Congressional Testimony
Congressional Testimony
Here's a look at documents involving congressional testimony and member statements
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American Farm Bureau Federation President Duvall Testifies Before Senate Special Committee on Aging
WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Special Committee on Aging released the following testimony by Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, from a June 4, 2025, hearing entitled "The Aging Farm Workforce: America's Vanishing Family Farms":* * *
Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Gillibrand, and members of the committee, including from my home state of Georgia, Senator Warnock, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.
I am Zippy Duvall, a third generation Georgia farmer and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, representing farm families in all 50 ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Special Committee on Aging released the following testimony by Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, from a June 4, 2025, hearing entitled "The Aging Farm Workforce: America's Vanishing Family Farms": * * * Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Gillibrand, and members of the committee, including from my home state of Georgia, Senator Warnock, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I am Zippy Duvall, a third generation Georgia farmer and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, representing farm families in all 50states and Puerto Rico. I am fortunate to follow in my father and grandfather's footsteps by taking over our family farm. Today, my son and I operate a beef cow herd, raise broiler chickens, and have restored the land that has been in our family for over 90 years.
The latest USDA Census of Agriculture revealed that nearly 40% of all farmers are at or beyond retirement age, while just 8% of farmers are under the age of 35. As older farmers outpace younger farmers, we should all be concerned about the future of family farms and the security of our food supply.
As this committee identified in its March 2025 report, "America's Aging Farm Workforce," there are many challenges facing the agriculture community, but there are also opportunities to support young and beginning farmers and help sustain the current agriculture workforce, including a new farm bill.
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Farm Economy and Farm Bill Reauthorization
I shared this with the Senate Agriculture Committee earlier this year, and the urgency has only increased since then. We need a modernized, five-year farm bill. Farmers and ranchers have faced unprecedented volatility since the last farm bill was reauthorized in 2018. A pandemic, record-high inflation, rising supply costs, and global unrest have hit family farms, making it harder for many to hold on. Sadly, the 2022 census showed the loss of over 140,000 farms in 5 years. That's an average of 77 farms per day.
This year, farmers will plant one of the most expensive crops ever. Due to rising interest rates, higher energy prices, and input costs that have gone unchecked, many farmers face the tough decision of whether or not to plant a crop. This is why an increase to the farm bill's Title I safety net is critical.
USDA's most recent Farm Sector Income Forecast has shown a $41 billion decrease in net farm income, down nearly 25% from 2022. Since crop prices peaked in 2022, they have taken a nosedive. Corn and wheat are down 37%, soybeans down 28%, and cotton down 22%.
At the same time, input prices have remained high. As compared to 2020, the cost to produce an acre of corn has grown by nearly 30% nationally. The combination of low crop prices and high supply costs has many farmers facing losses on every acre they plant. Despite these increased costs, 2024 payments to farmers are projected to be the lowest since 1982.
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Access to Credit
Additionally, farm debt is expected to continue to increase in 2025 to more than $560 billion. That's a half trillion dollars in debt. As farms continue to carry larger debt loads without increasing net cash revenue, they also experience worsening credit. In previous years, farmers and ranchers supported their credit with continuously increasing farmland values, but those increases have slowed. As farms lose options to support continued borrowing and use up their limited working capital, many farms may close before reaching the point of bankruptcy.
Our members support streamlining farm loan programs to better meet the evolving needs of farmers and ranchers. This includes ensuring loan amounts reflect rising farm-level expenses and reducing burdensome application requirements for young and beginning farmers to better align with standard agricultural lending practices. We also support prioritizing access to direct and guaranteed loan funds for applicants who are either new to farming or experiencing temporary financial hardship due to adverse ecological or industry-related conditions. We commend USDA Secretary Rollins' Small Family Farms Policy Agenda. It highlights the need to reform loan programs to streamline delivery and increase program efficiencies.
