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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS

FOR FISCAL YEAR 1992

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1991

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met at 9 a.m., in room SD-138, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Inouye (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Inouye, Hollings, Leahy, Sasser, DeConcini, Bumpers, Stevens, D'Amato, Rudman, Cochran, Specter, and Domenici.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

STATEMENT OF HON. H. LAWRENCE GARRETT III, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR INOUYE

Senator INOUYE. Mr. Secretary, Admiral Kelso, General Gray, the subcommittee welcomes the Navy-Marine Corps team to the subcommittee's fifth hearing on the fiscal year 1992 budget request. I think all of us will agree that this subcommittee has been traditionally a strong supporter of our Navy and Marine Corps, and in that spirit we salute all of you on a job well done in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

As with other American armed services, the Navy and the Marine Corps face one of the most challenging periods in their history. The struggle to manage the defense builddown while protecting essential military capabilities will be a long and arduous task on our part. The subcommittee will be most interested in learning how the Navy and Marine Corps are coping with this challenge and how they are going about redefining their missions and requirements for the future.

Congress will also be laboring hard to understand the military and fiscal implications of the budget request and future defense plans, and so we will need your very candid advice and insights to help us in this very important task.

All of us are joyous over the first real victory we have had in the last 15 years. We all hope that there will not be another war for many, many more years, if ever. However, the world remains an uncertain and unfriendly place in many ways. We must make our defense spending decisions in this and future years with sufficient

care and foresight to make certain that the United States and our friends will prevail in any future conflict.

So we look forward to receiving your testimony this morning and responses to our questions.

Mr. Secretary, it is your show, sir.

STATEMENT HIGHLIGHTS

Mr. GARRETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee.

I welcome the opportunity to review with you the posture of the Navy-Marine Corps team and discuss the Department of the Navy budget for the fiscal years 1992 and 1993. I ask that my formal statement be inserted in the record.

Senator INOUYE. Without objection.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Chairman, the United States over the last 10 years has made a substantial and a concerted investment in its military security-not least in its sea power. That investment has paid, I submit, invaluable dividends-by first accelerating the end of the cold war, by ensuring our ability to counter aggression, and by serving notice that America is a credible moral force for international stability and human freedom.

The extraordinary men and women of our armed servicesbacked by the support of this Congress-proved that point decisively 2 weeks ago when they secured the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's brutal occupation. They have, I submit, earned our unqualified pride, our respect, and our gratitude.

The challenge before us, as you point out, now is to preserve that investment at a time of great geostrategic uncertainty and to do so in a way that makes both fiscal and military sense.

PRIORITIES ESTABLISHED

The budget you have before you, Mr. Chairman, addresses that challenge. The maritime policy upon which it is built derives in turn from four key realities about the evolving world order.

First is the fact that the United States must remain firmly engaged in a world that is economically interdependent. The vast majority of our trading partners are on the opposite side of one ocean or another. Our economy, our way of life, and even our physical security depend on both the safety of our allies and the security of our seaborne trade routes. Current events make it abundantly clear that we simply cannot afford to retreat into isolationism or to abandon our maritime superiority.

Second is America's increasingly limited access to overseas bases and military facilities. Our national strategy will depend even more than it does today on self-contained, forward-deployed maritime forces that can project a wide range of power from international waters anywhere on the globe.

Mr. Chairman, our fundamental policy of maintaining forwarddeployed, combat-ready naval forces allowed the United States to have the striking power of two carrier battle groups on the scene within days of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait; and the first fully operational, combat-ready mechanized force in Saudi Arabia

was the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, supported by equipment loaded in forward-deployed maritime prepositioned ships.

A third important factor is the diversity of potential threats to American and allied security-from terrorist attack, to conventional armed aggression, to nuclear blackmail.

Finally, the threat of a global war with the Soviet Union has diminished, but the future of perestroika, I submit, is still uncertain, and the powerful potential of the Soviet navy has not lessened. At the same time, weapons of mass destruction have proliferated throughout the world.

In short, Mr. Chairman, our naval policy is to support the Nation with forward-deployed Navy and Marine Corps forces that can perform their missions worldwide and adjust to rapidly changing strategic and tactical circumstances-all within the fiscal restraints established for us.

