STRYKER BRIGADES

Mr. DICKS. Well, I want to welcome General Shinseki and Secretary White and I want to associate myself with the remarks of the Chairman and the Ranking Member about the service of General Shinseki who I think has done a fantastic job. And we have watched out at Fort Lewis the first two of these Stryker Brigades, and looking forward to seeing this program completed.

I just would mention that section 8121 of the Fiscal Year 2003 Defense Appropriation Act requires the Department of Defense to program and budget for no less than six Stryker Brigades. Now I understand that there is some question about this; that we have got approval now on the first four; but the last two, the Department is still reviewing it or studying it or doing something. Can you advise us on that?

Secretary WHITE. Yes, sir. As I said in my opening comments, the fourth of the six Stryker Brigades is in the fiscal year 2004 budget, Second Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Polk, and the money to support brigades five and six is in the program, the fiscal year 2004/2009 program.

Mr. DICKS. Where is five and six going to be?

Secretary WHITE. Five is Hawaii, 25th Division; and six is in the National Guard in Pennsylvania. We have been asked by the Secretary of Defense to complete a study that looks at whether modification should be made to the design of the brigade to (a) make it more of a transformational step, make it look more like a unit of action-for example, the addition of aviation and perhaps other things; and then (b) to look at the stationing of brigades 5 and 6. We all report to the Secretary of Defense on that. We intend to complete that in the near future and send it up to him.

My view is brigades five and six are imperative. We need those six brigades. I also think it is imperative that the National Guard get brigade six. We have never been more One Army than we are today, as you know, from being numerous places in the world, and we need to have them a part of Transformation, and brigade six does that. So it is in our program. We will do the study and have further discussions with the Secretary.

Mr. DICKS. If you made decisions to add capability to five and six, I would assume that at some later date those capabilities would be added to one, two, three, and four.

Secretary WHITE. Well, you could do that or

Mr. DICKS. Spiral

Secretary WHITE. You could say certainly we are going to improve one through four over time, and spiraling as Objective Force technologies come along. As we are fielding our units of action on the Objective Force side, we will look to infuse, where it is appropriate, those technologies into the existing force which obviously would include brigades one through four.

FUTURE COMBAT SYSTEM (FCS)

Mr. DICKS. Tell me about the status of the Future Combat System. You have mentioned that in your remarks and Congress-as I understand, the fiscal year 2004 budget includes $1.7 billion in Army research development and funding. Can you give us a little

more feeling about the Future Combat System and how that is going to work?

Secretary WHITE. Yes. The Future Combat System is a system of systems. It includes 19 different systems: manned, unmanned, air, ground, Land Warrior for the individual soldier, and, most importantly, the network that ties all of this together into a Network Centric Force. We have sent out requests for proposals for 24 different technology packages to support this. Industry is going to give us a tremendous response. I think we are going to get back over 300 proposals from industry on this.

We will package those together into an increment, one that will be the first installment as we roll this out. We will look at the analysis that indicates that increment one makes sense to do, that it is affordable and that the technical risk of fielding it in 2008 makes sense; bring all this to a Defense Acquisition Board decision in May, and proceed in a system design and development from there forward. So it is on track.

We focused our science and technology, S&T money along with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA to keep this on track, and the next three or four months are critical between now and May to get this through a successful task.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to Mr. Murtha.

Mr. MURTHA. This is going to be coordinated with the Navy and Air Force?

Secretary WHITE. Yes, sir; absolutely. And this force is designed to work in a joint environment.

Mr. DICKS. Let me finish this up Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LEWIS. One more question.

FUTURE COMBAT SYSTEM-KEY TECHNOLOGIES

Mr. DICKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What are the areas of emphasis on these various technologies that comprise Future Combat System? What are some of the things we are talking about?

Secretary WHITE. Number one

Mr. DICKS. The 24 Requests for Proposal, the RFPs and all that. Secretary WHITE. Right. The network and how all of these interrelate from a software, computing, communicating structure, number one. Number two, a common theme through this is our robotic technologies. The Crusader program had an automatic loader that we have transferred over. I think that is critical. Third, logistics economy. We are seeking to make this force as significantly a lower logistic burden than the existing force, so we are focusing on that. Four, survivability technologies that will give us equivalent survivability of a heavy force today at far lower weight. Fifth, intelligence and sensor packages. We have an operational concept for the Objective Force that says we are going to see first, we are going to decide first, then we are going to act and close decisively. There are technology packages that focus on the "see and decide" in this thing that I think are fundamental.

General SHINSEKI. Let me just add, Mr. Chairman, if I might, the Secretary has outlined for you a very, very aggressive program, and the $1.7 billion, Congressman Dicks, that you talk about in fiscal year 2004 is really a fiscal year 2004 piece to an effort that has been underway for about 3 years. If you look at the President's

budget in 2001, 2002 and 2003, there were decisions made that moved on the order of $12.5 billion into science and technology. That has already been underway that is going to deliver here in the next year or so the kinds of capabilities that the Secretary outlined.

You all put about another $3.2 billion into the Army's accounts to sort of jump-start and give us momentum. So we are talking here about $16 billion of effort already accomplished; $1.7 billion is the fiscal year 2004 piece, and that $1.7 billion breaks up into about three big bins: manned platforms, unmanned ground, and aerial platforms. So those are two, about a third each of that $1.7 billion. And the third is a network that makes them capable of acting in a synchronized manner. That investment is important because it then allows us to deliver that fiscal year 2008 capability we are focused on.

Some of this plays back to the questions that Congressman Murtha asked about a supplemental. If we are not able to take care of our 2003 requirements, as you know, what happens is we start looking for flexibility in other accounts, and when that happens to be this investment in the future, you begin to unravel in 2008. So these are fairly well-knitted-together and balanced priorities, and our ability to deliver the assurances in May that our Future Combat System Milestone B Defense Acquisition Board is on track, very much tied to being able to hold the $1.7 billion in research and development that is itemized for 2004.

