Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper has a virtual conversation with The Heritage Foundation on the readiness of the U.S. Armed Forces, October 15, 2020. Video courtesy of The Heritage Foundation.
Transcript
But we know we can’t do that. Our adversaries are looking to grow stronger. North Korea Threatens Missile Strikes Iran continues to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Russia and China. Their governments have attempted to influence our elections, invaded our allies and spread propaganda throughout our media. They also continue to build up their militaries to use for aggression, not to maintain peace. The US has maintained military superiority for so long that many take it for granted. But it’s far from guaranteed. If we don’t continue to invest in replacing decades old ships, planes, tanks and other equipment will soon fall behind. And then it may be too late to catch up. Given that our forces may also fight outnumbered, we need to look at every option to ensure that they are well trained, well prepared for the rigors of combat. And finally, we need toe. Always consider what we can do to take better care of those who are willing to put their lives on the line for this country. The Department of Defense, under the stellar leadership of Secretary Esper, has pledged to rebuild US military readiness and they’ve made great progress but there are challenges that still remain. The secretary is here today to tell us what we, as a nation must do to preserve America’s founding promises of peace and prosperity and freedom for this and for future generations and how we might help. But first, let me give you a little back rail. Dr. Mark Esper is a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy. He saw combat in the Gulf War with the 101st Airborne. The Screaming Eagles, the only air assault division of the U. S. Army. He later commanded a rifle company in an Airborne Battalion combat team. After leaving active duty, this highly decorated veteran chose to join us here at the Heritage Foundation and serve as our chief of staff. While continuing his military service in the National Guard and the Army Reserve. He eventually left Heritage and became a senior staffer on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate government affairs committees. He also was a policy director for the House Armed Services Committee and the first national security adviser for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He also served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense under President George W. Bush. Later, he would work in a number of private sector positions, including chief operating officer and executive vice president at Aerospace Industries Association, executive vice president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and vice president for government relations at Raytheon. In 2017 he was nominated by President Trump and confirmed as secretary of the Army in 2019. He was nominated and confirmed as secretary of defense. It is truly an honor and a privilege. So welcome to the Heritage Foundation and welcome home, I might add, one of our distinguished alumni and a dear friend of this organization. Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, Secretary Esper. Well, good afternoon, everyone. And thank you, Kate, for that very kind and generous introduction. And I want to say a big thank you to the Heritage Foundation for hosting this discussion about the successes of the Department of Defense, the challenges we face when it comes to implementing the national defense strategy in this era of great power competition. Today, our strategic competitors China and Russia are attempting to erode our hard earned gains as they undermine international rules and norms and use coercion against other nations for their own benefit. We continue to see this behavior globally from Beijing’s predatory economics and its aggression in the South and East China seas to Moscow’s violations of its international obligations and the sovereignty of its neighbors. When I was confirmed to Secretary Defense in 2019 I made my top priority the irreversible implementation of the national defense strategy. This strategy guides our work to protect our compare comparative and competitive advantages and to defend a free and open global order along three lines of effort. First, improving the lethality and readiness of the force. Second, strengthening allies and building partners, and third, reforming the department for greater efficiency and accountability. I also added 1/4 personal priority, taking care of our service members and their families. We have made great progress on all these fronts, which we distilled into 10 targeted goals. To drive change across the entire Defense Department enterprise, from focusing the Department on China, to developing coordinated guidance, to strengthen allies and build partners from modernizing the force by investing in game changing technologies, to reforming the Fourth Estate and from reallocating, reassigning and redeploying forces in accordance with the nds to developing a new joint warfighting concept just to name a few. In recent weeks, I have discussed our progress in several of these areas, including modernization and our plan for our future naval fleet of over 500 ships. Today, I’d like to highlight our efforts on another top 10 goal. Achieving higher levels of sustainable readiness. First, it is important to define what readiness really means for the United States Armed forces. Simply put, readiness refers to our military’s ability to answer the nation’s call and to fight and win anytime, anywhere. It is comprised of the training and equipment we provide our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and space professionals, as well as the deployment and maintenance schedules that drive our operations and the way we keep our service members physically strong and mentally tough. The bottom line is that each part of the Radius life cycle is vital to preparing and enabling our men and women