lion over the next four years-hardly a significant part of a 6-year, $84 billion proposed DOD topline increase. By comparison, the 104th and 105th Congresses added $10.6 billion over the last four years, not including the fiscal year 1999 emergency supplemental. Continuing to forego growth and modernization will ultimately confront the Pentagon and the American people with a dilemma: facing the procurement bow wave with too few resources or cutting force structure because of the so-called death spiral, a shifting of funds from procurement accounts to finance continuously growing operations and support costs. Since the latter alternative is not of interest to DOD leadership or to me, the former looms ominously unless there is sustained growth in future defense budgets.

The Pentagon's latest budget briefing declares that, quote, "Modernization is on target." Unfortunately, I cannot agree. And I think you will see evidence today that supports my contention.

In 1995, the immediate past Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shalikashvili, stated that there was a requirement for $60 billion annually in procurement spending, a figure now referred to as a Quadrennial Defense Review procurement goal, and urged that this amount be attained in Fiscal Year 1998. The Department's current budget indicates we will reach this amount in Fiscal Year 2001, three years than was recommended. But guess what? In Fiscal Year 2001, General Shalikashvili's $60 billion grows to $63 billion, assuming the administration's forecast inflations rates are accurate. That means the requirement has still not been reached, and in fact, it won't be reached until fiscal year 2003, five years later than recommended.

Meanwhile, aging equipment continues to age. In fact, I would be willing to bet that there is a significant amount of equipment in the inventory that would not be deployed to a major theater of war, if one were to begin tomorrow. Among other reasons, that is why I firmly believe we need $20 to $25 billion more in defense spending, beginning in the fiscal year 2000.

Incidentally, we asked the Joint Chiefs to tell us what they needed to maintain this decreased force structure that we now have. Their answer: The Air Force said they an additional $5 billion a year; the Army, an additional $5 billion a year; the Navy, an additional $6 billion a year; the Marines, an additional $1.75 billion a year-all that on top of the additional $2.5 billion that is going to be needed to fix the people problem; that is, the pay disparity and also the retirement system. So the Chiefs, for the first time, have come out and contradicted the Commander-in-Chief; that is, they have said we need $20.1 billion per year.

With us today to provide their views on the aging equipment problem, we have two panels. The first panel includes Dr. Lauren B. Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute. Thank you, Dr. Thompson, for being with us.

Dr. Raymond Pyles of the RAND Corporation. Thank you, Dr. Pyles, for being with us today.

And Mrs. Lane Pierrot, Senior Analyst at the National Security Division, Congressional Budget Office.

The second panel, who will follow these folks, is the Honorable Paul J. Hoeper, Assistant Secretary of the Army, Research, Development and Acquisition; Lieutenant General John C. Coburn, Dep

uty Chief of Staff for Logistics, Department of the Army; the Honorable H. Lee Buchanan, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition; Vice Admiral James F. Amerault, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Logistics; Lieutenant General Gregory S. Martin, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition; Lieutenant General John W. Handy, Deputy Chief of the Staff for Installations and Logistics, Department of the Air Force; Lieutenant General Martin R. Steele, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Policies and Operations, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, and Major General Gary S. McKissock, Commander, Marine Corps Materiel Command.

I want to thank all of you for being here this afternoon. We look forward to your testimony. We have an extremely difficult problem to take care of here, and I hope that you will be able to shed some light on the path we should take in the U.S. Congress to fix this national emergency. We all look forward to your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the Appendix on page 69.]

Before we begin, I want to call on Norm Sisisky, our distinguished ranking member, for any remarks he might wish to make. I would also like to ask the chairman of the full committee to weigh-in on this subject, since it is so critical to the future of the Armed Services.

So, first, my good friend from Virginia, the distinguished Mr. Sisisky.

STATEMENT OF HON. NORMAN SISISKY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will only be a couple of minutes. I want to apologize to our witnesses. I will not be back right after the vote, but I should be back within an hour. I have another commitment that I have to keep.