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2025 Tax Legislation
At a time of great economic uncertainty, farmers, ranchers and many other small businesses are facing the prospect of what may be the largest tax increase in American history. Failing to extend the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) would take billions of dollars out of farmers' pockets when they have no dollars to spare. One provision that is crucial for keeping family farms going from one generation to the next is the increased estate tax exemption. If the exemption level reverts, many families risk losing their farms. Congress must find a way to create a stable business environment by making permanent the expiring TCJA provisions and ensuring America's farms and ranches can continue to provide the food, fiber and renewable fuel this country needs. Farm Bureau was pleased to see progress made with the House passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act two weeks ago.
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Farm Labor
Of course, we cannot paint the full picture on this issue without talking about the employees who work alongside us. For many of us, they are like family, and they are aging right along with us. That's a problem because most Americans don't have any interest in working on a farm, despite big investments in recruitment. Congress must confront that reality and do something about it, starting with necessary reforms for our agricultural workforce. That means modernizing our outdated system by making crucial improvements to the H-2A guest worker program and recognizing farmworkers as essential to feeding and fueling our country.
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AFBF Young Farmers and Ranchers Program
Finally, it can be difficult for young farmers to find peers to connect with and share ideas. Farm Bureau's Young Farmers & Ranchers (YF&R) Program creates space for that connection--fostering collaboration, leadership development, and community for young leaders. I would not be where I am today without Farm Bureau's county, state, and national YF&R program. I made lifelong friends and gained leadership skills that continue to serve me well today.
Farm Bureau is proud to support young agricultural leaders, but we need your partnership to ensure they can thrive.
A country that cannot feed its people is not secure, and to meet the growing demand for food, fiber and renewable fuel at home and abroad, we must ensure the continued strength of our farming and ranching communities. I look forward to working with you to support the next generation of farmers.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today's hearing. I am happy to answer any questions the committee has.
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Original text here: https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/b866b016-e2b3-1a6d-0671-7bd8866554af/Testimony_Duvall%2006.04.25.pdf
Acting Chief of Naval Operations Kilby Testifies Before Senate Appropriations Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense released the following testimony by Adm. James W. Kilby, acting chief of naval operations, from a June 24, 2025, hearing entitled "A Review of the President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Navy":* * *
Chairman McConnell, Ranking Member Coons, distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the posture of the United States Navy. On behalf of our Sailors, Navy civilians, and families deployed and stationed around the world, thank you for your continued leadership and support. Thank ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense released the following testimony by Adm. James W. Kilby, acting chief of naval operations, from a June 24, 2025, hearing entitled "A Review of the President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Navy": * * * Chairman McConnell, Ranking Member Coons, distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the posture of the United States Navy. On behalf of our Sailors, Navy civilians, and families deployed and stationed around the world, thank you for your continued leadership and support. Thankyou for ensuring our Navy-Marine Corps team remains ready for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea as well as for recognizing in law our Navy's role in the peacetime promotion of our national security interests and prosperity. Your commitment guarantees that our Navy is postured and ready to deter aggression, defend our homeland, win decisively in war, and deliver peace through strength.
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250 Years of Naval Power
The United States Navy provides our Nation with the sea power and sea control needed to preserve our way of life. The Navy's ability to access, maneuver, and command the seas that border our homeland enables our security, prosperity, and economic wealth.
For 250 years, the Navy has promoted and protected America's interests worldwide by manning, training, and equipping our forces to perform a wide range of missions on the ground, in the water, sky, and in space. With a battle force of 292 ships and an average of 100 ships and 70,000 Sailors and Marines at sea on any day, the Navy provides ready, combat-credible forces to the Joint Force in competition, crisis, and conflict. Where 90% of the global economy moves by sea and 95% of international communications and 10 trillion dollars in financial transactions transit via undersea fiber-optic cables each day, our Navy keeps open the sea lines of communication which fuel our economy.
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The Geopolitical Landscape & Operational Successes
Over the past year, our Navy has been on the maritime frontlines. We create space for diplomacy, but are always prepared if it fails.
