile military, but all of us, i think, acknowledge, do we not, that it means tightening belts and seeing how we can do those things at lower cost. i know you've been working toward that and, in fact, made progress. but you accept that notion, do you not? >> i don't disagree with a word that then-chairman mullens said. i think from the department of defense's perspective, we are not just willing, we're anxious to do our part. we went through a first round of $487 million worth of cuts. and came in another cut. the thing that worries us now is not just the size of those cuts which becomes very sizable under the bca, under sequestration. but the rapid nature of the

implementation of them. so we want to do our part, and we think we are, but there does come a point beyond which national security becomes -- >> i agree. i don't believe 420,000 is sufficient for the army. but i don't know why we'll have to go there. and i'm going to have to be shown that. because i'm ranking on the budget committee. and we're wrestling with these numbers. and you have to know -- i know you know the president will not allow any additional money for the defense department unless he gets an additional equal amount decrease. and the ron murray bill this year did help. i know you agree. so what i can't understand is this. general odierno, you noted that fy-16 it kicks in again. but this is the way i read the funding levels.

this year we're at $496 billion. is that correct? for the dod? do you have that number? >> i deal in army numbers. >> i'm sure that's true. and another thing, we want to be sure the army is fairly treated as you work through this process. but my understanding is in numbers i have is we're spending this year $496 billion for the defense department. next year 2015, defense will get 498. the next year in '16 it will remain flat again. basically goes to 499. but the next year '17, it jumps 13 billion to 512 and increasing $13 billion each year for the next five years. that's under the sequester, under the budget control act. and they're not further cuts.

staying flat at a time of low inflation, even low inflation is somewhat squeezing of your budget i acknowledge. but in the years to come, we're showing growth that actually exceeds cbo's projection of inflation. am i wrong about that? >> i don't have the dod figures in front of me, but as you know, senator, the army has already experienced significant cuts. we're coming down from a high of $144 billion in our base budget in fiscal year '10 to $121 billion roughly in the fiscal year '15 bba. and even at a flat line, our costs don't flat line. >> let me ask you this. how are you rueducting this yea?

how many soldiers do you have this year? >> as of right now we're about 522,000 soldiers. we're not functioning, senator, that's the issue. we are not ready. we are not funding our training. we had to cut modernization programs. we are not functioning. >> if you reduce from 512 to 450, that'd be 60,000 soldiers. and if the other parts of the dod are tightening their belts, why -- i've just got to be convinced that we're not able to sustain ourselves at a steady growth rate. so there's a predictability. if the budget control act does not change, there is predictability. we are flat for two more years and then we grow a half percent a year for five years. so you have certain

predictability there. and i don't want to see the army disproportionately cut. and the danger to me always was this year and ryan murray helped. if we hadn't fixed the problem this year, it would really done it. so general odierno, my time's up, but i'll let you explain, isn't it true that the problems you're facing right now is you're having to make decisions to reduce costs that really won't pay off until the out years and you have an additional burden on you right now to keep this army under control in a positive way. >> that's correct. it is -- we were not able because of operational commitments and other things we're doing now, we can't balance ourselves to down the road. that's exactly the issue.

sequestration doesn't come into issue until '20. >> there's another consideration that goes beyond the base budget, senator. as you know, at the height of funding of funding, we in the army received $121 billion in the fiscal year 7 for wartime operations. those are coming down dramatically as well. and for example, last year's agreed upon budget, there was some $3 billion of base operations cost that the army incured that this congress allowed us to pay for out of oco. so those are tens of billions of dollars that obviously when we come out of afghanistan, while we hope we can receive that money is gone, too. >> we were told last year that you were having to take base money for oco. did that happen? did you actually have to use some of your --

>> well, at the end of the day, when oco was approved, in fact, congress allowed us to pay for some of our base expenses out of oco. >> good. >> it's good until the money goes away and then you're stuck with base operation expenses without the funding to pay for them. >> thank you, senator. to senator blumenthal. >> thank you for being here and thank you for your service and to your families for theirs in supporting the great work that you do. and i would like to join many of my colleagues in expressing my deepest sympathies and concern for the ft. hood community, and most particularly the families of the victims in that shooting. certainly this experience shows that no part of our country, no place is immune from gun

violence. and whether it is a small school in sandy hook, connecticut, or an urban community in new haven, or one of the great military installations in the world, ft. hood, everybody shares in the tragedies that needless and senseless gun violence causes in this country today. and this experience i think also shows as number of my colleagues have observed the importance of mental health care. obviously in this instance, an investigation is ongoing. i'm not going to ask you to comment on that investigation or this particular individual. but one of the questions that i've been asked in these brief hours since this tragedy is whether there is sufficient screening, put aside the health care issue, which is preeminently important. is there enough screening of

individuals to know whether they are dangerous. and general, i know you've thought a lot about this issue and you've commented here and perhaps you can make some observations on it. >> in this case, the individual was screened, was receiving counselling. so in a lot of ways, the system worked. but obviously it didn't work completely, because in the end, he made some decisions that obviously cost other people's lives. the amount of behavior health and the screening that we do and how off we do it has increased significantly over the last five years, especially with the help in congress, they help us in giving us the ability to do that. we have increased by 150% our behavioral health specialists. so we have made some really good progress here. but again, ultimately, as i said earlier, one of the issues we run into is the sharing of