I want to join you in welcoming our witnesses for today's hearing on the important, but difficult subject of aging equipment. Before we begin, I would like to make a few points.

First, I agree with Chairman Hunter that it doesn't make sense to spend increasingly large amounts of money to maintain and operate equipment that is essentially nondeployable. I believe we should use this money to help underwrite procurement of modern equipment that we would deploy.

Second, I am concerned that, in our enthusiasm to modernize, we have skipped a very important first step: the development of nextgeneration equipment for the future. With few exceptions, there is very little to procure today that is truly next-generation. Thus, we are increasingly spending modernization dollars for the procurement, modification, and service life extension of legacy systems whose technology is rooted in the 1970's. Ironically, with this approach, the more we spend, the less modern we become.

Finally, I don't see much relief coming any time soon. With the possible exception of a few programs like the Comanche helicopter, the F-22, and the new attack sub, there is very reaching next-generation things coming out of the R&D pipeline that could be procured during the FYDP. This situation stands in sharp contrast

with the early 1980's, when the Army alone had eight major weapons system programs entering procurement. Six of these the Apache, Blackhawk helicopters, the Abrams tank, and Bradley fighting vehicle, Patriot Air Defense, and Multi Launch Rocket Systems-remain the backbone of our land forces today, and, unfortunately, for the foreseeable future as well.

Worse, R&D budgets are down, and projected to remain flat across the Future Year Defense Plan and beyond. As the development of next-generation systems falls further behind the need, we will be forced to invest further in the 1970's technology.

Mr. Chairman, our ability to modernize is constrained by more than money. Unless we find a way to develop next-generation systems and break out of this so-called death spiral that you refer to, our ability to modernize is at risk.

With that, I look forward to this afternoon's testimony from our distinguished visitors, and thank you very much.

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, my colleague.

Before we go to the chairman, we have got just a few minutes left on this vote. We will go ahead and take the vote, and we will be back in a few minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. HUNTER. The subcommittee will come to order.

The chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from South Carolina, is recognized.

STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD D. SPENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

Chairman SPENCE. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I usually don't avail myself of this courtesy extended to make a statement, but this committee is embarked on very important business here today. So if I might have the indulgence for just a minute, I would like to make a brief statement concerning what we are about.

There has been a vigorous debate over the past several years concerning the adequacy of the administration's defense modernization budget, and, I might add, budget in general for defense. And this year is no different. Many have argued that a decade-long "holiday", quote/unquote, in weapons procurement was justified due to the robust modernization efforts of the 1980's, and because older weapons did not need as rapid replacement due to the drawdown in the size of the force.

But procurement spending has been cut by as much as 70 percent since the mid-1980's. And the military technological edge that was so clearly demonstrated in the Persian Gulf is being seriously eroded. Based upon the long list of unfunded modernization requirements submitted to the committee over the years by the Service Chiefs, such concerns are valid.

Without any meaning to steal any of the thunder from our witnesses today, I hope they can verify a few of the things I am going to mention.

The Marines are likely to be the first American troops into Kosovo if there is a peace agreement, and our flying 40-year-old tankers and 30-year-old helicopters.

The Air Force, flying around the clock, no-fly zone missions over Bosnia and Iraq, flying 38-year-old KC-135 tankers, aircraft that will be 79 years old when retired in 2040. The Air Force's V-22's that just left for the Mediterranean are, on average, 37 years old, and plans are to fly them for 30 to 40 more years. The air superiority variants of the Air Force F-15 are now expected to fly for 38 years before being retired.

The Army, that is being stretched so thin with peacekeeping mission after peacekeeping mission, is flying 37-year-old CH-47's, which are expected to fly for another 30 years, and is driving tanks that are now expected to be operational for as long as 36 years.

The Navy's F-14 Tomcat, which was introduced into the fleet in the mid-1970's, which makes it 1960 technology; the Navy is flying 20-year-old P-3M submarine warfare aircraft that are expected to fly for another 30 years.

