Secretary WHITE. Well, I think it is fair to say that on a 20-ton chassis as opposed to a 37-ton system, a Crusader, that you won't get the same caliber-length gun, and that you will probably carry fewer rounds; but we will still have an enormously capable artillery piece to get after the fundamental fire support requirement that remained valid and was recognized as valid when Crusader was terminated. Precisely what that will be we will know a lot more of as we go through Milestone B here in a couple of months, but I expect that this will be a very successful development.

Mr. SABO. When we acted last year, we put the management responsibility with the same program that had been charged with developing the artillery system, and my understanding is that for 2004 the Army is requesting or proposing combining this funding with the Future Combat Systems. Why is that and what is the impact of that?

Secretary WHITE. Well, I don't think it has got any impact on the development of the cannon variant of the Future Combat System. It is just that because they are all going to be on a common chassis, we wished to manage this as an integral part of the family. But the pieces of it, the digital cockpit that was developed, the gun-cooling technology, all the other things that we had invested in in the Crusader program, will be an integral part of the NLOS cannon variant and it will go on the common FCS chassis.

FISCAL YEAR 2003 SUPPLEMENTAL

Mr. SABO. Thank you. One further question, Mr. Chairman. We don't know the size of a supplemental, but could you give us some idea in terms of the additional cost? I expect there will be two parts to that, and one is the cost for deployment; and then, secondly, whether there is or isn't combat, a different type of supplemental-but simply for the deployment of the additional funds that are requested, how much of those funds that are required go directly to the services ratio-wise versus those going to outside contractors that we hire?

Secretary WHITE. I will have to get back to you in terms of the split because the contractor is going to be largely in the O&M part of the supplemental. The supplemental will be, or our request for it is about a little over 90 percent, I would say, of either military personnel or O&M, and I will have to get back to you with the breakout. And the supplemental hopefully will be here shortly and we can make it more specific.

Mr. SABO. Are those cost-plus contracts?
Secretary WHITE. Sir?

Mr. SABO. Are they cost-plus?

Secretary WHITE. I suppose it depends on precisely what part of it you are talking about and for what service; whether it is construction, emergency construction, or whether it is operation of food service or whatever. But I will get back to you with more detail for the record.

Mr. SABO. Thank you.

[The information follows:]

Based on current planning assumptions, up to one-third of the Army's supplemental funding may be provided to support contract requirements in the Operations & Maintenance and Procurement appropriations. Specific requirements, especially

for reconstitution of the force and recapitalization, cannot be predicted at this early stage.

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. Mr. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you both for your service to our country, and in particular, General Shinseki, thank you for your leadership. Thirty-seven years ago I had yet to be drafted and you were already there. And it is incredible to think of that length of service to our country, how proud you must be. We are proud of you.

General SHINSEKI. I am. Thank you.

ARMY COMBAT POWER

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Our all-volunteer-and we haven't heard that term here this afternoon-military has done us proud. And for all the talk years ago about what might have been the caliber of the young men and the women as an all-volunteer force as not meeting the mark, those myths and concerns have been dispelled or debunked. I think you and your colleagues have done an incredible job, particularly, and it has been mentioned, melding the Active and Reserve. It wasn't easy. There were characterizations about Reserves and Guard, and I think those characterizations today as a result of your leadership and your predecessor's has been removed. There is more professionalism, better training, better pay. And I like to say when I am on the stump, that the Army in particular, but the military generally, is the greatest equal opportunity employer in the Nation.

I don't think the military gets credit for it. And maybe this is in the way of an advertisement because the Army is here, the Army never really gets credit for being the largest part of that equation. As you have said on other occasions testifying and in my office, you have more troops ready to go literally today than any other service and we are not in the business here of beating up on other services-and you have more boots on the ground.

I want to just put out a general question that might be considered to be a softball, but relative to the issue of boots on the ground, often around this table we talk about the term “overwhelming superiority," and maybe that has to do with the excellence of our Air Force and the overwhelming power that they deliver.

Can you talk a few minutes about the Army's part of that equation? Because I think sometimes the Army is too modest about what it does, and in some ways has allowed some of our fellow citizens to think that wars can be won without losing lives and that wars can be won by overwhelming air superiority.

I don't forget the Marines either. His lips didn't have to move. I knew that if there was a whisper-the Ranking Member, for the record.

