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JIM BANKS:
I want to welcome everyone to this hearing of the Military Personnel Subcommittee. Today's hearing is focused on the health and welfare of the enlisted force and their families from the perspective of the service senior enlisted leaders. I want to thank our witnesses for being with us today, for their service to the nation, and for their continued daily support and advocacy of our enlisted service members and their families.
I personally owe a debt of gratitude to all of the enlisted service members I served with and that have helped me along the way during my Navy Reserve career. I also want to thank the thousands of enlisted service members, active duty, reservists, and Guard members who are serving this nation around the world as we speak here this morning.
We ask all of you to put your trust and confidence in us to provide for you and your families. And as always, you have answered the call and put service before self. But what I would like to know is, is whether we are doing everything that we can to support our all-volunteer force, an all-volunteer force that has placed the covenant of trust in our military leaders.
Trust is a tricky thing because we oftentimes can't see it, yet we know it exists. Trust is embodied in the spirit of the service member that is willing to sacrifice for their unit and their country because they have an abiding belief that their leaders will take care of them. But when I see the stories in the press about poor barracks and housing conditions, access to health care challenges, food insecurity, high suicide numbers, and the list goes on, I wonder if there has been an erosion of trust within the military and whether that can be restored.
Actually, it must be restored to ensure that we have the men and women we need to serve in the best military in the world. And that is the focus of today's hearing. An unvarnished assessment from the top enlisted leaders of each service on whether the Department of Defense and each individual service has lived up to this unbreakable contract with the all-volunteer force.
This is a contract of trust that is critical to recruiting and retention. I submit that they have fallen short in many areas, several of which we will explore here today. Our witnesses have the pulse of our enlisted service members and know what service policies affect their decisions to join or stay to go -- or to go, What I'd like to understand today is whether the services and the Department of Defense have not lived up to their responsibilities.
Is it pay health care, child care, assignments, social policies, food access, housing, other benefits? The answer is likely some combination of all of these things. Secretary Austin reiterated again in a March memo to the force that, quote, people are the bedrock of a strong national defense and that we, quote, we made significant investments to improve the quality of life for our service members and their families.
And yet despite this rhetoric, we find out that through DODs own survey process that 45 percent of spouses of service members and pay grades E-1 to E-4 are food insecure and that some 25 percent of military members overall are food insecure. This is clearly and completely unacceptable and a further erosion of trust with our service members.
Remember, this is an all-volunteer force. This is certainly a recruiting issue. How do you get people to enlist if this is what they will face? So for this hearing, I want to hear from our witnesses on their views of where the stressors are on our enlisted service members and their families, and where the Department of Service -- Services need to change policy to -- or to address funding.
I think with aggressive oversight from this committee, we can prompt quick action to keep the faith with those that we ask so much of. So I now want to welcome our witnesses, Sergeant Major Michael Grinston, Sergeant Major of the Army, Master Chief Petty Officer, James Honea, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy.
Chief Master Sergeant Joanne Bass, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Sergeant Major Troy Black Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, Chief Master Sergeant Roger Towberman, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force. But before hearing from our witnesses, let me offer Ranking Member Kim an opportunity to make opening remarks.
ANDY KIM:
Yeah. Thank you, chairman. It's been quite a few years since we've had the senior -- the service senior enlisted leaders testify, and I look forward to hearing from you about the issues that matter most. I want to just thank the chairman for your framing today in terms of what we're trying to deal with and what it is that's at core of this.
I think your distillation there of talking about it in terms of trust is really at the heart of this. Right now, we recognize that we're asking a lot of our service members. We ask them to risk their lives to be able to protect our country. And the promise that we make back to them is that we will have their backs, that we will support them and their families, especially in their time of need.
And honestly, as as the chairman mentioned, we don't always live up to that and we need to make sure that we're doing better. One example of that, that I face constantly when I talked to service members at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in my district is the challenge about suicide and mental health. That this recognition that -- people that I talked to, they struggle to get the care that they need even when they're asking for it. So this is something that we need to work together on to be able to address and ensure that our service members don't just get adequate care, but they get the best care that our country can provide.
As several of you alluded to in your testimonies, you may recruit the soldier, the sailor, Marine, airman, or guardian, but to retain them, you must retain the family. So ensuring access to quality health care, safe housing, affordable child care, and the right pay and benefits package is critical to sustaining the health of the force.
Military compensation is a combination of various pay and allowances, some of which are taxed and others not. While Congress was able to deliver a 4.6 percent across the board pay increase to all service members, I believe it may be time we consider reevaluating whether there are additional ways that we could help deliver important support to our service members and their families.
I'm looking forward to the findings from the Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation which kicked off in January, although I admit the results could be delivered faster. In the meantime, I have been optimist that -- I had been optimistic that short term solutions would have an impact on the financial challenges faced by some service members.
Yet I was disappointed to see so few service members are eligible for the basic needs allowance provision in last year's NDAA. We can and must do better. Like most of my colleagues, I'm gravely concerned by the findings of the report about food insecurity that the chairman mentioned, problems approximating 25 percent of active-duty service members struggling when it comes to food insecurity.
I appreciate that more research is needed to identify root causes of this problem. Is it a pay issue, a money management issue, an access to food issue, or some combination of all of the above? I'm looking forward to reviewing potential concrete actions that the soon to be released FY '24 defense budget includes to address this urgent issue.
I'm also grateful we're having this hearing today so we can address the pressing recruiting challenges faced by the services. Over the last 10 years, we've seen that steady decrease in the eligible youth population to serve without a waiver. And while waivers have become increasingly common among recruits in the eligibility to serve due to multiple reasons is the predominant disqualifier.
In addition, we continue to see a decrease in young adults who have close ties to the military or basic knowledge about what services look like. Perhaps as we celebrate the 50th year of the all-volunteer force, we should be asking ourselves if the tools we are using are the most effective with a generation that often has different perspectives and priorities when approaching the question of what kind of work and career that they seek.
Lastly, we must address the multitude of quality-of-life issues that impact our service members and their families. As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, health care, housing, child care, and pay and benefits are critical components of a ready and healthy force. And I'm confident we can find common ground across party lines to do what's right for the most important military asset, which is our people.
I yield back the balance of my time.
I thank the ranking member. I ask unanimous consent to allow members not on the subcommittee to participate in today's hearing and be allowed to ask questions after all subcommittee members have been recognized. Each witness will have the opportunity to present his or her testimony. And each member will have an opportunity to question the witnesses for five minutes.
We respectfully ask the witnesses to summarize their testimony in five minutes or less. Your written comments and statements will be made will be made part of the hearing record. With that Sergeant Major Greenstein, you may make the opening statement.
MICHAEL GRINSTON:
Chairman Banks, Ranking Member Kim, distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to speak on behalf of your all volunteer army. And I'd like to again thank my fellow senior enlisted advisors a lot. I talk a lot about my squad and having more than one squad and I'm proud to be a part of this squad that's here testifying today.
I'm even more proud of the soldiers in your army. Right now, more than 23,000 soldiers are supporting combat operations in places like Africa, Iraq, and Syria, not just training and advising combat. What started as a no notice deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division to Europe, their fourth in three years now includes 17,000 additional troops to the region.
And then last spring, the first armored brigade combat team of the Third Infantry Division had just returned from a nine-month rotation in Korea when they were called for a no notice deployment to Europe. Seven days later, they were doing a live fire exercise in Germany. I challenge anyone, any nation to, to see who could do that.
And in 36 years, I've never seen anything like it. America's soldiers are lethal, effective, and ready to surge when called upon in times of crisis. That doesn't just happen overnight. It doesn't happen without the support of this subcommittee. That means modernizing and becoming the army of 2030. Last year, we were awarded contracts for the XM5 and the XM250 as an eventual replacement for the M-4 and the M-4249. These weapons paired with a new rifle control system in a 6.8mm ammunition make our close combat force more lethal when it's proven accuracy and increased energy on target.
We're also looking at ways to augment those forces with robotics. Last summer, Army Futures Command led the largest ground combat robotics experiment to date. By connecting soldiers with scientists and engineers at a critical development juncture, just one soldier touchpoint helped save billions of dollars and save years off the potential fielding timeline.
That means preparing soldiers to make a difference through specialized training, access to relevant certifications, and advanced education. We increased infantry one station unit training from 14 weeks to 22 weeks, putting greater focus on building a lethal ground force. We combine the testing of common soldier tasks with expert badges resulting in 9 percent increase in pass rates for all soldiers and a 353 percent increase in expert soldier and field medical badges awarded.
These are the kinds of soldiers who make up your army, not someone else's army. Your support means investing in the command assessment program to select the right battalion and brigade commanders and command star majors who build positive command climates at Echelon. It means understanding the army life and never forgetting about our families who endure the stress of a level in a way or uncertainty of them leaving at a moment's notice.
It's investing in barracks, dining facilities for our single soldiers, meaningful spouse employment, quality housing, and available child care for our families and better access to health care for all. And it's a direct action from our elected officials to address pay. No soldier, airman, guardian, sailor, Marine, Coast Guardsman should join the military and then experience economic food insecurity, period.
Recruiting and retaining the best begins with reminding every American the army provides an opportunity to be all you can be. Polling shows that propensity to -- for military service is 9 percent, the lowest in 15 years. And the qualification rate for military service among 17- to 24-year-olds has decreased from 29 to 23 percent.
Young men and women want to be a part of something larger than themselves. They want to gain new skills and they want to make a difference in the world around them and provide themselves and provide for themselves and their families. We need a national call to service, a dialog that service to our nation does anything but put your life on hold as recent polling suggests.
Unless we have the full support of this committee behind them, the call to service only goes so far. Before I close, I request that each of you encourage young Americans to consider public service either as a teacher, a first responder, or civil servant in the military or any other way. Help us remind people you can jump start your life, contribute positively to our society, and be all you can be. Thank you for this opportunity to be here today and I look forward to our conversation.
Thank you. Master Chief Honea.
JAMES HONEA:
Chairman Banks, Ranking Member Kim, and distinguished members of this subcommittee, I'm grateful the opportunity to appear before you and discuss the quality of life of our sailors and their families. During my tenure, I want to do all that I can within my sphere of influence to improve the quality of naval service and remove barriers that impact readiness so that we can remain a dominant naval force to deter conflict, keep the sea lanes open and free, and when called upon, decisively win our nation's wars.
