major change in transformation, without the support of industry, and we invited industry to join us. We told everyone this would be a bold step, but we needed their help to step off, and we would do the best we can to resolve risks and work through this. There are a number of early beneficiaries of this. The NLOS cannon, common chassis FCS business, has already identified some members of industry who have already begun to make that return on early investments because they are part of this effort to make the change. Others took risk on their own and stepped off smartly with us and are yet to have the benefit of those decisions. Others were a little slower to step off for reasons of their own. There may be even some who chose not to step off. But there are a variety of categories of situations for industry. For the most part, industry has stepped up with us. We would not be where we are today— even if we had the funding available, we would not be where we are today if industry as a whole hadn't supported us in this effort. We will continue to look at those concerns that are expressed by Members that say they have got periods here that have to be bridged, but it is not too late to step off with us, and I think it is FISCAL YEAR 2003 FUNDS FOR ABRAMS AND BRADLEY Mr. DICKS. Would the gentleman yield just briefly? Mr. VISCLOSKY. Sure. Mr. DICKS. What are you going to do with the 2003 money for these upgrades and the tanks? Secretary WHITE. Spend it. Mr. DICKS. On something else or on Secretary WHITE. No. In other words, to get the fully modernized capability Mr. DICKS. At the Corps you have got to spend the money on the 2003 Secretary WHITE. Right. We are talking about 2004 money, not 2003. Mr. DICKS. Right. General SHINSEKI. The 2003 dollars were assigned against risks that we did not want to take, and so those dollars are being focused on that. It is the 2004 monies that we begin to-Congressman, it is really beyond the 2004 and it is really 2005 and 2006, that some of these trend lines begin to drop more significantly. LIFE CYCLE COSTS Mr. VISCLOSKY. I have a lot of reasons to be proud to serve with the members on this Committee. Besides their focus on the quality of life of those individual troops, it is also the issue of operation and maintenance and spare parts and all those things that don't capture headlines. And I share their concern particularly as far as the rising cost of readiness and the issue of paying attention to life cycle costs during system development. And my sense is that that life cycle cost of a system generically on average is about 72 percent of the overall cost. What programs or proposals do either of you gentlemen have in place to try to better address that issue? And I understand there is always that impulse, and I think it is a natural impulse, to get right to that cutting edge of that technology or new system but not look at the overall cycle costs in maintenance problems that may impose? Secretary WHITE. That thrust line is a central part, a critical part, of the Future Combat System development. We absolutely must reduce the logistic burden associated with the Future Combat System over the current heavy force that drives the life cycle cost. Another part of it is robotic technology. If you look at Crusader, and now the FCS Non-Line of Sight Cannon, the biggest classed element in the life cycle is the cost of the crew. And so if you go to unmanned systems and robotics and become more efficient with people going forward, it will also have an enormous impact on the O&M cost. So the automatic loader that we are transferring over to the cannon in the Future Combat System, which allows us to put a significantly smaller crew on the cannon, will also have a significant impact on the life cycle question. So I absolutely agree with you and that is a central thrust on the Objective Force. The same with Comanche. Mr. VISCLOSKY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. BUSINESS INITIATIVE COUNCIL Mr. TIAHRT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also like to add my voice in thanking you for your service to the country. You could have done a lot of other things with your life. You chose to serve our country, and so thank you very much. I want to make a comment to start with. You have started an Army Business Initiative Council. I think it is very innovative. The Federal Acquisition Regulations are lethargic, cumbersome, and they block getting new technologies into our soldiers' hands. And I would like to extend an offer to work with you to change the process if we can, so we can shorten the time it takes to get a good idea in the hands of the people who defend this great Nation. Secretary WHITE. I look forward to that. TRANSFORMATION Mr. TIAHRT. Second, we used to call it modernization, it is now transformation. We have an aging Legacy Force and in our efforts to upgrade them sometimes we have come up with multiple systems out there. We have about four different models of an M-1 tank, I am told three models of the M-2 Bradleys, a couple models of the helicopters, Apache helicopters. The Black Hawks have more versions than that out there. So