Calvert Remarks At FY25 Budget Hearing For The United States Navy and Marine Corps (As Prepared)

The Defense Subcommittee will come to order.

Today, the Subcommittee will receive testimony from the Honorable Carlos del Toro, Secretary of the Navy; Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Chief of Naval Operations; And General Eric Smith, Commandant of the United States Marine Corps.

Thank you all for joining us.

I want to start by welcoming Admiral Franchetti. You have the distinction of being the first woman Chief of Naval Operations, the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and today is your first time testifying before the Committee. We are happy to have you here today.

General Smith, this is also your first time testifying before the Committee. We are glad to see you back leading our Marines. Thank you for being here.

Finally, Secretary Del Toro, welcome back. It is always good to have you.

Today, our nation faces global, all-domain threats. Conflict in the Middle East has sent our sailors to the Red Sea, and our strongest regional ally Israel is at war.

The ongoing war waged by Russia in Ukraine continues to demand our attention and support.

Despite these ongoing conflicts capturing our time and resources, China remains the pacing threat.

In a China scenario, the Navy is the cornerstone of our military’s ability to project power. The tyranny of distance cannot be surmounted without a robust fleet, and I am concerned that the Navy is falling behind.

The Navy continues to retire ships faster than it builds them, and I am troubled by the Navy’s request to decommission 10 ships before end of service-life and build only 6. The budget also proposes to buy fewer strike fighter aircraft than was previously planned, and delays production of critical next generation platforms in all domains.

I understand the need to make tradeoffs, but these are pivotal years, and we must meet the challenges facing us today with credible capability.

I am especially concerned about delays in construction of the lead Columbia class submarine. This program is the Navy’s top priority and fundamental to our nuclear triad. Congress has funded every dollar requested for this program. Now it is delayed by a year, leaving no more margin for failure for the rest of its decades-long procurement and delivery schedule. I want to know how the Navy lost sight of the critical path to delivering this vital platform to the fleet. It’s simply unacceptable.

What’s more, this budget proposes to buy only one Virginia class submarine. Production remains at a 1.2 submarine cadence per year versus the necessary cadence of two per year, further undermining our ship count and sending a bad signal to our AUKUS allies. I hope to learn more about how the Navy will get our submarine production back on track.

Following three consecutive failed or no-test events in development of a Navy hypersonic weapon, the Navy is requesting deferral of its planned procurement by two years. I am concerned that after $4.3 billion invested in development, we have not had a successful test. I want to hear the Navy’s plan to get a hypersonic weapon fielded to the fleet in the near term.

I also want to note my concern regarding the nearly $2 billion requested for completing ship construction that was previously funded. This is a historic level of additional funding that represents cost-over runs driven by schedule delays and poor program execution. In a time of constrained budgets this reflects the gross inefficiencies and problems in our shipbuilding program.

I hope to learn more about what actions the Navy plans to implement to get these programs back on track, informed by the 45-day shipbuilding program review I understand was recently completed.

I note that the Navy intends to conduct a second review of challenges in the shipbuilding enterprise, and look forward to a robust discussion on the results of the review that you just concluded so we may be aware of the issues and challenges that were illuminated.

The Department of the Navy’s capability and capacity is further eroded by maintenance delays that plague the fleet. The issues range from lack of experienced manpower at our public shipyards to inconsistent demand signal and government paperwork delays at the private yards. The Committee continues to see the Navy spend every cent appropriated for ship maintenance, but complete fewer maintenance availabilities than forecasted.

This creates both near-term risk to fleet readiness and a bow wave of costly future maintenance requirements. The repeated extensions of the Bataan’s recent Middle East deployment, and subsequent gap in Marine forces afloat in that region, all because the Bataan’s replacement was delayed in maintenance, is the latest example of the significant impacts to global operations.

The conflict in Ukraine is teaching us how drones can have an asymmetric impact on the battlefield as cheap platforms can inflict damage on multi-million-dollar platforms. I am encouraged by programs like Replicator and Hellscape that are using these lessons to scale attritable kinetic solutions to deter and ultimately defeat a cross-strait invasion by the Chinese.

Our progress in leveraging emerging technologies is defined by the successes we have when we partner with the private sector. If we are to succeed in a rapidly changing threat environment, the Navy must continue to experiment with incorporating commercial technology to address our evolving operational needs.

Finally, I’d like to hear General Smith’s thoughts on the continued evolution of Force Design and how this budget advances the strategy to shape the Marine Corps of the future.