Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request

29 April 2026

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House Armed Services U.S. House of Representatives

Follow its sittings
18:37 - 24:25
Speaker 1
Alright.  A committee will come to order.  Without objection, the chair reserves the right to declare the committee in recess at any point.  Before we begin, I wanna remind those in the audience that this hearing is open to the public, but actions that disrupt or distract the proceedings will not be tolerated.  The chair reserves the right to remove disruptive persons from the hearing. 

The US Capitol Police are on hand to assist with that task, and I thank them for their service.  One housekeeping note before we get started.  We are expecting to be called to the house for floor for votes around 10:30.  We'll go as long as we can up until those votes, and then I ask members to come back as soon as they can after voting.  Upon conclusion, well, I'd also wanna ask members, when you're entering and leaving the chamber, because there are hearings going on all across the capital at this time of day, please go in and out through the side door. 

Those doors make a lot of racket when you come in and out, so ingress and egress through the anteroom.  Alright.  With that, I wanna welcome our witnesses and thank them for their service to the nation.  We are meeting today to review the Pentagon's FY 27 budget request.  Each year, the budget presentation gives us the opportunity to take a hard look at the threats we face and our ability to deter and defeat them. 

It helps us decide on a level of investment that will actually secure our homeland and protect our interests across the globe.  Here are the facts that underlie this year's budget request.  We are confronting an unprecedented global threat environment, with multiple adversaries working together to undermine our security and that of our allies.  They are building alliances and supporting each other with drones, munitions, missile technology, and energy supplies.  And China is leading the charge against us. 

As you can see from this graphic, 25 years ago, the PLA was just a defensive force with little ability to project power beyond their borders.  Today, the PLA is a modernized military force capable of projecting power well into the Pacific.  Their rapid military buildup has delivered thousands of new ships, subs, missiles, and space assets that severely challenge our ability to safeguard our national security interests in Indo Pacific.  China continues to invest heavily in the PLA's military modernization, announcing another 7% increase in defense spending this year.  As a result, they are spending more of their GDP on defense than we are. 

In fact, as you can see from this graphic, all of our adversaries are spending more of their GDP on defense than we are.  Meanwhile, our defense spending as a percentage of GDP has been steadily falling since World War II.  That yellow line that you see on the graph cutting across, that bar represents 4 to 5% of GDP spending.  History has shown that meeting or exceeding that level of investment ensures we can truly deter our adversaries.  That's also the level of investment we're asking our allies to make. 

But for years, we've chosen not to make that same level of investment ourselves.  Since World War two, defense spending has shrunk significantly as a percentage of our federal outlays, as you can see from the red line on that chart.  Nonetheless, nondefense spending, on the other hand, accounts for over 85%, and it's been increasing for the same period of time.  This underinvestment in our defense has had very real consequences.  Our defense industrial base, long the envy of the world, has atrophied significantly. 

We're no longer capable of manufacturing for our warfighters at scale or speed.  Just look at shipbuilding.  China builds 47% of the world's ships.  The US builds one tenth of 1%.  We build fewer ships than Croatia or the Netherlands. 

Our global munition stockpiles are low, and we lack the capacity to rapidly restock magazine depth.  We have very little industrial capacity to mine, refine, or process critical minerals.  As a result, many of our defense supply chains are reliant on the very adversaries we seek to deter.  Beyond the impact on our industrial base, the inadequate investment in our defense has resulted in a vicious cycle that has pitted sustainment against modernization.  For years, administration after administration comes to this committee with budgets asking us to decommission weapons systems that they admit we still need, or to cut funding for training, parts, and supplies, or to put off needed maintenance to the facilities where our service members live and work, or to reduce the number of military personnel. 

These budgets have asked us to make these sacrifices and accept the near-term risk so we could afford to reinvest in military modernization, which is something we desperately need to do.  But we and Congress consistently rejected this mutually exclusive choice.  Instead, we divided up the limited budget we were given and made a worse choice.  We underfunded both sustainment and modernization.  The result is we don't have new enough munitions, ships, aircraft, or autonomous systems to ensure dominance against every adversary. 

24:26 - 27:10

Speaker 1

And the ships and aircraft we do have suffer from unacceptably low mission-capable rates. Fortunately, that's about to change. This president has requested a historic $1,500,000,000,000 budget for our national defense. For the first time in over 40 years, we've been presented a budget that accounts for the true cost of American deterrence. This budget fully funds both sustainment and modernization.

It provides a 24% increase in operation and maintenance, including a 20% increase in core readiness programs like flight hours and combat exercises. It includes a 115% increase in funding to repair and improve facilities for our service members and their families. It increases military end strength by 44,000 and provides for a historic pay raise for our service members. It calls for an unprecedented 76% increase in procurement and a 64% increase in research and development. This will enable us to truly catch up in our modernization efforts to quickly field new munitions, aircraft, ships, land, space, and autonomous systems to replenish and expand our arsenal.

It directly confronts the challenges in our defense industrial base with over $100,000,000,000 in investments to revitalize manufacturing, expand domestic and allied critical minerals projects, and secure our supply chains. Finally, this level of investment gets defense back to 4 and a half percent. That's where we need to be. We want to truly deter conflict. It also ensures that America leads by example, as our allies heed the president's call to increase their defense spending and improve their military readiness.

I would also note that it's critical that we do not reduce deterrence while we're asking our allies to ramp up their own capacity, and that's something we're gonna be paying a lot of attention to in this committee. Before I close my remarks, I want to highlight the bravery, dedication, and professionalism of our warfighters throughout this conflict with Iran. Their tremendous work to achieve the very clear military objectives of this operation has given the president the opening he needs to negotiate a true and lasting peace that will ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon. Mister Secretary, General Cain, thank you for being here. I look forward to hearing how this budget request will ensure our military can preserve American deterrence for generations to come.

And with that, I yield to my friend, the ranking member, for his opening statement.

27:10 - 41:09

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate those opening remarks. I wanna start by agreeing with you on the last point. Our troops have performed incredibly well in the last 15 months. They have been asked to do more than anyone expected, and they have demonstrated the incredible capability of the United States military.

I think we should all recognize that. Even if we question the strategy, some of the decisions behind it, our troops deserve nothing but our praise for the incredible job that they have done. It has not been perfect. Certainly, mistakes have been made, but we have demonstrated to the world that we have a highly capable military. And I hear the chairman on the, you know, need for an increased budget.

I think there's a whole lot of needs across the United States of America that would have the same attitude about health care, about education, about infrastructure. But the problem is we have a $40,000,000,000,000 debt, and we insist on cutting taxes for absolutely everybody. We reduce the amount of revenue that is available to that. We also have to have a national security strategy that lives within a sound fiscal picture. Most experts would say that the most profound threat to our national security right now is exactly that, our fiscal picture.

How are we gonna continue to be able to afford to fund the things we need to fund as we run the debt ever higher? The other thing worth worrying about is the Pentagon has not yet passed an audit. If we give them what is roughly a 50 to 60% increase, is that money going to be well spent? We have every reason to doubt that. Now I will say, and I praise the chairman of this committee, and in a bipartisan, bicameral way, we have tackled the problem of acquisition reform.

I think last year's bill put us on a good trajectory to get to the point where we can, in fact, innovate faster at scale. I also believe the Pentagon has been working on that. We've had many meetings with Deputy Secretary Feinberg, who is focused on that, but we got a long way to go. Can the Pentagon really absorb another $5,600,000,000,000, depending on what the supplemental and the reconciliation package are. I don't think so.

We need to pay as much attention to how we're spending the money as to how much we're spending, and we never seem to do that. But the larger problem is the strategy that has been put before us. I looked through the secretary's remarks, and I've heard you give speeches before about this, about how realism is our strategy. And I find that absurd, given what we are doing. You can say a lot of things about the strategy, but calling it realistic, we started a full scale war in the Middle East against Iran to try to reshape the Middle East.

Now we can talk about that in a bunch of different ways, but it is the exact opposite of realism. And in fact, starting wars in The Middle East that get out of control and lead us to have far greater costs for the benefits is one of the cornerstones of the unrealistic strategy that this administration has criticized over and over again. And yet here we are in a full-scale Mideast war, and we've seen the costs of that. Certainly, at the top of that list is 13 service members killed and hundreds wounded, but it goes way beyond that, thousands of civilians have been killed. Over a dozen countries now have been dragged into this war in one way or another.

The Israel-Lebanon war has exploded since this war started. We now have a conflict between the Shia militias in Iraq and Kurdistan that is straining, to put it mildly, our relationship with Iraq, and also causing greater chaos throughout the Middle East. We've seen the impact on the economy. Certainly, here at home, gas prices are up by over a dollar. The impact of the fertilizer increase is going to come later, as food prices skyrocket.

But what is happening to us is a small part of what is happening to the rest of the world. Certainly, the Middle East's economy has been tossed up in the air, but dozens of countries are rationing gasoline as we speak and experiencing extreme economic pain because of this war. So there's nothing realistic about that. And one of the big questions that we need to get answered today is, where is this going? What is the plan to achieve our objectives?

We've seen the cost, and the cost is very high. All we keep hearing on the objectives is we keep seeing all of the targets that we have struck. And, again, that is an incredible accomplishment from a tactical standpoint. I think the proficiency of our military has been on display, but we're not in this for a tactical advantage. We're in this to fundamentally change Iran.

And as we sit here today, Iran's nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started. They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They're still able to blockade the Strait of Hormuz and have the ships that are capable of doing that. What is the plan to get that to change?

And most disturbingly, the president keeps telling us that it's over. What was it? A week ago Friday, the president announced that Iran had agreed to give up their nuclear program, to give up their ballistic missile program, to stop support for terrorist groups, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The only problem with that is literally none of that was true. It was he was completely making it up.

But it wasn't Iran had even agreed to meet with us, as became embarrassingly clear as the day spun out, and poor JD Vance had to keep going back and forth to the airport. We never even had a meeting. So wish fulfillment is not really a strategy. I mean, maybe the president thinks he's doing some sort of Jedi mind trick and can tell Iran you will give up your nuclear weapons, and they will automatically. But that's not working.

So what we need to hear today is what is going to work. We have 50,000 troops in the region who are still at risk. How are those tactical victories gonna translate into some sort of strategic success? And by the way, this is one of the things that realism recognizes. You can win a whole lot of little small battles and lose the war, which is why you don't stumble into the war in the first place.

But at the same time, we're doing all of this on our own as we increasingly push away all of our allies. Sometimes just because we wanna do what we wanna do, but we don't wanna have to consult them. Sometimes just gratuitously insulting them. I mean, in the middle of this war where we were asking NATO to come join us, the president took time out to insult President Macron and his wife. Okay?

How is that helping us to try and belittle everybody in the world? And I also, for the people who are criticizing NATO over this war, I will remind people that NATO is a defensive alliance. What that means is every country ended pledges to defend a country if attacked. And when we were attacked on 9/11, that's what NATO did. They put in article five, and for 20 years, they fought beside us.

NATO is not if any one of the countries decides to unilaterally and unwisely start a war precipitously, that everyone else is supposed to join. That's not the way it works. So berating and belittling our allies after we did that, and driving them ever further away from us, how is that realistic? Not only are we gonna try to reshape the Middle East, but we're gonna do it alone while pushing everybody away from us. And then we have other tools in our arsenal.

You see those numbers on the budget, but the state department's really important. Development is really important. These are ways to achieve our ends, we have moved away from that. We got rid of the entire USAID, literally causing the starvation of children in countries where we had pledged to provide food, you know, causing massive health care disruptions. People literally dying because we cut that off.

In diplomacy, we have sidelined again the entire world. France and the UK have brought together 44 different countries that have an interest in trying to open up the Strait of Hormuz. We've pushed them all aside. And then we've even pushed aside our own diplomatic corps. We have a very talented state department.

I praise today the talent of our military, and I will stand by it. They deserve that praise. Our diplomatic corps deserves that praise too. But we shoved them all to the side in favor of two real estate guys who are gonna go negotiate all the deals in the world, which, to date, by the way, has yielded exactly nothing. So something realistic about starting a war in The Middle East, going it alone, and pushing aside all diplomacy and all development and all other tools in our arsenal.

And on top of that, of course, we also wanna dominate the entire Western Hemisphere, you know, including apparently annexing Canada and invading Greenland. How is any of that realistic? And then the administration comes before us and asks for what is a hopelessly unrealistic budget in this environment. Back in that chart there, when we were showing how much money we were spending on defense, we had a balanced budget. We had a surplus for many years.

We don't have that anymore. So call this strategy whatever you want to call it, but please don't call it realism. It's not. Forgive me. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride.

It's a tense warning. I wanna lighten it up a little bit. And the guy keeps saying inconceivable when things happen. And finally, the guy says to him, you keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means.

I don't think we know what the word realism means. So, please, can we not have the realism conversation? Let's have the conversation about what the strategy actually is, and I'm sure you have a different definition of it than I do. But as I look at it, the strategy seems to be to use as much violence, as many threats, as much coercion as possible to bend the world to our will. I think that is a very dangerous strategy because one of the oldest clichés in the military is the enemy gets a vote.

And we may think that we can stand up and talk tough, and talk about how strong we are and how we're burying our enemies and they're begging for a deal. We can do that all day long. Alright? But the enemy gets a vote. They don't have to do what we tell them to do.

And meanwhile, that coercive, violent strategy undermines our credibility in the world because the chairman is absolutely right. And this is one area where I strongly disagree with the folks on the far left who say that we don't really face any threats, that the US is a maligned influence in the world and always has been. I don't agree with that. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, a variety of other transnational terrorist groups, including, yes, narcoterrorists, and human traffickers over here. They all are trying to weaken us.

Alright? They don't want a rules-based order. They wanna play by their own rules. They want to push us aside. We wanna be the side that stands up for the rules.

But if what we're saying to the rest of the world is stick with us because we're a better bully than China, we coerce countries more effectively, that undercuts the very message we're trying to spread to build the coalition we need to be successful. I also worry about the values that we are showing the world when the president threatens to kill off an entire civilization. That is the message coming out of The United States Of America. If we are going to be this big powerful force that throws our weight around the world, the world wants to know at a minimum that we're doing it for the right reasons and with a sense of values to protect people, not to destroy entire civilizations. And we all hear that, and we all go, well, gosh.

You know, he probably doesn't mean it. Well, that is so reassuring, okay, that he's just making it up. We're supposed to be the United States of America. I grew up on stories of the US at the end of World War two being the country that the Germans wanted to surrender to, not the Russians, because they knew they could trust our values. We don't seem to care about those values.

No rules of engagement. Give them no quarter. Alright? That is not who we are supposed to be. And just one final point on that.

The girls' school that got hit in the first days of this war. There is absolutely no question at this point about what happened. We made a mistake, and that happens in war. We identified this target based on earlier charts, and yet two months after it happened, we refused to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don't care. We do not care about the casualties and the chaos that is caused by our war, and we should care even if we want to prosecute the war.

Now, I agree with the chairman. We need a strategy. We face the most complex threat environment that we face in a very long time. So we really wanna hear from the administration, don't give us this realism, chest-thumping stuff. What are we really gonna do to meet those threats, to deal with the challenges we face?

And I'll close just by saying one of the other ironies of this, of course, is we have a great example in the world right now of what our strategy should be and where our values should be, and that's Ukraine. And I'm really curious. You know, here we are. We roll out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin. We belittle and insult President Zelensky in the White House.

He has no cards. Right? Well, here we are, a year after that. Looks like he had a couple of cards to play because Ukraine is actually winning against Russia. Ukraine, a sovereign democracy standing up against a brutal oppressive adversive dictatorship.

And we can't even bring ourselves on a consistent basis to say, we are with Ukraine and we are against what Putin is doing, and stand up and support them. So I wanna see that strategy to meet the complex threat environment that we have. But simply saying we've already won and boasting and bragging and trying to belittle and insult the entire world, that's not gonna get us to the position that we need. So I hope we have a conversation about how we can build a strategy that makes sense and is actually realistic. Without a yield back.

41:10 - 41:35

Speaker 1

I thank the ranking member for his opening statement. Now I'd like to introduce our witnesses. And we have the honorable Pete Heggsess, secretary of war, general Dan Cain, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and they are being accompanied by Mr. Jay Hurst, acting chief financial officer and comptroller for the department. I also want to welcome the secretary's wife Jennifer. Welcome to our hearing.

Glad to have you here with us today. And with that, Mister Secretary, we'll start with you. You're recognized.

41:37 - 44:09

Speaker 3

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ranking member Smith, distinguished members of the committee, we appreciate the opportunity to testify in full support of President Trump's historic $1,500,000,000,000 fiscal year 2027 budget request for the Department of War. The president's budget request reflects the urgency of the moment, addressing both the deferment of long-standing problems as well as positioning our forces for both the current and the future fight. We think divesting to invest is a strategy of austerity. I'm honored to appear alongside General Dan Cain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Jay Hurst, our comptroller or chief financial officer.

I'd like to start by thanking this committee and Congress for your partnership in securing the investments needed for a stronger, prouder, and more secure America. I think what our troops have demonstrated to the world over the last 15 months are a reflection of that. A nation's ability to build, innovate, and support the critical needs of its warfighters at speed and at scale is the foundation upon which its survival rests. However, upon taking office on 01/20/2025, President Trump inherited a defense industrial base that had been hollowed out by years of America last policies, resulting in a diminished ability to project strength. Under the previous administration, we were focused on offshoring and outsourcing, riddled with cost overruns and degraded capabilities.

Under the leadership of President Trump, our builder in chief, we are reversing this systemic decay and putting our defense industrial base back on a wartime footing. If you ask anyone at the Pentagon, urgency informs everything we do. We're rebuilding a military that the American people can be proud of, one that instills nothing less than unrelenting fear in our adversaries, and the utmost confidence in our allies. We fight to win in every scenario. The $1,500,000,000,000 FY 27 budget put forward by the president will build upon the historic $1,000,000,000,000 FY 26 top line and continue to reverse the four years of underinvestment and mismanagement of the Biden administration.

The

44:09 - 44:10

Speaker 4

$1,500,000,000,000

44:10 - 50:05

Speaker 3

The budget will ensure The United States continues to maintain the world's most powerful and capable military as we grapple with a complex threat environment across multiple theaters. Not to mention, this budget also includes a historic troop pay increase, 7%, for lower enlisted, and the budget eliminates all poor or failing barracks. Quality of life for our troops is front and center in this budget as well. By supercharging our industrial capability and transforming how the department does business, we're restoring American commercial dominance at a pace unseen in generations, transforming the defense industrial base from a broken, slow-moving system of the past. We have flipped the Pentagon acquisition process from a bureaucratic model to a business model, 180, decisively moving from an acquisition environment paralyzed by bureaucratic red tape into an outcomes-driven organization focused on delivering the most at cost, at scale for taxpayer dollars.

Over the past year, through historic multiyear procurement agreements, smart business deals for things like critical munitions and capabilities, we've sent an unambiguous demand signal to industry partners to build more and build faster. The result has been a surge, a revitalization of our great factories, and a massive reinvestment in the skilled American workers who serve as the industrial muscle behind our warriors. Let me briefly provide you with some concrete high-level metrics of what's been accomplished over just the past few months. These are announced new facilities and investments to support American warfighters, and I would refer you to the screen. The department has helped stimulate more than 250 private investment deals in 39 states, in 180 cities, and 150 companies worth more than $50,000,000,000.

It's resulted in 280 new or expanded facilities, more than 18,000,000 square feet of American manufacturing, and more than 70,000 new jobs in defense. This is the key part of this. These $50,000,000,000 of investment in new plants, new assembly lines, and new factories, these are private investments, not taxpayer dollars. By changing our departments, transforming our departments' business model, American companies are investing in America with their own money, their own capital. A historic demonstration of American manufacturing and defense revitalization, all again with their capital, not Uncle Sam's.

This has never been done before and is long overdue, from a bureaucratic model to a business model. Anyone on the outside looking in at what's been done inside this Pentagon in the last 12 months cannot deny the fundamental transformation at speed, at scale, to innovate and meet the threats of today and tomorrow. These investments equal great things for America, American families, and American workers, and help to ensure that our war fighters are able to defend the American dream and all American made. Together with the help of the policies, updates, and appropriations passed by Congress, President Trump's War Department has begun to turn the lights back on in manufacturing towns across this country, and once again, forging a lethal arsenal of freedom. Where critical supply chains are threatened, the War Department has acted decisively to inject capital, stipulate production, and prevent adversarial exploitation.

We are firing up the American economic engine at every level of our defense industrial base. Every policy we pursue, every budgetary item we request, serves to ensure the department remains laser focused on increasing lethality and survivability of our forces from the front lines to the factory floors. This is a historic budget, as you said, Mr. Chairman. This is a fiscally responsible budget. This is a war-fighting budget.

And speaking of war fighting, a topic, the topic of Iran, I'm sure, will come up today, which I very much welcome discussing. I look forward to sharing the incredible successes of our military achieved in a matter of weeks. President Trump, unlike other presidents, has had the courage to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, and he's ironclad in that. We're the best negotiators in the world driving that deal. The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.

Two months in, I remind you, two months into a conflict. Lest I remind you, and my generation understands how long we were in Iraq, how long we were in Afghanistan, how long we were in Vietnam, two months in on an existential fight for the safety of the American people. Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. We are proud of this undertaking. I am proud that president Trump had the courage to do it, and I look forward to sharing more about what our troops have accomplished.

So I thank you again for the opportunity to address this committee. I ask that God would continue to watch over our troops in harm's way, and those that have fallen are always in our memory, and we fight to ensure their legacy. Look forward to answering the questions of this committee.

50:06 - 50:09

Speaker 1

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. General Cain, you're recognized.

50:09 - 57:53

Speaker 5

Thank you, Chairman Rogers. Ranking member Smith and members of this committee, thanks for having me today. I'm honored to be here today alongside the honorable Pete Hegseth and honorable Jay Hirsch to testify in the president's fiscal year 2027 budget. I'm grateful for the opportunity to testify today, and I'm thankful for your continued partnership in support of our warfighters defending the homeland and our interests around the world. It's a privilege to speak with you today about the foundation of America's strength, our 2,800,000 members of the joint force.

And I'm continually inspired by our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, guardians, and coast guard guardsmen, and our civilians standing watch for our nation, supported always by their families. Each and every one of them could have chosen another path, but they don't. They choose to serve and to do something more important than themselves. And every day, they meet the nation's challenges from combat operations to critical support roles with the courage, tenacity, and grit that keep our nation strong and secure. I would also like to express my deep gratitude for the 39 members of our joint force who've passed away during my time as the chairman, including 14 who've passed during Operation Epic Fury.

As the secretary said, we are deeply grateful for each of them and their families, and their names will never be forgotten. As the chairman, my duty is to ensure our civilian leadership has a comprehensive range of military options and the associated risks, to those leaders who make the nation's hardest decisions and offer my military advice privately. I owe the president, the secretary, and the Congress the truth at every term. My blueprint for this role is General George C. Marshall. His commitment to civilian control of the military and nonpartisan military remains a constant standard and something I borrow from often.

I strive daily to emulate his candor, delivering the facts to our leaders and telling them always what they need to hear, not always what they want to hear. And once a decision is made, executing it with absolute dedication, and that is the demand of our profession. I sit here today before you representing our incredible joint force, and I wanna emphasize my commitment to this committee and the Congress that I will always follow General Marshall's steadfast example by providing clear and candid nonpartisan military advice and working together with our civilian leaders to ensure that our military does the things that we must do, being prepared to deter and defend our nation, and if called upon, win our wars around the world. America's joint force is operational at its core, purpose-built for the realities of a complex and ever-changing world. We are organized, trained, and equipped to execute the most demanding missions across the globe with unrivaled precision.

Over the past year, our war fighters have consistently demonstrated exactly what it means to be the most capable, adaptable, and professional military force in the world. Our shared goals are to ensure the joint force remains the strategic initiative and advantage, projecting American power and responding to global challenges on our nation's terms. During operations Rough Rider, Midnight Hammer, Southern Spear, Absolute Resolve, and Epic Fury, the joint force executed globally integrated operations and missions alongside our interagency and international partners. And once our civilian leaders made a decision, we make those missions our own, demonstrating the unmatched capability to seamlessly synchronize our capabilities across all domains, from the seabed to cis lunar space and higher. We're able to accomplish these complicated missions and work because we draw from a deep, enduring reservoir of training, professionalism, and commitment.

Our operational tempo is high, but we're designed to sustain and rebuild our strength continuously. We build readiness every day. We train professionals every day. We learn and sharpen our edges every day by being learning leaders. And I am incredibly proud to be a member of this joint force team, proud of the team, and proud of the commanders.

As the chairman and the ranking member both said, we live in complex and dynamic times where global risk is scaling. The complexity of today's modern battlefields demands our constant adaptation, innovation, and partnership with this Congress. As a joint force, we're up to the challenge. We're built for this environment. However, continued success is not guaranteed by past achievements.

It must be secured through forward-looking partnerships with Congress. And to drive this pace and change and maintain our superiority, we need timely, predictable, and sustained investment. The resources we discuss today are critical to modernizing our force and ensuring that whatever threats emerge in the future, your joint force is ready to meet those challenges to protect our interests and defend our nation. As the secretary, the president's fiscal year 2027 budget supports the department's goals of recharging the defense industrial base and the national industrial base, ensuring our military is ready, securing our military advantage. Within the joint force, the uniformed side, our priorities remain the same, ensuring our war fighters are properly armed, globally integrated, and ready, while always taking care of our people.

And what truly sets our people apart from other militaries around the world is the 1,800,000 enlisted members of our force, who maintain readiness beyond reproach and are the envy of every other nation. I'm joined today by the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman, Dave Isom, who's here with me today representing the 1,800,000 members of the enlisted force. He is a great American, not an American. While we face a dynamic and dangerous world, I have the absolute trust in the extraordinary men and women who come and volunteer to serve our nation within our joint force. They execute the missions quietly every day, and, coupled with the American spirit, outthink, outcompete, and relentlessly innovate.

We will maintain our decisive edge, but doing so requires your partnership. We stand ready today to answer our nation's call. It remains the honor of a lifetime for me to serve alongside the members of this joint force. And as we sit here today in this important hearing, I ask us all to remember our deployed teammates who are out there right now doing our nation's business. And may we, again, always remember our fallen who've given us the gift of an incredible example, and their family members who continue to show us what courage and grit look like.

Thank you again for your enduring support, and I look forward to your questions.

57:54 - 58:20

Speaker 1

Thank you, General. I recognize myself now for the questions. Secretary Hegseth, thank you for undertaking the Arsenal of Freedom tour and the great work the department's doing to help enhance our capacity in our defense industrial base. Could you tell us how last year's reconciliation bill helped enable what you have been able to do and what you think this year's FY 27 budget request will do on that front.

58:21 - 59:06

Speaker 3

Well, mister chairman, thank you for your leadership and your support on that topic. I mean, coming into this position, we fell in on a lot of the reforms you and this committee have been advocating for a long time, looking for somebody that was willing to run with them. And our department, have run with those. And that reconciliation bill last year was kind of the rocket fuel to initiate President Trump's priorities in this department. So we fell in on a department that was focused on a lot of the wrong things, going in the wrong direction.

And with reconciliation, we're able to put, you know, 22,000,000,000 in shipbuilding, 22,000,000,000 into Golden Dome, 25,000,000,000 into munitions, established drone dominance, which we're continuing to do this day, and this next budget funds. So getting in front of that budget cycle, which had been notoriously unpredictable.

59:06 - 59:07

Speaker 4

Mhmm.

59:07 - 59:55

Speaker 3

Out of coming out of the continued revolution resolution of FY '25 to fund this and then a bill, a historic bill in FY '26, laid the groundwork for this historic budget to ensure that we're not coming at a cold start here. We came into this administration. Reconciliation was a beautiful tool. We were able to use that through that one big, beautiful bill to fund the priorities of this department. We spent 4,000,000,000 on barracks, started immediately getting after the quality of life of barracks.

Because of the austerity of the Biden administration, we traded off maintenance, traded off quality of life to try to fund other things operationally. This budget stops that cycle and both invests in sustainment and modernization, which is something that's critically important. So without that reconciliation bill, I think, Mr. Chairman, we'd be in a very different place. So thank you for that. Great.

59:55 - 01:00:23

Speaker 1

Well, as you are aware, the expansion of the defense industrial base is the principal focus of this year's NDAA. So in addition to enacting this budget request that's been submitted, we wanna work with you to enhance the department's statutory authorities to improve the capacity of our DIB. What additional changes in law, such as the additional multiyear block by authority, would you recommend that we pursue in this year's NDAA?

01:00:24 - 01:01:37

Speaker 3

A few aspects of the acquisition, transition, transformation that's been undertaken by undersecretary Duffy in acquisitions and sustainment. So there are some aspects of that we'd like to codify even more. But you mentioned it. Multiyear procurement is incredibly important, and one of the most important parts of this bill. When this committee and this congress fund those things, companies are already breaking ground on tens of billions of dollars of new plants.

You name the we've got 14 in our ammunition council that we're focusing on certain ammunitions. Are 14 that are critical. You know? PAC threes, s m threes, s m sixes, THAADs, Patriots, Tomahawks, Amrams, Jasms, you name prisms, you name them. We were building a bit too slowly and too low a level.

Now the companies are gonna pay for those factories and those production lines. And when you're when congress gives those five to seven year demand signals, they'll then fund it, not just hey. Can we get 10 more per month, but can we two x, three x, four x production, pay for it now, and the companies invest accordingly. So it's been a critical aspect of some of what we've done so far, but we need more of those five to seven year investments.

01:01:37 - 01:01:47

Speaker 1

Great. General Kain, what does the $1,500,000,000,000 budget mean for the warfighter and our ability to project forces and secure our interests around the globe? Chairman,

01:01:49 - 01:02:46

Speaker 5

You know, in my view, this represents a historic down payment on future security. If the budget is approved and ultimately deployed, as we look at the character of warfare changing very, very fast, what's layered in to this budget by our civilian leaders will allow us to start getting ahead of where technology is evolving. And as I mentioned, the character of warfighting is changing pretty quickly. Mass, simultaneity, autonomy, undersea, space, cyber, information. All of those ways that are now manifesting themselves on the battlefields around the world, require a higher end of capital investment, and that's why we're grateful for the opportunity to have this budget make its way to the joint force.

So it's an important down payment on the future here, sir.

01:02:46 - 01:02:47

Speaker 6

Great.

01:02:47 - 01:02:48

Speaker 5

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

01:02:48 - 01:02:51

Speaker 1

With that, I yield to the ranking member for any questions he may have.

01:02:51 - 01:03:20

Speaker 2

Thank you. Mister Hurst, drag you into the conversation here. We have not yet received from the Pentagon the cost of the war. So just for the record, we'd like to get that as soon as possible. Certainly, the munitions expended, but also underreported is we've had a fair amount of equipment destroyed, including two C-130s with the rescue of our downed airmen.

So do you have either a cost estimate coming to us anytime soon or a specific supplemental request?

01:03:22 - 01:03:39

Speaker 7

Thank you for that question. So approximately at this day, we're spending about $25,000,000,000 on Operation Epic Fury. Most of that is ammunition. There's a part of that. It's obviously O and M and equipment replacement.

We will formulate a supplemental through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict.

01:03:39 - 01:03:42

Speaker 2

Sure. Damn it. So you're saying the full cost at this point is 25,000,000,000?

01:03:43 - 01:03:45

Speaker 7

Yeah. That's our estimate for the cost.

01:03:45 - 01:04:52

Speaker 2

Okay. Interesting. Because we, I'm glad you answered that question because we've been asking for a hell of a long time, and no one's given us the number. So if you could get those details over to us, that would be great. Mister secretary, you mentioned the nuclear aspect of Iran and the war.

And it is worth noting that every president prior to this one, including President Trump in his first term, also prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without actually having to go to war in Iran. So we need to keep that in mind. But also, since the war started, Iran's nuclear arsenal has not been weakened in any way. And at the moment, in negotiations, what Iran is saying basically, pay us to open up the strait. That is their position, which is completely untenable.

I agree. It's worth noting, of course, that the strait was open before the war started. Now we're negotiating to get back to the status quo. And Iran's most recent offer is to say, we'll talk about nukes later. So what is the plan to actually turn all of this lethal kinetic action into an improvement in the nuclear situation?

Because we haven't got there yet. Play it out for us. How does that happen? How does it actually lead to that result?

01:04:53 - 01:04:58

Speaker 3

Well, I would take issue with the premise of the question that nothing was done. Operation Midnight Hammer was a very effective

01:04:59 - 01:05:01

Speaker 2

Well, I didn't say anything was done. I said in this war.

01:05:01 - 01:05:02

Speaker 3

Ultimately, war started.

01:05:02 - 01:05:03

Speaker 8

Well, this is this.

01:05:03 - 01:05:28

Speaker 3

Under this administration, unlike other administrations, which cut bad deals and pallets of cash with no ability to oversee whether Iran is actually pursuing a nuclear program, which is where we're at. Litigate JCPOA or the Iran deal, our view, the president's views, that was a very bad deal. Okay. It gave them a bunch of money upfront. The future.

The fund you talked about negotiated deals. Funding allowed them to fund their proxies and spread Hamas and Hezbollah all around the region, build up nuclear capabilities.

01:05:28 - 01:05:29

Speaker 2

What are we gonna do now?

01:05:29 - 01:05:47

Speaker 3

President Trump has been clear-eyed from the killing of Qassem Soleimani to the pulling out of the Iran deal to midnight hammer and now to this effort to recognize that you have to stare down this kind of enemy who's hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon and get them to a point where they're at the table giving it up in a way that you

01:05:47 - 01:05:52

Speaker 2

Never have it. So they haven't broken it yet. Okay? We haven't gotten there yet for all of it.

01:05:52 - 01:06:02

Speaker 3

Leading facilities have been obliterated. Underground, they're buried, and watching it twenty-four seven. So we know where any nuclear material we're claiming it. We're watching.

01:06:02 - 01:06:15

Speaker 2

A second here. We had to start this war, you just said, 60 days ago because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated.

01:06:15 - 01:06:20

Speaker 3

Not given up their nuclear ambitions, and they had a conventional shield of thousands.

01:06:20 - 01:06:22

Speaker 2

So operation midnight, they were.

01:06:22 - 01:06:22

Speaker 9

a complete.