in uniform to successfully execute their mission. The question we must answer is this. If called upon to fight tonight, are we ready today? Given our efforts over the past few years, I am fully confident that the answer to that question is a resounding yes. I’ll explain why in a few minutes, because first, I want to show through historical example, how we learned the hard way the costs of not being ready. In July 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War, an under strength infantry battalion and an artillery battery of close to 500 American soldiers rapidly deployed to the outbreak of that conflict to a position north of Osan, South Korea, to delay the invading North Korean forces. Thes men, no Nas task force. Smith arrived without the standard kit of a regimental combat team, including tanks and air defenses. Moreover, they had very little ammunition. Their training was inadequate, Few of them had any combat experience, and they’re anti tank weapons were ineffective. Yet they would soon encounter thousands of enemy forces and dozens of North Korean tanks. Outgunned by heavy armor and outmaneuvered by enemy infantry Task Force, Smith was forced to retreat, suffering heavy casualties in the process. The battle votes on demonstrate the tragic consequences of leadership’s failure to understand the mission and their responsibilities, leaving American troops unprepared with obsolete equipment and heavily outmanned for many years to include my time on active duty as an infantry officer in the 19 eighties. The training imperative of the Army was no MAWR task fourth task force myths that must remain our mantra today. Our security environment looks much different 70 years later. But the lessons we learned about the importance of rightness remains with us today. The NDS requires the United States military to focus on preparing for a high end fight against near pier adversaries. To do so, we must acknowledge that for the past two decades our attention was directed mainly towards fighting low intensity conflicts against insurgents and violent extremist organizations. Moreover, years of insufficient budgets and sequestration cause significant damage to our readiness till 2017 when we were able to begin reversing course by adding over $200 billion to our budgets through fiscal year 2019. Over the past few years, the department has refocused and restored greatness in accordance with the NDS along three major categories people, policy and performance, each of which, which I went to outline in greater detail in the policy category. The department has made our biggest changes in global force management since the early two thousands, with the aim of creating more ready forces with far greater readiness and operational unpredictability. The NDS recognizes the need to balance the department’s modernization for future high end conflicts with the bands of current operations. To do so, we must grow are available pool of ready forces. Next, we must deploy them with greater agility in response to crises and strategic opportunities. And finally, we must be more disciplined and how we manage this ready supply from the services with the requests from combatant commanders. In addressing this challenge, the department has taken undertaken to major policy shifts. First, Implementing dynamic force employment allows us to rapidly reposition forces to enhance deterrence, to introduce operational uncertainty into our adversaries calculus, to take advantage of global opportunities and emergency situations and to test our own readiness. Second, increasing the number of highly ready immediate response forces and follow on contingency response force units, the Earth and the surf and providing greater central authority to use them globally allows us to tailor the readiness. The joint force for the most stressing war plans combined. These policy shifts, which constitute another one of our top 10 and DS objectives, have enabled us to think and act globally with speed unencumbered by limitations with individual geographic combatant commands. This construct has also allowed us to be much more confident in the Joint Forces preparedness and in directing writing this levels from the services while also creating predictability and efficiency within our programming and budgeting system. A particularly salient salient example is the Bomber Task Force Operational concept. In April of this year, I approved an air force construct to improve the readiness and strategic flexibility of our bomber force, moving away from a 16 year static and predictable presence on Guam that was burning down readiness. This change was also necessary to complicate Beijing’s decision making and prevent them from targeting our assets. We’re limiting our range with their growing capabilities. The impact of the Bomber Task Force concept extends beyond the Indo Pacific, however, offering a range of options to combat commanders in multiple theaters, including Europe. In August 6 B 52 bombers from my not air force base, supported by a robust airborne tanker brigade over flew all 30 NATO countries in a single day, integrating with allied fighter aircraft along the way. This robust show of force by a broad coalition did not go unnoticed by Moscow Neither did our ability to rapidly deploy our bombers anywhere at any time, sending a strong message of our commitment to our allies and partners. Moreover, the Air force continues to maintain a heightened posture of readiness to deploy fighter squadrons on short notice, much like we did late last year to support Saudi Arabia following Iran’s attacks on its soil. Another example is the aftermath of US air strikes against Iran backed Iran backed militias sites in Iraq last year. On December 31st, Pentagon senior leaders were informed of a large violent protest outside the US Embassy in Baghdad, followed hours later by a notice of a possible embassy breach. This triggered the requirement to deploy an immediate response force, which was successfully accomplished within 19 hours of the incident. Over