General SHINSEKI. Congressman, no question how proud the Secretary and I are of our service, but we are also very, very proud of the services that stand with us the great Air Force we have and Navy and Marine Corps. But ultimately the issues that we deal with are the issues of people, and they continue to reside on the ground and ultimately this gets resolved by, as we say, boots on the ground. It does not have to be Army boots, but it takes peo

ple invested on the ground to go and bring to finality all the other things that we can do.

If you want to look at the issue of precision and that gets a lot of attention because

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Precision, fire power, we have got it.

General SHINSEKI. It is sometimes described as a counterpoint to ground capability, and I don't think it is ever intended to be that way, nor do I think it is a very accurate way of describing what our capabilities are or our professions are. Precision has a value to the way we prosecute this business of combat.

But there is precision with fires and there is also precision with maneuver, and in the business of precision with fires, you have two components of that. You have the accurate location of a target and then you have the accurate delivery of fires. Accurate delivery of fires, I think we have demonstrated that we have the technology to be able to do that. We are always challenged with that first piece, and that is the accurate location of a target. Unless you can bring target location error and circular error probability of a location of a target and a strike of a weapon, precision is sort of less than we would like it to be.

Where ground forces provide contributions is resolving the front end of that, and that is locating, fixing, isolating that target so that you can bring to bear precision fires, and so there is a complement here. And certainly in the ground warfighting doctrine, fires and maneuver are always talked about as complementary capabilities.

In the joint arena, maneuver and fire still have that relationship, and a final resolution of most of the scenarios that we look at and prepare for ultimately end up on the ground. You have those situations in which a target not only cannot be identified or located, but even if identified and located are conflicted because you have innocents around them, and so your fires are not able to be necessarily employed to the extent you would like, and it takes, then, ground capability to go in there, get the separation you want or to take targets down.

I think we have seen all of our services mobilized for this potential operation, and I think all of us have demonstrated. As General Jim Jones and I used to say, we were never on an overly crowded battlefield. There is enough work for everybody.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Great. Thank you.

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. VISCLOSKY.

ABRAMS AND BRADLEY MODERNIZATION PROGRAMS

Mr. VISCLOSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, thank you for your service. Mr. Secretary, as I understand it, the Abrams and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were modernized, were two divisions, but that the proposal now is to terminate the modernization program, despite the fact that it has not occurred, for the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. What is the rationale for the termination of that?

Secretary WHITE. Up until this year, our plan had been to fully modernize three and a third divisions. The three divisions of III Corps: 1st Cavalry, 4th Infantry Division, 3rd ID and its cavalry regiment, 3rd ACR. This year we had to make some tough choices

about how much we could modernize, and the core of the modernization is the M1A2, most advanced variant of the Abrams, and the Bradley A3 variant.

This year in making trades that I referred to in my opening remarks and needing the money to support Transformation, we had to reduce the modernization to six brigades, two divisions, the 1st Cav and 4th ID, and forego the modernization of the other division and the ACR. And it was a choice that we had to make in order to fully fund Transformation, and we had to limit the degree that we would otherwise would have liked to have done in modernization of the existing force, and that is the call that we made.

Mr. VISCLOSKY. How much money would be involved, Mr. Secretary, approximately? What was the trade-off moneywise then? Secretary WHITE. I will have to get the details as to how much four brigades' worth would have been to modernize Bradley and Abrams, but I will get you those numbers.

[The information follows:]

To provide both the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 3rd Infantry Division with the same vehicle mix that the rest of the Counterattack Corps has, consisting of the Abrams M1A2-SEP tank and the Bradley M2/3A3 Infantry Fighting Vehicle, the cost would be $1.936 billion for Abrams tanks and $1.589 billion for Bradley Fighting Vehicles. If the Army were to use M1A1 AIM-D with second-generation forward-looking infrared radar, the cost would be $165.4 million plus $1.589 billion for the Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Other variations of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle could also be assessed for such an upgrade.

Mr. VISCLOSKY. I have one or two questions for the record on the Abrams Tank and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

[CLERK'S NOTE.-Questions submitted by Mr. Visclosky and the answers thereto follow:]

Question. In order to pay for the Army of the future (the Objective Force), this Committee has supported the Army's termination and reduction of dozens of current programs over the past two years. In fiscal year 2004, the Army again asks us to support program terminations and reductions—this time a total of 48 programs impacted.

