SAC-D FY25 Posture Hearing
SECDEF and CJCS Layout Strategic Challenges, Investments, and Vision for FY25
The Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee held a hearing on the FY25 Defense Budget Request.
Among all the posture hearings this season, this one may be the most comprehensive to watch and read the testimony. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen CQ Brown provided testimony to cover the full range of strategic direction, threats, investments, and initiatives.
We see this almost as the DoD’s version of a State of the Union speech. The hearing itself was the common dry commentary and Q&A.
We extracted key highlights from their written testimony (with added links) aligned to the Defense Tech and Acquisition themes we cover and included the video below.
SECDEF Lloyd Austin Testimony
Provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act forced tough choices related to further military modernization. The law’s topline limitation requires the DoD to make targeted reductions to programs that will deliver key capabilities in later years to preserve the joint force’s ability to fight and win in the near term.
The single greatest way that Congress can support the DoD and our troops is to pass predictable, adequate, sustained, and timely appropriations.
The DoD also continues to invest in cutting-edge defense capabilities, from uncrewed systems and smarter munitions to advanced energetics and manufacturing. We are integrating human-machine teaming, developing autonomous systems, and fielding reliable and resilient networks and data.
At the same time, we are taking steps to optimize the practices and systems that are working best, while phasing out our technical debt—those quick fixes that we know will be costly or obsolete in the future.
To sustain U.S. technological superiority for the future force, the public and private sectors must work even more closely together. The FY25 budget will advance the work of the Defense Innovation Unit, which is working with venture-capital firms and tech innovators who are often doing business with the DoD for the first time. By building bridges with private industry, we can acquire commercial technologies that will deliver game-changing capabilities at speed and scale.
We also continue to invest in programs to test and scale emerging technologies, such as the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, and the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT) program.
The U.S. needs an adaptive, resilient, and robust defense industrial base to meet its 21st Century defense challenges. Today, our defense industrial base still relies heavily on foreign production and vulnerable supply chains.
Providing military capabilities at the speed and scale necessary to maintain our competitive advantage—without relying on competitors for capital, technology, or raw materials—will require cooperation and investment from both the private and public sectors to build a modern defense industrial base.
This budget request will shore up critical domestic and allied supply chains for sectors such as microelectronics, casting and forging, and batteries and energy storage. It will also help secure upstream supplies of rare earth elements essential to U.S. economic and national security, including by supporting programs to boost innovative manufacturing methods, the use of alternate materials, and strategic stockpiling.
CJCS Gen CQ Brown Testimony
Implementing the NDS requires the Joint Force address these challenges while simultaneously accelerating modernization to maintain our strategic advantages.
The NDS articulates four key priorities essential to our national security:
Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC
Deterring strategic attacks against the U.S., Allies, and partners
Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary
Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem
We can only accomplish our mission and maintain our advantage with stable, predictable, and timely budgets. By passing an on-time budget, Congress enables the Department to execute our strategy with a full-year appropriation. We are challenged to implement our strategy and stay ahead of our pacing challenge when we are not resourced with an on-time full-year appropriation and funding is delayed due to another Continuing Resolution…. We have operated under Continuing Resolutions for 14 of the last 15 years, totaling 5 years’ worth of lost time. Time we cannot get back.
The NDS identifies five key challenges that threaten U.S. national interests and our way of life: the PRC, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Violent Extremist Organizations.
We cannot expect success when we focus on building U.S.-only capability and then adding on Allies and partners at the end. We must start at the beginning with the end in mind and account for our Allies and partners earlier in our planning, requirement, and acquisition processes. Our Allies and partners are a powerful force multiplier and are crucial for our continued security.
We must prepare by modernizing and aggressively leading with new concepts and approaches. The JWC provides a framework for how the Joint Force will modernize and how we will fight in a future conflict.
As we work to shorten the timeline between prototype and program of record, there is growing importance for collaboration between the Services and our industry partners to deliver at scale, develop training programs, and provide required sustainment so our warfighters can operationalize the delivered capabilities.
With rapidly evolving threats and technologies, accelerating our modernization is crucial.
Our adversaries are advancing quickly, and it is imperative that we equip our Joint Force with the most advanced tools and capabilities available.
Our air power will be elevated through a fleet of advanced fighter aircraft, the B-21 bomber, and tanker aircraft.
Our sea power is strengthened with the construction of six battle force ships as well as the continued production of Ford-class aircraft carriers and Columbia ballistic missile submarines.
Our combat force in the land domain will be modernized and reinforced with the most advanced equipment available including the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, Amphibious Combat Vehicle, and the XM30 Combat Vehicle.
This budget also includes significant development in uncrewed and autonomous systems to expand reach, access, and payload for operations across all domains.
The Joint Force remains committed to realizing a fully capable Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) environment and leveraging initiatives being demonstrated today in our Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE). A modernized and technologically advanced Joint Force will communicate seamlessly across platforms in all domains.
Expanded multi-year procurement authorities for critical munitions will continue to enable us to deepen our inventories and decrease operational risk. Multi-year procurement authorities are essential to proactively address challenges with complex supply chains, long lead-time components, obsolescence, workforce shortages, and infrastructure shortfalls that must be overcome. These authorities directly support the capabilities we need to execute our strategy while managing and mitigating risks during crisis and conflict.
To fully modernize the Joint Force, we must provide a consistent demand signal to the defense industrial base through clearly articulated priorities and resourcing. Doing so activates the defense industrial base to expand capabilities and capacity helping to enable contract performance and on-time deliveries.
Our Take
Both leaders stressed speed. We must rapidly produce at scale and iterate.
Thankful they both continue to raise the CR issue. The single best thing Congress can do to support national security is to pass a defense budget on time.
Working closely with industry, traditional and non, is vital to our success as a nation. We must continue to forge partnerships and reduce barriers, not have an adversarial relationship and demonize the other side.
While this is positive to hear, we also have not seen accompanying reforms (such as modernizing JCIDS to streamline processes and harness commercial tech) that would actually contribute to this desired outcome.
Working across the Services on Joint programs and initiatives is significantly harder than Service-unique efforts. Working with Allies from the start adds another order of magnitude layer of complexity. But we need to figure it out to leverage a force multiplier.
Autonomy is going to be a major part of the Joint Force going forward. While FY25 had some reasonable investments in certain autonomy platforms, the rhetoric around unmanned systems is still not aligned with the level of expected (and needed) budget investments. We need to 10X autonomy budgets!
See also our Five FY25 Defense Budget Expectations ahead of the budget rollout.
Articles on the Hearing
Austin: FY 2025 Budget Includes Tough, But Responsible Decisions
Brown: Aircraft Age and Need for New Tech Driving Need for Doomsday Replacement
Up Next
Next week USD(A&S) Dr. Bill LaPlante and the Service Acquisition Executives testify in front of SAC-D for a Review of Select DoD Acquisition Programs.
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