20250506: RDY Hearing: Military Readiness for FY26

House Subcommittee on Readiness

2025-05-06

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Source: Congress.gov

Participants

Transcript

Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.
Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.
All right.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.
Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.
Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Thank you.   Amen.
Okay.   Thank you.   Ladies and gentlemen, we have to wait for a member of the minority party to start.
So we'll start as soon as they get here.   While we're waiting, just for everybody's information, Chair Bergman is in a VA markup that started at 10 AM this morning.
They are rolling votes until the end.  He hopes to be here somewhere shortly after 3.30, but he will be here as soon as they conclude.   Subcommittee will come to order.  I ask unanimous consent that the chair be authorized to declare a recess at any time without objection.
So ordered, as I said, Chairman Bergman is in the Veterans Affairs Committee.  I am going to read his opening statement now, and then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Garamendi for any opening statements that he may have.   I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today to discuss the current state of our military readiness.  Overall, the time is upon us to take credible steps in the Indo-Pacom area to deter future conflict.  China's ever-expanding military efforts threaten the Indo-Pacom nations and destabilize the global norm.  While I'm pleased that we took the first step toward addressing these Indo-Pacom threats in our reconciliation efforts last week, we need to be particularly critical of our existing forces and their troubling readiness levels.  Aviation readiness, for example,
has our aviation forces especially problematic.  If we have 100 aircraft but half the inventory is not available because of lack of parts, maintenance, or personnel, have we really pushed forward in changing the overall readiness?  We need to significantly reform our approach to ensure our forces are not only ready in the next decade, but more importantly, ready in the next year.   As to the Army, I'm particularly concerned about their Indo-PACOM response.  Efforts to reduce Army watercraft and lack of modernization of our ship-to-shore capabilities are specifically troubling.  Additionally, the Army has significant Guard and Reserve mobilization concerns.  We need to substantially improve manning, training, and material readiness of these force and expand efforts to provide joint logistics to further deter future conflict.  As to the Navy, we need to quickly reduce the 22,000 sailors shortage in our fleet   and we need to get our ships out of dry dock.  Our inability to construct and maintain our submarine force is a national and international imperative.  With our Air Force, it's hard to be a deterrent force when the overall aviation force structure will be diminished by almost 400 aircraft over the next five years.

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