Strategic Deterrence. The Navy's fleet of Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines conducted uninterrupted strategic deterrence patrols around the world. As the most survivable leg of the nuclear triad, they protect our security and provide an assured second-strike capability to adversaries who threaten our homeland, national interests, and the American people. These persistent operations underwrite national security and provide the strength, flexibility, and breadth of options that national leadership requires.
Defending the Homeland. Border security is national security. The Navy remains focused on defending our homeland and interests in the Western Hemisphere. As part of Operation SOUTHERN GUARDIAN, our naval forces are providing domain awareness and regional maritime security through operational deployments to the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) areas of responsibility (AORs).
China. While acting urgently to strengthen homeland defense, we are also laser-focused on deterring China and strengthening deterrence across the Indo-Pacific region.
Over the last twenty years, China has undergone an unprecedented military buildup, modernizing capabilities and improving proficiencies across all warfare domains. The evolving joint capabilities and concepts of the People's Liberation Army continue to strengthen China's ability to revolutionize its maritime capability to rival and contest our own. In a short time, China has tripled the size of its navy, which is expected to grow to 395 ships this year and reach 435 ships by 2030.
China continues to aggressively use its naval forces against its neighbors to assert illegal territorial claims in the South China Sea, as the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) increasingly operates beyond the First Island Chain. To support the PLA Navy's expanded operational reach, China has sought an expansion in overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to enable greater military power projection and sustainment.
China's ambition and commitment to supplant the United States as the preeminent global power is clear. Recent PLA-N invasion rehearsals and live-fire exercises near Taiwan and around the region, joint exercises with Russia off the coast of Alaska, and snap live-fire drills during the circumnavigation of Australia illustrate a pattern of belligerent and threatening behavior to U.S. and allied interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. Navy remains committed to working with allies and partners in the region and around the world to reestablish deterrence and defeat this threat. We fly, sail, and operate in accordance with international law, conduct freedom of navigation operations, and build interoperability with key allies and partners to maintain a free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific.
Middle East. The Navy remains ready to find and destroy those who threaten our Nation and our allies and partners. In the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean, our ships, aircraft, and submarines are in combat defending American lives and assets and protecting waterways critical to the global economy. During the past 21 months, over 25 Navy ships, including 5 carrier strike groups and an amphibious ready group, have deployed to the U.S. Central Command AOR to respond to attacks from Iran and the Iranian-backed Houthis and stabilize the region. We have carried out dozens of offensive strikes against Houthi aggressors in Yemen to prevent further attacks and successfully defeated hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles targeted against American military and commercial ships, civilian mariners, and Israel.
Empowering Allies and Partners. The Navy remains steadfast in our commitment to enhance security, stability, and deterrence with our allies in the Indo-Pacific and around the world. Through joint exercises, force posture initiatives, and cooperative sustainment efforts, we are strengthening interoperability and ensuring a collective approach to shared security challenges. By deepening these partnerships and promoting burden-sharing, we enhance collective resilience, strengthen deterrence, and ensure our forces remain postured to respond to any contingency.
The Navy has participated in 49 exercises with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific in 2024 alone, most notably the Rim of the Pacific - the world's largest international maritime exercise. The month-long exercise brought together 29 Nations, 40 ships, 3 submarines, and more than 25,000 personnel to build interoperability and demonstrate the importance of our allies and partners in countering Chinese expansionism.
We continue to support the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) enhanced security partnership and we value the contributions of allies and partners to the global security environment. Royal Australian Navy Sailors are currently serving on American submarines and in the nuclear training pipeline. For the first time in the fall of 2024, U.S. Sailors assigned to the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land (AS 39) executed planned and emergent maintenance on the USS Hawaii (SSN 776) alongside their Royal Australian Navy counterparts. This successful maintenance period demonstrated our clear progress towards establishing the Submarine Rotational Force - West, from which our most capable undersea strike assets will operate forward in the Indo-Pacific by 2027, imposing strategic dilemmas on China through multiple avenues.