01:06:23 - 01:06:28

Speaker 2

of substance. It left us at exactly the same place we were before. So much so.

01:06:28 - 01:06:35

Speaker 3

Their facilities were bombed and obliterated. Their ambitions continued, and they're building a conventional shield. Let me.

01:06:35 - 01:06:36

Speaker 2

Try again.

01:06:36 - 01:06:55

Speaker 3

It's the North Korean strategy. You know this very well. The North Korea strategy was to use conventional missiles to prevent anybody from challenging them, so they could slow walk their way to a weapon. President Trump saw Iran at its weakest moment, took an action to ensure in a way that only The United States of America could do with our Israeli partners. And yet they still haven't been

01:06:55 - 01:06:55

Speaker 5

able to use

01:06:55 - 01:06:58

Speaker 3

Shield was brought to the field we've done.

01:06:58 - 01:07:21

Speaker 2

If I could get to it. So on Ukraine, a year plus ago, your advice, the president's advice, was Ukraine had no cards to play. They should go cut the best possible deal they could. Clearly, that was wrong. What did you miss?

What did you miss about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that you didn't see that Ukraine was going to be capable of doing what they've done in the last 14 months?

01:07:21 - 01:07:39

Speaker 3

What we didn't miss, and we're here in this committee, is that Joe Biden, with no accountability, gave hundreds of billions of dollars of our weapons to Ukraine, to an outcome that never would have happened if President Trump was president. So he pulled out or you guys don't talk about that. Ultimately, President Trump believes there's a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

01:07:39 - 01:07:44

Speaker 2

That serves most part. Where they are at right now. I'm asking you, just from a strategic standpoint.

01:07:44 - 01:07:50

Speaker 3

What do you think? Ukrainians have shown great courage, and I appreciate that Europe is now paying for any weapons that we provide.

01:07:51 - 01:07:52

Speaker 2

Alright. I yield back. Thank you.

01:07:53 - 01:08:03

Speaker 1

Alright. Now I wanna remind everybody there's everybody wants to get their questions, so we are going to be strictly sticking to the five minute rule today. So with that, I recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson.

01:08:05 - 01:09:45

Speaker 10

Thank you, Chairman Mike Rogers, for your leadership working with President Donald Trump. As the grateful father of four sons who've served overseas in Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan, I especially appreciate Ward, Secretary Hegseth, and Chief of Staff Kane for your competence, service, and success. Military families have never been more appreciated than today, and our enemies, dictators, now understand peace through strength. Dictators historically are on the run. With your leadership, President Trump has given Syria a chance with President Al Shahwar, replacing dictator Assad from Damascus, who now lives in Moscow.

Dictator Maduro is correctly in a Manhattan jail, as you successfully revealed in Caracas that the war criminal Putin air defenses do not work. The Chinese Communist Party radar failed, and human mercenaries were expendable. The human dictatorship is failing, and the ultimate mass murderer dictator Khomeini is dead in Tehran, Iran, joining 35,000 people he murdered this year. With your leadership, American morale has never been higher, and hopes for the freedom of the oppressed people of Iran, Cuba, Russia, and China have never been higher. And it's just an exciting time to be here with you.

And, mister secretary, we continue to see the growing nuclear threat of our adversaries as they expand their capabilities with the largest military buildup in peacetime in world history by the Chinese Communist Party. How critical is it that we continue, as at the Savannah River site in South Carolina, to develop the plutonium pit processing so that we have modernization?

01:09:47 - 01:10:46

Speaker 3

Well, Congressman, I appreciate that question. On nuclear modernization, this budget funds $71,000,000,000 to modernize the triad in a way that we had neglected to do, and our nuclear triad underwrites everything. But I really appreciate your opening statement. I think something that, obviously, the media doesn't want to cover and doesn't want to talk about is the historic record-breaking surge in recruiting in our ranks. Thirty-year record in recruiting Americans wanting to join our joint force, wanting to put the uniform on.

We're meeting recruiting goals halfway through the year. We couldn't meet our recruiting goals under the previous administration. Under Joe Biden, Americans didn't want to join the military. We couldn't get it. Now we have to turn people away and push them to the next fiscal year.

That's why this budget grows our force by almost 50,000, ultimately. Additional troops into the force that we believe we can recruit. That's the best vote of confidence I can imagine.

01:10:46 - 01:11:48

Speaker 10

Well, hey. Even better. Hey. This all over attention. You're really understating.

Leaving no airman behind. Hey. What an inspiration on Easter day. God bless y'all and what you've achieved. With that in mind too, General Kane, with your VMI military perspective, war criminal Putin is losing in Ukraine as his 30-day special mission is now four years of, as the secretary has identified, courageous Ukrainian success led by President Vladimir Zelensky.

I appreciate that NATO and the EU have unified for Ukraine, as the US ranks 17th per GDP in assistance for Ukraine. Ukraine is frontline stopping war criminal Putin from resurrecting the failed Soviet Union, rigging elections in Belarus, invading Ukraine, keeping troops in Moldova, and, with the end of Israel, invading and rigging elections in The Republic Of Georgia. As we're transitioning greater responsibility to our NATO allies, how do we ensure seamless integration to deterrence during this shift?

01:11:50 - 01:12:19

Speaker 5

Congressman, we're very fortunate to have great leaders out in the European theater right now. General Gringovich and his leadership team are committed to ensuring that integration and transition takes place in a most combat capable and effective way. Very entrepreneurial leaders out there across the components and with Gerald Grinkovic, and he's doing a great job out there as the committee knows.

01:12:19 - 01:12:49

Speaker 10

And indeed, as we conclude, historically, President Trump, Mister Secretary, General, you have united the Middle East nations unprecedentedly to ally with the United States. You have united Latin America unprecedentedly to ally with the United States. You've united the Indo Pacific unprecedentedly to ally with the United States, and United NATO, and EU. Unprecedented to ally with the United States. You're achieving peace and deterrence through strength.

I yield back.

01:12:49 - 01:12:52

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. You're not recognized. Gentlemen from Connecticut, Mr. Courtney.

01:12:53 - 01:16:40

Speaker 11

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister Secretary and General Cain, this morning's Wall Street Journal's lead headline reads, quote, Trump tells aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran. It goes on to describe, again, the thinking behind the strategy, but also talks about how prolonging the blockade is gonna continue to drive up energy costs all over the world. Given the ever-changing messages from this administration on the war strategy and timeline, I really honestly don't expect you to confirm or deny the journal story. But one thing is clear.

The number of transits across the Strait of Hormuz has dropped to the lowest level since the war began, and commodity markets have stopped listening to the happy talk. And crude oil prices this morning have risen to the highest level since the war in Ukraine started in 2022. AAA reported this morning that the average price of gas is $4.30 a gallon, up 30¢ in one week. Diesel's average is $5.45. My friend, mister Guaramendi, says in California, it's closer to $8 a gallon, and fertilizer prices have also hammered farmers at exactly the same time they're beginning to plant, all across the country.

Aside from the damage this war has done to American consumers, farmers, and small businesses, I want to focus for a minute on the cost of the war and our military readiness, particularly to other combatant commands. Mister secretary, you put out a national defense strategy in January, which listed the threat assessment facing our country. China was number one with the second largest, most powerful military in the world, of course. Russia's nuclear force clearly was number two in terms of the threat they pose to the homeland. North Korea, which has missiles that actually can reach US territory, was ranked number three.

And Iran was described as, quote, and accurately, after midnight hammer that Iran's regime is weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades. Again, this was before February 28 when the decision was made to go in, the military strikes, on Iran. So today, we have three carrier strike forces in Central Command. The indo... Indopacom, which is where Russia and China are operating their navies, 52% of the globe.

We have one carrier strike group in Japan, George Washington. And the imbalance in terms of just, you know, what our commitments and, frankly, you know, what our national defense strategy, I mean, is just blindingly obvious in terms of what this war is doing. Gerald Ford is on day 312 of its deployment. They've gone through fires, plumbing problems, and, again, an extended deployment, which, in my opinion, is hitting readiness as hard as anything I've seen in the time that I've been on this committee. So, general Cain, I mean, in terms of, again, the carrier strike groups that are over there, I mean, assuming that we get to some endgame here, Ford is not going over to the Indo Pacific to buttress the gap that exists there today.

They've gotta go back into pretty heavy repair and availability in terms of trying to recover from their deployment. So, again, in terms of just, you know, the decisions about where we're putting people and putting really the most powerful part of our navy. You know, can you explain again what that means in terms of the situation in Indopacom where China is watching? We saw Mister Rogers' pretty powerful presentation in terms of the buildup that's happening in that part of the world. How does that align with the national defense strategy, which was just put out by this administration in January?

01:16:40 - 01:17:00

Speaker 5

Well, sure. First, I wanna echo your comments on the Ford Strike Group. Fantastic work by incredible sailors, not just the Ford herself, but the other ships as well on a historic cruise doing incredible work for the nation.

01:17:00 - 01:17:01

Speaker 8

Excuse me. How does

01:17:01 - 01:17:01

Speaker 11

that balance with the

01:17:01 - 01:17:45

Speaker 5

National, yes, sir. Happy to answer the way I think about this. The national security strategy and national defense strategy are frameworks, but a president will employ national force and power based on the political and security situations that a president deems appropriate to use that military force. There's always trade-offs in all of these things. I'm confident that the president always carefully considers these readiness trade offs, and I'm sure he has done so in this case based on the military options that we've presented with the associated risks and advice.

01:17:46 - 01:17:56

Speaker 11

A trade going after a regime that's weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades, which is, quote, unquote, from the defense strategies report, does not, in my opinion, in common sense.

01:17:56 - 01:44:40

Speaker 1

Genomis time expired. As you can tell from looking at the dice, votes have been called. So we are now going to stand in recess until the end of this vote. I expect it to take 20 to 25 minutes, but we are now in recess. Here, I'll come back to the order.

Secretary, can you hear my voice clearly? General, can you hear my microphone now? Okay.

01:44:40 - 01:44:40

Speaker 5

Yes, sir.

01:44:41 - 01:44:44

Speaker 1

Gentleman from Ohio, Mister Turner is recognized.

01:44:45 - 01:45:34

Speaker 12

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doctor Hegseth, your written testimony on page 20 includes a statement concerning the importance of Pfizer and section 702, which is incredibly timely because this spot is gonna be voting today on 702, which could be expiring this week. You state this vital tool keeps Americans safe, provides critical intelligence to our warfighters, and is subject to a rigorous system of oversight by all three branches of government to guarantee the protection of the constitutional rights of the American people. Thought I'd give you a moment to expound on that because this is gonna be very important, because there are several people who right now in this body are gonna be considering their support for 07/002's reauthorization.

01:45:35 - 01:45:58

Speaker 3

Well, thank you for that opportunity, Congressman. Yes. This department strongly supports the reauthorization of FISA 702. And it is not hyperbole to say many of the most important missions we have executed could not have happened without the intelligence gathered through FISA 702. So, we would urge members to support that, so we can continue doing the good work of the American people.

01:45:58 - 01:47:13

Speaker 12

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I appreciate your comments that Iran must never be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon. There have been many comments that have been made concerning allies who have not assisted or supported the effort. General Kane, there have been many allies who have been essential for us to be able to execute the functions necessary both for Midnight Hammer and for the current ongoing operation. I'd like to ask you to speak for a moment about the essential aspect of the allies that are supporting the effort.

There are bases that are necessary. Our forward operating facilities, both our allies in the Middle East, both our NATO allies, those in Europe throughout. We would not be able to undertake this current operation without the use and support of facilities that we have in our bases throughout NATO, Europe, and the Middle East. If you could for a moment expound on the integral nature of our facilities that include those bases that are located within our allies.

01:47:16 - 01:47:44

Speaker 5

Well, congressman, from a purely military standpoint, allies and alliances are important. They allow us you did a better job than I could on articulating the importance of access, basing, and overflight considerations. You know, who those allies are and the quality of those alliances are left to our civilian leaders, but, certainly, we appreciate those allies who've helped us and assisted us along the way.

01:47:44 - 01:47:48

Speaker 12

General, you would describe them as having been essential.

01:47:48 - 01:47:50

Speaker 5

Yes, sir.

01:47:50 - 01:49:21

Speaker 12

Because that's very important. I mean, we want to make certain that, you know, that we treat adversaries as adversaries and allies like allies, especially those that are essential. The king was here yesterday, and as he was speaking, he received a standing ovation when he implored this body to continue our support for Ukraine. In the 2026 national defense strategy, it assesses Russia will remain a persistent manageable threat. It specifically identifies Russia's continued threat to Ukraine.

And we have, of course, the current presidential continued drawdown authority that can support Ukraine. And, also, the president Trump announced Pearl, the prioritized Ukraine requirements list. And in FY 2026, India AA, there is the 400,000,000 that is included in the European capacity building within the Defense Security Cooperation. General, the last time it went on the House floor with respect to funding for Ukraine, there was a vote in the House of over 300 members of the House that supported Ukraine. Could you please give us a description of some of the things that we're currently doing operationally to support Ukraine?

01:49:24 - 01:49:38

Speaker 5

Congressman, a few of those are probably left for classified session. We continue through our Security Assistance Group Ukraine to assist with some information sharing matters. UCOM continues.

01:49:38 - 01:49:43

Speaker 12

to describe it as continuous, ongoing, and essential for Ukraine with US support.

01:49:43 - 01:49:45

Speaker 5

Sir, much of the relation.

01:49:44 - 01:49:48

Speaker 1

General, the time's expired. I'm general from California, mister Garmindy.

01:49:51 - 01:53:50

Speaker 13

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister Secretary and General Kane, let me begin by thanking the men and women of the United States military for their service and their bravery. I recognize that our service members have performed with extraordinary courage and tactical skill, and they've done incredible things that our country has asked them to. Their professionalism and selfless service are not in question and never have been. What is in question is the purpose and the strategic direction of this war.

Mister Hedseth, as secretary of the Department of Defense, you are ultimately responsible for the conduct of the Iran war. Any unvarnished review of what is happening right now in the Middle East would reveal a geopolitical calamity, a strategic blunder resulting in a worldwide economic crisis. The result of Trump's war of choice is a serious self-inflicted wound to America. It will take years and a new administration to recover from the grave damage to our standing in the world, as well as our economy and our military. We must remember that 13 Americans have been killed in action, hundreds wounded, and thousands of civilians killed, including more than 100 schoolchildren.

The risk of this conflict was foreseeable. I'm certain that the Department of Defense knew that it was likely that in a war with Iran, Iran would create an international economic crisis by blocking the Strait of Hormuz and thus stopping 20% of the world's oil. Was this existential threat considered? Apparently not. During the 60 days of Trump's Iran war, critical munitions have been expended at an alarming rate, depleting magazine levels below what is thought necessary to hold China at bay.

It will take years and tens of billions of dollars to restock. A significant part of the necessary navy and marine force in the Pacific has been removed and sent to support the Iran war. Our support of Ukraine has suffered as supplies and defense systems are diverted to the Iran-Iraq war. America has lost irreplaceable aircraft, radar systems, and strategic bases, which have been shown to be vulnerable. The continued lengthy deployment of ships, equipment, and personnel has sacrificed readiness.

We know what we have lost, but what have we gained? Let's consider that the regime in Tehran is still intact with new and more radical leadership, as are Iran's ballistic missile and drone forces, as is Iran's ability to rebuild their military industries, also, as is Iran's coordination with China, Russia, and North Korea, and Iran's ability to choke off global energy supplies, and their stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which they only built after president Trump shredded president Obama's Iran deal in 2017. Secretary Heseth, you have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the president. You have misled the public about why we are at war. You and the president have offered ever-changing reasons for this war.

You've misled the public about the progress of the war. While they executed this war with tactical success, the strategy has been an astounding incompetence. Doing immense economic damage to America.

01:53:50 - 01:53:57

Speaker 10

Mister chairman. And the war. Chairman, with the personal attack on the secretary, he should have an opportunity to respond.

01:53:57 - 01:53:57

Speaker 13

He certainly will.

01:53:57 - 01:53:58

Speaker 14

When I say no.

01:53:58 - 01:54:00

Speaker 10

At the time you're doing it.

01:54:00 - 01:54:05

Speaker 1

It's the gentleman's time. He can use it as he sees fit and add an extra five seconds to Mr. Guirmeny's time.

01:54:05 - 01:54:54

Speaker 13

Thank you. You and the president are ever-changing reasons for the war. You have misled the public about the progress of the war. While the military has executed this war with tactical success, the strategy has been an outstanding example of incompetence. This war of choice is a political and economic disaster at every level.

Despite the president's promise to lower the cost of living, gas prices are up 40%, and inflation is soaring too much for lowering the cost of living. The president has got himself and America stuck in the quagmire of another war in the Middle East. He's desperately trying to extricate himself from his mistakes. It is in America's and indeed the world's interest that he succeeds in that. I yield back.

01:54:54 - 01:54:57

Speaker 1

Gentlemen yields back here, and I recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Whitman.

01:54:59 - 01:56:42

Speaker 15

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank our witnesses for joining us today. General Kane, Secretary Hexath, Mister Hurst, thank you so much. I wanna go to a statement I've been making here for the last several years, and that is we are in the most dangerous national security position that this world has been in since 1939. And we know that it's a critical effort that we undertake to make sure we can deter through the concept of peace through strength.

Miss secretary, I'd like to start with you. We know that peace through strength has a number of tenants. I think the most important of those is presence. And we know that United States has the Marine Corps amphibious ready group, Marine Corps expeditionary unit that provides us that presence. We know there are over 2,000 marines and an aircraft combat unit that are onboard those vessels, and they let us do a number of different things.

That's the crisis response team that gets to go around the world. Today, as we speak, we have three ARG muse that are deployed around the world. Unfortunately, that's an anomaly. It should be standard. Secretary Hegseth, the president and the combatant commanders need maximum flexibility to respond in multiple places at multiple times to combat and deter these threats.

I just want to get your perspective on your goal to make sure we have a persistent three point zero argument presence, and to look at how we're gonna make sure through our shipbuilding plans that we assure that we have the adequate number of amphibs that are being built. I think that number's probably around 40. And then what are we gonna do to make sure too that the A sub O, the operational availability, is gonna be at the level where we can maintain an ARGU 3.0 with the effort we have to put in to maintain these ships?

01:56:43 - 01:57:17

Speaker 3

So thank you for the question, the substantive question. Ultimately, we support 3.0 ARG. There that presence right now gives us a lot of flexibility. Yeah. And this budget supports moving in that direction to ensure that this administration and future administrations have that kind of strategic flexibility with the incredible capabilities the ARG MU provides. Yeah.

We saw it in Southern Sphere. We saw it on the Maduro raid. We saw it right now. It's a persistent capability. So, I think you'll find our shipbuilding investments to meet that as well.

But if I may

01:57:17 - 01:57:18

Speaker 15

Sure. Yeah.

01:57:18 - 01:59:08

Speaker 3

I didn't get a chance. I didn't see a question in the statement from the congressman. I hope you appreciate how reckless it is. When I said reckless, feckless, and defeatist of congressional democrats at the beginning, that came after watching you say the same thing on CNN this morning, a quagmire. My generation served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Years and years of nebulous missions and utopian nation building that led us to nothing. What we have right now, the way you stain the troops when you tell them two months in, congressman, you should know better. Shame on you. Calling this a quagmire, two months in. The effort, what they've undertaken, what they've succeeded, the success on the battlefield that could create strategic opportunities, the courage of a president to confront a nuclear Iran, and you call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies.

Shame on you for that statement. And statements like that are reckless to our troops. Don't say I support the troops on one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire. That's a false equivalent. Who are you cheering for here?

Who are you pulling for? Our troops are doing incredible work. They've done incredible things for the entirety of this mission, and achieved incredible battlefield successes. And you sit there and go on TV for your clickbait about quagmires. It undermines the mission.

Your hatred for president Trump blinds you to the truth of the success of this mission and the historic stakes that the president is addressing, which the American people support. Iran's been at war with us for 47 years. You wanna talk about a forever war? For two months, this president has stared them down. He's gonna get a better deal than anyone ever has and ensure that Iran never has nuclear weapons.

I know the American people support that mission despite your loose talk and words like quagmire. Thank you.

01:59:08 - 01:59:40

Speaker 15

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. General Kane, I wanna quickly go to you. We know all about the need for exquisite platforms, but we know if we're gonna close the gap with our pacing threats, we have to make sure we have those expendable and attributable platforms. And we know those nation capabilities are key, and we have to be able to spin them up quickly because that's the fastest way for us to, again, deter by peace through strength. Give us your perspective on how you see the urgency of getting that capacity not only in place, but getting that ability to go to scale and get those capabilities in the hands of our warfighters.

01:59:40 - 02:00:04

Speaker 5

Sir, I think it's critical. And when I look at what OSW above us is doing in the deputy secretary, as well as secretary Duffy. And, frankly, the national and defense industrial bases all rallying around the need to scale along with the new entrants that are out there who are coming and bringing products to the joint force. A key is capacity.

02:00:04 - 02:00:04

Speaker 16

time cross.

02:00:04 - 02:00:07

Speaker 1

As a chairman. Recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Norcross.

02:00:07 - 02:02:08

Speaker 6

Thank you, chairman. I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today. Mister secretary, it's well known that our defense industrial base and maritime industrial base have declined greatly over time. It's the shipyards. It's many of the things that you already spoke about.

In my community, we used to have three shipyards, 40,000 workers. We've lost that critical job skills there and 40,000 people who know how to do it. And quite frankly, most of it went overseas because it was cheaper. Well, cheaper doesn't buy the security we need for our industrial base. I championed a provision in the 24 NDAA entitled enhanced domestic content requirement for major acquisition programs.

Had to do with our industrial base making things here in America, long before this administration came in. The goal was to strengthen our supply chains and have that critical oversight, push for greater investments, much of what you're doing now on these major defense acquisition programs. So we pass that in a bipartisan manner because we knew that this was critical, and things can happen. Lo and behold, here we are. There was a reporting requirement in that that calls on you, the secretary of defense, to establish an information repository, issue rules, create a fallback process to govern the department of defense.

We wanted to better understand much of what is being done here, but it's not being reported back to us. I sent to your office on January 8, followed up on February 4. We're years overdue on this report. That will give us insight into how we're addressing it. We hear what you're saying, but can you commit that we will get that report to us in the next 30 days?

02:02:10 - 02:02:26

Speaker 3

Unless Jay has additional details, I'll make sure we look into it. Whatever we can get to you as rapidly as possible, we will. We'll also check with the new navy leadership and make sure they're complying as rapidly as possible with every aspect that could apply to shipbuilding. That's been our focus on the Navy side.

02:02:26 - 02:03:46

Speaker 6

It's not just shipbuilding. Major acquisition programs across the board. This is incredibly important, and they are ignoring it. And thirty days is being generous, certainly. Second issue is, you talked about championing the American worker and how important this is.

Yet, in a memo on April 9, you terminate all the collective bargaining agreements across the DOD, taking away from hundreds of thousands of workers at the DOD their collective bargaining rights that they voted for. There was nothing to indicate there were any issues with any of the bargaining agreements, yet you decided to take away from them. Over the last few years, we have increased the wages for those war fighters, incredibly important. This year, up to 7%. Yet on the other side of this, you talk about supercharging the defense industrial base.

We are in this. How do you go and say yes. We support the warfighters. They can't do their job unless we are building things that they can use. Yet, no evidence to prove that these collective bargaining agreements were a problem anywhere across the Department of Defense under Democrat and Republican administrations.

How do you kinda square that circle that you care about this, yet you take away their voice in the job?

02:03:48 - 02:04:12

Speaker 3

Well, certainly, sir. The great workers that, whether they're contractors or DOD civilians that do the important work for us, the great ones are gonna stay. And we've invested more in merit bonuses for civilians than any previous administration. So if you're doing great work, you're gonna stay, and you're gonna have even more opportunities. But with our ear to the ground, in those shipyards and other factory floors, there were issues with collective bargaining, which led to restrictions on the workforce and our ability to move faster.

02:04:12 - 02:04:13

Speaker 6

If I may. And

02:04:13 - 02:04:17

Speaker 3

In that case, you made the decision to provide additional flexibility.

02:04:17 - 02:04:30

Speaker 6

You didn't take it away from the shipyard workers. You took away from Department of Defense employers where there hasn't been any issues. Let's be clear. Those are independent contractors, and they have their collective bargaining groups. The ones that work for you.

02:04:31 - 02:04:41

Speaker 3

The ones that work for us should be at will, like anybody else, based on their performance. And if they're performing well, which I'm sure they are, as you've represented, they will have a job at the department.

02:04:41 - 02:04:46

Speaker 6

So where is the issue that you took away their collective bargaining rights? Why did you do it if it wasn't a problem?

02:04:47 - 02:05:04

Speaker 3

Well, I stated upfront it has been a problem. There are plenty of cases, whether it's con or inside our own department, where collective bargaining had led to arrangements and agreements that minimize the efficiency and effectiveness of employees at the point of their impact. That's what we were focusing on, that's why we made the change, which we very much stand behind.

02:05:05 - 02:05:06

Speaker 6

Well, I yield back.

02:05:07 - 02:05:10

Speaker 1

Gentleman yields back here, and I recognize a gentle lady from New York, Miss Stefanik.

02:05:11 - 02:05:53

Speaker 17

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Heath, I appreciate the department and the administration's focus on expansion and innovation in the defense industrial base. That's particularly important for emerging technologies. For years on this committee, my office has led the effort to ban the procurement of Chinese communist drones, which pose a significant national security threat. And last year, after years of work, this committee finally passed my Countering CCP Drones Act or Section 179 of the NDAA, which was fully implemented in December.

How does the FY '27 budget scale domestic production and deployment of drone systems to ensure the US has the decisive advantage against our US enemies?

02:05:54 - 02:06:59

Speaker 3

Well, thank you for the question. First of all, thank you for your work on that. And critically important, when you look under the hood of the ways in which China is trying to use critical elements of our defense industrial base and supply chain against us or capabilities in the future that could hamstring us with options for a future president, it's staggering. So drones was one that not only have we recognized, but thanks to your leadership and the leadership of others, we are supercharging this budget. Conservatively, $54,000,000,000 in drone and drone dominance and counter-UAS.

Jay just slid me a piece of paper. If you add it all up, it could be closer to 74,000,000,000. We started a defense autonomous working group, autonomous warfare group, excuse me, to focus on this, but we're gonna do even more. We'll shortly announce a subunified command, autonomous warfare. Drones are so central to the future of warfare and where we get them from that we have to be able to both make the exquisite ones better than anybody else and also the attritable swarm, and then the ability to defeat them ahead of our adversary, learning from battlefields like Ukraine and Epic Fury.

So thank you for your leadership. It is front and center in this budget.

02:06:59 - 02:07:45

Speaker 17

I very much appreciate all that the department is doing under your leadership. One of the concerns I have is recent reporting indicates that while DJI, which is a communist Chinese drone company, is prohibited from receiving new FCC authorizations, there are still DJI products such as the DJI Avada 360, widely available in the US through major retailers. These received FCC authorizations before my provision in the NDAA was fully implemented. So my question to you is, we need to close this loophole to protect our national security. Will you commit to working with this committee in my office to ensure that these products that pose a significant risk to our national security are no longer permitted, given the evident threat CCP drones pose to US national security?

02:07:46 - 02:08:02

Speaker 3

Congressman, yes. The department will commit to working with your staff and looking at that loophole, which we are aware of. And I missed in my first response. Of course, that 54,000,000,000 is American made. Absolutely. Dominance.

That is exactly where they need to be, and that's where our focus is.

02:08:02 - 02:08:28

Speaker 17

Great. Another emerging technology that's very important and has a strong tie to my district is quantum computing. China continues to invest heavily in quantum computing, sensing, and secure communications for military advantage. I represent Rome Air Force Research Lab, which is a hub of research when it comes to quantum. Secretary Hegsaf, how does the budget proposal position the US to maintain leadership in operationally relevant quantum technologies?

02:08:29 - 02:08:56

Speaker 3

The country that dominates in quantum will dominate the future in c two, in comms, in every way that we fight. And so this makes the maximal investment possible here at home to ensure that quantum compute and working across the interagency, by the way, this is not just a DoD issue. This is an interagency issue, to ensure that we've got the ability to scale and compute outcompute adversaries who are racing for the same code.

02:08:57 - 02:09:13

Speaker 17

General Kane, throughout my time in Congress, I've pushed for the department to optimize its approach to quantum and develop a strategic roadmap. In your opinion, which quantum capability areas offer the most immediate benefit to the joint force and should be priority investments moving forward?

02:09:14 - 02:09:23

Speaker 5

Probably some of the work in crypto and quantum is to make sure we can see, sense, understand, defeat, and protect our own stuff. So that's where I'm most interested in it right now, ma'am.

02:09:23 - 02:09:45

Speaker 17

Great. And I also wanna use my remaining time. I just wanna invite both of you to visit Fort Drum, home of the Tenth Mountain Division, most deployed division in the US Army since 09/11. In the first Trump administration, I had the honor of hosting President Trump where he signed the NDAA in my district, and it's been a privilege to represent them. So encourage you to visit that installation before the end of this year.

Thank you very much, and I yield back.

02:09:46 - 02:09:51

Speaker 1

Generality yields back. Chair now recognizes a gentleman from Massachusetts, Mister Molton.

02:09:51 - 02:10:08

Speaker 9

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mister secretary, you and I agree that Iran is a national security threat to us and our allies. Now earlier, you called us feckless for questioning your war. Do you think congress was smart or feckless when it failed to ask tough questions to the Bush administration and gave them a blank check for Iraq?

02:10:10 - 02:10:14

Speaker 3

Well, if you're trying to compare this war to Iraq, I'm just asking you.

02:10:14 - 02:10:14

Speaker 6

Do you?

02:10:14 - 02:10:17

Speaker 3

I think it was harder for the first one to call a stupid war, then a false comparison.

02:10:17 - 02:10:25

Speaker 9

Okay. Well, probably a good idea to ask tough questions. So let me just ask you a few questions. Did you advise the president that we should attack Iran?

02:10:26 - 02:10:32

Speaker 3

We were first of all, in this position, in the cabinet, we never talked about what we would advise the president to do or not.

02:10:32 - 02:10:34

Speaker 9

But you think the president or the president deserves more?

02:10:34 - 02:10:38

Speaker 3

I've been in every meeting. I understand that, man. And everybody else has the secretary.

02:10:38 - 02:10:38

Speaker 9

I'm asking the question.

02:10:38 - 02:10:42

Speaker 3

And he got every perspective possible when it came.

02:10:42 - 02:10:45

Speaker 9

to asking what your perspective is. Are you afraid to take ownership of this?

02:10:45 - 02:10:45

Speaker 3

Do you.

02:10:45 - 02:10:46

Speaker 9

Think it was a good idea or not?

02:10:47 - 02:10:58

Speaker 3

My when I as I've consulted the president, do I think it's a good idea to confront a nuclear bomb. To start this, hands off, imagine what the world would look like right now if Iran had a nuclear weapon. Okay. So let's just imagine.

02:10:58 - 02:10:58

Speaker 9

Which, by the way,

02:10:58 - 02:11:01

Speaker 3

Every other which Obama you were gonna allow them.

02:11:01 - 02:11:08

Speaker 9

The first Trump administration had prevented them from having a nuclear weapon. So, listen, how is this war going? Do you think we're winning?

02:11:08 - 02:11:12

Speaker 3

Militarily, on the battlefield, it's been an astounding military success.

02:11:12 - 02:11:18

Speaker 9

No. But are we winning the war? Absolutely. Okay. So do you call Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz winning?

02:11:18 - 02:11:24

Speaker 3

Well, I would say the blockade that we hold that doesn't allow anything to come in or out of Iranian ports will.

02:11:24 - 02:11:45

Speaker 9

So we've blockaded their blockades. They blockaded us, and then we blockaded their blockade. That's like saying tag you're it. Or, you know, if President Madison had said, well, the British just burned down Washington. But don't worry.

We're gonna burn it down as well. Chairman Cain, did the military have plans for the idea that Iran might blockade the strait?

02:11:46 - 02:11:58

Speaker 5

Sir, thanks for the question. I'll answer it this way. You know, in this job, I have to maintain trust with a variety of constituents.

02:11:58 - 02:12:00

Speaker 9

Okay. I'm just asking if the military.

02:12:00 - 02:12:00

Speaker 18

Yes, sir.

02:12:00 - 02:12:16

Speaker 5

We, as always, my point in this is, as I explained the role, my point in this is we always offer a full range of military options that are carefully considered with the associated risks with those options and the considerations therein.

02:12:16 - 02:12:18

Speaker 9

And did you consider this risk?

02:12:20 - 02:12:25

Speaker 3

Of course. This department has looked at all aspects of this risk. And the quality of this department.

02:12:25 - 02:12:30

Speaker 9

The looks only minesweepers we had in the Gulf to Singapore weeks before the war started.

02:12:30 - 02:12:35

Speaker 3

We have lots of capabilities that you may or may not be aware of at the classified level.

02:12:35 - 02:12:35

Speaker 9

Okay. And so.

02:12:35 - 02:12:36

Speaker 3

with the to deal with by way, would

02:12:36 - 02:12:38

Speaker 9

The Trump class battleships have helped with this?

02:12:39 - 02:12:44

Speaker 3

You're talking about my perspective. Future battleship, which we welcome in the fleet.

02:12:44 - 02:12:46

Speaker 9

Okay. So you're supportive of the battleships?

02:12:47 - 02:12:47

Speaker 3

Yes, sir.

02:12:47 - 02:12:57

Speaker 9

Okay. How much has Iran profited from your administration lifting the sanctions on Iran when you started this war?

02:12:57 - 02:13:00

Speaker 3

I can tell you Iran is financially devastated right now.

02:13:00 - 02:13:01

Speaker 9

Okay. Well, junction with the Treasury.

02:13:01 - 02:13:13

Speaker 3

$14,000,000,000. Economic fury. They're at a point where between the blockade and what we've done to them militarily. Remember, don't have a navy. They can't contest the blockade.

Okay. Between what we've done to the military and financially, they're at a place.

02:13:13 - 02:13:14

Speaker 9

for billion dollars.

02:13:14 - 02:13:15

Speaker 3

Have very few options.

02:13:15 - 02:13:20

Speaker 9

How many Chinese missiles can they buy for $14,000,000,000? Does that sound like winning?

