• 20 hours ago
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) spoke about harmful effects of funding the military through continuing resolutions.

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Transcript
00:00I'm gonna continue my line of questioning
00:03that I started with General Mahoney to you,
00:06just again on the, we've already touched on it a lot,
00:09but it's okay to, I wanna hear from all the services.
00:13The negative impact on the CR,
00:15the budget flexibility that you would want
00:18or request as part of this year's NDAA,
00:22and then any lessons learned on the good news
00:27that we're all starting to see,
00:28I think across the services on recruiting
00:31and to kind of, you know,
00:36make sure we're learning across services on that,
00:39because I don't think you got enough press,
00:42but if you have an all-volunteer force
00:44and we're hitting a recruiting crisis
00:47of tens of thousands of Americans who we were short,
00:51that's an existential threat to our military.
00:54Fortunately, it looks like we're beyond that,
00:55but we need to embed the lessons learned
00:58from all the services
01:00on how we got out of that danger zone.
01:02So, General, to you on those three questions.
01:06Senator, as far as the CR,
01:09we've canvassed pretty much all the negative things.
01:11I'd just like to hammer down on one.
01:14We talked about anomalies and flexibility
01:16in order to move between appropriations or accounts.
01:21We also need to be mindful of what the top line is.
01:24If there is only so much top line from which to flex
01:27or to move, we're gonna rob from one account
01:32to pay for another.
01:33Examples might be inflation that outpaces the plus-up,
01:37pay raises that were not planned for or budgeted,
01:40but are must-pay bills that money will come from somewhere,
01:43and non-budgeted contingencies
01:46that we pay out of our own primarily O&M accounts
01:49will have to be accounted for somewhere
01:51in the rules of that continuing resolution.
01:54A knock-on effect specific to the Marine Corps is if,
01:58and it's already been touched on by Admiral Kilby,
02:00if ship maintenance or ship building or procurement
02:04or anything that touches amphibious shipping,
02:07it will have a knock-on effect to the Marine Corps
02:10as I spoke about with Senator Hirono earlier.
02:15As far as flexibility goes,
02:18I would reference the Lord Hale study on PPB reform,
02:22and I'll just bring up three things
02:24that come to mind immediately.
02:25I think they have 16 recommendations in there
02:28which are all really good.
02:31Multi-year availability of one-year accounts
02:34so that you are not forced into making bad decisions
02:37at the end of the year and buying things
02:39that you really don't need,
02:40but have a period of availability
02:42to where you can make better executive
02:44and managerial decisions against that appropriation.
02:48Greater transfer authority
02:50so that we can move between appropriations
02:52or move between sub-activity groups
02:54in order to solve a problem early
02:57so that we don't have to come to Congress
02:59for an above-threshold, massive reprogramming
03:03late in the year that may be laid to need
03:05or not solve the problem.
03:07And lastly, and I'll let it go,
03:10is multi-year colorless appropriations
03:14to have flexibility within a portfolio
03:18to strengthen where you're weak
03:20and move money around to make sure
03:23that you can get your objectives attained
03:26within an account.
03:28So multi-year availability,
03:30greater transfer authority,
03:31and multi-year colorless appropriation.
03:33And we did the last one,
03:34and if you think of MRAP and you think of JADO
03:37back in the day, that worked pretty well
03:40to get things done at an accelerated pace.
03:45I'm running on here, but recruiting.
03:48For us, three things.
03:51We have a brand that we will not back off from.
03:54We believe that that brand is attractive.
03:56We believe it is a magnet to a wide demographic
03:59of young Americans who will prove themselves
04:02physically, mentally, and morally qualified.
04:04We will not back off of the standard,
04:07and counter-intuitively,
04:09you maintain a standard at a high level,
04:11that attracts people who want to perform to that standard.
04:15That's a great lesson,
04:16and I think we have to always keep that in mind.
04:22All the services,
04:22no matter what our recruiting challenges are,
04:25it is counter-intuitive, but it works.
04:28So thank you for that.
04:29And lastly, Senator, I already talked about it in detail,
04:32and that is our recruiting force.
04:35A breed apart, who are hand-screened,
04:39selected, incentivized, promoted,
04:42and as I said, when they get back in the fleet,
04:45as you know, they're some of the best staff NCOs
04:48and officers we have,
04:49and they become Sergeant Major of Marine Corps.
04:52And Commandant of the Marine Corps.
04:53Real quick, General Gutlein,
04:55can you just hit on these three questions?
04:59Try to be concise.
05:00I'm going over my time here.
05:01I want to be respectful to my colleagues,
05:03but I do want to get through this issue.
05:05CR, budget flexibilities, and recruiting.
05:11Yes, Chairman, I can go pretty quick.
05:12From a CR, it's a huge challenge.
05:16It's very, very inefficient.
05:18It does impact us, especially,
05:20because we are the smallest force with the smallest budget.
05:23So any churn in our budget is a huge hit to us.
05:27As far as what we would ask for flexibilities,
05:30I agree with the rest of the staff, New Starts.
05:33We are seeing an enormous amount of threats
05:35emerging every single year,
05:37and it is very hard to get after those threats
05:39when you have to wait two to four years
05:40to get the budget to get after those threats.
05:41So anything you can do,
05:42budget flexibility for New Start Authority.
05:45PE consolidation, the ability to move money
05:48between programs would be hugely beneficial.
05:52And then the multi-year procurement,
05:53multi-year execution authority
05:55that General Mahoney talked about.
05:57As far as recruiting and retention,
05:58we've actually got a much easier problem
06:00because we have a much smaller force,
06:01but we are seeing two recruits,
06:04two volunteers for every recruit
06:06that we take into the United States Space Force.
06:08So we're able to be very, very, very selective
06:10for high quality.
06:1115%, almost nearly 15% of our recruits
06:14have some college level of education
06:16to include all the way up to master's and PhDs.
06:19We are recruiting, objectives were met
06:23the last four years in a row,
06:24104% for our enlisted, 101% for our officers.
06:28And we are looking at continuing growth in the future,
06:31and our retention rate has been in excess of 98%.
06:34Wow, great, that's great news.
06:35Great job, General.

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