Press Releases

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, today commented on the Department of Defense Infrastructure Capacity Report for 2016, which was delivered to Congress this week. The report was required by the FY16 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as a way to assess the capacity of America’s military ahead of any request for another round of base closures. The NDAA required the report to be delivered in February with the President’s budget request and to use military force structure as it existed in 2012 as a baseline. The report delivered this week is months late and uses 2019 force structure as a baseline:

“The capacity report the Pentagon belatedly delivered to Congress simply doesn’t tell us what we need to know. In envisioning a military far smaller than anyone thinks is wise, it fails to comply with the law as badly as it fails to justify a BRAC round. No one believes that the current military force structure is adequate to meet the threats we face. Just this month, senior commanders testified that our military is too small. Assessing our capacity based on an inadequate force structure makes no sense. It would lock in a future where our stressed military becomes permanently gutted. That’s why Congress directed the study to use the military we had in 2012 as a baseline, to reflect the needs of a more capable force. The legal requirement to submit a capacity report based on 2012 force levels remains unfulfilled.”