Elissa Slotkin Urges Army Officials To Modernize Defense Infrastructure And Advanced Manufacturing

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During Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) questioned  the Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, and Chief of Staff General Randy A. George about defense infrastructure.

Transcript

00:00So I don't want Senator Kelly to beat me up. We thought he was going next but I

00:05will happily take my five minutes. Thank you for being here. We've talked a lot

00:10even this week about the army transformation and I'll echo a number of

00:15things that Senator Peters said. I think we all understand the need for the army

00:20to modernize. I don't think there's a single person who feels like we we

00:24should stay the same and the status quo is just doing great and that's based on

00:28the fact that China's investing in new technology new techniques and if they

00:33and others that we may hopefully never have to fight if they are ahead of us on

00:39a whole bunch of different things like we're not doing our job in preparing and

00:43protecting the United States. So I think we're all on the same page. I just want

00:48to make sure that it's not just about cutting stuff right and we understand

00:53that you've looked at cutting things like Humvees and the JLTV and things that

00:58Michigan does but that we also look at processes and procedures right you

01:04alluded to this in your strategy. Right now China can go from concept to fielding a

01:10new system in one year. The US military and I say this with love can go from

01:17concept to fielding in three years if we're lucky right if we're lucky. So to me

01:23the future is going to be won by the people who are most agile and flexible

01:28in taking the new great idea some of the stuff we're seeing in Ukraine right now

01:32and moving it to contact faster. And I would just offer that we don't want to

01:38destroy the defense industrial base we want to update it and I think Michigan

01:44can be the place to do that advanced manufacturing to bring in AI to bring in

01:493D printing to bring in all these new techniques that are making to make us go

01:53faster. So I'm thrilled that you're coming. We're going to show ourselves off

01:58and instead of fighting to hold on to everything that we've had in the past we

02:05want to be the defense point of contact for advanced manufacturing for the future.

02:09And we're going to give you the dog and pony to make sure you feel the same way

02:15because we are pretty hot shit in what we do in Michigan. I'm just gonna say that.

02:19Sorry to swear Mr. Chairman. So can you talk a little bit about why, like on the

02:25advanced manufacturing piece, can you help elaborate on what the Army is going to

02:31do to speed up that flash-to-bang concept to fielding with advanced

02:35manufacturing? So Senator, just to the earlier point about the cuts, I think when

02:42we've rolled out Army Transformation Initiative, there were basically four

02:45buckets. I won't hit them all, but the first bucket was the cuts in order to

02:48take the $48 billion in savings that the President of the United States and

02:51Secretary of Defense empowered us with to innovate and spend it to make the Army

02:56stronger. And General George and I are optimistic that Army Transformation

03:01Initiative will be a renaissance for the American industrial base for small and

03:05medium businesses so that they can show us their innovation. We, the United States Army,

03:10have been a very poor customer oftentimes, and I would say perhaps all the time, we

03:16do not allow small and medium businesses to show us their product, have us get into

03:21the hands of soldiers, show them how to improve it, and then reward them when we

03:25need it often enough. And there's this chasm that has been created that only

03:29incredibly large companies that take, I would say, three years is generous and

03:33it's probably closer to ten, but we are actively working to fix it. Yeah, and I would

03:37just say to your earlier point about modeling and simulation, Michigan is

03:41quickly becoming the hub for if you want to like test something out before you

03:45have to build an actual scale model, bring in a platoon of guys to let them put on

03:50the VR glasses and test something out before we build it. We're gonna become the

03:54hub of that and we are eager to show that off. But I would say I think my, my, one of my

04:00many criticisms of this administration in general is that they're really happy to

04:05have the press conference about cutting this many people or this many programs.

04:09But as someone who worked in the federal government, it's often the procedures

04:14within the departments and agency that take forever, right? There's so many steps,

04:19there's so many things to do. And I would welcome the Pentagon actually saying

04:23it's not, we're not just gonna do the press conferences on how many woke people we

04:27got rid of or woke programs we got rid of, and I would contend with some of those

04:31things. But it is about actually cleaning up our internal processes so it's not so

04:37laborious. And I want, I've never once, a Democrat or Republican, including the Trump

04:43administration first time, gotten a proposal, please take off these

04:47regulations. Please Congress, remove these things. They may have been well

04:50intended but it's too much. So please don't just do the shiny object, the stuff

04:55that gets the political attention. Please actually dig in and do the damn work so

04:59that if you want transformation you actually get it. And I just want to

05:03quickly give my Ranger buddy a shout out on the recruiting side. There were over

05:07600 forms that could possibly be filled out on recruiting. 600. I don't even know

05:12what they could all possibly ask. But obviously you'd have to repeat your name

05:1557 times on each of the forms. And what General George did with the recruiting

05:20team is he said, you are not allowed to have more than 10 forms. Full stop, make it work.

05:25And they are at currently I think eight or nine and have cut down on 592 forms. Which

05:31is remarkable and we would be delighted to give you that list. Yeah, thank you very much. I yield back.

05:35Can I add one thing, Chairman? Oh sure. Thank you. We have asked Senator

05:41for agile funding in the past and you know we have to buy capability portfolios for drones,

05:47counter drones, EW. We will be submitting that as part of our budget to have that capability. We've been

05:55asking I think in here for that. I would happily give flexible funding and multi-year funding if

06:00we could get our act together up here. I think we can all acknowledge that we haven't. But it's also

06:04for more traditional things. We've given you a lot of authorities over a year, over the years.

06:09I would agree. There's a culture problem in the Pentagon. It's not just what more authorities

06:13we can give you. So I'm open to it a hundred percent. But do the internal work too. Yep. Okay.

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