02:13:21 - 02:13:27

Speaker 3

They're not insuring, and they're not buying Chinese missiles. Okay. You know, at the end of.

02:13:27 - 02:13:42

Speaker 9

The day, this also has a cost to us. If you, let's say, this war costs a $100,000,000,000. I mean, you've already said, give us more time. It's only been 2 months. It could go on for 20 years like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let's just say it costs $100,000,000,000. What is that to the average American taxpayer? Do you have any idea?

02:13:42 - 02:13:48

Speaker 3

Well, unlike foolish previous administrations, it won't go on. I'm just asking for years and decades.

02:13:48 - 02:13:48

Speaker 9

But let's just say.

02:13:48 - 02:13:50

Speaker 19

it's $100,000,000,000.

02:13:50 - 02:13:51

Speaker 3

Hard to imagine how.

02:13:51 - 02:13:51

Speaker 9

You know that?

02:13:51 - 02:13:52

Speaker 3

It's allowed for those things to happen. You were a part.

02:13:52 - 02:13:53

Speaker 9

of the war to that.

02:13:53 - 02:13:54

Speaker 3

So was I. And ever.

02:13:54 - 02:13:59

Speaker 9

I never, I'm just asking if you know what your war cost the average American taxpayer.

02:13:59 - 02:14:02

Speaker 3

What is the cost of Iran having a nuclear weapon that they wield?

02:14:02 - 02:14:04

Speaker 9

I'm just asking if you know the cost of the average American mess.

02:14:04 - 02:14:06

Speaker 3

With you at the cost of that.

02:14:06 - 02:14:33

Speaker 9

So for the American taxpayers out there, my constituents, some of the constituents you wanted to represent in Minnesota, I'm just wondering if they have an extra $600 lying around to pay for your war. I think that's just a question that we ought to ask. Now quickly, on March 13, in a press conference, you said we will give them no quarter, no mercy. In order for no quarter or no survivors to be a war crime under the Geneva conventions. You understand that's murder.

Do you stand by that statement?

02:14:34 - 02:14:42

Speaker 3

The Department of War fights to win, and we ensure that our warfighters have the rules of engagement necessary to be as effective as humanly possible. You called the.

02:14:42 - 02:14:49

Speaker 9

Democratic members of Congress to be tried for sedition for reminding our troops to follow the law. But when you tell them to commit a war crime, you stand by yourself.

02:14:49 - 02:14:51

Speaker 3

For insinuating the laws.

02:14:51 - 02:14:56

Speaker 1

That we're giving them are, gentlemen, the law firms expired. You're now recognized. Gentlemen from Tennessee, Doctor Desjardins.

02:14:56 - 02:16:04

Speaker 20

Thank you, mister chairman, and I thank our witnesses for being here today. And I'd like to thank you for your commitment to our advancement in space, Golden Dome, and nuclear modernization, all of which are critical. And also, understand we're going to start some reproduction of the MQ-9 Reaper drones, which you, mister secretary and miss secretary, share my great state of Tennessee. And we know the one eighteenth air wing, the National Guard operate very field and conduct many of these missions, and they do so with great precision. So thank you for that.

Secretary Heg Seth, you were commissioned as an infantry officer in the US Army National Guard in 2003. You've been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay. You have been awarded two bronze stars, the combat infantry treatment badge, joint commendation medals, two army commendation medals, and other recognitions. You have seen military actions from both an operational and a service member perspective. Have you ever seen the scope and scale and complexity of Midnight Hammer, Operation Absolute Resolve, and Operation Epic Fury?

02:16:06 - 02:17:56

Speaker 3

Thank you for the question, Mr. Congressman. Not only have I not seen missions like that, but if you ask, if you earnestly go into our formations right now and you talk to colonels and majors and staff sergeants and two-star generals and you ask them about the environment of our military right now and its capabilities right now compared to under the Biden administration, under Obama. They will tell you it is night and day. Even the ranking member acknowledged that the troops performed incredibly well over the past 15 months and have demonstrated to the world. These are not new troops in a lot of cases.

These are the same troops with new leadership under President Trump, who gives them every authority, under a department that ensures they have what they need. I have operators looking at me saying, for the first time ever, we have everything we need to accomplish the mission, both in equipment and authority. That matters when you go 37 hours around the world for midnight hammers. That matters when you go downtown, in Venezuela and grab the indicted dictator of a country in the middle of the night in the most fortified location. That matters at the outset of the Iran conflict.

It matters during operation Roughrider, which there's a reason why the Houthis aren't in this fight right now, because they experienced fifty days of the American military under president Trump. That matters, in the Caribbean and our fight against designated terror organizations. This military is unleashed, and morale is at a level that this country has not seen for decades and decades because of the leadership of president Trump and because this war department allows them to get back to basics. No more distractions. No more debris.

It's simple: accountability, training, standards, lethality, and they respond to it. And it's that response that's manifest in highly and historic successful military operations led by our incredible joint force, who are grateful to have a commander in chief that has their back.

02:17:56 - 02:18:54

Speaker 20

I can tell you for that, our nation, myself, and all of us are, incredibly grateful. Secretary Hegseth and General Kane, with your vision and steadfast commitment to our nation's service members, you have both overseen the beginning of a generational transformation of our armed services. This budget request reflects that commitment by building and sustaining our defense industrial base, increasing service member pay, housing, and benefits, robust funding for GMD missile defense and space capabilities, and the emphasis on the peace through strength doctrine outlined in the National Defense Strategy. Based on the defense department's recent track record of successful missions, can you share some examples of military action that illustrate exactly how your leadership and vision for the Department of War is translating the peace through strength doctrine into an operational reality, and what psychological impact that may have on our near-peer adversaries such as China and Russia? And I'd like to get both yours and General Kane's perspective if you can take thirty seconds each.

02:18:54 - 02:19:18

Speaker 3

I'll keep it brief. Reestablishing deterrence is one of the core pillars of what we set out to do after Afghanistan, after October 7, after the war in Ukraine, after Lloyd Austin went AWOL for a week, and no one seemed to care. The world took notice of that. And through the actions we've taken swiftly that I just laid out, the world has recognized that American power is back, and the willingness to utilize it shows that we can achieve peace through strength.

02:19:18 - 02:19:21

Speaker 20

General Kane, in terms of our adversaries?

02:19:21 - 02:19:57

Speaker 5

Yes, sir. You know, when we look at the totality of actions that we've done over the last year, one thing leaps out at me that I think is clearly and unambiguously seen by our adversaries or those that may consider it, and that's our ability to integrate and synchronize a whole range of capabilities that we have in the joint force: information, cyber, you know, deception, jamming, air power, sea power, land power, etcetera. And I think that ability and I'm so proud of our joint force, those young Gentlemen's.

02:19:57 - 02:20:01

Speaker 1

times expire. You're now recognized. General from California, Mr. Carbajal.

02:20:02 - 02:21:23

Speaker 14

Thank you, mister chair, and thank you, general Cain, mister Hexeth, and hers for being here today. I associate myself with the comments of ranking member Smith and Mr. Garamendi, so that I won't repeat a lot of what has been said. Mister Hexeth, I recently realized that we have something in common. I'm also a fan of Pulp Fiction. And no, the movie is not an accurate portrayal of the Bible.

You know what I'm talking about. This president and his administration has claimed to be the most transparent of all time. With that in mind, I'd love to get some straightforward answers today. Some estimates show that the Trump administration's war of choice in Iran is costing taxpayers around $1,000,000,000 every day. In addition to spending taxpayer money on a war they don't want, it is also driving up costs.

The cost of gas, while the cost of living is skyrocketing under this administration's policies. To me, and I assume to the American people, it is unclear why we started this war, how it will end, and what anyone has gained from it. Mister Hegsev, about how much money has been spent on this war to date, and how much more do you anticipate spending?

02:21:25 - 02:21:43

Speaker 3

Well, as our comptroller laid out, the estimate is less than 25,000,000,000 at this point as far as an expenditure. And the question I would ask this committee is, what is it worth to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, considering the radical ambitions of that regime? I mean, almost every member of this dais at some point has said whether it.

02:21:43 - 02:21:47

Speaker 14

was 20. Thank you for your answer. I'll proceed. My next question, either way. Thank you for your answer.

02:21:47 - 02:21:50

Speaker 3

President Trump is the one that's willing to make sure it doesn't happen.

02:21:50 - 02:21:59

Speaker 14

Supposedly, we had taken care of the nuclear capability last time around. And now this war, we're at it again because, obviously, we said we did it, but we did it.

02:22:00 - 02:22:00

Speaker 3

In a way.

02:22:00 - 02:22:01

Speaker 11

that we know. We

02:22:01 - 02:22:39

Speaker 14

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Wait. Wanna reclaim my time. We know that the cost of oil and gas has gone up as a direct result of this war, and the American people are feeling that pain at the pump. In an attempt to alleviate the high price of gas caused directly by this president, he lifted sanctions on Russian oil. The way I see it, this is a massive gift to Putin and Russia's struggling economy.

Mister Hegseth, is there any concern that easing sanctions against Russia will allow Putin to continue funding Russia's illegal war against Ukraine?

02:22:42 - 02:22:58

Speaker 3

Well, we've seen Russia's and Putin's inability to make effective battlefield gains, just like their inability to defend the Maduro regime with the billions of dollars of systems the Russians sent to Venezuela in order to defend him, which were defeated in 15 minutes. So Russia's military capabilities are no match.

02:22:58 - 02:23:03

Speaker 14

or out. And, you know, when either of the sanctions is helping Russia?

02:23:03 - 02:23:06

Speaker 3

We have the best energy team on the planet, at the

02:23:06 - 02:23:08

Speaker 14

It's just a yes or no.

02:23:08 - 02:23:09

Speaker 3

We're gonna make sure that.

02:23:09 - 02:23:11

Speaker 14

This is not déjà vu. It's a simple yes or no.

02:23:11 - 02:23:14

Speaker 3

Understand the energy dominance that this administration has unleashed.

02:23:14 - 02:24:06

Speaker 14

Alright. Well, we'll proceed to my next question. Last week, it was announced that the Department of Defense is no longer requiring service members to get their annual flu shot. Now this is an easy one for you. It's a softball.

Don't screw it up. The rationale was to, and I quote, restore freedom to our joint force. This has been a requirement since 1950, because it is ineffective at preventing the spread of flu among our troops. It's not some new woke requirement, as you like to lean on for much of your rhetoric. This decision is actively making our military less safe and less. Mister Hexeth, at this time, there are plans.

Are there plans to remove the mandatory requirement of other vaccinations, like measles, mumps, and polio?

02:24:08 - 02:24:14

Speaker 3

We made very clear in our announcement that it applies to service members having a choice as it pertains to the flu vaccine.

02:24:17 - 02:24:18

Speaker 14

Don't you think that's a little reckless?

02:24:21 - 02:24:39

Speaker 3

No. I think allowing well-informed Americans who serve our country to make a choice is not reckless. And commanders will still have latitude, say, for a submarine or something else to make a decision for a unit about whether it could be mandatory in a particular circumstance. But, overall, our troops have earned the right to be able to choose something like that related to their health.

02:24:41 - 02:24:54

Speaker 14

Mister Hexeth, I stand by what I said last time you were here. You were incompetent then, you're incompetent now, and you're the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to incompetence. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

02:24:54 - 02:24:59

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. You're not ready. Than that, doing good. Thank you. Mississippi, Mr. Killey.

02:25:00 - 02:25:27

Speaker 21

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary, don't you think it was extremely reckless to mandate COVID vaccines for the healthiest and most unlikely to get COVID and kick them out of the service if they did not comply with a, although legal, crazy order from the previous administration? Don't you think it was reckless to require that those soldiers, marines, and sailors had to take that COVID vaccine?

02:25:28 - 02:25:52

Speaker 3

Congressman, thank you for the question. Not only do I think it was reckless, but we point out the nature of the emergency and lack of actual data on it. We think it may not have been legal. And as a result, we're working very hard to ensure that any service member who is pushed out is brought back in. If they were forcibly pushed out with back pay and rank and everything that comes with it, those soldiers and troops of conscience who had to make that choice.

02:25:52 - 02:25:52

Speaker 21

Very good.

02:25:52 - 02:25:53

Speaker 8

Think of the.

02:25:53 - 02:25:54

Speaker 3

Best troops in our force.

02:25:54 - 02:27:07

Speaker 21

Listen. I'm grateful that we have two great National Guardsmen sitting at that table today. As a longtime serving guardsman who just retired, I'm so proud of y'all and what you mean to our total force. It's not the national guard. It's not a reserve.

It's not an army. It's not a navy. It is a total force, and thank y'all for recognizing that. I just wanna go back to some of the Iran stuff. I don't know.

Maybe they're in a different world than I'm living in, but from where I live since 1979, Iran has been at war with the United States, although we refuse to acknowledge it. Whether that's Hezbollah, whether that's the Houthis, whether that is Hamas, whether that is trying to build nuclear weapons, exporting terror everywhere. I know for a fact when I was in Iraq, both tours, that EFPs made by Iranians killed our troops. I know for a fact that many of the munitions, I know for a fact many of the militias in Iran that were Shiabais were there to attack Americans at their willing knowledge of the Iranian government. Do you agree they've been at war with us and are still at war with us and the world since 1979?

02:27:08 - 02:28:10

Speaker 3

Of course. For 47 years from Beirut to Baghdad, Iran has sought the most dangerous weapons in the world to try to achieve death to America. And if they were to get the most dangerous weapon in the world, a nuclear weapon, they would most certainly use it, which is why this is at the level of seriousness that President Trump was willing to address it. And that's what I think so many in this body misrepresent. North Korea is the lesson.

Everybody thought North Korea shouldn't have a weapon. Under the Clinton administration, they gathered so many ballistic missiles that their ballistic missile shield allowed them to blackmail the region and the world to say, we're gonna get a nuke, and you can't do anything about it. Under this administration, them weakened by the twelve-day war and what happened with midnight hammer, president made a bold choice on behalf of the American people to say, never will Iran, with their view of death to America and death to Israel, have a nuclear weapon? Because if they have it, they'll use it. And he's taken that bold action in a way I think the American people, when they understand the nature of that threat, and they do, they support it.

02:28:11 - 02:28:32

Speaker 21

Chairman Kane, wow. I've been around a long time. Can any other military in the history of the world pull off Venezuela, Midnight Hammer, an epic fury, the way that our great warriors that defend and project power for our nation? Are you aware of any other nation in the history of the world that could have done that?

02:28:32 - 02:29:11

Speaker 5

I'm not sure. And I remain very proud of the joint force. I'll also say we're a learning organization, and we're gonna continue to look at the things that go right in any operations that we're tasked to do, and we're gonna get better every day. So we do not want to sit on the successes and assume future successes. We owe it to the nation, and to the citizens, to constantly improve no matter how well something goes.

So I'm incredibly proud of the horse. That said, I'm even more proud when they come back after that. They go into a team room, and they start debriefing to make sure that we do it better next time, whatever it may be.

02:29:11 - 02:29:56

Speaker 21

And my final point, I just wanna talk about what a stroke of genius it was, greater than I would have thought, to blockade the ports of Iran. And that blow economically to their entire economy and to their leadership and everything else is gonna take a little bit of time to play out. But that was so smart because it is more effective than any bombs, and those bombs were effective in Midnight Hammer. They continue to be. But until we kill their will to create a nuclear weapon, they will always be a nuclear threat, because they've advanced far enough along.

But that blockade was so important. And it amazes me now we're crying about high gas prices when they were $2 a gallon more just four years ago or five years ago under the previous administration. With that, I yield back.

02:29:56 - 02:30:00

Speaker 1

Gentleman yields back. You're now recognizing the gentleman from California, Mr. Connor.

02:30:00 - 02:30:26

Speaker 4

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Hegsett, tomorrow is two months since the war began. You've testified that it was 25,000,000,000 in cost in terms of the munitions we used and what we paid for it. But when you add to that the damage that was done to our bases and today's dollars for buying replacement munitions and replacement aircraft, what has the total cost been over the last 60 days?

02:30:28 - 02:30:31

Speaker 3

That number right now reflects the total cost that we're seeing.

02:30:31 - 02:30:37

Speaker 4

Including buying in today's dollars the new weapons and replacements, and including the damage there? That's your test.

02:30:37 - 02:30:41

Speaker 3

If there's adjustments to that, I would defer to the comptroller on that.

02:30:41 - 02:30:49

Speaker 4

And how much are you seeing in terms of are you asking in terms of supplemental funding just for the Iran mission from this committee?

02:30:49 - 02:30:56

Speaker 3

If and when a supplemental is submitted, Uh-huh. How much? The majority of it would not just be for.

02:30:56 - 02:30:58

Speaker 4

an extreme bulk for Iran.

02:30:58 - 02:31:01

Speaker 3

Munitions related to the entirety of what you want to get done.

02:31:01 - 02:31:04

Speaker 4

The number, what would you submit? What.

02:31:04 - 02:31:11

Speaker 3

It would be within the on Iran, it would be less than 25,000,000,000, but there's a lot more we would ask for beyond this. Iran. Saying it's 25,000,000,000.

02:31:11 - 02:31:12

Speaker 4

Okay. I would just if.

02:31:12 - 02:31:27

Speaker 4

Come back and wanna revise those numbers, because all the experts are disagreeing with you when it comes to today's dollars and damage, but you can revise it. How much did it cost American taxpayers in terms of the strike on the Iranian school where kids were killed? Do you have that number in terms of the missiles?

02:31:27 - 02:31:38

Speaker 3

used? As I've said, that unfortunate situation remains under investigation. We don't know how much taxation costs. Tie a cost to that, to anything.

02:31:38 - 02:31:40

Speaker 4

It's a reasonable question.

02:31:40 - 02:31:40

Speaker 19

No.

02:31:40 - 02:31:50

Speaker 4

Sir. I mean, our taxpayer money was going there. Do you know how much it will cost Americans in terms of their increased cost in gas and food over the next year because of the Iran war?

02:31:52 - 02:31:55

Speaker 3

I would simply ask you what the cost is of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

02:31:56 - 02:31:57

Speaker 4

Give you that opportunity.

02:31:57 - 02:32:01

Speaker 3

Simply ask you what the yeah. I'm questions about domestic things. I'm not.

02:32:01 - 02:32:07

Speaker 4

You're asking, you're saying it's a gotcha question to ask what it's gonna be in terms of the increase. Why won't you answer?

02:32:07 - 02:32:09

Speaker 3

What it costs to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb?

02:32:09 - 02:32:11

Speaker 4

That, sir. But let me. What would it cost?

02:32:11 - 02:32:14

Speaker 3

What would you pay to ensure Iran doesn't get a nuclear bomb?

02:32:14 - 02:32:14

Speaker 4

Do you?

02:32:14 - 02:32:15

Speaker 3

What would you pay?

02:32:15 - 02:32:22

Speaker 4

I reclaim my time. Do you not know? You had no one do the analysis of what the increased cost of gas and food on the American people is gonna be?

02:32:22 - 02:32:26

Speaker 3

What is the cost? Iran holding that strategic issue with nuclear weapons.

02:32:26 - 02:32:51

Speaker 4

It's $631,000,000,000, which means it's an increase of $5,000 a year for American households. Now let me give you this point. You're saying that your operation is preventing a nuclear Iran. Will you acknowledge that there is an economic cost to the American people for doing what you believe is necessary to make Iran denuclearized? Will you acknowledge the economic cost?

02:32:52 - 02:33:00

Speaker 3

We have an incredible economic team that's managing this better than yeah. But what the previous administration did for our economy. What the previous administration did for.

02:33:00 - 02:33:04

Speaker 4

The inflation. Know what, you know what's upsetting? The administration did for COVID.

02:33:04 - 02:33:06

Speaker 3

And you're gonna elect for this administration to.

02:33:06 - 02:33:49

Speaker 4

See about the economy. You know what is upsetting? Incredible. You didn't even do the analysis on how much it's costing the American people. It's one thing if you said, okay.

Cost the American people $5,000, but we think it's worth it. That's what we've done in World War Two and other wars. Here's what it costs. You gotta pay for it. You don't even know what the average American is paying.

You don't know what we paid in terms of the missiles that hit the Iranian school. You don't know what we're paying in terms of gas. You don't know what we're paying in terms of food. Your 25,000,000,000 number is totally off. It's the incompetence.

It's incompetence. Let me ask you this. Certainly, maybe here we'll find an agreement. There were still 440 pounds of low enriched uranium, correct, when President Obama signed the JCPOA. Is that accurate?

02:33:50 - 02:33:52

Speaker 3

The amounts and types are classified.

02:33:53 - 02:34:02

Speaker 4

Okay. Will you acknowledge that there were 970 pounds of uranium enriched after Trump tore up the JCPOA?

02:34:03 - 02:34:06

Speaker 3

The JCPOA was a terrible deal that allowed her on a path to.

02:34:06 - 02:34:26

Speaker 4

A nuclear bomb. You deal with vague platitudes. I'm just asking you about numbers. Like, you don't know what gas costs. You don't know what food costs.

You don't know what the operation costs. You know, I get soundbites, but how about numbers? Do you know how much the enriched uranium was after you ripped up the JCPOA?

02:34:26 - 02:34:35

Speaker 3

I'll give you a number. I know that, as was stated early on, the price of gas is twice as expensive in California, your home state, as anywhere else in the country because of the horrible policies your state pursued.

02:34:35 - 02:35:00

Speaker 4

You know what? It used to be that that type of stuff worked, and then you started to lose the people that you campaigned you wanted to be for because you said you won't get us into bad wars. You said you wouldn't bring down the prices. You know what I'm sad for? I'm sad for all the people who voted for Trump.

I'm sad for them because you betrayed them. You betrayed a lot of the MAGA base. And you know who knows that? JD Vance knows that.

02:35:00 - 02:35:05

Speaker 1

That's why I'm sorry. Recognize this gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Bacon.

02:35:05 - 02:37:25

Speaker 22

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all three of you for being here today. It's a real privilege to be part of this committee. We are the most bipartisan committee out of 20 in Congress. We have a tradition of voting on NDAAs with large majorities year after year.

And support not to be a Republican first in here or a Democrat first. We're Americans trying to ensure that our country is well funded. And in that spirit, I compliment the operations in Iran. I served 30 years in the air force. We were attacked repeatedly by proxy groups in Iran.

On every deployment I was on, they were the number one threat where I was located. I've lost friends, like at Cobar Towers. Iran with a nuclear weapon would have been an existential threat to our country. And if they had a missile that could hit New York, they would have done it. They would have done it 2 months ago.

So I support our operations there. I think it was good that we got Maduro out. You know, I would say it would be important to get the representative government that duly won their election there, and not good to replace one dictator with another dictator, but Maduro was bad for their country. I support our 5% GDP spending. There's no way to modernize our nuclear force, sixth generation fighters, take care of our minimum uniform without being up 5% of GDP.

But also in the spirit, I share a bipartisan concern of the firings that we've seen at the Pentagon for the six service chiefs. For example, the Coast Guard, we had a huge bipartisan adjoining here that had confidence in the army chief of staff and the secretary of navy. I would just point out it may be constitutionally right. You have the constitution's right to do these things, but it doesn't make it right or wise. Now my first question is dealing with the housing allowance.

Something I've been working on for the last two or three years. Our housing allowance is underpaying people in certain areas, and the department, and it hasn't started under this administration. It's been going on for a while. They take out 5% of the housing allowance. Send it to other needs.

But that means we're underpaying our servicemen and women living off base by 5%. So we tried to fix it with a $2,900,000,000 line item to fix the housing allowance. That money was moved. So I'll just, mister secretary, could you tell us how we're gonna fix this? Because we have a shortfall in housing allowance, and we tried to fix it out of here, I'd like to get it fixed.

02:37:27 - 02:38:18

Speaker 3

Congressman, I agree with you. I think that is precisely the kind of quality of life issue that's been ignored time and again. Oftentimes, with good intentions of trying to do some trade-off with something else. But I mentioned the 7% pay increase. That's just for junior enlisted.

It's 6% from, you know, 6 to 03, and it's 5% from 04 all the way up. It's but closing that gap, TRICARE reimbursement's a big one we're gonna look at well. If we reimburse TRICARE lower than Medicare, then the net no one wants to take TRICARE, and now you don't have a real network for service members. So those places where we pinched pennies to try to eke out additional budget space have really hurt the service members. So we're I I'm committed to working with you on that to close that gap and ensure that folks can live where they are asked to serve. Thank you.

Because they can afford the housing.

02:38:18 - 02:39:05

Speaker 22

Okay. I think this has already been addressed to a degree, but I just wanna emphasize we did put $400,000,000 in for Ukraine. I asked you to execute it. It's important for most of us in here. It has overwhelming support.

Also, I'm the chair of the Baltic Security Caucus, and we've put money in for the Baltic Security Initiative. These people love America. They love freedom more than anywhere I've ever been, and they need us. They're on the front lines with Russia. Mike, I have a question for the chairman.

So we did twenty-nine years of the nuclear alert, airborne alert, the looking glass mission. In 1991, we turned that off because the Cold War turned in our favor. I think we're back to where we were. Russia's a threat. China's building a nuclear force to match ours.

I think we need a look.

02:39:06 - 02:39:15

Speaker 1

and restore that nuclear command and control survivability that gives us deterrence. Russia, China needs to know no matter what they do, we can launch those 400.

02:39:15 - 02:39:21

Speaker 22

ICBMs. What's your vision for the looking glass tour, the follow on?

02:39:21 - 02:39:51

Speaker 5

Well, sir, as you know, right now, we're looking at all three legs of the nuclear triad to make sure that most critical back stop on our nation's most important day is reliable, redundant and workable. And so we'll take a look at that. I know the team already deepened the analysis on all the from NC3 to the end state. But what I want you to know is the most important thing is the ability to execute if we had to, and we can.

02:39:52 - 02:39:54

Speaker 22

You know, for 29 years, we had a plane airborne.

02:39:54 - 02:39:54

Speaker 23

with the

02:39:54 - 02:40:03

Speaker 22

Federal on board, and it gave the Pentagon, the White House, Stratcom the assurance that we had a backup. I think we're back to the future.

02:40:03 - 02:40:04

Speaker 5

And I appreciate.

02:40:04 - 02:40:04

Speaker 22

You look at it.

02:40:04 - 02:40:06

Speaker 5

I just flew with them, and they were doing great.

02:40:06 - 02:40:07

Speaker 1

And as time expired.

02:40:07 - 02:40:08

Speaker 22

Mister chairman,

02:40:08 - 02:40:10

Speaker 1

Recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mister Keating.

02:40:10 - 02:45:03

Speaker 24

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna talk briefly about the current US doctrine conduct of the administration in a particular event and a series of events, actually. As everybody in the dais, in the witness table, is aware, the Department of Defense Law of War manual specifies that any order to kill shipwrecked persons in an illegal order would constitute a war crime. It isn't suggested there's a specific example to show a clear cut example of what this entails in our own manual. With that in mind, let's look back a few weeks ago, when a fishing crew ended a long day of hard fishing, scoring a full stock of albacore and swordfish on board.

Without any warning or expectation, this small Ecuadorian fishing vessel operating about 200 nautical miles off the Galapagos Islands was militarily engaged by US forces. It was hit once, then it was hit again. Not a warning shot, not an interdiction, two drone strikes. Survivors describe chaos and severe injuries. Our US forces then handcuffed the crew at gunpoint, placed black hoods over their heads, seized and scrubbed their devices, and held them for days.

Ultimately, the crew was released given there was no evidence, no evidence to support any knockoff activity or any charges that may be against them. So, to recap, we struck a vessel. We struck it again, set fire to it as it was sinking. And as public reports, they even drank their beer. We detained the survivors, and then we let them go.

This should be eye-opening. Let's go to another example, the double tap or two strike attack that took place on September 2 in the Caribbean. A vessel was struck, disabled, and then struck again, killing all but two survivors that were left clinging to the wreckage. And this is the thing. We know this happened.

We know how it happened, and the defense department still refuses to release the follow-up video of the killing of the shipwrecked survivors, even though they released the initial one to the public in major news networks worldwide. No difference in sources and methods in the two videos, but still not released to the public. Of course, the backlash was severe at the time, and perhaps it's being forgotten. An impracticable, but a noble display of character from this administration, fingers were pointed at one another as everyone scurried to cover. The fantastic acknowledgement that this was an issue potentially violating international law.

Now I've reviewed what's been available, the phony rationale, that these attacks are about trafficking, when we know fentanyl comes from China, India, through Mexico. Then the baseless argument that this was about narco-terrorism. You know, I don't believe a word of it. This was to create leverage for regime change in Venezuela. And now the president acknowledged that it was about oil.

Beyond the simple need for justice and exercising American values, it's important for us to discuss what the US belligerence on the world stage means to our security, our ability to marshal cooperation with our allies, and most importantly, not to normalize these actions that could endanger the lives of our own service members put in similar peril. Let me be clear about one thing. Whether it's these particular strikes discussed here, the one that killed 11 others off the coast of Venezuela, whether it's the 178 other killings, with each of these extrajudicial killings, the administration is pirating American values. We'll continue to investigate this. We will.

It'll come forward in the future. Some days, that second video will be released, but we've got to stop also using our precious resources that are being attacked so heavily all over the world on actions that hurt our military. They hurt our military, and they hurt our standing internationally, and they're hurting our standing here at home. I hope that we can move forward. Hope we're gonna review whether these are justified, because I found no justification.

We were given classified information on the second strike. I can't discuss it, but I must tell you, it's the most convoluted bullshit I ever heard in my life. This should be public. This is our honour. This is what makes American a difference maker.

This is what we're.

02:45:03 - 02:45:06

Speaker 3

proud array of false accusations.

02:45:06 - 02:45:08

Speaker 24

And I yield back. Time.

02:45:08 - 02:45:13

Speaker 1

Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes a gentleman from Texas, Dr. Jackson.

02:45:13 - 02:47:25

Speaker 25

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Hegseth and General Kane and Mister Hurst for your bold leadership and for your time today. I really appreciate it. I can't tell you how awesome this hearing is today. It's fantastic.

After someone who's set up here for four years during the last administration, this is a great day. Despite some of the crazy and disrespectful comments from some in this room, the Department of War is back. Today is a win because we are discussing American power and dominance, national security, and making America great again. There may be differences in how we go about that, but at least we are not wasting all of our time talking about how to restructure the Department of War into a social experiment that appeases the far-left woke agenda that existed for the last four years. Thank God those four years of the disastrous Biden administration are done.

On behalf of someone who served 25 years on active duty and almost everyone I know currently serving in uniform, thank you, mister secretary, for saving the department. Okay. My question. The US special operations command budget has been relatively flat over the past decade, failing to keep pace with inflation, and reducing the command's purchasing power by 14%. I was disappointed to see that SOCOM's FY 27 budget request was only $223,000,000 higher than last year's enacted level, dropping even further from an already less than 2% to now just above 1% of the department's overall budget.

All of this comes despite being increasingly asked to do more. From 2023 to 2025, there was a 35% increase in combat and command demand for soft capabilities. And last year alone, SOCOM was unable to satisfy roughly 70 mission-specific requests due to resource and capacity restraints. Secretary Hegseth, I have appreciated the opportunity to meet with members of your team and leaders like ASW Solike Anderson and SOCOM commander Admiral Bradley as we work to grow the SOCOM top line for future fiscal years. Can you discuss the critical role soft plays in underpinning deterrence?

And do you agree with the urgent need to grow the SOCOM budget accordingly?

02:47:27 - 02:48:17

Speaker 3

Well, congressman, thank you for your words, and I wholeheartedly agree. When you look at the burden that SOCOM shoulders on behalf of the joint force, it's incredible, and it's significant. And so many of the things we have accomplished would not have been possible without the incredible leadership of Admiral Bradley, Braga, and others inside that community, and what they do, I recognize your desire for increased funding beyond what is in FY '27. We have and will continue to look at that. That needs to happen.

I think some of the other things inside the budget, drones, quality of life, there will be things that are applied to that community even more so, we believe, to ensure that they're taken care of properly. And then there's facility questions that are outstanding also, which we're examining. So we're committed, and we want to work with you. Where we've missed something, we need to get it right because they are, at the front lines.

02:48:17 - 02:49:24

Speaker 25

Thank you. That leads into my next question. I just wanna ask this real quick. But this year's budget request of 54,600,000,000 for the defense autonomous warfare group is a vital step to unleash American drone dominance and rapidly integrate autonomous and unmanned systems across the joint force, and we've talked about that a little bit here. However, my concern is only 1,000,000,000 of this proposed funding is included in the base request, with the remaining 53,600,000,000 dependent on future reconciliation package.

While I understand the flexibility this approach provides, I remain concerned about the potential gaps created if such a package fails to occur or if funding for the dog is not included in future budget requests. To and, like you said, I'm hoping that SOCOM is a big part of this. But to avoid critical capability gaps, how's the department planning to fully fund DAWG at the $5,454,600,000,000 dollars if reconciliation stalls or if the department does the department intend to transition funds for autonomous requirements into the base budget for future years? And, additionally, as you mentioned, how will the department ensure SOCOM receives and executes portions of this funding to meet future mission requirements?

02:49:25 - 02:49:52

Speaker 3

It's the right question, and we plan to work hand in glove with this committee, with OMB, with the White House to ensure that the reconciliation package is properly tailored and timed so that it is passed, so that critical money gets there. So we're not looking to FY '28 or FY '29 because we need those capabilities right now, which is why I appreciate the chairman's opening question about reconciliation. It is a critical vehicle in this calendar year to ensure this department is fully funded to meet the threats of the future.

02:49:52 - 02:49:58

Speaker 25

Well, thank you. Once again, I think you guys are doing an incredible job. I appreciate your leadership, and thank you for your time today. I yield back, Mr. Chair.

02:49:58 - 02:50:02

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. Chair, I recognize a gentle lady from Pennsylvania, Miss Houlihan.

02:50:02 - 02:52:13

Speaker 26

Thank you, mister chair, and I appreciate you gentlemen for being here today and for the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation with each of you. I have many questions and, unfortunately, need to start with some that disturb me, Mister Secretary, from your opening remarks. In your opening remarks, mister secretary, you reserved more words and more time and more vitriol to condemn Democrats than you did for she and for Putin combined. It's pretty telling to me that you decided to use your words and your time for that. It turns out that Democrats, even Democrats in Congress, are patriots as well.

