Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Committee on Rules for yielding this time. Mr. Speaker, let me say he has gotten beaten up a little bit over this rule. Let me tell Members something that the chairman did insist on that was very important from a national security standpoint. That is that he has allowed and the committee has allowed, and should be commended for letting us put in four amendments that have to do with the transfer of satellite technology, which is at this point a very critical issue for national security. Most people now know that China has been launching American satellites with their Long March rockets, which are essentially the same rockets that are aimed with nuclear-tipped warheads at cities in the United States. We have an interest, obviously, in not accuratizing those missiles or making them more reliable. Unfortunately, after a failed launch in 1996, it has been alleged that Loral and Hughes, two of our satellite companies, engaged with the Chinese scientists after one of the satellites had gone down, and it was a $200 million package, engaged with the Chinese scientists and engineers and showed them what they were doing wrong with respect to these Long March rockets, which have nuclear-tipped missiles which are aimed at the United States. The Department of Defense issued a statement that said American security interests have been harmed. That is the Department of Defense for the Clinton administration, very serious statement. It is clear that our policy with respect to transferring satellite technology to China has been detrimental to the United States. There may have been criminal activities, and we need to further explore this issue. But today we have several amendments that have been allowed. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) have an amendment that expresses the sense of Congress that business interests must not be placed over United States security interests and that the United States should not agree to a variety of initiatives at the upcoming presidential summit in China, including support for Chinese membership in the missile technology control regime, a blanket waiver of Tiananmen Square sanctions, an increase in space launches from China, agreeing to unverifiable arms control initiatives, increasing the level of military to military contacts, and entering any new agreements involving space or missile related technology. Essentially we are saying, you fouled this thing up, you have given away American security interests. We are putting the brakes on until we can sort this thing out. It is an excellent amendment by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman). The gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) has an amendment that would prohibit U.S. participation in any post-launch failure investigation involving the launch of a U.S. satellite from China. Somebody mentioned that Loral and Hughes were kind of like the engineer who was sentenced to the guillotine by Khomeini, and after the guillotine had failed to work on several other people who would have been executed and they were allowed to go free, the engineer, the American engineer laid under the guillotine and said, I think I see your problem. At any rate, the Bereuter amendment would prohibit U.S. participation in any post-launch failure investigation involving the launch of an U.S. satellite. We have the Hefley amendment that would prohibit the export or reexport of any missile equipment or technology to the People's Republic of China. And finally, I have an amendment that would prohibit the export or reexport of U.S. satellites, including commercial satellites and satellite components, to the People's Republic of China. These are very important amendments. I thank the committee and the chairman for allowing them.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to reiterate to my friend the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky) that one of the great things about the Committee on National Security over the last couple of years has been that despite our strong debate, especially on strategic systems on the House floor, and I admit I am often a partisan in that debate with respect to the Strategic Defense Initiative and other initiatives that I think have been given short shrift, we have always been together on technology transfer. We have been very close on that, and we have kind of held the line against other interests, particularly against commercial interests, because there is that compelling interest in commercial operations to press the advantage, to make that last sale, even though it may be militarily critical technology that is involved that one day could harm our troops on the battlefield. We have always stuck together. Interestingly, it has been not only Republicans and Democrats, it has been conservatives and liberals. Mr. Dellums was one of the foremost proponents of restricting technology transfer and many of the people who testified before us came from various political divisions of the left and right and center in America, experts who felt that we should not send military technology to potential adversaries. Let us work this problem on that basis. Walk through this thing, find out how much damage was done to American security and how we can stop it from further eroding.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to strongly endorse the Hefley amendment. This chart shows all of the aspects of missile technology that are manifest in a commercial satellite program. They include payload disbursal technology, kick motor technology, radiation hardened electronics, encryption devices, launcher attitude control. So there are a lot of aspects of technology beyond the mere delivering of a package that can assist the Chinese rocket program. So the amendment of the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) is right on target; I would recommend its approval.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we have spoken about this amendment for some time now during this debate. I think most of the folks that are listening to the debate understand the problem. The problem is that there is an inextricable link between the satellite technology that we have been transferring to China pursuant to our satellite launch partnership with them and their nuclear missile capability. While we are trying to sort this problem out, Mr. Chairman, it makes sense for us to stop the train, to put on the brakes and say we are not going to make any transfers, no export or reexport of U.S. satellites, including commercial satellites and satellite components, to the People's Republic of China. That is what this amendment does. Mr. Chairman, in this crash we saw another problem that we had not thought about, and that is that we have these packages which, in theory, are protected against Chinese scientists and engineers being able to examine the contents even while they are in China. I listened to the President of Hughes Electronics tell me very passionately how these packages are guarded and nobody is allowed to come close to them, so the engineers in this Communist country will have no ideas what is inside the packages. The problem is, if you have an aborted launch like the one that we had or a disastrous launch where the Chinese missile with the satellite package atop it goes down in China, and the damage is then recovered and analyzed by the People's Liberation Army of China, they then have access to all of the contents of that satellite package. Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, without having the most recent briefings, which the administration I think has been somewhat reluctant to give, on exactly what transpired after the crash, I am concerned and I am worried that some things were recovered by the People's Liberation Army that should not have been recovered. So this amendment bans the export and reexport of U.S. satellites, including commercial satellites and satellite components into the People's Republic of China. I think it is a timely amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have remaining?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield to me, that is right. Oversight or the primary review of the satellite transfers has now been taken away from the Department of Defense, who look at it from a national security standpoint, and given to the Department of Commerce, which arguably does not have the experts to understand exactly what is being transferred, and does not have probably the political will that the Department of Defense has to keep critical militarily strategic components from going to the hands of our potential adversaries. The Defense Department is tougher on these transfers.

Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is exactly right. In fact, it is exactly the same missile. The Chinese use the same missile both for the satellite launch and for the nuclear weapons launch. That is why it is so critical to really examine these packages.

Mr. HUNTER. That is right. This thing bans the export and reexport.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me just make this clear. This bans the export and reexport of U.S. satellites, including commercial satellites and satellite components, to the People's Republic of China. I think it is necessary at this time. My friend the gentleman from Missouri pointed out that we have waived or we have allowed these transfers in the past under the Bush administration. That is true. I led off my debate by saying this has gone back a long way. I think, in light of the activities that have taken place in recent years, 1996 through 1998, I personally have a problem in trusting the folks that are making the decision to go or no go on satellite transfer, to allow them to have the discretion at this time. Mr. Chairman, I think this is a prudent thing for the House to put on the brakes at this point and to hold up all transfers until we sort out how much damage has been done, and damage has been done, according to the Department of Defense.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. I want to say how much I appreciate the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking member, for his comments in this area and for his stalwart support of what has been the policy of the Committee on National Security in that, even in times of marked partisanship in the House in recent years, one bipartisan effort has been the effort by the Committee on National Security often resulting in unanimous votes in the committee to halt the movement of American technology, militarily critical technology; that is, technology that could end up killing American men and women on battlefields or killing Americans in our cities, to keep that technology from moving to those who might use it against us. So, Republicans and Democrats, we have been together on this issue. We have this very troublesome issue that the committee has battled with and now that the American people have to battle with; and it is the issues that are surrounding the transfer of satellite launching technology to Communist China. It has now become clear, we all know this now, that, in fact, a number of Chinese missiles are aimed at American cities. Those Chinese missiles have nuclear tips. It is in our interest not to give those Chinese missiles more reliability. Because of our diplomatic efforts notwithstanding, we cannot predict the future, and we cannot say absolutely that those missiles will never be launched against the cities that they are presently aimed at. So we do not want those missiles to be reliable. We do not want them to be accurate. We would hope that, in a time of launch, they do not even have the capability to leave the ground. That would be the best thing. Juxtaposed against that national security concern is a commercial concern of some American companies, and that is that they have satellites to launch and they want to launch them cheap. The cheapest launchers in the world are the Communist Chinese; that is, they will send up an American satellite built by Hughes or another American company on a pretty inexpensive basis atop a Chinese missile. The so-called ``Long March'' missile is the missile of choice. That Chinese missile that sends up satellites also is the same missile that has nuclear warheads on top of it that is aimed at American cities. So we have a problem. We want to make sure that American companies, in putting their satellite packages atop these Chinese Communist ``Long March'' missiles, do not inadvertently show them how to make the missiles more reliable, more accurate, and have a number of factors that would allow them to destroy American cities with nuclear warheads. We have this major problem. I asked for these charts to be placed over here because I think the charts very effectively explain some of the things that we have inadvertently taught the Chinese rocket ministry; that is, the people in charge of destroying American cities in a time of war how to make their missiles more reliable. Let me just describe a few of those. We talk about the launch of April 1990, taught the Chinese why and how to build clean rooms for satellite launch investigation and introduced them to the need to protect fragile complex payloads against significant thermal dynamic change. In 1992 we confirmed the Chinese analysis that the launch problem was in engine control of the launcher's first stage rather than altitude control. In 1992 we gave them information relating to the design of payload fairings. In May of 1995 we validated China's solid rocket satellite kick motor. This motor was still in development and had only been tested once before with the attitude-altitude controlled defective launch of a Pakistani satellite. It was a new system; we validated that system. In 1996, 1997 and 1998 we validated the Chinese upper stage separating technology, and we shared vibration and load coupling analysis with them. Now, another very troubling thing happened in 1996. That is, one of the Long March rockets went down. They are considered not to be the most dependable rockets. It went down. It was destroyed before it got very far off the ground, and it carried a Loral-Hughes payload, an American satellite payload, worth a couple hundred million dollars. So Loral and Hughes, to make their stockholders happier, had to figure out how to make these missiles that carry them up into space more reliable. So they then engaged with the Chinese scientists and engineers and showed them how to make these missiles more reliable. That is the information that we have right now. Now, the problem is, it is very difficult to get more information from the administration. This committee, the Committee on National Security, under the leadership of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), and the Committee on International Relations under the leadership of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), and I might say the ranking Democrats on both of those committees, has sought information as to exactly what happened with respect to this information sharing and this accuratizing of the Chinese missiles. We do know this: The Department of Defense has issued a statement after analyzing that debriefing and that information sharing, and they said this, which should be of interest to every American mother and father. They said American national security has been damaged by this transfer of technology. We are trying to find out exactly what was transferred, what happened, what reliability that is going to give to these nuclear systems that the Chinese have, and we are not getting any answers. Against that backdrop, we are offering four amendments today. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) are offering an amendment that expresses the sense of the Congress that business interests must not be placed over U.S. national security interests, I think every American would agree with that, and that the United States should not agree to a variety of initiatives at the upcoming presidential summit in China, including, and these are some of the things we think our administration may be offering China, support for Chinese membership in the missile technology control regime; a blanket waiver of Tiananmen Square sanctions; an increase in space launches from China; agreeing to unverifiable arms control initiatives; increasing the level of military-to-military contacts; and entering any new agreements involving space or missile-related technology. That amendment is being offered by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman). I think every Member should vote for that. We have the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) offering an amendment. This amendment would prohibit U.S. participation in any postlaunch failure investigation involving the launch of a U.S. satellite from China. The gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) very wisely is addressing the very occurrence that we just talked about. We had a big American payload of a $200 million satellite on top of a Chinese missile. The missile went down, so the $200 million satellite was destroyed, did not get launched. So Hughes stockholders and Loral stockholders said, ``We need to get more money. We have just lost $200 million. We need to help the Chinese accuratize their missiles and make them more accurate,'' not thinking about the fact those were the same missiles that are aimed at American cities with nuclear warheads. So we debriefed the Chinese engineers and scientists on the problems their missile had and on how they could correct it. That is currently the subject of an ongoing investigation. The gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) is saying, wait a minute. Let us not agree to any more debriefings. We do not share technology. When the guillotine is over our head and sticking, we do not say we think we see your problem and we want to solve it for you. The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) has an amendment. The amendment would prohibit the export or reexport of any missile equipment or technology to the People's Republic of China. This says listen, let us put the brakes on. We have made a major mistake. Our own Department of Defense under the Clinton Administration has said national security has been damaged. Let us stop everything and try to figure out exactly what has happened and what we can do to rectify it. An excellent amendment by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley). Finally, I have an amendment that prohibits the export or reexport of U.S. satellites, including commercial satellites and satellite components to the People's Republic of China. This says the lives of our children, the safety of our cities, are more important than the shareholders seeing their stock go up a few points because they have sent the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction into our own American cities. Now, the administration needs to be forthcoming. They need to send us information on exactly what happened when we had this Loral and Hughes debriefing of the Chinese engineers and scientists in 1996. They need to send us information on exactly what the situation is with respect to the new capability of the Chinese missiles as a result of that. I think until they do that, they do not deserve to have us allowing them to move forward with American companies continuing to send American satellites and interacting with the very people in the launch program in communist China who work both with domestic satellites, sending those satellites into space, and who work with preparing nuclear-tipped missiles for launch at American cities. This says, let us hold everything up until we shake this thing out. So we are offering those four amendments. I would hope that Democrats and Republicans all vote for those amendments. This should be a time of reorganization and reexamination.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I am kind of surprised at the gentleman's tirade here, because this gentleman never mentioned money, never mentioned treason, rarely mentioned the President. And when I went over the litany or the chronology of missile launches, I started with the Bush Administration in 1990. This is a Committee on National Security. We are not worried about where the money came from or what it did or whether there was influence. What we are concerned about, very simply, is this statement, this statement made by President Clinton's Department of Defense. Hopefully that is not part of a right wing conspiracy, I would say to my friend who just spoke. ``In May 1997 the administration was jolted by a classified Pentagon report concluding that scientists from Hughes and Loral Space and Communications had turned over expertise that `significantly improved the reliability of China's nuclear missiles.' '' That is the New York Times, April 13, 1998. Our Department of Defense said American security has been damaged. That is what we are concerned about. I think what we are going to have to do, both Republicans and Democrats, is when we have colleagues that come in and start ranting about the money, is very firmly but quietly push them aside to get their part of the debate over, and then go into what really concerns the American people, and that is this: that we have two conflicting pressures here. We have the pressure of our domestic satellite industry, like Hughes and Loral, that wants to sell things and make money; and they make money by taking advantage of the cheap launch that the Chinese offer by putting their satellite packages on top of Chinese missiles. That is the one factor, the one pressure. The second pressure, of course, and a concern of ours, is national security. Because those very same missiles that carry the domestic satellite launches that we make money on, and Loral and Hughes, also carry nuclear-tipped missiles that are presently aimed at the United States, and conceivably in a conflict the reliability of those missiles to carry its nuclear payload into American cities should be something of great concern to us. That is what we are talking about here. If I could have that second chart over here, let us talk about that for just a second. Incidentally, I have never heard of the New York Times being called part of a right-wing conspiracy. I hope they have not changed overnight. But I think this chart is pretty descriptive because it tells how, in working out commercial launches, in doing commercial launches in China, we are inadvertently increasing the capability of their nuclear strategic systems. Payload dispersal technology. Payload dispersal technology allows single commercial rockets to deliver more than a single satellite into space per each launch. The same technology can be used to develop Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles. We talked about those in the Cold War on this floor. Those are known as MIRVs. A MIRV is when we send one missile up, one missile, and when it gets to a certain altitude when it is over American cities or over another military target, it disperses 3 or 4 or 5 or as many, in the case of the Soviet Union, as many as 10 warheads to different targets, so it can usher in absolutely massive destruction with as many as 10 targets from one single rocket. That MIRV capability is something that we were hoping that the Chinese would not obtain, because they do not have too many ICBMs, and we were hoping that they would not get the capability to have more than one nuclear warhead per missile, because it is very difficult to handle, if we ever do get defenses, to handle 10 warheads coming out of each missile. But they have gotten some of that technology from our commercial satellite application. A second area where they desperately needed capability in their nuclear strategic arsenal and they got that as a result, or got some help as a result of their interaction with our satellite people, is kick motor technology. Kick motors are used to propel satellites precisely into their described orbits. This same technology can be applied to warhead delivery systems to enable them to evade ballistic missile defense systems. Radiation-hardened electronics. These specialized chips are designed to resist electromagnetic interference in space as well as electromagnetic pulses in a nuclear combat environment. Encryption devices. In both commercial and military applications, encryption devices allow only authorized users to control the system. Launcher altitude control, another vital area. Stage separation systems, a very critical area for launching successful, making successful missile launches, whether one is launching a satellite or launching a nuclear payload. So let me just close by saying this. This committee, Democrats and Republicans, looked at this issue several years