Two of these programs are the Abrams Tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle. These are the current force's most potent weapons to ensure both enemy defeat and soldier survivability. The Army now proposed to terminate Abrams and Bradley modernization after fielding of modern versions of each vehicle to only two divisions. This leaves the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment-the other unit in what the Army calls the Counterattack Corps-with Abrams and Bradley vehicles that are more than 10 years old.

Please explain your rationale for terminating the M1A2 SEP tank and Bradley A3 Fighting Vehicle before fielding to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Answer. The Army favors a pure Abrams tank fleet for III Corps; however, as with many other major weapons systems, it is cost prohibitive to procure a M1A2 SEP tank for every armored crew. This is especially true when considering the significant bills we are faced with in order to transform the Army. As a result, the Army has made some difficult decisions on equipping the armor corps. The end state for the tank fleet based on these decisions will be M1A2SEP tanks in the 4th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry, and M1A1HA, M1A1AIM or M1A2 tanks in the rest of the active force. We are currently working options to buy back M1A2SEP's and M3A3's or M1A1AIM-D+ tanks and M3A20DS++ for 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment giving them the digital architecture to communicate with the rest of the digitized III Corps.

Question. Please provide your analysis of this decision that shows how the need to terminate these programs for affordability reasons outweighs the operational combat risk.

Answer. The Army has made some difficult decisions on equipping the current force with the most modern and capable equipment. Although we have assumed some risk by not producing enough M1A2SEP tanks to equip the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and 3rd Infantry Division, we still maintain both survivability and

lethality overmatch with the current tank force. The delicate balance required to transition from the current force to the Objective Force will require some acceptable risk, but never to the extent of putting our troops at an unacceptable risk.

Although every armor unit will not be equipped with the M1A2SEP tank, all Active Component units, less 3rd Infantry Division, will receive a new AIM tank providing even greater survivability, mobility, and increased operational readiness rates. The 3rd Infantry Division is scheduled to keep their newer M1A1 heavy armor tanks providing them with a similar level of armor protection.

The Army is preparing a response to a Congressional report requirement requesting a study on the compatibility of a mixed tank fleet and the adequacy of such a mixed fleet to meet the heavy corps mission. We except this study to be finished in July 2003.

Question. Can this Committee be assured that if it provides the Army additional resources to procure the required M1A2 SEP tanks and Bradley A3 vehicles that the Army will spend the funds for that purpose and that the Army will provide the balance of funding required to complete that procurement?

Answer. Yes, to the extent that the Army is continually reviewing the delicate balance of the Army's contributions to the Joint war fight. Modernizing the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is one of the Army's top priorities and every effort will be made to use all available assets to accomplish that goal.

Question. Would the Army be willing to work with the contractors for each of these combat vehicles to find an innovative solution to resourcing the needed M1A2 SEP tank and Bradley A3s to include zero sum movements of funding within each program?

Answer. The Army shares your concerns about the long-term viability of United Defense LP and General Dynamics Land Systems. We have initiated a series of discussions with corporate representatives in an effort to ensure these facilities can successfully bridge the gap between the end of the production of legacy systems and the initial production of the Future Combat Systems. We will continue to support the Abrams fleet as the Army transitions to the Objective Force, maintaining minimal risk on all fronts.

[CLERK'S NOTE.-End of questions submitted by Mr. Visclosky.]

COUNTERATTACK CORPS ARMOR REQUIREMENTS

General SHINSEKI. May I add to this discussion, Congressman? Three years ago when we began this review of the state of the Army, in fact we had a focus on this counterattack corps, three and a third divisions. And as we projected forward the investments at the end of 10 years, at that would accomplish for us if we were to do everything we had described, we would have three and a third divisions that were quite capable, quite modernized, essentially a heavy force that we have today, and the ability to transport it rapidly would still be challenging.

It is on that basis that we went back and took a look at whether the Army would be best served with one piece of it, this one corps that was wholly modernized, whether it was strategically more important for us to go back and look at the entire Army and put in place a modern transformation program that would give us all of our divisions that would be in the same condition as that one corps, all of them capable of being moved quickly, being lethal, and having the descriptors that I used earlier. A strategic change for us. And we decided to refocus our dollars and our energy and to make some tough decisions that would give the Army, the entire Army, the capabilities that we had been sort of husbanding for a single piece of it.

We think in the long run that will bear out as having been the right decision. We understand that whenever you go through this transformation, there are pressures on existing members in the industrial base. We understand that. And 32 years ago we made very clear in our early presentations that we could not do this, this