During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-CA) questioned General Bryan P. Fenton, Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, about prioritizing safety in training exercises.
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00:00Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank our witnesses for being here today. As a
00:04former USD of PNR, I feel like I have to defend Genesis in the sense of what it
00:10does and the fact that it does give a picture of looking at the old medical
00:13thing, but it is the services, not Genesis, that decides what is acceptable
00:19medically and what is not. But with that, being the former USD PNR, readiness was
00:25part of my portfolio and training fell under under that, so my first question
00:30General Fenton is going to be about training and there was a GAO report that
00:36came out that said most training accidents are a result of human error and
00:40concerning SOCOM lacks the funding to fully implement the training oversight
00:44program. So does SOCOM have any plan to conduct any analysis of negative
00:50safety trends or reevaluate training assessment programs since it was
00:54reported that 80% of non-combat incidents come from training?
01:00Representative, I'll start by saying first, any accident training or worse yet a
01:05death is absolutely not what we're all about. We are about rigorous, arduous
01:13training so that if an event some of our teammates go into combat, that combat is
01:19easier than the training they've seen and the training we will do over and over
01:22again. I would take a little bit of umbrage or maybe even dispute with the fact
01:28that we don't do continual assessments of the safety in our various training
01:32courses. We do. We have a lot of training courses, assessment selection for our Army
01:37teammates, Air Force teammates, Marine teammates, Navy teammates and those are
01:41looked at consistently, usually by what I would call an outer cordon of medical
01:46safety, very experienced civilian personnel to continue to address that. That's our
01:56sacred obligation to the moms and dads that send us their sons and daughters for
02:02these kind of standards-based training and we do that. So I think we're always in
02:06that motion. We continually strive to have the very hardest training we can while
02:12protecting the teammates that are certainly the national treasure sent to us by this nation.
02:16Do you, but do you have the funding that you need in order to implement the training
02:21oversight programs and do ensuring that the safety of the training is at max capacity there?
02:28Representative, first I'll start, no. I talk about it in terms of modernization and I think
02:34as I laid out in the opening statement, and we'll continue to come back to, training and training exercises,
02:40along with modernizing authorities, modernizing technology, and when I talk about people,
02:44certainly I start with humans more important than hardware, long-held special operations command,
02:50truth and education for uncertainty as part of modernization, and that's our humans. We absolutely
02:58need more money to make sure we're doing that and keeping up, especially as we make our training exercises,
03:03not our assessment selection processes, more complex, more complicated, so that we emulate what we're
03:09actually seeing on the environment now. Integrated Air and Missile Defense, it's no longer just about
03:15OPSEC and distance. Now it's almost pure adversary systems everywhere. So I think absolutely, Representative.
03:21Well, thank you, and I understand. I mean, the training, like you said, the job and the missions that
03:26your service members go out and have to do, they need to train at optimum levels. But we need to make sure,
03:33and I think, I don't want to speak for the committee, but I will do what I can to ensure that you have the funding,
03:38to ensure that you have the safety standards that you need to ensure that it's safe.
03:41Thank you, Representative. Mr. Jenkins, just one question for you here, sir.
03:47You know, Congress created, like, the special operation forces there to kind of almost make
03:51it like another service, but yet it's not really another service because, you know, you're not like a,
03:58you're not in the acting role as a service chief. You're really kind of, I think, at an assistant
04:04secretary level there, right? So do you feel that the fact that they've kind of taken this and kind
04:10of put it in there and started this off, they're away from the services, that that has kind of had an
04:15effect on the funding as to maybe why the services may not be funding this or it's not getting funded
04:22at the level because you're not at an equal level and yet the services don't have control over this
04:26anymore so they're not putting in the assets that they used to? Perhaps you've landed on some key
04:33points there, and we are grateful to Congress that SOLIC exists so that we do have those service-like
04:38capabilities. I do wear two hats where I am a service-like advisor to the SECDEF, but I'm also
04:45a policy advisor, so it's a unique ASD ship, as you said. And so, yes, we are constantly keeping our
04:50elbow sharp, making sure that we're at the correct tables with our service counterparts, and that as they
04:55ponder cuts, we can defend our own equities and make sure that they understand a cut here in the Army
05:00affects Army soft down here, or a cut in the Navy affects Naval Special Warfare as well. So we
05:06we certainly are grateful for Congress, the reinforcement that we receive. All right, I yield back
05:10another time. Thank you, sir. Mr. Luttrell, you're now recognized for five minutes.