WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke with Amy Henniger, President Trump’s nominee to be Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, Benjamin Kohlmann, nominee to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, and David Denton, Jr., nominee to be General Counsel of the Department of the Navy during their nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Sen. Tuberville spoke about the need to improve technology in the defense industry, address the challenges many military members are facing, and the importance of shipbuilding to our national security.
Read Sen. Tuberville’s remarks below or on YouTube or Rumble.
ON SPEEDING UP DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY TESTING:
TUBERVILLE: “Good Morning. Congratulations to all of you, and thanks for your service.
Ms. Henninger, Huntsville, Alabama is a major hub for innovations in hypersonic space warfare and quantum computing, just to name a few. I don’t need to tell you we’re already years behind our adversaries in these critical technologies.
What would you do to accelerate the testing and evaluation of critical technologies, especially as threats from adversaries, like China, continue to mature?”
HENNINGER: “Senator Tuberville, thank you for the opportunity to answer this. I am very familiar with Huntsville. I’ve been there many, many times to Redstone. I worked with the Cyber Red Team there, and I agree [that] it is a hotbed of innovation for the country. I appreciate all the smart people down there. And speed is very, very important. And speed with rigor is even better.
So, there are a number of levers in place right now that DOT&E can encourage the operational test agencies to employ. They include things like shifting left. They include things like taking advantage of training exercises or operational experimentation exercises. They include things like more tightly integrating DT and OT. The issue, in my view, is that those things are becoming our go-to for surge, and they should be everyday baseline in every test we do. So, I would like to see us move beyond surging with manpower and find […] more automated T&E, more digital methods, digital modeling, to speed and facilitate our test and evaluation processes.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. Our F-35 program seems to take one step forward and two steps back. How do we fix that?”
HENNINGER: “Sir, thank you for the question. I’ve been out of the office for four years and […] I’m not tracking exactly what’s going on with the F-35. I haven’t been briefed on it. I know the Block 4 is coming up. I know there’s a lot of classified work on that. I am slightly familiar with it because I worked on it previously. But one of my first steps back into the office would be to come up to speed on all these weapon systems, especially the classified ones that I’ve missed the last four years, and understand where we, where our baseline is and what we’re doing.”
TUBERVILLE: “You’ll find out pretty quick. Again, it’s a great machine. We just continue to have problems.
ON WORKFORCE PROBLEMS IN THE MILITARY:
“Mr. Kohlmann, DOD civilian workforce numbers have exploded in the last two decades while service end strengths have decreased, the tail is eating the tooth and has become an enormous burden to the American taxpayer. Under the previous administration, there were additional protections put in at the request of labor unions to make it harder to fire unperforming employees. What is your plan to fix this bloated bureaucracy?”
KOHLMANN: “Senator, thank you for the question. Coming from the private sector, there were many opportunities when we had to reassess our workforce to understand if it was at the correct size. I think it is appropriate for government to make similar assessments. I want, if confirmed, [to] get in the seat and understand where the core areas’ priority are and if we have to reshift, reshift allocations of civilian workforce from one area to the other or maybe re-rightsize areas as well. I think holding civilians and military personnel to very high standards and holding them accountable for poor performance is critical to driving the change that we need.”
TUBERVILLE: “Yeah. And also, with a lot of our military bases, brick and mortar is an absolute disgrace. I know […] you’re not going to be over brick and mortar, but we’re going to need your help to fix a lot of that. You know, we’re behind.”
KOHLMANN: “Senator, the state of how our service members live is critical to both retention and recruitment and I look forward to working with the Secretary of Navy. I know it’s a priority of his to make sure that our service members have the right places to live.”
TUBERVILLE: “Yeah, the quality of life should be a lot better than what it is for a lot of our families. And that’s important for recruiting as we were talking about earlier.”
ON ADVISING SENIOR LEADERSHIP IN THE NAVY:
TUBERVILLE: “Mr. Denton, the previous administration flouted the law and used the office [to seek] and many others to advance a political agenda. As the Navy’s top lawyer, can you commit to helping ensure the Navy will follow statute and advise senior leaders in an apolitical manner?”
DENTON: “Absolutely, Senator.”
ON SHIPBUILDING:
TUBERVILLE: “[Do] you see any problems? What do you think will be your number one agenda when you first go into office?”
DENTON: “Senator, I think that my most important priority, if confirmed, will be supporting Secretary Phelan’s most important priority, which is shipbuilding and getting the battle force back to where it needs to be. That’s going to be a full life cycle effort, throughout the entire acquisition and sustainment process, making sure that we are receiving value for dollar from industry, but at the same time, ensuring that we have the right authorities and the right resources deployed to sustain the fleet and make sure that we have the capabilities that our sailors and marines need to deter and, if necessary, win any fight that might come our way.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you.
Senator Wicker and I like to hear that word ‘shipbuilding,’ don’t we, Senator?”
WICKER: “Senator Tuberville, I don’t think we could have had a finer answer to that question.”
TUBERVILLE: “Exactly right.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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