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Navy's FY26 Strategy-Driven Budget Request
The Navy's budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2026 funds a strong, global Navy that is postured and ready to defend our homeland, deter adversaries, and prevail in war - prioritizing China as our most consequential opponent. It is a thorough, strategy-driven budget that is focused on delivering resources to ensure our naval forces remain ready, resilient, flexible, and agile to execute national tasking and preserve peace through strength.
The FY26 budget executes our overarching strategic guidance. It fully funds the Columbia-class submarine - the Department of the Navy's highest acquisition priority - and addresses the modernization of the nuclear architecture that underpins it. The FY26 budget allocates resources to our operations and readiness accounts that will keep our naval forces forward, postured, and ready to defend our national interests, and prioritizes resources to fund the Submarine Industrial Base (SIB). Further, it supports the United States Marine Corps Force Design and maintains a mandated fleet of 31 amphibious ships.
However, the Fiscal Responsibility Act and realized inflation forced hard choices on the Navy. The FY26 Budget Request focuses on warfighting, lethality, and readiness for the near-term fight. It builds a deep bench of combat-ready platforms and invests in the key platforms, munitions, and sensors needed to meet our congressionally-mandated peacetime mission and ensure our warfighting advantage in this decade. It delivers the quality of service our Sailors deserve.
The FY26 Budget Request focuses on achieving seven key tasks necessary for warfighting advantage in the near term. It enhances our long-term advantage by investing in key future capabilities and enablers. Recognizing our industrial constraints, the Navy endeavors to foster an adaptive, accountable, and warfighting culture; invest in the health, welfare, and training of our people; and strengthen shipbuilding and the maritime industrial base.
Binned under the priorities of the Secretary of the Navy, these seven key tasks are:
Foster an Adaptive, Accountable, and Warfighting Culture
1. Ready our platforms. Through force readiness improvements, we will achieve and sustain an 80 percent Combat-Surge Ready posture for ships, submarines, and aircraft.
2. Operationally integrate robotic and autonomous systems. We will integrate proven robotic and autonomous systems for routine use by the commanders who will employ them.
3. Fight from the Maritime Operations Center (MOC). Prioritizing the Indo-Pacific, all fleet headquarters will have ready MOCs certified and proficient in command and control, information, intelligence, fires, movement and maneuver, protection, and sustainment.
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Invest in the Health, Welfare and Training of our People
4. Recruit and retain talent. We will achieve 100% rating fill for the Navy active and reserve components, man our deploying units to 95% of billets authorized, and fill 100% of strategic depth mobilization billets.
5. Deliver quality of service. We will provide the quality of service our Sailors deserve, focusing on quality unaccompanied housing for our Sailors, quality medical and healthcare, adequate access to childcare and childcare development centers, and eliminating involuntary living aboard ships in homeport.
6. Invest in warfighter competency. We will have reliable, realistic, relevant, and recordable Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC)-enabled architectures to train Navy warfighters to successfully execute high-end warfighting in Joint and fully informed training environments.
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Strengthen Shipbuilding and the Maritime Industrial Base
7. Restore critical infrastructure. Prioritizing the Indo-Pacific, we will assess, prioritize, and program resources to repair infrastructure directly supporting Defense Critical Assets and Task Critical Assets to enable worldwide fleet operations and force generation.
The events of the last two years in the Red Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Indo-Pacific demonstrate the enduring importance of American naval power. America's Navy is a key pillar of national power and a critical part of our Joint Force's ability to maintain peace through strength. Achieving these seven key tasks will ensure a lethal, combat-credible Navy that contributes layered effects to the Joint Force and can fight and win our Nation's wars in the maritime environment. The Navy welcomes the White House Office of Shipbuilding and Executive Order Restoring America's Maritime Dominance as well as proposed legislation and looks forward to engaging with all stakeholders - the White House, Congress, industry, and allies and partners - to remain the world's most combat-credible Navy. There is no time to waste.