information. trying to protect individuals' rights, but also trying to ensure that we are providing them with the help necessary, and we also obviously continue to combat the stigma of coming forward with behavioral health issues. so those are the things we have to constantly and continually focus on. we do quite significant screening today, but it doesn't mean it's right, and it doesn't mean we can't improve it. we have to constantly evaluate this. this is something that we're going to have to deal with for a very long period of time. that's the consequence of 13 years of war. so we're going to have to make sure we have the systems in place to do this. and we'll have to do constant evaluations of this. >> may i add, senator -- >> please. >> first, i'd like to -- i believe i may have misspoke earlier. i said our behavioral health and calendars in the army have increased by over 900%. i got enthusiastic there. >> i was going to ask you that.

>> it's over 90%. still significant. the baseline being about 900,000 to almost double that. so we view that as a positive thing. and as the chief said, it's in no small measure due to the efforts we made to bring onboard to bring on significant increases in behavioral health specialist process provide them at a lower level so people feel more comfortable going forward. the challenge i think we have is we've discussed earlier is ensuring that we have the best possible tools to identify problems after those encounters and those assessments occur. we do predeployment just prior to post deployment. periodic at 30 days and at 90 days after deployment, behavioral health screening face to face to try to make sure we see problems that may be emerging. and thereafter, every soldier is

screened each and every year. clearly, we may have missed something yesterday. we need to work very hard to understand what that might have been, and if we can learn a lesson and improve the process, that's what we want to do. >> and i appreciate the kmecomms that both of you have made and i have no question about your determination to improve and upgrade the system, which -- police departments and all kinds of other organizations with a similar -- not the same, but a similar mission that deal with firearms and the challenges that you do in even hiring situations. so i don't minimize the challenges that you face. i would respectfully suggest since you mentioned earlier, the call that you received from the general that part of the strategy has to be to increase

the compatibility of records keeping. we have dwelled on this at length, as you know. i am sorry to once again belabor this point, but the sooner and better we can make those record systems completely interoperable and make the health care systems completely seamless, the better it will be, and so i just want to emphasize that point as strongly as i can and if i may ask a question since my time is very limited about the army aviation restructuring initiative, i understand from my national guard units, and this concerns me as head of the subcommittee that has jurisdiction, that under the iri, blackhawk helicopters will be transferred from the active component to the national guard in very substantial numbers. the national guard has expressed concern to me that they will

receive older anl model blackhawks instead of the new m model, which would, as a result, require a significant -- and right now nonexistent financial investment to modernize that force. is it true the guard will be receiving the anl model aircraft? >> won't be any as. it will be a combination of lnms that they receive from the active component. >> and is there a plan to provide additional, even more modern blackhawk? >> over time, because they have a higher percentage of our ua-60s now. as we continue to modernize the fleet, they will become more modernized, just like the active component has modernized. the active component has lmns as well. it actually increases our modernization levels over the long run. >> thank you. i very much appreciate your testimony and thank you again

for your service. >> thank you very much, senator blumenthal. in that act, we had a lot of provisions relative to increased interoperability. you raise a very critical question. we're going to ask for the record a update on the interoperability on these records. because it's critically important. we thought we had really taken a major step, and maybe we did hopefully with the wounded warriors legislation towards that goal. and so we'll ask the secretary if you can give us an update on that question that senator blumenthal raised. >> yes, sir. >> for the record. >> we can do that. >> we'll ask both the v.a. and the d.o.d. to give us -- as a matter of fact, this will be a good test. we'll ask you to give us a joint report. >> me personally? >> no, i'm talking about the army and the v.a., give us a joint report signed by both of

you on this question. that will tell us something about interoperability. >> you're the chairman. >> i'm sorry. it should be d.o.d. can you pass along our request to the d.o.d.? >> i'd be happy to. >> we'll make it directly to take you off something of a hook on that one. >> and if i may just add, mr. chairman, with very sincere thanks for that suggestion, that it be done within the next month, i don't want to put time pressure on you and i know i'm a little bit out of line -- >> no, not at all. >> i can't speak for the department of defense, but obviously this is something the they've been working on diligently. secretary hagel immediately picked up the challenge from secretary panetta. so i'm sure they'll do it as quickly as they can. >> and we will pass that directly to the secretary of defense and send you a copy so you can follow what we're doing. >> thank you very much, sir. >> thank you very much.