How many of us would drive a car that is 20 or 37 or 79 years old? Yet, we are asking our sons and daughters to go to war in equipment that is older than they are. It is, quite frankly, irresponsible. We are counting on this equipment to get the job done and bring our men and women back home to their families safely, defending this country in the meantime.

This morning in the full committee the chairman of this subcommittee has said-we were hearing the Service Chiefs. When asked about funding for quality-of-life programs, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, a great general and Commandant, Krulak, stated, and I quote him, "The No. 1 quality-of-life issue for my marines and their families is bringing them home alive. Right now we are in the position that we are in the position that we are struggling to get the equipment to be able to allow them to go ahead and fight and win across the board." Is this the best we can do for the men and women who are serving our country and defend this country? I certainly home not.

I think my colleague, Mr. Hunter, the chairman of this subcommittee, and Mr. Sisisky, for holding this hearing. It is very important, and I hope that you folks can help us to make the case that we need to make with the American people, how desperately we need to modernize the force.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Spence can be found in the Appendix on page 72.]

Mr. HUNTER. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you, too, for taking the initiative over the last couple of years, when our service leaders were supporting the President's budget in this room and then were coming to see us after the hearing and saying, "Here are some additional things we need," and we saw the spate of newspaper editorials talking about Republicans and members of this committee giving the military things it hadn't asked for. So you started the practice of asking people to put on paper so-called unfunded requirements, and I think that was a great initiative, because in the end it drew our military leadership to this table with an annual requirement above and beyond last year's baseline of about $20 billion. I just hope we have the good sense, and the sense of responsibility to our uniformed personnel, to carry

that number this year. So thank you for what you did in terms of highlighting this very important problem.

With that, we will now turn to our first panel. Why don't we go from left to right? Dr. Thompson, we have been listening to your expertise on many occasions, and the floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF LOREN B. THOMPSON, PH.D., CHIEF
OPERATING OFFICER/LEXINGTON INSTITUTE

Dr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you members of the committee, for inviting me to be here today and talk about aging military equipment. I am going to limit my remarks to military aircraft, the area where aging equipment raises the most serious operational and budgetary concerns.

Let me begin by commending the subcommittee for addressing a neglected but important issue. As you know, coverage of military procurement matters in the general media tends to be superficial and sporadic. Many Americans don't realize that only three percent of the Federal budget is spent on weapons procurement or that the Nation devotes about twice much of its wealth to gambling as it does to all aspects of national defense.

What I would like to talk about today is a different kind of gamble: the risk that America increasingly is taking by sending its military personnel to war in obsolete, aging aircraft. I would like to begin by telling you a story sort of, a little personal anecdote. Every year the U.S. Air Force holds an Aerospace Power Demonstration at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. I attended last September, and it was pretty impressive. But let me tell you a little bit about some of the aircraft that were on display that day.

The very first airplane that flew over was a KC-135, the most common aerial refueling tanker in the Air Force suite. It is basically a military version of the venerable 707 Boeing jetliners. The Air Force has over 500 KC-135's. As Mr. Spence just pointed out, the average one is 38 years old.

That KC-135, that first airplane that I saw fly over, was refueling a B-52H bomber. B-52's make up over a third of the service's long-range bomber fleet. The average B-52H in the active fleet today is 37 years old, and it has accumulated 14,000 hours of flight. But the Air Force plans to keep the planes flying for another 30 to 40 years.

I didn't put this in my remarks, but the B-52 was actually being designed the year I was born. If they keep it going in the active force for as long as the Air Force has it projected, 2040, 2045, it will actually have a design-to-demise lifetime roughly equivalent to the period between today and when the Wright brothers flew at Kittyhawk.

The next plane that the crowd saw at the Aerospace Power Demonstration was a propeller-driven C-130 refueling helicopter. Like the KC-135 and the B-52, the C-130 was designed in the early 1950's. Now I don't know how old the average age is for the Air Force's 500 C-130's, but what I do know is this: Many of them are so far beyond their planned design life that the Air Force and the Navy no longer even try to predict when they are going to need structural repairs. They just wait until cracks appear and then try to fix them.