We serve in our uniform services. We admire and love our uniformed services, and we love our country just as much as Republicans do. In fact, in this body, I and Representative Bacon, who you just spoke to, led the junior enlisted pay raises that you now sit there and take credit for. We led the closing of the BAH, which then you ended up poaching and using for other things. This body led and authorized Ukrainian funding that is now being withheld.

You also, in your opening remarks, strangely admonished us here for not being patient with the results of your two-month war. A war of your suggestion to this president, a war of your choice. A war you executed without congressional consultation. And so it shouldn't be shocking, sir, mister secretary, that we have questions. Indeed, it's constitutionally our right to do so.

So to be clear, despite a brilliant performance by our men and women in uniform, despite thousands of tactical successes, Iran still has nuclear material, still has air defenses, still has small boats, and still has the Strait. So despite the fact that your recent comments indicate that operations appear to be finished, it's clear there is more work that needs to be done. As mentioned, today is indeed 60 days. So, mister secretary, how many more months, just order of magnitude, do you think that you're going to need to be able to conclude operations successfully? And how many more billions of dollars do you think you're going to ask this body for?

02:52:15 - 02:52:19

Speaker 3

Well, as you know, and as the president has stated, you would never tell your adversary.

02:52:19 - 02:52:21

Speaker 26

Especially once you, that is the line that you always.

02:52:21 - 02:52:24

Speaker 3

Especially once you decimated their military, and you controlled.

02:52:24 - 02:52:25

Speaker 19

Their trade.

02:52:25 - 02:52:26

Speaker 26

Four x.

02:52:26 - 02:52:28

Speaker 3

How long you would be committed to the mission?

02:52:28 - 02:52:51

Speaker 26

And the next thing that you mentioned in your opening remarks, Mister Smith, military, is that you called on, which astounded me, examples of the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, and the Vietnam war. Those are stunning examples to me of something that didn't go our way. We had the opportunity to execute on those wars quite well, but we didn't accomplish any mission, in my opinion. And I think you would agree on that as well.

02:52:51 - 02:52:54

Speaker 3

My point is this effort is not those efforts.

02:52:54 - 02:52:58

Speaker 26

That's exactly it. Is this war shaping up to be that war? Because it has anything.

02:52:58 - 02:53:04

Speaker 3

to with Democrats. We got in those wars who were naysayers from the beginning, undermining the progress of

02:53:04 - 02:53:08

Speaker 26

The conversation is about the country and the nation, and not about parties.

02:53:09 - 02:53:12

Speaker 3

This the Democrat party wanted to socially engineer the department.

02:53:12 - 02:53:12

Speaker 1

of war.

02:53:12 - 02:53:17

Speaker 3

We've had to undo that and get it to a point where it's patriotic, not party power. Clearly, you're not.

02:53:17 - 02:53:34

Speaker 26

Able let them a conversation. So I will move on to, and I'm going to reclaim my time. General George, let's talk about a guy who's a patriot. Somebody who every single person here in this diocese, and down there in that audience, and out there in this world has huge admiration for. Why did he get fired?

02:53:36 - 02:53:43

Speaker 3

Well, as with any moves we make with general officers, first of all, I thank them for their service, and ultimately.

02:53:43 - 02:53:47

Speaker 26

My impression is you thanked him by a text or a phone call. You didn't even do it to his face.

02:53:49 - 02:54:07

Speaker 3

Out of respect for these officers, we never talk about the nature of their removal, but every one of them, including myself, knows that they served. Ultimately, out of respect to these officers, we don't reveal it. However, I will note, it's very difficult to change the culture of a department that was destroyed by the wrong perspectives. You said General George.

02:54:07 - 02:54:08

Speaker 26

Destroyed a culture?

02:54:09 - 02:54:15

Speaker 3

There are many we've gotten rid of many general officers in this administration because we need new leadership.

02:54:15 - 02:54:19

Speaker 26

You have no way of explaining why you fired one of the most decorated and remarkable men who's.

02:54:19 - 02:54:21

Speaker 3

That's asked do.

02:54:21 - 02:54:45

Speaker 26

And so your answer is a very immature way of responding to my request. My next question has to do with my remaining time about the fact that there apparently are orders that you've recently given to the Navy to detail officers to command billets in special operations where they, the people who you're detailing, have already received bad performance reviews. They've received negative fitness reports. Is there a truth to that statement, sir?

02:54:45 - 02:54:47

Speaker 3

I'm not aware of what you're referring to.

02:54:47 - 02:54:54

Speaker 26

Have you ever ordered a navy to add officers who never screened for special operations major command to the promotion list for flag officer?

02:54:55 - 02:54:57

Speaker 3

I'm not aware of what you're referring to.

02:54:57 - 02:55:00

Speaker 26

Alright. I'll take that for no. Thank you. I yield.

02:55:00 - 02:55:17

Speaker 1

Generally, he yields back. For everybody's situational awareness, it's my plan at 01:00, or approximately 01:00, to recess for about ten minutes to give the witnesses a chance to stretch their legs and visit the restroom if necessary. But with that, we will now go to the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Jimenez.

02:55:17 - 02:55:29

Speaker 27

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, mister secretary, are you aware that I ran either through our intelligence or they themselves said they had about 500 kilograms of enriched uranium up to about 60%?

02:55:35 - 02:55:40

Speaker 3

We're aware of what they have or what they believe they have and what we know they have, but all of that is classified.

02:55:40 - 02:55:49

Speaker 27

Fair enough. And if indeed they had 500 kilograms of your enriching reign, how many how long would it take to take it to weapons grade?

02:55:51 - 02:55:55

Speaker 3

Quickly enough that it's a serious national security problem for the United States.

02:55:55 - 02:55:55

Speaker 8

If I

02:55:55 - 02:55:59

Speaker 27

Said if I said days or a few weeks, would that be inaccurate?

02:56:00 - 02:56:01

Speaker 3

You might be somewhere in the ballpark.

02:56:01 - 02:56:37

Speaker 27

Okay. Thank you. Actually, that's you can just get that from ChatGTP. It'll give it to you. Okay?

So, it's not that classified. Alright? Would you say that our primary mission in this war is to deny Iran the capability to develop a nuclear weapon? Yes. And do you say that a regime that's capable of killing 35,000 of its own people within a two-day period, are they capable, if they had the delivery systems, to carry out their threat to destroy Israel and also to harm the United States of America?

02:56:38 - 02:57:00

Speaker 3

Any regime willing to kill 35,000, and we think it might be more, 45,000 of their own citizens in cold blood, would most certainly be willing to use the most dangerous weapon in the world, especially as history teaches us. When a nation says they will do something, you ought to listen. And when they chant death to America or death to Israel, if they have got that nuclear weapon, history tells us they might use it.

02:57:00 - 02:57:32

Speaker 27

Well, Hitler said he was going to kill the Jewish, and he was gonna try to eliminate the Jewish population and Jews from the face of the world. Nobody really believes him, but he's really tried to do it. So when somebody tells me for 47 years that they wanna kill us, I think I'm gonna take him at his word. And so would you also agree that a now another goal of ours is to make sure that Iran never blockades the Strait Of Hormuz, never has control the Strait Of Hormuz. Would that be an objective of ours?

02:57:33 - 02:57:57

Speaker 3

What they're doing right now is effectively piracy. It's terrorism. It's threatening international shipping. And our blockade is signaling to the world that we actually control that strait. And I would ask this committee, what would this effort look like if Iran had nuclear weapons?

Imagine if Iran had nuclear capabilities, what they would do to wield over any advantage they have from proxies, to funding international terrorism.

02:57:57 - 02:58:30

Speaker 27

Mister secretary, also, not only would they do that, but imagine if we had not become energy independent. Under the previous administration, they were hampering our ability to be energy independent, under the guise of, you know, the Green New Deal, which is insanity, by the way. I'm gonna go back a little bit in history. We were bombed, Pearl Harbor was bombed on 12/07/1941. Do you know how long it took for the United States to have its first major victory in World War two?

On in the Pacific theater.

02:58:31 - 02:58:32

Speaker 3

Number of years.

02:58:32 - 02:59:06

Speaker 27

No. It was actually six months. It was the battle of Midway. Alright? It was a turning point of World War two.

Could you imagine if we had had the same Democrats asking the then secretary of war? Alright? Gee, it's been 2 months. Okay? And we haven't won this war yet, back then.

We didn't even win a major battle for six months. Your job, the job of the military, what you've done in the first two months is extraordinary. And so, again, for my one or a couple of final questions. Do you know how much money we spent on Ukraine?

02:59:08 - 02:59:11

Speaker 3

Helping Ukraine? Under the previous administration?

02:59:11 - 02:59:12

Speaker 27

No. Right now. Up to now.

02:59:12 - 02:59:14

Speaker 3

Up to upwards of 300,000,000,000, 300.

02:59:15 - 03:00:17

Speaker 27

You're probably right about 300,000,000,000. And yet I don't hear anything about, you know, gee, how much money have we spent on Ukraine from the other side? The difference between them and me is this. I support the United States and their efforts to help Ukraine against a dictatorial, aggressive power like Russia, which is our second greatest adversary. But I also support our efforts to make sure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.

And so you'll always have my support, and I'm pretty consistent in that. I also support our efforts in what we did in Venezuela. We still have to go a little bit further because the remnants of that regime are still there, and we need to provide freedom for the people of Venezuela. And, also, one thing, for me, I guess, what I'm looking for in this war with Iran is to make sure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon, that we have established an inspection protocol to make sure they never get a nuclear weapon, and that we control the strait, and they never can control the strait.

03:00:17 - 03:00:20

Speaker 1

Time's expired, chairman. I recognize you. From Colorado, Mr. Crow.

03:00:21 - 03:00:29

Speaker 28

Thank you, chairman. Mister secretary, I wanna go in a little bit different direction. Timothy Parlatory served as your private attorney. Correct?

03:00:32 - 03:00:32

Speaker 3

Correct.

03:00:33 - 03:00:39

Speaker 28

And mister Parlatoli Parlatori also served as private attorney for president Trump's campaign. Correct?

03:00:40 - 03:00:44

Speaker 3

I'm not privy to every professional position that he's held.

03:00:44 - 03:00:50

Speaker 28

Well, I'll help you out. He did. And you appointed Mister Parlatory as your senior adviser. Correct?

03:00:52 - 03:00:55

Speaker 3

He does reserve duty on behalf of the Navy.

03:00:55 - 03:00:58

Speaker 28

His title is senior adviser. You gave him that title. Correct?

03:00:58 - 03:01:01

Speaker 3

And I would count him as very much an adviser of mine.

03:01:01 - 03:01:04

Speaker 28

Yep. He travels with you. Correct?

03:01:04 - 03:01:08

Speaker 3

Tim Parlatore has been a long-term friend. He's a great patriot.

03:01:08 - 03:01:09

Speaker 28

He travels with you. That's not.

03:01:09 - 03:01:09

Speaker 22

what I

03:01:09 - 03:01:18

Speaker 28

asked every claim by time. He travels with you. He travels with you, doesn't he? Correct? There's public Instagram that shows this.

Just say yes.

03:01:18 - 03:01:19

Speaker 3

Yes. Of course.

03:01:19 - 03:01:22

Speaker 28

Okay. He sits in meetings with you and advises you, doesn't he?

03:01:25 - 03:01:27

Speaker 3

He sits in some meetings on occasion.

03:01:27 - 03:01:43

Speaker 28

He maintains a desk in an office in the Pentagon. Does he not? I'd have to check. You don't know? It's a big pentagon.

You directly commissioned Mister Parlatory in the naval reserve as a navy commander in March 2025. Did you not?

03:01:44 - 03:01:46

Speaker 3

I was very proud to do so.

03:01:46 - 03:01:56

Speaker 28

And when you did, because he's a Navy Reserve officer, he didn't have to go through the PPO process, the White House Presidential Personnel Office. Right? He wasn't vetted by a White House PO.

03:01:57 - 03:01:59

Speaker 3

Uniford service members, don't get vetted.

03:01:59 - 03:01:59

Speaker 14

by The

03:01:59 - 03:02:08

Speaker 28

Answer is yes. He didn't have to be vetted by the White House PPO. He didn't go through the senate confirmation process either, did he? The answer is no.

03:02:09 - 03:02:11

Speaker 3

I don't know what you're getting at, but Tim is a fantastic.

03:02:11 - 03:02:27

Speaker 28

You what I'm getting to. The answer is no. Right? He does great work. Okay.

He didn't maintain a security clearance when you appointed him as special adviser. Is that right? I'd have to check. You don't know?

03:02:28 - 03:02:33

Speaker 3

I mean, anybody that has access to sensitive material is gonna have the appropriate clearance.

03:02:33 - 03:02:36

Speaker 28

Okay. So when you appointed him as special adviser, he had a security clearance?

03:02:38 - 03:02:40

Speaker 3

I don't think you're trying to piece together a time. No.

03:02:40 - 03:02:44

Speaker 28

I'm asking a simple question. One of your special, most sensitive advisers. Did he have a security clearance? You're playing.

03:02:44 - 03:02:49

Speaker 3

A gotcha game like you do on TV and everywhere else. You're trying to thread together details that.

03:02:49 - 03:03:05

Speaker 28

Clearly, you're concerned. Clearly, you're concerned about my line of questioning, aren't you, mister secretary? Because you know where it's going, don't you? I think you do. So does Mister Parlatory represent foreign governments?

He has a private law practice. Does he not?

03:03:07 - 03:03:12

Speaker 3

From what I understand of his law practice, he does a lot of great work for service members in the military and others.

03:03:12 - 03:03:17

Speaker 28

He maintains a private law practice. Does he represent foreign governments or foreign persons in that private law practice?

03:03:17 - 03:03:19

Speaker 3

I don't know.

03:03:19 - 03:03:30

Speaker 28

You don't know? Somebody who's sitting in your meetings, a special adviser, you don't know. Does he represent any senior officers who are currently under consideration for promotion by you or your office?

03:03:32 - 03:03:35

Speaker 3

The only pay person that makes determinations about senior officers is me.

03:03:36 - 03:03:42

Speaker 28

They have answered the question. Does he represent senior officers who are under consideration for promotion by you?

03:03:42 - 03:03:46

Speaker 3

No. I'm the one that makes decisions about choosing. Does he represent them?

03:03:46 - 03:03:48

Speaker 28

Mister Secretary? Does he represent them?

03:03:48 - 03:03:51

Speaker 3

Represent anyone. He's a legal adviser and always has me.

03:03:51 - 03:03:52

Speaker 28

But he has clients. Does he not?

03:03:52 - 03:03:57

Speaker 3

He's a legal adviser to me on reserve duty, and he always has been, and he does a fantastic job.

03:03:57 - 03:04:04

Speaker 28

Mister was removed, you're taking my time. Is it true that Mister Parlatry was removed from an investigation by the White House last year?

03:04:04 - 03:04:08

Speaker 3

I don't know what you're referring to, but not that I'm aware of.

03:04:08 - 03:04:15

Speaker 28

You're not aware of it. Was it true that you were also removed from that same investigation? The answer is yes.

03:04:15 - 03:04:16

Speaker 3

No. Not that I'm aware of.

03:04:16 - 03:04:24

Speaker 28

You're not aware of it. That's interesting. Well, is it true that Mister Parlatory disparaged President Trump?

03:04:26 - 03:04:28

Speaker 3

I don't know what you're referring to, but no.

03:04:28 - 03:04:34

Speaker 28

Is it true that Mister Parlatory was accused by President Trump and his lawyers of lying?

03:04:35 - 03:04:39

Speaker 3

What you're accused of is an acute line of questioning that's going nowhere.

03:04:39 - 03:04:46

Speaker 28

Well, it's going somewhere, which is why you're not answering the question. Was it true that he was accused of lying by the president's legal team?

03:04:48 - 03:04:53

Speaker 3

I'm not familiar with you'd have to give me the. Well, it's right here.

03:04:53 - 03:04:55

Speaker 28

You wanna look at the statement from President Trump?

03:04:55 - 03:04:58

Speaker 3

A quote and claim it says something, that's what you're doing in a little stunt.

03:04:58 - 03:05:06

Speaker 28

Secretary Hegseth, what I'm really concerned about is you purport to have loyalty to President Trump, and yet you are continuously, oh,

03:05:06 - 03:05:08

Speaker 3

You care a lot about President Trump, don't you?

03:05:08 - 03:05:08

Speaker 28

You're going behind us.

03:05:08 - 03:05:10

Speaker 3

Waste of your 5 minutes.

03:05:10 - 03:05:11

Speaker 28

I'm pointing at you. I huge.

03:05:11 - 03:05:12

Speaker 3

my time.

03:05:15 - 03:05:19

Speaker 28

You are repeatedly going behind the president's Colorado time.

03:05:19 - 03:05:20

Speaker 1

Go ahead, Mr. Carl.

03:05:20 - 03:05:29

Speaker 28

You are repeatedly going behind President Trump's back, appointing people who he has accused of a lie, who the White House has Genomis Times expired. And you are not being honest with us.

03:05:29 - 03:05:31

Speaker 1

Lady from South Carolina, Miss Mace.

03:05:31 - 03:10:31

Speaker 29

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I request unanimous consent to enter a number of documents into the record. The first of which is a statement from Cory Mills' first sergeant stating his forms and accounts of his military service are falsified. The second document is a picture of Cory Mills wearing a Bronze Star from 2019 before he ever got a Bronze Star.

The third document is a document that conveys a bronze star medal and his life saving care to the wounded. And according to the soldiers who were there, they said it never happened, according to the men who were there. The next document is a transcript of a conversation I had with Brigadier General Arnold Gordon Bray, who confirmed that he did not review, did not read, did not physically sign the form, d, I guess, six thirty-eight, form six thirty-eight that Mills submitted for a Bronze Star. To be candid, he said, quote, I didn't look at it. I asked to review the email that he sent to Mills' staff about authorizing his signature for a form he did not review, and he said that he would not share it with me.

That's a future subpoena. I would like to enter to record a picture of Cory Mills who says this is the second time he got blown up, but what he wouldn't tell people is that the blood on the pant leg in this photo is the blood of Sergeant Ray. It is not Cory Mills' blood. And the same series of photos he shares when he said he was, quote, blown up, are images of a Humvee that exploded with severe damage that is not his Humvee. His Humvee purportedly was 50 yards away, suffered no damage, and was not blown up.

This is a copy of Cory Mills' marriage certificate with a 09:11 imam at a 09:11 mosque, entered for the record and redacted with family members' names protected. This is a picture of Cory Mills with a purported Russian hooker in Afghanistan, which she, of course, denies. And then last but not least, I would like to request unanimous consent to enter into the record a restraining order against Cory Mills for dating violence. Thank you. I just buried my father on Thursday, Mr. Chairman.

My father died with shrapnel in his body. He had three tours of combat, two in Vietnam, one in 1965 during the coup d'état of the Dominican Republic. And I take stolen valor seriously because we have men and women in uniform who have given their lives. And an individual that steals the stories of dead soldiers or injured soldiers have no right to serve in this body, let alone on this committee. And so I take it very seriously.

I want to thank you, Mister Secretary, and the folks that serve under you in the Department of War. As my father lay dying on April 14, there was only one thing that calmed him down, that gave him the courage to pass on to the next life. And that was for me to read stories and testimony from three different soldiers that we had. Our family previously didn't have. We've been doing a lot of research on my father's service when he just received the distinguished service cross with v device in 1968 in Dongzhai.

He rescued every man in that battle, in that firefight, over a two-day period. He rescued them, dead or alive, on his own. He stood up to take fire over and over again. He called on artillery, heavy artillery onto his position within 100 meters of his position. The man should never have made it out of Vietnam alive.

And in fact, his commanding officers kept him back in many cases because they thought he was on a suicide mission, because he was just so dangerous out there. But he saved the lives of so many soldiers. And so as he was taking his final breaths, I was provided with the Department of the Army some testimony of soldiers we didn't have. And diagrams and information, it was the one thing that calmed him down, so that he could pass away knowing that he was a war hero, and knowing that Jesus loved him. And, it changed our family's life, and it changed his life in his last moments, his last breaths, his last hours.

And for that, I am so grateful for the ship that you're running at the Pentagon and the Department of Defense. I have heard from people in the way that you're trying to innovate and trying to change the way we do business there. And I'm glad that you're firing people. There are people there that are getting in your way. They need to go.

And the efficiencies that you wanna bring, whether it's shipbuilding, whether it's cyber, whether it's AI, whether it's public-private partnerships, we have never seen a secretary of the department of war who has been as innovative as you have. So I can't say enough good things about you right now. I was impressed. I was concerned about troops on the ground in Iran early on, and I was impressed with where we are today, how those soldiers were evacuated that were on that flight that crashed. But everything I have seen, you have surpassed all of my expectations, and I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart, and God bless you.

03:10:32 - 03:10:36

Speaker 1

Gentle lady yields back. Chair, now I recognize the gentleman from Maine, Mister Golden.

03:10:36 - 03:10:40

Speaker 30

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mister Secretary and General Cain.

03:10:40 - 03:10:41

Speaker 19

I'd like.

03:10:41 - 03:14:31

Speaker 30

to use my time to drill down on an important decision concerning America's surface fleet. That is the future of the DDG 51 Flight III destroyer. Everyone on this committee knows about the navy's struggles to successfully design, manage, and field new classes of ships. To name a few examples, I'll highlight the littoral combat ship, the Zumwalt class destroyer, and the recently canceled Constellation class frigate. By any measure, the Arleigh Burke class destroyer has been a highly successful program that continues to deliver to the navy.

A large surface combatant, it can depend on. So the Zumwalt class destroyers were gonna replace the Arleigh Burke. It's a ship with some interesting capabilities, but the navy rushed to construction before the design was complete, and it lacked a workable weapon system that the navy wanted to outfit it with. So the navy scrapped the program at three ships, and went back to the DDG. I'm in my eighth year on this committee and the entire time I've been in conversation with the navy publicly and privately about the latest Flight Three destroyer and how critical a role it will play, and now is playing for the surface fleet.

And yet, even before we delivered one to the fleet, the navy was already planning the DDGX. I'm skeptical about the transition to yet another new class of surface ship, given the troubles I've laid out already. From my perspective, we have a proven hull for an Arleigh Burke destroyer that is described by C and O after C and O as the backbone of the Navy's surface fleet. But now I'm even more skeptical. The proposal cuts production of the destroyer down to just one ship, scraps the future destroyer, and proposes 17,000,000,000 billion to build just a single new battleship, a class of ship the navy decommissioned in 1992.

Mister Secretary, when you visited Bath Iron Works, you discussed this budget proposal with the shipbuilders. You said, quote, we're maxing out on DDGs. It's a workhorse, and it's a damn good workhorse. You were right about the DDGs. They are a workhorse.

They're cost-efficient, deadly effective, and feared by our enemies. And I'm wondering why would we move on so quickly from a relatively new Flight III destroyer. That's the gold standard for ballistic missile and drone defense capabilities. It's a ship that's proven itself time and again, recently in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and the Taiwan Strait. I understand the navy wants to field hypersonic missiles, but look no further than the three Zumwalt ships that the navy has in the fleet that have been refitted with vertical launch tubes capable of delivering hypersonic missiles at a great payload at over 17,000 miles this year.

Perhaps what's most troubling to me is that the battleship plan proposes moving at a pace that is, I think, extremely dangerous or just high-risk, low reward. To begin construction so quickly, breezing right through design, it's well documented that expediting design and preemptively moving to construction is the greatest recipe for failure. This represents an unacceptable cost to taxpayers if it fails and leaves America less secure, and our navy less prepared. I understand the proposed battleship was a bit of a dream child of the recently departed Secretary of the Navy. I wanna remind everyone here that recent history is littered with failed efforts to replace existing successful programs that remain the best in class worldwide.

This isn't the failure of shipbuilders or sailors. It's a failure by leaders to learn a simple lesson. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. My sincere hope is that you, the Navy, and the Congress will pump the brakes on this battleship. Take the time to get it right, whatever it is.

And for now, on the workhorse you can depend. America cannot afford a surface fleet without a backbone.

03:14:32 - 03:15:31

Speaker 3

I very much appreciate that perspective. And, the idea of divesting of an asset that's indispensable right now is not just a navy problem. I mean, we've seen the same on MQ-9s and Apaches and A-10s and systems that our warfighters continue to rely on, which is why divesting to invest, which was sold under the previous administration because of continuing resolutions and insufficient budgets, created a gap where now you're getting rid of the very things that you need right now, and you don't have available things of the future that you said you would have because of the way this department did business. Always overcost, always delayed. So there's one destroyer, one Arleigh Burke class destroyer in this budget, because I hate to even say it.

I'm not gonna say it in open hearing how many years behind we are in the backlog of building the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. So the bulk of the money goes into shipbuilding to fix that, ensure we can get new places to build more faster, then you can fund additional, either whether it's this class or the next class. But.

03:15:31 - 03:15:31

Speaker 31

We're

03:15:31 - 03:15:41

Speaker 30

Almost over time. Gonna reclaim and just say in my last seconds here, careful with the pace moving through design to construction so quickly, as proposed by this budget. Thank you.

03:15:41 - 03:31:10

Speaker 1

General's time has expired. As announced earlier, we're gonna now recess until ten minutes past the hour of one. We will call this hearing back to order, and we now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Latrell.

03:31:12 - 03:32:08

Speaker 32

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister secretary, general, thank you for your service and your continued service to this great country. Mister secretary, a few weeks ago, our commander in chief, president, signed an executive order over research on psychedelic medications, hovering over the veteran space as well as active members. Could you, and I know you're aware of this, and the health and well-being of the service members and the veterans is very near and dear to my heart. We lose over 6,000 veterans a day.

Oh, we a day. A year. I would love to see that trajectory go to zero. Can you, at a high level, is the Department of War interested in kind of coming in with VA, HHS, NIH, and pushing this type of research?

03:32:09 - 03:33:07

Speaker 3

First of all, thank you, congressman, for all the work you've done on this. You are there's no more passionate advocate for him. It was great to see you in the Oval Office, with your brother and with so many other seals who are saying, hey. This option saved my life or gave me a new lease on life. And I've heard that time and time again based on that particular approach that the president has approved through the EO. And I think our department has shown a willingness to be flexible and look at new options and alternatives.

And I think if you talk to Secretary Collins at the VA, the partnership we've had is as deep as any partnership between the Department of War and the VA has ever existed. So we've got regular meetings between us as secretaries, but also our chiefs, and then down into the committees to ensure the flow is consistent. But if there's something that the VA is doing that we should be looking at that enables our service members to be better at their job, we're going to entertain it. So I, well, thank you for your advocacy on it, and we'll take a look at it.

03:33:07 - 03:34:13

Speaker 32

Thank you very much, sir. And it excites me that the two entities, one couldn't exist without the other. I've had the opportunity to not only travel the country but travel the world and visit our troops, either OCONUS or CONUS. And I have to say sir, the morale, the well-being, just the sheer excitement our service members see and how they're acting today. It kinda takes me back to our generation, if you will, just to see that kinda that forward momentum and that attest of fortitude kinda glows on them.

And I think that's a direct correlation to your leadership, sir, as well as the president. Can you, from your perspective, I'm assuming you're seeing the same thing. And I think that that blue line that needed to be popped got popped, and our service members are absolutely leading from the front. And the world has noticed. Tell me I'm not seeing that.

03:34:13 - 03:36:03

Speaker 3

Just from my own eyes. No. You're not, Congressman. And I meant this when I said it. Would encourage every single member of this committee to talk to lieutenants and captains and majors and colonels and sergeants and staff sergeants and sergeants major and specialists who are doing the job right now on the front lines or across the country, and they have seen a sea change in the environment and the morale and the spirit in their formations.

And it isn't some secret sauce. Don't treat us as a petri dish in your social justice exercise or your social engineering approach. Just let us do our job. Let us get back to basics. Let us train.

Let us choose people and elevate people simply on merit, and merit alone. That's motivating for people. That's why they joined. That's why they do really difficult things like you did, and are away from their families for a very long time. They wanna defend their kids and grandkids, but they don't wanna have distractions and debris on the inside.

So when we talk to them, they are so grateful for the fact that we're just getting back to the basics of readiness, training, accountability, discipline, warfighting. Commanders, squad leaders, you name it. And to those watching across the country, ask folks who have served, who've been in it, how they view it. And they see it under President Trump's leadership fundamentally different. And we haven't even talked about the border, which is now secure.

I mean, there's the recruiting successes, the fitness and combat standards that have been restored. We're treating everybody at the same level. Sounds like basics, but it all translates into morale. And then morale translates into readiness, and that translates into capabilities. And then when you have a commander in chief that unleashes them, it turns into mission success.

And then the world pays attention to what the American military is capable of doing. And it's on the shoulders of leaders like you who've did it in previous generations, we're simply doing it again. So thank you for your leadership.

03:36:03 - 03:36:13

Speaker 32

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And for everyone in the room that's in uniform, god bless each and everyone for your service as well as your families. Mister speaker. Mister Speaker. Sorry about that.

03:36:13 - 03:36:15

Speaker 1

I thought you liked me.

03:36:15 - 03:36:16

Speaker 32

I did. I'm sorry.

03:36:16 - 03:36:17

Speaker 7

That's it.

03:36:17 - 03:36:18

Speaker 32

How much time are you about?

03:36:18 - 03:36:21

Speaker 1

We're not gonna this gentle lady from California, Miss Jacobs.

03:36:21 - 03:37:44

Speaker 33

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister Secretary, as you know, I represent San Diego, the largest military community in the country. Right now, as we are speaking, 2,500 San Diego Marines are off the coast of Iran. Many other San Diegans in uniform have gotten 48-hour deployment notices. So this war in Iran is not theoretical for me or for my constituents.

It's deeply personal. As you also know, on Easter Sunday, President Trump threatened to destroy Iran's bridges and power plants, writing, quote, open the fucking Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. And two days later, President Trump wrote, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.

My office's phones have been ringing off the hook. I've heard from so many military families concerned about the president's mental fitness and whether he's fit to serve as our commander in chief, given that he's sending their loved ones into harm's way. Our troops who have shown incredible bravery and tactical proficiency deserve to know that their leaders are focused and stable. So, mister secretary, you are with the president a lot, and it pains me to even have to ask this about our president, but my constituents' lives are at stake. Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough to be the commander-in-chief?

03:37:46 - 03:37:49

Speaker 3

Did you ask the same question of Joe Biden for 4 years?

03:37:49 - 03:37:55

Speaker 33

Mister Secretary, Joe Biden is not the president. Mister Trump has been president for a year and a half, and I'm asking you now.

03:37:55 - 03:38:02

Speaker 3

And I won't even engage with the level of disparagement that you're putting on the commander in chief who indeed is, I mean, every, I mean,

03:38:02 - 03:38:06

Speaker 33

Meaning every single day, Mister Secretary Biden is not the president.

03:38:06 - 03:38:15

Speaker 3

Most insightful commander-in-chief we've had in generations. And you wanna compare, I mean, you wanna ask that question, you and your fellow Democrats defended Joe Biden who could barely speak.

03:38:15 - 03:38:18

Speaker 33

Then, you know, AWA was. You know. I know.

03:38:18 - 03:38:23

Speaker 3

An autopan. A secretary of defense who went AWOL for a week. Can't go for ten days.

03:38:23 - 03:38:25

Speaker 33

For five minutes. Will reclaim my time.

03:38:25 - 03:38:26

Speaker 1

with you, so many. Vinylates time.

03:38:26 - 03:38:27

Speaker 6

She reclaimed it.

03:38:28 - 03:38:36

Speaker 33

As Mister Jimenez said, we should be taking leaders at their word. So is there a reason that we should not be taking our leader at his word?

03:38:36 - 03:38:42

Speaker 3

Iran should not underestimate the will of president Trump and the United States military to achieve our mission.

03:38:42 - 03:39:13

Speaker 33

Okay. Well, I want you to know this is not a partisan thing. In fact, many Democrats have had many Republicans have had these same questions. Marjorie Taylor Greene said he's out of control, and he's gone insane. Candace Owens said the 25th amendment needs to be invoked.

Megan Kelly, Tucker Carlson, who used to work with Alex Jones, Stephanie Grisham, the list could go on. So how do I explain to my constituents that while they are in harm's way, their commander in chief is posting these unhinged posts?

03:39:14 - 03:39:25

Speaker 3

How did you explain to your constituents what happened on October 5, or what happened in Afghanistan, or what happened with the debacle and the withdrawal in Afghanistan where the troops were left? How did you explain Joe Biden's leadership?

03:39:25 - 03:39:25

Speaker 33

How did.

03:39:25 - 03:39:26

Speaker 4

You explain that.

03:39:26 - 03:39:30

Speaker 3

To the marines that didn't get medals? That we restored their medals because of that disastrous.

03:39:30 - 03:39:31

Speaker 33

Fall in Afghanistan.

03:39:31 - 03:39:32

Speaker 26

Did you explain that to your?

03:39:32 - 03:39:35

Speaker 3

constituents when Joe Biden was asleep at the wheel, and he had an AOL steering.

03:39:36 - 03:39:54

Speaker 33

How about this next post? How can I explain this next post to my constituents? I'm Jewish, so this doesn't really bother me. But my understanding is that this is quite offensive to many Christians. So how do you explain this post?

03:39:54 - 03:39:58

Speaker 3

I'm not here to explain the post. We have an incredible commander-in-chief.

03:39:58 - 03:39:58

Speaker 33

Okay.

03:39:58 - 03:40:02

Speaker 3

Who puts our troops first? I'm here for a budget hearing about our troops.

03:40:02 - 03:40:02

Speaker 33

This is.

03:40:02 - 03:40:05

Speaker 3

It's a historic budget that's giving you a chance.

03:40:05 - 03:40:06

Speaker 33

To Mister Secretary?

03:40:06 - 03:40:09

Speaker 3

President Trump is doing that in world-class fashion.

03:40:09 - 03:40:12

Speaker 1

This is about your time, mister secretary.

03:40:12 - 03:40:27

Speaker 33

This is about our troops. This is about who is commanding our troops, and if our troops can trust that they are being sent into harm's way under a good strategy. The mental stability of our commander-in-chief is deeply important to our troops. It's deeply important to this country. It is.

03:40:27 - 03:40:29

Speaker 3

It wasn't important to you during Joe Biden.

