Ranking Member Courtney Opening Statement: Posture & Readiness of the Mobility Enterprise Hearing

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Joe Courtney (CT-02), Ranking Member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, delivered the following opening statement at today’s Seapower Subcommittee and Readiness Subcommittee joint hearing, “Posture and Readiness of the Mobility Enterprise.” To download a video of his opening remarks, click here.

Full Remarks

Thank you, Chairman Kelly, and I also want to begin by associating my remarks with your words of condolence and sorrow particularly over the loss of the KC-135 aircrew and all the families who have lost servicemembers in the war with Iran. 

This Committee has jurisdiction over the tanker program and the work of its pilots and crews who do so much important and complex operations for our national security, and their service, which sometimes is maybe not that well known, deserves all of our support and appreciation for what they do, not just for our armed services but also for our country. 

I want to welcome both witnesses here as well, General Reed and Mrs. Reed for being here. Our new MARAD Administrator Steve Carmel, we had a great visit a few weeks ago, and I’m very excited about the fact that someone with your incredibly strong background in industry is at the helm of this position. I think a lot of us all think alike, and hopefully, we’re going to do good things together. So again, thank you for your appearance today. 

We hold this hearing every year, and sometimes it does feel a little bit like Groundhog Day because of some of the recurring challenges are revisited year-in, year-out. What I would say is the good news is there is strong bipartisan support for recapitalizing the Sealift Program, which Trent mentioned in his opening remarks. And the same holds true for our Airlift Programs as well, which particularly, and hopefully we’ll talk a little bit about the C-17 age right now in terms of where that stands in terms of our future priorities.

This Subcommittee remains committed to moving these priorities as fast as possible. I would just again not for the record that in the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act, we were the first to mandate the use of Vessel Contract Manager models for ship construction and we’re seeing great success with the Merchant Marine training ship recapitalization program, and we have legislated over the last two years extending those authorities to the National Defense Reserve Fleet and also for Landing Ship Mediums, which the Secretary of the Navy just announced a couple of weeks ago that they are actually going to move forward, again using the VCM model which really, I think, shows great promise in terms of speed and affordability in terms of ship construction. 

I would just end by noting what I mentioned a moment ago which is that the C-17 cargo planes, which have been workhorses for decades, are starting to get a little long in the tooth, and we need to start having a real conversation, hopefully, it will spread to other committees and the defense committees, in terms of how we do not get in a situation where we are doing service life extensions ad nauseum for platforms that really cost a lot of money to keep in the air. 

I want to recognize our friends from the Readiness Subcommittee, who are very passionate and active in this portfolio, and with that, I yield back. 

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