the next three days, an entire infantry brigade combat team consisting of more than 3000 soldiers and equipment was deployed halfway around the world to secure American lives and property in Iraq. The navy is also executed multiple short notice movements under dynamic force employment. This includes the deployment of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower earlier this year, which was quickly adjusted in light of the coronavirus outbreak and forced the Ike to remain it see for seven months to continue its maritime stability and security operations in the Middle East. It also includes a rapid deployment of the Comfort and Mercy Hospital ships to the east and west coasts of the United States in March to provide medical support in covert hospitals to support the American people Moving on to people. The department has pursued several initiatives to train our personnel for great power competition to better prepare them to deploy, have called upon and to ensure that they’re less likely to serve and back to back deployments, all while improving their quality of life. Our path forward also relies on service level training and professional military education that develops the expertise of our force on Chinese military systems, tactics and doctrine, much like my generation did when we studied the Soviet armed forces during the Cold War. As part of our top 10 goal to focus the department on China, I directed the National Defense University to refocus its curriculum by dedicating 50% of the coursework to China by academic year 2021. I also task the military services to make the People’s Liberation Army, the pacing threat in our professional schools, programs and training. Another critical factor in our readiness is the size and composition of our deployable force, which we now track in ways we never did before. We have added nearly 30,000 military personnel to our ranks since 2016 and they great gains not simply by growing our in strength but by maximizing the number of service members were able to deploy at any given time. This was a result of close, senior level and senior leader attention to needed reforms, such as quickly resolving medical conditions, enabling service members to get back to a ready status sooner. Ultimately, we drove down non deployed numbers past our goal of 5% of the force, increasing readiness by returning tens of thousands of personnel, the fully deployable status months ahead of schedule. For example, over the last few years, the army’s non deployable population has decreased well over 50% meaning many more soldiers are available for a potential high end fight if called upon to go. Since 2017 the Air Force has recruited and trained 4600 additional maintenance personnel, which, coupled with additional investments drove a 19% increase in overall unit readiness. At the same time, the number of sailors filling operational sea duty billets is at its highest point since 2014. Meanwhile, we’re doing everything in our power to balance the inexorable demands of overseas deployments with readiness and our service members commitments at home. One of our first tasks before we make a decision to send forces abroad is to determine how the deployment will impact their work life timelines. By increasing and monitoring these deployed to dwell thresholds, we’re working to make sure every warfighter and unit gets adequate time to recover from their last deployment, is well trained and prepared for their next one and, on a more personal note, experiences mawr of the important moments in their family’s lives. We aim to do all this while enabling the services to continue to generate enough readiness for both today and tomorrow. Key to our people’s ability to execute their mission is there. Is there resiliency and well being? This is why we continue to take steps to improve service members quality of life, including by expanding the availability of child care, helping spouses sustain their careers through multiple PCS moves, improving housing and providing mental health resource is and other support. It is also why we remain focused on reinforcing ethical leadership across the force, fostering trust in the chain of command and promoting inclusion and equal opportunity for all. Finally, regarding performance, the department is working alongside industry partners to improve maintenance and sustainment while investing in high end training and exercises to increase the proficiency of the force. Many of our aircraft have undergone extensive maintenance and much needed upgrades over the past few years, set to substantially increase their readiness levels. This includes the F A 18 Hornet, whose mission capable rate increased from a long term average of 55% to 80% as of last year. Among several initiatives, the Navy divested from the oldest legacy Hornets and harvested harvested more than 14,000 repairable items for spares. Additionally, improvements were made to manage the aircraft undergoing depot repair and increase workforce employment. As a result, we now have more ready aircraft on the flight lines and pilots with greater proficiency and experience. The department’s fiscal Year 2021 budget request aimed to strengthen warfighting readiness with a balanced mix of fighter aircraft, including F 35 to ensure American air dominance. As we transition to new platforms, we continue to restore and maintain legacy ones such as the CH 53 Echoes Super Stallion, Heavy Lift transport helicopter Marine Corps has improved this helicopters mission capable rate by nearly 10% since fiscal year 2017 in fleet squadrons and returned 30 helicopters to full mission capable status supporting the execution of over 104,000 flight hours in training and operational flights. Overall, the Navy’s readiness has been on an upward trend since 2018 thanks to increases in readiness, funding and process improvements in aviation and private shipyards, including the hiring of hundreds of additional shipyard personnel. As a result, on time ship maintenance completion rates have increased considerably, which