senator graham. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> to all of us, i think heartbroken, ft. hood going through this thing twice. so the whole nation is thinking about the army today, and particularly those at ft. hood. but as we move forward, dylan, with this problem, do you think the 1992 d.o.d. regulation prohibiting personal possession of firearms on installations should be revisited? push review about one way to deal with a tax like this. is to have installations with people, are armed and can fight back. what's your view of that? >> i believe that we have our military police and others that are armed. and i believe that's appropriate. and i think that i believe that that allows us the level of

protection necessary. although we carry arms quite regularly overseas on a regular basis, i believe in the united states, it's more appropriate. >> i would ask you to keep an open mind, because in a deployed environment, everyone has a weapon. it's a pretty stressful place in iraq and afghanistan. i think people have been responsible in the military. and as i remember, my last visit to the afghanistan, that you could not be served chow unless you presented your weapon. and i think the reason is you want everyone to have their weapon because of the insider threat. is that correct? >> that's correct, sir. >> i think our military at home is very much a target of terrorism, but also this seems to be more of a individual who had a hard time coping. major hasan clearly was an act of terrorism. i think you can expect more of this back here at home.

i just talked to attorney general holder and he said home grown terrorism -- and i'm not saying this was. it apparently wasn't. is getting to be a bigger threat. we've had several soldiers killed. i think one outside of new jersey. i just hope you'd revisit this policy because i think our military members are very responsible with firearms and we need to really look at having more capability, not less to deal with insider threats. now, as to the size of the army, i know we have a $17 trillion budget deficit. and admiral mullen said something that got a lot of attention. the biggest threat to our national security is our deficit. there's some truth to that. but i'm not so much worried about our deficit blowing up the country as i am terrorists. i don't think people in south carolina are as safe as they could be given sequestration. and you have said very

eloquently that you began the career in the ara hollow army, not want to end my career in a hollow army. if sequestration is allowed to continue, will we have ended that career in a hollow army? >> for the next -- from today through 2020 or so, until we get rebalanced based on taking the strength to a low level, our ability to stay in a level of readiness and modernization begins to hollow the army out. >> so the answer would be yes? thank you for your honesty. and i think you're right. i think every service chief has told us that. and i hope we will act responsibly. now, within reason, knowing that money is always an object, would you agree that our military is being positioned based on budget concerns more than threat concerns? given sequestration. >> it's clear to me we developed

it for guidance which was before sequestration. it does not allow us to meet that. so we're driving down structure based on budget. >> the world is just not safer. that's not why we're cutting the budget. we just decided for some reason to cut the budget in spite of the growing risk. within reason, what would be the appropriate size of the army? and if you can't give me an answer today, think about it, given all the threats that are reasonable that we're facing, and see if we can build a budget to support the army based on the threats of the nation, do you have any ballpark figure? >> i do. and i'll repeat what i've said in the past. i believe in order to meet -- i testified last year and the year before that in order to -- at moderate risk, which i think is reasonable. force of 390, 350, and 202 and

the reserve component is appropriate for that. let's say that we didn't want to accept -- we wanted to accept some risk, but less than moderate. what would you do? >> so then i would say i believe the floor is 450,000, 335,000. >> no, i want to go the other way. i want to give us a budget that gives us minimum risk. >> i see. >> call me old-fashioned. >> i've not fought my way through that. but for many years, most of us believe that the right size of the army is somewhere around 500 to 520,000. >> that would be the optimum army, given what we face as a nation. could you tell me the difference in terms of cost. not today, but over time. you don't have to do it today. between high risk, moderate risk and the optimum army? >> we can lay that out for you. >> and what i want the committee to look at is in terms of our

budget deficit, how much, if we went to the high risk, could we remotely balance the budget. i think the amount of money involved is going to be within our power to gather if we could replace sequestration. >> now, about the a-10, the a-10 is being retired because you've got to make hard choices budget-wise. is that correct? >> that's what i believe. >> the f-35 comes online if everything goes perfectly, in 2021, i believe, is that correct? >> around that time, sir. >> okay. so for $3.5 billion, we could keep the a-10 in the inventory for a few more years and wouldn't have a gap. >> i would just say i think it would allow us to keep the a-10 for that amount of money. it would be obviously up to

them. >> do both of you still believe that military commanders should bear the responsibility for dealing with sexual harassment problems in the military? >> absolutely, senator. absolutely. >> john, do you think we're on the right track of getting a handle on this problem? >> i think as we look at the kinds of indicators that we normally used to track these reports, particularly have grown significantly. we view that as positive, as an personal to that, a good number of those reports are for years, where something happened before the soldier. usually a female. but not always. the soldier even joined the military. that shows us they have increasing confidence. we obviously have a long ways to go. none of us are ready to declare victory. but we are doing -- the chief and i focus on this every day. we had a meeting just last week, a rally in the pentagon to kick off sexual awareness month, month of april, and everything we do and say, including our

published priorities, sexual assault and harassment is my number one priority. i know that everyone in the army believes that and is working on it. >> thank you. my time's up. in ten seconds, could you tell us what happens if we get afghanistan wrong? if it falls apart? what's going to come our way? >> as i said, i mentioned earlier, ungoverned territory or instability will allow those to exploit that element such as eke and others, which would then allow portions of afghanistan and any other area that's ungoverned and not properly secured to threaten the united states and that remains a concern. >> thank you. thank you, senator graham. senator cain. >> thank you. i'm going to ask a question about the long-term stress on the army of 13 years of war. we see these shooting incidents too at ft. hood, one at the navy