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Key Task #1: Ready our Platforms
In an era of rapidly evolving threats, the readiness of our national maritime industrial base to build ships, aircraft, and weapons is essential to maintaining a technological and strategic advantage. We are providing industry with a clear demand signal based on our procurement strategy and working with our industry partners to improve our maintenance processes.
Strategic Deterrence Investments. The Navy is prioritizing our Nation's top defense acquisition priority and the Navy's contributions to our strategic deterrence: the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the second life extension of the Trident II D5 Ballistic Missile, and the E-130J Take Charge and Move Out aircraft.
Surface Fleet. The Surface Force remains the backbone of our Navy's ability to visibly project power, ensure maritime security, and uphold freedom of navigation across the globe. Our Surface Fleet provides persistent presence, rapid crisis response, and deterrence alongside allies and partners.
Amphibious Fleet. The Navy is committed to maintaining a 31-ship amphibious force structure. Last year, the Navy awarded multi-ship procurement contracts for three LPDs (LPD 33-35) and one LHA (LHA10). Congressional authorization in the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allows the Navy to pursue a Non-Developmental Vessel this year as the initial Medium Landing Ship Block 1 to meet the Marine Corps' critical mobility need for Marine Littoral Regiments in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Submarines. Submarines ensure maritime dominance via unparalleled stealth and strategic deterrence. Their ability to access and operate undetected in hostile environments allows for critical intelligence gathering, force projection, and the protection of national interests. The Navy has an undersea warfighting requirement for 66 attack submarines. We are well below our requirement, with 47 currently in inventory. As of June 2025, 24 Virginia Class Submarines have been delivered and 14 are under contract. Five Columbia class submarines are in construction.
Submarine Industrial Base (SIB) Investments. The Navy is investing in our undersea warfare capability. We must send a strong signal to and increase the health of industry, build our supply chain resiliency, and bolster our long-term capacity, all while ensuring readiness for today.
This is a national effort. The SIB, including the supply chain that supports material readiness for all submarine classes, consists of over 15,000 industry partners spread across every state in the country. The Navy will continue to partner with industry to make investments that will deliver Columbia and Virginia-class submarines to replace the aging Ohio-class and achieve our required force structure of 66 SSNs.
Air Wing of the Future (AWOTF). The AWOTF will consist of multi-generation manned assets with advanced weapons and capabilities, that will conduct manned-unmanned teaming with the Navy's MQ-25 Stingray and collaborative combat aircraft (CCA).
Right now, the Navy is working on the CCA initiative, which is a key component of the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems and focuses on developing unmanned air vehicles that can operate from aircraft carriers. This effort enhances the capability of carrier air wings in air superiority, anti-surface warfare, strike, and many other missions. By adopting a modular, data-driven, and scalable approach, the CCA program will redefine naval air power. With a focus on interoperability, government-owned systems, and data-driven outcomes, we are developing an aircraft system to enhance situational awareness, lethality, and range for our 4th and 5th generation platforms in complex, contested environments.
Last year, the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) completed all installation milestones and became the world's first operational unmanned carrier aviation air warfare center, while the first class of MQ-25 air vehicle pilots completed initial training at Unmanned Carrier-Launched Multi-Role Squadron Ten. The MQ-25 provides the right combination of refueling, autonomy, and seamless carrier deck integration to meet the U.S. Navy's goals.
Taken as a whole, these critical long-term investments mean America's naval aviators will project sea power across the globe throughout the next century.
Long Range Fires. To ensure our forces remain equipped with cutting-edge capabilities to counter diverse threats, the Navy is focusing on key munitions investments in long-range fires and terminal defense. Our continued investment in air, surface, and subsurface launched weapons including Tomahawk, Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, and the Standard Missile family, provides multi-mission capabilities and extends range against aerial and surface targets. The Navy is dedicated to expanding production capacity for these critical munitions by investing in factory automation, source material availability, obsolescence management, and supply chain resilience.