I was pleased to see during my visits to shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia, and Groton, Connecticut. Further, the Navy is investing $20 billion over the next 20 years to modernize our aging public shipyards. Recognizing the impact that these improvements will have on our goal for Battle Force 2045 the modern 500 plus ship Navy I outlined last week, the Air Force and Space Force have also made significant progress in rebuilding readiness across multiple aircraft fleets, satellite constellations and mission sets, while actively pursuing the development of integrated systems such as the Advanced Battle Management System Key. And this effort has been our investment in weapons systems sustainment with a 9% funding increase, yielding tangible improvements in aircraft availability and training opportunities, and as the priority for manning first, the fight frontline units have seen increased readiness as high as 45% over the past two years. Meanwhile, we have enhanced our ground combat capabilities by converting infantry brigade combat teams, two armored brigade combat teams, the Army’s most lethal and mobile combat formations. Over the past four years, the Army has increased the number of ABC ts ready for deployment by 30% while also upgrading and modernizing more than 470 Abrams tanks. Additionally, this year the Army conducted its largest strategic force projection exercise in nearly two decades, with defender 20 integrating armored brigade combat teams with our NATO partners in both maneuver and live fire exercises on the European continent. Among our efforts to further enhance the proficiency of our force, the defense department has streamlined pre deployment training, preparations and medical requirements by returning those decisions to the military departments. This April, I also signed the Joint Operational Training Infrastructure Strategy to integrate our efforts to modernize operational training over the next 10 years. This is a vital step toward fulfilling another one of our top 10 goals that is establishing realistic joint war games, exercises and training plans. In doing so, we will ensure the joint force receives better training that replicates operational conditions and contested environments against our strategic competitors. The Air Force, for example, has migrated to a common simulator platform to enhance interoperability and cybersecurity and to integrate multiple domains. This step was taken in response to the insufficient capabilities of simulators that were designed a standalone devices training cruise to fly specific aircraft. Meanwhile, the Navy is developing an integrated live, virtual constructive training environment which merges live and synthetic training to prepare our forces for conflict against Pierre and near peer competitors. At the same time, the Navy Marine Corps, preparing for large scale exercise 2021 a multi domain maritime exercise that will test their ability to integrate and operationalized fleet design and supporting concepts at multiple levels of war. As we continue to strengthen United States, military readiness for the future are imperative is to build upon the gains we have made in recent years while adapting to stay ahead of emerging challenges, including cyber. We know adversaries. Malign actors are attempting to attack and jeopardize the networks that are platforms, weapons and formations rely upon toe operate. The tremendous investments we have made in our most lethal capabilities could be rendered ineffective in a high end fight unless we treat cyber cyber capability readiness with the same seriousness as we do material or personnel readiness. This is why the department has put cyber on par with the other elements of readiness. I discussed earlier people, equipment and training. The coronavirus pandemic represents another challenge to our military and our industrial base. However, the department has been quick to minimize its impact on our forces by taking immediate action, going back to January to stem the spread of the virus in our ranks, we suspended international travel for our personnel, then shifted to a conditions based approach. We published 13 iterations of force health protection guidelines since early February, when we activated our global pandemic response plan and we modified our training to Mitigate Cove it risks. This year’s RIMPAC exercise, for example, was held on Lee at sea without port calls. At the same time, we provided medical support, personal protective equipment and other supplies to federal agencies working in hot spots around the country in support of the American people and through the Defense Production Act, we announced over $500 million worth of contracts to sustain essential domestic industrial base capabilities. Meanwhile, more than 140 d. O. D labs have performed over 1.2 million co vid clinical diagnostic tests so far as part of our work to enable the safe deployment of forces across the globe, and we’re testing an average of 40,000 plus service members weekly. That number reached more than 54,000 earlier this year due to our robust monitoring efforts, we also developed a convalescent plasma collection strategy to support advanced illness within the force and collected nearly 11,000 units by the end of the fiscal year. While our competitors attempt to exploit the pandemic and extend their malign influence, the United States military continues to protect our people remaining prepared to deter every threat and to fight and win if need be. Lastly, the success of our efforts relies on the support of Congress in the face of rising strategic threats. We depend on steady fiscal commitments to sustain our current force and prepare for tomorrow’s challenges. The past few years of funding allowed us to rebuild our readiness. After years of insufficient budgets yielding significant results, 52% of our major combat force elements are able to generate more combat power during the initial phases of of a conflict today than they could in 2017. Now, as I’ve said many times