Opening Statements

I welcome our witnesses and thank them for their service to our nation.

Today we’ll hear from the Department of the Army regarding their FY27 budget request.

As my colleagues are aware, I’m laser focused on bolstering and expanding our industrial base.

Last year, we worked to fundamentally reform the defense acquisition system via the SPEED Act.

The reforms enacted in the FY26 NDAA, streamline the process and significantly reduce the time it takes to field new military capabilities.

This year, the focus of the NDAA will be expanding the industrial base – both organic and defense-wide.

Our Defense Industrial Base, long the envy of the world, has atrophied significantly.

Our global munitions stockpiles are low and we lack the capacity to rapidly restock magazine depth.

The industrial base has shrunk and so has our ability to manufacture for our warfighters at speed or scale.

Our government owned depots, arsenals, ammunition plants, and shipyards are a vital component of our overall capacity to manufacture and sustain critical capabilities.

But as bad as the contraction has been in the private sector’s manufacturing capability, it’s arguably been worse in our organic industrial base.

The OIB has suffered from decades of neglect and underinvestment.

Recent conflicts have exposed weaknesses in the OIB.

And weakness in the OIB directly affects our readiness.

Mission capable rates for critical weapon systems have fallen well below acceptable levels.

I have been beating the drum for a long time on the decline of the OIB and the defense industrial base as a whole.

I am glad President Trump shares my concerns and has released a budget that will finally addresses this problem.

The President has requested a historic $1.5 trillion budget for our national defense.

This budget directly confronts the challenges in our defense industrial base with over $100 billion in investments to revitalize manufacturing, expand domestic and allied critical minerals projects, and secure our supply chains.

We need to enact that budget and we need to rapidly turn that historic investment into capability for the warfighter.

That’s why it is so critical to understand from the services how they plan to accomplish that goal.

Last year, the Secretary presented the Army’s Transformation Initiative, or ATI.

The goal was to position the Army for future fights, streamline force structure, and eliminate wasteful spending.

Congress shared those goals, but as questions arose, it became clear the Army hadn’t done all of its homework.

ATI has since evolved into “continuous transformation”. The name may have changed, but our questions remain.

We’d like to see a concrete plan on how the Army intends to modernize.

• Where will investments be made?
• What risks to readiness do we absorb?
• And what impact will it have on the industrial base?

We want to make sure the Army has done a careful analysis of how transformation will affect our capabilities and force structure.

We want to understand how the Army intends to sustain the legacy capabilities our servicemembers still need and use.

We want to avoid spending this historic influx of money ineffectively and wasting this opportunity to bolster the DIB.

I’m confident that by working together, we can transform the Army and revitalize our industrial base.