The Navy recognizes our dependencies on capabilities from other services to enable long-range fires, particularly in the areas of sensing, effects, and communications. As such, the Navy supports continued investment and collaboration in these areas to ensure a unified and effective approach.
Sealift Investments. The current strategic environment demands a naval logistics enterprise capable of assuring readiness and sustainment at speed and scale for the Joint Force. The Navy is modernizing our logistics enterprise to be more agile, resilient, and capable of sustaining combat effectiveness in contested environments against peer adversaries. To address the challenges of refueling, rearming, resupplying, repairing, and reviving inside weapons engagement zones, we are investing in new equipment for our expeditionary forces, survivable 'logistics over the shore' systems, and new capabilities, such as rearming at sea.
Military Sealift Command (MSC), with the broader maritime industry, is facing a civil service mariner (CIVMAR) manning shortfall that jeopardizes its ability to sustain peacetime logistics operations and wartime readiness. CIVMAR shortfalls have reduced MSC's ability to operate its government owned / government operated ships, which include our combat logistics force. Consequently, MSC has implemented a Risk Reduction Plan that places 17 ships pier side, temporarily taking them out of operation to reprioritize the CIVMAR workforce onboard to higher priority operational ships. The Navy has launched a comprehensive MSC Workforce Initiative to increase CIVMAR manning and quality of life. This effort targets retention and recruitment, CIVMAR quality of life improvements, improved Human Resource policy and systems, and pay reform to achieve parity with private maritime industry.
The Navy is committed to meeting Strategic Sealift mobility requirements by recapitalizing the Ready Reserve Fleet and the Maritime Prepositioning Force with a combination of used vessels and new construction vessels. To do so, the Navy is building a Sealift Campaign Plan to focus on a whole-of-strategic-sealift approach across the entirety of sealift prepositioned and surge assets. A key element of this plan is continued implementation of the congressionally-authorized Buy-Used Program. To date, the Navy has procured seven ships through the Buy-Used Program and plans to procure three in FY26, which will meet the congressionally mandated limit of ten.
Readiness Investments. Our enemies will not wait for our new platforms to be delivered. We must therefore generate more available ships, submarines, and aircraft from the fleet we have today.
We are increasing the readiness of our platforms by reducing maintenance delays and embracing focused and deliberate approaches to manning, training, modernization, and sustainment. Our goal is to achieve and sustain an 80% combat-surge ready (CSR) posture by 2027. These efforts began with naval aviation in 2018, improving the operational availability of tactical aircraft. We are now scaling our efforts across all aviation platforms, as well as in the surface and submarine communities.
CSR is a certification for air, surface, and submarine platforms to execute combat missions. It is distinct from Global Force Management, which provides forces in response to Combatant Commander demand, balanced with available supply. CSR-certified units meet minimum requirements for material condition, training, manning, and armament.
To increase our combat surge readiness, we are reducing the number of platforms in depot maintenance through improved business and maintenance practices, as well as certifying training earlier in the force-generation cycle. Type Commanders have been designated as the single accountable officers to ensure their respective forces achieve 80% CSR. This accountability, along with the above reforms, is driving a fleet-wide cultural shift towards aggressively prioritizing readiness.
To sustain a high operational tempo, we must maintain a robust inventory of spare parts. The Navy is shifting from a "just in time" logistics model to "just in case" - a model that ensures Sailors have the right parts on hand to keep their systems operational, lethal, and ready. The Navy's budget for spare parts has increased by 36% since FY20. This critical funding ensures that our ships, submarines, and aircraft are prepared to respond to commander tasking or adversary action and are not sidelined by equipment casualties. The Navy appreciates Congressional support for funding to improve the parts inventories that keep our warfighting platforms operational.
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80% CSR for Aviation Community.
The Aviation community is at 66% CSR (as of 17 June 2025).
