Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel (Sullivan): Hearings to examine the Department of Defense personnel policies and programs in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2027 and the Future Years Defense Program.

Might as well turn that on. Willingness to appear before the committee and discuss the department's priorities, challenges, and ongoing initiatives. I also want to recognize what has been a welcome shift back toward a focus on warfighting readiness standards and lethality across the force. Our military exists to deter conflict and, if necessary, fight and win wars. Strong leadership, discipline, and mission focus matter to the readiness of the joint force, and I appreciate your leadership to reintroduce and reinforce those priorities.

At the same time, Many of the personnel and readiness issues facing the force present significant changes for the senior leadership as well as our service members. While recruiting has improved significantly over the last 2 years and retention remains strong across much of the force, we cannot afford to become complacent. The department continues to face long-term demographic challenges, increasing competition from the private sector, and a shrinking pool of Americans eligible for military service. The strength of our military depends not only on the weapons systems we field or the operations we conduct, but on our ability to care for the men and women who serve this nation and the families who stand beside them. This subcommittee has spent years working on issues like military compensation, childcare, spouse employment, and professional development because taking care of service members and their families directly impacts readiness and retention.

As the department continues to make significant investments across the defense enterprise, it is crucial that resources remain focused on the quality of life, healthcare, and personal readiness issues that most directly affect service members, military families, and overall force readiness. Today, the military health system faces significant funding and readiness challenges that threaten access to care, strain military treatment facilities, and jeopardize the retention of highly skilled medical professionals. At a time of increasing global threats and growing demands on our force, we cannot afford to underinvest in the healthcare infrastructure that underpins military readiness Ensuring stable, significant— sufficient and predictable funding for the military health system is not simply a healthcare issue, it is a national security imperative. Today's hearing also provides an important opportunity for the committee to hear directly from the department's civilian leadership on the policies and decisions shaping the force. Too often, military leaders appearing before Congress are asked to defend or explain policy decisions that ultimately originate elsewhere within the department.

This hearing gives us the opportunity to discuss those decisions directly with the officials responsible for developing and implementing them. I appreciate all of you being here today, and we look forward to your testimony. Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being with us today. Our annual posture hearing provides an opportunity for the department to discuss personnel priorities for the coming year, and it's also an opportunity for this subcommittee to continue to focus specifically on the challenges that service members and their families are facing.

That is our job. Since this subcommittee's posture hearing last April, Secretary Hagel and President Trump have asked our troops to risk their lives in an illegal war with Iran at the same moment that the administration's actions make life harder for service members and their families. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have badly mismanaged America's military budget. The Army reportedly needs to make up for a shortfall of $4 to $6 billion. Now to fill that gap, the Army is reportedly looking to slash training costs across the force, including by cutting pilots' flight hours, which could have serious safety consequences.

We should ask ourselves, why is there such a huge gap? And the answer is that the president's decisions to drag the military into a war with Iran and at the same time to use the military to do DHS's job at the southern border. And the gap is getting even wider because the Army still has not been reimbursed by the Department of Homeland Security for its past support in border operations. Now, Secretary Hegseth has also continued to send chilling messages of who is and who is not welcome. In America's military.

So far, despite repeated questions from Congress, there have been no explanations for multiple abrupt remu— removals of top military officers. The secretary also reportedly blocked the promotion of 4 Army officers to become one-star generals, 2 of whom are Black and 2 of whom are women. Secretary Hegseth is also requiring a review of the, quote, effectiveness of having women in ground combat roles, despite senior enlisted leaders testifying before this subcommittee in February of this year that women in combat arms units do not lower standards and Attacks on university partnerships will limit opportunities for troops to develop leadership skills and risk gains in both recruitment and retention. Secretary Hagseth has also continued to undermine the military justice system. He fired the top military lawyers shortly after he was confirmed to avoid quote, roadblocks to President Trump.

Those roadblocks are known as the law. The secretary has sent Judge Advocate General off to work as immigration judges or federal prosecutors in Minneapolis and other cities. He said the Iran war would have, quote, no stupid rules of engagement. He also launched a, quote, "ruthless" review of the roles of JAGs that may simply be one more way to reduce accountability for potentially illegal policies. The administration also continues to treat DOD's civilian workforce with contempt.

It is shameful that for the second year in a row, DOD's budget request fails to include a dollar of pay raises for civilian employees. That is shameful. With Trump policies driving up costs for all Americans, this is a significant pay cut for DOD civilians who play critical roles in our military, critical roles supporting service members and families' quality of life, contracting and acquisition for weapons systems, engineering, holding together our medical health system, as the Chairman identified, and much, much more.

Secretary Hegseth is taking other steps that endanger the health of our troops. Last month, he announced that DOD would end the mandatory flu flu vaccine, which has been in place since 1945. Keep in mind that the flu vaccine was made mandatory after 20 to 40% of the U.S. Army and Navy personnel fell ill during World War I, resulting in over 26,000 deaths and significant degradation in military readiness. Mandatory vaccines in the military date all the way back to when General George Washington mandated that troops be vaccinated against smallpox back in 1777. Secretary Hegseth is playing politics with the health and the readiness of our military, and that is wrong.

There is much to talk about, but I want to focus on two topics with our witnesses. First, we need to ensure that the contractors entrusted to administer TRICARE benefits are keeping our service members and their families healthy, not just using taxpayer dollars to boost their own bottom lines. Express Scripts, which is the largest pharmacy benefit manager in the United States, has held the TRICARE pharmacy contract for 20 years now. And over that time, Express Scripts has forced thousands of pharmacies out of the TRICARE network, which makes it a whole lot harder for service members to fill prescriptions, but it likely boosts the orders and the profits for Express Scripts mail order pharmacy. For years, I've been calling for more transparency into the TRICARE pharmacy contract, But DOD has carefully protected the interests of Express Scripts at every single step.

It is time for TRICARE to put the interests of our service members first. They should do it on their own, but if they don't, then Congress should force them to do so. Second, we need to have protections in place for service members to report serious concerns to protected channels without fear of reprisal. Military families have long dealt with terrible living conditions in housing that is owned by private military contractors. But those private companies have muzzled families by forcing them to sign nondisclosure agreements to get compensation for the damages that they have suffered.

I appreciate that one of the department's legislative proposal for this year's NDAA would be to make clear that tenants are protected from reprisals for reporting dangerous and disgusting housing conditions to an inspector general, to Congress, or to the Department of Defense. But we shouldn't stop there. We must make clear to service members, including in other contexts where they're forced to sign NDAs, that they still have the right to report serious violations of the law, to report gross wastes of money, abuse, serious threats to public safety, and to do it all through protected channels. We also need to make sure that we are protecting service members who come forward to report serious concerns to troop safety and— health, such as unsafe weapons or aircraft systems, so they can report to Congress, to DOD, and to the IG. Safety of our troops and the efficient operation of DOD should be at the top of our list, and that means protecting people who have the courage to call out problems and make us aware of them.

So I look forward to discussing these topics. With our witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, Senator Warren. Now we'll turn to our opening statements.

