Joe Morelle Presses Navy Admiral About The ‘Integration Of Autonomous Systems’ In The Armed Services

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing held before the congressional recess, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) questioned Navy and Marine Corps Officials about the Integration of Autonomous Systems.

Transcript

00:00gentlemen mr. Morelli yes thank you mr. chairman thank you the ranking member

00:04and thank you gentlemen for not only for being here for your service if I could

00:09just follow up mr. Adderhall's a question Admiral can you talk about the

00:17integration of autonomous systems and unmanned systems with with manned

00:21systems I know it's attempt to reduce risk to personnel distribute operations

00:28expand maritime domain awareness what have you learned over the last several

00:34years in terms of the development and experimentation about how what insights

00:40have you learned in and sort of how have you used that and will it influence the

00:45long-term integration of autonomous systems and manned systems so sir we we

00:50have three fleet areas principally that are working this now task force 59 and

00:55fifthly task force 66 and sixth fleet and fourthly now there are different needs

01:00for those I would tell you necessity is the mother of invention so Admiral Cooper

01:05when he was the fifthly commander found himself ship poor so he invested in

01:09unmanned technologies to do maritime domain awareness with things like a

01:13sail drone which is a persistent vessel that can do maritime domain awareness

01:17similarly fourth fleet has adopted that the work being done in the sixth fleet is

01:22interesting because it ports right over to support Admiral Koehler and Admiral

01:25Paparo in the Indo-Pacific because those same technologies can be used there in a

01:30manner that's effective so it's almost a battle lab for the Indo-Pacific so

01:35there's learning across all our fleets the geography drives the use case for

01:40what you need for that but our initial focus is this thing called non-traditional

01:44sea denial ultimately though I want to get to a hybrid fleet that engages our unmanned

01:51capabilities alongside our ships supporting our submarines in the air wing

01:57of the future for man to unmanned teaming so to me that's the future state and and

02:02last week I was in San Diego with Admiral Paparo and Admiral Koehler looking at

02:07their experimentation and rehearsal of these very technologies thank you I

02:13appreciate that I want to maybe if I can just expand on the Indo-Pacific and in the

02:19use undersea dominance I understand is critical to deterrence and force

02:23projection I'm concerned about what appears to be a little bit of a mismatch

02:29between rising demand for anti-submarine or cap capabilities and

02:33relatively flat funding for key enablers like sonobuies I think I'm saying that

02:39right it's a weird word inventory levels are reportedly well below the global floor

02:45which raises questions about anti-submarine warfare could you just I think

02:49you're spot-on we got ourselves in a in a in a non-effective position for sonobuie

02:56manufacturers but we've increased our sonobuies for everything but the Mac

03:00buoy now so we want to get back to that global floor we will continue investment we

03:05appreciate your support in that investment and it's a key enabler for us to

03:09invest in but now we have two companies Sparta and Lockheed Martin that are

03:13individually producing sonobuies they're not producing something that I have to

03:17be married up together I think that's a much better solution and my last stats are

03:21about seven percent increase is what we're shooting for every year so I think

03:26that is an area we definitely need to continue to invest in very good I just

03:30wanted to come back to something I'm new to this committee and when we had

03:34secretary Driscoll I think he said something and I'm paraphrasing essentially

03:39that there were 35,000 people in the in the army related to acquisitions but upon

03:45further conversation turned out that it seemed like there were about 5,000 the

03:49rest were engineers and people were involved with sustainment so mr.

03:53secretary when you say that there's 56,000 people help educate me what what

03:57does that mean are they actually all doing acquisitions or are they doing other

04:02things that relate to sustainment and and making sure that the engineering and

04:07the contracts etc are appropriate thank you for the question congressman there's

04:12actually close to 80,000 if you count third party and contractors but the total

04:18number is fifty five thousand eight thirty three of which fifty one thousand four

04:23thirty eight or civilian in cost estimating their 700 in financial

04:28management there's 2,127 in contracting their 7,959 in engineering and

04:36technical management there's 27,031 in lifestyle logistics there's 7,154 in

04:43program management there's 7,483 test and evaluation is 2,990 other which I'm

04:53still waiting for is 389 so in and I see him out of time and I apologize perhaps

04:59we get it just a definition of what all those areas are and what you're when the

05:03appropriations request comes in how that will match up against those happy to

05:07follow up with you on it thank you you back sir thank the gentleman for that

05:11answer

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