ago. We were asked to place this satellite launching technology, the licensing for this technology, to move it out of the control of the Department of Defense, the overview of the Department of Defense and the Department of State. Typically, the Department of Defense has always been very tough on allowing this technology to go overseas. A lot of the users like Hughes and Loral wanted to move it into the Department of Commerce, where the object is to sell things and make money, where they thought they would be given a little more liberal license to transfer this technology to China. This committee fought that, and we had a vote in this committee, Democrats and Republicans. As I recall, and I could be wrong, it was unanimous, except for I think either 1 or 2 votes. It was almost unanimous, Democrats and Republicans, and in fact, one of the leaders on the Democrat side was Mr. Dellums, and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) was our leader on the Republican side. So this is not a partisan issue, this is not about money, this is about security, and we need to pass these 4 amendments, put this whole transfer of satellite technology on hold until we have sorted this thing out, figured out how much damage has been done to the American people and go from there.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), chairman of the full committee, who wrapped this package together along with his counterpart, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), and commend them for doing more with less this year. I want to thank also the wise gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky), who is my good partner on the Subcommittee on Military Procurement, for all the work that he did. Having thanked those gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, let me say that this has been a thankless year for this committee, because we have been forced to preside over the decline of America's defenses, a very dramatic decline. Anyone who looks at this chart and looks at the various functions, mandatory outlays which have increased from 1991 to fiscal year 2001 by over 38 percent, domestic discretionary outlays, that includes all the social programs that have increased some 15 percent in that same period of time. Finally, look at defense going down 33 percent over that period of time. We understand that we have reversed our priorities and that we no longer consider the security of this Nation to be the number one priority. That mistake we have made in the past, my friends; and, in the past, it has cost American lives. If we get specific, we can talk about the reductions in force structure that we have made. We have gone down since Desert Storm from the 18 Army divisions we had to only 10 today, the same number of divisions we had when South Korea was invaded in 1950; we have gone down from 24 to 13 fighter air wings, cut our air power almost in half; and we have cut our ships from 546 ships to about 333 ships. At the same time, we have put enormous strain on our people, and we are losing our people. The other day, when I had a chance to go up with the C-5 refueling with some of our great Air Force personnel and had a chance to talk with some of those personnel about whether or not they wanted to stay in the Air Force, the answer that all of us got back was disturbing, because we are projected to be 835 pilots short this year. And it is not just a money problem. It is a fact that we have such a small force now and such major obligations around the world that our pilots are not able to spend that graduation with their daughter, or go to their son's wedding, or do the other things that the men and women in uniform like to do, that is, to have a family life. So we are dropping down radically on personnel. The Commandant of the Marine Corps told us a couple of months ago that at times he has had the highest OPTEMPO, that means the most Marines staying the longest time away from home since World War II. You can go right through the personnel problems and see that we are in fact approaching that time in 1979 when, as a guy in San Diego, I could look at our naval personnel and see that we had 1,000 chief petty officers a month leaving the Navy. That was a dramatic problem. We are approaching that same problem today across the array of military services. Now, with respect to our modernization accounts, this account is about $60 billion less in real dollars than it was in the 1980s. That means we are using tanks, planes and ships much longer than we used them in the past. We are running out their lifetime. As a result of that, we have grounded some 907 Huey helicopters because they are not safe to fly anymore. We are building five ships this year. We are building to a 200 ship Navy. Just a few years ago we had almost a 600 ship Navy, and none of our projections for projecting the American power and foreign policy have lessened. So we have dramatically cut the national security budget. We had just a few cents to spend on what I call platform items this year. We bought a few Blackhawk helicopters, two F-16 fighters, probably fewer F-16's than Sweden is going to buy this year, and just a few other platforms. That is all we could afford to add to the budget this year. We are buying some 66 total tactical aircraft, and that is in fact about 1\1/2\ times the buy that Switzerland made a couple of years ago on aircraft. So we are rapidly disserving our military people in a most critical way. That is, we are not giving them the equipment they need to do the job. That is just as important as giving them pay, giving them quality of life, giving them good living quarters. So, Mr. Chairman, we can a lot with the few dollars that we had this year. I want to thank all of the folks that worked so hard on the other side of the aisle, all of our staff members. I hope the House will pass this defense budget, and then come back to raise the top line, spend more on defense, and give us more security.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about the state of our military. I was with my good friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Jimmy Saxton) and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Saxby Chambliss), two great members of the Committee on National Security this morning, observing a very interesting and unusual exercise from our takeoff point at Andrews Air Force Base. That was the refueling of a C-5 aircraft somewhere over Pennsylvania. We went up and married up with an aircraft and refueled her out of Dover, out of Delaware, undertook a refueling. We had an opportunity to talk to our folks, our military folks, while we were doing that, briefly, before the flight and during the flight. Mr. Speaker, I harken back to the days when I came into Congress in 1980. In those days one of our biggest problems was what we called the people problem. Coming from a Navy town, San Diego, I saw that problem manifested in the thousands of chief petty officers who were getting out of the Navy. Those were the people that really knew how to make the ships sail. It was a tremendous loss. We had a thousand petty officers a month leaving the Navy, and we could not replace them. As I was briefed by these fine young men and women in the Air Force this morning, I could see that we are revisiting that people problem. It is probably across the board, but what we focused on today was the United States Air Force. I want to quote General Ryan, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. He said that last year more than 800 pilots refused bonuses of $60,000 to extend their time in service 5 years beyond the 9 they signed up for. Only 36 percent of the pilots at the 9-year mark agreed to stay on, while the Air Force goal was 50 percent, to avoid shortages. Mr. Speaker, that means that we are going to probably have a shortage of about 835 pilots this year. The taxpayers pay about $6 million, on the average, to train a pilot. When we lose a pilot from the United States Air Force and he goes out ahead of his retirement time to work