During a House Armed Services Committee hearing held before the congressional recess, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) questioned US European Commander Cavali about DoD force posture in Europe.
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00:00I thank both the witnesses. I recognize myself for questions.
00:04General Cavoli, given Russia's armed forces are mobilized for long-term confrontation,
00:11what's your best military advice on whether or not DOD should maintain the current force posture in Europe for the foreseeable future?
00:19Chairman, it's my advice to maintain that force posture as it is now.
00:23We have reviewed periodically since in 2022 we originally surged forces forward.
00:31We have periodically reviewed the force structure at both the military level and the policy level.
00:38And I have consistently recommended throughout that period to maintain the forces we surged forward.
00:43And I would continue to do so now if asked.
00:46You referenced this in your opening statement. I would like for you to reiterate it.
00:51How does the U.S. force posture in Europe contribute to the defense of our homeland as well as our operations in CENTCOM and AFRICOM?
01:01Sir, thanks. Yeah, it's an important part of why we're there.
01:06First and foremost, Russian strategic forces.
01:09Russia continues to have very powerful strategic forces, thousands of nuclear weapons and the delivery methods to deliver those.
01:16Those are not pointed just any place.
01:20Those are pointed, those are there, they exist for America.
01:24And our defense against those strategic forces, whether in the air or undersea, begins in the European continent.
01:32For example, Russian submarines are mainly stationed with the northern fleet up in Murmansk, up in the area, up east of the northern Nordic countries.
01:44They come out of their harbors and they go south between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, the famous GI-UK gap.
01:55We have to bottle them up north of that gap.
01:58If they break out into the Atlantic for a variety of reasons, it gets tougher to track them.
02:03And from those positions, they can hold the country at risk.
02:07So our maritime efforts, which are greatly aided by the efforts of our allies, their maritime patrol aircraft, their anti-submarine helicopters, their destroyers, all of our efforts together, but built around America's exquisite capabilities, that's the first line of defense against Russian subs.
02:26If we look to the south, we participated in the defense of Israel early this year.
02:34U.S. Central Command led a brilliant campaign with the Israelis and some other allies to protect against Iranian attacks against Israel.
02:42The ballistic missile defense part of that comes off of UConn ships in the eastern Mediterranean.
02:49The refuelers come out of UConn.
02:51The airspace control comes out of UConn.
02:53We do the same for AFRICOM and everybody else.
02:56It's really because of our proximity and our familiarity with the area.
03:00The bases that we have in Europe and the legal permissions we have with nations hosting us give us the ability to project power quickly in our interest, on behalf of our U.S. unilateral interests.
03:12Thank you, General.
03:13Ms. Thompson, given everything you've just heard, does the Department support maintaining its current posture of U.S. forces in Europe for the foreseeable future?
03:23Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman.
03:26The Department right now is undergoing a global force posture review, and so we are taking into account not only the dynamics in UConn, but in all of our theaters and evaluating that based on President Trump's stated interests and sizing our force and our resources appropriately to that.
03:44No decisions have been made at this time as part of that global force posture review.
03:48It is ongoing.
03:50I think that the ranking member and I have made it very clear in our previous correspondence to the Department, and I think in this opening statement,
03:58you should be focused on maintaining the surge posture that we've had in Europe since the conflict was started by Russia for the foreseeable future.
04:10General Cavoli, you noted in your written statement that the inadequate U.S. defense production capacity and problems within foreign military sales systems are making it hard for Europe to buy U.S. weapons.
04:22What challenges does this pose to your command responsibilities in UConn?
04:29Thank you, Chairman.
04:30In my oral statement, in my opening statement, I talked about an historic transformation of Allied command operations, the operational force in NATO.
04:38So we've designed these plans to defend NATO territory, and from that we derive a force structure requirement, a description of what exactly forces and how many of them we need.
04:50So this is sort of the spending list, the shopping list for defense spending in Europe now.
04:57Increasingly, nations are putting money up against that shopping list.
05:00Twenty-three nations are spending above two percent right now.
05:04We're grateful for that, but there's got to be something in the store to buy.
05:08There is a lack of production capacity right now, and that's the first problem.
05:13The second problem is...
05:14I'm sorry, my time's expired.
05:15I'm sorry.
05:16I'm sorry.
05:16I'm sorry.
05:16I'm sorry.
05:17It's okay.
05:17I think this probably might have time for 2 months.
05:18But I need to have my own ad, because I'm going to be too frustrated, because I love it.
05:19Thank you very much.
05:20I know.
05:20So this is the counterpoint position.
05:21I can also ask you, or if we were not doing something new, because I thought that very馅ак 피부,