The Honorable Anthony Tatum, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Chairman Tuberville, Ranking Member Warren, distinguished members of the Personnel Subcommittee. Thank you and your staff for the opportunity to testify today and for your shared resolve to care for our service members, their families, and Department of War civilians, and to ensure that our military remains ready, lethal, and unmatched. When patriotic young Americans answer the call to defend our nation, we answer a call of our own to look after them and the families who serve and sacrifice alongside them.

This includes our fallen heroes and their loved ones. They will never be forgotten. President Trump and Secretary Hudson have prioritized the well-being and preparedness of our warriors from day one. Since last July, my team and I have focused on optimizing personnel and readiness policies in line with their guidance. We have taken swift action to deliver tangible outcomes that directly improve the lives of the people we serve.

For example, we have enabled historic recruiting successes and strong retention rates through innovative initiatives like MEPS in a Box, expanded our partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs, striving to expedite the transfer of electronic health records, created an Aviation Mishap Task Force to address concerning trends in aviation, and more recently authorized the evacuation of military civilian families in Bahrain, helping to coordinate safe moves and continuous access to education. Indeed, a service member who knows their family is well cared for is one who is focused on their mission. With this as a governing principle, we will continue to ensure that our warriors and their families have access to high-quality healthcare, sound education for their children, food security, and meaningful employment opportunities. Meanwhile, we are working to reshore the pharmaceutical supply chain for military essential medications, transform the Department of War Education activity to better serve our students, revitalize professional military education in line with our core warfighting mission, modernize the Defense Commissary Agency, and establish Project Patriot Pipeline to develop mission-critical skills for the department and the defense industrial base. The president's historic $1.5 trillion budget enables further investments in these activities, allowing us to build on hard-earned gains that will benefit our military community and our mission for years to come.

Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Hudson, the department has made strong progress. With your support, we will keep advancing the policies and programs that enable our people to thrive in the force to remain ready. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

The next is Honorable Tim Deal, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Secretary. Chairman Tuberville, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of the Personnel Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the heartbeat of the Department of War, our men and women in uniform, our civilian workforce, and their families. My team is guided by President Trump's directive to achieve peace through strength and Secretary Hegseth's three key pillars: restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and reestablishing deterrence.

I'm grateful for Secretary Hegseth's and Undersecretary Tata's leadership in accomplishing these tasks. As a former Green Beret, I constantly remember the first of United States Special Operations Command's soft truths: Humans are more important than hardware. The department must attract, develop, employ, and retain the finest talent by offering a meaningful mission, setting high uncompromising standards, and taking care of our people. We're succeeding on that front. In fiscal year 2025, the military's recruiting efforts broke records with all active duty services meeting the recruiting and retention goals.

That momentum continues in fiscal year 2026. We can never fully compensate our service members for their sacrifices. We must ensure they're financially secure. Our recent review confirms the department's total military compensation package is strongly competitive with the civilian labor market. To reward our top civilian performers, the department recently processed more than 90,000 cash awards.

We are expanding spouse education and career development opportunities and removing unnecessary regulations to reduce military spouse unemployment, increasing childcare opportunities, and focusing our DIA schools on core academic excellence and transparency with parents. I've witnessed firsthand the bravery, sacrifice, and resilience of our men and women in uniform, our civilian personnel, and their families, and I am privileged to serve them. They are the reason the American military is the most lethal fighting force in history. May God bless our troops, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much. Next we have the Honorable Keith Bass, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Chairman Tupperville, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of this committee, thank you for this opportunity to represent the 130,000 men and women of the military health system. The President's fiscal year budget 2027 is a direct investment in our most vital military asset, our people. This budget equips the department to counter evolving threats and most importantly to safeguard the health and well-being of our service members.

A medically ready force is a lethal force, and to that end, our primary focus is on ensuring our medical personnel are strategically positioned to enhance force readiness and maintain the critical clinical skills required for combat casualty care. To further this objective, we are strengthening our strategic partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. These collaborations are vital They enable the delivery of joint healthcare services, optimize the use of taxpayer resources, and enhance the patient access across both systems, ensuring a seamless continuum of care for our nation's heroes. The proposed budget funds critical combat support requirements, including our blood program, joint trauma care, and medical logistics. These investments allow for rapid deployment of life-saving technologies to support our medical personnel in the most austere and remote locations.

With the continued and invaluable support of Congress, we are making significant investments in military medical research and development. These efforts directly address the unique threats our warfighters face, with particular focus on advancing brain health and expanding access to mental health care services. Finally, we are taking decisive action to remedy the TRICARE transition issues, My leadership team is aggressively focused on enhanced contract oversight, process improvement, accountabilities at all levels to ensure that no member of our community faces unnecessary delays in receiving care. We are redoubling our efforts to ensure beneficiaries are aware of resolution channels, including our dedicated TRICARE benefits counselors and patient advocates to address any issues with billing, access, or quality of care. Our warfighters, past and present, and their families deserve a healthcare system they can depend on without reservation.

I'm grateful for the enduring partnership and the support of this committee and has provided to the department and to the military health system. Thank you. And I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much. The next is Honorable Maurice Todd, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness.

Chairman Tuberville, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the readiness of our total force. As we navigate a strategic landscape defined by persistent competition and accelerating technological change, the partnership between the department and this committee has never been more vital to our national defense. Our National Defense Strategy demands a joint, disciplined force that is lethal, agile, and decisively superior, ensuring our warfighters can deploy, fight, and win in any conflict. My office is committed to translating that strategic imperative into operational and tactical reality.

Over the past year, our direct partnership with this committee has yielded significant, tangible wins in our readiness enterprise. By executing our strategic priorities and applying resources precisely where they generate the greatest operational impact, we are maintaining a proactive, dominant posture across the globe. This deliberate allocation of our forces and readiness capabilities does more than maximize our combat credibility and readiness. And builds vital trust with the American people and takes care of our warfighters. We are seeing the results of this unified effort through several critical wins.

In aviation and operational safety, we are aggressively prioritizing mishap prevention to protect our aircrews. Through the new Aviation Mishap Task Force, we are examining mishaps to identify critical safety issues and solutions to improve aviation safety throughout the force. We have also refocused military education and training standards to restore the warrior ethos, to forge the intellectual and tactical readiness of the total force, recognizing that our true advantage is the intellect and resilience of our warfighters. By fundamentally refocusing professional military education on mission-relevant curricula, we are ensuring our warfighters have the dedicated time to master the skills required to outthink and outfight any adversary. In human performance and brain health, we are aggressively mitigating risk to brain health from blast overpressure.

We have established cognitive baselining at all initial military training sites and are modernizing how we track lifetime exposures. Thanks to your partnership in the fiscal year 2025 NDAA, we are developing blast-specific safety thresholds and deploying new blast safety officers across the force. We are actively promoting a culture of safety across the enterprise by tackling systemic risks head-on to protect our most valuable asset, our people. Ultimately, the shared focus guarantees that our total force is ready to deter aggression and, if called upon, to prevail decisively against any threat to American interests. As a public servant to the American people, I am deeply committed to this mission and to our continued partnership to ensure the readiness of our warfighters.