It is toward that end that we have identified our budget priorities. The most important, as I have said to you before, is our people. The war in Iraq was won by skilled, courageous, and dedicated men and women who volunteered to serve their Nation, at extraordinary personal risk. Their concerns are my concerns and the concerns of all of the Navy and Marine Corps leadership: compensation, quality of life, training, and the benefits we provide them as service members, veterans, and as retirees. They are without question our most precious asset.

Following closely is training. Our ability to respond to rapidly developing crises depends on units and personnel that are practiced, professional, and combat-ready. Ships, airplanes, and tanks are of little use without well-trained people to man them.

Next is readiness and sustainability, and by that I mean the ability to bring a credible and effective force to bear in combat when and if the national leadership requires such an option. We were able to confront Iraqi aggression because we had the means to sustain and support a full-scale operation for an indefinite period of time. To safely address sophisticated and volatile_threats into the 21st century, we will need to maintain that standard of readiness and sustainability.

Another critical priority is to maintain a balanced force as we build down our naval force structure. We are on the road to a smaller Navy and a smaller Marine Corps. Our objective is to maintain an appropriate balance of war-fighting capabilities while also balancing our force structure against our manpower needs. It makes no sense to keep our harbors filled with ships and our hangars filled with airplanes if that means sacrificing the training, the readiness, the quality, and the morale of the people required to make them work.

A keystone to our ability to build and maintain a Navy is our infrastructure and our industrial base. America's strategic advantage depends fundamentally on a healthy, productive, innovative, and competitive national industry. We simply cannot afford to drive our defense industrial base, especially our vital shipbuilding industry, offshore.

Technology is another key priority. Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield amply validated our traditional emphasis on technological superiority. Advanced high-technology weapons systems not

only served to save American lives, they significantly limited death and damage to noncombatants. As our force structure reduces in size, it becomes even more important that we preserve our technological advantage with vigorous research, development, and operational evaluation.

Mr. Chairman, the new world we face is one of great promise, but, as you pointed out, it is also one of great danger. The stability, the freedom, and the prosperity of the international community will depend in the end on America's consistent strength and leadership.

With that in mind, we have, in the Department of the Navy, looked very hard, not only at the challenges to America's security, but at the way we do business. The budget before you represents a maritime force which is smaller than we have had before, but one which remains combat-capable, cost-effective, and tailored to the threats we are likely to face as the 20th century draws to a close. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be happy, after the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant submit their statements, to respond to your questions.

Senator INOUYE. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. [The statement follows:]

STATEMENT OF SECRETARY H. LAWRENCE GARRETT III

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I welcome the opportunity today to review with you the posture of the Department of the Navy, to present our biennial budget for fiscal years 1992 and 1993, and to review the operations of our Navy and Marine Corps during the past year. This is my third appearance before this committee, once presenting this report as the department's undersecretary, and last year far the first time as Secretary of the Navy. As I stated in my report a year ago, we see increasingly dramatic changes throughout the world. We are witnessing events that we could not have predicted in advance. These changes are shaping what the President has appropriately called a new world order.

I view the presentation of this posture statement as my most important task thus far as secretary of the Navy. The events in today's headlines are among the most consequential for the United States since World War II. My message today is framed by the events in the Middle East, and it is very simple. Over the past decade we have chosen to invest a great deal in the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. In terms of naval power, we have bought a tremendous amount of capability with that investment. Since the defense build up, and prior to operation Desert Storm, we had not been called upon to perform in combat to this degree, so we had not fully verified the wisdom of our force building. It is apparent now that we did the right thing. The vision of the national leadership has clearly been validated many times over. Navy and Marine Corps weapons, equipment, and people have combined to give the U.S. the most capable sea power in the world today. In and around the Persian Gulf, U.S. naval forces are participating in joint and combined combat operations to defend Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait. Besides the Middle East conflict, U.S. naval forces remain deployed all around the globe, maintaining a forward presence in support of America's security objectives and global interests.

DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM: NAVAL SUCCESSES

When Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, the Navy's Middle East Force, part of the existing Joint Task Force Middle East, had a total of eight ships assigned. USS La Salle (AGF-3) was in theater as the Force flagship, accompanied by one cruiser, one destroyer, and five frigates. To deter further Iraqi aggression, the aircraft carriers USS Independence (CV-62) and USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN-69) moved immediately to the northern Arabian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, naval deterrent air power was on station three days before the ground force and land-based air force deployments began. Our Maritime

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