During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) spoke about North Korea sending thousands of troops to aid Russia in their invasion of Ukraine.
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00:00Mr. Bacon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate all three of you being here.
00:03And we got our hands full of the United States. We got China's, the pacing threat, the long-term
00:07threat. They want to be the regional hegemon now, and they want to be the world's superpower in the
00:14decades to come. I will also submit that Russia is the near-term threat by its behavior, with
00:20Ukraine, severing cables, shooting down airliners. And then we also have Iran, the world's largest
00:24exporter of terror. And we have to deal with all three of these, which means we have to have the
00:28capabilities. We also have to have close allies. I appreciate the job our two four-star generals
00:33are doing in the Pacific. I'm grateful to you. My first question is to Admiral Paparo. I was a
00:3830-year electronic warfare guy in the Air Force. I think we were dominant in the 1990s. We
00:45related atrophy. Could you talk about the importance of EW in your theater, but also the Air Force
00:51has funded 10 EA-37s, Compass Call aircraft, which I used to fly the earlier version. I don't
00:57think that's adequate for your needs. So if you could talk about the importance of electronic warfare
01:01and the EA-37.
01:02Thank you, Congressman. Yes, as discussed, our highest priority is counter command control communications
01:11intelligence surveillance response and targeting. And electronic means, whether that's through
01:18internet protocol, that's through radio communications, is the absolute linchpin. And to be able to target
01:26that non-kinetically is absolutely critical. And I couldn't agree more with our need to strive
01:35even harder to gain and to maintain dominance in those critical spectra.
01:40Is 10 EA-37s adequate?
01:44I'll have to get back to you on that, but you're talking to somebody that's never satisfied with where we are.
01:50Well, I have had some access to studies that I think PACOM needs 21. So I'd like to make sure we can fund more Compass Call aircraft.
01:59So you have those capabilities. I was going to talk to you about attack submarines, but you've already done that. So let me pivot to the Ohio class
02:08SSGN. So we're going to, they're aging out. They're going to be deactivated at 600 Tomahawks.
02:12And when I visited with you in February, you were also pointing out some of the cruisers that were going to be deactivated. So can you talk about the gap that we're starting to build
02:21here and the impacts of losing these submarines and cruisers?
02:26Yes, sir. Having quantity of vessels that can impose costs. I'm probably quoting the wrong guy, but quantity has a quality all its own. And so to the extent that our capability decrease,
02:42that's bad for us.
02:47General Brunson, a question for you. Can you talk a little about why is North Korea sending thousands of troops to Russia and what do you think, how do you think they're benefiting from this?
02:58Yes, Congressman. So one of the reasons is, is it helps them to circumvent the normal course of business and sanctions that exist on them presently. It allows them to get around some of that because there is a lot of
03:12material that's coming back to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
03:19They're also able to get a technological boost, if you will, on things that they are seeking to develop. It's cutting their development time in half.
03:28They're also receiving some material that we can talk about in the closed session that is causing us some problems in the operating environment currently.
03:37I'll come back to the attack submarine since it was already touched on. We've been producing about one a year right now. What's your take on that, Admiral Paparo?
03:46It's inadequate, and we've got to work harder in order to do that. And it's a combination of steady stream of funding. It's a combination of liberalizing the defense industrial base, reforming the industrial base.
04:01And so we have to work harder. We have to get to 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 per year, and we can't rest until we do so.
04:11Thank you very much. I appreciate all three of you. And I would just close by saying, leader of the free world, and we can only produce one attack submarine. We've got to do better. I yield.
04:20I yield.
04:21I yield.