yard, one in virginia recently at naval station norfolk. they posed some mental health challenges. they posed base security challenges. when we hear the testimony about sexual assault in the military, when we hear testimony about military suicides, general amos was here a couple weeks ago talking about instances where marines acted in disrespectful manners that he's having to deal with. i view all these issues as kind of connected to potentially organizational stress issues. we now have a war that's been 13 years of continuous warfare before. talk to me about long-term stress of 13 years of war and the effect that you see in the army and what we need to be doing to deal with that, please. >> thank you, senator. in the army, you know, we've had 2.4 million deployments of --

some are multiple deployments. 2.4 million soldiers have deployed to iraq and afghanistan over the last 13 years. 500,000 of those have deployed multiple times. what that means is there is stress. stress on families. stress on individuals. and it's the first time we've done this with an all-volunteer force. we have to understand this. this is one of the things, so what are we seeing? we're seeing increased alcoholism. we're seeing -- we had initial increase in divorce rates. that's settled down. we're seeing an increase in those who have behavioral health issues that we have to help them with. that's the cost of this. one of the things i don't talk a lot about when we talk about risk, though, is when we make it smaller, in the future, if we have to deploy these forces, it's going to put a significant risk on them because of the pure numbers. and that's one of my worries. that's one of the risk calculations i make, what's the impact this reduction has on a smaller force. and what will be the impact on

our leaders and our soldiers. you know, we don't talk a lot about the impact this has on our leaders. our leaders are the ones who have multiple, multiple, multiple deployments. and have the stress of leading and they've handled it incredibly well. but they also have stress on them as well, as we move forward and we have to consider all of this in the future. we have to have programs in place to deal with it. we have to make sure we understand this as we continue to develop the army, and we have to consider that as we adjudicate risk for the future for us. >> in this time of really unprecedented in the sense that we don't have a historical precedent of a 13-year war, unprecedented stress, we ought to be doing what we can to make it easier, but wouldn't you say sequestration, budget uncertainty. that's a pretty significant additional stressor on top of a stress that is already an unprecedented one. >> i agree, senator. >> and i just have to say i don't know exactly the context

under which admiral mullen made the statement that our debt was our largest national security threat. i've just got to say, i could not disagree more. i've done an awful lot of budgets as a mayor and a governor. i understand surpluses. i understand deficits. i understand debt. i understand ratios of debt to gdp that are acceptable. we're a little on the high side. by a couple of percentage points. it's completely within our control to deal with it. the national security challenges we have that are the most serious -- debt that we can control doesn't match up to an iranian nuclear threat. debt that we can control doesn't match up to a north korean nuclear threat. debt that we can control doesn't match up to the proliferation and mutation of al qaeda affiliates all over the world. i think we need to get out of our head that debt is our biggest national security challenge and sort of read the newspaper every morning. and it is my hope, mr. chair, that working through the budget that we'll be able to do in 16

and 4 what we did in 14 and 15. the request, if we do what has been requested, everything that's been requested, we will have lifted half of the burden of sequester, actually slightly less than half of the burden of sequester from the military. they will have absorbed more than half. i'm not sure i would have made such a reasonable request. you're trying to meet us halfway. you're asking for us to give you half relief essentially. it's my hope that we'll do that. one question only, and that is, i've been asking this in all the posture hearings. talk to us about one year in, the integration of women fully into all mos, and give us a one-year status report. thank you. >> thank you, senator. first of all, to this point, it's going very, very well. the army has through the department of defense noticed congress of our attempt right now to open up some 33,000

positions across the army. it really does take a very broad base perspective, broad based approach to various jobs that women are interested in doing. even in our more challenging moss, our combat engineers are attended the schools. they're doing extraordinarily well. in fact, over the last three years, women have graduated at the same rate as men. a pretty remarkable statement as to the capabilities of these soldiers, both male and female. and perhaps most important of all, we're going through a very methodical evaluation of our physical standards, and people are in some corners suggesting we're doing this to lower standards, to help women into the ranks. simply not true. what we're trying to do, and we'd be doing it even if we're an all-male military, is try to

match required physical skills with those kinds of actions that you're expected to carry out in your particular job. we want every soldier to be postured for success and to have the physical as well as the mental capabilities to do the job that they're assigned to. that is a very methodical process led by our training and dongt rin command. all of us wish it would go further, but to do it right, it needs to work its way out. so we have a full report due on this at the end of the year. from the army perspective, including our soft units, our 160th aviation is going very well. >> great. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much. senator king has graciously yielded to senator hagan. >> thank you. thank you, chairman levin and senator king. i too want to express my deep

concern, my heartfelt prayers and condolences to what's taking place at ft. hood now, and particularly to all the families and all the service members, men and women and families on that base. and all of north carolina is wishing those same thoughts and prayers. i did want to make one statement on the 440th air lift wing. i am deeply concerned with an air force proposal would remove all of the c-130s stationed at pope army airfield at ft. bragg. the airborne mission is probably the best example of the importance of joint operations, and it's critical to ensure input from all stake holders before significant decisions are made. i want you to know that i'm committed to ensuring the readiness of the 82nd airborne, which is the heart of our global response force and our special operations forces and our other