03:40:29 - 03:41:19

Speaker 33

Stake. I'll remind you that when there were concerns, Democrats came together, and he was not our nominee for president. So I encourage you to have the same courage that Democrats had. Mister secretary, you keep saying that he is the best commander in chief we've ever had, the best to the troops. 13 American troops have died.

More than 380 have been wounded. The Strait of Hormuz, which was wide open, is now closed. Less than 90% of traffic through the strait is still not going despite the ceasefire. The Iranian regime is still in power. It still has nuclear material.

The war is costing Americans billions of dollars. And, mister secretary, if you think that this is what winning looks like, then maybe we should be questioning your mental stability. Maybe you are the one responsible for this failure, and the president should think about replacing you. Mister chairman, I yield back.

03:41:19 - 03:41:21

Speaker 1

Good lady yields back. It's not Rick.

03:41:21 - 03:41:21

Speaker 6

That's not too bad.

03:41:21 - 03:41:23

Speaker 1

From Virginia, Miss Kiggins.

03:41:24 - 03:43:03

Speaker 34

Thank you, mister chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being with us. I have the privilege of representing Virginia's 2nd Congressional District. So Hampton Roads, home to a lot of our East Coast Navy. And I had the privilege of attending the VFA 106 change of command on Friday, which is our fleet replacement squadron for the F-8F, the aging F-18s. But what an awesome event.

And to talk to some of the navy leadership that was there and to listen to them say firsthand, just about the morale of the squadrons that are currently deployed on the USS Ford, specifically talking to leadership a lot of our children serve. It's a family business for those of us in naval aviation. And, miss, they're like, don't believe the media. The morale is amazing. Those guys are doing tip-of-the-spear mission work.

I live with a retired F-18 pilot husband who also is beginning to find a way to get back in the cockpit because he's jealous of what he sees. So just that type of mentality. Thank you for that. I know that they're doing a mission, and keeping them engaged is an important part of the fight. Along those same lines about naval aviation, I would love to hear, Mister Secretary, your thoughts about the future of naval aviation.

I know that this is a budget hearing. So last year's budget, we had 900,000,000 that we were looking forward to using an FAX program. And then the fiscal year 27 request was reduced to 140,000,000. And, of course, keeping tabs on the Air Force, you know, $5,000,000,000 for their F-47 program. So we love aircraft carriers.

We love that mobile air superiority piece. What are your plans for the future of naval aviation? I kick and scream every day of the week here in this committee about the F-30 Fives and getting them at our East Coast master jet base. I know that FAXX is our next-generation strike fighter, but just would love to hear your plans and timelines for the future of naval aviation.

03:43:04 - 03:43:19

Speaker 3

Well, I appreciate your comments, and then I would defer to the chairman too on the utility, remaining utility of the F-18s, which are still flying critical missions right now off our carriers and do a fantastic job. 30-plus years old. But.

03:43:19 - 03:43:20

Speaker 2

Yes. Correct.

03:43:21 - 03:43:36

Speaker 3

Which is why the issue of the fax is important. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when. It's a matter of trade-offs in industry and design and capabilities, ensuring we're not slowing other things down at the behest of others. So if I think in August, the August time frame is, I'm sure you're familiar with that.

03:43:36 - 03:43:36

Speaker 9

What.

03:43:36 - 03:43:43

Speaker 3

We're looking at. It's a critical capability that we need to fund for the future of naval aviation. I would defer if anything you want to add.

03:43:43 - 03:44:13

Speaker 5

Sure. I think you covered it. The, you know, we don't need access basing and overflight off of a CSG and a CVN, and so it gives the secretary and the president a lot of options. So, and I just wanna echo the thanks for the joint force on behalf of the joint force for all three CSGs that are out there getting after it right now. I share your husband's jealousy, but just want the force to know how much we appreciate, man, especially the Ford.

03:44:14 - 03:44:46

Speaker 34

Thank you. Thanks very much, General. And then, mister secretary, just, again, representing a big navy district and, having just a concern for the navy. Could you shed any light on why the secretary of the navy was relieved and what that timeline to replace him looks like for permanent leadership? I think that's one of the reasons why we struggle with, with even, I think, about basing decisions and, again, naval aviation.

And that's I wish we would talk more about, just the contributions of our aviators. But could you shed any light on that issue?

03:44:46 - 03:45:15

Speaker 3

Well, as the president stated, we thank the previous secretary for his service. Appreciate a lot of the initiatives that he undertook. Ultimately, it was time for a new leadership and a new direction as far as running fast toward those objectives, and so we made a change. We think, it's hard to personnel his policy. And the sooner you identify, especially, we talked about general officers, you know, as you're evaluating whether they're running with the mission they've been given.

You gotta make a change if they're not. The same with civilians. And in this case, we made that change.

03:45:16 - 03:45:19

Speaker 34

And any timeline to replace, or do you have a new secretary of navy?

03:45:19 - 03:45:28

Speaker 3

Well, right now, we have an acting, in Hong Kong who's, was, did a fantastic job as the number two, and he'll be acting for now. And, I would imagine we'll know in due time.

03:45:29 - 03:46:02

Speaker 34

Thank you. And then General Kane, I know you're a VMI graduate, and I know there's, you're watching some of the partisan attacks that have been going on with some of our senior military academies, specifically in Virginia. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts or have had any discussions about how we can remove some of our senior military academies from these partisan state politics. I think it requires a further discussion. We had 170 army ROTC officers that we commissioned out of that school specifically, but we've seen pushes to shut down, defund, replace their board of visitors.

Any thoughts on how we can be more protective of those great schools?

03:46:02 - 03:46:25

Speaker 5

Well, ma'am, you sort of started where I'm gonna land on the importance of staying politics as the chairman and not unintentionally or inadvertently stepping into a political matter where I should not. As the secretary said, people are policy, and policies are things that we don't do in the joint force. I appreciate all of the commissioning sources that are out there.

03:46:25 - 03:46:29

Speaker 1

General Counselor retired. Command. Chairman, I recognize a gentlelady from Washington, Miss Strickland.

03:46:30 - 03:48:07

Speaker 35

Thank you, Chairman Rogers and Member Smith, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. This committee is being asked to consider a $1,500,000,000,000 DoD budget request that funds not only weapons and system programs, but the people, leadership, readiness, and trust required to make them effective. When senior leaders are removed abruptly or merit-based promotions are disrupted without clear explanation, Congress does have the responsibility to understand the rationale and operational consequences. So I'm gonna focus on Secretary Hegzeth. And to start, no one is disputing that senior officers serve at the pleasure of the civilian leadership.

The issue in front of this is whether the decision to remove General Randy George strengthened the army or created an avoidable disruption during an active operational period. General George, who also served as commanding general at First Corps at JBLM, has been serving for four decades, including multiple command and operational leadership roles, culminating as chief of staff of the Army responsible for readiness, forced modernization, and the welfare of over a million soldiers and civilians. He was removed in the middle of an active conflict involving US operations against Iran, when leadership continuity is most critical. Look, reporting indicates that General Georgia's removal may have followed disagreements over army personnel matters, including concerns regarding withheld promotions. So my question, secretary, is this.

What specific national security risk, mission risk, or leadership concern did General George present that justified removing him in the middle of a conflict, or was he removed because he challenged some decisions being made?

03:48:09 - 03:48:20

Speaker 3

As I stated earlier, out of respect to these officers, I don't discuss the nature of the removal. But I would ask an earnest question of you, where does General George fall in the operational chain of command?

03:48:20 - 03:48:22

Speaker 35

So I'm asking you, why did you fire him?

03:48:22 - 03:48:27

Speaker 3

Don't change the, you talked about an operational moment. Where does General George fall?

03:48:27 - 03:48:28

Speaker 27

in his

03:48:28 - 03:48:31

Speaker 3

No. It's a national risk. You're on the House Armed Services Committee.

03:48:31 - 03:48:35

Speaker 35

Concern. What did he present that justified removing him in the middle of a conflict?

03:48:35 - 03:48:38

Speaker 3

Do you know where General George serves on the operational chain of command?

03:48:39 - 03:48:48

Speaker 35

So, ma'am, gonna ask you my question one more time. Don't try to flip it on me. Why was he removed? Was he a national security risk, mission risk, or leadership concern?

03:48:48 - 03:48:50

Speaker 3

We don't, yes or no? We don't talk about it.

03:48:50 - 03:48:52

Speaker 35

nature of removals, but

03:48:52 - 03:48:58

Speaker 3

You also won't answer where he is in the operational chain of command because he isn't in it. He isn't in the operational chain of command.

03:48:58 - 03:48:59

Speaker 1

for the time.

03:48:59 - 03:49:01

Speaker 3

That we're gonna, you wanna tie it to the war,

03:49:01 - 03:49:02

Speaker 4

But you don't even know.

03:49:02 - 03:49:03

Speaker 3

where he is in command.

03:49:03 - 03:49:05

Speaker 1

It's the general lady from Washington's time.

03:49:06 - 03:49:47

Speaker 35

Under DOTI 1320.04, the secretary of defense may withhold or disapprove forwarding nomination after service recommendations in limited circumstances, including newly identified adverse information, pending investigations, reportable information, and questions regarding mental, physical, moral, or professional qualification, incomplete or noncompliant nomination packages, missing certifications, or the need for additional clarification from the military department. Several colonels reportedly selected for brigadier general were removed or withheld after board selection service set of certification. Which of these specific grounds applied to each withheld officer, and what objective evidence supported these decisions?

03:49:50 - 03:49:58

Speaker 3

That was just one of many boards across the services where we will perform similar reviews, and I anticipate other officers will also be removed.

03:49:58 - 03:50:00

Speaker 35

Okay. But what were the grounds for those?

03:50:00 - 03:50:21

Speaker 3

Again, don't talk about it out of respect for those officers. We don't talk about the nature of that, and we all serve at the pleasure of the president. We're solving for an institution that needs to be based on merit and professional execution. And there's been a lot of gender and demographic engineering that's been going on for reasons other than the focus of exactly what we should be doing on the battlefield. So whether it's.

03:50:21 - 03:50:21

Speaker 36

that or

03:50:21 - 03:50:22

Speaker 35

It's I did not raise the gender.

03:50:22 - 03:50:33

Speaker 3

You that's implied in every statement that everybody makes. And so, ultimately, as we review all these boards, it has nothing to do with anything other than their performance on the battlefield or their performance in their career.

03:50:33 - 03:50:43

Speaker 35

And these people are thoroughly vetted, thoroughly researched. And I guess my question is, is this about loyalty to Trump, or is it about what's good for the mission?

03:50:45 - 03:50:55

Speaker 3

I understand what you're implying, but it's about the constitution and our military and its ability to execute. And I'm gonna make sure the president has the finest officers across the force, prepared to deliver.

03:50:55 - 03:51:12

Speaker 35

So this committee funds weapons, readiness, recruiting, professional development, and leadership pipelines. But no amount of money can compensate for a force that may lose trust in the fairness of advancement. And this is fairness. We believe in merit. We have always had a merit-based system.

That's not the argument. No.

03:51:12 - 03:51:16

Speaker 3

We have not. Not under the Biden administration. We did not. It became social engineering, not merit, and we're fixing it.

03:51:16 - 03:51:30

Speaker 35

It's quick. No. It did not. No. Did not.

And when we consider this budget request, we must ensure that taxpayer dollars are matched by sound judgment, credible leadership, and a personnel system worthy of those who serve. I yield back, Mr. Chair.

03:51:30 - 03:51:34

Speaker 1

General, lady yields back. Chair, and I recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Scott.

03:51:34 - 03:53:21

Speaker 37

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I'm sorry I was late. I was on the floor of the House of Representatives with a voice a rule vote, and I did not hear the majority of the testimony. But, secretary Hayseth, I respect you.

I do want you to know I disagree with the firing of General George. I've sent you a letter. I hope you'll, I look forward to seeing the responses on that. And I just, I mean, it takes 218 votes to get something across the floor of the House of Representatives. And with NDAA and with budget plus ups and everything else, we're gonna lose some dim votes.

I mean, we're gonna have to have, I mean, we're gonna lose some Republican votes. I mean, we're gonna have to have some dim votes to do the things that we have to do to fund the Department of Defense. And I just I would I would encourage everybody to keep that in mind because we're gonna lose some Republican votes on the on the plus up. General Kane, the joint staff plays a unique role in our strategic direction. The integration of services is what gives us a coherent joint force.

I have seen where disputes in the air force and the army led to elimination of systems that we needed. His department has made attempts to right-size various components. Could you talk about the importance of the joint staff and the value to the joint force?

03:53:24 - 03:54:13

Speaker 5

You bet, sir. And I'm incredibly proud of the joint staff. You know, our job is to integrate options, to deliver those options to our National Command Authority, and work with all the services. And the one area of exclusivity we have pursuant to the 2017 NDAA is as a global integrator. And our j two, j three, j five, j seven team, j eight all do a fantastic job along with the one and the six every day and the four to really bring the totality of American combat capability together into a range of options and risks that we can then bring to the secretary and the president.

So they are extraordinary in everything they do, and I appreciate the chance to brag on them a little bit.

03:54:13 - 03:55:33

Speaker 37

Well, I have watched as the Air Force was paying for a system that was predominantly used by the Army, in the past. I'm talking about JSTAR specifically. It was a ground moving target indicator that the army used, but it was coming out of the air force budget. And then, I think that dispute led to the stand down of a system before another system was ready to go. And that's a dangerous, it's a dangerous thing.

I spent a fair amount of time in Africa from this committee's work and from HIPSI's work. We lost Airbase 101 and 201. All of you at that table know what happened there. I blame that on the state department and the way the state department handled that. How do you intend to handle one is, we looking at Nigeria and the potential to get 101 and 02/2001 back?

And I do believe that an apology would go a long way over that country as someone who's met with the ministers over there. And interestingly enough, Minister Tumba wanted tractors. He wanted John Deere tractors, is what he asked for. But where will we base out of if we can't get Nigeria back? And are we looking at getting 101 and 201 back?

03:55:33 - 03:56:14

Speaker 5

Yes, sir. Well, we all want tractors. So, I echo his thoughts there. You know, I know General Anderson is doing a lot of work right now leaning forward, doing a fantastic job along with his deputy commander, General Brennan, on looking at the total requirement across the western flank, for access, spacing, and overflight. One and two zero one are one of many things that they're considering.

I think the key is, what are they going to be able to do with the resources that they have? And we're always in a resource-constrained environment, congressman, to put sufficient pressure on the CT adversaries there in order to hold them at bay.

03:56:14 - 03:56:23

Speaker 37

Well, the middle-to-middle relationships are still good. Yes, sir. I've been out with some of the ODA teams over there, as a civilian, as a member of congress.

03:56:23 - 03:56:23

Speaker 5

Yes, sir.

03:56:23 - 03:56:34

Speaker 37

Yes, it does bother me that our footprint has gotten so much smaller over there. But I do know with drones and other things, it makes it much more difficult to have those outposts. But I appreciate all of you being here. Sorry that I have not been here.

03:56:34 - 03:56:36

Speaker 5

No, sir. Appreciate the other work.

03:56:36 - 03:56:40

Speaker 1

Jim and Yields back. Cheering. I recognize the gentleman from New York, mister Ryan.

03:56:40 - 03:56:56

Speaker 38

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Head wounds, heavy bleeding, and then just shrapnel all over. So folks are bleeding from their abdomen, bleeding from arms, bleeding from legs. Secretary Hegseth, you know who said that?

03:56:58 - 03:56:59

Speaker 3

I'm not sure I do.

03:56:59 - 03:57:17

Speaker 38

It was one of our soldiers describing the devastating Iranian drone strike at Port Shweiba, March 1 in Kuwait. As you know, six of our soldiers killed, over 30 wounded. Secretary, do you know the range of the Shahed 136 one way attack drone approximately?

03:57:18 - 03:57:20

Speaker 3

It depends on the variant, but it's got

03:57:20 - 03:57:25

Speaker 38

serious dis Several 100 miles. Mhmm. Do you know how far Port Shweiba is from Iran?

03:57:26 - 03:57:32

Speaker 3

There's a reason why we took extreme measures my time. Because we underwrite the proximity challenges.

03:57:32 - 03:57:58

Speaker 38

Mister chairman, reclaim my time. It's well under 100 miles. Before the war started, there was clear intelligence that Shweiba was high on Iran's target list. Internal analysis had said the site was indefensible from an aerial attack and should not be used. Yet you sent our soldiers from the 103rd sustainment command there anyway.

Is that true or false? True or false? Straightforward question.

03:57:58 - 03:58:00

Speaker 3

Are you gonna give me a chance to answer or just play gotcha?

03:58:00 - 03:58:02

Speaker 38

Did you send them there or not?

03:58:03 - 03:58:10

Speaker 3

I always we took proactive measures from the beginning to ensure force protection and defensive master would.

03:58:10 - 03:58:22

Speaker 38

maximize across the theater. Let's talk about what defenses they had. Prior to the attack, officers on the ground knew our troops were vulnerable. In fact, they requested additional force protection. Did they receive it?

03:58:24 - 03:58:28

Speaker 3

Wherever humanly possible, force protection encounter UAS was always made available.

03:58:28 - 04:00:01

Speaker 38

They did not. In fact, when asked to describe the base's defense, one survivor who's come forward from the unit said, quote, I mean, I would put it in the no category. From a drone defense capability, none. Let's be clear. No counter-drone capabilities.

No counter-rocket systems. No counter-mortar or counter-artillery. Not even the basic overhead protection that you and I had 20 years ago in Iraq, and now six of our soldiers are dead. The next day, you downplayed the attack. You said it was a squirter that squeaked through the fortified defenses.

But since then, thankfully, brave survivors have come forward to set the record straight. One of our surviving soldiers told CBS, quote, painting a picture that one sneak through is a falsehood. Another said the unit was, quote, unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position. Another survivor said the building's protection was about as weak as it gets.

Secretary Hegseth, that is obviously in direct contradiction to what you said from the Pentagon podium the next day. So are you saying that these soldiers, our soldiers who survived this horrific attack, are lying?

04:00:04 - 04:00:17

Speaker 3

What I'm saying is before the commencement of the conflict, we put in maximum defensive posture we could. That's a direct con. We moved 70 what they said. This in this directing can I speak, or you just gotta monologue falsehoods all over the place?

04:00:17 - 04:00:18

Speaker 38

It's not a falsehood.

04:00:18 - 04:00:20

Speaker 3

You moved 7,500 troops off.

04:00:20 - 04:00:21

Speaker 38

The exact time.

04:00:21 - 04:00:21

Speaker 3

On the Intel.

04:00:21 - 04:00:24

Speaker 38

Stop. Based on the intel. Stop. Reclaiming my time.

04:00:24 - 04:00:28

Speaker 3

Because you yell doesn't make you right. Just because you yell doesn't make you right.

04:00:28 - 04:00:33

Speaker 38

My time is on behalf of these survivors. You just said what they said is falsehood.

04:00:34 - 04:00:42

Speaker 3

There's a much larger picture at play here that includes integrated air defenses, bunkers, moving people off the x.

04:00:42 - 04:00:43

Speaker 38

Mister secretary, not.

04:00:43 - 04:01:00

Speaker 3

part of the target. We moved those troops all across the theater, thousands of troops off the x, off of their bases because we knew what Iran was gonna try to strike, and we knew that there was a tragic moment. It could be a tragic moment where something could get through. Of course, that's the consequence of conflict. And we remember those six every day.

04:01:00 - 04:01:34

Speaker 38

But don't play games with not playing games with wanna finish more quote from a survivor of the attack, and I this is on the record. Telling the truth is important, and we're not gonna learn from these mistakes if we pretend these mistakes didn't happen. Secretary Hexev, those soldiers told the truth. Those soldiers are braver than you are. I commend. They are asking for accountability.

They deserve accountability. And I'm asking for the same, starting with you. And as I said a year ago, you need to resign immediately.

04:01:34 - 04:01:35

Speaker 3

I commend those. I yield back.

04:01:36 - 04:01:39

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. Cheer now recognizes a gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fallon.

04:01:40 - 04:02:57

Speaker 36

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Hackseth, I want to tell you something right now. You focused our military once again, and finally, and you shaped it into the meritocracy, and you've dramatically increased The United States' ability to project power and, when needed, lethality. And, I mean, and as a result, our deterrence has never been more evident the world over. So, thank you.

General Kane, you mentioned in your opening remarks, George Marshall. Unfortunately, some of your immediate predecessors were clearly one type of general. They were democratic generals. One of them, even in this committee, used politically charged rhetoric of the left. And I don't want democratic generals.

And for that matter, I don't want Republican generals either. I want American generals. You, sir, are an American general. You know exactly what we need, generals, a joint chief of staff that knows, understands, respects, and embodies your role to serve this republic, the troops, and the mission. And that is precisely what you're doing.

And I wanna thank you because you do remind me of George C. Marshall. He was a great American, and so are you. Secretary Hegzif, what do you know of any nation state that ever enriched uranium to 60% that then didn't make a nuclear weapon?

04:02:58 - 04:03:10

Speaker 3

Well, first of all, I wanna second your comments about the chairman, and I agree. I appreciate how he does his job. Usually, when a country pursues at that level, it's pursuing a nuclear weapon. 100% of

04:03:10 - 04:03:30

Speaker 36

The countries that have reached 60% enrichment have then produced a nuclear weapon. And is it true that you Iran was in the process of building such a swarm of UAVs and ballistic missile shield conventionally once they wanted to bake the cake because they had all the ingredients to make nuclear weapon? It would have been damn near impossible for us or anyone else to prevent them.

04:03:30 - 04:03:59

Speaker 3

As I pointed to, the president was wise enough to understand that at its weakest moment following the twelve day war and midnight hammer, now is the time to degrade their conventional capabilities, the umbrella they were building of missiles, long range, short range, cruise missiles, one way attack drones that they were gonna use to blackmail the countries around them to not do anything about their nuclear program when they broke out from 60%. We knew that to be their intention, and something had to be done about it, and president Trump had the courage to do it.

04:03:59 - 04:05:07

Speaker 36

Well, President Trump, there's been a lot of quotes that people have been mentioning in his words, and I wanted to mention some that I thought were interesting. Here's a quote. I will take no options off the table to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Barack Obama. Iran will never get a nuclear weapon, Joe Biden. I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary, and I will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

All options are on the table. Kamala Harris in this one. We would totally obliterate Iran. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. Hillary Clinton, 2008.

So it seems to me that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump had something in common. They weren't gonna allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, and some of them, four of them were all words, and one of them took action. There's 93,000,000. We're involved in a land war in Asia. I get it. It's complicated.

93,000,000 people, much larger than Iraq, but 80% of their country hates their guts. This is a regime that murdered 40,000 of them and gunned them down in the streets. They're responsible for over 600 American deaths. How long was World War Two? Do you have any idea?

In days. I have it right here. In days, exactly.

04:05:07 - 04:05:09

Speaker 3

I gotta multiply by 365.

04:05:09 - 04:05:20

Speaker 36

But it's 1347 days. Korea was 1,129. And our involvement in World War 1, which is rather quick, was 585. How long have we been involved in Iran?

04:05:21 - 04:05:24

Speaker 3

Just shy of sixty-six zero days.

04:05:24 - 04:05:28

Speaker 36

60 days. Two months. And what is the degradation of their navy right now, secretary?

04:05:29 - 04:05:59

Speaker 3

Their conventional navy is destroyed. They had three drone aircraft carriers. They have none. They had 11 submarines. They had none.

They had different frigate classes. They have none. They may have small speedboats at this point, coast guard-type vessels, but their conventional navy is gone. Air force? Likewise, functionally destroyed.

Command and control? It's hard for them. It's there's a reason why there's a challenge in communicating around a deal is because their command and control is fundamentally broken as far as who's in control and how.

04:05:59 - 04:06:35

Speaker 36

They communicate. We could make very good arguments that the serious nature of any action in a country like Iran, there were good things to consider before doing it. There were also very good reasons to do it. The fact of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, Republicans, Democrats, we're here now. This is an evil regime.

We can fundamentally reshape not only the region, but the world. They were the largest exporter of terror and ballistic missile technologies. We need gentlemen to win. Secretary General Cain, win. I yield back.

04:06:35 - 04:06:39

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. Here now recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Delusio.

04:06:39 - 04:07:18

Speaker 19

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We all just heard pretty powerful reporting, courtesy of Mister Ryan, from many of our wounded troops who were injured in the attack in Kuwait. Mister secretary, you heard direct quotes from some of them via CBS's reporting. They were willing to talk to the press. Things like they were unprepared to provide any defense for themselves in the unit.

Things like we were moved closer to Iran to a deeply unsafe area that was a known target. Your spokesperson, Sean Parnell, in response to that reporting, said it was not true. Do you agree with that? He's calling these guys liars?

04:07:19 - 04:07:45

Speaker 3

I'm not calling our troops liars, and I don't know if what you're representing is correct or not. I'll take you at your word on that. But all I know is that we took every effort possible at the commencement of this campaign to ensure the defense of our troops, to include moving them off of known bases to places that were not known, and we had until understood, secretary. Known. And then those were fortified with bunkers and other fortifications with theater air defenses.

Was our concern that something could.

04:07:45 - 04:07:45

Speaker 9

Be, I'm gonna pause you there.

04:07:45 - 04:07:48

Speaker 19

I'm gonna give you a chance. You're gonna I'm give.

04:07:48 - 04:07:49

Speaker 3

You chance. Me, I don't care.

04:07:49 - 04:07:51

Speaker 19

I'm asking you whether you think they're liars or not.

04:07:51 - 04:07:54

Speaker 3

That's what I ask. You are disparaging me that I don't care about the passing of our troops.

04:07:54 - 04:07:57

Speaker 19

Nope. I ask you your thought they're liar, Terry.

04:07:57 - 04:08:03

Speaker 3

That's disparaging and smearing in every way. Nobody cares more about the fate of our troops. Nobody cares about the health of our troops.

04:08:03 - 04:08:04

Speaker 1

Mister secretary, nobody.

04:08:04 - 04:08:05

Speaker 3

wants to bring them all hope.

04:08:05 - 04:08:05

Speaker 1

more

04:08:05 - 04:08:05

Speaker 14

than I.

04:08:06 - 04:08:14

Speaker 1

I understand, but he controls the time. He controls the time. You get to control your answer. And the gentleman's ready.

04:08:14 - 04:08:39

Speaker 19

If we're allowed to answer, Mister chairman, thank you. Secretary, my question was clear, whether you thought they were liars or not. You don't seem to want to answer it. We can move on. The other part of what your spokesman said, and you just reiterated here, was that, and I'm quoting your spokesman, every possible measure has been taken to safeguard our troops, end quote.

You're meant to tell us, and let's I'll give you a chance to clarify. There is not a single additional thing you could have done to protect those troops who are now wounded, six of whom are dead.

04:08:39 - 04:09:09

Speaker 3

I'm telling you that as a department, we did every conceivable thing at my level and every echelon down to ensure the maximum force protection for our troops. We live in a dangerous world, a dangerous place against a determined enemy that can't have a nuclear weapon, and that requires risk. And it, tragically, in this case, it meant six Americans lost their lives and others were wounded. And I and we all know that, and we all that's part of the cost. But it does not mean we didn't care, and it doesn't mean we didn't care.

04:09:09 - 04:09:09

Speaker 22

I didn't.

04:09:09 - 04:09:09

Speaker 19

ask you that.

04:09:09 - 04:09:10

Speaker 3

It doesn't mean.

04:09:10 - 04:10:01

Speaker 19

We didn't do everything possible, which we did. But what I, let's be clear about what was done. There were T walls there, essentially. There was no overhead protection. The known threat in that environment, and I think we all here understand it, is an overhead drone strike.

There was no protection from overhead drone strike. So I'm struggling to understand how your and your spokesman's answer is that every possible measure was taken. We can move on. Mister chairman, chairman Kane, I want to ask you something about a different topic. Folks at home know you're the senior military officer in our armed services.

They may not have as much of an understanding of your role in the chain of command. You're outside the operational chain of command, but you are the president's and the secretary's senior military advisor. So I want to ask a very basic thing. What you would expect our commanders in the field, our troops to do should the enemy lay down their weapons and try to surrender. What would you expect commanders in the field to do?

04:10:03 - 04:10:16

Speaker 5

Well, sir, I think I'll go back to something I said earlier with deep respect for your question, but I think you're trying to take me to a partisan place here, and I can't let you do that.

04:10:16 - 04:10:18

Speaker 19

General, I as always, respect your

04:10:18 - 04:10:18

Speaker 5

No, sir. I

04:10:19 - 04:10:21

Speaker 19

desire to avoid it. I'm not trying to put you in a partisan.

04:10:21 - 04:10:34

Speaker 5

And I know that. But I, you know, our officers and enlisted service members always follow lawful orders. There's a checklist for them to do that. And, I just, I'll stay in the middle.

04:10:34 - 04:10:57

Speaker 19

Understood, general. Secretary, let me give you a chance. You've asked about this earlier. You said it, I think your press conference, essentially, and I'll quote you here: no quarter, no mercy for our enemies. That's the end of the quote.

Is your guidance that you expect our troops in harm's way if there's a foreign enemy surrendering, laying down their arms, they're supposed to provide no quarter and kill them?

04:10:59 - 04:11:08

Speaker 3

You denied it, but you were indeed trying to take the chairman to a partisan place. That was General Milley. That was the previous administration which played politics. We don't play that. Simple question.

04:11:08 - 04:11:10

Speaker 19

I'm asking you what you meant.

04:11:10 - 04:11:15

Speaker 3

Win, and we ensure the rules of engagements are such that our troops have every authority possible to

04:11:15 - 04:11:23

Speaker 19

I'll give you another chance. Do you mean saying that, are you trying to tell commanders that that's what you expect? You're in the chain of command. It's a simple question.

04:11:23 - 04:11:29

Speaker 3

I understand that. My commanders know exactly what the guidance is with each and every mission, and they know every tool that you're focusing.

04:11:29 - 04:11:39

Speaker 19

too accurate. I think you speak volumes. I think that's a dangerous thing. We all know the expectations. We know the law of war.

We know what is lawful. I'd expect our commanders to understand that as well. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

04:11:39 - 04:11:43

Speaker 1

Gentleman yields back. Cheering, I recognize the gentleman from Guam, Mr. Moylan.

04:11:47 - 04:12:59

Speaker 31

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Hercep, thank you for your continued attention to Guam. Really appreciate it, and while leading the war department here. And I'd like to remind my colleagues that one of your first official trips as secretary was to visit Guam.

And during your confirmation hearing, you identified the island as America's most strategic location globally. And this commitment does not go unnoticed, sir. So I thank you, Mr. Secretary, for that. And as we continue our buildup, for the defense of our nation in Guam and the people at Guam, as we have many active duty personnel, but we also have a lot of Department of War civilian personnel too. And right now, one of our most consistent, my most consistent question from my constituents has been asking is, when would the living court or allowance authorization for war department civilians in Guam, when will it be implemented?

And recently, your office confirmed that the guidance should be published early in May. Will you work to keep that timeline? And will you work to ensure the living quarter allowance will properly incentivize local hires to stay on Guam?

04:13:00 - 04:13:36

Speaker 3

Well, if that's what we stated, we need to stick with it. That's been our pledge. And I think, it reiterates that the amount we're paying to pay for housing and for quality of life and living at certain especially unique locations is usually mismatched, and it causes staffing and workforce problems that we need to address in a tailored nature to some of those unique locations like Guam, like Hawaii, and others in Europe. So, we are committed to that. And I would just note that in our budget, we've got almost 1,000,000,000 for the Guam defense system.

Also, we're investing in, ensuring that that critical location you described is part of our theater umbrella.

04:13:36 - 04:14:28

Speaker 31

Excellent, sir. Thank you for that. Another long-standing request I have from the war department has been the increased support for Guam's power grid. As you know, we all, the one island approach there and working together, our water, our power, our port, our airports, our hospital, it's all in support, working together with the military. But one of the important ones for us is Guam's power grid.

And most of Guam's grid is owned by the department and is leased to the Guam Power Authority. And as the military demands upon the power grid increases, do you see either O and M funds or military construction funds being the best path for the department to support Guam's power grid needs?

04:14:33 - 04:14:59

Speaker 3

I'd welcome your input first and foremost, as we have throughout. But as was noted, we've got 450000000 for small modular reactors, which is a new approach we're taking, which we think makes our bases more resilient. If there's one place the American people count on being able to be prepared in that moment, it's our bases wherever they are, whether CONUS or OCONUS. And these reactors are a key part of getting at it. So that would be part of how I'd answer your question.

04:14:59 - 04:16:01

Speaker 31

I appreciate that, mister secretary. Also, the Guam Power Authority is the only one in charge of all the transmission lines. So where that power source and I know there was some consideration of the small nuclear reactors as well, but the power authority will be the one for the transmission lines for all the power on the island. So looking forward to working with your office. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Another deep concern for the people of Guam has been the cost of housing, which is often driven up by large numbers of servicemen living on base in Guam. And I've been impressed by the recent efforts by joint regional marijuana to reduce the reliance on existing housing stock in both North and South of Guam. Can you tell us how the department housing strategy in Guam will work to keep homes affordable to locals? And if increased private sector involvement would help address my constituents' concerns.

04:16:02 - 04:16:26

Speaker 3

Well, we've got about 4.5 billion for family housing in the FY twenty seven budget. It's something we recognize as a challenge, and in places like that, a unique challenge. There's also been a bureaucratic construction process, which has been a huge impediment. And you can imagine President Trump has demanded that we do something different and accelerate a different process to deliver those things in more of a private sector, less bureaucratic fashion, and we look forward to employing those.

04:16:26 - 04:16:41

Speaker 31

Excellent, sir. And finally, we did have one discussion when we first met on Guam, regarding the Medal of Honor, possible recipients that are deserving of this. Now Guam has never had any Medal of Honor recipients.

04:16:41 - 04:16:43

Speaker 31

there's three names that we've

04:16:43 - 04:16:44

Speaker 1

Been Gentlemen's time's expired.

04:16:44 - 04:16:45

Speaker 39

Thank you.

04:16:45 - 04:17:06

Speaker 1

I would like to point out, you know, once I recognize a member, they have control of those five minutes. If they wanna give a speech, they can give a speech. If they wanna ask questions, they can ask questions. But if you ask a question, I would hope you give a witness a chance to answer. But if they choose not to, then the witness has to recognize it's their time, cut it off, and go back to them.

04:17:06 - 04:17:06

Speaker 6

But I.