Thank you for your continued partnership. I look forward to your questions.

Okay, thank you very much. As we start here, we'll just go through a round of questioning. Mr. Tate, recently we heard about a project you've been working on called Project Patriot Pipeline. Could you explain to us what that is? Thank you, Chairman, and thank you for your and the ranking member's commitment and this committee's commitment to our men and women in uniform.

Project Patriot Pipeline is a direct result of the Secretary's focus on the arsenal of freedom. As he has traveled around the country to bolster our defense industrial base, we in the personnel and readiness domain asked ourselves the questions, how are we going to resource this with the talent necessary to expand the arsenal of freedom and complete the mission and indeed to align presidential priorities and personnel policy. And so what we've done is we've taken a look at several different work streams. You have active National Guard Reserve, you have spouses, and you have civilian workforce that we are charged with managing. And within each one, we want to encourage re-enlistment, and we want to encourage re-enlistment into those high-demand, low-density military occupational skills such as Patriot, cyber, aviation maintainer, and we are aligning bonuses with the services to ensure that we are encouraging folks to re-enlist within those key high-demand, low-density MOSs.

Within, if they choose to leave service, we want to capture that training and investment that we made in their training so that we're able to keep that half million or a million dollars that we put into that individual, and if they're an aviation maintainer in the military, we want them to be a depot aviation maintainer, and so we are tweaking tuition assistance and SkillBridge time to be able to incentivize folks that want to migrate into the defense industrial base, to try to incentivize them into those key skill sets. We have a real issue with our aviation depot maintainers. We're gonna drop off the cliff here pretty soon, and demand is gonna go way up, uh, uh, dependent upon the platform that we're talking about, and so we, we are trying to get ahead of that by incentivizing people, if they're going to leave, to stay within the defense industrial base, and I include healthcare, education in the defense industrial base, as well. And so we are incentivizing people through tuition assistance, through Extra Time and SkillBridge. Come down to military spouses, we have a huge military spouse employment effort going on.

We're rebranding it as SpouseWorks where we have the SkillBridge-like program that they can do the internships and then begin to work. We have money where we can pay for scholarships. We're gonna increase that to incentivize them to go into the defense industrial base, whether that's healthcare, education, aviation maintainer, welder, shipbuilder, all of that to us are spouses and deserve these opportunities, and we've allowed for direct hiring authority in many of these areas to help with the Patriot Pipeline, as we call it. And then third, the civilian workforce. We want them to re-enlist, so to speak, and re-up within the civilian domain to go into things such as the Golden Dome, cyber, and these real critical high-demand, low-density areas where we need the real talent.

And so it's a holistic approach from when someone comes in, we're trying to incentivize them through bonuses into these critical high-demand, low-density areas, We're trying to keep them in, which we're doing, and recruiting and retention are going very well right now, and then to the very end when they choose to get out, if that's 3 years or 30 years, we've invested a lot of money in that professional military education, we want them to stay, or a spouse, we want that person to be able to work in the defense industrial base and make our country stronger, make that arsenal of freedom stronger. And then likewise with our civilian workforce. So that's it in a nutshell. We are trying to complement the Secretary's efforts and Under Secretary Duffy's efforts in the Arsenal of Freedom to undergird it with the talent necessary to run the Arsenal of Freedom.

Thank you. Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The TRICARE pharmacy benefit helps 9 million service members, veterans, and their families access prescription drugs. TRICARE's prime pharmacy contractor Express Scripts decides which pharmacies are included in the TRICARE network and decides what they're going to get paid.

And of course, Express Scripts is supposed to work for the DOD and for military families. That's what taxpayers pay Express Scripts to do. Except Express Scripts also runs its own pharmacy that participates in the TRICARE network, a competitor to every other pharmacy. And that means that Express Scripts both provides pharmacy services to TRICARE members directly and sets the reimbursement rates for itself and all of its competitors. That gives Express Scripts an incentive to under-reimburse all of the competing pharmacies and inflate its own payments.

So how is that deal working out for the taxpayers? Express Scripts reportedly charged DOD $484 more on average for generic drugs dispensed by the Express Scripts-owned pharmacy. Meanwhile, Express Scripts has offered unaffiliated pharmacies such terrible terms that since 2022, nearly 13,000 retail pharmacies have just left the TRICARE network. They've just said, we can't be be part of this. So, Assistant Secretary Bass, you lead the Defense Health Agency, which oversees this contract that I'm talking about.

Are you concerned that Express Scripts appears to be steering service members to the pharmacies that it owns and overcharging American taxpayers?

Thank you, Ranking Member Warren. Appreciate your, your your support, and I understand that this is an important issue. The department continues to look at this and review, and as you're aware, this PBM is— TRICARE PBM is different than a normal PBM. It is a— it provides administrative services only, is a contract management mechanism for the departments. It does claims, mail order pharmacy, and is paid a fixed fee for each of the prescriptions.

The Department of War controls their pricing and retains the cost savings. We understand the concerns and we welcome the opportunity to work with you and your staff on—. I'm sorry, could I have an answer to my question? I am concerned that we've got a pharmacy benefit manager here who competes with a bunch of America's pharmacies, and it's the one that is doing the pricing, and it's the one that's deciding who else the competition will be. That seems like to me a perfect way to be able to advantage yourself, disadvantage everyone else, And look, I'm not just making that up.

I've got two pieces of evidence: $484 more per average that we're paying now on these generic drugs, and 13,000 pharmacies across this country that have just said, you won't pay me enough, so I've got to leave the entire system, which cuts down on service for our military members. And are you telling me Oh, you're thinking about it? You've had 20 years to think about this. We— the department continues to evaluate this budget. It over— it reviews and works with the contractor to ensure that it's within the guidelines of the contract.

You're working with the contractor. How's that working out? How do you explain $484 on average more for prescription drugs, for generic drugs? Thank you, Senator. I'm not aware of the— Cost discrepancy.

Okay, then how do you explain 13,000 pharmacies actually leaving the whole system, just saying you won't even pay me enough to make it worthwhile? The contractor is meeting its contractual requirements.

Yeah, what? You don't— what are you saying about 13,000 pharmacies leaving this whole system and they won't do any— they can't fill prescriptions now for our military and for our veterans? You're okay with that? No, ma'am. Our priority is to make sure all of our beneficiaries, the 9.6 million, get the coverage that they deserve and the benefits they deserve.

Well, I think they deserve a lot more than what you're delivering for them, and I want to know when you're going to get better at this. Look, what we're talking about here is a blatant conflict of interest. Our job in this Senate subcommittee is oversight, and that's why it is For years now, I've been calling for more transparency to ensure that Express Scripts isn't favoring itself and its own subsidiaries and under-reimbursing the independent pharmacies in the hopes that it can drive them out of the TRICARE business altogether and just have more of the business for themselves. I have been met with obstruction every step of the way from our own Department of Defense. So let me ask you another question, Secretary Bass.

Will you disclose the differences between TRICARE reimbursement rates and fees and other price concessions between what it's paying pharmacies and what it's paying itself? Yeah, thank you, Ranking Member Warren. I, I commit to working with you and your staff in providing the data that you're—. You'll give me that data. I will work with you and—.

