Rep. Wittman: The 2015 NDAA is an Effort to Make Up For Lost Time

The readiness of the United States military was struck a damaging blow by sequestration, and the funding written into the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act is an attempt to build it back up, according to Congressman Rob Wittman on Friday’s Secure Freedom Radio program.

“I believe the top issues and the top requirement for Congress, and in turn, the House Armed Services Committee, is to make sure our forces are properly trained, they’re properly equipped, and that we have the right number of men and women in uniform in those right categories to do the job this nation needs to do,” said Wittman. “Today we are not there. We have seen degraded readiness because of sequestration.”

Wittman (VA-1), Chairman of the HASC’s Readiness Subcommittee, detailed several examples of neglected training, including the seven Air Force wings that have not accumulated enough flight hours to be flight certified, and are thus unable to fly missions.

The 2015 NDAA, passed in the House Armed Services Committee this week, included provisions that are meant to help the military play “catch-up” with training and equipment procurement. Wittman said that the committee made certain to take into consideration the suggestions of the individual service branches as to where the money was most needed.

He emphasized that bringing the armed forces back to full readiness is not instantly fixed, however, and pointed to an upcoming situation in the Asian Pacific region next year when the US will not have any aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean because of a supply shortage.

“China is not only building one aircraft carrier–which they now have at sea—which is essentially a rebuilt Russian aircraft carrier, but they’re building another one. And the only reason you build aircraft carriers is to project power beyond your territorial seas, and that’s exactly what China wants to do to exert their influence. If we don’t have presence there to counter that, then it puts us in a very, very bad position.”

For those who scoff at the Chinese and Russian fleets, Wittman, who is co-chair of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus, concluded, “China and Russia are building navies. They have more ships than they do. Our ships are better, but at some point quantity has a quality all of its own.”