04:17:06 - 04:17:06

Speaker 14

wanna stick.

04:17:07 - 04:17:08

Speaker 2

Sorry. Go ahead.

04:17:08 - 04:17:19

Speaker 1

I want to be respectful of each other and be able to make sure we maximize the use of this time. But everybody has to understand it's the member's five minutes, once I recognize. Did the ranking member want to offer something?

04:17:19 - 04:17:35

Speaker 2

I just wanna second that. Yeah. It is the members' time. I do hope members, you know, ask a question. Gotta allow for more than two words.

Yes. If they filibuster or don't answer the question, feel free to interrupt. But I hope we can keep this respectful, it's more productive for us and for the witnesses and for those watching. So thank you, mister.

04:17:35 - 04:17:35

Speaker 14

chair.

04:17:35 - 04:17:39

Speaker 1

And with that, we will recognize a gentlelady from Hawaii, Mr. Kuda.

04:17:39 - 04:18:20

Speaker 40

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On February 2, President Trump said we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting, despite the constitution assigning primary responsibility for elections to the states. Federal law also draws very clear limits. Under 18 US code section 592, military officers are prohibited from deploying troops or armed personnel to polling places unless necessary to repel armed enemies of The United States.

That is the exception. Not politics, not suspicion, not conspiracy theories, not armed enemies. Secretary Hughes said, do you think American voters are enemies of the United States? Simple yes and no or suffice.

04:18:22 - 04:18:26

Speaker 3

I think legal voters, I think everybody who's legal should vote. Yes.

04:18:26 - 04:18:31

Speaker 40

So American voters are not enemies of the United States. Yes. You're agreeing with me?

04:18:31 - 04:18:33

Speaker 3

I think America's legal citizens should vote. Yes.

04:18:33 - 04:18:48

Speaker 40

How many armed enemies of the United States have attempted to interfere in the last election? Can you recall any time when armed enemies of The United States attempted to interfere in the last election or the 2020 election?

04:18:49 - 04:18:51

Speaker 3

We just had the king of England here a while ago.

04:18:51 - 04:19:07

Speaker 40

But oh, two hundred fifty years ago. Okay. Very good. Alright. Well, Secretary Heck said, if President Trump ordered you to deploy troops to polling places during the midterm elections this fall, which would violate the law I just cited, would you implement his order?

Yes or no?

04:19:08 - 04:19:22

Speaker 3

What you're trying to insinuate is that the president would give unlawful orders, and we would somehow deploy troops as a result. And the evidence of our department is that we've worked alongside law enforcement very effectively for 15 months. Los Angeles would have been on fire for the summer had we not come across.

04:19:22 - 04:19:53

Speaker 40

I humbly disagree that. But this is not a hypothetical situation that I'm inferring on your president. In January, told The New York Times that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in key states after the 2020 election. Last I heard from you, the last time we had any kind of armed enemies at any type of voting place was 250 years ago. We're talking 2020. So if the president, again, I'm asking you, orders you to break election law, violate the Constitution and the law, would you follow the orders of the president?

Yes or no?

04:19:53 - 04:19:58

Speaker 3

The president, you like to insinuate that the president issued a legal question. And does not.

04:19:58 - 04:20:00

Speaker 40

Who would you follow? The president or the constitution?

04:20:00 - 04:20:04

Speaker 3

Note that in 2024, troops were with Joe Biden. The

04:20:04 - 04:20:05

Speaker 40

Joe Biden was.

04:20:05 - 04:20:13

Speaker 3

Deployed to polling locations in 15 states. 2024, Joe Biden, troops deployed to polling locations in 15 states. Explain that to me.

04:20:13 - 04:20:26

Speaker 40

I am asking you a question now. You seem to really like Joe Biden. You've brought his name up more than many other topics today. Answer the question: who are you beholden to, mister secretary? The president of the constitution?

04:20:27 - 04:20:33

Speaker 3

Well, very proudly answer that question because he's proudly serviced the president. Very proudly swear a note in the constitution.

04:20:33 - 04:20:52

Speaker 40

In Los Angeles. He couldn't answer that either. So I think our answer is very clear. Obviously, you have taken an oath of loyalty only to the president and not the people of this country. Let's move on now, and let's talk about AI.

The Marvin Smart System, which appears to be the program on record being used in Iran, does the targeting work we know of about 2,000.

04:20:52 - 04:20:54

Speaker 3

It's called the Maven system, not the Marvin system.

04:20:54 - 04:21:14

Speaker 40

Me. Thank you so much for that correction. It does it in a fraction of the time. The intention was to compress the kill chain, and the result was an attack that killed almost 200 children. Would you agree that tragic actions like this prove that when we trade time and humans for safety, people die?

04:21:16 - 04:21:31

Speaker 3

The Maven system is a very effective tool, and inside that we have very prescriptive processes by which we ensure as much precision as humanly possible in very complex battlefield power.

04:21:32 - 04:21:36

Speaker 40

Think we took every absolute effort to make sure that innocent civilians did not die in this attack?

04:21:37 - 04:21:48

Speaker 3

I know that there is no country on planet Earth that takes more measures to ensure that civilian harm or civilian casualties are minimized than the United States of America and this war department, and that is a fact in here.

04:21:48 - 04:22:13

Speaker 40

Okay. And yet, mister secretary, you eliminated the department's civilian harm reduction staff. You eliminated it. For a country that does take great efforts, makes great efforts to make sure human casualties are reduced or eliminated, don't you think that goes actually counter to what you just said? Would these children not still be alive if you had not eliminated all of the staff working within Centcom?

04:22:13 - 04:22:22

Speaker 3

We didn't eliminate them. We made sure that those things that they normally accomplish are at the field level, which they are. And all of these processes are in place.

04:22:22 - 04:22:37

Speaker 40

At every level. Something clearly has failed, whether it's our implementation of AI, whether it's understanding our human dependence on AI. Would you not agree something failed because almost 200 children died in Iran as a result of our bombing?

04:22:37 - 04:22:40

Speaker 3

You're insinuating something where an investigation is not complete.

04:22:40 - 04:22:43

Speaker 1

Generally, times expired. You're now recognized as a gentleman from Georgia, doctor.

04:22:43 - 04:25:51

Speaker 8

McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, I'm happy to have you here today and really excited about the things you've been able to accomplish. Just to, I'm gonna summarize this. I'm just sitting here for a few minutes, to let everybody politicize what we've done.

I'm just gonna break it down as best as I can, and then I'm gonna let you answer a couple of questions. First of all, just since the short period of time that the Trump administration has taken over, we've handed over control of Ukraine's destiny to Europe where it belongs, a conglomerate that has a $20,000,000,000,000 economy versus a $2,000,000,000,000 Russian economy to actually take care of their own country in a very good way, their own continent. We've kept Iran, who has literally talked about raining down fire from heaven and talked about us being the Great Satan, from becoming a nuclear power. We've reshaped the geopolitical space in the Persian Gulf. We've re-established the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere.

We've basically executed two of the most amazing raids in history, almost flawlessly. They will be studied for a generation, at least. We reduced senior administrative billets. Thank you. We've defeated Iran with under 30,000,000,000 spent, with minimal civilian casualties compared to any other war.

People forget that in World War two, in one night, we lost 100,000 civilians, totally innocent, and fire bombs. That's before we dropped the nuclear bombs. War is a horrible thing, but I think we've executed at least as best as possible in a very hard and consequential environment. That's just to sum up a few things, not to mention the recruiting that went from dismal and really something that could have crippled our military to now a surplus just by a change in administration. That's pretty impressive for a short period of time.

Thank you, and I commend you for your hardship, overcoming those hardships. A couple of things that I wanted to get through. One thing is we talked about the incentivized saving act, is something I wanted to apply to all bureaucracies. But when I was in the military as both an operational officer and a logistics officer for my squadrons and my jump places, we got to end the fiscal year. If we didn't spend it, what happens?

We lose it, we get our budget shrunk. Everybody knows that in the military. Everybody knows that in every bureaucracy in America. One of the things I came up with is at the end of the fiscal year, if you don't spend it, you don't have anything, you know, we save 10% of our budget for emergencies like we're facing right now. If you don't spend it, instead of spending it, you actually can save half of it.

49% rolls over to the next year. 49% goes back to debt and deficit. 2% to reward the people for being good administrators of the money. I don't see any downside. This is the way that we reinvent government, the way we spend money.

And I just thought I wanted your opinion on something like that. I thought I was thinking outside the box because I've seen wage fraud and abuse. We're trying to address that. This should be a bipartisan, bicameral approach to actually doing something right as we expand the budget, also give us some wiggle room for putting money back and being good stewards of people's money. What do you think about an idea like that?

04:25:52 - 04:26:43

Speaker 3

I like very much like an idea like that, which creates all the right kinds of incentives. And I would just add, in addition to that, which is the type of thing that our department would support, the deals that we're cutting with these private sector companies on munitions ensures they build the plants, they build the assembly lines, which is exactly the right kind of incentive. If you on cap you've on facilities, you're gonna make sure you make money on those facilities and the munitions that you produce. There's ownership in that stake. There's the right incentive that's overturning the entire way the department does business.

So I agree with that. We're pointing at the defense contractors that the president has and saying, you need to do your business differently. This is not a gravy train for the government. You need to be beholden to us, actually. So I think we're the spirit of that is infused into everything we're doing at the department.

04:26:43 - 04:27:15

Speaker 8

And I think it's right in line with what you're talking about, running it more like a business where we have accountability, and we're pointing the right direction. We do have a lot of old programs that we need to update. Mhmm. One of the things you talked about is a five- to seven-year period of time of updating. I think almost year by year now is gonna be how we're gonna have to look at how we budget things in contract because the technologies are so dramatic, as General Kane pointed out.

I know I'm running out of time real quickly, but I wanna also revisit the fact that you are still invited down to North Georgia, one of the elite eight schools. We're looking forward to PTing with you.

04:27:15 - 04:27:16

Speaker 3

I do that.

04:27:16 - 04:27:20

Speaker 8

Appreciate you guys being here today. God bless you, and God bless our military service members. Without you.

04:27:20 - 04:27:25

Speaker 5

Sir, I gotta say this guy over my left shoulder is a University of North Georgia graduate.

04:27:25 - 04:27:33

Speaker 8

He doesn't want me to tell you that, but he is. The president would be very happy. The president of the university's great president, Shannon, would be very happy to hear that.

04:27:33 - 04:27:37

Speaker 1

Thank you, mister Towers. I'm breaking out the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Davis.

04:27:37 - 04:29:43

Speaker 18

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Also, thank you, Mister Secretary, Chairman Cain, and Mister Hurst. Shout out to Winterville. 13 US service members killed. 13 families forever changed.

13 heroes who put on the uniform, paid the ultimate sacrifice. We owe remembrance to those families. I just want you to know we see you, we stand with you. We'll never forget their gold star families who are here today, sitting in the room, carrying the honor and remember flags. Remember the sacrifice, and when we do so, words can't fully capture it.

April '15 strike eagle pilots were rescued because we live by a simple promise. We do not leave anyone behind. The same spirit must be extended to those who are killed in action. That's why I raise again today and raise this question of the importance of passing HR thirteen sixty three honor and remember flag recognition. Mister secretary, I raised this with you before.

And, actually, I come today to thank you for the response from your office and actually engaging with us in this. I rise again today and bring this up because we must never lose sight of the true cause of war. As we commemorate 250 years in this country, the first call for independence, Halifax County delegates move forward with the first official action in my district. Our service members are the reason we are here today. They've delivered freedom, and I believe it would be amazing if we could deliver for their families, those who've sacrificed this flag, something to help them ideally by Memorial Day or at least commemorate their families. I was simply asked, do you have any thoughts whatsoever on how we continue to lift and honor those who have been killed serving our country.

04:29:45 - 04:30:25

Speaker 3

Well, thank you for what you do on that topic. I think, first and foremost, we do it by doing right by the legacy of those that we lose, whether it's those 13 from this conflict or any other conflict. I've been at Dover every single time, as is the chairman, as is the president, the vice president when they can, to greet that and respect and honor that. In our department, we established the first ever Gold Star task force, where we've got a Gold Star advocate right in our front office working these issues on a daily basis, which is why it wouldn't surprise me that we so quickly got back to you. These are passion, these are deep in our DNA, things that we care about.

How you treat a family who's given everything in that moment, not just at Dover, but in every step.

04:30:25 - 04:31:52

Speaker 18

Of that process is reflected out. Thank you truly, just for time here. And I'd served mortuary, I've been to Dover. I deployed to Dover. So thank you. I wanna shift to the army, cadet command.

The senior RTC programs rebalance optimization plan, North Carolina Central University in particular, their real access and logistical challenges that are before the cadets. And when we think about building the next generation of leaders, I would just ask us to think about how we're putting barriers in front of some. And I would just ask you quickly if you could please take a closer look at the impact on the cadets. I wanna shift to another topic and really spend the last moment here as I'm running short. Your memo, April memo, the nonofficial personal protection arming of the Department of War, property.

My son is at Fort Benning right now, infantry. He's training, ideally. He wants to be 11 bravo. And I shared the memo with them, and he shared it with his battle buddies to see the response. And he's definitely second amendment enthused, an advocate, and they're really interested, you know, in this.

My question is simple. How do you plan to provide any guidance on the denials, and how do you plan to track them?

04:31:53 - 04:32:21

Speaker 3

That was the intent, is to make sure those men and women out there feel like they have their second amendment rights even when they're on post. And the burden of proof is on the command as to why they would deny, as opposed to the burden of proof on why they should allow. So the presumption is the same rights they would have outside the gate of a base, they have inside for personal protection purposes. Our bases shouldn't be gun-free zones except for the armory and the MPs. So the burden of proof is something we're gonna pay very

04:32:21 - 04:32:38

Speaker 18

Attention. My last 15 seconds, chairman Kang. Thank you again for the conversation, Breakfast. Any final thoughts in terms of any reservations of how we're dealing with munitions, in terms of a supplement on the depletion of munitions.

04:32:38 - 04:32:42

Speaker 1

Gentlemen's time expired. I do not recognize the gentleman from Louisiana, mister Higgins.

04:32:42 - 04:36:56

Speaker 23

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Kane, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for being here today. Mister secretary, you stated in your opening statement that one of the foundational endeavors that you embrace is to, in your words, forge a lethal arsenal of freedom. I don't think it could be more accurately described.

The spirit that you gentlemen are delivering within the Department of War, the men and women that you serve. It's notable for an American like me, army veteran, 65 years old. I don't believe in my lifetime I've witnessed this level of rebirth and hardcore focus that I'm witnessing out of the Pentagon right now. And I just commend you for driving that. And please know that you have a great deal of support, not just in this body and on this committee, but across the country.

Regular Americans that have served or have families that have served have taken note. General, you said in your opening statement that if called upon, we win our wars around the world. Those are your words, and we're gonna make certain through this committee that you have the support, the equipment, and the funding that you need to if called upon win wars across the world. But we expect a lot out of you, gentlemen. We expect you to liberate and secure the entire Western Hemisphere.

One of my colleagues across the aisle stated that in a negative way. Let me flip it to positive. We absolutely do expect you to liberate and secure the entire Western Hemisphere. We expect you to drive Iran to its knees, and free the world of the Iranian terrorist threat. We expect you to leverage NATO into an indomitable force.

We expect you to set China back on its heels worldwide. We expect you to drive peace and stability through the projection of military power. We expect you to secure the transit of affordable, transportable American energy products as the indisputable cornerstone of economic prosperity for every allied nation. That's a lot of expectations. And what you gentlemen have laid out today as you've answered questions, solid, you've made it clear that that's the path we're on.

And I support you. My democrat colleagues have made it clear today that after careful study and thorough research of world history, they've come to the conclusion that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are far safer if they're never deployed into conflict. You've made it very clear that you take your business seriously, and we support you. I certainly do. Mister secretary, in consultation with your staff, reflective of your goals and your mission and your stated intentions, in consultation with your staff and personnel and readiness, I propose legislation to codify your guidance that combat fitness standards must be rigorous with no separate scoring scales, adjusted standards, or accommodations.

But there'd be only a single uncompromising standard, not to exclude any American from any opportunity, but to ensure we have the best, most capable Americans in the most critical positions. Would you welcome this body making your guidance into law and the NDAA?

04:36:57 - 04:36:58

Speaker 3

I would welcome the Congressman.

04:36:58 - 04:37:15

Speaker 23

Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for clarifying that. A question about Iran, and I'll give you the final thirty seconds to answer. Was Iran moving precipitously towards nuclear weapons capability, Mr. Secretary?

04:37:16 - 04:37:41

Speaker 3

Even after the obliteration of Midnight Hammer, what was clear is that the intention of Iran remained in pursuit of nuclear weapons. And after as hard as they were hit by Israel, it created an opportunity to get rid of the conventional shield. That's why we talked about missile production and the navy and the defense industrial base to set them back from blackmailing the region and the world in pursuit of nuclear weapons, because we understood how much they could continue to pursue them.

04:37:42 - 04:37:44

Speaker 23

Roger that. Thank you, gentlemen. Mister chairman, I yield.

04:37:44 - 04:37:49

Speaker 1

Gentlemen's time has expired here, and I recognize a gentleman from California, Mr. Cisneros.

04:37:49 - 04:39:19

Speaker 41

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you and the ranking member for bringing us here today for this hearing, very important to the nation. I wanna thank our witnesses for all being here today. Mister secretary, the president recently made an announcement that the state-activated National Guard would start receiving active duty pay for federal missions, and I believe you kind of made similar remarks as well. I'm happy to see that announcement because it brought the much-needed attention to this disparity.

Whether you agree with missions or not, when guardmen are called up for active duty and they really have no choice in the matter for homeland missions, often, they are receiving inconsistent pay and benefits depending on their status. This issue has persisted for decades. This is why earlier this year, Rep Bergman and I introduced the duty status reform act, which would address the issue head on. I believe this is the right time to push us over the finish line. It's something the National Guard Bureau supports.

The council of governor support, just the other week, service. The service personnel chiefs were all here. They support it. TAG support it. So, mister secretary, as a former member of the National Guard, I am asking you here today, would you consider supporting consolidating the 29 duty status for the military reserve component into a balanced and equitable system that would also help the National Guard receive retirement points when they're called up for these federal missions.

Would you support that?

04:39:20 - 04:39:40

Speaker 3

Congressman, thank you for your efforts on this. It makes a ton of sense, and we support these efforts for duty status reform in pursuit of things that work for the department and for the troops, because they deserve the kind of pay and benefits that are commensurate with active duty troops. So we would look forward to working with your office, to get at duty status reform. Think now is the right time.

04:39:40 - 04:39:54

Speaker 41

Thank you for that. General Kane, I ask you the same question as if an individual who's served in the Air National Guard. Would you consider supporting duty status reform that's gonna simplify this and help our National Guard troops?

04:39:54 - 04:40:16

Speaker 5

Sure. I'll be careful to stay in my lane. My personal, not the chairman's opinion, is somebody who's lived the house of pain of 30 different duty statuses would support it. As the chairman, I'll leave personnel, and you know this from your prior life, to our civilian leaders who do that. But I do think we owe a better set of options to our guardsmen and our reservists across the forces.

04:40:16 - 04:41:35

Speaker 41

Well, thank you both for that. This is something that I think needs to get done, and something I've been working on for years now. The National Guard Bureau supports it. And so I hope you will, like you said, work with us to get that done. O and B seems to be our roadblock, so I'm hoping you can kinda push that roadblock down so that we can finally get this done.

Next question. Mister secretary, I take what we do for our personnel very seriously and that sometimes I know you have stated right here today, our troops are ready. They will do anything if I ask upon them. But I think as leaders, sometimes we need to kind of protect them as well. And I worry about the USS Ford, which has now kind of been out there over 10 months.

It's probably well over 300 days by the time it gets back to The United States. I just saw a thing today. It's gonna be headed back here in a few days. You know, these people have gone pretty much all over the world. They crossed the equator multiple times.

But I am interested, you know, I'm sure that was not in the GIF map when it was first assigned, when they were deployed. And so what were some of the concerns, you know, that the navy had when you made this modification, when it was brought forward to you that, hey, this is what extending them out to past 10 months is gonna do. This is, you know, both on the troops and on the ship. What concerns did the navy bring up for this?

04:41:36 - 04:42:06

Speaker 3

It's a very fair question. And I can tell you every week I stare at an orders book, where I'm looking at troop movements or asset movements, and multiple times that included the Ford. And multiple times, the operational requirements, whether it was down in the in Southcom or up to Centcom, demanded additional assets in real time, which, through a tough decision making process, led to an extension in consultation with the navy. Admiral Caudle and his staff, they fairly represented readiness trade offs, maintenance trade offs, which are real face.

04:42:06 - 04:42:50

Speaker 41

of concerns. What trade offs are we making right here? I mean, really, we have three carriers in the area right now. How many do we really need? And it's rather, I mean, it's a great show of force, but do we really need three carriers there?

You got one arc there, and another one on the way. You know, this is gonna set back possible deployments later on. It's gonna have ramifications down the road, extending for this much. And not only talking about, you know, we had service members that were kept away from their families for almost a year. How many missed the birth of a child, you know, before, you know, extending them in another four months?

We need to keep this in consideration when we make these modifications. And I hope these issues are being raised when you do these dab books. Right? And people are actually making these decisions. Time expired.

04:42:50 - 04:42:53

Speaker 1

We now recognize a gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Maguire.

04:42:53 - 04:44:59

Speaker 42

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our witnesses today. Secretary Hegseth, I really appreciate your return to the warrior ethos and the priorities of our military. Merit over performance is how you win, and it's how you save lives. And your love of our military comes out in everything you say.

So we really support you and your team and what you're doing. General Kane, your comments about being in the middle and being apolitical also save lives. I think all of the fellow veterans in this room, military guys, would agree that if somebody saved your life on the battlefield, you wouldn't care if they're a male or female, black or white, Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever. We're all Americans, and we're all on the same team. And we put our differences aside, and work as a team.

We can turn the impossible into a possible. We can be outnumbered and still win. So I wanted to commend you guys for supporting our troops so they can best survive. Let's see. The border.

Nobody talks about the border, Mister Secretary, as you say. But it's incredible what you guys did in just a matter of weeks. The missions in Ukraine, Honduras, I don't know any other military in history who would have been able to successfully do something so complicated, but it talks to the unity and the teamwork of all the source, the joint force, and how well they work together. I got a lot of questions. I'll try to go fast.

$1,500,000,000,000 budget. In that budget, I wanna echo what Rep. Jackson said about US SOCOM. We are often deploy, and we seem to be doing more with less, and we don't complain. And they won't be that voice. So for us in Congress, we wanna be that voice.

It's just take a look at the budget and see if we can help them with that. Also, I wanna talk to you guys about solid rocket motors. I know that the secretary of war, I know that in this budget we've picked one particular company that we put a lot of money in, and I think it's a great company, and they do a great job. But what is your plan to also have other companies come to the table to help us with a shortfall of solid rocket motors?

04:45:00 - 04:45:27

Speaker 3

You're right on SOCOM, and we will absolutely work with you and look at that. On solid rocket motors, it's a such critical component. You got to go with your fastest runner to get caught up as quickly as you can and give them incentives. But we've also learned on multiple domains that just one option means zero options when you're stuck. You know?

One is zero, two is one, one is none. So we need multiple avenues on that approach, and we look forward to finding other companies that can do it as well.

04:45:27 - 04:45:47

Speaker 42

Thank you. General Kane, National Guard, I'm thinking about counter drone with the FIFA coming up, Super Bowls, and all these things going on. Have you considered, and if you haven't, will you consider training national guardsmen, send them to counter drone schools so they can come back and train law enforcement, so we can increase our ability to protect critical infrastructure?

04:45:47 - 04:46:04

Speaker 5

Sure. For sure. They may already be doing that. Please let me take that one, and come back to you. I know the title 32 force in advance of all the domestic things that are on the horizon here with America's 250 are looking at a range of capabilities.

So if you'd be okay, we'll get back to now.

04:46:04 - 04:46:18

Speaker 42

On Ukraine, whoever could answer this is, you know, they have 60% enriched uranium. They say they have enough to build 11 bombs. And even at 60%, is that enough to make a dirty bomb? Is that a yes or a no? Does anybody have an answer for that?

04:46:20 - 04:46:20

Speaker 1

I mean, I

04:46:20 - 04:46:24

Speaker 3

Wouldn't wanna state anything that might be classified, so I wouldn't talk about that in this setting.

04:46:24 - 04:46:55

Speaker 42

And by the way, in World War two, a congressman was in a closed briefing and learned that the reason the Japanese hadn't sunk any US submarines is they didn't know our submarines could go below 250 feet. So we went out to the media and told them that, and we started losing submarines and losing American sailors. So a lesson for all of us in Congress. Be careful how we, so thank you for considering that. I would say this, if they had a nuclear bomb, would that kill hundreds of people potentially, thousands of people potentially, or millions of people potentially?

04:46:58 - 04:47:11

Speaker 3

The history shows us what the lethal potential is of a nuclear weapon, and so you'd have to assume the higher end of that range. And given the radical nature of this regime and the likelihood of them to use it, it gives you a sense of the threat.

04:47:11 - 04:47:53

Speaker 42

Well, I think the threat is too great to wait, and I have to commend this president Trump for having the fortitude and the secretary of war and the joint force for making sure we stop this threat for the world. Also, I'm a big supporter of the AH-64 Apache. I understand and operations, absolute resolve, and everything else. It's been very effective in countering drones. I'm glad that in the NDA, we're keeping the program going.

And I just saw that you're gonna keep the 10 program going. And a good friend of mine said, long live the warthog. But if there are ways that we could bring some of the warthogs back, and or, are there any other capabilities that can replace the warthog? I don't think so. Is there anything that can do what the warthog does?

04:47:53 - 04:47:57

Speaker 1

Gentlemen's time expired. Here, I recognize a gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Sorenson.

04:47:57 - 04:48:43

Speaker 43

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To General Cain, on behalf of myself and my constituents, we thank you for your service and your leadership. To our military men and women, to our service members, and the veterans that I see in our committee today, thank you for your support of our great country. Mister Hegseth, I hear from your officials in our briefings here on the Hill. And because I live in an army town, I now hear from neighbors at the grocery store who are worried about our munitions stockpiles that are now down to critical levels, and they sure don't want another forever war.

So, mister secretary, first of all, talk to us about the need to renew munition stockpiles, and tell us what happens when munition stockpiles become depleted.

04:48:44 - 04:49:25

Speaker 3

Well, first of all, I would note that, as you know, we give weekly briefings on munitions to this committee. So it's not something that's withheld from any of the members here. We appreciate that. And but it's also a topic that isn't something that should be publicly discussed, as far as any shortfalls that may exist. But I would assure you that there are no shortfalls that exist in our ability to execute the missions around the world.

And the reason we're investing in the defense industrial base with $1,500,000,000,000 is to make sure the greatest companies in the world, which has been falling behind for decades, are running faster than ever before to give us two x, three x, four x of the critical munitions, your Patriots, your THAADs, your SM threes, every other state standard missile, and

04:49:25 - 04:49:29

Speaker 43

And my neighbors work really hard to make sure that we can have jobs in America.

04:49:29 - 04:49:30

Speaker 3

It's what our warfighters need.

04:49:30 - 04:49:40

Speaker 43

We're focused on tell me why we're firing the people at Joint Munitions Command for no cause other than just telling them they're overhired or they're a surplus employee?

04:49:40 - 04:49:52

Speaker 3

Would have particular to the circumstances of that. But there have been places where we haven't been moving fast enough with the munitions. And when people don't move fast enough in the Department of War, we find someone else that will run fast.

04:49:52 - 04:50:01

Speaker 43

This is Joint Munitions Command. I mean, your department says that you're prioritizing munitions, yet you cut 58% of the joint munitions command at Rock Island. But let me move on. My district is also.

04:50:01 - 04:50:04

Speaker 3

Munitions are not built by command. Munitions are built by.

04:50:05 - 04:50:05

Speaker 43

They're the ones that.

04:50:05 - 04:50:14

Speaker 3

And we're very good at building commands and bureaucracies and slapping three- and four-star generals in charge of things that don't move things any faster. So our job is to unleash the power.

04:50:14 - 04:50:14

Speaker 35

that we're

04:50:14 - 04:50:30

Speaker 43

To get a divide, this doesn't have joint munitions command. But let me move on. We also have the Army Sustainment Command in my district. Could you tell me why we're firing folks at Army Sustainment Command when now is the time that we should be giving our soldiers every piece of sustainment that we can give them?

04:50:31 - 04:50:37

Speaker 3

Because as I've stated, the status quo at this department before the Trump administration was unacceptable, and changes had to be made.

04:50:37 - 04:50:50

Speaker 43

Do you think it's acceptable to fire veterans from jobs where they've been, you know, I talked to my neighbors at the arsenal, and they've worked there twenty, thirty years on top of their service to this country. And they're doing it exemplarily.

04:50:51 - 04:51:11

Speaker 3

Great performers will always have a job at the Department of War. When you reestablish merit, sometimes things happen, but we're grateful for all the vets who serve. And, in fact, we've created a Patriot pipeline for service members to get into the defense industrial-based manufacturing business to consider that as a second career. So we're leaning into vets and service members as the workforce of the future in our department.

04:51:11 - 04:51:42

Speaker 43

And this isn't me. I mean, they tell me that, you know, they feel you're taking a wrecking ball to the civilian workforce. But, you know, I wanna go and follow-up on congressman Norcross' questions about why you terminated collective bargaining earlier this month. This affects hundreds of thousands of hardworking DoD employees. So many of them are veterans who have honorably served our country.

You testified that if you work hard, you do the work, you keep your job, but that's not what is happening. And you allege it is being done to maximize efficiency? Explain that.

04:51:42 - 04:51:51

Speaker 3

I should, yeah. I'd thank you for asking that question. I'd love to clarify. I fundamentally believe the Department of War should not be subject to collective bargaining, full stop.

04:51:52 - 04:51:56

Speaker 43

So people shouldn't be able to fight for good wages and be treated well?

04:51:57 - 04:52:02

Speaker 3

I think our department does a great job evaluating and providing pay and benefits for folks across.

04:52:02 - 04:52:16

Speaker 43

to invite you to the Rock Island Arsenal so you can look these patriots in the eyes and tell them that. How does creating chaos for long-term civilian workers actually maximize efficiency? Do you have any comment on that?

04:52:16 - 04:52:28

Speaker 3

There are plenty of examples of shipyards and other manufacturing. That limit the hours, limit the ability of leaders to ensure we're providing meeting the goals we're supposed to, and I don't think we should love.

04:52:28 - 04:52:29

Speaker 32

To those restrictions.

04:52:29 - 04:52:48

Speaker 43

Okay. Okay. Well, you know what? I wanna use the rest of my time to thank the men and women of our armed forces. Please go forth with the integrity and the morality that you've carried before this administration took us down a path that has allies turning away and American citizens objecting.

Do what's right, even if you're asked to do otherwise. Mister chairman, I yield back.

04:52:49 - 04:52:52

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. Chairman, I recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mills.

04:52:52 - 04:53:44

Speaker 16

Thank you so much, Mister Chairman, Mister Secretary, General Cain, and the Honorable. We'd love to just thank you for this opportunity for coming here and for continuing to push forward the warfighter ethos for making sure that the realities, regardless of what's said in here, are the realities on the battlefield that we're getting day in and day out. I ask the chairman for unanimous consent to enter a couple of documents into the record. Without objection. I'll be entering the record my DD 214 published in 2003 indicating my bronze star and other wartime medals and decorations.

I'd also like to present the document provided by the Department of the Army in 2024 that also authorizes vets and verifies all medals and or awards, as well as a document by Paul Savitsky, former special forces member, that annotates the two explosions that I was involved in in Baghdad.

04:53:44 - 04:53:47

Speaker 1

Without objection, so ordered. Mister secretary, as.

04:53:47 - 04:54:11

Speaker 16

You know, you're pretty familiar with the ideas of slander, defamation, and attack on the character. So I apologize for having to take that moment to be able to go ahead and correct the record, but it was necessary. I'd also note that my OMPF file that was FOIAed by the Department of the Army or that was FOIAed was actually released by the Department of the Army the same day as yours was. So everything is sitting on the actual website itself if people are not too lazy to look.

04:54:11 - 04:54:14

Speaker 36

At it. Secretary Heg Seth, thank you for.

04:54:14 - 04:54:58

Speaker 16

Your testimony and for the time that you have here today. As the chairman noted, president Trump's incredible $1,500,000,000,000 investment into our national defense is set to reverse the years of atrophy that our defense industrial base has faced over time, especially small innovative businesses, and needs a solid demand that signal that our war department is ready to buy American. I witnessed myself as I was with you in Merritt Island, Florida, as we went on the Arsenal tour, and, unfortunately, I didn't get to do the cool things, like flying a jet really quick and buzz around while we were all actually doing hard work here. But I wanted to just say, mister secretary, can you detail for us how the department of war has eased the path for American small businesses to contract with the department?

04:55:00 - 04:56:40

Speaker 3

Well, congressman, thank you for the question. That has been core to our mission is the recognition that we have a problem at the department, previously Department of Defense and now the Department of War, and that problem is us. That problem is our bureaucracy, our process that is meant to block out new competitors and protect existing primes. And there are great primes that provide great products, and we continue to support them. But to build an arsenal of freedom, you need more than just five or six.

You need an entire network of small, medium, and large companies contributing to the US manufacturing and supply base, delivering weapons ahead of schedule and under budget that don't only have defense business but also commercial business. And when we need something, can move quickly and adapt accordingly because there are multiple options. So our acquisitions transformation, speech and memo and directive we rolled out on that. The Arsenal of Freedom tour going out there with the hard hats and saying, you are part of the workforce. You have the backs of our warriors.

Just changing the entire dynamic to say, you shouldn't have to sue the department in order to get a contract with the department. We're opening the doors with biz small business loans with a SIB or SID or DIU or OSC. The Office of Strategic Capital hasn't even been discussed today. 20,000,000,000 that gets levered into $200,000,000,000, so that companies can invest in ways they otherwise wouldn't have the capital to do, and it's not on our balance sheet. So we've got businessmen, the deputy secretary of war, who should be deemed a national asset for what he understands and how he works.

We're opening the aperture of our department in historic ways, and I think our manufacturing base is gonna see the benefit for it.

