actually work side by side day in and day out, and you've done an excellent job of springing some socom people out in other places. i think the nctc is a good forum for that, but we want to see that happen more and more and rock for ways to encourage it, and i think in particular some of the title 10, title 50 conflicts between spell and dod can be resolved better if we start having more sharing back and forth. now, obviously, we understand all of those different pieces have personnel to manage. that's the great challenge, i know, for you. and if your personnel is sent all over a bunch of other places, you've got a core mission to accomplish. so along the way if there are ways we can help you free up more personnel, please let us know. i know we have got an ongoing issue in terms of the management within your own entity of different service members, and we are communicating that concern to dod and trying to give you the authority you need to better manage your own personnel within socom, and certainly we look for those opportunities also to build those relationships and really just sort

i just wonder if you could comment how you see socom's role in combating piracy in that part of the world and any concerns you have about how it may distract from some of the other missions? >> yes, sir. we have obviously across the military there's robust capability to take on piracy in different ways. and special operations contributes some of the capability to that as was evidenced here a couple months ago. how that force is used is a matter of policy. it's my responsibility to train the force to do what it is it's asked to do. we do keep some elements of our force on standby, on alert to respond to that kind of situation so that if they are infrequent, then i think we would consider it not to be much -- >> and that is all i need in the case. even with everything that's been going on in the last eight years, it's always been the case that you've had that standby force. >> yes, sir. >> i'm sorry. i didn't mean to interrupt if you have anything else. >> again, it's more of a policy issue, but the question is, is really are we -- are we going to prevent piracy or are we going to respond t

currently, the department of defense is leasing the land for socom from a private individual. the funds authorized by this bill will be used to build a new headquarters on land adjacent to the current location and leased from the state of florida. for the grand sum of $1 per year. this provision is extremely important to my community because socom personnel and supporting services have contributed over $1.2 billion and over 20,000 jobs to south florida's economy. mr. speaker, while i support the underlying legislation, i have deep reservations about the majority's decision to block full restoration of missile defense funding. this comes as north korea's demented despot continues to mock global condemnation of his nuclear program and threatens the united states and our friends and allies with mass destruction. just today, an official from the north korean central news agency, a mouthpiece for the dictatorship said and i quote, if the u.s. imperialists start another war, the people and army of north korea will wipe out the aggressors once and for all. at the same time, the irani

and something we dealt with and what we always tried to do on this committee is find ways to enable socom to have a more nimble approach to acquisition, so that the normal processes are difficult operating with such speed and technology that's rapidly changing and if you go through a acquisition process the time you acquired the product it's out of date. we tried to speed it up in a couple different areas. curious how you think that is going in general and give you an opportunity to respond, "the washington post" has written an article critical of the contracting but it hasn't followed the process and in some instances i have a strong bias that drowning the d.o.d. process is one of the things inhibiting our ability to move forward but it's not to say we don't need to have some transparent process so we make sure it's all in the up and up and not in the best interest of the taxpayers and i'll give you an opportunity to comment on a couple of those issues and where you see it headed. >> i certainly agree with you and am encouraged by all secretary of defense gates has said about relooking a

what we have always tried to do on this committee is find ways to enable socom to have a slightly more nimble approach to acquisition. so the more normal processes are difficult when you're operating with such speed and so much technology that is rapidly changing. if you go through a normal 18-month acquisition process. by the time you have acquired the product, it is out of date. so we have tried to speed it up in a couple of different areas. curious how you think that is going in general. also wanted to give you an opportunity to respond. "the washington post" has written an article recently critical of some of the contracting that it hadn't followed the process in some instances. i have a very strong bias that browning the d.o.d. in process is one of the things that is inhibiting our ability to move forward. but that's not to say that we don't need to have some transparent process so that we make sure it's all on the up and up and done in the best interests of the taxpayers. i just want to give you an opportunity to comment on some of those issues and where you see it headed. >> i c