In an era of strategic competition, if we are to maintain, train, and equip a combat credible force, we owe our sailors and their families stability and their pay, access to timely health care, and services as well as opportunities to develop personally and professionally. Their individual success and the Navy's collective mission accomplishment rely on ability to provide an environment that promotes inclusiveness and a sense of value to the team that ensures recruiting and retaining the talent our nation requires.
In the six months of being MCPON, I have traveled to our fleet concentration areas to hear directly from our sailors and their families about their concerns. Access to adequate medical care and services and timely care is a top concern. In places like the Pacific Northwest, there have been two naval hospitals that were downgraded, requiring our sailors and their families to drive an hour or more to seek military medicine and specialized care.
Obtaining access to care isn't just a problem for our service members, though. It also includes our DOD civilians and their families. And some of our overseas locations, they face medical care challenges because they're unable to access military medical treatment facilities due to the care priority. Our DOD civilians are a part of our total military family and work directly alongside our military teams.
As it stands, we will begin losing some of these employees that are mission critical. To prepare our centers for combat, we must ensure each of our members of our team is resilient. Mental health is a warfighting readiness necessity, and we are facing significant mental health challenges. Tricare is partnered with some telehealth programs.
However, active-duty members must still make an appointment with their primary care provider for a referral. This increases the wait time, therefore missing the intent of more accessible health care. I ask for your continued support in these programs. If our team is to remain a dominant naval force, we must continue focusing on the factors that influence our recruiting and retention efforts, assessing situations that impact our all-volunteer forces' propensity to serve and build a stronger national call to service.
Every sailor is a recruiter, and we ask for your support to influence those around you to consider public service as an opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves. This year's pay increases were historical milestone for our military compensation package, and we are very grateful. However, our sailors are still facing challenges to meet basic needs in their economies.
Affordable housing, food costs, and finding adequate childcare remain enormous stressors within our high-cost fleet concentration areas. If we want to retain our professional and qualified service members and give tangible incentives to sustain a military career, I ask Congress to look at pay increases in compensation and retention bonuses to ensure that we appropriately keep them compensated.
We are asking our men and women to be the best and most skilled warfighters to defend our nation and the risk of losing these talented sailors will have dire consequences on our future fighting force. The United States Naval Community College reinforces our warfighting advantage and enhances operational readiness by providing world class naval relevant education to a globally deployed force.
This program is partnered with colleges throughout the United States to provide degree and professional certificate options. This empowers our enlisted force to succeed in complex and uncertain situations they will face in future conflict and serves as a force multiplier that will be the advantage over our adversaries.
I am honored to be here today and to appear before you on behalf of our 390,000 sailors, their families, and our civilians deployed across the globe. I am committed to removing barriers from service that prevent them from having a safe and secure place to live and work and the execution of their oath of enlistment.
Military service is one of the hardest things our sailors, marines, soldiers, airmen, and guardians will ever be asked to do. With your continued support to our Navy and our families, you enable us to remain ready for any situation. I thank you for your time this morning and I look forward to your questions.
Thank you. Chief Master Sergeant Bass.
JOANNE BASS:
Good morning. Chairman Banks, thanks for your service, sir. Ranking Member Kim, thank you for your support. And to the distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for your continued interest and support in the quality of life of the men and women who serve our great nation. I am honored for this opportunity to join my brothers in arms and speak with you specifically on the issues impacting your Air Force and the lives of our airmen and their families.
Right now as we speak, there are 16,021 airmen deployed across the globe, conducting operations to defend our homeland, build strong alliances and partners, and ensure the rules based international order remains unchallenged. We find ourselves at a critical point and the trajectory of our great nation. For the first time in modern history, we are facing challenges from two strategic competitors, China and Russia.
And while China might be our most significant pacing challenge, we cannot ignore the acute threat that Russia also plays. I am here today to tell you that more than any platform, more than any system, more than any program, it is our service members who will -- who are and always will be our biggest competitive advantage.
As the chief master sergeant of the Air Force, I have the distinct privilege to meet and get to know our airmen, hear their stories, talk with their families, and their -- and listen to their concerns and the unique challenges that they face as members of our force. They are the airmen who are serving in your districts, and I am honored to be their voice.
They answer our nation's call without hesitation and without fail. Therefore, it falls upon us to ensure that the airmen of today have the resources required to serve in the highest trained, best equipped, and best led Air force this world has ever seen. In order to be the Air Force that our nation needs, we must prioritize both the quality of life and the quality of service of our airmen and their families.
The over 689,000 total Force airmen who I represent have afforded me a unique perspective on the direction our Air Force needs to go. Over the past year, I've seen examples of our airmen working extremely hard to get after the operational imperatives and accelerate the change that our Air Force needs to build a future operating concept that maintains our dominance, even as China attempts to close that gap.
They understand that rapidly evolving challenges, new domains of warfare, and near peer competitors will define future state operations, and we must continue to provide our support to them as they faithfully support and defend this great nation. I met one of those airmen this week in fact, Master Sergeant Aaron Cordrock (ph) who was stationed at Herbert Field Florida.
He is a -- he was at the warfare symposium I was at to highlight a project that he created to identify cyber threats to our maintenance systems. What impressed me most in his words that he's doing all of this to make our Air force better, all the while serving alongside his active-duty wife and raising their son.
They are truly an example of the dedication and professionalism that we see in abundance in our United States Air Force. And how we recruit, how we train, develop, how we compensate, retain, and care for our airmen are key to our success and they are key to our readiness. We have a strong modernization strategy, and we will need your help.
As we continue to move forward and focus on the Air Force of 2030 and beyond, there is much to be done. We will continue to develop the airmen that we need and create an environment where every single one of them can thrive and be their very best. We need our airmen to remain focused and committed to defending the homeland and we cannot have them distracted by whether or not they can find quality and affordable housing, spouse employment opportunities, or other challenges such as health care, child care, inflation, and food insecurity.
When these are not readily available, our ability to accomplish the military mission and to deter our adversaries is absolutely degraded. We also have to acknowledge that the scope of responsibility of our enlisted force has never been greater. However, we will be challenged in retaining and recruiting the talent that we need if we are not able to appropriately compensate them.
For 50 years, every single service member has willingly raised their right hand and accepted a life of service to our nation, and we must ensure that the care and welfare for them and their families remains an undisputed priority. These things are integral to who we are and imperative to our future success.
Taking these issues on demonstrates our commitment to our service members and their families and ultimately builds their trust in our great institution. As we work with you, our willing partners, in developing actionable solutions to build that trust and care for our airmen and our families, we have to fundamentally understand that quality of life directly impacts quality of service.
It also impacts our ability to recruit and retain high end talent that we need to build the future force. Our airmen are America's sons and daughters, serving at the -- one of the most complex times we've ever known. They are an all-volunteer force ready to fight tonight and they are ready to defend our nation.
These are Americans who are not just content to sit back and watch history unfold. They are making it. If we can accept these challenge -- if we accept these challenges that they faced as a cost of doing business, it becomes a cost that is borne by our service members and our families. The work that we do with this subcommittee absolutely matters.
So thank you again for your continued support for the men and women who wear this uniform. Thank you in advance for the help from each of you that you will provide to help ensure that we have timely authorizations and appropriations. We cannot afford to degrade our readiness. We cannot afford to spot China any more time.
That will be a cost that is borne by all Americans. I look forward to your questions.
Thank you. Sergeant Major Black.
TROY BLACK:
Chair Banks, Ranking Member Kim, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, I'm honored to speak to you today on behalf of your United States Marines. And thank you for your time and allowing you to provide you with the state of your Marine Corps. I also echo the previous members and I know I'll speak on behalf of the chief master sergeant of the Space Force now in saying we are proud to be part of this squad as a sergeant major of the Army had spoken to a moment ago.
We represent your entire enlisted force. Bottom line up front is that your Marines are ready to fight and win. The technological enhancements and the paradigm of how we fight has evolved to better prepare us for the uncertain future, but a certain foe. For this, we must thank our people, our Marines, who are the greatest strategic advantage over any foe.
The American people know that service is not given in our society and this issue rests on the shoulders of all of us in this room today. Today, I ask that we focus our attention on the five pillars of the all-volunteer force so that we may preserve our force of a noble group of motivated warfighters. The connection with the American people that drives propensity, equitable, real income pay and compensation, quality of life standards, adequate medical care, and long-term retirement benefits that retain our most experienced capable warfighters.
As we approach the 50th year anniversary of the all-volunteer force, it's time to address the issues that affect these pillars, starting with the eroding connection with the American people. Negative depiction and conversation about our service members in the media, social media, pop culture have all become unbalanced, inaccurate, and quite frankly, they are unjust.
We must challenge the misconceptions that make bigger strides and make bigger strides in valuing our service members publicly. We need immediate action if we are determined to increase their propensity to serve our nation. I've had the privilege and access to the entire Marine Corps over my nearly four years as the sergeant major of the Marine Corps.
I've toured buildings, flat lines, hangars, ships, and of course, the barracks and the chow halls where our Marines live work and reside. It is clear to me that we must increase our investment in the quality of life of our Marines. Many of our barracks are more than 30 years old and in dire need of renovations, about one-sixth of which the Marine Corps has they're poor or they are failing.
I visited a barracks in Camp Pendleton just a couple of weeks ago that has had deferred maintenance for over 12 years, and Marines live there. Along with a quality of home -- quality home, our Marines and families require quality care. Although the Defense Health Agency is currently undertaking the largest revision of health care in our history, this transformation has not yet fully satisfied the expectations of our families or our service members, in particular those in overseas locations.
Currently in Japan, a military service member does not have access to emergent care in a military treatment facility and the local economy does not provide such care. In addition to a lack of mental health care for the same reasons. This is unsustainable for our force. Suicide and harmful behaviors remain Corps wide concerns as well as all the services have lasting negative effects on all of us. We know as a society that mental health care is lacking more so in our services because the additional health care that's provided to them and military treatment facilities no longer exists in abundance.
We need help here. Our Marines serve with honor, courage, and commitment and we will continue to do so with respect for human life. The lifeblood of our unit cohesion and a spirit of corps and respect for each other is what keeps us a close cohesive family. We will continue to remain committed to the prevention of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other poor behaviors.