I'm going to hold you to that. So Express Scripts' pattern of bad behavior speaks for itself. In addition to the news reports that I've already mentioned, an audit of the office— an audit by the Office of Inspector General for the Office of Personnel Management found that Express Scripts overcharged American Postal Workers Union and the federal employees' health benefits program by about $45 million. And the Government Accountability Office found, quote, persistent inconsistencies in the data that Express Scripts provided to DOD, which DOD is supposed to be validating on its own, but failed to catch. So, Secretary Bass, given the long history of infractions by Express Scripts that I just read to you, Will you commit to annual audits of the TRICARE pharmacy contract to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being wasted?

I commit to— yes, I commit to doing annual review of the contract. Good. And then will you let us see those annual audits? I commit to working with you and your staff. No, will you let us see them?

I don't want to hear about them and hear your summary. I want to see the audits. Do I have that commitment? I will work with you and your staff. Is that a yes?

Yes. Good. Thank you. That wasn't so bad. Look, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I apologize for running over. I just want to finish up by saying the current TRICARE contract with Express Scripts expires in 2029, and DOD right now is in the acquisition planning phase for the next generation contract. As it builds the requirements for this new contract, DOD cannot continue to ignore this conflict of interest that arises when a company owns both a PBM— that is, the one directing the payments— and a pharmacy. That has got to stop. And in the meantime, existing contracts should be regularly audited and subjected to much greater transparency.

To try to beat this kind of conflict out of the system. I look forward to working with DOD on this and serving the best interests of the 9 million American service members, veterans, and their families who are depending on us. Thank you. Appreciate it, Secretary Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the extra time. Thank you, Senator Warren. Senator Caroneau.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary Tata, the Trump regime has repeatedly attempted to reshape our federal vaccine policies in direct conflict with science and leading public health experts. Now it seems those misguided, as far as I'm concerned, policies are seeping into the military. First, Secretary Hicks has waived the COVID-19 vaccine requirements, and now Just last month, he overturned the annual flu vaccine mandate, which has been DOD policy since the early 1950s, over 70 years. Of course, there's a reason for the flu vaccine requirement. Military personnel frequently live and work in close quarters, particularly on ships, making them highly susceptible, susceptible to rapid disease transmission.

Secretary Taylor, do you know who funded the invention of the first flu vaccine?

Senator, thank you for the question. Thank you for the concern for our soldiers. I believe World War I was— the U.S. Army created the flu vaccine. And so the U.S. Army in the 1930s and '40s. And do you know why the Army did this?

Uh, because, uh, they wanted to stop the, uh, spread of infectious disease. So does that concern still not exist? Because, uh, what's going to happen when getting the flu vaccine becomes optional? In fact, uh, what new peer-reviewed literature did the department rely on to support overturning the flu vaccine requirement and How many service members of the 1 point— I don't know the millions. There are 1.8 million, 2.8 million active duty and almost a million reserves and civilians within DOD.

So what peer review study led to this change in the flu vaccine requirement and how many service members do you expect will now not get get the flu vaccine as a result of this optional policy? Senator, thank you for the opportunity to comment on this. We, under the Secretary's guidance, went to the services. We asked the services to come back to us with a list of exceptions to the policy that they wish us to pursue. We are collecting those exceptions right now, and as you might expect, The services have come back with a robust set of exceptions that we are still in the pre-decisional draft stage.

We're talking about submarines, we're talking about ships, we're talking about basic training, we're talking about Ranger School, we're talking about—. Just so I understand, Mr. Secretary, so these exceptions are those services who are saying that they want to continue to require people getting the flu vaccine? Is that— are those the exceptions you're talking about? This is in draft pre-decisional. They've come back asking for these exceptions.

To the policy that we will then take to the Secretary for his final approval. Okay, I'm going to have to ask you again just so there's clarity. The exceptions are to Secretary Hicks says these are optional, this is an optional vaccine. So the services are submitting exceptions that they want their submariners, for example, to have to get the flu vaccine. Are those the exceptions that are being gathered now?

I can't list them all for you right now, but the exceptions that we are gathering are to be able to vaccinate for flu prior to deployment on a ship, for example. But there are several other exceptions that are being requested. Yeah, I understand. I just want to make sure that there are some services that have decided that this optional policy is going to probably affect readiness. You can't have a flu outbreak in the submarine, for example.

So I think that, that is warranted. But you didn't mention peer-reviewed literature that led to Secretary Hicks making this policy change to begin with. Are you aware of any peer-reviewed studies that led to this Change. Senator, what I'm aware of is the troop morale and significant backlash from the imposition from the Biden era on the COVID vaccine and the mandatory COVID vaccine and the expulsion of lots of talent for refusing to take that vaccine. That experimental vaccine that was unlawful as implemented.

And so I think what the Secretary is trying to get at is restoring trust and faith, restoring the warrior ethos within the force by saying that—. Okay, so he had his reasons, but they were not based on any peer-reviewed literature. It was based on the— you know, there is such a thing as leadership that will say to the service members, this is for your health protection. It is, it is science-based, etc. But that didn't happen.

Senator, he did it in full consultation with Health Affairs, with me, with the, with the team to make the best decision possible to restore trust and faith in the wake of the COVID vaccine. So basically it was ideologically based, not peer-review based. I have a question about women in combat. Can I continue? I can't tell from my clock whether I've— my time is up.

I think it— is it up? Can you— okay, I could— I just mentioned something about women in combat. So as you know, Secretary Hicks has asked for a review, a study on the appropriateness of women in combat roles, and you recently issued a memo mandating the review of female service members' performance. In combat arms units. Uh, and as you know, women can serve in combat units, uh, provided that they meet all of the physical requirements that everybody else has to meet.

So I just want to ask you, uh, should every service member regardless of gender be permitted to serve in any role, including the combat arms, if they meet the established standards? Yes or no? Senator, uh, what we are doing is reviewing the effectiveness of ground combat units that have been integrated 10 years after integration, just like we did Goldwater-Nichols, just like we did Don't Ask, Don't Tell, just like we did blended retirement system. Do you think that anyone who meets the physical requirements should be able to serve in any role to which they meet the physical and other— whatever requirements there are? Yes or no?

I'm not sure I understand your question, Senator. Whether or not any— okay, we'll repeat. Should every service member, regardless of gender, be permitted to serve in any role, including the combat arms, if they meet the established standards? The established standards, yes, Senator. Yes, thank you.

Thank you, uh, Secretary Todd. Traumatic brain injuries continue to be a huge problem. Do you see anything that we're doing that's helping restore and, you know, just improve, you know, the identification, number one, of brain problems, because we've all seen that, and then are we making any progress on getting the health recovery time faster than in the past?

Chairman Tomorrowski, thank you for your question. Traumatic brain injury is a serious concern in the force among our military service members. It can have long-lasting effects long after they've had the initial concussion or injury. We are working diligently with the military services to ensure that we have guidelines out there concerning exposure, particularly blast exposure, but also other types of traumatic brain things that can cause traumatic brain injury. We put out guidelines.