Mr. DICKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you Mr. Dicks. I kind of failed the Committee at the very beginning, for I promised myself in the future that I am going to say to all of those who are willing to listen, who are present, if we have any cell phones, "Blackberries" or any other kinds of berries in the audience or otherwise, they should be turned off. They can be heard in the hall, but otherwise not in this room. Let's see. Mr. Cunningham.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Jack, The Predator, is made in my district.

Mr. MURTHA. That is right. That is absolutely right.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We need additional money for production of Predator B's that will go to Iraq.

Mr. MURTHA. The more I see about it, the more I agree with you. It is marvelous.

Mr. LEWIS. You are doing real good, friend.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESTRICTIONS ON TRAINING

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. You raised a question on Comanche. My concern is it has been 20 years in production. When I was still on active duty, we were talking Comanche. And I know the Russians, they have got some pretty good capabilities with their helos as well. And my concern is if it has taken 20 plus years to develop, are we still putting any modern technology into these helos? And so I want to follow that.

Camp Pendleton is located just north of my district. The Marines literally go in off the beach in their amphibs. But they have to assemble as a group once they hit the beach, and go through a narrow corridor because there's gnat catchers on both sides of them.

They can't make a full plus assault. They can't dig foxholes. They can't do lot of combat maneuvering. They are training in some areas where they are limited to pushing-literally walking with boxes, acting like tanks. Is the Army at its bases facing similar restrictions in training?

Secretary WHITE. I think we all are, Congressman. That is why the Range Preservation Initiative which is the Department of Defense-wide initiative which basically is aimed at giving us the flexibility to sustain training fundamental to readiness, but, at the same time, being good stewards of the environment is critical. What tends to happen is that the laws are litigated in the courts. The solutions tend to become extreme and that produces highly restrictive situations like the one that you referred to.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. So you would say those conditions do exist today on restrictions and training?

Secretary WHITE. Yes.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. And you need our help.
Secretary WHITE. Yes.

Mr. LEWIS. If the gentleman would yield for one moment.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Absolutely, sir.

Mr. LEWIS. To that point, the National Training Center for the Army is located in the Great Mojave Desert, no longer in my district but nonetheless the most important training center in the world, was held up by way of expansion for years and years regarding the desert tortoise. The reason it was held up was because the only healthy population of the tortoise that could be found in the whole region could be found on the base, because the Army was better stewards of land than our other agencies that are involved. There is enough territory there for four Eastern States. And for well over a decade, some of us have been calling upon them to plant eggs out in that east Mojave to revitalize that population. There is absolutely no consideration of that, while in the meantime the stewards get kicked around who happened to be training these fine troops that we are talking about on that very fine base. Thank you.

RESERVE COMPONENT PAY

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have another real problem. My district director in San Diego is a Marine Corps Reservist. And he is being called up to deploy to Iraq. Our office is going to lose him to a deployment. And during Team Spirit, I was the CO of a unit that was responsible for that exercise, and we used a lot of Reservists to supplement Team Spirit in Korea. And the problem is that when my reservist goes from working for me to the Marine Corps, he cannot even make his house payments on the Marine Corps pay. I have come to find out that we as Members of Congress can't supplement that.

Secretary WHITE. Can't?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Cannot. And I am looking for bonuses, anything I can to support this young man and his family. And I know that other Reservists lose pay when they go to the Reserve active duty, and I just need your help and the Members'. That it is something I think that we ask these men and women to go over, and yet when they do and when they sacrifice for this country, they

can't even meet their house payments. And you know as well as I do, one of the things they want to know when they are overseas is that their families are doing okay.

Secretary WHITE. That is right.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. So I think it is an area that in Congress we really need to take a look at. I don't know what the complement should be with looking at the new scenarios with all the services in Reserve and Guard, but that is one of the areas that really started bothering me when I looked at my own district director, that he couldn't even pay his house payment.

Secretary WHITE. There is significant economic hardship. It depends on where you are. If you work for a private sector corporation, a lot of times they will equalize the pay. I rode around in Afghanistan, Pakistan, in a Guard C-130 where the crew all worked for Northwest Airlines. And Northwest Airlines equalized the pay so that there wasn't economic-but that is not a uniform deal. People that own their own businesses, run their own businesses, are particularly hard hit by this. So there is significant economic hardship to the extended mobilizations.

IMPACT AID

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. The last thing I would say is that many of us feel that the President was wrong on reducing Impact Aid for those people that live off base, and we have a caucus that I am sure will override the budget and put that money back in to take care of our troops.

I yield back.

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Cunningham. By the way, every President this century has eliminated those Impact Aid monies because they know the Congress will put it back in. That is a kind of game we play.

But in the meantime, the ever-patient Mr. Sabo.

NON-LINE OF SIGHT CANNON (NLOS-C)

Mr. SABO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Secretary, General, welcome to the Committee.

A year ago this Committee was struggling with the issue of the Crusader. In the end we added some money, stopped the Crusader, but provided $370 million to continue deploying an indirect fire system, including a deployable chassis. What has happened with the Congress past last year and in consultation with the administration?

Secretary WHITE. The progress has been excellent. We are in the midst of executing the 2003 program. We are transferring the Crusader technology, the robotic loader, the cockpit, all the other pieces of this. We will have a cannon system on the common FCS chassis, and I expect that it will be an integral part of increment one, and we will begin fielding in 2008. So I think it has played out exactly the way we hoped it would as the program was restructured last year and as Crusader was terminated.

Mr. SABO. One of our concerns was the question of how one would integrate a fairly large artillery piece on a lighter chassis. How is that problem working out?