Roger Wicker Presses Air Force General On 'Very Poor' Readiness Rates For Aircraft

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During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) spoke about the readiness rate for US aircraft.

Transcript

00:00And we thank each of you for your testimony. Quick yes or no answer from

00:05each of you. Much of the funding in the defense reconciliation bill will be

00:12unspecific because of House and Senate rules and will technically be at the

00:17discretion of the Department of Defense, though we will write recommendations for

00:21them. A quick yes or no from each of you. Do you commit to follow unequivocally

00:25the Congress's spending recommendations in defense reconciliation? General Albin?

00:31Yes. Secretary Mink? Yes, Chairman. General Saltzman? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Now

00:40General Albin, you said a statement, you made a statement that I think I very much

00:46agree with you said got to be a better way. I think you were talking about then

00:51these frequent continuing resolutions, were you not? Yes, Chairman. That's what I was

00:57referring to. Okay. Thank you very, very much about that. General Saltzman, I think

01:03you said the Space Force consumes 3%, about 3% of the defense budget. You're taking on

01:14additional responsibilities. I think you agree that those additional

01:20responsibilities are correctly directed toward the Space Force. Yes, sir, I do. And

01:26do you think the 3% in in the next 5 to 10 years is going to remain a correct

01:36percentage of the overall national security budget? I think that depends on

01:41what the denominator is, but I definitely think we need more resources in order to

01:45accomplish those new missions. Okay. Now, General Albin, let's talk about the F-47, and

01:54let's compare it to the development of the F-35. There, I understand there is a

02:03completely new acquisition approach. Don't take the full three minutes I have left, but

02:11what's the difference there, and how's this going to affect the taxpayer, and the

02:15warfighter, and national security? Thank you, Chairman. I'll go as fast as I can, because I

02:20could go on for about an hour. The primary difference is that we are, we now have more

02:25of control over the project as it moves forward. We have insourced more. We have

02:31more of the ownership of the tech base. We have guided a government reference

02:36architecture, so we own the mission systems, and so others can come in and play, but we

02:41own the development, the upgrade, and so the upgrades can come at the speed of

02:45software, not hardware. It can come at the speed of our engineers understanding how

02:49fast to advance versus dealing with the contractor and paying the extra cost. Right, sir.

02:54This is a major change in approach, is it not? 100%, Chairman. How's it going to affect the

02:59taxpayer? How's it going to affect the timeliness of this project? Chairman, I think we're going to have

03:06some conversations about F-35 and how we don't want to repeat that, so it is going to affect

03:11the taxpayer. My sense is that we're going to be able to be more agile, and as more disruptive

03:15technology comes into play to be able to develop more advanced systems, we'll be able to more

03:21rapidly integrate them, not only into the F-47, but into those two collaborative combative aircraft,

03:26the YFQ-42 and the YFQ-44 that are currently under prototype. They're all going to be under the same

03:33mission systems architecture, so we won't just be upgrading one platform. We'll be upgrading a

03:38system, and so the American taxpayer will get more combat capability out of their money.

03:46What do we mean by mission capability? And we're told there's some fairly poor numbers, 60%

03:57readiness rates for some of our aircraft. What do you mean by that, and how are we going to address that

04:01issue? So mission capable rate, obviously you assess the missions for which it is designed,

04:06and the aircrew are trained, whether that be air-to-air combat, air-to-ground, certain capabilities.

04:12So the aircraft has to have the systems that are working that enables all those missions to happen.

04:16So when we say mission capable, it gets pretty detailed. There's fully mission capable,

04:20partial mission capable, non-mission capable. Let's talk about the F-16. What's our capability rate?

04:25Where it ought to be? The F-16, for its age, I would say the F-16 is about where it ought to be,

04:32for its age and for its sophistication. Because obviously the more complex the system, the tougher

04:37it is to keep up those mission systems. So where is it? The F-16, and I'm cheating because I don't

04:42have it all committed to memory, but the F-16 aircraft availability, which includes depot time,

04:48is now just about 50, hovering around 50 percent. Now that, that deceives you a little bit because

04:55aircraft availability includes the time when it goes into the program depot. And so its mission

05:01capable rate is higher than that, and I can get that for you here. Let's see, I can actually now.

05:06It's a 62 percent mission capable rate. Okay. Well, you probably will want to supplement your

05:13answer there, but thank you very much. And Senator Reid, you're now recognized. Thank you very much.

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