for an airline company or to gain employment in another civilian field, we lose a great asset. We not only lose the $6 million of training time because when we find another pilot to take his place, we have to expend that $6- to $8 million to train that pilot up, but we also lose the great experience. And, of course, there is a time lapse between losing those experienced pilots and bringing on the newly trained pilots. So we are losing this resource. We have been asking people why they are leaving. They are not leaving because of money. A few of them are citing dollars or pay as a reason for leaving, but a lot of them are citing, most of them are citing what they call quality of life. And a lot of that has to do with what we were told about this morning as being the extreme OPTEMPO of our operations. We have a much smaller Air Force now, for example. We are down from 24 fighter airwings during Desert Storm to only about 13 today. Of course that reduction is reflected across the array of U.S. Air Force aircraft. What that means, if you are a pilot or a crewman on one of those aircraft or a ground crew, is that you are going to be working longer hours. You are going to be called up when you do not expect to be called up and when you have some pressing business to do with your own family. That means a lot of our folks are not there to see their son's graduation or their daughter's wedding or any of the other things that we do on the civilian side, on the family side that makes life bearable. Because of that, a lot of folks are saying, we are not in a war, this is not an emergency; I am going to get a job in an area where I can spend a lot more down time with my family. So this is a family decision that people are making sitting around the kitchen table and unfortunately they are making it, they are coming down on the side of leaving the Air Force. Mr. Speaker, a lot of these folks that are leaving are the senior people who are qualified in very important fields. A lot of them are instructor pilots. A lot of them are examiner pilots. Aerial refueling- qualified pilots, that is very important because the United States has the bulk and the backbone of the free world's refueling capability. A lot of them are airdrop-qualified pilots and special operation pilots. And so, Mr. Speaker, we are facing this time when, even though we are paying $22,000 additional bonuses now to try to keep these pilots in, we are seeing this continued retreat and exodus from the Air Force of some of our most valuable and qualified people. We are going to have to do something about that. It is probably going to be, part of that answer to this problem is going to be raising the top line because we are going to need to have more planes and more pilots if we are going to do this job that we have been asked to do over the last several years which has extended our OPTEMPO. I will be talking tomorrow about some other problems.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding the time. Let me ask the Speaker how much time we have left in the special order, because I know the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel wants to talk as well?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, let me know, I am sure my friends will time me and let me know when we have divided that time equally, and I will then yield back so Mr. Buyer can speak. Let me just start by thanking my friend for bringing this special order together and the chairman for giving us an historic backdrop with all of the wars that he has seen and the police actions and Presidents coming and going, Secretaries of Defense coming and going, and seeing the backdrop in which we find ourselves right now with this trough of military spending. When I say trough, I mean we are spending $100 billion less in real money than we were spending in the 1980s for national security. I want to expand a little bit on the statement that was made by my friend, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie). We had a focus group in my area in San Diego recently. That is where we sit behind the screen, and we get to see what our constituents really think of us. I think that is quite a lesson also. But we also get to see what they think about very serious issues. And we are asked that question. The question was asked of our constituents, who are very sophisticated people, do we have a missile defense? Most of them thought we did. When the moderator said, what is the defense, one of them said, well, I think we scramble the jets. Of course, a jet cannot take down an intercontinental ballistic missile. Another one said, I think we hit them with cruise missiles. Of course, that does not work, because a cruise missile goes exceedingly slow. It is like throwing a rock at a 30.6 bullet. One other said, I thought Ronald Reagan took care of that. They really did. They thought that his announcements in the 1980s took care of the problem. So the facts are, when the Secretary of Defense was before us, I asked him that lead-off question, can we stop today a single, as Chairman Spence said, a single ballistic missile coming into an American city? The answer is no, not one. Let me just say for the sake of our listeners what the State of defense is today with respect to force structure. Since 1991, we have cut defenses in this way: We have gone from 18 Army divisions to only 10. We have gone from 24 fighter airwings to only 13. So we have cut our air power almost in half. We have cut our Navy from 546 to 333 ships. So we have cut our Navy by almost 40 percent. We went from 18 divisions to 10. So today we have 10 Army divisions. That is exactly the number of Army divisions we had in 1950 when we felt, like a lot of experts have said today in the administration, that there is no chance of America being involved in a war in the near future because we are the high-tech Nation. We have all these things that nobody will mess with and realizes that we have the ability to do a lot of high-tech things to our adversaries that they cannot respond against. That was the same theory that prevailed in 1950, in June of 1950 when North Korea swept across the line. We had the atom bomb, so we thought nobody would mess with us. North Korea attacked, almost drove us into the ocean. We threw the 25th Infantry Division into the Osan pass. It was annihilated. General Dean, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division, was captured. And the United States was almost driven into the sea. We barely held what is known as the Pusan perimeter at the south end of that peninsula. Later, the Communist Chinese come across the line, so they did not respect the atom bomb either. Even though we had the high-tech, we had a heck of a fight on our hands, and we lost 50,000 Americans because we were not prepared. So I would just conclude by saying I thank you for this special order tonight. We are approximately 72 percent less in modernization funding then we were a few years ago. It is our job to get on with the job of rebuilding America's defenses. I thank my friend for the time.