'I Don't See The Investment': Markwayne Mullins Questions Air Force Lieutenant General On Simulators

4 months ago

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) questioned Lieutenant General David A. Harris, USAF about Air Force modernization.

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Transcript

00:00 baseline comment across the total force.

00:02 - Great, wonderful.

00:03 Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:05 Senator Mullen.

00:06 - Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:08 General Harris, just looking at you guys'

00:13 re-optimizing for the future powers ahead,

00:18 you guys are making some changes to the training processes

00:23 for your pilots, which is great.

00:26 We've got new platforms, new technology we gotta work on.

00:29 But as you know, Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma

00:33 and Vance Air Force Base, where Vance is one of the

00:37 top pilot training centers in the country.

00:41 Where are we at with changing those programs there

00:45 and where does it leave the Air Force bases?

00:48 When you start talking about what's the future of Vance

00:50 and what's the future of Altus and their current mission?

00:52 - So I don't see the current missions changing.

00:57 What I do see changing is as we look to reframe

01:00 what a unit of action is and how we deploy,

01:03 that will be different.

01:04 And this is where we get into the in-place combat wings

01:09 or the different types of combat wings

01:10 that might be out there.

01:12 There's still foundational things that we need to do

01:14 within our Air Force that Air Education and Training

01:16 Command does for us today.

01:17 The changes that we're talking about

01:19 under great power competition and the re-optimization

01:21 for this really are aligning things like

01:24 the accessions part of it or onboarding

01:26 of the warrant officers and the other things

01:28 that our chief has talked about in previous testimonies.

01:31 As far as the bases and the missions and the roles

01:33 and functions, specifically the institutional ones

01:36 that are aligned to that, I don't see those changing.

01:38 - Well, in Vance I have a concern because you're changing

01:43 a lot of your flight time to simulators,

01:45 which is at first, to be quite frank with you,

01:47 General Hirse, I was thinking how are you taking someone

01:50 with the actual flight time to a simulator

01:53 and then your instructors down there actually spent time

01:55 with me and said, "Listen, we can put these pilots now

01:57 "in situations where they might have a 5%

01:59 "survivability rate because of a mechanical error.

02:03 "We can put it in a simulator over and over

02:05 "and over and over again and we're gonna see

02:07 "an increase of that survivability rate."

02:09 In which I thought, okay, I totally understand that now.

02:11 I'm not a video game guy at all.

02:14 I didn't ever even want Mario Brothers

02:15 back way back when on Nintendo.

02:17 So that's just not my world.

02:19 But when you start looking at the simulators

02:22 and the way they're training, I totally understand it.

02:25 But some of the simulators you guys have set up at Vance

02:27 is literally in a warehouse.

02:29 I was in there in the middle of summer and wow.

02:33 I mean, this warehouse was 100 degrees all day long,

02:37 if it's not over.

02:38 And these future pilots are setting these simulators

02:43 for hours.

02:45 And so I don't see the infrastructure meeting

02:48 where you guys are moving towards.

02:51 You're just taking them and putting stuff there

02:53 and I don't see the investment.

02:54 I definitely don't see it when you're going to your budget

02:57 that they're forced to put out.

02:57 I didn't see anything new for Vance

03:00 to be able to meet the new training

03:02 that you guys are asking them to do

03:04 except using old infrastructure.

03:06 So can you speak of that?

03:07 - Senator, I can speak to part of that.

03:10 So in terms of great power competition

03:14 and the re-optimization, you won't see money associated

03:18 with any of the efforts that we're making into this one.

03:20 A large part of that is the work is ongoing

03:23 and we're still uncovering what it's gonna take

03:25 to be able to do this effectively.

03:27 And FSRM and some of these facilities will be one of them.

03:30 The joint simulation environment is another piece of this.

03:33 But it also speaks to a broader piece of the ranges

03:36 in general and how we train and practice every day

03:38 and the modernization that's gonna need

03:40 to keep all those together.

03:41 - Go ahead, Daryl.

03:43 - Senator, I'm not tracking the issue

03:46 that you're talking about at Vance,

03:47 but I understand the concern.

03:48 Let us take this for the record and come back to you

03:50 and give you a more cogent discussion on this.

03:53 - And let me explain this one too.

03:55 I'd love to invite you guys there.

03:56 We take a lot of pride in Vance.

03:58 And it's something that the community is 1,000% behind.

04:02 It's something that the state's behind.

04:04 We love the fact that there's more pilots trained there

04:06 than any place in the country.

04:08 We wanna keep that there.

04:09 So with that being said, I'm a hands-on type of guy.

04:14 I wanna see it.

04:16 So we would love to make that invite.