before, we need predictable, adequate, stable and timely federal budgets to continue to support the investments of our industrial base, to grow our capabilities. And to further strengthen readiness, I would like to see 3 to 5% annual real growth for the Defense Department to stay ahead of the challenges we face, especially from China and no more CR’s. Looking ahead, I’m confident that the department, civilian and military leaders are lying to deliver more sustainable rightness, particularly as I meet regularly with them to assess our progress toward that goal much of this involves bringing together hundreds of data systems into a common Advanced analytics architecture that provides real time data and predictive indicators. This tool allows senior leaders to evaluate readiness at every level, better manage our forces in response to emerging threats and to make decisions. The best address brightness challenges The department’s vision for readiness is one in which our people are focused on great power competition from Day one and trained to deter and prevail in the high end fight while able to perform across the full spectrum of combat operations. It is a bit it is a vision in which we have more planes in the air, more ships at sea, more units prepared to go into combat at a moments notice, mawr, cyber warriors online and more space assets ready to defend the high ground. It is a vision in which our people have the resource is they need when they need them so that they never find themselves in a fair fight. We must and will maintain our decisive overmatch well into the future. And it is a vision in which senior leaders have more flexibility to move our forces and equipment around the Globe enabling us to project power to reassure our partners and allies to deter aggression and to effectively respond to emerging crises. Thanks to the hard work of our men and women in uniform and with the support of Congress, industry and our like minded partners, the United States military will continue to honor that vision and strengthen our readiness now and in the years to come. Thank you, Secretary. Expert. Thank you so much for those remarks. You have covered a lot of ground there. And so I look forward, Thio, exploring some of these topics and a little more detail. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tom Spore. I’m the director of the Center for National Defense here at the Heritage Foundation. And this next segment will pose some questions to the secretary focusing on readiness and Secretary. You talked a lot about the progress this administration has made. Building Readiness line of effort number one in the N. D. S. The strategy calls for a requirement for a multi year investment to restore warfighting readiness. What’s your assessment? You talked. You gave us some numbers, but what’s your assessment on where the department stands today on improving tactical readiness. And what was the rationale for moving away from the 80% mission capable goal that the department had previously established for four of your major fleets of aircraft? Worse, as I said very clearly in my remarks, we are ready today, no doubt in my mind we’re ready to take on any mission and and we’re prepared to fight and win if the president calls upon us to do so. And that has been enabled by much of what I said that our readiness rates have seen dramatic increases across all the services double digits without a doubt, with regard to your specific question about readiness of the tactical air fleet if you go back in time a few years, I believe it was deputy secretary defense at the time, Shanahan, who said. We looked at the fleet readiness and it was it was not sufficient to meet the needs of what we had. I cited the example of the F eighteens and so we set a mark of 80% and I’m pleased to report that the services reached that 80% mark for the for the for the most part. But as I stepped into off was office we and with the goal of implementing the N. D s, we looked more broadly and try to put readiness in the context of a war plan. And when you do that, as we’ve done with our Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, we established what we call the immediate response force the Earth and those air units that have to deploy within a period of days. And then we also have another slice of the force across all the services that’s called the Contingency Response Force. And they have to be ready within a period of weeks. So to take an arbitrary number such as 80% and say that if you’re in the earth, if you’re in that response force, it has to deploy in a number of days, 80 percents too low. I need you well above 90%. But if you are further back in the flow, let’s say you don’t deploy until date 40 or 50. I don’t necessarily need you. At 80% I might be able to have a lower readiness rate as long as you can when you deploy your at an adequate level. What that does is that allows the services to use dollars spent to maintain an unnecessarily high level of readiness and invested into people into modernization, uh, into any other thing they want without jeopardizing their ability to meet the war plans. So what we did is we took that metric of 80% which brought us up to a high level, and now we’ve been able to put it into the context of the war plans, specifically the Earth surf and follow on forces. And make sure the readiness levels we’ve established within those categories are sufficient to deliver combat power consistent with our war plans again, if called upon to do so. It’s very interesting. It’s almost counterintuitive, but your suggestion you can have too much readiness and that you’re better served investing. Those resource is elsewhere. You absolutely can. You can spend too much money and be too ready, particularly if you know the trade off of that one extra dollar. Maybe modernization, which we call future readiness. And that’s one of things that I’m constantly balancing and juggling is today’s readiness versus future readiness. Thank you, sir. You know, another. You touched upon this people. A