We have a reference, an information guide that addresses specific weapon systems that our service members are exposed to on a regular basis, outlining the area of the blast, the standoff distance required, the minimization of using or being close to these weapon systems, minimizing what they have to do to maintain their proficiency, emphasizing the use of simulators if possible in order to ensure that they are proficient. We're also looking and working with our acquisition folks to make sure that as we develop new weapon systems, the impact of blast overpressure and of course those impacts on traumatic brain injury are considered when developing the weapon systems so that we have some sort of mitigating measures. In addition, the Secretary, Recently signed the Warfighter Optimization— Performance Optimization Directive, which focuses on total, the total readiness of our force and looks at their health, and part of this is brain trauma and traumatic brain injuries. We are working again with all the services, we are also working directly with specific units in the field. In fact, we just had a briefing from the Ranger Regiment where they were doing, using their own local tactical initiatives to see what they can do to mitigate, for example, breaching operations or confined explosive operations, and they came up with a number of very innovative ideas on how to do it.

In addition, since, as you know, our Ranger regiments are airborne units, they have a mouthpiece that has a Wi-Fi factor or component in it, so every time one of their soldiers jumps, It can automatically record if there was what it perceived as some sort of traumatic injury, and it automatically starts broadcasting and they can't hide it, because some troops just don't want to report it, they want to keep soldiering on, and so that is hooked in with some of the initiatives they're doing. We're taking that, looking at it to see if we can expand that not only to other airborne units, but across the force. In fact, the Undersecretary, Recently decided that we should work with our DoDEA schools, DoEA schools, in order to use some of these mouth guards to see if we can identify any risk to the children of our service members when they're playing sports in some of our schools. So we're trying to look both with our service members but across the force to identify any of these things that impact or could cause traumatic brain injury. Thank you.

Mr. Deal, only a small percentage of Americans currently qualify for military service without a waiver.

Many of these young Americans who are motivated and want to serve, but they encounter a lot of times administrative hurdles and waiver decisions during their process. From your perspective, what are the biggest bottlenecks in the system today, and what more should the department do to be streamlining medical evaluations and waiver processing so that we are not necessarily delaying or disqualifying otherwise capable applicants. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you highlighting that issue and the chance to speak to it. It's a very concerning thing that so few young Americans today are qualified to serve. Something we need to be very careful about is, for one, maintaining high uncompromising standards So where we have a very good reason to ensure that you meet a minimum qualification, we need to uphold that for the good of the service and for the protection of the individual.

We also need to make sure that we don't just have needless requirements because they're historical relics. So one of the things we must continue to do through our medical accession records pilot program is carefully review each of the medical requirements we enforce when a young American man or woman tries to join and make sure that requirement makes sense, that it's connected to the battlefield requirements, that it contributes to lethality, and if that's a historical requirement that doesn't make an impact on the battlefield, we should get rid of it. We've had success over the last couple years reducing some of the requirements in this pilot program, letting young people come in despite the fact that they had a preexisting condition that in the past would not have been wavered, and we see very strong results from that program. We are continuing to actively review conditions. Even just last year, we removed several of the existing conditions that were automatic disqualifications to ensure that if you're actually qualified to serve, that we give you that opportunity.

I can speak to personal experience. I had an ACL reconstruction in college. When I applied to the Army, I was automatically disqualified, needed a waiver to come in, and I'm so grateful that I was given the chance to serve, and I was able to serve in airborne special operations units for 10 years. And that was the right decision to make sure there wasn't a needless disqualification. And we did continue to do that to carefully filter and take advantage of the talent that's volunteering to serve in our department.

So in your instance, how many evaluations did you have to have to be cleared? I had to go to two extra appointments. I had to see a specialist, and there was really advanced equipment that I had to drive another hour to a different facility to put my leg in that machine and have it test the flexibility and strength. And it took months in that process. I was sweating bullets, Mr. Chairman, to see if I'd have a chance to serve in the Army.

I'm really grateful I got the chance, and I think it was clearly the right decision. Thank you. Senator Blumenthal.

Thank you, Chairman. Um, Secretary Tata, I want to ask you about the recent decision to to remove military fellowships and PME programs from, that is professional military education programs, from Yale and a number of other institutions.

I question whether these decisions were driven by actual national security criteria or by, very bluntly, political retaliation. Against universities that are perceived, I think wrongly, as ideologically disfavored. According to the Pentagon's own memo, partner institutions are supposed to be evaluated based on factors like intellectual freedom, national security relevance, and relationships to adversaries. As I'm sure you know, Yale has a nationally renowned national security program, the Jackson School. It has experts at the law school as well as elsewhere in the university.

It conducts extensive defense-related research. It hosts ROTC programs, which are very widely attended, and it educates active-duty service members and senior officers. So my question is, why was Yale removed from these programs? And I assume the same answer would apply to the other institutions. Senator, thank you for that question and your interest in our professional military education.

Certainly all the schools that were adjusted from the current list of fellowships, we added new schools, we wanted to refresh In particular, we were interested in schools that allowed freedom of speech on the campus and other types of intellectual freedom. And the realignment—. And Yale provides freedom of speech and intellectual freedom?

Senator, for Yale and others, the Secretary chose to realign so that we could involve other schools that were more aligned with the patriotic values and the values that we seek to instill within—. I don't know if it's more aligned with patriotic values than Yale. If you come to Yale and you talk to students and faculty, but also see the great tradition of Yale as volunteers for our military, its active duty participation now in educational programs and ROTC, which has grown in magnitude, um, I really question whether that's a fair assessment and whether in fact it's based on preconceived, non-fact-based notions of an Ivy League school.

What would you say? Uh, Senator, I don't think it was based on any preconceived notion. Uh, the, the list of schools that we have now are all very much aligned with establishing strong professional development programs for professional military education and getting our senior leaders focused on our foundational principles, back to the constitutional principles upon which our great nation was founded. And that's the, the goal of the professional military education. Well, I think that It's pretty clear these decisions were made based on the Secretary of Defense or some other official feeling that these universities are, quote unquote, woke, which I think undermines our national security because it denies our service members the benefit of some of the best teachers academicians, research, and frankly veterans at these schools.

Let me ask you, um, about, uh, housing conditions of US military installations. Um, a comprehensive survey not long ago reported that 97% of service members and their families reported habitability issues with their military-provided home, like toxic mold and damage, the survey also found that half of all requests to address dangerous conditions reportedly went unresolved. I don't have to tell you that that pattern is unacceptable. Along with some of my colleagues on this panel, Senator Hirono, Senator Ernst, in a bipartisan way, led the Military Occupation— Occupancy Living Defense Act, the MOLD Act, which requires strict health and safety standards, independent inspections, financial accountability for contractors in privatized housing to assure that military families are protected. Given that these problems have continued, What are you doing?

What reforms have you undertaken? Senator, thank you for your concern. I share your concern for military family housing. It's certainly something that is not under the personnel and readiness portfolio, but we have a seat at the table on the Barracks Task Force, and we do not own facilities or military housing, but I'm very very concerned about it, and I was just in the Pacific last week, and we had mold in housing, and we talked about it with families. I held sessions with families and other folks, teachers and parents and those that were living in housing, and it's a real concern.