Achieving and sustaining 80% CSR in the aviation community requires improved maintenance and training for both aircraft carriers and carrier air wings, which certify independently. The Navy has improved the number of mission capable tactical jets and is scaling proven methods across all type/model/series of aircraft. Aircraft carrier availability remains the primary constraint for reaching 80% aviation CSR. We are increasing aircraft carrier availability through performance improvement in our public shipyards. Recent investments in our naval shipyards have focused on workforce expansion, workforce training, optimizing maintenance schedules, and implementing advanced planning and logistics management practices.
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80% CSR for Surface Community.
The Surface community is at 62% CSR (as of 17 June 2025).
Achieving 80% CSR in the surface community is critical to our overall force readiness and our ability to control the seas. The Navy has improved significantly in surface ship depot maintenance, from 41% on-time completion in FY23 to 68% in FY24. The surface Navy concurrently reduced the maintenance backlog, the accumulated 'debt' of deferred maintenance, from $2.3 billion in FY22 to $1.9 billion in FY24. Furthermore, the Navy was able to extend the service life for 12 destroyers and 3 cruisers based on improved material condition, maintenance processes, and Life Cycle Health Assessments.
The Navy is committed to improve the material readiness of the amphibious fleet. To that end, the FY25 Shipbuilding Plan maintains the legally mandated inventory of 31 amphibious ships. In 2024, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps tasked the Navy and Marine Corps to develop a comprehensive plan to improve the readiness of our amphibious warfare ships. The Navy is implementing this plan.
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80% CSR for Submarine Community.
The Submarine community is at 72% CSR (as of 17 June 2025).
Production and maintenance delays are keeping our submarines in the shipyard and driving up costs. The Navy is working closely with all stakeholders to drive innovation and target investments where they will yield the greatest results in the shortest time. We are improving our production and maintenance processes by embracing industry best practices such as outsourcing certain work, increasing material on hand prior to work commencing, and pushing project management authority as close as possible to the worker on the shop floor.
As part of our broader investment in the maritime industrial base, the Navy is focused on improving the submarine industrial base across six lines of effort: workforce development, supplier development, shipbuilder infrastructure, strategic outsourcing, manufacturing technology, and government oversight. Since FY18, Navy has budgeted for over 725 supplier development projects with more than 300 suppliers across 33 states to add capability, capacity, and resiliency to the supply chain. The Navy has also invested in Virginia Class spare parts and has ordered contingency material to have on hand for inspection-based work. Those efforts are yielding results: Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard completed both USS Hawaii (SSN 776) and USS Minnesota (SSN 783) availabilities on time, returning both submarines to the fleet in July 2024. Navy will continue to focus on planning and materials until this becomes the standard.
Our four public shipyards - Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard - are vital to our effort to achieve 80% CSR submarines. I have visited each shipyard and seen the work being done by the 37,500 engineers, tradespeople, and support personnel who serve there. The workforce of our public shipyards is committed to improving the readiness of these critical assets, and the Navy is committed to supporting their efforts through improved compensation and work environments.
At the Navy's request, DoD conducted a wage survey in the Norfolk Tidewater region to achieve pay parity between Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the surrounding private shipyards. The survey showed that in the early 1980s, new wage-grade workers earned four times the minimum wage. Now, those same workers earn approximately one and a half times the minimum wage. This effort resulted in an $80 million wage investment in FY24, and retention has begun to improve. We must continue to invest in shipyard infrastructure, expand and enhance the SIB, increase productivity, shorten maintenance timelines, and reduce our maintenance backlog to stay ahead of our competitors and prepare our submarine force for the threats of tomorrow.
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Key Task #2: Operationalize Robotic and Autonomous Systems
The Navy is taking full advantage of the innovative technology available from American industry to rapidly deliver needed capability to our warfighters. We are focused on prototyping, experimenting, and integrating Robotic and Autonomous Systems into the Fleet through efforts such as Replicator and in close collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Disruptive Capabilities Office. We are leveraging established partners and new entrants in this sector. OPNAV is institutionalizing the lessons learned across the Fleet and using them to speed the capability delivery cycle.