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, we are getting closer and closer to the anniversary of the invasion of South Korea, and I reflected back the other day when I was at my aunt and uncle's house in Fort Worth, Texas, because on one of their dressers they have a photograph of a young marine; his name was Son Stilwell, a Marine Lieutenant killed in Korea, one of the 50,000-some casualties KIA that we suffered in that conflict. I reflected on that this pending anniversary. We are on the eve of when I listened to our Secretary of Defense and President Clinton's defense leaders as they presented a declining defense budget to the U.S. Congress. The situation, I think, is a lot like it was in those days in 1950 before that June invasion. To set the stage, Mr. Speaker, we have come down, we have slashed defense and cut down on our forces dramatically since Desert Storm. We have cut from 18 Army divisions that we had in 1991 to only 10 today. That is, incidentally and coincidentally, the same number of Army divisions we had when Korea was invaded. We have gone from 24 to only 13 fighter air wings, so we have cut our air power almost in half under the Clinton Administration. And we have cut our naval vessels from 546 to 333, about a 40 percent cut in naval vessels. Now, the theme in 1950 and the reason that so many defense leaders from then Lewis Johnson, then Secretary of Defense, right on down, the theme that they propounded as they presented this declining defense budget to the U.S. Congress, and said that it was adequate, was that somehow we were the dominating Nation of the world with respect to high-tech, and nobody would mess with us. Of course, we had at that time the nuclear weapon. Nobody else presumably had that until a few years later. Yet we were shocked in June when the North Koreans invaded South Korea and almost pushed the South Korean forces and the Americans that tried to stem the tide into the sea. We tried to hold them up at the Osan Pass, the 25th Infantry Division that we flew in, MacArthur flew in from Japan, was cut to ribbons. The commander, General Dean was, in fact, captured by North Korean forces. We held the Pusan Peninsula by our toenails and finally started to push it up to the northern part of the peninsula. Then, interestingly, the theme that the leaders had that nobody would mess with us because we had the high technology and the nuclear weapon was further devastated when the Communist Chinese invaded South Korea. The point isn't that we are any dumber than we were in 1950 and/or maybe we were dumber than we are now, and maybe we have leaders today that know something those people didn't know. My point is that the events of the world are unpredictable and that we today are taking a high level of risk by dramatically cutting our defenses. The American people need to know that. They need to know that the massive savings, so-called savings that President Clinton is showing the world proudly and showing the American people proudly, the millions of dollars that he has pulled out of programs, have primarily been pulled out of national security. We have dramatically cut back our national security. And we do not know what this world is going to bring us. I am reminded of the fact that when we had our assembled intelligence apparatus and our intelligence leaders in front of us, and we asked them a few simple questions, such as which of you predicted the Falklands war, none of them could raise their hands. When we asked which of you predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union, that was in all the papers. None of them could raise their hands. And when we asked them which of you predicted the invasion of Kuwait, one of them actually said before or after the armored columns started moving? We said, no; before the armored columns started moving. None of them had predicted the invasion of Kuwait. It is not that they are not smart, it is not that they don't have a lot of resources at their disposal. The facts are that unexpected things happen in this world. We are still living in a very unstable world, and we have a declining military to face that unstable world with. One reason we were able to bring home to the American people so many of the soldiers and sailors and marines who went over to Desert Storm, and the reason we didn't have to fill up those 40,000 body bags we took with us in fighting the fourth largest army in the world, was because we were so strong we won the war decisively in a very short period of time with very limited American casualties. Mr. Speaker, we are taking a big chance today, because under the Clinton Administration's leadership, we have cut our military almost in half. If the balloon goes up today, we cannot win a Desert Storm war as decisively as we did just a few years ago.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will hold on for just a second, I appreciate his kind words. I just wanted to remind him and remind my colleagues that the reason I am the chairman of that Procurement Subcommittee is because one of my dearest friends in the world that I know, the gentleman thinks highly of him too, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), the chairman of the Committee on National Security, appointed me and appointed the other members who are chairmen of the subcommittees. He basically gave us the ball in all of our respective areas. I have Military Procurement, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) has Research and Development, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Bateman) has Readiness, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) has Military Construction and on down the line. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) has Personnel. He has let us run with the ball. When we have had a fight with the Clinton administration, he has always stood behind us. I accept the gentleman's thanks. It is a two-way street because the gentleman from New Jersey is a real hero in my book. But I want to let him know, too, that it is our leader, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) who has really bucked this administration and bucked the numbers that we are forced to live with.

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. He has done a lot to help this committee. I want to recognize the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), an expert in lots of military areas who really has great expertise, especially in airlift.

Mr. HUNTER. I am from southern California, so I think everything is the south. But I thank my friend for correcting me. With respect to China, China is trying to step into the superpower shoes that were left by the Soviet Union, and I think their intent toward the United States is best manifested by the fact that their most recent purchases from Russia have been antiship missile cruisers. Now, those are ships that were built by Russia with one goal in mind, and that is of destroying American aircraft carriers. You may recall that we embarrassed China with respect to the Taiwan crisis. We moved the fleet in, and we backed them down. They were throwing missiles over the bow as the Taiwanese were trying to hold their elections. They were embarrassed by that, and I am sure their military vowed to never have it happen again. So they have been going about the task of acquiring a lot of missile capability, some of it supersonic, some of it with the ability to zig and zag so that our antimissile shipboard defense systems will not be able to hit them. They are doing that for one reason. They want to be able to sink our ships and destroy the young men and women that operate those ships. China is becoming very aggressive. They have made very aggressive statements about us. During the Taiwan crisis, one of the diplomats said we hope the people of America care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan. That is a very naked threat to use nuclear weapons on an American city, something you would never get from the Soviet Union. We thought the Soviet Union was bellicose and threatening, but the Chinese have been building a lot of military capability. They are buying a lot of high-tech capability from the Russians and from other countries that have technology, some of them western countries, unfortunately. They have got about 42 supercomputers that they bootlegged out of the United States and that they got past an acquiescent Clinton administration review. The Clinton administration has not done a good job of keeping the supercomputers out of the hands of the people that are now using them, some of them in their military nuclear complex, building nuclear systems that are to be targeted at American cities. But you mentioned one thing I want to bring back to your district in North Carolina. You mentioned sitting down with your pilots and talking with them and their concern about lack of spare parts. Let me give you the mirror of that discussion that you have had in informal discussions. We had this hearing on the carrier, the USS Constellation, in