Offenders will be held accountable. There's a long waitlist at some of our child care facilities. We will address those conversations in the upcoming testimony. But our biggest problem with childcare provision is being able to pay an equitable fee to those who provide that care. We have vacancies. Lastly, I thank this community for your 4.2 percent pay raise last year, However, we must pay our enlisted Marines and service members wages that move them far away for qualifying for any federal assistance.
If enlisted wages continue to lack in terms of real income, one of the foundational pillars of the all-volunteer force will be at risk and will continue to challenge recruiting and retention. We look forward to the upcoming review or results of the quadrennial review to see how those things are addressed.
Lastly, today, as always, we have more than 30,000 Marines forward deployed who are well trained, lethal and capable. They are forward deployed in locations in 45 countries across the world. Every embassy and consulate is guarded by Marines. Your Marines are currently conducting -- or have conducted 23 real world operations either in the air, on amphibious ships, on land, in space, or in special forces.
They have conducted three amphibious operations, eight large scale exercises, and the list goes on. Your Marines as well as rest of the services are fully deployed protecting our nation. I am thankful for this committee's attention and consideration of these issues we face today with barracks, pay, health care, child care, and other issues that the all-volunteer force must address before it's too late.
I look forward to working with each of you and the rest of this testimony. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Chief Master Sergeant Towberman.
ROGER TOWBERMAN:
Sir, thank you. Chairman Banks, distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for everything you do for our guardians, their loved ones in your space force. Thank you for your service to our country and your steadfast leadership and support for our service members. Also your willingness to make a difference.
I am honored beyond words to speak on behalf of our uniformed and civil servant guardians around the world. On behalf of all of them, I thank you all for what you do and your time here today. I would also like to extend my sincere thank you to our deployed guardians around the world, ensuring space superiority for the joint and coalition fight and the nearly 75 percent of our force who know and live the reality of 24 hours a day, seven days a week employed in place missions which enable not only military operations but modernity itself.
Without question, our greatest weapon system lives and breathes. Our service members set us further apart and more definitively apart than any other weapon system, technology, or strategy ever has. I can think of no more fitting way to mark our 50th anniversary of an all-volunteer force than to discuss their recruitment, readiness, and quality of life with you here today.
As regularly as I can, I visit our guardians and their families around the globe, hearing what is on their minds and in their hearts. I try hard to hear what they say and even more so what they don't. My commitment to represent their voice could not be stronger. And I work hard to get truth from all levels.
Every connection and every story matters. And I'm honored to spend as much time as I possibly can hearing those stories. Every single guardian matters to us and to me personally. Our leaders in the field also do their best and we empower them to do so to see what could be missed, to ask hard questions, and to find out what's going on. Recently, one of our senior master sergeants took that empowerment at Schriever Space Force Base and stepped in when policy failed to find solutions and keep one of our most talented guardians who otherwise would have separated.
Thanks to Sergeant Cherish Dempsey. These individuals -- individual acts matter in a small service. It's one person, but it matters to the Space Force. The culture we are unleashing, the guardian spirit we are amplifying is changing lives as we change the world. Your guardians represent some of America's most highly technical, professionally skilled, and talented cohorts, which makes them at times difficult to recruit and difficult to retain.
As I mentioned earlier, nearly 75 percent are employed in place that have unique challenges to their resilience and quality of life. Imagine spending your day providing missile warning to people on the other side of the planet and then punching out to go home to play ball with your child while the news reports on the lives you helped save.
But you can't talk about it. It's not a normal military life. And the better we understand and address these unique challenges, the better our hope to maximize their skills, talent, and experience, which are critical to our mission, a mission that grows more complex and more complicated by the day. When we first stood up the Space Force, we tracked 1,500 spacecraft and 25,000 objects in orbit.
Today, that number is 7,000 spacecraft and 50,000 objects. Robotic arms, direct ascent threats, hypersonic vehicles, the list goes on. There's no question. Our domain has never been more congested, more contested, or more competitive in finding and retaining the most talented guardians possible is a matter of national security.
Young Americans value choice and the young Americans this country needs in the Space Force have many. Recruiting and retention challenges are real, even for our small force. We must do what we can to remain an employer of choice and an institution of trust focused on the future. Focused on their future delivering a value proposition commensurate with the talents and abilities so critical to our combat readiness and continued ability to win.
President Roosevelt once said, happiness lies not in the mere possession of money. It lies in the joy of achievement. In the thrill of creative effort. There is no doubt an important key to our guardian's value proposition is the work. They want to be on the cutting edge. They want to explore, to analyze, to solve difficult problems.
They value autonomy and they invite challenge, and there is no shortage of challenges. We will continue to do what we can to amplify their spirit and allow them to use their exceptional talents in ways that matter to them. But happiness is not only in meaningful work. Their skills, expertise, and talent are compensated well outside the military.
We must at a minimum provide their families and them enough compensation to take worry off the table. I look forward to helping the office of the Secretary of Defense with the Quadrennial Review as has been previously mentioned. Thank you in advance for continuing your help to improve their lives and strengthen their value proposition.
I know it's not lost on any of us in this room how important this is. I thank you for your leadership. I thank you for your opening comments, sir, and I look forward to the discussion.
Yeah. Thank you to each of you. Such powerful testimony. Each of you have done a great job today representing the men and women who make up the enlisted force of your branch. And I appreciate it very much. I'll begin with questions. And I want to begin with the obvious question of 50th anniversary of an all-volunteer force.
Yet we are met with a recruitment crisis that we've never seen before. And all of you have discussed this already in your testimony. But I want you to be more succinct, be as candid as you can possibly be because it can make a big difference today in helping guide our work to make a difference for the men and women that you -- that serve under your command.
What is the biggest obstacle to recruitment of the enlisted forces? Is it quality of life? Trust in the military? Social issues? Is it the -- men and women questioning whether or not service is the best path to a successful career? Or is it the slimming pool of recruits that we're asking to join and serve today?
And what do you want us to do about it? We'll start with the Army.
Chairman, thank you for the question. As we surveyed the -- our future candidates for the United States Army, we asked them this very question, what is their number one barrier. And we found that the number one barrier for those that we surveyed was they would be putting their life on hold. And I challenge that every day when I say I don't think my life was on hold.
I would not have met my wife without being in the military. I got my degree through going to night school. So I continued to further my life as it went on from the first day I got into the military. And that's the number one reason that when we were asked about putting their life on hold. What I'd asked for the committee to do is to be the advocate for the military and talk to someone that is -- not have a service man or woman that they've served with in the past.
They don't know about our army. We found that about 83 percent of those serving in the military have a parent, a grandfather, or someone that was in the military. This should not -- we don't want the army to be, you know, a family business. We want it to be an American business. We need every man, woman eligible to do that.
So if there were two asks I could add would be the second is increase the propensity for those that want to serve. 9 percent is not going to be a big enough pool for us to sustain the all-volunteer force navy.
Navy.
Chairman banks, again, thank you for your opening remarks. What you spoke about for trust of our service members is very, very important. Those that we're trying to recruit as well as retain need to understand that we have their wellbeing in our consideration and all the decisions that we're making. I'm going to allow for Sergeant Major of Marine Corps speak in greater depth about those five pillars that he used in his opening comments.
But we should reexamine how well we are performing at those five pillars that were founded in the Gates Commission on how we're going to create that -- our all-volunteer force. So we need to continue to find ways to make sure that those that we're recruiting and those that we're retaining do believe that we have their wellbeing in consideration.
I believe that serving in our military matches the values of most of our Americans and many of our young people that have an opportunity to serve. What I think that they probably find missing is whether or not our -- their wellbeing would be taken into consideration. There's way too much rhetoric out there about serving in the military could be dangerous to their life in a way that their wellbeing wasn't being taken into consideration.
And they see the issues with adequate compensation as all of us spoke about in our opening comments. So that's what I would ask for us to continue to do, sir.
Very good. Air Force?
Chairman Banks, thank you. Chairman Banks, thank you for that question. In addition to what my colleagues mentioned, I would say all of it that you mentioned is the biggest challenge that we have, specifically the service piece. What we also are finding out is again that narrative piece cannot be understated.
There is a narrative that if you join the United States military, you are going to be hurt or injured, PTSD, etc. And I would say that is where we could really use the help of that narrative. There's a narrative that you could join the United States military and you will be sexually harassed and or assaulted.
And I would say that right, as a mother to children and as a mother of two daughters, I trust that my children, especially my daughters joining into the United States military, I feel more comfortable with them joining the military than possibly going to some of our colleges and our university. And that is not a knock on our education system, but it's that narrative that we would appreciate your help with.
We in the Air Force, the Department of the Air Force in fact have a working group that is focused on what are the barriers that we can do internally to help make sure we don't have artificial barriers that are keeping our people from being able to join. We've started executing some of those, but we will overall need a help with the narrative and also the quality of life challenges that we mentioned in our opening statements.
Thank you.
Very good. Marine Corps.
Chairman, sir, thank you for the question. And I thank the committee for taking on these challenges. Master petty officer of the Navy mentioned the Gates Commission. I think it's worth a good read. I'm sure everyone has read that. I have intently. There are some -- there are pillars to the all-volunteer force that are non-negotiables and I mentioned them in my verbal statement.
It is the connection with the American people, right? We don't want to be a family business. Otherwise you lose that connection. The ability to recruit and retain talent, equitable, real incoming compensation that's commensurate with inflation rates and the cost of living, right? There's quality of living conditions.
Whether that's housing on bases or installations, access to it out of bases or our barracks and a couple other ones. But those are the three primary ones that I like to focus on it, and I'll narrow that down to just one. We'll talk about many challenges here today that we need assistance with in our services.
But if the American people don't have a desire to serve in uniform, we can do all the things we need to do. And I think the majority of the challenge we have right now in my understanding of it is how we speak about service in our military to the people we're trying to attract and bring into the service.
I made a joke last week and testimony, I won't repeat it, but I would challenge anyone to find any positive story about the military. And if it is, it's buried on page six. Their front page is all negative. There was a report of our testimonial last week where we spoke about propensity to serve in the military, the joy of serving.
