general breedlove is vice chief of staff of the u.s.air force at georgia tech graduate and we enjoyed a graduate of university of virginia playing you the other week. it may be the one bright spot we will have this year but thanks for your help and cooperation in that. he is also a graduate of arizona state university where he had a bachelor of science degree and national war college. without further ado we want to get right to your opening statement. we are pleased to have the ranking members join us now. we also have with us the chairman of the full committee. we talked before you got here dispensing with opening statements and putting them in the record because we're going to call votes in 10 or 15. >> i want to welcome our witnesses today and placed a statement in the record. >> we appreciate your service to this committee. we worked as close partners and have a special relationship and i appreciate her help with this committee and the great work that she does. with that we will do something a little different today. we will put you

general breedlove, we thank you for working in your schedule to be here. often times we hear everybody talking about leaving iraq and afghanistan, but we know when the air force, when everybody else might come home, the air force oftentimes does not come home. they still have to stay there an continue to do operations. i'd like to have any comments you have about what these cuts have made to the air force already and what future cuts could do and the floor is yours. >> thank you, chairman forbes. chairman mckeon, congresswoman bordallo, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you today about 69,000 -- 690,000 plus proud airmen who serve as part of a joint team you see before us. these are challenging times, the air force has been at war more than two decades. we have fought alongside the team in afghanistan since 9/11. we went to the gulf, the gulf war in the beginning of the 1990's and didn't come home to your point, sir. quite often when the nation comes back from a war, we leave significant assets to overwatch remaining forces to provide support to those

general breedlove, we thank you for working in your schedule to be here. when the air force and, when everybody else might come home, the air force often does not come home. they have to stay there and continue to do operations. i would like to have any comments that you have about what these cuts have meant to the airports already and what future cuts could do. the floor is yours. >> thank you, chairman. thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about 690,000 proud chairman who serve as the part of the joint team that you see in front of us. these are challenging times and the air force has been at war for more than two decades. we went to the golf at the beginning of the '90s and did not come home. quite often when the natn comes back from a war, we need significant assets to overwatch remaining forces to provide support to those who would remain behind. the cuts that we see, i think my remarks and will talk about in just a minute,hese are challenging times. the tempo is exacerbated by the fact that our aports since the opening of the gulf war h