major component writing. This is having the right people at the right place. And we’ve heard how the services have had to adapt their models based on co vid leaning more heavily on virtual engagement versus that traditional recruiter face to face meeting as a zai look, especially in my research to the future. A lot of the trends that I see that predict future recruiting success such as youth obesity of veterans, the percentage of veterans that are in our society, the percentage of people leaving high school that immediately want to go to college. That’s up. But that may not be great news for the military. They’re not pointing in the right direction, these trends. And so first, um, interested in how is recruiting going this year? How did it go for fiscal year? 2020 House? A look ahead. And then, as you look to the future, do you see a future recruiting problem for the United States? Well, I’ll take your last question first, if you will. I mean, because I work this pretty hard as Army secretary when you look at the numbers right. First of all, the young Americans who are qualified to serve that number gets down to below 30%. And then when you look at that number, plus the number who have a proclivity to serve, you’re talking a single digit number. And so it does not augur well right now for where we are. And so when I was Army secretary and Secretary McCarthy is continuing to this day. We looked at all the different ways we could go out to reach all parts of America. Rural, urban, east, west, north, south, coastal mountains. You name it. How do we go out and find those young Americans who would be interesting is serving and just don’t know that opportunity exists and how do we reach them and s So it’s a It’s a big effort. It’s a strategic challenge that will last many years and depends on a number of factors. But it’s, uh it’s one that we have to focus on in a whole of government approach now, boring in on what happened in the last seven months, I will tell you that co vid actually forced us to accelerate the process by which we go after today’s youth s. So what we try to do is find that opportunity in a crisis and what that demanded because we had begun this a few years ago in the Army was reaching out to young Americans through text online through social media, through the platforms by which they communicate with each other today and with their parents, in some cases to and find them there. And the army had begun that process. But we were forced. All services were forced to accelerate. Accelerate that in the midst of Kobe because, of course, ah, things were shut down. Schools were closing. You couldn’t get recruiters into a high school. Uh, some case you had, you had to close recruiting stations because of covitz. So it forced us to go online and do all those things. And I’m pleased to report that right now the numbers look good that the services have met their marks. That’s the good news. But what Kobe did was forced us, I think, to accelerate that process and to really look hard at what we dio and eso as we looked at that way. Look at what Kobe did, how it forced us to adapt the force. And of course, the impacts of Kobe go beyond recruiting. It goes, you know, the pipeline and then the readiness of the current force. And I gotta say, I’m very proud of how the force is done through all this. Um, you know, I laid out really early in January that my priorities were taking care of our people number to ensuring that we maintain our mission readiness, our capabilities. And then number three provides support to the American people through civilian authorities. And we did all that really well. Our infection rates were much lower than the American people, and every every loss is terrible. But thank God we only lost one active duty service member. And the force has done pretty well into this date. In the wake of 13 health Health Force health protection measures, we continue to maintain our protocols and do everything that’s necessary. Seri. So look, we’re gonna get infections. They will happen out there. We’ll find hot spots we follow. You know, we train our people if they get infected or near somebody, we treat them. And of course, we tres we trace. So, you know, again, train, treat trace and follow those protocols and then you have to be able to operate. If you’re in some type of quarantine status. You gotta be able to do your job. And we’re all capable of doing that. Whether you’re, you know, the lowest private or secretary defense, you name it. Everything in between his d o. D is standing ready, standing tall, and we’re prepared to continue on and make sure that way accomplish our mission. Thank you, sir. You referred to this in your remarks on October the sixth. You talked about a new fleet for the US Navy, which emphasizes submarine small surface combatants, amphibious ships and unmanned vessels seeking to exceed 355 ships by the mid 20 thirties and over 500 by 2045 and often overlooked. Although you touched upon it on this, in this discussion of increasing the fleet site is the need for the maintenance and the workers in the capital infrastructure to not only maintain the fleet we have today, but if we’re gonna grow it to keep it deployed and out there. And as you know, in the past, the Navy has suffered from consistent maintenance delays in its shipyards, both public and private, and forecast that without change, they’re gonna be unable to accommodate 68 maintenance availabilities in the next 20 years. How can the department overcome that big challenge? It’s a great question. That’s something I’ve spent a lot of time on since I entered office. A secretary defense last year. First of all, to frame it. The discussion, if you will, your right. Last week I introduced what we call battle Force 2045. It’s what I did earlier this year where I stopped the ongoing process and said, Look, we need to take a new look at what the future fleet might be in the year 2045 which is a few years before the before. The Chinese military wants to have a role, what they call world class