I'm married to a retired Marine. We have raised children. They've gone to school. They are successful. Our family has been successful. We have served of course in combat. All of us here have. But the story did not focus on that. In the middle in bold print and all caps with parentheses and quotation marks, it was negative, negative, negative, negative, negative and it ended, and we need to get people to join the military.
Whether that's a national leader, it's in media, pop culture, in social media, it's irrelevant. It's always something negative. Until we reverse that -- until we reverse that, it doesn't matter how qualified someone is. They still have to have a desire to serve. We can reduce and lower the qualifications, but we'll still have to tap into the point that the sergeant major army made was 9 percent propensity.
That's desire to serve your nation, raise your hand to defend the Constitution in the United States. That is a national challenge. Thank you, sir.
Very well put. Space Force.
Yes, sir. To save time, I won't repeat everything my teammates have said, though we feel as passionately about them as they do. I would say maybe two things a little bit from our perspective, which is really about quality of recruiting. Our numbers are small. We meet our numbers, but the quality has to continue to be good.
We need access to schools and anything that anyone can do to help us partner with the Department of Education and with schools at large, not just high schools but universities as well so that that we're working together, not just on recruiting but on this nationwide mobilization to serve in some way. It's really important to us as a nation and certainly we're willing to partner with anyone to talk about service and also the importance of STEM, which again is certainly very important to us in the Space Force.
So anything that that we can do, any help that we can get from the subcommittee to work in a whole of government approach to really mobilize this nation to care about stem, to make sure our children are focused on the right things. And then to have the access to schools throughout so that they can see the benefits of military service, the benefits of any service, I really think that that might help in this propensity to serve conversation.
And then everything else everyone has already said. Thank you, sir.
Thank you to each of you. I yield to Ranking Member Kim.
I'm actually going to start by yielding to Representative Strickland.
MARILYN STRICKLAND:
Thank you, ranking member. Enlisted service members are the backbone of the military, and a lot of people don't even know that 40 percent of the people who are enlisted are people of color. If they don't thrive, the military doesn't thrive, and our national security suffers. Since coming to Congress, I have focused on the issues that I hear most from soldiers and airmen and their families that I represent at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
And my family went to Washington State because of Fort Lewis. And the issues that arise are not news to us. Housing, pay, food insecurity, and child care, that's a really big deal. Now I have several questions that apply across all the services, but because of my limited time I'm going to start with you, Sergeant Major Grinston.
And if any other witnesses want to jump in, feel free to do so. So last year, I was pleased that my basic allowance for Housing Calculation Improvement Act was included in the Defense Policy bill and this language directs the department to evaluate how it can create a more transparent and modernized approach to calculating BAH. I hear from my constituents all the time about how their housing allowance doesn't keep up with the cost of housing.
And in the market that I represent, we have a housing shortage, and we get emails and calls all the time to my office about I'm coming to JBLM, and we can't believe how expensive it is to find housing. While this report is not due until December of this year, how do you think that we can update the way we calculate BAH, so that it's more responsive to the reality that service members are facing to find adequate housing?
And when I say adequate housing, I mean housing that is affordable, that is habitable, and that is safe.
Congresswoman, thank you for the question. And I concur that every soldier or every service member should have adequate and quality housing -- family housing. But to address your specific question about the basic allowance for housing, I would actually be proud and tell a little bit of the story about the power of this group.
Almost about 18 months ago, this group got together and challenged the basic allowance for housing. And we had a meeting with OSD and said we have to change right now what we're doing for the basic allowance for housing. And it was a very heated discussion with the PNR. And the power of this group got -- we saw a change in that year and out of cycle basic allowance for housing.
And that's what we need. Doing a survey one time a year, it ends in August. And then the survey comes out in January is late to need for our servicemen and women. And we have advocated -- this whole group up here has advocated multiple times that that calculation needs to be done faster. In this day and age with all the things that we have, we can do better.
And that's what we've challenged OSD and that's how I would recommend that we go forward with the basic allowance for housing. We can't do it once a year and expect that to meet the needs of our service members.
Right. Chief Master Sergeant Bass, did you want to join in?
Absolutely. Thank you, ma'am. You know, what I might offer is we have got to -- and what we've pushed is we've got to be responsive in our ability to look at and assess BAH. And how we assess, to the sergeant major of the Army's point, on an assessment, written assessment is probably not the best way in 2023 that we might be able to look at how we can keep up with housing costs across the nation to include overseas.
And we've been pretty vocal on that. What I would say is the challenge that we have across the nation is when we increase BAH, everybody knows. And so as such you have a lot of landlords who are also then increasing what they are costing. So it's a cycle that we are really in, which is why I think you've heard from every single one of us, we need to a holistic look at military pay and compensation period.
We still need to be responsive to BAH, but it really is that holistic look of military and compensation altogether. Thank you, ma'am.
Great. Thank you. According to the Department of Defense's 2021 survey of active-duty spouses, 45 percent of junior enlisted service members' spouses reported facing food insecurity. This was mentioned in opening remarks, E-1 through E-4. Given this need, what is the Army doing to encourage people to seek help and lessen the stigma among lower enlisted families?
What suggestions do you have to remove barriers to food and nutrition support?
Congresswoman, again thank you for the question. So, first of all, we've added financial counselors. So you can see here's the pay that you have and how are you managing that money. So that's number one is how do you manage your money. And I will you know jump on is that we have to pay our service men and women adequately and then we have to teach them how to manage that money that they have.
But there have been several initiatives and some of them have actually come from the secretary of Defense. And one of those is getting a larger benefit in the commissary for -- especially for those items like milk, cheese, meat, and reducing those prices so that there is a benefit when they go to the commissary.
So they will actually save money when they shop there as opposed to going to another grocery store. But it's a product for two things. We have to pay our servicemen and women the same -- equitably and then we have to teach them how to manage their money. And we're making great strides in to do that.
The gentleman's time has expired. I yield five minutes to Representative Waltz.
MICHAEL WALTZ:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all of our listed leaders for joining us today. I agree with you that a narrative about service is really at the heart of the issue here. And but just to do a quick kind of walk through. We just two years ago we had the first ever African American secretary of Defense order a service wide stand down because of the growing threat of white supremacy within our services.
Yet then a year later, the study showed only 100 service members out of 2.5 million. It's a fraction of a fraction of a percent are actually participating in extremism. I think we're doing a much better job of talking about sexual assault. But to your point, Sergeant Major Bass -- Master Sergeant Bass. Excuse me. That's my army in me, right?
Parents aren't going to want their kids to join a military if their parents -- or a family of color if they believe it's overrun with white supremacy, if they believe their daughters are going to be sexually assaulted, if they believe their kid's going to come out and want to commit suicide because of PTSD. And on the flip side, as I hear from my constituents who don't want their kids to join, if for example, they go to the Air Force Academy and they're told in their orientation, don't say mom and dad, say parent, don't say boyfriend, girlfriend, say partner.
And if you have a seminar at West Point talking about how to cope with your white rage. And so I want to submit for the record, Mr. Chairman, a poll by the Heritage Foundation that is showing that 68 percent of active duty members are concerned about the politicization of the military.
Without objection.
Another -- thank you. Another 68 percent are saying the politicizing of the military is impacting their advice to their children of whether to join or not negatively. And to your point, Sergeant Major Grinston, I think we're at what, 80, 90 percent of current recruits come from military families. So you're getting a double hit there.
You're getting a retention problem and you're getting a future recruitment problem. So my question -- I'll just start with you, Sergeant Major Grinston. Is the military a meritocracy? And should it be?
Congressman, thank you for the question. I think even by your comments are we politicizing the military, it almost feels like we're politicizing the military. We support and defend the nation and the Constitution of everybody. And that's kind of how I feel about it. And we'll leave the policies up to the elected officials and the secretary of Defense and the president and then we execute those.
And that's what good soldiers do. That's what we swore that we would defend the Constitution of America.
Now, sorry -- not to cut you off just for the matter of time. I 100 percent agree with you. The army I came up with, you leave your politics at the door. You leave all of that at the door. It's about taking care of the men and women to the left and the right. It's about achieving the mission. The color you're worried about is red, white, and blue.
The enemy's bullets don't care about any of this stuff. And I'm determined to get us back to that warrior mentality, focused on being the best and having the best pilots, having the best soldiers that we have regardless of where they come from because that's what our nation is going to need to win wars. To that end, Sergeant Major, we -- Senator Cotton and I had language in last year's NDAA -- the language established gender-neutral fitness standards and made the fitness standards dependent on the job, right?
Obviously, a different fitness standard to be an infantryman or woman than it is to be a cyber warrior. Can you just give me a quick update on implementation of those gender-neutral standards? And again this is on the premise that the artillery round doesn't care what race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and neither do the enemy's bullets.
Congressman, thanks for the question. As you know, the NDAA gave us 180 days to report back. We've been looking at this for quite some time for the language. The language I believe said the secretary of the Army shall implement MOS specific standards. But when we look at our AR611-21, there actually are MOS specific standards and it defines things like -- and I'll give you just one example, 11 Bravo occasionally drags 268-pound person, 15 meters while wearing their equipment.
And that's what the regulation already says. And it doesn't say anything about anything other than you have to execute this task. And those are the tasks that they're graded on. And the one station unit training when they graduate to be 11 Bravo. But we acknowledge the task, and we understand that we have 180 days --
-- I'll look forward to that update. I agree with -- two questions. This in my remaining time. Does anyone -- the Army has -- the chief marketing officer of the Army has -- had some different data and polling than what this Heritage poll found out. Do any of the other services have actual data of active duty members, recruits, they're influencers, their parents of the decisions that they're making that they can -- that they could share with this committee?
Because we all have our narratives and our opinions on the narratives. Does anybody have any -- any of the services have any data behind it?
You know, congressman, like you said other than the Army, I'm assuming, because yes, we do have that.
I'll take that. Thank you. And in my few seconds remaining, I agree with your call to national service. If you could answer for the record -- send me back for the record if you believe expanding junior ROTC programs in secondary schools would help introduce students to the military or help promote a sense of public service.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield my time.
Please submit that for the record. Gentleman's time has expired. I yield five minutes to Representative Houlahan.
CHRISSY HOULAHAN:
Thank you. I appreciate that. And gentlemen and ladies, I really appreciate your time, too. Having been born on a naval air station, having been a dependent for about 17, 18 years of my life, and then having served myself, everything that you talk about is really resonating with me. I want to drill down on a couple of things that are about quality of life.
