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Today, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower & Projection Forces, made the following remarks, as prepared for delivery, on the Subcommittee's hearing titled "The Current State of U.S. Transportation Command."

"I want to welcome General McDew and thank him for the time and effort on this most important issue. I also want to thank Chairman Wilson for offering to have this joint subcommittee hearing today. I believe that there is any number of overlapping issues with the Readiness Subcommittee and I look forward to working with the gentleman from South Carolina to move these issues through the NDAA markup process.

We are a seafaring nation. This was the vision of our founding fathers when they commissioned the U.S. Navy in 1775 and our seafaring nature is now the bedrock of our economy. Today, merchant ships carry around '90 percent of everything,' with the total amount having more than tripled since 1970.

Unfortunately for our national security, this seaborne trade is being increasingly outsourced to other nations and our own merchant fleet is in rapid decline. Between the years 2000 and 2014, our U.S. commercial fleet has shrunk from 282 vessels to 179 vessels, a reduction of almost 40 percent.

This decline in our commercial fleet increasingly represents a national security challenge because the mariners that support our commercial sector will be used extensively by the U.S. Transportation Command during times of war or mobilization. The Maritime Administration has indicated that our commercial sector does not have sufficient mariners to sustain a prolonged mobilization of our Ready Reserve Forces. Our nation cannot presume that a foreign owned maritime sealift component will be available during times of conflict to deploy into contested waters. Our nation needs U.S. mariners on U.S. flagged ships.

As to our strategic airlift capabilities, today we depend on a much smaller fleet to move cargo, personnel, and to MEDEVACthe wounded from more remote battlefields than during the Desert Storm era. Even with the larger Desert Storm force, a 1993 RAND study found that more than 60 percent of the troops and 25 percent of the cargo airlifted in or out of the theater went by the private sector. In future major theater wars, the Civil Reserve Airlift Fleet may be asked to absorb even more of the demands for cargo and troop movements.

I am concerned that outdated planning assumptions need to be reviewed. The new administration has made it clear that it wants to increase Army and Marine Corps force structure. However, at the same time, areas of the globe are becoming less permissive for civilian aviation operations to deliver these additional Soldiers and Marines to their areas of operation. I believe TRANSCOM should thoughtfully consider how best to increase strategic airlift capacity and its ability to operate in contested environments around the globe.

I thank Chairman Wilson for working with the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee on this important issue and I yield back the balance of time."