And so I support what it is that you are discussing, and I'm happy to talk to my colleague, the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment that owns that portfolio. Well, it's a health problem. It's a readiness problem. That's right. It's a military family problem.

It's a mold problem, which is potentially fatal to children. And evidently our leadership isn't doing much about it. And in fairness, I should tell you, this problem has spanned various administrations. But now is the time to do something about it, and I hope you will. I visited housing in New London and Groton where mold problem has really presented a health problem to military families.

And if you're not the right person, I hope you will tell us who the right person is. Senator, Senator, I, I am the— I'm the right person. I'm here before you. I'm the right person, uh, in representing the Department, and I'll tell you, the Secretary made an announcement not too long ago. He's committing millions of dollars to remediation of mold across the force, across all the housing, and so, yes, I'm the right person because I'm sitting right here before you.

Well, let me just posit to you, we've now spent and acknowledged $29 billion on a war of choice It is a war that this president said would not become a forever war. It seems like now a whatever war becoming a forever war, but it is consuming at least a billion dollars a day. I suggest respectfully some of that money should be devoted to military housing. It would be a fraction of that total. But it is vital to readiness and preparedness, not just morale, but the health of our troops and their families.

And we know families serve along with our military men and women. And I could also suggest, by the way, that maybe instead of $1 billion for a ballroom, we could devote some money to military housing. As I said, Senator, the Secretary has pledged money to remediation of mold throughout the barracks and housing. Thank you. My time has expired.

Thank you for your answers to my question. Thank you. I'd like to follow up. Secretary Tate, do you think that people are actually listening? Because we— I think every state's having this problem in military bases.

You know, we can talk about it, but I know we're having a huge problem in our state of Alabama. And if you're not having a problem, then you don't have humidity in your state. Any state with humidity has huge problems. What do we need to do? I mean, do we need to specifically put in the NDAA something about mold, something about, you know, the treatment?

I mean, we can't continue. It's been happening since I've been here for 6 years, and we haven't made any progress. So what's your thoughts? Are people listening? Chairman, people are listening.

The Secretary has made a commitment of significant funds to remediation of mold, and we can certainly circle back to the committee with exactly what that commitment is, but the Secretary takes it very seriously. He is all over the world. He is in barracks. He is in family housing, and he has noticed this problem. He talks to troops and families routinely, as do I, and we know this is an issue and we have committed funds to it and we are resolved to resolve the issue.

How much in funds have been committed? You want to let me go next because my questions follow right up on what you're doing. Are you through, Senator? How much in funds have actually been committed and spent?

Senator, I need to get back with you on that number. I do not know the exact amount that has been committed to remediation of mold in family housing. I think the chairman is absolutely right. I've been on this committee now for almost 16 years. We've talked about it endlessly.

I have visited bases and military family housing, and it seems like The inaction is like the mold. It just keeps growing and it's there. As I said, Senator, the Secretary shares your passion and commitment to fixing the problem, as do I and my team. Senator Warren. Sir, I just want to follow up on this same conversation, if I can, with you, Secretary Tata.

It picks up on what the chairman said. Is anybody listening? And I just want to— I just want to focus in a little bit on that. So you're the top advisor on quality of life issues. Do you support Congress passing reforms in this year's NDAA that would protect service members and their families from retaliation for reporting housing companies that are forcing them to live with mold for months or even years on end?

Absolutely. Without equivocation, I support that. I really appreciate that. I want to triple underscore it as we go into our negotiations on the NDAA, because housing companies have been using nondisclosure agreements to try to muzzle tenants to keep our service members from being able to report. What's going wrong.

And we just don't want to see the same thing over and over where NDAs are used in different parts of DOD to keep those who are injured from being able to complain about their injury. And look, there may be a lot of different circumstances where people are being asked to sign NDAs, including people who have clearances. But those agreements should never preclude the ability of a service member to be able to complain to a commanding officer about what's happening in housing, to be able to complain to an inspector general, or to complain to Congress to point out wrongdoing. And I think it's critical that we make sure that whistleblowers of every kind, including spouses who are trying to protect their children in their housing, all the way to people who see something wrong in the department they're in. So let me ask you on that one, uh, Secretary Tata, should DOD be informing service members of their rights and responsibilities to report violations of the law and abuses even if they've already signed an NDA agreement?

I support any— Senator, I— or Ranking Member Warren, I support any action that protects a family member, a service member and their family to have appropriate housing and to lodge appropriate complaints regardless of the circumstances because they deserve the best. They're sacrificing their lives for our country and there should be nothing in their way of absolutely having the best housing possible. And I appreciate that, because like my colleagues here, we've been working to try to upgrade the housing for a very long time. Basically, it feels like ever since the private contractors came in and took over and figured out they could make a profit by shortchanging our military families. But let me remind you, Mr. Secretary, the question I was asking actually widened out the second time, and that is, this is true about housing, But I'm asking the question up and down the line.

The fact that people are being asked to sign NDAs, and it raises questions in other contexts about whether or not they have the right, for example, to report to an inspector general about something they've seen that is wrong. And if they can't report or feel like they can't report to an inspector general, then we don't get the information we need. We don't get the oversight we need. We can't expose the problems we've got. So I just want to make sure your support is not only that families ought to be able to report about housing, but anybody up and down our chain in the military should not be stopped by an NDA from reporting when they see something that is wrong, being able to report to an IG, being able to report to a commanding officer, being able to report to somebody here in Congress.

Are you in agreement on that? I know of nothing that restricts anybody from reporting anything to the Inspector General. Okay, and then if I can, I'll do one really quick, one more turn on this, and that is about the importance of making sure that our warfighters are operating systems that do not unnecessarily endanger their health or or their safety. For example, in 2011, two F-22 pilots raised concerns about becoming disoriented because of oxygen problems with the F-22, but their commanders said fly anyway. Both pilots went to Congress, one went to the IG.

The IG concluded that the pilot wasn't protected. The law protects troops, who come forward to raise concerns about public safety, but it isn't explicit if they want to prevent their fellow service members from being hurt or being killed. So I just want to ask, should we be alerting people to their rights to report and make sure that service members can come forward with concerns about troop safety?

Ranking Member Warren, broadly, any soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or Guardian that sees an issue with any kind of defective equipment or any safety issue should feel free to go to the chain of command, go to the Inspector General, go to whomever that can help solve that problem until that problem is solved. Yeah, I appreciate that. I very much support your conclusion here, but I want to remind you, the reason I'm asking these questions is because the problem is out there, and there are people who feel like they can't do that. And so I just hope we're going to do everything possible at DOD. We're going to get as much as we can in the NDAA to push in that direction.