And the first one is that we were able to successfully get through the NDAA 12 weeks of parental leave, both for fathers and mothers in the '22 NDAA, and that has been rolled out with each of your services. So I was wondering the 2.5 minutes of my time, if you could share how you are sharing that information with your servicemen and women such that it is a benefit that they are aware of and hopefully one that they will therefore be more likely to stay as a result of. Chief Master Sergeant Bass, please.
Representative, thank you so much. Thanks for your service to the United States Air Force as well. I'll tell you that was a good news story that came out and our airmen and their families were excited for that. We published articles communicating that this was an added benefit through both kind of the traditional ways of pushing those things out.
We also posted them on social media and then we did it the traditional way through chains of command by our A1s pushing that out to our major commands. And so we're very confident that our airmen are well aware. Thank you. Thank you for your support on that.
Sergeant Major Black, please.
Congresswoman, thank you. I'll echo chief master sergeant of the Air Force's comments. There's a couple of things you don't have to worry about people getting the word for, right? It's their pay increase and they get more time off. And I'm not meaning to be flippant with your answer, but before we had even began to actually release through the official chains, the service's social media accounts were just exploding with people being aware that this expansion of parental leave, ma'am.
That's fantastic. Anybody else want to contribute before I move to my next question, which is related? My next question has to do with the action that we are -- your respective branches are taking to increase recruitment of female service members. I think the service right now is something around 20 percent women, but depending on this different service branch, it's lower.
It's as low as 10 percent in some of the branches and particularly in the enlisted service. Are there ways that you can think of and resources that we can set aside to specifically target outreach to women? Have your branches increased the proportion of recruiters who are women and who increase their visibility at recruiting events?
And if I could go with a Chief Master Sergeant Towberman, is that correct, for that. I know you don't apparently have an issue with recruitment but interested in whether or not we're focusing on women.
Yes, ma'am. Well, we're focusing on talent. And certainly young ladies are talented. So we're getting plenty and we're really happy about that. And that's where our focus is, is how do we get into these conversations. I saw a study recently that said one in nine -- only one in nine young ladies between 17 and 23 see themselves in a STEM career.
But anyone that served in the military knows that even the high-tech jobs, it's about a lot more, right? It's about service. Excuse me. It's about people. And so how do we correctly sort of advertise our brand so that it's teachable, learnable, knowable? And as we increase that denominator to all people, the numerator sort of takes care of itself.
And Sergeant Major Grinston, do you have any ideas that we should be executing on? Are things that you're doing already to increase the number of women recruits?
Congresswoman, thank you for the question. I would just say we just have a really great example. We have the secretary of the Army. And I'll even highlight one woman that I saw on the TV yesterday and I was extremely proud when I saw Lieutenant General Donna Martin, the first inspector general of the Army to be a woman.
And I think that speaks more volumes than any other recruitment we can have is not just you know saying this is what we want. We just have those leaders that are out there exhibiting those examples. But to specifically recruit, we just recruit talent. We need all men and women to serve that are capable of serving the United States Army.
Yeah, you certainly can't be what you can't see. And I think that it is helpful to be able to see that. And I know that Chief Master Sergeant Bass, you had something you want to contribute and then I'll go to Master Chief Honea. Go ahead.
Yes, ma'am. If I can just offer real quick. You know, we've done really a good look at even upon entry into the United States military where -- how are we assigning people and are we ensuring that we are assigning all possible recruits operational career fields and things like that? But one of the things that I'm probably most proud of is we have a barrier analysis working group that is called the Women's Initiative Team, the WIT. And that team is looking at all the barriers that perhaps you know are not helpful to us being able to keep the talent especially our women.
And one of the wins at the end -- they've had numerous wins, but one of the wins is we had written policy where if you were pregnant, you were not even able to apply for officer training school, right? Like how much sense does that make? We could delay when you go to officer training school. But that was one of those things that you know again from the WIT we were able to identify some barriers to help us. Thank you.
Thank you. And I've run out of time, and I apologize, master chief. And if you have something to add, please do add it to the record. I appreciate you. Thank you.
Thank you. I yield five minutes to Representative Mills.
CORY MILLS:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's great, first off, as a noncommissioned officer myself, to see no officers in here, which means we'll get things done. You know, I want to start out with the fact that you talked about key things for me that I can understand, which is pay, the barracks standards, quality of life, health care, child care, food insecurity.
But also, I want to talk about morale, priorities, and recruitment. You know, I've seen over the coming years, you know, I went back in with the original be all you can be days. And back then, we were really focused on things like increased lethality and readiness. I have seen where in some regards the privatization of CRT and DEI became something that was above the actual ability to maintain standards instead of lowering standards to meet actual numbers.
And that was concerning because we know that the adversaries that we're going to face in the future are going to be much different than what we have been facing. So in knowing that, cost of living and inflation takes a massive hit. In my opinion, the 4.6 percent increase, while that sounds great, it's nothing whenever you're talking about a 10 to 13 percent increase in cost of living and inflation.
It's actually an invisible defunding of our military is what it really is. And when you can't actually feed your families and you can't have the ability to go and train and fight knowing that your spouse and your children at home are being taken care of, that takes our priorities away. You know, I'd love to see something where we're able to put a bill on the floor that allows us to tie our rate of increase from our military salaries to the rate of increase of our inflation to guarantee that no one could actually be invisibly defunded again.
And I think that that's one of the things that we should be working on. And going over this and knowing that we are having the access to care challenges and knowing that. I can remember from Fort Bragg when we were sitting in World War II barracks with black mold and everything else and you just kind of drive on. What do you think personally outside of pay is the number one issue for a lot of the people with regards to the deficit and morale?
Any of you can start.
Congressman, thank you for the question. I will say that the retention in the United States Army has been exceptionally well. We're at the highest level of retaining our soldiers than we have in a long time. And we've been consistent in the last 10 years of retaining those soldiers. And that's how I meter morale.
It's not 100 percent, but it's a good indication that once they join the team, they actually want to stay on the team. So we've seen our retention stay steady. It's about sessions. It's about getting new recruits into the military. And so we've consistently met every requirement that the United States has asked us to do, and lethality and our soldiers actually want to execute those missions and then they want to stay with the team.
So to answer your question specifically on morale, I just look at retention and our retention numbers are consistently high.
And an understanding that retention is obviously key, we're also going to face a time period whereby retirement age and retirement capabilities are going to overturn, and our recruitment numbers wouldn't be able to maintain and keep up with that. That's just a harsh reality. And I know that our messaging, you know, I can remember when I would go into the recruitment station, I wanted to see the Ranger video where they were kicking doors, jumping out of planes, and doing really cool stuff.
Now all of a sudden, it's about how do we address our fellow soldier airmen and what pronouns we're utilizing, which in my opinion wasn't exactly the quality for me. So knowing that the Marine Corps prides itself on being first to fight, have you seen an increase by chance -- and this kind of ties into the morale perspective.
Have you seen an increase branch wide with regards to an increase of Article 15 or utilization of disciplinary actions?
Congressman Sir, Thank you for the question. The simple answer to your question is no. If anything, it's normal, right? Based upon where those actions are that commanders are taking to maintain good order and discipline, sir.
Thank you so much. And just in my last seconds, you know, understanding that our armed forces and our NCOs are really the core of our armed forces. This is exactly what every one of our adversaries continue to strive to achieve is to get to a noncommissioned officer corps like we -- have like no other country has.
There are a lot of times top down. They don't have the actual backbone that we have. And so any recommendations that you guys can submit later, whether it be in writing or otherwise to continue to support our noncommissioned officers' corps, how we can strengthen our military and how we can continue to contribute to our armed forces, I'd love to be able to receive that in my office.
With that, I yield back.
Thank you. Gentlemen's time has expired, I yield five minutes to Representative Horsford.
STEVEN HORSFORD:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the ranking member for this important hearing. Chief Master Sergeant Bass, in your opening testimony, you state how recruitment, training, development, compensation, retainment, and transitioning are key parts to readiness. I agree with you. My district is home to Nellis Air Force Base.
Creech Air Force Base, the National Test and Training Range and the Hawthorne Army Depot. And while we don't have a shortage of missions coming out of our district, we do have a shortage of housing, especially at Creech Air Force Base. What was once a modest installation now hosts over 3,000 strong workforce and it sustains around the clock overseas contingency operations against global terrorism.
Currently, there is no on base housing at Creech Air Force Base and airmen who are stationed at Creech have to commute over 45 minutes to Nellis for basic needs such as housing, medical, and child care. So Chief Master Sergeant Bass, I'm just curious when you were last at Nellis and Creech, and what you think of the housing situation there.
And are there any areas that you've identified as needing immediate attention?
Congressman, thank you for that question. Thanks for your support and especially for your staff for spending time with those leadership teams out there. I did get an opportunity to talk with them. I have not personally seen the housing that is at Nellis, but upon my discussions with our airmen who live in those housing.
I will tell you by and large the housing operator there does a really good job in taking care of the houses that are on Nellis proper. The challenge is, as you mentioned, we don't have enough of them, and nor do we have any housing on Creech proper. And so there are hundreds -- about two to 300 families that live on Nellis and do get bused back and forth to Creech every time.
When I talked to the command team there, what they shared with me is their work with the community and their continued work that they're going to have with the community on trying to get safe, affordable places for our folks to live. They were very appreciative of the BAH increase that they got at Nellis, which was extremely helpful.
But it still is not helpful when the surrounding areas around most of our installations are just not the places that we typically want our service members to be in.
Well, I extend a personal invitation to have you come and to see firsthand both the needs in and around Nellis and Creech. You also mentioned in your testimony that the Air Force plans to spend approximately 235 million in FY '23 facility sustainment, restoration and modernization funds to repair and improve the condition of the current inventory of dormitories.
But I'd like to know how the Air Force plans to assess which installations need the funds. I've been working for some time now to get additional money for dormitories at Nellis. And for whatever reason, it's on their priority list, but it never seems to make the department's priority list. And I vote for the funding and it's not making it to the base and to the service members and their families in my district.
Yes, sir. So as you mentioned, we have a -- you know the majority of all that money is going toward dorm funding. And so we've got a dorm master plan across our United States Air Force where we prioritize that based on the facility conditions, forecasts, and really the needs of the installation and the commanders do that.