units at ft. bragg, and we can chad about that later. but my first question i wanted to ask about maintaining our technological superiority. in your written testimony, you stated that if sequestration persisted in 2016 and beyond, it would not be until fiscal year 20 to 23 that the army would begin reinvesting in the modernization programs to upgrade aging fleets. i chaired the subcommittee on emerging threats and that is a real concern. we held a classified briefing with defense secretary kendall on military technology superiority. secretary mchugh, thanks again for your service to our country. thank you. to the extent that you can speak about this in an open session, what risk will the army be

assuming? if you're forced to really degrade much of your modernization programs due to this long-term sequestration that we've all been talking about this morning. >> we thank you for reading the submitted document and for focusing on a very, very important passage. this is an area that we deeply concern ourselves about. it is one of the things, the very hard things you had to do to ensure as best we can that for the threats that arise today, we're as prepared as possible to send soldiers into harm's way to meet them. it is not the kind of cut that we would prefer to take for the simple reason that as you noted, the threats and the capabilities of our potential adversaries in the future are evolving very rapidly as well. heretofore, very basic terrorist

organizations are developing key capabilities, one of the great advantages that the united states army has enjoyed particularly over the last 13 years was the best equipment, the most modern equipment. that didn't just happen. we don't just go by it at a box store. it has to be developed. own accounts have been severely hit, and under sequestration would be a mere percentage of what we view as the rational investment level. and it will have a significant impact on our snt national base. i know you're concerned about, but also clearly on the availability of the most modern equipment in that future battlefield, not when it arises but where it arises. >> i'm also concerned about the talent that we need to have to be sure that we have the top talent, and if we put this off years down the road, we're going to lose what i think would be an institutional capability that's

not going to sit around and twidle their thumbs. >> exactly. we talk about highly skilled workers. it is the same kind of challenge in our research and development snt fields. these are obviously very highly trained, very highly educated, and in our case, very high skilled individuals that will go find other things to do if we are unable to sustain them and give them work they find interesting and challenging. and work that obviously will greatly benefit men and women in uniform. >> and it really is a problem, because if you wait years down the road, the catch-up will be way too long to be competitive. >> may be too late. yeah. >> on the front end. i know that we just had one question on the new roles for women in the military. i understand that during the last year, the army opened approximately 6,000 positions in 26 different brigade combat teams. select aviation specialties and

special operations aviation and approximately 3,600 field artillery positions. i also understand the army anticipated opening an additional 33,000 previously closed positions during fiscal year 14. can you expand on that? and i know those are huge numbers. there's a big transition. with those openings, how many combat related positions are still closed to women, and how is the transition going? >> senator, thank you for the question. we are continuing to open up positions. and as you just said, for the secretary of defense, we informed congress to open up 33,000. and those are really occupations very open to women, but they are serving at different levels. they are now serving in infantry battalions. >> and now they're getting credit for that. >> that's right.

exactly. so what we're doing now, the next step is we're now looking at -- we're doing our physical demand study to move towards opening all positions to women. there's a couple things we have done. we now have our first female soldiers that's completed training in multiple launch rocket systems and they are now serving as platoon leaders. that's a new opening. we are doing our physical demand study that is looking at the rest of our artillery, army, and infantry positions that will help us as we go forward and report out in the end of '15 to opening all of these positions as we've been requested to by the legislation. we're also conducting a significant integration study on how we would properly integrate them. so what you'll see in the next year or so is the relates starting to come out of these studies that we're doing. we just finished a fairly comprehensive test out of ft. stewart in the third infantry division in testing infantry

skills and other things as we develop the standards. we had both women and men conducting in those experiments. and so i believe we have a comprehensive effort to gather the data, which will enable us to make the right decision moving forward. and we anticipate that we will begin to open up more and more and more positions to women as we move forward. >> one question that arises when you're conducting these standards. are the men already trained and the women are not? how are you looking at the actual training program? >> yes. so it's a physical demand, so it has nothing to do with training. it has to do with physical abilities. so in other words, it doesn't count -- we're not accounting for can you do something quick or faster. it really is about testing your physical abilities to do it. so level of capability does not play into it. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator hagan. senator king? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to begin by making a modest suggestion.

one of the advantages of being the last person on the line is one gets to listen to all the other questions and comments. and i've been coming to these hearings now for a year, almost a year and a half, and the word that's been used more often than any other single word is "sequester." and it occurred to me as i was listening to the questions on both sides of the aisle that are deeply concerned about the impact on sequester on the army, and on the department of defense. perhaps the armed services committee could lead a discussion to find -- to lead a bipartisan project to find a solution to our sequester and budget problem. it's a bipartisan group. well respected group. and i think most importantly, we have i think a more intimate acquaintance with the real effects of sequester than perhaps any other committee.