we have these upgrades that cost a lot with O&M, and I think it consumes our resources. How do you balance between maintaining some of these items in our Legacy Force with new procurement, new ideas? What is the criteria that we are going to use in the future to decide whether we maintain an existing system or discard it for a new technology? Secretary WHITE. Well, let me start, and the Chief can-let us take aviation, for example. We have invested over the years to put together an aviation fleet with Apache, Black Hawk, and currently Kiowa Warrior and, in the future, Comanche, that we are paying to upgrade to digital capability and to have a common set of heli copters and retire the AH-1s and the Hueys that were in our fleet in previous years. So the overall fleet is going to be smaller by about 1,000 helicopters. But it will be more modern and it will all be digital cockpits, and that is the decision we made on how to modernize aviation and bring Comanche on as a part of it. We will make decisions on block improvements and infusion of technology into existing systems as a trade against bringing in new systems in the Objective Force. And as you have heard in the previous discussion, we have found it necessary to limit the modernization of the Legacy Force in order to support Transformation because we think there are enormous advantages to doing that. But it is a tough call and in this particular budget, the call is made in favor of the Transformation side as a way to get to the O&S costs and a lot of other things and strategic deployability of the force. General SHINSEKI. I would only add, Congressman, that this is a challenge that all the services had, and the Army has had to walk this line between taking care of today's Legacy Force, that force that you go to the unanticipated crises, that go to fight wars on short notice, understanding that if you don't husband resources and take care of the future, that future force is the same one you have today, just older. So all of the challenges that you have today about where you can deploy, how fast you can deploy, and what it takes to sustain it, is just more significant 10 years from now. And so what the Army has done over the last three years and where it stands today is to have balance, exactly what you asked us to do; and that is to ensure that today's force can go and handle today's crises, but to put as much energy as we can towards the Future Combat System. Much of that momentum that we have today came right out of this Committee. I mean there was $3.2 billion added a few years ago to give us that kind of momentum. It is a challenge. We have taken risk in the Legacy Force, but I can tell you that the answer I provided to the Chairman in the opening here as he asked is this force ready, and I unequivocally said, yes, it is, and it can go and do what it is that the President might order-I will tell you that that risk has been acceptable in our estimation, and we are as confident in this force today as we thought we would be here in the year 2003. But at the same time, we have put the energy for capability in 2008, 2010, that will allow a future Chief, yet again once removed, to be able to say that right decisions were made in 2003 to give him the best Army in the world in 2008-2009. Mr. TIAHRT. I realize this is an open hearing, Mr. Chairman, and I would have other questions if it were closed, but I think I will just yield back the rest of my time. STRYKER BRIGADES Mr. LEWIS. We will have many occasions to ask those closed-door questions. Thank you very much. For the members of the Committee but also those who are participating with us, we have this room for about another half hour and I know members have additional questions. So while we have the opportunity, Chief, earlier we talked about Stryker, and I remember your talking about the fifth and sixth brigades. I was frankly-while I had known, I was nonetheless reminded of the value of that sixth brigade being with the Guard and Reserve people, that if they are not connected to the future that it has implications that are long term. So I was hesitant to even mention the fact that Fort Irwin used to be in my district. It is not any longer, but I have always wondered why we didn't have a Stryker Brigade out there. In the meantime I General SHINSEKI. There will be a Stryker unit training there shortly, Mr. Chairman. STRYKER ACQUISITION Mr. LEWIS. I specifically wanted to ask you if you would elaborate for us with those brigades anticipated, the mission requirements that are a part of that asset and what you anticipate. General SHINSEKI. May I give a broader answer and then get to some specifics? Mr. LEWIS. Sure. General SHINSEKI. Mr. Chairman, three years ago, if we were to go back and visit the discussions we had, I think the observation of the Army was it was an Army still Eurocentric, very much heavy, and focused on Europe. And the question to the Army was how are you looking at your responsibilities more broadly and what do you think, what capabilities you need to be able to deal in a larger strategic context? As a result of some of those discussions, we did take a look