And I also want to say thank you to Secretary Todd for your work on blast overpressure. I appreciate the questions from the chairman on this, and thank you to Secretary Bass for your point about supply chains. Other things I would have asked you about, but you guys have covered it. I really do appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you for your work. Secretary Tata, you can, you can tell we're all concerned about the mold because we all hear about it from our constituents. And, you know, I'm all for spending whatever we need on a trillion-dollar business, which is our military, but we always have to look at the blocking and tackling here, and that's the pay for our service members and taking care of our service members through healthcare or housing or whatever, 'cause I have people come in my office all the time talking about mold and their families are sick. I mean, sooner or later, whatever we do with the NDAA, if we just add a percent to personnel readiness, it would help this military so much. Sometimes it just gets overlooked, unfortunately.

It's not your fault, but now we're charging you with getting—. Chairman, I'm sitting here, so it's in my rucksack. I'm gonna carry it back. The Secretary, as I said, has recognized this a while ago, and he has committed funds to it, and he's got a team working on it, and I've got about 15 note-takers in here, including myself, and we are— this is one issue that we know that we need to get back to you on ASAP. Thank you, sir.

Remember the blocking and tackling. Yeah, that's right, and we're your mouthpiece while you're doing it. That's something we're good at. Secretary Kaine, or Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and to Ranking Member Warren, and to colleagues here. I want to follow up on just a point that Senator Blumenthal was making. In early March, when the Pentagon canceled the Senior Service Corps Fellowship Program, in at 13 colleges and pulled them and said it was because these colleges were weak and woke. That was the claim. One of the colleges was the College of William Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the oldest public university in the United States.

The educator Thomas Jefferson, a pretty important figure in our nation's history— William Mary's kind of key leadership position is the chancellor for a long time. Recently, that chancellor was Bob Gates, the former Secretary of Defense. And it was almost comical that I think that announcement came out of the Pentagon on the 3rd of March. On March 25th, militaryfriendly.com named William Mary a gold-level military-friendly school, the highest honor a university can receive, and also named the Raymond A. Mason School of Business as the top graduate school in the nation for military and veterans. William Mary, 1,600 military-connected students across campus, Army ROTC, Naval ROTC.

The Office of Student Veteran Engagement is the central hub for connecting military and veterans on campus. Since that opened 6 years ago, the graduation rate for military or veteran-connected students has exceeded the graduation rate for everybody else. But, but that's not all. William Mary also has the The Lewis Puller, Chesty Puller Veterans Benefit Clinic at the William Mary Law School that, where law students help veterans qualify for benefits they're entitled to under the VA. The Center for Military Transition at the Mason School of Business to help veterans transition to high-level civilian management positions.

The School of Education at William Mary has a unique program in the country. It's called the Clinical Mental Health and Military Veteran counseling program, which trains counselors to work with veterans and military families, and there's a whole lot more I could say about military friendliness at William Mary. Now, the announcement that William Mary is one of the 13 schools that's too wet, weak, or woke to have a senior fellowship kind of struck the campus almost as, is this April Fool's Day? There was only one such fellow at William Mary at the time, so it's not like this was a huge dent to the university, but for a college that has had such a prominent role in American military history and is winning awards for being a military and veteran-friendly campus, it kind of felt like a gratuitous slap, and I just wanted to ask Secretary Tator or anybody is like, what's weak and woke about the College of William Mary? Senator, thank you.

I appreciate your support of our military, and it's been 20 years since we bumped into each other in Afghanistan. When you were governor.

Notably, everything that you read except for the fellowship program stays with William Mary. The ROTC, all of that stays. We are realigning the Senior Service College Fellowship in a different direction for professional military education. Notably, George Mason stays, and, and, you know, quite frankly, the Hayden Center there, they're not super super supportive of the administration, but they've stayed and they met the criteria. And so this was an objective assessment of education institutions and—.

Can I just say about Secretary Tatum on that objective assessment? If the announcement was we're realigning and maybe William Mary only has one of these fellows, so it's not like a core part of the William Mary mission, they got these other things, or if the announcement was about some objective criteria, certain universities meet it, certain universities don't. That sounds like a realignment and analysis, but the announcement that we're pulling 13 schools because they're weak and woke, that was the headline around the country. That's the headline that the William Mary alums and the students and the folks who are working so hard with the veterans military families had to be confronted with, and when they're running the ROTC program and the veterans benefit program and the military families counseling program and they're winning awards from national publications, it just seemed like a gratuitous and unnecessary insult, and I doubt you were the person who assigned that label to William Mary. You're a Virginian and you know how important William Mary is to Virginia, but it just, It was almost comical that this happened at the same time as William Mary is being lauded for national publications for how much they do for our nation's military.

I'm gonna ask a second question, and this might be, Secretary Tata, for you, or it might be for somebody else, but this is something that I think I may offer some amendment about in the NDA process. The SecDef recently recently announced reforms to the Chaplain Corps that would remove visible officer rank insignia from chaplain uniforms. The argument was the change would reinforce the idea that chaplains are chaplains first and officers second. But I've heard from an awful lot of people in the Chaplain Corps, and they've argued that, hey, I earned my rank. I earned my rank, and just like I could wear a Chaplain Corps insignia just like somebody else could wear the insignia that might signify what their MOS is in the military.

Chaplains are saying if I've earned the rank, I ought to be able to carry the insignia on my uniform. I'm trying to understand what is the problem that's trying to be solved here because I think a lot of our chaplains feel like when you order me to take off my rank insignia, you know, you're almost, kind of devaluing the work that I've done to get to the rank that I've earned. So could you explain that a little bit? 'Cause I think I may try to bring up an amendment about this in the course of the NDA, but what's the justification for that? Thank you, Senator, for that question.

I'll take a shot at answering, then I'll turn it over to Secretary Dill as well. The bottom line is a former paratrooper battalion commander, air assault brigade commander, and Deputy Commanding General and all the troops in Afghanistan. Sometimes, frequently perhaps, young soldiers see a captain, major, lieutenant colonel rank and they're a little concerned about going to an officer versus a chaplain. And I believe that that was a large part of the aesthetic change that the Secretary directed. To get back to the ministerial duties and not counseling but ministering to our troops, the faith-based troops that want to come to the chaplain.

And I don't care if it was the captain that was a chaplain for me as a battalion commander or the chief of chaplains of the Army, I still called him chaplain. And I don't care what faith they were, I still called them chaplain. Does anybody else want to Do you want to add to that? 'Cause I kind of have a follow-up response. Yeah, so I'll let Secretary Dill take that on.

Senator Kaine, I appreciate the chance to speak to this. Very personal issue to me as well. My father's a pastor. I served for many years and very grateful for the chaplains. I echo Secretary Tata's point.

Absolutely, there are young service members that are gun-shy about approaching senior personnel in general. I would be disappointed to hear a chaplain express that type of reaction about their rank, some— a phrase that you shared to say like, "I earned that rank." That is the case, but I absolutely see the role of a chaplain as being a servant of the troops. And the fact that they have that rank I think should not at all impact their primary concern to be just as Secretary Tata said, to care for the spiritual needs of the service members. You know, I often— when I served in Special Forces, I often did not wear my rank. Never did I have a feeling that I was no longer a captain in the Army or that someone had disrespected me, and I wasn't in a chaplain's role.