we have three members of the budget committee on this committee, and i commend to you the idea of convening us as a group to talk about the solution to sequester, because it's would have been the frustrating things to me is that around here, we often bemoan problems like sequester, but they don't seem to get resolved. we now have a little breathing space because of the bipartisan budget agreement, but i'm just afraid if we just keep talking about it, we're not going to get anything done. so i make that suggestion, too. >> i very much welcome that suggestion. if somebody who has spent a huge amount of my time recently the last couple years struggling with this issue and suggesting an alternative, which so far has not achieved support, because of it involves, at least in part,

revenues. to address the problem. so very, very sympathetic to what you're saying. and i will talk to the ranking member, senator inhofe, about how we might see if there's enough interest on his side. already talked to one of our colleagues, republican colleague on his side. i won't identify him because he should identify himself, who raised a very, very similar suggestion, just this morning to what you have. we as a committee and we as individual senators are in a position because we've seen the impacts, and we see the looming impacts, by the way. we've seen the '15 impacts, but also the fiscal year '16 impact where is this sequester comes back in its full bloom and its full lack of glory. so we are in a position, as senator king mentions, that perhaps except for the budget

committee, no other committee -- no other single committee can see. because we have about half of sequester falls on the military. no other committee is in that position. it's the rest of us for the nondefense discretionaries divided among committee. so i'm very much welcome to the suggestion and will talk to senator inhofe and see what he thinks so we might be either formally or informally to get our committee members together and start noodling this very important issue. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. general odierno, to go from one of the broadest to one of the more narrow issues, as you know, the budget proposes a series of changes involving military pay raise, the base allowance, commissary subsidies, tri-care. the pressure here is going to be to wait. there's a commission on compensation that's supposed to report about a year from now. and i know that everybody's going to say, you know, let's

put off this discussion until that commission reports. what's the downside of waiting? >> well, it's our budget figures in '15 and beyond. i mean, '15 is really -- it's the savings that we garner from those proposals immediately. it probably impacts '15 more, because we supposedly would have some output from them. so we'd have to figure out how we make up for the reductions that we booked based on our recommendations for the changes in composition, if we have to wait. i don't have the exact number what it is in '15. so i'd have to tell you what that specific impact is. i know the number grows as it gets to the out years and becomes more significant. >> we had a personnel hearing and the number we were given was 2.1 billion for year one and almost 30 billion over five

years. so i think that needs to be borne in mind that every year we put off those decisions, we have to find that money somewhere else. >> that's exactly right. the army's portion of that is around 40% because it's based on the number of personnel that you have. >> general, by my count, you've been a part of two military draw-downs. first in the '70s following vietnam and the '90s after the cold war. what lessons do you take from those experiences and different phases of your career that can be applied to the different circumstance? >> the '70s, i was probably too young to understand what was going on and really have a grasp. but what i remember from the '70s was the hollowness of the army that i came into. the lack of training, the lack of resources, the lack of ability for us to properly train our units to meet the missions that they had at the time. that was very clear to me. we saw that change in the '80s

as investment increased inside of the army and made a significant difference on morale. made a significant difference on our abilities, on our confidence. you could even argue that at some point along the way, the american people lost confidence in their military, which was rebuilt in the '80s and the '90s. what i learned in the '90s is we took our personnel out so quickly, it left significant holes in the force that took us ten to 15 years to recover from in terms of properly allocating and properly managing the downsizing. and that was not done -- it was forced because of the amount of people to take down. but the difference between those years and now was the sheer capacity. back then we had almost a million-man active army in the '90s, which was brought down initially to 750 and 550. so what happens is now that we're getting so small, each cut

has significantly more impact on the ability because we are really getting small enough now where it really means something. in the past, maybe it didn't. to me, that's the biggest difference as we look forward to this. we have to make sure we're not hollow and we have to make sure we remain at capacity so we have the ability to respond and deter. >> a couple of brief observations and questions. senator kane and i and senator levin were both in the middle east at the same time the last six months or so. one of the things we noticed was the very high value of our training and exchange programs with officers in other countries. i think that program, it's a relatively low cost, high return because the -- i don't want to overstate it, but the respect and admiration and positive

feelings of those officers for the united states after they had come here and had training here was palpable. and i think -- i'd like you to comment on the value you see of those programs. >> two things. one, it goes two ways. first is the value of us sending our officers to foreign countries to train and the influence that they have, and the influence they have to interact. it helps them tremendously when they get to hear different viewpoints and how people view us, and it helps as we look at developing capabilities. the second piece is when they send them here and what they gain by interacting. we are expanding that program in the army. we have expanded the number of officers that come to our war college. we're expanding the number that we are sending to other countries. we've been very cognizant in that decision. for me, that's critical for us, especially as we operate in this very complex interrelated world

that we have today. >> and that's a pretty low-cost program. >> it is. you get a lot for the money that you spend on it. >> just a final comment, again, based on these trips. and one i took just a week ago that was on a naval vessel. you have amazing people. when i got back from the trip with chairman levin, my wife said, what was your overall impression? and we were in some pretty interesting areas. lots of experiences. lots of inputs. but my overall impression was the quality of people we have working for us. particularly the young people. who are working under difficult circumstances, who are -- many of them haven't had raises in a long time. they have to deal with the threats of furloughs. and i just -- and i had exactly the same experience two weeks ago on this naval vessel. it was the enlisted men, the chiefs. and the officers, of course.

but the young people that we have working for us who are patriotic and idealistic are fantastic, and i often feel that we don't pay them as much respect as i think today deserve for what they're doing. >> just one quick comment, senator. that's why i still love to wear this uniform. it's because of them. and what i see every day and the sacrifice they make and how dedicated they are. i try to tell everyone that there are times when people are worried about this generation. i'm not worried about this generation. we've got great young men and women out there that dedicate themselves to a lot of different things and that's what inspires me every day to continue to serve, sir. >> well, i have to tell you that the experience that inspired me was the interview and going through the process of the young people applying for the military academies back in maine and seeing the quality of people that want to serve our country. it's reassuring, for sure. gentlemen, thank you very much and thank you for your service.