and I think found ourselves fairly heavy-forced and focused in Europe. We were asked to think about the Asia-Pacific theater, a maritime theater to be sure. The tyranny of distance is clear, but ultimately as I indicated, when you get to where the problem areas are, they reside on land, and you have to have some capability to deal with it. A heavy army with 70-ton tanks didn't see itself quite capable of providing options to the combatant commander of the Pacific. We were asked to think about it and we tried to resolve our concerns in developing an interim capability that served really several needs. One was to solve this gap between early-arriving light and later-arriving heavy forces, and we did need something that gave us a capability we didn't have, an interim force. We also understood that if we are going to talk about the future force, that initially when we asked about these breakthrough technologies that would be available to be used in the Army, the early answers were 2018. That is what we were asked to think about. Well, 2018 was so far in the future we needed a way to pull that focal point closer in, and we have asked for a 2008 capability. But to do that we had to restructure our acquisition process. And Stryker then served the second need, and that was to run at our acquisition processes, sort of bang into things and reorganize the deck chairs into a faster, more capable acquisition process. Stryker was described as a 7-to-9-year effort initially. We have fielded it in 22 years. I think we have demonstrated that both the acquisition process and industry can respond more quickly, giving us some confidence in the 2008 date. And, equally importantly, the third reason we needed the Stryker Brigades was you need a laboratory to grow new leadership that is going to think about new organizations, new ways of putting together capabilities, new ways of fighting, so that when 2008 arrives and the technology is here, you have got a leadership that is ready to leverage that. For all those reasons, we felt that the interim effort was important. How many of these Stryker Brigade Combat Teams-and as you know, there were Interim Brigade Combat Teams initially. They didn't even have a name because there was no vehicle associated with it. There was a range of numbers. We settled on six, and the six were located at Fort Lewis, Washington, for reasons that were important to us because Fort Lewis has a history of mounted operations and we didn't have to put a lot of investments in infrastructure. It already exists: ranges, motor pools, roads. If we were going to address the requirements of the Pacific combatant commander, we had to give him more than just a one location option and we looked at placing Stryker Brigade No. 3 in Alaska. We had a requirement to meet the needs of the 18th Airborne Corps, our contingency corps, and that required us to provide the fourth piece to the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Polk. The fifth was to round out the Asia-Pacific focus, and that was decided that to get to Southeast Asia most rapidly, a location of a brigade in Hawaii would fit. And then the sixth was a more strategic investment and that was for the reasons cited by the Secretary, an investment of a sixth brigade in a National Guard unit. And the National Guard participated in that decision, came back to us and said that the best unit should be the one in Pennsylvania. We have been asked to relook at the fit, the organization, the capabilities, and the locations. We are doing that study now, and for all of what has been provided, the early studies seem to have been about right; that the capabilities to get to the problem areas in the Pacific that the combatant commander asked us to look at, put those four brigades on the Pacific Rim about in the right locations. But we will review that and provide our final studies, as the Secretary said, we are in the process of doing. Six is about the right number. It is an affordable one. REDEPLOYMENT OF ARMY FORCES IN EUROPE Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Secretary and Chief, you heard me earlier express no small amount of frustration relative to the peace option and I kind of pointed a finger at our friends in Europe; namely, the French and Germans. I wanted a linkage to scratch my head. There is a question I wanted to ask about how you view the recent discussions concerning redeployment of U.S. Forces from bases in Germany to locations in Eastern Europe. Secretary WHITE. Well, Mr. Chairman, the Combatant Commander, General Jones, is in the process, as he has talked about, of conducting a strategic review to see what our positioning should be and our posture should be in Europe, looking towards our longterm security interest in not only that area of the world but in other parts of the world where you could possibly deploy from that portion of the world. Our business will be, when he brings that in and the Secretary looks at it and decisions are made about that posture to line up the Department behind whatever plan is decided, to support him and to support the Secretary of Defense. And consequently we are ac |