San Diego last week. This is what one of our people said, Commander John Hults, Commanding Officer of the Strike Fighter Squadron 113. This is what Commander Hults said. He said, ``Very simply stated, my job is to get all of my pilots into the cockpit enough to make them proficient in all of our primary mission areas.'' That sounds logical. ``In order to achieve that, the training and readiness matrix that we use to report our level of readiness requires that each Hornet pilot,'' that is an F-18, ``fly 32.8 flight hours per month.'' Here he says it. ``The reality is that we don't have the necessary resources available to us to attain or maintain that level of readiness.'' That means that those young pilots in Commander Hults's squadron, if they have to enter into a combat situation in the Middle East or in Korea in the near future, will not have the training that we said they needed to have to make them proficient. The reason they did not have the training is because this government in Washington, D.C., while they felt we had plenty of money to spend on the National Endowment for the Arts and a lot of other things that have at least what I would call marginal value added to this country, we did not see clear, our government, to give the resources to our pilots and to pilot training. He goes on and he says this. ``The number one resource challenge that we face is low aircraft availability. The primary reason is that we don't have enough spare parts in the F/A-18 community. This lack of spare parts is the cause of a snowball effect that can be felt throughout the squadron. The fewer parts we have, the more cannibalization we have to do.'' He brings up that word again, robbing one airplane so that another one can fly, ``The more cannibalization we have to do, the more maintenance man-hours required; the more man-hours required, the longer the workday, which affects morale and leads to retention problems.'' So he has brought this back to why people are leaving these critical positions in the armed forces right now. Low morale. One thing Ronald Reagan did when he came in in 1980 was put in enough increases in our military budget to put those spare parts on the shelf and to pay our people adequate pay, and to carry that flag high, to establish a policy in this country that we would achieve peace with our allies and our adversaries through American strength. Commander Hults goes on. He says, ``Our noncombat expenditure allowance, which is the ordnance we are given for training, doesn't allow us to practice with the weapons we will realistically use in combat. Among our modern-day weapons of choice for combat are the various laser-guided bombs that provide pinpoint delivery accuracy and, therefore, minimum collateral damage and minimum numbers of aircraft required to send into harm's way.'' We all remember that. Americans who watched CNN and watched the war in the Gulf remember perhaps the world's luckiest taxicab driver; it was that taxicab that was going across the Iraqi bridge. The American airplane came in and instead of delivering as we did in the old days in World War II, in Vietnam and Korea literally a blanket of hundreds and hundreds of bombs, hoping that one of them or two of them would hit the bridge at a key point and knock it out, we delivered one bomb into that bridge and we set it right into a strategically placed strut on that bridge and just as the taxicab driver got to the end of the bridge and got safely off of it, that bomb hit. One single bomb, that is the precision-guided munition that Commander Hults is talking about. But he says we need to train with those bombs. Then he goes on to say this. He says, ``Unfortunately, we don't get any of those in our noncombat expenditure allowance, and I currently have only one pilot in my squadron that has ever carried and delivered one.'' That means that if Commander Hults is in a combat situation over Iraq in the next several months and he says, ``I have two bridges I have to knock out. Has anybody ever dropped one of these laser-guided bombs?'' he will have one man who says, ``I've used them before, Commander,'' but he will not have anybody else. So he will have to either take a chance that a brand-new rookie with that piece of equipment can learn enough to do the job, or he is going to have to send that same pilot that knocks out the first bridge, the only guy he has got in the squadron who is qualified, to do the second bridge. It is just one of thousands of examples, but it is an example of how the policies that we set here and the inadequacy of military spending that we have established as a policy here have a harmful effect on two things, our ability to defeat the enemy in combat, and secondly, the disservice that we do to our young men and women who put on the uniform expecting to get the very best in equipment and training, who are shortchanged as a result of that. I thank the gentleman for letting me give that lengthy explanation, and I yield to him for any other questions.

Mr. HUNTER. While the Speaker is there in the Speaker's chair, I want to thank the gentleman for what he has done to help bring our military forces at least to the state of readiness they are at today. As a friend on the Committee on National Security, the gentleman has worked long and hard to see to it that we have sufficient airlift to move our forces around the world. I am here, Mr. Speaker, to speak about national security. We are in this great Chamber, the Chamber where, according to Alexander Hamilton, the people rule, and our first constitutional duty to our people, to our country, is to defend them. And yet, Mr. Speaker, over the last several years, under the leadership, if we can call it that, of the Clinton Administration, we have been abandoning our first duty to the people of the United States in that our military forces are much smaller than they were 6 years ago, and they are not ready, Mr. Speaker, to fight and win two regional conflicts. And that is the standard that we set for our armed forces. Now 5 years ago when we fought Desert Storm we had 18 army divisions. Today we only have 10. We had 24 fighter air wings. Today we only have 13. The Clinton Administration has cut our air power almost in half. And in those days we had 546 naval ships. Today we only have about 333 ships in the U.S. Navy, so they have cut the Navy by about 40 percent. Now, Mr. Speaker, we in the Congress obviously produce the defense authorization bill, and if we do not produce a bill that is signed by the President this year, that puts enough money in spare parts, ammunition, fuel, training and other aspects of readiness, as well as in modernization, and that means buying new equipment to replace the old equipment, then we are doing a great disservice to every young man and young woman who goes down to a recruiter and signs up to be in the U.S. military. We have been having hearings around the country. The other day my great colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Duke Cunningham), who has also a seat made in San Diego, and I and a number of other Members, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. McHale), and of course the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Herb Bateman), who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Readiness, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Solomon Ortiz), the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Robert Underwood), and the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Jim Hansen) all participated in a readiness hearing. We had that hearing on the Constellation, the United States aircraft carrier stationed in San Diego. The testimony that came back from not only the leadership in the Navy, the people that wear the stars on their shoulders, the admirals, but also the enlisted people, was very disturbing, and I want to give my colleagues some of that testimony today, Mr. Speaker. First, let us hear from Archie Clemmins, Admiral Archie Clemmins, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet. And he