“If sequestration occurs without relief, without some sort of manner in which
we’re able to take the cuts as we see fit, it will definitely change the Navy
that we have. It will be a different Navy come Jan. 1 [2013] than we have
today. In force structure, in how we train, how we deploy, where we deploy. It’s
the thing that scares us the most, across all services. We’re all very concerned
about the supercommittee not meeting some sort of agreement on debt.”
— REAR ADM. THOMAS H. COPEMAN III, NAVY CHIEF OF LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS
they do business today, already-established routes, to
deliver to the troops. Something the DoD could not do.”
The precision delivery of supplies is critical, Tokarski said, noting the important coordination between air and sealift providers.
“But at the end of the day,” he said, “95 percent of it still
goes by sea. It costs the taxpayers about 5 percent of the
total cost to be able move those goods by sea. Air is the
inverse to that.”
Among the current sealift challenges is making sure
there is enough sealift capacity available and ready, To-
karski said. There are a number of areas and programs
that help, including the Maritime Security Program,
which is a contract with 60 U.S.-flag ships that are ply-
ing international trade.
“They are under contract to provide capability and
capacity of those ships as well as the rest of their fleet,”
he said.
Another important program is cargo preference, “a pri-
ority that we place as a nation that we want to ship our
government-sponsored cargo, to the maximum extent, on
U.S.-flag vessels. … The challenge that the U.S.-flag fleet
has is to ensure we maximize the government-held car-
goes. Some people think that’s the wrong approach. ‘Let’s
ship this the cheapest way that we can.’ When you do
that, you undercut the ability to support men and women
in uniform globally.”
Another challenge, Tokarski said, is the tanker short-
age in the international market.
“My friends here on the panel rely on fuel signifi-
cantly. Right now, the only way they can do that is rely-
ing on foreign-flag tankers, and sometimes [the tanker
countries] say no. It happened during the first Gulf
War, 13 foreign-flagged ships refused to go in to sup-
port our national strategic objectives. We’ve never had
a U.S.-flag ship say that.”
Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval oper-
ations (CNO), “has asked everybody in the Navy to
view every decision they make through the lens of
‘warfighting first,’ Copeman said. “That means a lot of
things to a lot of different people, depending on where
you are.
“Warfighting first means you have to be ready, you
have to have the correct amount of people that are
properly trained, you have to have the correct amount
of maintenance done, the correct amount spare parts,
all in a very efficient manner,” he said.
Another priority, Copeman said, is forward presence.
“When the land wars are complete in Iraq, which is
very, very soon, and in Afghanistan, which is
unknown, the Navy and Marine Corps team will continue to do what we’ve been doing. There will not be
any decrease in the demand signal for Navy and
Marine forces to support the combatant commanders
across the globe,” he said.
“With these looming budget cuts, there will have to
be very difficult decisions made inside the Pentagon on
whether the traditional 1/3-1/3-1/3 [distribution of
cuts] to each of the departments goes on as it has the
last 40 to 50 years,” he said. “I don’t think that it can if
you want the Navy and Marine Corps team to continue
doing what they’re doing today. Both services are
stretched thin, our [operations] tempo for the last 10
years has been significantly higher, it’s wearing our
ships out.
“We must take care of our Sailors and their fami-
lies,” Copeman said of the CNO’s priorities. “We have
to protect the morale of our troops, from their com-
pensation to their job security, to how we treat their
families, to how we treat them.”
He then explained what the “committee of 12,” also
known as the supercommittee, is doing in Washington.
That committee must come up with a plan to cut $1.5
trillion in spending over the next decade, and get it
approved by their colleagues by Dec. 23 and signed into
law by Jan. 9, or go into sequestration.