military. What is the force we need to build in order to make sure that we can compete with them? But if if competition and deterrence fails, were able to fight and win, and what it took us two is we looked at key attributes is we needed more submarines. We needed a larger fleet, but composed of smaller combatants. We need to still have a carrier presence. Of course, we need to distribute early fatality. We need a greater survive, though there were a number of things. And so it produced this fleet of 500 plus ships, a combination of manned and unmanned to make sure that we could do that, that we can fight, win in the years ahead and then do all the other stop that Ford presence, control sea lanes on, then reassure our allies and partners. But you’re right. A big challenge built into that, and I addressed this in my remarks last week. Is capacity and its capacity not just to build that future Fleet butts capacity, thio them, maintain it because what we don’t want to do is have a hall of force. The Navy last year, as I stepped in office, had made the choice, and it was a smart one. To say We’re going to invest are limited dollars into today’s readiness, and what that meant was we had to slow the shipbuilding down a little bit this year, though, based on reforms they made based and and because the reforms they made, they freed up billions of dollars. I said, Hey, great job. You continue to do that, given what you did, I will also put in additional dollars as well. So this future fleet we’re looking to raise the percent of Navy spend in their top line to 13% which is matching what the Reagan era buildup look like and so built into that, though again, his investments in the shipyard. So I mentioned $20 billion over 20 years Thio to improve shipyards on Ben. Also predictable funding, building this larger fleet into the private shipyards. We think based on the types of ships that we need and the unmanned, we can grow the number of shipyards around the country, which would be good not just for the fleet, but for for the economy. And we also need to make those investments. And it’s not just people. It’s not just the infrastructure, it’s people, too. And I’ve spent a lot of time talking to industry. I’ve talking to the shipbuilders about what they need. We’ve had good conversations about this. As I said, I’ve been to the shipyards. I’ve been toe Kings Bay, Georgia what we’re doing work there out the Hawaii and really bore into this problem and make sure that we could do that. The good news is on the delays because you mentioned that in particular. And the Navy has done a really fine job here. At the end of 2019. The what’s called the the average number of days delays due to maintenance right? They delays due to maintenance was over 7000. At the end of 2020 it’s a little bit over 1100. So you see, like an 85% reduction in the number of days of maintenance delays out there. So a great achievement by the Navy we need to keep working at it. We need to keep investing. And if we get support from Congress for this battle Force 2045 the 500 plus ship Navy, it’ll be a clear demand signal to the shipyards to improve their infrastructure, to grow their workforce. To build that fleet, we need to be able to fight and win and compete in the year 2045 everywhere in between. Thank you, sir. That’s excellent. Going to shift gears here. You closed talking about re sourcing. And this administration, as you mentioned with the support of Congress, has done a lot to get increased resource is to the d. O. D to help it rebuild and reorient on great power competition. Both your predecessor, secretary Defense Mattis and yourself have described the need for continuing growth in defense funding until a least 2023 calling for 3 to 5% riel growth. And some people may not get that that word riel growth is important because it’s 3 to 5% growth after inflation. Yet the 2021 defense budget, uh, following the agreement, the budget agreement is essentially the same as 20 twenties, and the administration’s forecast for the years 2022 beyond only calls for increases of less than 2% maybe even falling short of inflation, fall far short of what you have called for. If that funding projection holds true, is the national defense strategy still execute a bill, or do we need to relook it and maybe make our ends a bit more less ambitious? Well, we certainly need that sustained and predictable funding stream over the subsequent years. If you look at what China has done over the past 20 think the numbers will tell you that between 2000 and 2016 the Chinese were increasing their annual rate of defense spending at 10% real growth the last two years. We’re looking at 5 to 7% real growth. So if we’re going to compete with them and be prepared to fight and win, have called upon, Uh, then we need to actually make those investments as well, because it’s crucial to our national security. Now, look, we its income incumbent upon us as well in D o D. And that’s why one of our major lines of effort is to reform the department. I talked about freeing up time, money and manpower to put into other priorities. The American taxpayer gives us a lot of money last year, $740 billion. We have to be very good stewards of those taxpayer dollars. We’ve gotta be able to pass an audit, and we’re making good progress on that front. But we also got to make the hard choices that too often folks in government don’t want to dio. And that is to look at reducing or canceling programs we’re making taking lower party, uh programs and cashing them in in order to put your higher party. So we have to we have to do our part of that as well, but we also know we recognize that look, these are tough times. The America America faces the fiscal challenge of of increasing debt out there. We incurred more debt due to Cove it It was the right thing to do. But it’s a few more trillion dollars on top of this growing debt that’s already out there. But if we’re going to continue to maintain this rules based international order that is based among those values and principles that we