said this: After decades of requirement driven operations, we are now asset limited. In the past, decisions to commit forces were guided by requirements. Now we determine the level of peacetime commitment based upon forces available. Instead of meeting all requirements, we must prioritize missions and then assign increasingly scarce resources. This is becoming more difficult as U.S. leadership and interests dictate an increase rather than a decrease in forward deployed naval forces. And he closed with these words in his statement: The net effect is that we are stretching our forces to the limit. He said further: In the past 4 years, we have reduced our personnel force size by over 22 percent while maintaining recruiting standards and keeping faith with the career force. Although we have been manning our deploying ships at adequate level, we are experiencing manning shortfalls that have grown into readiness concerns. Now that means, Mr. Speaker, that these 333 ships in a Navy that used to be 546 ships are having to operate at an increased OPTEMPO. That means that they are on deployment more often than they were 5 or 10 or 15 years ago, even during the Cold War. And that means that a young sailor who goes off on a 6-month cruise, or a young marine who goes off on a long deployment to Bosnia, or in days past Somalia or Haiti, now comes home and before he can spend time with his family, he is told that he has to leave again on another deployment; or he has to go with his ship while it is being repaired, given an emergency overhaul at some other port, and he is home just in time, has just enough time basically to hug his family, kiss his wife good-bye and leave. After a period of time, Mr. Speaker, the American personnel who are serving in the uniform say, that is it, I have had it and I am leaving the service. Even today, and this was testimony throughout our hearings, pilots, who are a very, very critical component of our military forces, are in declining number. It is tougher to retain them. They are leaving and going other places. Now, there are a lot of reasons given for that. Some of the reasons, theoretically, are monetary reasons. They can fly for airlines. It is a little easier job than being deployed for 6 months at a time on an aircraft carrier. But morale is low. And morale is low partly because of that OPTEMPO, because we have this fleet with decreasing resources. And this budget that President Clinton has given to us is $100 billion less than the budget that Ronald Reagan gave to us in the mid- 1980s, using real dollars. So it could be dollar driven, but it is also morale driven in the sense that these people are seeing that we do not have the spare parts that we need. And that means that when a petty officer, and this was testified to us, when a petty officer goes to a shelf and reaches for a component now for a part, he cannot find that part. It is not there because we did not buy it for him. So now he has to go to one of the airplanes that we have in the fleet that is stationed on deck and he has to take that part out of the airplane. That is called cannibalization. Eating your own. It is like a farmer who has two hay bailers and he robs parts off one hay bailer so he can make the other one work. The problem with that, of course, is that you get to the point of no return with the first airplane just like you get to the point of no return with the first hay bailer and it becomes just a parts machine. All it is good for now is taking parts off of it. And if we do try to restore it, now we have to spend the manpower getting the extra part that was robbed off it to make the other plane work and you have to spend a lot of time putting that part back into the plane that was robbed. So we are taking readiness dollars in several ways. We are taking a lot of manpower dollars. Now, let me go to a statement by General David A. Bramlett, commander of the United States Army Forces Command. He said: Today our biggest concern is resource. The bottom line is that for fiscal year 1998, FORCECOM has fewer dollars than last year in operation and maintenance funding, roughly a 9 percent decrease in constant dollars. In sum, it is and will continue to be increasingly difficult to balance the requirements of go-to-war readiness, infrastructure and quality of life at current and anticipated levels of funding. What that means is they leave old barracks and old houses for our military families. A corporal and his wife and couple of kids may be asked to live in a home that he can be absolutely ashamed of because Uncle Sam does not have the dollars to fix that home or to give him a better one because of the fact he has had to take that money and use it for fuel or spare parts to keep part of our military operating. Now, let me refer to another gentleman who testified. This is commander Terry Kraft, United States Navy, Commanding Officer Tactical Electronic Warfare, Squadron 131. Commander Kraft said, ``Another example of one of the frustrations present in our current situation is part support. Available parts go first to deployed squadrons, as they should. The challenge lies in obtaining parts for the jets needed to train when not deployed. Cannibalization has become routine for my squadron.'' Mr. Speaker, we live in a time when our economy is extremely robust. We have lots of money circulating in this economy, lots of government revenue. We are supposed not to have any deficit this year. And yet, we have a military that has to cannibalize some of its airplanes so that the other airplanes can fly. One other important area, Mr. Speaker, is ammunition. I asked the Marine Corps and the Army and the Navy to tell me if they had enough ammo, and if they did not, how short they were. The Marine Corps is $193 million short of the basic ammunition supply that it needs under its definition of a two MRC. That means two-conflict scenario. Incidentally, a two MRC scenario presumes that we might have to fight Desert Storm again in the Middle East, and we might have to fight almost at the same time as a conflict in Korea. Well, the United States Marine Corps, which is our 911 force, those are the guys that go in first and sometimes they take enormous casualties. They are $193 million short of their basic ammo supply. We ought to be ashamed of that, Mr. Speaker. The Army is $1.7 billion short of its basic ammunition supply. And the Navy is over $300 million short of its basic ammunition supply. So Mr. Speaker, we are disserving the American people. And the American people may not think a lot about national defense right now, now that the crises with Saddam Hussein seems to be momentarily past us. But there is going to be a time when we have another conflict, another war, and the American people are going to turn to us and say, ``Why did you follow the Clinton administration when it slashed national defense?'' Mr. Speaker, I hope that in this cycle, in this funding cycle, we restore the massive cuts that have been made in our readiness so that we do not have to stand there before the American people after a lot of casualties have been taken on the Korean Peninsula or in the Middle East with no answers for the American people who are asking that question after their sons and daughters have gone off to fight a war that we did not have them prepared for. So Mr. Speaker, I see over here I have my good friend, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones), who is an outstanding member of the Committee on National Security, along with you, Mr. Speaker; and I would like to yield to my colleague.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Once again, I thank him for his great expertise on the Committee on National Security, and we have a bunch of great Members who have really contributed in these very difficult times. Our motto is that we are going to keep working and we are going to try to build that budget back up to where it should be so that we do a service rather than a disservice to the folks in uniform.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.