>> thank you very much. senator shaheen. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary mchugh, general odierno, i know you've had a very long morning, so i just have a brief question. but before i ask that, i just wanted to express my condolences to both of you, to everyone in the army over the tragedy at ft. hood. i know that we all share in mourning the victims and offering condolences to their families. i wanted to ask both of you about a hearing that i held yesterday in the readiness committee, where assistant secretary hammock -- we were discussing the whole issue of brack. and she commented -- and i'm going to paraphrase. but we have the quote, if you would like to see it. but to paraphrase what she said

is that if the army -- i assume d.o.d. -- can't get the authorization for brack in 2017, that you would go ahead -- you might go ahead and list some basis for closure in your budget request because of the concerns about because of the concerns about the ability to continue to run those bases in the way that they should be run. and while i appreciate the budget constraints that defense has at this time because of sequestration and certainly think we should do everything possible to roll back those automatic cuts, i found it troubling that the military would go forward without working in conjunction with congress. and so i wonder if you could respond to that. >> thank you, senator.

i obviously didn't get a chance to review personally secretary hammock's comments, but let me tell you the army's view. having gone through three rounds as a member of congress, i understand how difficult they are. i also understand that the way in which we need to pursue that and the way in which we realize the most savings is working with congress, particularly through a base closure process that is endorsed in law. you have, this congress has provide ed us certain flexibilities to, short of a brack, make decisions on excess facility and excess structure shedding. and we'll certainly look at the authorities that you have provided, the congress has provided. but in terms of an actual base closure round, certainly my

view, my position that will only occur should this congress give us the authority to do that. >> thank you. i very much appreciate that response, and i know we're awaiting some information about the european infrastructure and what can be done there. so i look forward to receiving that. but i very much appreciate your answer. thank you. >> thank you very much. senator shaheen, thank you for raising that subject. i had not heard of that comment until you just reported it. and i would just tell you, mr. secretary, that if our army or any of the other services proposes something in the budget which is not compliant with the brack process, in other words, front running the brack process, it will be doubly difficult, maybe triply difficult to get a brack process going. i mean, i supported the last brack process, but i know how

difficult it is to get a brack process. but it will set any possibility of such a process back many, many years if there's an effort to obviate the law, and i think that's basically what you just told senator shaheen and i very much welcome that assurance as well. you mentioned -- i only have one additional quick question of you, general odierno. you've mentioned individual rights a number of times when it comes to the mental health counselling question. and it's sensitivity which we all would appreciate. what do you mean by that? is this the inability of a counselor, for instance, to talk to a commander about what a mental health counselor had heard from a soldier, or is it something different? >> it's partly that, but it's also, for example, if a soldier has mental health counselling at ft. bragg, north carolina, and he moved to ft. carson,

colorado, sometimes we have difficulty moving that information with them. because of patient hippa, frankly. so that's the concern. we are trying to develop systems that enable us to do some of that, but it is difficult. >> isn't that a matter of mental health records being interoperable, whether it's to -- can't we shift mental health and medical records? >> the issue is the medical records would be available to the physicians -- i'm talking about commanders' knowledge. so in other words, it's about the company commander at ft. bragg knew this. >> ah. >> but the company commander at ft. carson does not know that this soldier had previous problems. >> we had a flavor of that with major nidal hasan, and that the receiving commander was not

aware of some of the disciplinary issues that he had. some of the academic issues that he had that over time added to his challenges. so part of the problem is hippa and who has access to what kind of medical records, behavioral health records. part of it is our own regulatory process, and it's the age-old culture of the military, not just the army that you're given a new start with every permanent change of station. we've made a lot of progress in making the relevant information aware and available to receiving commanders, but we still have some challenges on what we're allowed to do legally. >> all right. let us know if there's anything we should be doing in that area legislatively. apparently we do not have any additional questions, i believe. and we thank you very, very much. >> senator, i said my respects

to senator chambliss, and i want to close. we will miss you deeply. i will miss you personally. you have been an amazing and inspiring leader. the people of your great state have been blessed and we have equally been blessed and the men and women of the army have always appreciated and respected your leadership and your contributions. >> thank you, secretary mchugh. thank you, general odierno. thank you both for your very personal accolades for me. it means a great deal to me to receive them from people of your quality and your character and your caliber and your leadership, and we will treasure those comments from both of you. i'm sorry, general? >> i just want to clarify something, senator, if i could. >> sure. >> i was asked -- >> as long as it wasn't the accolade for me. >> no. [ laughter ] i double that, sir. i was asked several questions about risk and other things. i want to be very clear as i was