04:56:40 - 04:56:57

Speaker 16

Well, thank you so much. I also wanna thank you for your due diligence in making sure that task force audit will come forward, and we will see the Department of War for the first time in 2028 with a clean audit, something that the previous administration was never able to do. Many before that, I believe it's 28 years, if I'm not mistaken, mister secretary, since we've had a clean audit.

04:56:57 - 04:57:10

Speaker 3

That is right. And this is not a thing we just announced. We've been doing it for 15 months. Jay's been integrally involved. We just launched a joint task force audit.

We are going to pass an audit as a department by 2028 because of the tax. This

04:57:10 - 04:57:38

Speaker 16

This is why we're so honored to have you as our secretary of war. And General Cain, we are honored to have you as well leading our forces. Mister secretary, with the last few seconds I have, from ships to bombs to bullets, our industrial base is in dire need of support. Even as these defense markers are strengthened, as a former small business owner, I understand how bottlenecks can hold up good contracts and move from the speed that we need for our warfighters. Mister secretary, can you detail how the department has moved to promote diversity in our defense industrial base?

04:57:39 - 04:57:43

Speaker 3

I can't detail the well, if you will.

04:57:43 - 04:57:43

Speaker 16

Can we submit for record?

04:57:48 - 04:57:53

Speaker 3

Sorry. Every aspect is opening it up to provide as much running room for new entrants as possible.

04:57:53 - 04:57:56

Speaker 16

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. I yield back.

04:57:56 - 04:57:58

Speaker 1

You're now recognized, gentleman from New Mexico, mister Vesquez.

04:57:59 - 05:00:01

Speaker 44

Thank you, mister chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. You're here before us requesting $1,500,000,000,000 for the defense department, the largest one year increase since World War two. While I will recognize that your budget does include increases for pay and quality of life, these increases are outweighed by the rising cost of living and the department's ongoing failures in childcare, education, medical care, and other quality of life factors. Just like other families, the soaring cost of gas, groceries, housing, and childcare has left military families underwater. Yet the department continues to put other priorities like a $25,000,000,000 war of choice in Iran and slight photo ops with Kid Rock ahead of improving the lives of our troops and their families.

It's deeply troubling to me that the department received a historic $1,000,000,000,000 last year, including $9,000,000,000 under HR one for improving troops' quality of life. But the New Mexican service members that I have and I've talked to are still living in barracks that are at capacity, sending their kids to run down schools, and lack access to on base child care. Here's an example. During my most recent visit to White Sands Missile Range, I saw severely aging base infrastructure, specifically an elementary school that is in need of a complete rebuild. Secretary Heggseth, last fall, you said that the quality of life for our warriors is a critical component of reviving the warrior ethos.

In a video you posted to social media last November, you said that the places where our warfighters reside need to be safe, comfortable, and clean. And in your opening statement today, you said the quality of life is front and center in this budget. But when it comes to our troop's quality of life, I fear that this is more of all talk because I can tell you the outdated barracks that I saw at White Sands Missile Range were anything but safe, comfortable, clean, and I haven't heard from service members about any improvements since you assumed this role. A secretary of defense, do you take any accountability for the continued quality of life concerns that New Mexico's military service members and families face today under your leadership?

05:00:03 - 05:00:42

Speaker 3

Well, I appreciate your attention to the matter of quality of life, which is incredibly important to us, and it's reflected in this budget. I mean, historic amounts in barracks, in family housing, in family support, like child development, youth program. This budget surpasses anything you've seen from this department in quite some time, to include replacing or eliminating all poor and failing barracks. So we've seen those photos. We responded to them with the barracks task force with a billion dollars initially, and now we have billions of dollars behind it to make sure they're safe and clean, and quality, but also that where they need to be replaced, they're rebuilt and replaced.

And the president has charged me with doing that, and we're focused on doing that.

05:00:42 - 05:01:57

Speaker 44

Thank you, secretary. And I hope that the next photos that you receive and the next photos that I receive and reports that I receive are of improved conditions and of new barracks and of quality of life improvements, because this has gone on for far too long. Let me give you another example. At Hallum and Air Force Base, the child development centers on base faced critical staffing issues for many years and, just recently, gave military families, our airmen and women, just nine days to find new child care providers. One parent said she felt she had no choice but to resign from her job as a physician assistant when her son lost his spot in on-base care.

And one patient describing his experience seeking health care at Cannon Air Force Base said, good luck if you need specialized care. Referrals take six months or more, and regular appointments are booked a month out. And so spending a billion dollars a day on a war overseas while leaving our service members out to dry is not America first. It's a betrayal. Secretary Heg Seth, I voted for $1,000,000,000,000 for the defense budget in committee last year, and I've yet to see the results come home.

Service members back home have said nothing about progress or improvements under way. Within thirty days, secretary, would you commit to sending me a detailed list of every dollar that is going to improve the quality of life at the bases in my district? We will get.

05:01:57 - 05:02:14

Speaker 3

You whatever we can, but that doesn't meet with what we've seen, which is running as fast as this department ever has on quality of life issues, because I've been in their shoes. I've seen those barracks, and I've seen them recently. And, it may not have happened under this administration, but this administration's gonna fix it. And, ultimately, this budget reflects that kind of priority across.

05:02:14 - 05:03:03

Speaker 44

Thank you, secretary. And I will just suggest that it needs to run faster. It needs to run at the speed of light. It needs to cross time travel. I don't care what it takes, but it's gone on for far too long.

And so I appreciate your attention to this issue, but we have got to get it done, and we cannot be here again next year discussing the improvements that haven't been done despite what's in the budget today. And so let me be clear that these issues have persisted for years under both administrations, on both sides of the aisle. The department has received billions of taxpayer dollars, as this committee has continued to work in a bipartisan fashion to support our troops and their families. And at a time when cost of living is the top issue for families, including those who serve, the department is in the position to address these costs of housing, childcare, groceries, and other needs. I hope the department chooses to do that.

Thank you, chairman. I yield back. Chairman yields back. You're now recognized. Gentleman from Texas, Mr. Goodin.

05:03:03 - 05:03:51

Speaker 45

Thank you, mister chairman, and thank you, secretary, for being here and for the work you're doing. Over the past decade, bitcoin has evolved from a fringe asset into a matter of national security. Iran has demanded bitcoin as a toll for transit through the Strait of Hormuz. North Korean cyber actors have leveraged it in ransomware campaigns, and China is believed to be stockpiling substantial holdings as part of a strategic reserve. Just last week, Endopaycom commander admiral Paparo stated that Bitcoin has direct implications for power projection, and he noted that Endopaycom is operating a node on the Bitcoin network in furtherance of that mission.

Secretary, do you share the opinion that Bitcoin is a tool to project power? And are there any department-wide initiatives to ensure the US secures a strategic advantage in Bitcoin and combats China's digital authoritarianism?

05:03:53 - 05:04:09

Speaker 3

I guess my short answer would be yes, and yes. Long an enthusiast of Bitcoin and crypto potential, and a lot of the things we're doing, enabling it or defeating it, are classified efforts that are ongoing inside our department, which I do provide us a lot of leverage in a lot of different scenarios.

05:04:09 - 05:04:23

Speaker 45

I appreciate that, and I share your views. I thank you for that. I also wanted an update with our operations in Qatar. How are those going since the Iran war, and how has Qatar been as a partner to work with over these last few months?

05:04:24 - 05:04:49

Speaker 3

I think it's fair to say that the Gulf States, to include Qatar, have done a nice job integrating air defenses specifically, and then providing access, basing, and overflight. Qatar being one of them, UAE, Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain. They've lived the threat of Iran. There's some complicated aspects with Qatar, but, ultimately, they've provided support to what we need in theater.

05:04:49 - 05:05:00

Speaker 45

I appreciate that. I also appreciate the job that our men and women are doing there at that base. I realize, they're going through a lot. We really appreciate the work you do, and I'll yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.

05:05:01 - 05:05:04

Speaker 1

Chairman, I recognize a gentle lady from New Hampshire, Miss Goodlander.

05:05:05 - 05:06:23

Speaker 46

I wanna thank our witnesses for being here today, and I wanna begin by getting right to it since my time is limited on this $1,500,000,000,000 budget request. Mister Heggseth, you testified last year and you testified again today that you will be accountable for every American taxpayer dollar that comes to the department, where it goes, and why. That's really important since, as it's been pointed out, the department has failed 8 audits. The department remains on GAO's high-risk list. The inspector general just last year alone identified billions of dollars that could have been put to better use and in questioned costs.

That is spending that raised red flags. So this is a crisis right now in accountability of where the dollars of the American taxpayers, who are in the middle of a cost crisis, where this money is going. I wanna ask about your war in Iran. And, mister Hurst, you testified earlier today that $25,000,000,000 has been spent. And I just wanna clarify that that is money, that taxpayer dollars that have been spent already in the war.

05:06:25 - 05:06:33

Speaker 7

$25 reflects the cost of the war. Right? So we've already spent the dollars on munitions and things like that. So we're factoring in the cost of munitions expended into that total.

05:06:33 - 05:06:40

Speaker 46

So how much of that has gone towards the munitions? Does that include the munitions that have been spent to date?

05:06:40 - 05:06:45

Speaker 7

Yeah. That reflects the munitions that have been spent to date, and other operational costs.

05:06:46 - 05:06:49

Speaker 46

Can you give us a breakdown of what those costs are?

05:06:50 - 05:06:53

Speaker 7

We'll work to get you guys a product that has a detailed breakdown of those costs.

05:06:53 - 05:07:20

Speaker 46

Yeah. My concern here is, mister Hegzeth, you've testified repeatedly that you're gonna be accountable for each and every American taxpayer dollar that you spend, that you're gonna be accountable for the rationale. Here we are sixty days into your war of choice in Iran, and you can't give us an answer on a basic breakdown of American taxpayer dollars that have been spent in your war of choice? That's a question for Mr. Hurst. You right now, as you sit here now, you cannot.

05:07:20 - 05:07:23

Speaker 7

Give you a breakdown. We'll provide you a product after this hearing.

05:07:23 - 05:07:35

Speaker 46

Well, I would love for you to give us this breakdown now and explain to us, was this unbudgeted costs, or was this something the department planned for in advance since you were appropriated $1,000,000,000,000 last year?

05:07:36 - 05:07:40

Speaker 7

The department deals with contingency operations all the time within its normal budget.

05:07:40 - 05:08:09

Speaker 46

So this was not budgeted for? My point here is, you know, and, General Cain, you've testified to this. We all understand. For you to do your jobs, you need Congress to pass budgets. For us to do our jobs, we need you to give us the details and to be accountable to American taxpayers.

And so I gotta say it's an extraordinary dereliction that as you sit here, you cannot account for billions of dollars that have already been spent in

05:08:09 - 05:08:12

Speaker 3

this munitions every week. You and your entire staff have.

05:08:13 - 05:08:13

Speaker 40

I'm asking.

05:08:13 - 05:08:19

Speaker 3

To the American public, no. It's not as if you don't have munitions levels, you do from us every single week. So you know exactly the numbers you're.

05:08:20 - 05:08:32

Speaker 46

You have testified that American taxpayers need to know where their dollars are going. And as you sit here today, you can't provide us with a basic answer to the most simple question that you should be able to answer to each and every one.

05:08:32 - 05:08:36

Speaker 3

American taxpayer. Question to an answer with an answer you already have.

05:08:36 - 05:09:04

Speaker 46

No. I'm asking you for a breakdown where you said you will be accountable for every taxpayer dollar. You cannot tell us where any of the $5,000,000,000 in taxpayer funds that have gone to fund your war of choice in Iran. And I look forward to getting details from our witnesses after this hearing, because the American taxpayers need to know. Mister Hegseth, can I ask you, do you know what the average cost of a gallon of gas was in this country on February 28?

05:09:04 - 05:09:07

Speaker 3

Well, it depends on where you live. If you live in California, it's $8.

05:09:07 - 05:09:11

Speaker 46

Dollars and 83¢. Do you know what the average cost of a gallon of gas is today?

05:09:12 - 05:09:14

Speaker 3

Much higher in California.

05:09:14 - 05:09:48

Speaker 46

$4.23. I gotta say, mister Hegseth, you said you've got a crack economic team that's looking at the impacts of this war on the American taxpayer, and you can't answer this basic question. That should shock the conscience of every American. Miss General Cain, I wanna come back to something, a really important principle, and my time is limited. You testified to an important and bedrock principle of American law, that our service members follow lawful orders and lawful orders only.

Is that right? Do you agree with the statement, quote, "the military won't follow unlawful orders"?

05:09:49 - 05:09:50

Speaker 12

I do.

05:09:51 - 05:09:53

Speaker 46

Mister Hegseth, you agree with that statement?

05:09:54 - 05:09:57

Speaker 3

I do. But understand what you're insinuating at a partisan point.

05:09:57 - 05:10:06

Speaker 46

I'm not. I'm actually quoting you directly, Mister Hegseth, from 04/12/2016. And I appreciate that, on the record, you've clarified this important principle of America.

05:10:06 - 05:10:09

Speaker 1

Time's expired, chairman. Recognize Jim from North Carolina, Mr. Harrigan.

05:10:09 - 05:15:07

Speaker 47

Oh, thank you, mister chairman, and thank you, mister secretary and chairman Cain. It's always a pleasure to have you here. I'm gonna fall in line with the chairman's earlier statements, so we can do whatever we want with our five minutes. And I'm gonna give you all a brief break from the conflict here, and I'm gonna tell you a story. And it's a story that's important to me.

And I'm gonna start with a proposed citation. And it's a rare point of personal privilege for me to do this, but I haven't asked of you. But I'm gonna start with a proposed citation for a Medal of Honor award upgrade from a Silver Star. Sergeant First Class Thomas J Grasso distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty between September 29, 1935, and 10/04/2015, while serving as a senior communications sergeant. Operational Detachment Alpha-3133, Advanced Operations Base North, Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan in support of Operation Resolute Support.

Sergeant First Class Grasso was part of a small Special Forces element that sees Kundus, a provincial capital of over 300,000 civilians, from the Taliban. Outnumbered 60 to 1, the US special forces element faced an overwhelming enemy force of 2,000 confirmed Taliban fighters. On September 29, facing a Taliban advance on Kunduz airfield, sergeant first class Grasso established a sniper overwatch position in the air traffic control tower. With enemy fire converging from three directions, Sergeant First Class Grasso risked his life to engage a hostile anti-aircraft team, successfully clearing the way for air support. On September 30, fighting through relentless ambushes on their subsequent movement into the city, Sergeant First Class Grasso repeatedly dismounted his vehicle while exposed to intense enemy fire to engage insurgents and shield the convoy.

During one encounter, while under withering enemy fire, he disregarded his own safety, maneuvered into the kill zone of a complex near ambush, saving the lives of five trapped Special Forces teammates, one Romanian partner, and their interpreter. Sergeant first class Grasso again came under heavy machine gun fire when he dismounted to direct the element to the city compound. To enable the remaining element to safely enter the compound, he effectively returned fire and suppressed the enemy positions. From October, Sergeant First Class Grasso anchored the defense of the compound, absorbing the heaviest concentration of enemy fire. He repeatedly subjected himself to heavy machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire from distances as close as 15 meters, repelling dozens of enemy attacks.

On October 1, a rocket-propelled grenade directly hit his position, inflicting a traumatic brain injury. Bleeding, disoriented, and going sixty hours without sleep, he checked on his teammates before returning to his exposed post. From there, he single-handedly neutralized continuous waves of attackers, attempting to detonate vehicle-borne IEDs, forcing the enemy to request a temporary ceasefire. During a subsequent rocket-propelled grenade attack near his position, he eliminated a follow-on explosive-filled rickshaw, preventing a perimeter breach. As the fight wore on, the enemy began throwing hand grenades into the compound from an adjacent building.

Sergeant first class Grasso ran through the blast to hurl grenades back, then established a clear line of sight from an exposed staircase to enable his command to call in a danger close F-16 strafing run, bullets hitting 15 meters from his position. When partner forces were decisively engaged, without sufficient ammunition outside the perimeter, he maneuvered without regard for his own safety under devastating fire to resupply their position, and employed accurate sniper fire, destroying another advance. On October 4, he unhesitatingly stepped into the enemy's line of sight to destroy the fighter preparing to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at two trapped teammates. Throughout 130 hours of grueling sleepless combat, sergeant first class Grasso's extraordinary heroism, unwavering dedication to his teammates, complete disregard for his own life ensured the recapture of Kunduz with zero friendly personnel killed in action. As these severe conditions took a toll on the element, his ability to fight through a traumatic brain injury with indomitable will and lethal precision inspired those around him.

Sergeant first class Thomas J. Grasso's heroism and selflessness are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army. I'm asking you to direct the board chair of HRC, awards and decorations branch, to board Sergeant First Class Thomas J. Grasso's packet. I know these things to be true inside this packet because I was there. And I'm here today only because I was one of those five that he rescued out of that near-complete ambush. And I'm grateful for your service to our nation.

05:15:07 - 05:15:11

Speaker 3

Congressman. We'll do it, and I'd love to meet the sergeant first class.

05:15:11 - 05:15:12

Speaker 5

Thank you.

05:15:12 - 05:15:17

Speaker 1

I thank the gentleman. Yes, the chair that I recognize is a gentle lady from Maryland, Miss Elfrith.

05:15:17 - 05:16:35

Speaker 48

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanna start by thanking Sikh I Issam and General Keane for inviting a number of us to the Pentagon last week to talk about the 1,800,000 enlisted service members we have, the challenges and opportunities that we can work together. Every base that I go to internationally and every single major military base in Maryland over the last year, I insist on meeting with service members and hearing what we can all do better, mister secretary. I wanna assure you I insist on those meetings. There's a whole lot we could talk about today, war in Iran.

And I too wanna thank the families of the 14 service members we have lost, in this war so far, both strikes in the Caribbean and the East Pacific, firing of a number of people we all respect on this diocese on both sides, sixty one days into this war. But I wanna start with those quality of life issues, Mr. Secretary. A number of members of this committee met with survivors of sexual assault at Fort Hood, enlisted members, and family members. You sat here last year and you said, quote, I applaud Congress for the efforts that have been ongoing to address sexual assaults, which we do need to drive down to zero. That funding has not been reduced.

I appreciate that. But the budget we have before us is level funded from last year, which you would agree is a realized cut year over year. So I wanna give you the opportunity to talk about how you're still going to drive those sexual assault numbers down to zero via flat funding.

05:16:36 - 05:16:47

Speaker 3

I'm told we've added five percent, so it's actually not flat. But, we remain committed to that. And I think you've seen throughout the force reductions. Not enough. We want more.

We wanna go to zero, but we remain committed to.

05:16:47 - 05:17:37

Speaker 48

that. We're gonna hold you accountable for that. Thank you. I wanna move on to Ukraine. I don't normally agree with Mitch McConnell, but as you know, the department is withholding approximately 400,000,000 in appropriated security assistance to Ukraine.

Despite some public belittling, Ukraine has stepped up perhaps more than any other ally for us in the Middle East. They're harnessing the superiority that they have generated from a hard-fought war with Russia. They are intercepting Iranian drones that threaten US and partner forces in the Middle East. But, mister secretary, I'm very concerned about that 400,000,000. Can you please let this committee know, folks watching at home, the Ukrainian people, when they can expect that 400,000,000 in Ukraine support passed by Congress bipartisanly last year to be released and put on contract for its congressionally intended purpose, the defense of Ukraine.

05:17:38 - 05:17:46

Speaker 3

So the department recognizes that 400,000,000 was allocated for European capacity building. And as of yesterday, it has been released.

05:17:46 - 05:17:49

Speaker 48

As it released under contract as of yesterday.

05:17:50 - 05:17:51

Speaker 3

How would you describe it, Jay?

05:17:52 - 05:17:55

Speaker 7

Not under contract, but released to be put under contract.

05:17:56 - 05:18:02

Speaker 48

Let me ask you a different way, mister Hurst. When will it actually be on the ground in Ukraine?

05:18:02 - 05:18:08

Speaker 7

That depends on what they buy with the money. Okay. We're gonna take the advice of the Yukon commanders who employ those funds for pest use.

05:18:09 - 05:18:49

Speaker 48

Okay. We're gonna keep on that because it's incredibly important as we heard from everybody, including the king of England yesterday. I'm gonna stay on our allies here. It's clear that the president didn't account for the strait of who is being closed. Global market, oil market disruption, gas prices skyrocketing.

Mister secretary, gas in my district, Maryland, not California, $4.11. The president did not notify allies abroad or Congress before he went to war. He has repeatedly berated and belittled our NATO allies. And I am not interested in Twitter diplomacy. I'm interested in our actual exit strategy from this war.

So I'm gonna actually pose it to General Kane if I could.

05:18:49 - 05:18:57

Speaker 3

But the president did understand the risks and had the courage to undertake the endeavor nonetheless, which the American people voted for, that kind of courage in taking on that Iranian nuclear threat.

05:18:59 - 05:19:13

Speaker 48

General Kane, have you or what have you formally and specifically requested of our NATO allies and European partners for operations in the Strait? Can you tell me escort duties, air defense, peace enforcement, specific requests of our NATO allies?

05:19:14 - 05:19:41

Speaker 5

Both us and state have reached out through a variety of mechanisms to pulse our international partners, not just in Europe, but in The Pacific as well, to see what capabilities could be brought to bear down there as this is largely a we don't move much trade through there. I'll defer to energy, commerce, and treasury.

05:19:41 - 05:19:43

Speaker 48

Cover specific with our allies about what we need.

05:19:44 - 05:19:44

Speaker 5

We have.

05:19:44 - 05:19:57

Speaker 48

Okay. Can I ask you for specificity on another issue that's been brought up today? From a military perspective, not a policy perspective, what will it require of our service members to actually eradicate any Iranian nuclear threat? Can you help us understand that?

05:19:58 - 05:20:17

Speaker 5

There is such a wide range, ma'am, of options in there, all of which are classified. It would be out of my swim lane, but we always deliver the full range of options, the associated risks, the advice to go and do the things that we would be asked to do. There are many.

05:20:17 - 05:20:19

Speaker 48

I can't speak for everybody on this committee, but I know we would like.

05:20:19 - 05:20:25

Speaker 34

Woman's time has expired. The chair now recognizes mister Mesmer from Indiana for five minutes.

05:20:25 - 05:21:12

Speaker 49

Thank you, chairman, and thank you, secretary Hegseth, general Cain, and comptroller first, for being here today. Congratulations to all of you for rolling out the $1,500,000,000,000 defense budget. I'd like to offer special thanks to mister Hurst and his comptroller team for the work that it takes to put this budget together. It's a monumental task and an important one for our nation and our well-being. Secretary Hegseth, as you know, the theme of this year's NDAA is expanding the defense industrial base, and one of the key bottlenecks to that expansion is our workforce size.

We are not producing enough skilled young workers, and too many regions with strong manufacturing potential remain underutilized. Would you support Congress working across committees on a national defense strategy workforce, a workforce strategy that promotes technical training, apprenticeships, and proven school-to-industry pipelines?

05:21:14 - 05:21:29

Speaker 3

Absolutely. I think you'll find our budget fully aligned with the theme of the NDAA. And when it comes to skilled workers, whether it's DoDEA schools, Doweia schools, whether it's the Patriot pipeline or any form of trades, we're investing in that because we need those folks invested in our industrial base. Excellent.

05:21:29 - 05:22:05

Speaker 49

I'd look forward to working with my team to ensure those efforts align with the department, the defense, the industrial workforce priorities. So our office will be reaching out. Also, Secretary Hek Seth, we are in a shipment crisis as the department implements President Trump's vision for a larger fleet. Should the navy leverage a model of distributed modular shipbuilding that taps industrial strength outside of traditional shipyards such as, in the Midwest, in the Great Lakes, and Ohio, and Mississippi Valley regions to help expand capacity, to ease pressure on overburdened shipyards, and cut down on maintenance backlogs?

05:22:07 - 05:22:24

Speaker 3

In short, yes. And including international options where we can work with partners who have specific capabilities that would speed up the timeline on shipyards that are behind, in our own country. But you'll find $65,000,000,000 in this budget on shipbuilding, a lot of which builds on those types of capability.

05:22:24 - 05:22:33

Speaker 49

Excellent. Would you also agree that platforms like unmanned surface vessels, tenders, and other support ships seem well suited for production outside traditional shipyards?

05:22:35 - 05:22:54

Speaker 3

Absolutely. And in fact, some of those facilities were precisely the ones we visited on the Arsenal of Freedom Tour: USVs, UUVs, where you don't need the same capabilities you would in a traditional shipyard, or you can invest in a new type of shipyard, specifically tailored to those more bespoke capabilities that can be scaled for the fight of the future. For sure. Perfect.

05:22:54 - 05:22:55

Speaker 9

Thank.

05:22:55 - 05:23:19

Speaker 49

you. Secretary Hegseth and General Kane, many from the department have reiterated support for the nuclear sea launched cruise missile, and I believe President Trump needs more support options in the form of expanded theater nuclear capability. From your perspective, what specific deterrence problem does Slickom Inn solve that current capabilities do not? And what risk do we assume if that capability is not fielded?

05:23:20 - 05:23:47

Speaker 3

Take it first. Slick Amend provides its part of the multiple layers of nuclear deterrent that any president has to have at their disposal, that creates dilemmas for enemies who are either nuclear capable or not, and ensures the kind of leverage required and defense required, deterrence required, that the nation that sort of underwrites everything we do. So more options on that, that the adversary can't account for, is only good for us.

05:23:48 - 05:24:02

Speaker 5

The only thing I'll add is, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, sir, if we continue to modernize the full range of the triad, this is another tool in that regional normal. So it's a something I support.

05:24:02 - 05:24:12

Speaker 49

Thank you. As we look beyond the current program, should the department be thinking about a future sea-launched nuclear system with greater survivability, maneuverability, and potential hypersonic capability?

05:24:14 - 05:24:17

Speaker 3

Yes. And I know we are.

05:24:17 - 05:24:38

Speaker 49

K. Thank you. Secretary Heg Seth and General Kane, one of the major bottlenecks in expanding the Defense Industrial Base is test range access. Companies are waiting too long for range time, and that slows fielding at the speed modern conflict demands. What is the department doing to expand and modernize the testing architecture?

05:24:41 - 05:24:56

Speaker 3

$5,200,000,000 worth of investment. But I'll tell you when we sit with industry, and I simply ask the question, what can we do for you? How do we empower you? Test ranges come up almost every single time, and the limits and the timeline limits they create. So we're trying to blow that open and create a lot more options for them.

05:24:56 - 05:25:15

Speaker 49

K. Thank you. Secretary Heckseff and General Cain, I'd like to extend an invitation for both of you to come and visit Naval Surface War Center Crane, and see what great work is being done in Southwest Indiana to support the warfighter and ensure our military edge. And with that, I'll close and surrender the rest of my time.

05:25:16 - 05:25:20

Speaker 34

The chair now recognizes Mr. Whitesides from California for five minutes.

05:25:20 - 05:26:01

Speaker 50

Thank you, chairman, chairwoman. Secretary Hegseth, General Cain, Mister Hurst, thank you for testifying today and for your service to the nation. Over the past few weeks, military and civilian leaders of many of the DOD components have testified about their FY '27 posture. We appreciate their professionalism and their service to the country, and the time that they've spent to testify before us. Wanna start with mister Hurst.

Mister Hurst, you testified at the beginning of this that you said that the estimated cost of the war is about $25,000,000,000. In March, you stated that the first week of the war cost $11,000,000,000. So is it right to say that the following seven weeks have cost about $14,000,000 total or $2,000,000,000 per week?

05:26:01 - 05:26:06

Speaker 7

Yeah. The most intense phase of the conflict was obviously the beginning. That's when most munitions were used.

05:26:06 - 05:26:06

Speaker 38

Okay.

05:26:06 - 05:26:08

Speaker 7

And that's the base expense of the war.

05:26:08 - 05:26:29

Speaker 50

Right. So that you and you also said just now that the $25,000,000,000 includes the cost of the munitions deployed. Is that right? This question is for the CFO, sir. Yep.

That's correct. Okay. So I guess I'm confused then. It makes sense that if that's the cost, then the cost to refill those stocks would be no more than $25,000,000,000. Am I right about that?

05:26:29 - 05:26:34

Speaker 7

When we estimate the cost of the conflict, we're using current replacement cost for these weapon systems.

05:26:34 - 05:26:44

Speaker 50

Right. You're using the current replacement cost. So it's, frankly, pretty surprising that the estimate for the supplemental would be $200,000,000,000. You don't, if you'd like to explain that, you can.

05:26:44 - 05:26:48

Speaker 7

But that's not that's not accurate. We don't have an estimate for the cost of stuff.

05:26:48 - 05:26:54

Speaker 50

That's what's publicly reported. So it's good to hear that it's going to be less. Mister Hurst, do you have signal on your phone?

05:26:57 - 05:26:58

Speaker 7

I'm sorry. Why is this relevant?

05:26:58 - 05:27:00

Speaker 50

Do you have a signal on your phone?

05:27:00 - 05:27:02

Speaker 7

What does this have to do with the budget?

05:27:02 - 05:27:07

Speaker 50

I'm gonna take that as a yes. Mister Cain, I'm sorry. General Cain, do you have signal on your phone?

05:27:09 - 05:27:10

Speaker 5

I do, sir. Yes.

05:27:10 - 05:27:26

Speaker 50

Okay. So I want to talk about Signal. Last year, the secretary and other administration officials discussed sensitive and almost certainly classified information about a strike in Yemen using the unclassified Signal app. Mister Hurst, what's the current policy for Signal on official DoD devices?

05:27:27 - 05:27:30

Speaker 7

On the comptroller? Don't do the CIO work.

05:27:30 - 05:27:37

Speaker 50

So, therefore, it is allowed? Is that your statement that it is now allowed to have a signal on your device?

05:27:37 - 05:27:40

Speaker 7

Mister White said, my statement is I run the budget for the DOD.

05:27:40 - 05:27:44

Speaker 50

Yeah. Okay. Well, he's got it on his phone. So, therefore, it must be permitted.

05:27:44 - 05:27:51

Speaker 5

For I don't, I gotta go back and look if it's on my official phone. I was talking about my personal phone. I'm not exactly sure. I'll go back and look, though.

05:27:51 - 05:28:44

Speaker 50

Okay. Last month, FBI director Cash Patel made a public announcement that Russian hackers are targeting Signal App users in the government, specifically stated they were targeting individuals of high intelligence value, including current and former US government officials. I hope that it is not official policy that you can have Signal on your official phones, and I would love to get a response from the department on that. We have now asked this question about five separate times and have never gotten a straight answer. I wanna close by talking about helicopters.

Mister secretary, I want to ask about the army Apache helicopter that flew over Kid Rock's property on March 28. An investigation was launched by the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade command leadership. But before that review is completed on March 31, you terminated it via a social media post. Did you personally direct the termination of that review?

05:28:46 - 05:28:47

Speaker 3

I did.

05:28:47 - 05:28:56

Speaker 50

Okay. Now the president said they probably shouldn't have been doing it and that I'd take a look at it. So did you talk to the president before terminating the review?

05:28:56 - 05:29:00

Speaker 3

Well, I don't relay what I talk about with him.

05:29:00 - 05:29:26

Speaker 50

Okay. I think, unfortunately, that means that you did talk to him, which in turn means that you've just confirmed the president himself overruled the leadership of the 101st Airborne. Mister secretary, you yourself have affirmed repeatedly the need for higher standards and higher accountability at every level of your agency. Commanders rely on established processes to uphold these standards. How does canceling a command-initiated review by the hundred and first airborne leadership support a culture of accountability?

Actually, I think I'll ask that to the chairman.

05:29:28 - 05:29:43

Speaker 5

Sure. Back to my earlier comments about the importance of my role in staying in the middle. What you're alluding to is, in my assessment, with deep respect for your ask, a partisan question, and I think it would be inappropriate for me to answer that.

05:29:43 - 05:30:17

Speaker 50

Mister, sir, I actually don't think it is. I think it is actually a fundamental principle of accountability in our department, and I think it was the wrong decision. I'm gonna close by just saying one thing. Mister secretary, you started this hearing by politicizing it, and I want to make one point. Poll after poll shows that the American public does not support this war, and support is dropping every day.

We are all representing our constituents. Our constituents, which is our constitutional duty. And to state that we are politicizing it is an affront to Congress and every member in this house, and I yield back.

05:30:17 - 05:30:19

Speaker 3

You are politicizing it, congressman.

05:30:20 - 05:30:25

Speaker 34

The gentleman's time has expired. The chair now recognizes Mr. Schmidt from Kansas for five minutes.

05:30:25 - 05:31:10

Speaker 51

Thank you, madam chair. And I wanna thank all three of our witnesses for being here today and answering our questions. Mister Secretary, let me start with you. A little bit off topic for today, but relevant. We are now more than two months into the funding shutdown for the Department of Homeland Security because folks at this end of the avenue have not yet been able to get to yes.

I hope we're gonna get to yes here shortly. I think we made some progress here today while we've been in this gathering. It's been necessary, as I understand it, for the administration to scrape out the pennies under the couch cushions in order to keep DHS running and honestly running not at full speed. Has your department had any role in contributing to the ongoing operations of DHS while things have not been funded?

05:31:11 - 05:31:37

Speaker 3

Well, I wouldn't comment on the status of the DHS. I'll just say the ways that we cooperate with them have continued. I mean, at the Southern border and the 11,000 troops we have there, task force Southern border, ensuring that our border is locked down. We've worked with law enforcement from day one on DHS, to do that, just like we have with local law enforcement across the country. So obviously, we welcome DHS funding.

But in the meantime, we're gonna protect the country, protect the homeland, and that's what we're doing with them.

05:31:37 - 05:32:35

Speaker 51

Do what is necessary. Very good. General, let me ask you. If it's more appropriate for the secretary, we'll defer. But we, you know, we've obviously been following with interest all of the developments and the publicly reported developments in Operation Epic Fury.

There was some publicly reported activity, a while back, that I had reason to think might involve some Kansas service personnel we didn't know from the public reporting. We have simply been trying to find out whether our folks were involved or not. We finally did get an answer. It took about 4 weeks. And when we got it, it was, for the most part, everything we'd read in the press with one exception.