In fact, you know, they are always both a chaplain and an officer regardless of what people see on their chest. And how strong is it to be able to see the symbol of their religious service and the servant leadership position prominently on their chest to let service members know this is who you can come to talk to, to have your spiritual needs addressed. And as you may know, Senator, this policy from the Secretary is not stripping chaplains of their rank and not even depriving them of the chance to wear that rank on a uniform, but not in the working and utility uniforms when they're out there ministering to the troops. Yeah, and so let me respond back to that. Our troops go to a lot of folks for pretty personal advice.

They go to medical professionals. They go to lawyers, JAG lawyers, for advice. We don't deprive somebody who's in the military in a medical MOS of their ability to wear their rank when they are providing service to troops. We don't provide JAG officers who are providing legal counsel on incredibly sensitive matters cases of the ability to wear their rank when they're providing services to their troops. We don't provide mental health professionals who are uniformed— we also have obviously civilian mental health professionals— we don't provide mental health professionals who are uniformed and tell them, listen, you're not supposed to wear your rank when you're providing services to your troops.

And so I, I think there's a little bit of a double standard here that I can understand I understand why we've received outreach from chaplains on this. Their sense of having earned the rank is not an entitlement mentality. It's that they joined this all-volunteer military and they're proud of their service. And when they feel like they alone are being told you have to remove your rank insignia when you're interacting and doing the job that you're doing for the US military, feel singled out in a way that they can't understand. It's helpful to hear you, you know, to kind of describe the rationale, and this is something that, you know, we can take up more as we go forward in the next month.

The last thing that I wanted to ask, and I never assume budgetary decisions are made, you know, by the person that happens to be sitting across me at the table. I get budget recommendations are made, they go all the way up the chain, and you Usually it's the president's team and OMB that's kind of maybe the final arbiter, but I have mentioned at Armed Services Committee hearings that it seems odd that the budgetary request to increase the defense budget from $800 billion to $1.5 trillion, give or take, does not include a pay raise for 800,000 civilians who work in the military. There's a bonus pool, I get that, there is a significant and well-merited and well-deserved pay raise for uniformed members of the DOD family, and that's good, and I hope we do that. But to not include any pay raise for the civilian 800,000, which is I guess maybe about 30% of the DOD family, that strikes me as if— well, if money was really tight, I might get it, but if we're jumping from $800 billion to $1.5 trillion, I think that sends a signal that is kind of a challenge. You have an awful lot of DOD civilians who are working side by side with uniformed folks every day.

These guys will get the big raise and these guys and gals won't get any raise. I think that could create some morale challenges, and especially when you consider that the DOD civilian workforce is heavily a veteran workforce. An awful lot of the DOD civilians are people who've served, you know, could be 8 years or could be a full career in the military, and then they move into a DOD civilian position, and so it's my hope, and this is, again, I'm not assuming that any of this was your recommendation. I mean, I suspect all of you would like to see a whole lot more done in a whole lot of areas, but I'm hoping that our colleagues, when we sit down and grapple with this significant, request in the top line, think about the fact that this 800,000 civilian component of the DOD does really, really good work, and we ought to be sending them a message that we recognize that. And so with that, Mr.

Chair, I yield back. Thank you. Secretary Tata, oversight. We're getting ready to go into our markup, our NDAA. Anything any of you want to say?

Any need or whatever we can think about going into the markup next month. We'll start down here, just if we missed something. Chairman, Ranking Member, Senator Kaine, I appreciate your comments on civilian workforce. I talk frequently about the professionalism of the PNR career civilians. One of the things we just did was we rewarded the top 15 GS-15% and within PNR, I said make it GS-15 and below, because SESs get a bonus, up to $25,000, and I was in Korea last week with my good friend General Xavier Brunson, and his team lined up all the civilians that they had given bonuses to, and they said this was life-changing, this was a sea change in how we treat our civilians, so that bonus pool that you referenced, Senator, is very, very important, and certainly we appreciate your support of our civilians and we appreciate our career civilian workforce.

And to the Chairman and the Ranking Member, we appreciate having this conversation. We dedicate to you to answer all of the questions that you might have for the record, and I will turn over the rest of my time to my teammates here that I work very closely with. Can I just say one thing about this guy? So before I knew him, I knew his dad, who was a beloved member of the Virginia General Assembly for a very long time representing Virginia Beach, and his nickname was Coach. Everybody called him Coach Tada, and he was a member who was really revered on both sides of the aisle.

And I first met the Secretary when he was serving in Afghanistan, and as governor I went to visit our Guard troops, and I think it was at Bagram Air Force Base. I don't know if it was at Bagram, and you stopped when you saw my last name and you said, "Are you Coach's son?" And, and, um, I said, "Of course." And, uh, you're getting me misty-eyed here, Senator. Good man, good man. Secretary Deal, any follow-up? Chairman Tuberville, I appreciate that question, the opportunity to speak on the department's needs, the Primary thing I would point to would be fully supporting the President's budget request.

That request is how we get after so many of these quality of life concerns, from the well-deserved pay raise for the troops, to funding childcare, to helping spouses find employment, and then many other things in my colleagues' portfolios as well. So that would be my major request, and of course we always appreciate the chance to work with your staff as you examine these issues in markup and come to us and give us a chance to provide some context. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Bass. Chairman Rankin, member, I just want to thank you for your continued support.

Obviously, military health system equals readiness. I have 20 years in the military. Both my girls were born in the healthcare system and I received care at Fort Belvoir. So obviously this is a, a very important issue for our military members. And I look forward to continuing to work with, with this committee.

Thank you. Secretary Todd. Chairman Tuberville, thank you very much. Um, yes, as you look forward to moving ahead, I think one key thing that we can look at is, as we work with the services on blast overpressure requirements, they've identified many requirements, but the only folks who put money on it in the, in the palm for FY27 was SOCOM. So what we would like to do is ensure that We emphasize to the services that if you're gonna identify these requirements, that you put a number on it in your POM request, because just looking at the numbers estimated required for FY27, it's about $85 million, and then those things are multiplied over the FY depth.

So yes, they understand there's a requirement, we understand there's a requirement, we put money on it, what's available to us, so does SOCOM, but to emphasize to the services that if they do have this requirement, to please budget for it, Also, as you look at aviation mishaps throughout the force and responding as we have been to the, to the tragedy of January 2025, we've been looking very deeply across the force and we're finding that the availability of funds in a timely manner through a formal budget will help our commanders and leaders in the field implement their flying hour programs, be able to plan for maintenance, scheduled maintenance and unscheduled maintenance step of maintenance and buy the repair parts they need. So we're hoping that— we know the continuing resolutions happen quite a lot, but they do limit our folks in the field to be able to implement these programs, so reduces flying hour programs, safety training, undermines retention because aviators want to fly, and if they can't do it in the military, they'll do it somewhere else. So we really hope that we can get some support there to make sure they have dedicated funding, and we're hoping to somehow emphasize to the services not to reduce your flying hour programs to meet other requirements, because it does undermine safety and readiness across the force. Thank you, Chairman Tupperbill. Thank you very much.

This has been good. I hope somebody got something out of this, but we do appreciate all of your service. We might went over a little bit of time today, but this was very informative, If we can help in any way, let us know. Thank you. Adjourned.