And so I will tell you that there are two dorms at Nellis that are on that prioritization list. We also have renovations that are going on in Nellis proper for fiscal year '23, and we look forward to those. But we are managing those, sir, based on the dorms.
I hope they stay on the priority list.
Yes, sir.
Finally, in FY '22, the NDAA requires the military departments to invest 5 percent of their total facility's sustainment budget into the maintenance and renovations of barracks and unaccompanied housing. Have you seen any evidence of those increased investments across your services? And if yes, is that effort making an impact in prioritizing these needs?
Sir, I would offer absolutely it is, anytime we can have funds that are going toward those things. I would also tell you they're going to make future needs. We've got 39 dorm projects that are on the way in fiscal year '24 and we look forward to those. Thank you.
Great. Well, I look forward to working with members of this committee, Chairman Banks, and Ranking Member Kim, and their leadership. Housing, in my view, is one of the most critical things service members and their families should not have to worry about having a safe and adequate housing. And I agree with the chairman's opening remarks about the unconscionable nature that so many of our service members and their families indicate that they're food insecure.
It's just unacceptable And I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this committee to make sure that that is a priority. With that, I yield back.
Thank you. I yield five minutes to General Bergman.
JACK BERGMAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to all of you for being here. And thanks for continuing to be the example not only for the young men and women who would desire to serve but those influencers who would make every attempt to enable them to achieve a dream that may not -- they may not have dreamed for a long time.
It could be something that just happens quickly. In fact, as I walked in, I heard more than one of you, I think used the term propensity. And so my favorite app on my phone is my Webster's Dictionary. I'm a little old school and it's much lighter to carry it here. But in the Webster's definition of propensity is an often-intense natural inclination or preference.
That is the definition of propensity. But the key phrase there intense. And when you think about the age at which your recruiters are beginning to engage these young men and women, that means a lot of cases high school. Would you care to offer any thoughts on how recruiter access to the public school system, let's start there, is, and the welcoming nature or not in the high schools for your recruiters?
Yes, sir. Thank you for your service. And thank you, congressman, for the question. I'd be remiss if I -- or I think we'd be fooling ourselves if COVID and all the schools being shut down didn't have some kind of impact with access to high schools.
I want to -- I want to go right to the heart of the matter. I don't want to talk about COVID. I want to talk about the welcoming of your recruiters by everything from the board of education to the school superintendent to the principal, to the guidance counselors, to the coaches, the teachers, the influencers that those kids are with seven, eight hours a day.
That's where I want to focus this. We're not talking about COVID. Not to cut you short because time's clicking.
Absolutely. We have to have access. If you don't have a recruiter that walks down the hallway, and you don't see them --
-- Are you getting -- I guess my question is, are you getting it? And if you all want to take this for the record -- by the way, I only have roughly 40 years -- not that I've been looking at this for a while, but I can tell you of a study the Marine Corps authorized in 1985 in Chicago about access to the school systems.
I was part of that study, Ok? And I'm trying to look at as well as others here, what's changed, what stayed the same Because we need -- we can talk about food insecurity. We can talk about training standards. We can talk about a lot of things all day long. But if we don't have access your recruiters, those ambassadors that wear your uniform, we're not going to be able to intensify the intensity that they already have that being a uniform of sorts would make them a better man or woman and make them a better functioning adult.
So that's kind of where I'm going here. So I guess maybe it would be best if you take this for the record. I would like to have a written answer on the access to the schools. Now -- and time goes fast here. I would also like you to take for the record the following because you are all in leadership role.
And if the answer is you decide not to, Ok. Would you be willing to submit a list for the record or privately, your call, of current DOD policies that inhibit your ability, whether you as the senior enlisted in a unit at whatever level or the commanding officers' ability to lead and are there policies -- because we do policy.
We do some law here, but we do mainly policy. And we're trying to figure out here, are there policies that are counter -- you know, countering the positive efforts and we still have on the books that you're expected to comply with? And that could be touchy. But the point is, I thank you. And by the way, rather than saying thank you for your service.
And I know some of you may already know that I've been kind of being scorched in the media for this, but introducing a resolution that says instead of saying that, say thank you for our freedom. So thank you for our freedom. I yield back.
I yield five minutes to Representative Escobar.
VERONICA ESCOBAR:
Thank you so much. I'd like to express my appreciation to the chairman and ranking member for this important conversation. And many thanks to our panelists not just for your participation but for your service, of course. I represent Fort Bliss, Texas and in my community of El Paso, Texas, we are very, very proud to be an Army strong community.
It is the second largest military installation and the largest joint mobilization force generation installation in the Army. And in my duration on -- in Congress, I've served on the Military Personnel Subcommittee because quality of life for our service members is so critical. And I'm really proud also of the work that my team and I have done for military spouses because we know that the family serves when the service member serves.
And included in last year's NDAA was my bill to help support military spouses who own small businesses who move to make sure that they have the resources necessary when they make those moves, that they take their entrepreneurial spirit and can ensure that it benefits another community. But that we do our best to help support that effort as well.
And so if I have time, I actually want to ask an issue about spouses, but I first really want to focus on food insecurity because it is something that we have seen has increased especially post-pandemic as many resources have gone away and food banks have been extra stressed during this period of time. And I'd like to focus my question really with Sergeant Major Grinston.
My first question about food insecurity is I'm wondering what the Army is doing to mitigate the effects of inflation on costs of food for our service members. And what can we as members of Congress do to help support those efforts?
Congresswoman, thank you for the question. Like one of the things I already alluded to what the secretary of Defense did with the cost of reducing the amount that a service member would pay in those facilities that we can control. You know, making the meal, the meat and the eggs cheaper in our commissaries really helped those families out and controlling those costs and helping the servicemen or in this case on Fort Bliss, the soldiers and their families reduce that cost.
And then the second thing is what you've heard consistently from the panel. We're going to keep saying it, we have to look at how we compensate our base pay or our soldiers and their families. We have the QRMC, Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation. We need to take a hard look at that. And I agree with the other panelists is that no soldiers should be able to be eligible for those needs because our pay is just that good.
Thank you so much. And now a question for all of you about spouses. And we -- again, we know that when the service member serves, it's not just the service member, but it's the entire family. And one of the things I've heard consistently in my community is how we've got to do more to help with that transition, which is why I introduced the legislation for entrepreneurs who are spouses.
Our local chamber of commerce has really embraced this as an issue as well. But have you all seen some best practices in -- during your tenure or some gaps maybe that we as members of Congress can address? And I only have one minute. So anyone who might have a burning desire to answer this question can go first.
I'll go very quickly is we need the state reciprocity for our spouses as they move over. You know the president kind of saw -- signed it in law, but each state has to actually acknowledge that. So when a spouse moves from one location, they shouldn't have to redo their licenses again. And that is incumbent on every state to go ahead and ratify that.
Thank you. Sergeant Major Black
Ma'am, I mentioned before in my verbal comments that we have challenges in our CDC. Directly to your point, a large portion of our providers are spouses. But if a marine's family transitions from California to North Carolina, they have to start the entire process of recertifying in that state with their rules, regulations in order to be able to provide the child care and be a child care provider.
And our biggest shortfall right now is in providers. So being able to continue, like the sergeant major of the Army mentioned, being able to get those certifications to transfer is a big help. And I won't speak for everyone, but we're all shaking our heads north and south because that is number one key, ma'am. Thank you.
Can I just follow up on that real quickly?
Gentlewoman's time has expired.
You know actually, yeah, my time is expired. I'll follow up separately. Thank you. I yield back.
Thank you. I yield five minutes to Rep. Moylan.
JAMES MOYLAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses here. I was a product of the junior ROTC program in my high school and I'm glad I did it because when I enlisted in the Army, I got myself an extra stripe. So get me a little extra pay and eventually did the ROTC program and went from enlisted to commission.
But I really appreciate and I respect the -- your positions. And as I grew up, that really helped me move forward in my life. I represent the district of Guam. And of course, we have this massive buildup going on right now because of our situation in paycom. The Marines coming from Okinawa, that's wonderful and working really closely with our admiral there to ensure that transition is worked out.
And sergeant major, I forget now, were you able to come during the rededication there or the reactivation of our Camp Blaz?
Congressman, I was, and it was good to see you again. Sir, the commandant and I really enjoyed the visit. Thank you, sir.
I'm glad you were there, and I hope to see you again as well. Let me just -- I have a few questions here. Ok. So with the increase in military presence on Guam over the next few years, what are the departments -- let me rephrase that. Hold on. The fiscal year of 2023 NDAA mandated by statute a timeline to contract an independent assessment of the much-discussed defense of Guam integrated air and missile defense architect.
The 60-day window for the secretary of Defense to enter into the contract to fulfill this requirement was last week and we have not seen a public notification that this congressional mandate has been met. So please advise if anyone can or where we stand on this mandate to date. If not, that's fine. We can get back to each other.
Is there somebody willing to answer? Ok, let's move on. One of our main concerns, of course for the morale and the welfare of our troops on Guam and understanding an Indo-Pacific how expensive it is for our troops to live. There was the situation with the COLA being reduced. Do we have any recommendations or are we seeing a correction to be made to that, please?
Congressman, thank you for that question. Thanks for your care for our airmen that are living on Guam proper. I will tell you that I spent some time talking to that command team there and I've spent time on the island myself knowing that a carton of milk today in Guam costs $14 is just you know, a challenge that we do not want any service member to bear.
And so yes, the help that we've gotten with funding our commissaries has been extremely important in reducing costs, almost 25 percent. But the challenge that we have in both Guam and also Japan and some of our other overseas locations are challenges to the supply chain. And then commissaries that have empty shelves.
And so -- which forces then our service members to go off base. And so that is a challenge that all of our command teams are actively working. First sergeants are working to make sure that they have a -- you know, that they are in tune with the support and the needs of our airmen, you know, providing some of that training.
But we've also really tapped into the Air Force Aide Society and them giving hundreds of thousands of dollars of grants to our service members to be able to help offset that cost. But we've got some work to do on that. And thank you, sir.
I appreciate that. Thank you. Also with the increase in military presence on Guam over the next few years, would you know -- or can you express what the Department of Defense plans are, if there is constructing for new schools or construction of schools? We got the military families coming on over. Is there any discussion about the students?
