During Thursday’s Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) questioned General Randy A. George, Chief of Staff of the Army, about cybersecurity efforts.
00:00Senator Rosen. Well, thank you, Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Reed. I appreciate it. And I would also like to thank Secretary Driscoll, General George, for testifying today for your service to our country.
00:12I know we're talking a lot about training, so I'm going to talk about small arms training, small arms range in Nevada, of course, because Army leaders in the past have made commitments to me to build Nevada's first certified small arms training range at Hawthorne Army Depot.
00:29So the Nevada National Guard and Reserve Soldiers no longer have to travel out of state to fulfill their annual weapons qualification at an average cost of $500,000 per year, per unit. You want to save money? Build our range.
00:44I'm appreciative that the Army followed through on these commitments and included this project in the FY2025 budget request, which was added in both the House and Senate FY25 appropriations bills.
00:57However, since Congress did not pass these bills and instead passed a full year CR without budget tables, we lack certainty about whether or not the Army will actually fund this project, which is already well underway.
01:11So to both of you, can I have your commitment that the Army will, in fact, deliver Nevada's first certified small arms training range so that our soldiers can meet their annual requirements at a greater convenience and lower cost to the taxpayer?
01:26Secretary Driscoll?
01:27Yes, Senator.
01:28Oh, General George, thank you.
01:29We love rifle ranges, for the record.
01:33Yes, Senator.
01:34Secretary, thank you.
01:35We're going to stay on this, and we're going to talk about the Transformation Initiative and its impact to Nevada.
01:42You know, again, Hawthorne Army Depot is the world's largest ammunition depot and demilitarization facility.
01:48The depot stores and demilitarizes munitions and ensures munitions readiness for each of the services.
01:55Despite its size and crucial role that Hawthorne plays, it's in dire need of continued infrastructure upgrades.
02:01Investing in our munitions depot has only become more important in light of our need to ramp up munitions production, backfill our stockpile.
02:10So we've heard quite a bit today about the Army Transformation Initiative, but I'm concerned about these broad structural changes, particularly reductions in platforms, personnel, systems, as you've been alluding to.
02:21They might impact critical facilities and communities such as Hawthorne.
02:25So during both your confirmation hearings, you made commitments to consider further investments in Hawthorne.
02:31Can I have your commitment as that the Army moves forward with its transformation initiative?
02:38Investments in Hawthorne will continue providing munitions readiness for the Army and DOD.
02:43Secretary Driscoll?
02:46Munitions depots are incredibly important.
02:49Our magazine depth is not where it needs to be.
02:51We have got to figure out as a nation how we are going to do these investments.
02:56I think when you're referencing the cuts that we're making at ATI, what we're trying to do is, from a bottoms-up approach,
03:02where we over-indexed on things like Humvees or JLTVs, or where did we over-invest in research and development for things like our robotic combat vehicles?
03:13Where can we save money and reallocate those dollars to best help with all of these big problems that we have?
03:19And so I can absolutely commit that we would want to work with your office to figure out how can we rapidly continue to scale our munitions base.
03:28Perfect. General George, please.
03:30Yeah, I would agree with what the Secretary said.
03:33And plus, you know, the other thing that we'd like to work with you on is how we can probably build some of these things and repair things cheaper,
03:39because I'm confident we can do that as well.
03:41We would love to work with you on that. Thank you so much.
03:44And my final question is about cyber workforce development, because the FY24 NDAA included my bipartisan legislation authorizing the Army to create a civilian cyber security reserve
03:56to provide cyber calm with qualified civilian personnel for surge capacity, ensuring that the U.S. government has the cyber talent it needs to respond to malicious activity
04:06and secure the DOD's information and its systems.
04:10So, General George and then Secretary Crystal, can you provide a status update on the Army's implementation of a civilian cyber reserve?
04:21I just had about, I think it was last week, I took a brief, a readiness brief, specifically on cyber and had our Army cyber came up
04:30and how we're filling the formations.
04:31What I don't have for you is the specifics on the civilians.
04:34I will tell you this is a conversation we have a lot as far as, like, for the Guard and people that are actually out there working in,
04:43and that's their day job, and have them, you know, connected to that is critically important to us.
04:48There's a lot of folks filling those positions.
04:50I do think this is an area we are trying to expand this.
04:54We're doing pretty good right now expanding it.
04:56But, as you know, this is something that takes months and years to get the exquisite capability that we're talking about.
05:02So, I can come and go over this in detail with you.
05:06I would be great to have a meeting with my team.
05:07I appreciate that.
05:09Secretary Driscoll.
05:11Nothing additional to add other than we talk about this all the time, a little more often in the National Guard and Reserve sense.
05:18But, the civilian ability to scale our cyber needs, everything we're talking about with this data letter and generative AI will require cyber warriors to help us.
05:28Especially as we try to implement CyberCom 2.0.