It's a bit unsatisfactory, when we're just trying to do our job and figure out whether our folks are implicated and whether we need to be doing something to help them, their families or their folks back home. I know you take seriously the importance of providing that information, but can you just offer some reassurance that you do take those inquiries seriously and that that was perhaps not?

05:32:35 - 05:32:43

Speaker 5

We do, sir. I'm not exactly sure the situation you're talking about, but I'll get the teams together and figure out what broke down there and fix it.

05:32:43 - 05:33:29

Speaker 51

Appreciate it very much. Mister secretary, let me come back to you. In talking with Kansans who either have been deployed or in support of folks who have been deployed, I am under the impression that there has been a particularly high, especially early in the operation prior to the ceasefire, particularly high amount of concussive activity, and that we might be well advised to be prepared when folks come home for concussive injuries, for combat related PTSD, perhaps at levels we aren't expecting, at least those of us watching from the outside of the operation. Can you say anything either about that in particular, or more generally about what types of health and post-combat related health issues we ought to be preparing for when folks come home from this operation in particular?

05:33:31 - 05:33:52

Speaker 3

Well, I know, congressman, all of that is tracked very closely. As it pertains to this budget, there's 70,000,000 for more research on that. But I would note that as it's tracked and identified, also 90 percent of those with injuries in this conflict have returned to duty. So but that doesn't mean there couldn't still be a lingering effect, which is noted and will continue to be tracked throughout.

05:33:52 - 05:34:20

Speaker 51

And can I follow on that? I appreciate that answer very much. With respect particularly to guard personnel who have been deployed and may, when they come back, return to their civilian roles. They may be in communities far from a military post. They may be in communities that don't have dedicated health care services that may be particularly focused on concussive damage or post traumatic stress damage.

Is there a particular thought on things we ought to be doing to prepare to serve that population when those men and women come home?

05:34:21 - 05:34:44

Speaker 3

I think the biggest one is identifying it up front, doing that testing up front to identify what has occurred, and then the ability to track those service members. I know as a frontline leader, that became part of my responsibility as well, tracking those who may be more susceptible to it, whether they have a formal network to address it or not. So, definitely something we care about. TRICARE, ensuring they have increased access in places where there aren't any military facilities, is an important part of it.

05:34:44 - 05:35:29

Speaker 51

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We care as well. We wanna be helpful in that front, when our folks come home. Last question, particular to some folks in Kansas. When you were here last year, mister secretary, I talked about cooperation between the Veterans Health Agency and DHA and some work we've been trying to do at our Irwin Army Community Hospital for Fort Riley.

This committee and the congress and the president enacted into law provision that causes some cooperation between the two to happen, and we are very excited to report looking very good, out at Irwin. The reason I raise this with you today, some of the folks who made that happen were the commanding general at the First Infantry General Roan who's about to deploy to Europe, I believe in early June. He is chief medical officer who's about to leave for a different assignment.

05:35:29 - 05:35:31

Speaker 34

The gentleman's time is expired.

05:35:31 - 05:35:33

Speaker 51

Can we get those things signed before they leave?

05:35:33 - 05:35:37

Speaker 34

The chair now recognizes Mr. Tran from California for five minutes.

05:35:38 - 05:36:22

Speaker 52

Thank you so much, chairwoman. Thank you, Secretary Hegseth, General Cain, Mister Hurst, for being here today. You know, after I was honorably discharged from the army reserve, the GI bill helped me go to school and ultimately become a lawyer. My focus was representing clients who were wrongfully terminated or faced discrimination and harassment at work. Mister secretary, if I were in the courtroom trying to prove that you discriminate against our military heroes, I wouldn't have to look very far or very hard.

In just 16 months, you have fired more than a dozen senior military leaders. You've delayed or canceled the promotion of even more. Your chief of staff told the secretary of the army that President Trump would not want to stand. That's

05:36:22 - 05:36:22

Speaker 53

Not true.

05:36:22 - 05:36:24

Speaker 3

That was totally false reporting. Can you?

05:36:24 - 05:37:07

Speaker 52

No question yet, Mister Secretary. Yeah. You told the president, sorry, the secretary of the army, that the president would not want to stand next to a black female officer at the military events. But, you know, despite all of this, I remain very hopeful that you can and will do better for the men and women who have dedicated their lives to protecting our great country. You're here to ask for $1,500,000,000,000.

That's a huge budget, and I want to make sure that you have the ability to manage it. Secretary Hegseth, you would agree with me when I say that we want the most qualified people in every position of our military.

05:37:07 - 05:37:08

Speaker 32

Correct?

05:37:08 - 05:37:10

Speaker 52

That's a question.

05:37:10 - 05:37:11

Speaker 3

Yes.

05:37:11 - 05:37:13

Speaker 52

Thank you. General Kane, you would want the same?

05:37:16 - 05:37:17

Speaker 5

Yes.

05:37:17 - 05:37:24

Speaker 52

Thank you. You know, I share the bipartisan concern about the firing of General George.

05:37:24 - 05:37:43

Speaker 3

And what I and the American people wanna know from you is, did you ask the president for his permission before you fired General George, Secretary Hegseth? It is my responsibility to confer with the commander-in-chief on especially high-level personnel matters. Ultimately, won't relay what was discussed, but he was aware of the action that would be taken.

05:37:43 - 05:37:51

Speaker 52

Okay. Great. Thank you for that. And when you made the decision, fire General George, did you consult Secretary Driscoll?

05:37:53 - 05:37:57

Speaker 3

There had been multiple consultations over a year. Yes.

05:37:57 - 05:38:01

Speaker 52

Do you and secretary Driscoll have a good working relationship?

05:38:02 - 05:38:04

Speaker 3

Yes. I appreciate the work he's doing for the army.

05:38:05 - 05:38:09

Speaker 52

And for the record, would you agree that Secretary Driscoll is doing a great job as Secretary of the Army?

05:38:10 - 05:38:16

Speaker 3

I appreciate the work that the secretary is doing and made the personnel change based on the chief of the army.

05:38:17 - 05:38:25

Speaker 52

In fact, he was so good at his job that the president sent him to Ukraine to negotiate a peace deal. Do you know why the president chose to send him over to you?

05:38:27 - 05:38:36

Speaker 3

I'm grateful that the president puts in players at key moments to advance policy priorities, and that's what occurred there. And I was very supportive of it at the time.

05:38:36 - 05:38:51

Speaker 52

Recently, Secretary Driscoll testified in front of the appropriations committee that he refused to strike the names of two female and two Black officers from a promotion list due to their exemplary service, names which were ultimately removed. Did you order him to strike those names?

05:38:52 - 05:39:24

Speaker 3

I know, we removed those names. I did. K. Why? Because we review every general officer.

You mentioned 12 generals have been reviewed. The number's much higher than that. I would also note that under Barack Obama, 197 general officers were removed. So this is not something specific to this administration. Every officer serves at the pleasure of the president.

And when they need to be removed in order to ensure we have the right leadership in those services, I will make those calls regardless of what you might say from the dais.

05:39:24 - 05:39:56

Speaker 52

You know, about a year ago, the army began their transformation initiative. I'm off for a modernization, but this process seems to have been completely rushed in a way that compromises our readiness, including deactivating a medical evacuation Black Hawk unit at Joint Training Forces Base Los Alamitos. I've heard recently from senior army officials who support slowing down the army transformation initiative, specifically as it relates to aviation. Secretary Hegzef, can you commit to slowing down ATI as it relates to aviation?

05:39:57 - 05:40:13

Speaker 3

There are multiple places inside ATI that we are reviewing to ensure that we do not create capability gaps inside today's army based on the fights we have today and the fights of the future. And this budget reflects ensuring that we don't have any operational gaps in the army or any of these services.

05:40:14 - 05:40:34

Speaker 52

Mister secretary, during your opening, you brought up this beautiful slide, and you talked about the arsenal of freedom. It's an arsenal of freedom slide talking about private investment, you know, from the $1,500,000,000. RTX was on there, Boeing, GE, L3 Harris, Lockheed. My question to you is, do you or your wife have any personal investment in those companies?

05:40:36 - 05:40:42

Speaker 34

No. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired. The chair now recognizes Mr. Crank from Colorado for five minutes.

05:40:42 - 05:41:31

Speaker 54

Thank you, madam chair. Mister secretary, the department's FY 27 military construction request includes plans for a new $250,000,000 space force operations facility at Shriver Space Force Base. When constructed, this facility will support essential national security missions like Golden Dome, the National Reconnaissance Office, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and other space command requirements. With a projected workforce that includes over 2,600 high-paying civilian jobs, how will the department compete with the private sector to recruit and hire the highly skilled talent needed for those positions? And how will the department work with El Paso County, which is my county, and the city of Colorado Springs, who strongly supported this administration, by the way, to meet the growing needs of the space force?

05:41:33 - 05:42:05

Speaker 3

Well, first and foremost, and I mean this, I would welcome your input. That's usually what I say when I'm on the road and in the field with commanders: can you ask me we meet with battalion and brigade commanders all the time. They ask me a really detailed question. The first thing I say is, what do you think? And usually, they know the problem set much better than us. So we take that feedback back to HQ, and we action it.

So I would welcome how we can ensure that workforce is properly cared for, and competitive considering how important the space force is, which is doubled in this budget in size, that domain of warfare we have to get right.

05:42:05 - 05:43:16

Speaker 54

Yes. Okay. Mister secretary, sometimes, here in Congress and on these committees, sometimes we do oversight, but sometimes we just overact. And there's been a little bit of that today. There's been some overacting.

I would hope that when I look back on my congressional career, I've only been here a little while. I do know that when President Biden did some military operations, I supported him. I wasn't here, but I supported those operations because it's important to support the men and women of the military, and it's important to support our commander-in-chief when he makes the decision to deploy those troops. And I'd hope that when I look back on my career years from now, I will say the same thing, that I didn't choose what to support based on who the party was in the White House, but based on whether it was the best thing for our national security. And I hope that some of my colleagues who don't seem to hold that same standard would introspectively look at what they do.

But I want to give you a minute. There's been a lot said about Iran, about the mission in Iran. And I think there's been a lot of misinformation here, and I want to give you the opportunity to correct the record.

05:43:17 - 05:45:27

Speaker 3

Well, I appreciate that. We are fortunate to have a president who understands the nature of the threat we face from a nuclear-armed Iran, full stop. We know what they say they would do. We know that they were pursuing, and we know that at their weakest moment, we had an opportunity to do something about it before they had a conventional shield of missiles and drones so large that they could never be contested. And then without inspections and from a bad deal, they would race, they could possibly race to a bomb.

So the threat was right there in front of us. All it took was the courage to act, which no other president had done. And he gave us a clear set of objectives with the chairman, and I talked about from day one. In pursuit of ensuring that Iran gets a nuclear weapon, you degrade their missile program, defeat their missile program, get at their conventional navy, and ensure they don't have a defense industrial base so they can rebuild those capabilities. That's what we briefed from the podium.

That's what we talked about. That's what we were focused on. And in service of that, had overwhelming military victories in pursuit of it. I mean, we've never seen an air campaign like what we did alongside the Israeli Air Force, not to mention the rescue of those two pilots and the professionalism of that joint force that went downtown twice, once in the day and once at night, to leave no man behind. That is a call the commander in chief makes, he had the guts to make it.

And as a result, we're in a ceasefire, in the middle of negotiations, in a very strong place with a blockade that will ensure that when this is done, when a deal is set, it's a deal on the president's terms to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. That's a fight worth having. And if the American people remember 47 years, Americans remember 47 years of what the Iranians have done to us, targeting and killing Americans. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would use it. This president has unleashed his military to do something about it.

We've had historic successes. And if we need to go at it again to ensure that success, we are prepared to. But we're hopeful over time that a deal will be completed and completed quickly. So this talk about endless wars or forever wars, the President points out rightfully what this town tolerated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. That is not it.

This is a discrete mission to pursue US objectives, and we're doing it in a historic fashion.

05:45:27 - 05:45:44

Speaker 54

I support this president's operation right now in Iran. I supported president Obama when he said he opposed a nuclear Iran and would do what was necessary to not do that. And I supported president Clinton when he did the same. It's time to act, and I'm glad that this president did. Thank you.

05:45:45 - 05:45:48

Speaker 34

The chair now recognizes Mister Vinman from Virginia for five minutes.

05:45:49 - 05:46:15

Speaker 55

Thank you. Earlier, Secretary Hegseth, you talked about flexible realism. So let's see if we can figure out how much of it is realistic and how much of it is just flexible. Secretary Hegseth last year asked you some questions about Indopaycom and threats in Europe, and you had a hard time answering those questions. I'm sure you prep better this year. I'm hoping you can answer some of these basic questions since now we are at war.

Do you know what the price of oil is today?

05:46:17 - 05:46:22

Speaker 3

I don't know where it's gone as of time of this hearing, but roughly a $100 a barrel.

05:46:22 - 05:46:24

Speaker 55

It's actually closer to 120, 117.

05:46:24 - 05:46:26

Speaker 3

Well, it depends on the index you're looking at.

05:46:26 - 05:46:35

Speaker 55

I'm looking at Brent. Do you know what the price of Brent was the day before we went to war?

05:46:36 - 05:46:39

Speaker 3

It was certainly lower. You understand you're taking some economic risks, but I would note.

05:46:39 - 05:46:40

Speaker 55

A lot lower.

05:46:40 - 05:46:43

Speaker 3

The energy dominance this president has at least just put us in.

05:46:43 - 05:47:02

Speaker 55

An incredible place. Question. Thank you. So it's $72, and now we have a 62% increase. By the way, the department obviously will be paying those extra fuel costs.

That's gonna be not insignificant, but so will be the American people. Now, at its narrowest point, how wide is the Strait of Hormuz?

05:47:04 - 05:47:06

Speaker 3

I think it's about 12 miles, but I'd have to check.

05:47:06 - 05:47:11

Speaker 55

24 miles, but 12 miles is actually the relevant number because that's the navigable channel.

05:47:11 - 05:47:13

Speaker 3

That's the international water navigable channel point.

05:47:13 - 05:47:19

Speaker 55

And do you know how many barrels of oil transited the Strait of Hormuz each day before the war started?

05:47:20 - 05:47:28

Speaker 3

I don't know the exact number, but you're looking at over 100 oil tankers usually transited a day or 120 a day would transport the strait.

05:47:28 - 05:47:52

Speaker 55

Yeah. And so 20 20 million barrels a day. And right now, they're at an 81% reduction. So it sounds like you've done your homework. You're tracking pretty well what the strategic situation is.

So, a couple of questions. Were you aware that if we struck Iran that they would most likely close the Strait of Hormuz?

05:47:55 - 05:48:03

Speaker 3

Of course, our department was prepared and planning for every possible contingent being front and center as something they may do in a desperate state to attempt to

05:48:03 - 05:48:05

Speaker 55

Which is what they've done.

05:48:05 - 05:48:05

Speaker 3

Some kind of control.

05:48:05 - 05:49:15

Speaker 55

And I appreciate that. And earlier, you told mister Bolton that this department has looked at all aspects of the risk and that the president got every possible perspective. And then recently, you just said that the president did understand the risks and had the courage to undertake the endeavor nonetheless, and that's leadership. Or words to that effect, pretty close. And so I just wanna kinda give you the state of play right now.

It's been two months of war. We have hopes for a resolution, but the war really continues. Iran has closed the strait, and we've now gone in and blockaded their ports. A one fifth of the world's oil is unable to transit the strait, and the American people and the department are paying significantly more. And you also said that this is what the American people actually voted for.

But actually, the American people voted for a promise not to get into Middle Eastern wars, and they voted for lower prices. And this is the exact opposite of what they got. So let me ask you this. The president ordered the strike. Is that correct?

05:49:17 - 05:49:25

Speaker 3

The president's been saying for over 30 years that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. So he's been very clear as a position when the American people voted for President Trump overwhelmingly.

05:49:25 - 05:49:26

Speaker 28

They voted for that position.

05:49:27 - 05:49:29

Speaker 55

But the president ordered the strike. Is that correct?

05:49:30 - 05:49:32

Speaker 3

Which strike are you referring to?

05:49:32 - 05:49:34

Speaker 55

The strike on Iran. The war that we're in.

05:49:34 - 05:49:36

Speaker 3

Oh, of course. I mean, he's the commander in chief.

05:49:36 - 05:49:43

Speaker 55

He's made the calls. It sounds like you're blaming daddy for the mess we're in, and I don't think he's gonna be particularly happy with you.

05:49:43 - 05:49:48

Speaker 3

I see what you're trying to do. There's no daylight in this administration on this.

05:49:48 - 05:50:11

Speaker 55

Campaign, I'm happy to hand shoulder to shoulder with this administration. My time. So let's shift gears. Last time we were here, I asked you if you'd apologize to the mother of an F-18 pilot whose son you endangered for sharing classified information on a Signal chat. You refused.

On March 1, six army soldiers, including a constituent of mine, were killed by an Iranian drone strike. Do you take any responsibility for those deaths?

05:50:13 - 05:50:18

Speaker 3

I was there at Dover when they came back. Of course, I take responsibility for every aspect of.

05:50:18 - 05:50:32

Speaker 55

Because you also complain about the fact that tragic things happen. News makes it front-page news. The press only wants to make the president look bad. Is it about the soldiers, or is it about the president looking bad?

05:50:33 - 05:50:37

Speaker 3

It's not just the president who wants or the media that wants to make him look bad. It's you.

05:50:38 - 05:50:48

Speaker 55

It's actually about the soldiers, and it's frankly reprehensible that you would make that statement. And so, you know, Truman had a sign that said the buck stops here. And this.

05:50:48 - 05:50:50

Speaker 34

The gentleman's time has expired.

05:50:50 - 05:50:50

Speaker 46

The chair.

05:50:50 - 05:50:53

Speaker 34

Now recognized as Mister Van Orden from Wisconsin for five minutes.

05:50:54 - 05:54:35

Speaker 39

Thank you, madam chair. Mister secretary, it's great to see you, General King, honorable Mister Hurst, of course, my dear friend of over 3 decades, Master Chief Eisenhower. How are you doing? Hey. I have to be very clear here.

I spent my entire adult life training for war, training others for war, or at war. And you very astutely mentioned to some of my Democrat colleagues that our generation has been involved, was involved, in an endless war, a morass. And it I I've had with Matthew Burns, I've had 22 of my friends commit suicide. And I know that you have recently instituted a specific office to help lower active duty and veterans' suicide in conjunction with my great friend Secretary Collins. So I want to thank you for that.

Two months does nausea morass make. However, it could be the start of one. And the difference between this administration and many previous administrations, I think, is that you understand particularly because of your background and your SCA back there in general Cain. You understand what it means to fight to win. And we didn't fight to win in Afghanistan.

We didn't fight to win in Iraq. And it's palpable. I have more friends than I can count who are still on active duty in every branch of service, including the Coast Guard. And for a navy guy, that's a big stretch. The morale of the men and women in the Department of War, and in their case, the Department of Transportation, is exponentially higher than I've ever seen it, ever.

And that comes from leadership, starting with President Trump, going through you to General Kane and through your SCA. And what some of my colleagues refuse to admit is that that's how you win. It starts with the man. It's the first soft truth. Humans are more important than hardware, and I want to thank you for setting up that environment.

I don't want to be at war. But Iran declared war on The United States Of America 47 years ago, and those bastards are responsible for killing and maiming many of my friends. So this is not some esoteric political argument for me. This is the fact that President Trump, by using you as the Secretary of War and General Cain as CJCS, and Mashfi Faysum, what you're doing is you're going to end a war that was declared on us. And I, of all times, when we should unite as Americans, especially in this puzzle palace up here, is when we're at war.

And it is a war of choice by the mullahs. That is who chose to fight this war, and we're gonna end it. I don't really have a question for you. I trust your judgment. General Kane, I trust your judgment.

Master Chief, I trust your judgment. And when you're coming here with a request for a tremendous amount of money, I understand that there's no fluff in there, that this is what's required to end this war that the Moles chose to declare against us. And I'm telling you right now, we have your back. And there are a lot of my Democrat colleagues who do also. They're just afraid to say it out loud because they'll be crushed by the left third party, and that is reprehensible.

So with that, whatever you guys need, you just holler. Okay, mister secretary? I couldn't say.

05:54:35 - 05:54:36

Speaker 3

Is it any better? Thank you very much, congressman.

05:54:36 - 05:54:38

Speaker 39

You're welcome, sir. With that, I yield back.

05:54:38 - 05:54:42

Speaker 1

Gentlemen, yields back. Chair, I recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Bell.

05:54:42 - 05:55:01

Speaker 56

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mister secretary, I don't trust your judgment. You made the comment to my colleague that there's no daylight between you and the president, which calls into question your role and, again, your accountability. And so I gotta ask, has there ever been any time that you disagreed with the president on this war or anything in general?

05:55:02 - 05:55:05

Speaker 3

I would never betray the conversations that we've had.

05:55:05 - 05:55:14

Speaker 56

The commanders even acknowledge that you've ever even disagreed with the man. Like his choice of tie, that dance, anything. You haven't disagreed on anything.

05:55:15 - 05:55:17

Speaker 3

I've never related to the discussions I have with the commander in chief.

05:55:17 - 05:55:51

Speaker 56

Okay. Because it seems to me that rather than being Trump's secretary of defense, that sounds like you're just being Trump's secretary. And we need someone who's going to be there that is actually advising, that is also pushing back when necessary, and serving the country as opposed to the president. So you said you've never called, you've never called him out privately or publicly because we know that hasn't done. But have you ever said the words?

You don't have to tell me what it was about. Have you ever said the words, mister president, I disagree with you?

05:55:52 - 05:55:56

Speaker 3

As I said, I don't relay the private conversations that a commander should agree.

05:55:56 - 05:56:07

Speaker 56

That, like, if you've just said, mister president, you're wrong about this or you're wrong about that. You can't even acknowledge you can't even admit that if that's happened. You can ask it again if you want.

05:56:07 - 05:56:10

Speaker 3

but I don't relay the private conversations that a commander is in

05:56:10 - 05:56:10

Speaker 12

Chief deserves.

05:56:10 - 05:56:52

Speaker 56

This war has constantly shifted and changed. You see that, though. Right? Like, you can acknowledge that. Because one minute, it was to dismantle the Iranian nuclear program.

But how, you know, I don't know how that objective has not now been the listed objectives as far as I understand. Then there was a regime change. Trump even said, when announcing the start of the war, the hour of your freedom is at hand. It will, it's yours to take. He also posted on Truth Social in January.

Help is on the way to the Iranians protesting in the street. Do you still believe in this particular objective?

05:56:53 - 05:56:59

Speaker 3

The objectives have been clear from the beginning, I've supported the president throughout in having the courage to take on this threat.

05:56:59 - 05:57:44

Speaker 56

Okay. So, then let's talk about what else is he what else has he said? Like, so let's talk about the Trump doctrine. So on November 6, the president said he was all about ending wars, not starting new ones. Yet in the so-called doctrine, the conflict has not answered why we're in the war.

The objectives have changed. We're not sure about the exit strategy. This, to me, is the definition of open-ended or forever war, and you cannot claim to end forever wars while engaging in one. And then here's the one that really gets me. So I don't know when it's over, when I feel it in my bones.

So, mister secretary, war decisions should be based on defined military objectives. You agree with that statement. Correct?

05:57:47 - 05:57:53

Speaker 3

It's the commander in chief who makes the call. I'm happy with the American people when our objectives are completed.

05:57:53 - 05:57:56

Speaker 56

There should be clearly defined military objectives. That's safe to say.

05:57:57 - 05:58:01

Speaker 3

Ultimately, the commander in chief makes the decision about when to objective searching.

05:58:01 - 05:59:15

Speaker 56

Okay. Because I'm just trying to figure out, like, what kind of analysis, evaluation are we looking at with objectives when it's just what the president feels in his bones? Like, are we talking about some da Vinci Protruvian man or what, like, what are we talking about when we just talk about filling it in your bones? Because my thing is, we're not set up here to trust anyone's judgment. We're here to represent our district and the American people.

And so my next question is, the problem that I'm concerned with is that Iran continues to increase their negotiating leverage with us. And so we've been told that the, we've won this war. It'll be over in a few days. But now they didn't control the Strait of Hormuz, and now they do have leverage in the Strait of Hormuz. I remember even in the strikes in June, after the strikes in June, I should say, they struck ala Al Adeid, and we never responded to that.

As a matter of fact, Trump even said he knew that strike was coming, and he allowed it. Do you agree with that?

05:59:16 - 05:59:23

Speaker 3

Ultimately, the president has been clear about his objectives. And if you if Iran thinks they're gonna outdeal the best dealmaker on the planet, they got another thing coming.

05:59:23 - 05:59:31

Speaker 56

But they struck us, we didn't strike back. And you're okay with that? He, like, said he authorized, like, he allowed it. He said that. And you're okay with that?

05:59:32 - 05:59:37

Speaker 3

The president has done many bold things for this country to ensure Iran never has a nuclear weapon.

05:59:37 - 05:59:44

Speaker 56

Okay. Well, allowing another country to attack us is that treason? Allowing Iran to get a nuclear weapon, aspire.

05:59:44 - 05:59:47

Speaker 1

You're not recognized as general, but you were, or mister Amaday.

05:59:49 - 06:00:06

Speaker 53

I wanna thank your team behind you for having the discipline, stamina for being here. I know what work was involved in doing this type of hearing, so thank you all. Mister secretary, I wanna ask you about the 10 warthog. How effective has it been in the war in Iran?

06:00:08 - 06:00:10

Speaker 3

As I'm sure you know, it's a very effective platform.

06:00:10 - 06:00:28

Speaker 53

Yes. And so why is the air force, I mean, they've been trying to retire this platform for 40 years since 1984. And it seems like it keeps proving itself, no matter the technological advances that we have in the military. So why is there a need or a push to retire this platform?

06:00:29 - 06:01:15

Speaker 3

Well, the push to retire the platform was for previous administrations, based mostly on requests from the air force. But given how I mean, anybody of our generation knows how impactful, important, and significant the A-10 and the Warthog has been. And that's what you want when you need close air support, full stop. Everybody knows it. To include when you've got down pilots and you need to go downtown, Iran.

And it was incredibly effective in those missions. Now there are other places where it's less survivable, and I understand that. But there's still most of the world where it is the most effective close air support platform. That's why I got with the Air Force secretary. We extended it to 2030, and we're, per the president's guidance, gonna look at other options, maybe other variants in ways at which we can keep a 10 capability or platform on the battlefield for our warfighters who want that kind of close air support.

06:01:16 - 06:02:09

Speaker 53

Thank you. I appreciate that. Just, you know, as technology advances, sometimes we forget. Sometimes the old-school machinery we have works just as well. I know you just, you know, got the Apache helicopters.

I mean, that's a 50-year-old frame. You look at the AK 47 sevens, my god. It's one of the most effective rifles, and it's from 1947. So I don't want to lose sight of that. You know?

I think too much is spent on so many defense companies coming here selling us the newest, greatest product, but warfare, all warfare ultimately is about killing the enemy, and we know that Warhog does that. I wanna shift focus a little bit to, actually, kind of old school as well. I know the SOF and the SIOP right now. There's been 3,000 positions cut, mostly on SIOPs and civil affairs. As you know, I've been wondering.

We have air superiority in Iran, and it seems like there's no Internet connectivity in Iran. Are we doing any leaflet drops over there?

06:02:11 - 06:02:19

Speaker 3

We've explored a variety of different actions, many of which are classified, but that could restore additional communications capability to the Iranian people.

06:02:19 - 06:02:56

Speaker 53

I would love for President Trump's Truth Social post to be leafletted all over Iran, to be honest with you. I think that would encourage them to actually take to the streets. Moving to Iraq. I think there's budgeted right now about $118,000,000 for the government of Iraq for the counter ISIS mission. We know the problems that the Iraq government is facing right now.

And you have personally said that you're gonna certify, you know, the spending on it. I mean, how do you think that this is an effective use of our money to give it to this government that we know is aligned with Iran and seems like it's becoming more difficult to deal with?

06:02:56 - 06:03:25

Speaker 3

It's very much an open question. We're paying very close attention to the new government there and the counterterrorism efforts, some of which have been successful over time and others of which have not in this conflict where Iraq has not stepped up in those efforts. And we're reviewing, funding, basing every aspect accordingly, just like we did in Syria. The president directed that we leave Syria. We had 8 bases.

We went down to four, two, and then one, and now, ultimately, are in Northern Iraq. And we'll review our posture throughout the region.

06:03:25 - 06:03:28

Speaker 53

Great. With that, I yield back, mister.

06:03:28 - 06:03:32

Speaker 1

Chair, now I recognize this gentleman from New Jersey, Dr. Conway.

06:03:33 - 06:08:33

Speaker 57

Thank you, mister chairman, and thank you, member Smith, for holding this hearing today. Thanks to the witnesses for presenting themselves to us to answer questions. At the outset, let me say that I'm proud of the work that our service members do every day to keep our nation safe, and I have profound respect for those who voluntarily put on the uniform to serve and protect our country. The Trump administration's reckless military actions are driving up costs for everyday Americans. This war, as you know, is not supported by a significant majority of the people in this country.

The administration has increased military operations around the globe, including strikes in 8 countries, and the war in Iran is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Estimates are, by the time it's over, it could cost three and dollars to the American people. A lot of that is off budget. It's estimated that the first 6 days of the war cost around $12,000,000,000 alone, and we are now hitting 60 days of war fighting without a plan to exit this conflict. The administration has failed to transparently tell the Congress or the American people what the cost of the war is and why we are at war, and expects Americans to keep footing the bill.

The comptroller has, and thank you for coming, sir, given us an incomplete number. I understand we're in the midst of war and they do have some challenges in that regard. But the congress, I think, my colleagues would have appreciated a more thorough going cost estimate so that we may properly conduct oversight as is our duty. I would agree with my colleague, Miss Goodlander, about the department sharing the full breakdown of the cost of this war and understanding where every dollar is going. That number does not likely reflect the full cost of war, as you know.

There are many estimates out there that say that this war will cost much more than you and the administration are putting before the American people. If you look at our past conflicts, when we went to war in World War One, this has been mentioned. Wilson went to Congress and called for the American people to help pay for the war. Franklin Roosevelt went to Congress, asked for a declaration of war, and Americans pitched in to pay for the war. Conflicts after that, sadly, many too many of them are off budget and are leaving Americans with trillions of dollars in debt. Average Americans are suffering the consequences of this war in Iran, including increased fuel prices in my home state of New Jersey, where gas is now on average $4.20 a gallon.

Diesel is almost $6 per gallon. In addition to increased fuel prices, everything costs more. Groceries, housing costs, and people, the people have to pay for it, have not asked for this war. And I think we're a little bewildered as to why we're in this war. I'm not disputing the fact that the Iranian regime is a malignant, dangerous regime that has killed its own people and has indeed killed Americans over the decades.

I think where we disagree is what's the best way to get to Iran? Do we negotiate with them and control their access to nuclear weapons, in a multilateral way that even included Russia in the deal, and the agreement that president Obama brought forward? Or do we, Joe, try to and engage in a costly war in order to get at those nuclear weapons? I think that's where the principal conflict lies. How do we achieve the same goals?

Costly war or through negotiation. And we've seen that apparently, there wasn't a plan to deal with the action that Iran had to take. That is the closest strait of Hormuz. This is the only thing you can do when you are the weaker country in an asymmetric conflict. Of course, they were gonna do that. I wonder whether or not the president was surprised by this before he took the actions that he has taken.

So let me just ask this question. And before I just make this comment, too. This war is just 60 days so far. And this thought that Americans wish to bear the consequences of increased fuel prices, don't think is borne out by the fact that, you know, those costs impact people on a weekly basis, biweekly basis. Mortgages come and have to be paid.

Groceries have to be bought on a weekly basis, and those gas prices squeeze the American public. So can you tell us whether or not it was planning to deal with the in advance, to deal with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz given the likely impact on world fuel prices.

06:08:33 - 06:08:34

Speaker 6

Will have.

06:08:34 - 06:08:40

Speaker 1

To be for the record, because, man, gentlemen, time has expired. Chair not recognized as a ranking member for any closing comments he may have.

06:08:41 - 06:10:32

Speaker 2

Well, first of all I wanna thank the chairman for conducting this hearing. Obviously, there's a lot of passion on both sides, a lot of partisan stuff being thrown around. I think on this committee, we're all trying to serve the men and women who serve us as well as we possibly can. You handled it very well in a difficult time. I appreciate the fairness of that.

Yes. We have a lot of issues. But at the end of the day, the Iran war is the biggest issue that we face. And I hope that you all, you gentlemen, would take seriously the concerns we have about where it's going and how it's going to end. Yes.

It has not yet lasted as long as Vietnam or World War two, but we're also told it was gonna last four to five weeks when it started. We were given an idea of what the mission had been. It's clearly gone beyond that. We did not contemplate that we would have, you know, the Strait of Hormuz shut down or that we would have to implement a blockade. So how we get to the result is something we really are gonna wanna hear from all of you about on a regular basis, and what role the service members who are over there.

Some 50,000 are going to play in that. And we all agree, mister secretary, that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. Is this really getting us there? That's the connection we want to see. And you can say, well, we had to start a war to stop the nuclear weapon.

That in itself doesn't make it true. How is the war and the military action actually stopping that nuclear weapon? How does it put us in a better position? I think that's what we really need to hear, and what we'll have to continue to work on long after this hearing. But I thank our witnesses for coming before us.

It is the democratic process. You know, we're all part of representing democracy. I have never met many people at the Pentagon who loved coming over and talking to congress. I get that, but I hope you understand how important and how necessary it is that the people's voices are heard. And we do have an opportunity to question and challenge the decisions that are made by our executive branches.

We have a right to do under the constitution, actually, an obligation to do under the constitution. So, I look forward to continuing the conversation. I thank the chairman again, and I yield back.

06:10:33 - 06:11:25

Speaker 1

I thank the ranking member, and I thank the witnesses. Thank you for your service to our country. Thank you for six hours of tough duty, and you've done a great job. I want to end this hearing the way I started it. This is a historic budget request by this administration.

We are in unacceptably low levels of spending historically, and this president is meeting the moment with a budget request that meets the requirements that we have to meet if we want to remain at peace. This is about peace through strength. This budget will help us have peace through strength, and I urge my colleagues who are not in this chamber to pay attention to what we talked about today. This department, I think, is done an admirable job of defending the budget. And with that, thank you for being here.

This hearing is adjourned.

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