Congressman Moylan, again, thank you, sir, for representing Guam. As you know, the Marine Corps has got a pretty long history on Guam. In fact, I'll make two really quick comments and both about schools. You mentioned ROTC. There's a fine retired sergeant major that is responsible for the Marine Corps ROTC at the high school there.
And that's a good thing. Lastly about the schools at large, as you know, the majority of the growth of population or military population on Guam is going to be Marines. And as we see the expansion of the Marines start showing up there over the course of the next several years, there's going to be additional resources provided to that.
I would like to get back to you on the record specifically what those things are going to be, because it's more than just the schools in and of itself, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. And just quickly of course we want the military, the long-term relationship. And it's important that we continue our cultural relationship and make everybody feel at home, too. So I hope you please continue to do so. And working with our communities, working with our mayors.
Gentleman's time is expired.
And I thank you and I applaud you for --
--I yield to the ranking member five minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you again for all of you to come on out here today. I have a couple questions about mental health related issues, but I did want to just ask a very quick question since it's a topic that's come up several times in this hearing. I want to just kind of quickly ask each of you. Do you have any reason to believe that DEI initiatives are negatively impacting our recruitment, our retention, or lethality of the force?
Sergeant major.
Ranking member, as I've previously stated in our survey, that was not the number one, two, three, four, or five reasons and how that would negatively impact our soldiers.
Ok. Thank you.
Our future recruits.
Appreciate it. Master chief petty officer.
Ranking Member Kim, I would echo sergeant major of the Army's comments.
Great. Thank you. Chief master sergeant.
I agree, sir. What I would say is back to the opening statements, I think the narrative that we are focused on that more than warfighting is what's perhaps hurting us.
Sergeant Major Black.
I think if we focus more on war fighting and protecting the nation, I think we'll probably see those numbers increase.
Chief master sergeant.
Yes, sir. I agree with my teammates.
Thank you. I wanted to just switch gears here. As we're thinking through some of the issues -- I've raised this with you as we were talking earlier. One of the big things that I hear about from people in my district is about mental health. We've had some tragic suicides in our region. I've recently saw that the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee released over 125 recommendations to reduce the rate of military suicide.
So I wanted to just get your reactions to this in terms of what you're hearing, if you had a chance to review any of this. But in particular, when I was looking through it, it felt like a number of these types of recommendations are ones that I think we've talked about already or ones that we've understood in terms of how to have better health care access and support for our service members.
So I'd also like you to just try to address, you know what's holding us back. Is there something that you need from us? Is there something that that that we can offer or other things like that that can try to help us make sure we we close this gap? Sergeant major, it looks like you wanted to jump in.
Ranking member, sir, thank you for the question, and really the interest. Having read through and I know the rest of the panel has the Independent Review Commission's recommendations. Let me first start by saying thank you for the review. But if I were to challenge anything, it would be the following. Mental health in and of itself is not mutually exclusive of other factors.
It's generally -- it's a combination of things that makes someone have challenges, mental health that results in potential suicide. I think occasionally we get too wrapped up in a single issue and forget the fact that human beings are very complex and there's more things to look at holistically. For instance, what piece does spiritual spirituality fit into a sense of worth, right?
When it comes to mental fitness. How do we think about social fitness, how we interact with each other, right? How do we think about our behavioral fitness? Obviously, we talk about performance and fitness in terms of physical fitness a lot, but that's also an aspect of it. And then lastly, there's an aspect of mental fitness.
That holistic view is a lot of what we found inside of the Independent Review Commission, right? Along with some quality-of-life challenges, right? So, all of those things together are wrapped up in a study labeled suicide, but a holistic human performance and fitness look holistically, that's a new way to look at solving the problem rather than just one thing at a time, sir.
Yeah. Well, one thing I want to just kind of expand on here just in my final minute here is some of the recommendations focused on issues about length of assignments, greater flexibility in a career trajectory, more predictability in unit training. Some of those certainly sound very direct to this issue, but some of them also sound like these are the types of things that we can be doing for recruitment and retention and just overall modernizing sort of how we understand our workforce.
Does that make sense to you? Is that something that you would agree upon? I guess maybe Chief Master Sergeant Bass, if you don't mind, kind of speaking to this.
Sir, thank you so much for that. Absolutely. Like, I was actually really excited to read the -- all of the recommendations, and a lot of them we're already doing. Some of those ones that you mentioned though with respect to assignments, etc., those will draw you know, budget requirements. And so those are some of the challenges that all of our services have to face when it comes to mil purse accounts and things like that, that we absolutely want to do those things.
But when you have a set amount of budget, it will you know, challenge our ability to get after some of those assignment things and promotions.
I'll just say here to conclude that's on us too.
So I very much want to engage with you on what these best practices are and then make sure that the chairman and I and this committee are doing everything we can to fund it. Thank you.
Yield five minutes to Rep. Alford.
MARK ALFORD:
Thank you, Chairman Banks. And thank you, Ranking Member Kim. 9 percent. That's a number that really jumped out in the testimony and what was written that we were able to look at beforehand the number -- the percentage of young people who are actually interested in joining our armed services. I, of course, I'm a freshman.
I'm joined by my brothers here in our freshman class, who've served in our military. And I never served, but I give up everything I have to run for this office and to be here today because I feel like we're very close to going over the edge as a nation. And I wanted to do something to serve my nation. And this was it. Read a book from Simon Sinek.
It's entitled Start with Why. And it was very instrumental in helping me form exactly why I wanted to do this. There are two ways to motivate people. One through manipulation and one through inspiration. Typically, manipulation involves some sort of fear. And we live in a very dangerous time, as you all know, this threat from communist Chinese government, the uncertainty with the war in Ukraine.
So it would be very easy, I think to try to motivate someone through fear, the existential threats that our nation faces. We need to inspire young people to greatness. We need to inspire people to the greatness of America. We need to let them know that the American dream is alive. I personally believe we've been sold a bill of goods that our strength as a nation relies on our diversity.
I truly believe the strength in our nation relies on our commonality, what we have in common, and that one thing we have in common is we live in the greatest nation ever known to man and it is worth serving. It is worth fighting for. It is worth dying for. We had to get out on the House floor and publicly denounce socialism.
I never thought in my wildest days that I -- one of the first things we would have to do in Congress when I got here is to educate Americans and denounce socialism. We live in the greatest nation known to man. An experiment in democracy, a republic with no equal, a beacon of hope, a refuge for freedom, a land of opportunity.
So how do we get our young people -- without manipulating them through fear, how do we, in their eyes make, America worth serving? Sergeant Major Grinston, I'll start with you.
Sir -- congressman, thank you for the question. I actually will go off with the sergeant major of the Marine Corps already said, we have to tell our stories. We have to share. We have to be out there and be an inspiration for all those young men and women. And just advocate that, you know, we are the greatest country in the world, and we have the greatest, strongest military the world has ever seen.
Full stop. And we're going to take care of our people. We've got great programs and we're hard on ourselves. Let's be honest, is that -- and in our militaries, we go, and we look at ourselves and sometimes we're overly critical and say this is -- we need to do better. We need to do better. But make no doubt, like I said in my opening comment, we have the greatest army the world has ever seen and will see in the foreseeable future.
And I think that's what every narrative has to be from every American, not just us in the service. Have you asked your kids, your cousins, your uncles, your nieces, your nephews, and their parents, why aren't your kids joining the military? And it shouldn't be just those in the military that do that. And then are you advocating for us? Remember we're your army, your service.
We're about out of time and I wouldn't want to throw it to anyone else on our witness panel, not giving them the justice of time to answer that question. But I thank you for your service from the bottom of my heart. And I will do all I can to fight for you and to fight for this nation in the time that I have left here.
Thank you so much. I yield back.
Thank you. That completes our first round. I've had requests for a second round. So with the permission of the ranking member, can we do a rapid fire? A second round of questions for those who would like to. I'll begin. Sergeant Major Grinston, you've referenced an Army study a handful of times. The study was leaked to the media -- to a Associated Press reporter but hasn't been made publicly available.
Why would the Army not be willing to publish that recruitment report, make it publicly available?
I'm not sure, congressman. We'll have to take that for the record and make sure that we can get you that. I don't control the survey, but we have an obligation and see what we can do.
Talk about the results of this survey.
And public testimony. Why not make it publicly available? I mean, why wouldn't the Army be willing to do that? You also made strong comments to members of the committee suggesting that because they're talking about the effects of DEI programs that that's having a more severe consequence on recruitment than the actual programs themselves.
If you're willing to say that in public testimony, why wouldn't the Army be willing to make that report public? Can you take that for the record and have the Army get back to me on that?
Yes.
I appreciate it. With that, I yield to Ranking Member Ken.
Look, I just wanted to follow up on one more question that I had. You know, we talked a lot about recruitment. We talked a lot about the challenges that we're facing here. I guess my question to you here just to help me think through this is, is that what new tools or what new tactics are you thinking about here?
You know, we're talking -- we were talking about school access, and we're talking about some of the narrative elements. And I think those are certainly part of this. But you know, as we're thinking through this kind of new paradigm shift moment and certainly a lot of new challenges out there, not just for the military but for every employer in this country when it comes to workforce.
I'm curious if that's pushed you to think through sort of new tools, new tactics, things like that, that would be helpful for us to know about here in Congress. Go ahead.
Ranking member, if I can just add, you know, for us, it's interesting, right? For those of us who've been around when 9/11 happened, you know, our bases by and large were more open than they are today. And since that, they were more closed off. You know, our chief of staff of the Air Force pushed a note to every one of our wing commanders saying we've got to figure out ways to some degree be able to open our bases back up. So you don't have Americans that live five miles down the road and have no idea what is happening on our installations and what we offer.
And so we're opening ourselves up to partner with our communities more than we ever have before. I would offer when it comes to recruiting, we have to start way left even before high school. You know, children -- we have to start to inspire at elementary school, middle school. And so we're doing those things organically by encouraging our airmen to spend time in some of the schools with STEM programs and other things like that.
Yeah, thank you. And you know, I just want to end here by just kind of reiterating a point that I just thought you know Sergeant Major Grinston, you you made so eloquently in your opening remarks about just that sense -- I wrote it down here. You talked about this national call to service. And I want to thank you for talking about it in that kind of way.