04:19 I will personally make sure I change my schedule

04:22 to fit your all schedule if anybody wants

04:23 to come down there and put eyes on it.

04:25 - Yes, sir.

04:26 We would love to do that.

04:27 I'm not tracking this particular issue,

04:29 but we'll take it for the record.

04:29 - And they're not complaining to me.

04:31 I picked it up.

04:32 - Yes, sir.

04:33 - They've never brought it to me and said,

04:33 "Hey, we need to look at this."

04:34 I just thought if we're talking about retaining the best,

04:37 sometimes conditions do matter.

04:38 - Yes, sir, fair.

04:40 - Real quick before I run out of time,

04:41 and I hate to spend so much time on that,

04:43 but Secretary Hunter, we got a problem at Tinker

04:47 with providing our mission when we have an overrun

04:50 of the E-7s while we're phasing out the E-3s.

04:52 And I brought this up multiple times,

04:54 and we get answers that go all over the place

04:57 on how we're going to actually phase out the E-3s

05:01 when we can't deliver the E-7s on time

05:04 and still be mission capable.

05:06 We talk about utilizing space assets,

05:09 which that's a possibility.

05:11 But what are we actually going to do

05:14 to make sure the mission that Tinker does,

05:16 and we know Tinker provides a very vital role to us,

05:19 and especially in a time of conflict,

05:21 if we go into an eventual fight,

05:22 they're gonna be our eyes and our ears.

05:25 And yet, we're not gonna have the platforms

05:27 to provide the mission.

05:29 What's our actual plan?

05:30 Are we gonna plan on just keeping some of the E-3s around

05:33 because they're phasing out pretty quick

05:35 before we get the E-7s?

05:36 - So our plan is to have E-7 as a replacement,

05:40 and we are on contract with Boeing.

05:42 - But way behind in price or budget?

05:45 - So we have been executing on the work.

05:47 What we've been behind on is,

05:49 we got a proposal from Boeing that was roughly twice

05:53 what the budgeted funding was.

05:54 Funds that were budgeted based originally

05:56 on information from Boeing about what the cost was gonna be.

05:59 I can tell you we have narrowed that gap quite considerably

06:03 and into an area where I believe we will soon have

06:08 an agreement that will be something that is affordable

06:10 for the taxpayer, affordable for the Air Force,

06:12 and we'll be able to definitize that contract with Boeing

06:16 and know how that rapid prototyping program,

06:18 which is what we're currently engaged in,

06:20 is gonna work over the next several years.

06:23 Then the issue, and where we have seen some changes

06:25 in our plans that you're referencing accurately,

06:27 is how do we move into production of those aircraft

06:30 that we've taken through that prototyping process?

06:33 And that is where there have been some delays

06:34 because not knowing that we had a design that was affordable

06:37 we could not in good conscience budget

06:40 for production of an aircraft that we didn't yet have

06:43 a design that we knew was gonna work.

06:45 So we will be able to revisit the issue of

06:47 what is the pace and tempo of E-7 production

06:50 once we have that agreement reached with Boeing.

06:53 - Thank you.

06:54 General Moore, I think, is gonna weigh in on this,

06:56 but I'm out of time, so Chairman, it's up to you.

06:58 - Yeah, go ahead.

06:59 - Sir, you said the E-3 would be our eyes and ears.

07:03 I think we all have to be honest

07:04 about what the E-3 actually provides.

07:06 The physics of the E-3 does not permit it

07:09 to function in the highly contested environment.

07:10 Nothing that we can do to upgrade the airplane

07:12 will change a 10 second revisit rate,

07:14 it won't change the range, it won't change the resolution,

07:17 which allows it to see what we need.

07:18 The mission computer in an E-3 weighs 25,000 pounds.

07:22 It is powered by TF33 engines.

07:24 We did an extensive amount of research

07:26 in the B-52 upgrade program to determine

07:29 how long those engines were sustainable.

07:31 And there are some heroics that could get

07:33 some of those engines past 2030,

07:34 but for all intent and purposes,

07:36 2030 is the end of the road for the TF33 engine.

07:39 So we are working, as Mr. Hunter said,

07:41 as quickly as we can to bring the E-7 on,

07:43 but the E-3 is not a part of the fight

07:46 in the highly contested environment.

07:47 That doesn't mean it doesn't have use

07:49 in other AORs and in other regions,

07:52 Homeland Defense in particular,

07:54 but it is not a part of the fight

07:55 in the highly contested environment.

07:56 - Thank you, appreciate it.

07:57 - Senator Bill McDonnell.

08:00 Thank you.

'I Don't See The Investment': Markwayne Mullins Questions Air Force Lieutenant General On Simulators

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