Shelley Moore Capito Asks Sec. Pete Hegseth About Military Recruitment Of Women

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At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) questioned Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth about military recruitment of women.

Transcript

00:00Senator Capoteau, Senator Murphy, and then Senator Kennedy.

00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:07Thank you, Secretary Hedseth, and thank you, General, and thank all the men and women every

00:11day that serve us and protect us.

00:14Extremely grateful.

00:15Secretary Hedseth, you and your team are working on a national defense strategy.

00:18I'd be interested to know when you think you'll be coming forward with that.

00:22We know that the last year, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy found that

00:26quote, there's a high probability that the next war will be fought across multiple theaters

00:31and would involve multiple adversaries.

00:34How are you thinking about these interconnected threats, and how will your national defense

00:37strategy establish a new force to meet those challenges?

00:42And when do you think that report will come forward?

00:44Senator, it's the right question.

00:47It drives almost all of our decision-making, certainly on a topic related to budget.

00:52We did an interim national defense strategy almost immediately upon arriving, because

00:57with a new administration, our planning guidance was from the previous administration that we

01:01think had the wrong priorities, or some of the wrong priorities.

01:04And by issuing that interim national defense strategy, it allowed our building to plan around

01:08the priorities of President Trump.

01:11And that interim national defense strategy focused on defending the homeland, a recognition

01:15that that is important.

01:17Our pacing threat in the Indo-Pacific.

01:19And then burden sharing for our allies and partners, making sure that they're stepping

01:23up so that we can focus where we need to.

01:25I would anticipate that our national defense strategy will include a lot of those ingredients,

01:29but more fully developed.

01:32I would expect late summer, if I were to put a pin on it.

01:38But that interim strategy has driven why we're investing, where we're investing, and I think

01:44driven a lot of difficult decisions.

01:46There are things in this budget that we have to address that have been deferred for a long

01:50time, that we're willing to say that may have been a fight for the last 20 years, but

01:54it's not as applicable to the long-range fight we think we may need to be a part of in the

01:58future.

01:59Or it's not survivable, given what we've seen in the last three years in Ukraine, and the

02:04way the battlefield is changing.

02:05That's what I would hope the American people would expect from their department, leaning on

02:09the military expertise of our uniform class to try to get it right.

02:14We'll look forward to that report, and that leads me to my second question.

02:17I'm interested in listening to all the questions that this hasn't been asked, and this is a

02:22question on space superiority.

02:24In my view, I think a powerful destabilizing force would be if China were to get the superior

02:34hand in space.

02:37General Saltzman has said that he feels that we do not have what we need to fight on our

02:42terms.

02:43So I would imagine in your national defense strategy, but also reflected in your budget,

02:51how does this match with the need for us to become space dominant?

02:57I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to point out that it was President Trump that

03:00created this space force.

03:02A lot of people said he shouldn't in his first administration, and that's been critically

03:06important to us gaining advantages in that space to include our ability to implement something

03:11like the Golden Dome.

03:13We also are able to leverage world-class private companies that come alongside DOD to help us

03:20with that capability.

03:21Obviously, how we rapidly field things is going to matter.

03:24And then you'll see, some of which is classified, obviously ways in which we're investing in this

03:29budget to ensure we maintain dominance in space.

03:32That is the frontier.

03:33That is a COCOM, if you will, that we need to be able to understand fully and defend against and match our adversaries.

03:41Well, it's interesting because I think there's a tremendous interplay between the military superiority

03:46that we could achieve in defensive capabilities in space, along with what's going to happen

03:51in the private sector.

03:52Because if we don't achieve this militarily or defensively, we're not going to be able

03:56to have the private sector superiority that we all enjoy in every facet of our life.

04:01So last question, you mentioned, and I'm very proud of this fact, that the recruiting

04:05goals that have been, we've seen them falling short, with the exception of the Marine Corps,

04:10I want to give them a shout out, because they were meeting their goals.

04:14You said that they are higher, so I assume you have some of the statistics as to how much

04:19the recruitment is up.

04:21I'm curious to know, for women, is the recruitment up for women, and how you see that.

04:26Do you have statistics?

04:27Yeah, I mean, we, I think there was plenty of pre-criticism that certain groups would

04:34not be interested in joining the military in this environment, and we've seen the exact

04:39opposite.

04:40Because for us, it's not about women, or men, or black, or white.

04:43It's about, we want the most qualified Americans possible in our ranks who are ready to go,

04:49and they have responded.

04:50So across the services.

04:52The Army's four months ahead.

04:53The Air Force is way ahead.

04:55The Navy's way ahead.

04:56And this is, this is, we're going to meet goals well beyond the goals that were reduced

05:01by the previous administration, because they could not recruit.

05:04So we're talking about far surpassing anything that was done before.

05:07Is there one prevailing thought when you're doing your after recruiting, talking to recruit

05:11that's signing up?

05:13What's the difference?

05:15The difference is they, a commander in chief they believe in, Senator.

05:18Thank you, Senator.

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