and many other Western countries share, that we hold dear, that protects our way of life that guarantees freedom of navigation and commerce and things like human rights. And, uh, and those intrinsic what we call American values, that we need a strong American military to defend them and to protect them. Aske a set up front, her remarks for quoting President Reagan. We have to be able to make those investments a strong national Security is the foundation for a strong economic prosperity, and vice versa. So we’ve got to be able to do both. And again that means a combination of us being better. Stewart’s of the taxpayer dollars, but also an enduring commitment from the Congress to keep us at a steady increase level of annual funding. Thank you, sir. So you mentioned this. A lot of the discussion on readiness usually devolves tow planes and and ships and formations of soldiers and Marines, and that’s obviously very important. But we have also seen increasing mention, especially of late about strategic readiness and not readiness of strategic forces. But the how the d o. D mobilizes how used to deploy and how you sustain your forces and how this department probably ought to shift some attention to that. I’m interested in your assessment of where d o. D stands in strategic readiness. Uh, mobilizing, sustaining forces deployed in a future major fight that might take months, if not years, to conclude. How do we stand in that particular area? I pay a lot of attention to that. Particularly the context is I look at our war plans. So another one of the top 10 objectives I laid out last year for us to pursue is to update our key war plans. And when you look at those, you gotta make sure you understand the flow of forces, that strategic mobility you’re talking about, and when I think about strategic mobility. I think about airlift and sealift principally and with airlift. You have to think about tankers. And so one of the concerns I have out there is, you know, is our tanker fleet modern and ready. And clearly we’ve had challenges getting the new tanker Casey 46 out there on time. I’ve spent, uh, time with the Air Force talking about this with the manufacturer, Boeing. I’ve walked in and out of the aircraft. I’ve looked at the systems to understand How do we get that aircraft to meet its timeline toe to fix the system that’s broken with the remote remote system? So I’m really focused right now in that leg with regard to tankers because we know we need 487 tankers out there, So I have to extend the life of the current fleet at the same time. Try and pull to the left that future fleet. So that’s one big thing I look at. We have we have enough air left to do the job, if you will, but the other big one to see left so our ground forces have to get to the fight as well. In a timely way with everything they need. So we have worked out pretty hard with transportation command. We’ve come up with some new concepts whereby we can accelerate the process to get adequate sealift. Bye bye Recapitalizing Arcila fleet with use commercial vessels. And so those are some of the things you will see coming out in our budget here in February to do that. But look, there’s other things. I think about two. You mentioned mobility. It’s important. There other things, like munitions. You have to have sufficient munitions. There’s all these things out there that you have to buy that you have to procure and make sure that they’re ready at a moments notice because you won’t have time when that war talks and sounds. Thank you, sir, that Zatz Super important. Remember in a hearing where representative Wittman asked you, I can’t matter if you were the secretary of the Army or defense. Should the Army fund see lift? And I think, uh, it’s a cable. It needs to get funded no matter which service, and it’s really irrelevant at this point for our country. Well, Mr Sector, I think we’re at the end of our time. I greatly. We’ve greatly appreciate your comments has been fascinating. So glad you’re able to come over to heritage and share a snapshot of the readiness of the armed forces. Thank you. And all the Patriots A to the Pentagon and the Department of Fence For everything you do to keep us safe on a daily basis, any closing comments or Well, I’d like to thank you again for hosting me this today. It za pleasure to be here to talk about the readiness of the United States Armed Forces. I know. It’s, uh it’s important everybody that we be ready, and I can assure the American people that they that we are ready Thanks, Thio their generosity with the defense budgets And thanks to thanks to young Americans, men and women every day going to a recruiting station, applying online, uh, doing what they’re doing. One of the great pleasures I have in this job is I did. A secretary of the Army is to go out there and host and enlistment ceremony on toe watch. These young men and women raise the right hand and swear that oath that you’ve sworn many times I’ve sworn many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that’s so very important, because that document embodies all the values which we and they are willing toe certainly live for and to die for if necessary. So really, it’s, uh oh, great. Thanks to the American people out there and to all those young Americans each and every year who sign up in the tens of thousands to serve this great nation, it’s truly an honor. Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming here today for our guest. Thank you for your participation. I want to mention to upcoming events. On October 27 Heritage will host General Gus Purna, who is the chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed. He’s gonna talk about the fight for the Cove in 19 vaccine looking forward to that one a lot. And then on November 17 we roll out the 2021 Heritage index of U. S. Military strength and representative Mac Thornberry, who’s been a great supporter of national defense, is going to provide the keynote remarks at that event. So, lady and gentlemen, thank you so much and have a great rest of your day