You framed it as saying that what inspires people to want to join our military is they want to be part of something bigger than all of us. And I very much feel that as well. I did not serve in uniform, but in terms of what inspired me to serve this country, it was very much in that same vein. There are a number of us in Congress on both sides of the aisle that are trying to develop up efforts that would build towards a national service program or something of that nature that would very much try to instill in people whether they decide to go into uniform or not or non-uniform or government or public service in a different way.
But I just want to thank you and everyone on this panel for your patriotism, but also your belief that we can still turn this ship around and make sure that we can inspire a new generation to serve. And I'd like to continue to work with you to realize that. Thank you.
Yield to Representative Mills.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just touching back on what I was mentioning earlier, and I'd love to hear each of you individually with a simple yes or no so we can kind of get through this. But do you feel that with the increased focus on pronoun training and DEI that it has made us a more increased lethal and ready force?
We'll start with you, sergeant major of the Army.
You know, congressman, it's hard to answer that with a yes or no answer.
Well, how about -- I'll simplify it. Do you feel that pronoun training translates into increased lethality of our armed forces?
Again, it's really difficult to answer that with yes or no. I can just say that we're stronger and better the more inclusive we are. And it's a testament to see the diversity of this panel.
So, I -- when I served, I served with members who were born in Cambodia, lived in California. I served with people who had grown up in bad neighborhoods out of Brooklyn. I had served with people out of Alabama. It was pretty diverse. There was inclusion and we all considered ourselves to be able to bleed red, blue, and -- red, white and blue.
I'm curious, you know, because when I walk through Arlington and visit friends of mine, I don't notice that our headstones are actually lined up by race or gender or by what our religious belief is. It's by the battlefields that we were all willing to fight and die together. So I'm curious as to when I talk to people and say, well, why aren't you looking to join the military?
A lot of them say, well, the military has been over politicized. Well, the military has gone woke. Well, the military is now focused on areas that doesn't really focus on what I care about which is being able to do things that I said that brought me in, the cool guy videos. You know, the 80 percent do stuff, 20 percent, how cool does it look.
Kick doors, jump out of planes, and increase lethality to be able to take it to the enemy. So we're saying that this modification and that this idea that we now have the -- you know, because we don't see the recruitment videos that we once saw whenever we were all like joined in the military. We're saying that this new focus, this new shift, this new kind of woke ideology is not impacting recruitment and not impacting our readiness lethality.
I have a hard time believing that. Does anyone want to just address on a yes or no? And I know you, command sergeant, you -- you're more than welcome to go ahead.
Sir, I would offer the Air Force does not have pronoun training. And sir, you know, you've asked where you can help us. I would offer, Congressman Mills, where we could use your help is by sharing that message that your services are not focused on any of those such training more than we are on war fighting.
That is a fact I can assure you of that. We have challenges when it comes to quality of life of our airmen. That is not one of them.
And we have not lowered standards in any way to include things such as Ranger School where certain classes wasn't even carrying the rooster (ph) and the mountain phase and things like this. We have maintained standards at all times. Is that what we're saying?
Congressman, yes, we've maintained our standards. And I would say that when I looked at it, there is one hour of equal opportunity training in basic training, and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training. And if you go to OCET, there's 165 hours of rifle marksmanship training and still only one hour of equal opportunity training.
Well, I can tell you from a person I had served with, one of my first roommates who ended up going throughout the enlisted ranks all the way through to being a major, he was training over at West Point and he was teaching squad and platoon tactics for infantrymen. And his class had got bumped because they wanted to introduce a new class which was called intro to transsexuality.
Now I'm not really certain on how that is a priority over platoon tactics or how that in any way increase our locality and readiness. I can guarantee we have the ability to out pronoun every one of our enemies, no doubt about it. But if you look at what China, Russia, and others are actually focusing on right now, it is about increased lethality and being able to take it to the West economically, resource perspectives, militarily, and also making sure that they now have the largest navy in the world.
Not us. Just from the rest of the members who haven't answered yet. Do you in that same thing feel that our priority had shifted somewhat because of the politicization and that we are as ready now in lethality and readiness as we always have been?
Congressman, great question. We're talking about words. There's a word that the ranking member used that I haven't heard yet, except from him. It's called patriotism. I'll let that sank into my verbal -- my oral statement what everyone here is said about propensity. So we want to focus on words. We probably should focus on words like patriotism.
I agree.
Some of the words we've used here are not words that we regularly use, right? And quite frankly, until we figure out -- Congressman Bergman brought this up. His time in the 1980s serving on a certain panel in a study. In the 1980s, we knew who the enemy was. Right? Everybody knew who the enemy was. We all talked the same about who the enemy was.
That's right.
That had us who wanted to join the military focused on what our mission was, and it was all based in the protection of the Constitution, period .That's called patriotism. And so we can figure out who meets standards and who does not meet standards. But I can tell you this and I won't speak for everyone, but in the Marine Corps, we have not lowered a single standard.
We will not lower a single standard.
As it should be.
Whoever meets the requirements of becoming a United States Marine will be a marine as patriots protecting the Constitution as we swear to. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. And with that, I'll go ahead and yield back.
Do you have further questions? Representative Moylan?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sergeant Major Blake, if we can continue on where we left off the -- I think we were discussing the military presence over the next few years and especially with the Marines. If you have ideas or what is the Department of Defense plans with the schooling for these families that are coming on out to Guam?
Congressman, as I had mentioned, legitimately, I would like to take that for the record because along with education for the increasing amount of military personnel, Marines in particular are are going to be arriving in Guam as part of the Camp Blaz reactivation, sir. There's a whole list of other things that are -- we're going to talk about assets to the community.
So, it'd be worth talking about offline, sir. Thank you.
I appreciate that. Another follow up question is that given the magnitude of all the other branches also expanding on Guam -- I'd like to make this an open question for any of the witnesses. First, For the many service members being stationed on Guam means moving far away from home to a place that's culturally unique within the United States.
So what programs or practices have you found to help service members integrate with the host community?
Congressman, thank you for the question. This is -- I'm assuming most of us already have one program that deals with sponsorship of families as you move from one installation. It doesn't matter whether you go to Guam, if you go to Germany, if you go to Hawaii or Alaska, all these moves are unique and of themselves.
You're joining a community. You're joining a different culture that you may not have grown up in. I moved from Alabama to Washington State my first move. And it's important for us to -- and bring those families on as they move. And we've had the sponsorship program along for a long time since I've been in the Army and that's how you bring people into the community.
You welcome them. Most families want to look for two things. It doesn't matter where you go. Do I have a place to live? And you know, are my kids are going to be taken care of? So if I can get that, then I can get to work and I can just focus on the mission. And we have several programs, one of those being the sponsorship program for the Army.
Congressman, in addition to the sponsorship program, we have base introduction briefs and programs where all of our installation command teams welcome our service members when they come onto the installation for the first time. And it's typically during those briefings that's you know, a day or two days long where we introduce them to the culture, to the community, and also bring on a lot of our folks from off base onto our base to help indoctrinate our service members.
Congressman, if I could add, as I was thinking about your question, I'm remiss. I didn't say [untranslated] to you. But the reason is, as a young Marine, and I think we can all say this, if you're getting ready to get stationed in a new country and getting to a new community or a new society, things like knowing that when you get off the plane, people are going to run at you and they're going to say like aloha and mahalo if you go to Hawaii.
If you go to Japan, it's going to be [untranslated]. You're going -- and you're not a member of that community until you can also communicate with that community. That's one of the greatest benefits of service, to joining and sitting in these uniforms that we sit in is being able to have those experiences.
And I've never been stationed in Germany, but everyone who I know in the Army who has, like -- they're like half German because they're part of that community, right? Not in a literal sense. But being part of the community is part of the integration in the communities. And just something like simple as saying [untranslated] to you is -- that's part of that.
[Untranslated]. And thank you for that. I appreciate that. And I think we'll be working out just fine. So thank you for your service, folks. And I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of you. Sergeant Major Black, this is a very patriotic committee. We have a duty and a job to address a recruitment crisis in this country. For the first time in 50 years of an all-volunteer force, we have a crisis and that's why we're here today to address it. And Sergeant Major Grinston, DEI programs -- accusing members of Congress of talking about issues and hurting recruitment, that's why we're here today, to dig deeply into these issues, to come up with solutions and guide the way for the NDAA to solve big problems and big issues that we have that come to recruitment.
That's the job of this committee, and I take it very seriously. But with that, I want to thank all of you for your service, for providing testimony or feedback. I want to close by requesting that you take the issues that we have identified and discussed here today back to your service personnel chiefs and their leadership -- and leadership and let them know that we will be asking them what concrete actions they intended to take to mitigate the problems that we have identified in this hearing, and how they intend to rebuild trust with our service members.
With that, and there being no further business, the subcommittee stands adjourned.
List of Panel Members and Witnesses PANEL MEMBERS:
REP. JIM BANK (R-IND.), CHAIRMAN
REP. ELISE STEFANIK (R-N.Y)
REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FLA.)
REP. JACK BERGMAN (R-MICH.)
REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-FLA.)
REP. BRAD FINSTAD (R-MINN.)
REP. JAMES MOYLAN (R-GUAM)
REP. MARK ALFORD (R-MO.)
REP. CORY MILLS (R-FLA.)
REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-ALA.), EX-OFFICIO
REP. ANDY KIM (D-N.J.), RANKING MEMBER
REP. CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA.)
REP. VERONICA ESCOBAR (D-TEXAS)
REP. MARILYN STRICKLAND (D-WASH.)
REP. JILL TOKUDA (D-HAWAII)
REP. DON DAVIS (D-N.C.)
REP. TERRI SEWELL (D-ALA.)
REP. STEVEN HORSFORD (D-NEV.)
REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WASH.), EX-OFFICIO
WITNESSES:
MARINE CORPS SERGEANT MAJOR TROY E. BLACK
PETTY OFFICER OF THE NAVY MASTER CHIEF JAMES M. HONEA
SPACE FORCE CHIEF MASTER SERGEANT ROGER A. TOWBERMAN
US ARMY SERGEANT MAJOR MICHAEL A. GRINSTON
US AIR FORCE CHIEF MASTER SERGEANT JOANNE S. BASS
James Honea
09 March 2023
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