in the written statement that i have defined risk very clearly. at 450, i've defined the risk as significant in executing the defense strategic guides. at 420, question not implement the defense strategic guidance. i want to make sure that's on the record. by the questions i was asked, that might not have been as clear but i'm not backing away from my written statement. i wanted to clarify that for the record. >> thank you so much. there's two or things we've asked. one is -- we'll ask secretary of defense and the veterans affairs secretary about interoperability of medical records. staff, please, if you can try to get a joint letter from myself and senator inhofe on that, it would be appreciated. in terms of the restructuring of the army aviation, you're going to get us the budget, the basis of the savings for that. so we can understand it.

i think with that, we will stand adjourned with our thanks. >> during this month, c-span is pleased to present our winning entries in this year's studentcam documentary competition. studentcam issey smith annual competition that encourages middle and high school students to think radically about issues. students were asked to create their documentary based on the question --what's the most important issue congress should

consider in 2014? ben wolman is one of our second price winners. he attends palisades charter high school in pacific palisades, california. he waste his documenter on the issue was reported to him -- nasa funding. >> i was strolling on the moon and they've marry -- in the merry month of may what much to my surprise -- >> nasa's proposed budget for fiscal year 2014 is the lowest it has been since 2007 with a .44% of the annual federal budget. nasa is a huge asset to the united states, bringing not only information about our universe but also's roaring technological innovations and development here on earth. the organization's impact on our

country and our planet is unjustly downplayed due to its comparably meager funding. us overalso benefits and over again, not just on what byproducts of the that investment, whether it is in the medical area, which we see where hospitals are using some of the technology that came about from the nasa programs or new enterprises, new businesses in this country spun off because of the burgeoning zen research that is done with nasa itself. >> i go to schools and i described to students my personal connection to nasa technology, and i described the car accident that i had with that airbag that saved my life was nasa technology. >> nasa is encountering some new competition, raising the question of whether a declaration of safe board detracts from the current

predominance of governmental space organizations. lays a leading role in the new establishment of private space businesses. >> if you look at the private companies, they are doing a great job supplementing nasa now, but there are things done with nasa's pioneering work, in other words a lot of scientists, a lot of know-how came from nasa, and the funding is still under -- is still fundamentally governmental. to be world while developments, especially with nasa having a central role in the company's operations. but there was one nature of law -- -- major flaw. they are overpowering governmental organizations. >> they will never be probable, and private companies are doing things that are profitable, and they do things more efficiently than any government organization ever could, but there are things such as basic science that will never pay off in terms of making

money. >> make a profit by sending two rovers to look for a formerly part on mars. >> there may not be profited private shareholders, but for every one dollar given to the organization, the american oeople receive as much as $7 t $14 back from splash -- from spinoff technology post up in my city of los angeles, california, almost 10,000 aerospace engineers are employed by companies that work in tandem with nasa on various projects. >> increase funding for nasa and space exploration would have have an enormous benefit for southern california as a whole, los angeles county generally, and the city of los angeles particularly. >> i am standing in front of a business only 20 minutes away from my house that has supplied nasa with interconnect system such as the hubble telescope. boeing, another company close to

my house, has long worked with nasa and is the prime contractor for the internationals base station. as you can see from the stuff in my room, the organization still is a much more personal impact on people. nasa has always inspired me in particular, and i credit it with giving me a sense of fascination and interest in science. i remember playing nasa games on their website and watching the shuttle losses from home. i also have the privilege of its annuale jpl from open house, which was cut last year due to sequestration. with the current state of funding, kids are being deprived of experiences that could usually impact their lives and future careers. >> not only with the united states when the race to put people on the moon, but the cold war is over, the soviet union has collapsed, the competitive argument, whatever virtue it may , it certainly scared the united states, it is now gone.

-- whatad to ask exactly is the function? dna toust have it in our explore. it is our destiny, it is our mission. too often that gets lost in d.c. >> enhancing man's knowledge -- i should say person's knowledge -- about outer space is extort -- is extraordinarily important pour the enticement of young people into knowledge, the pursuit of new front tears. >> i think we need to increase the nasa budget for exploration, robotic exploration of mars. i have a robot around every planet. we could learn out there ultimately about our planet and what we need to survive on earth. >> if you cut your research budget, you literally cut your

future. futureure industries, technology, and if you're not maintaining that, whether it be or not, then you do so at your own peril. >> if you're not a scientist or technologist, you value that activity. are thethe 21st century foundations of tomorrow's economies, and without it, you might as well to slide back to the cave. that is where they are headed right now. >> nasa's reach extends beyond geographical boundaries and nationalism. nasa has long inspired not only americans but people around the world. each scientist achieving the congressman not of one country but of the entire human race. other countries are still ramping up their space programs, and congress must realize that giving nasa proper funding is a responsible to both the u.s. and the world will stop in this new year america, the world's worst is country should lead the way, take off, and