Last year, we delivered the first 24 small unmanned surface vessels to a newly established Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) Squadron to jumpstart learning how to best command and control robotic platforms and integrate them into the Fleet. With the stand up of USV divisions, we are enabling a culture shift to rapid development and integration. Further, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's USX-1 Defiant completed construction in February and is currently undergoing commissioning trials. The Navy will take ownership of Defiant after her extended at-sea demonstration. Defiant will be the Navy's first Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) that is designed from the ground up as an unmanned ship and will operate in a fully unmanned fashion.
We recently launched the Navy's first extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle; follow-on developmental and operational testing is being conducted this year. We continue to develop and demonstrate long-duration, long-range, payload-capable unmanned underwater vehicles ready for persistent operations in dynamic maritime environments for undersea, subsea, and seabed warfare. In the air domain, we put more Triton MQ-4C aircraft on patrol, giving us operational orbits in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East. We have also continued development of the MQ-25, which will enable CCA employment and our AWOTF, as previously mentioned. We have commenced CVN integration through in-port testing.
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Key Task #3: Fight from the MOC
To stay ahead of emerging threats, we remain committed to Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), which means dispersing the Fleet while concentrating its effects. That means distributing, integrating, and maneuvering people, platforms, munitions, and data across time, spectrum, and space. At the center of how we fight in this distributed manner is the MOC, the Navy's approach to fleet-level command and control. MOCs must act like the conductor of an orchestra - integrating with the Joint Force, allies, and partners so we can enhance our decision advantage while synchronizing distributed sensors, shooters, and effectors across an increasingly large and complex multi-domain battlespace. We are prioritizing the manning, training, and equipping of our MOCs in the Indo-Pacific before scaling to our other Fleets.
Information dominance and decision advantage are the key enablers in this new form of maneuver warfare. To ensure warfighting advantage, we must guarantee decision superiority for our warfighters. Fight from the MOC lines of effort will further expand Navy's contribution to DoD's Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) initiative. Through Project Overmatch - the Navy's contribution to CJADC2 - we are fielding the connective tissue for today's Fleet, while developing and experimenting with what is needed in the MOC and our hybrid fleet. Navy investments have begun delivering software-defined networking to increase the available pathways to connect and share information, as well as containerized software applications that aid decision makers and planners in executing DMO.
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Key Task #4: Recruit and Retain Talent
Our Sailors stand ready as a lethal fighting force to deter or confront any adversary. After missing our FY23 recruiting goal, we raised our goal for FY24, and exceeded that goal by contracting 40,978 future Sailors, the most since 2003. As a result of the Navy's comprehensive strategy to increase recruitment through sustainable process improvement, we are on pace to surpass our FY25 recruiting goal of 40,600 this month. This performance, coupled with increased retention, will help us advance towards our primary manning goal of 100% enlisted rating fill by the end of 2026 and will directly reduce our gaps at sea.
We continually apply data-driven processes and explore innovative strategies to attract qualified, motivated individuals. The Navy is maximizing its pool of recruits with the Physical and Academic Future Sailor Preparatory Courses, as well as by expanding our reach through partnerships and traditional and mixed-media marketing. Increasing access has not lowered the standard - every recruit must complete the same training at boot camp and meet all qualifications for his or her assigned rating.
The Navy is dedicated to retaining our most capable Sailors; retention is a critical component of achieving our end-strength goals. To that end, we leverage both monetary and non-monetary incentives, including Selective Reenlistment Bonuses, suspension of High Year Tenure Length of Service gates, the Retention Excellence Award and Best in Class program, and enhanced exit and milestone surveys which focus our retention efforts. As a result, enlisted retention remains healthy. We exceeded our FY24 retention benchmark forecasts in all retention zones. The Navy continues to meet or exceed its retention benchmark forecast for FY25.
While officer retention remains a challenge in specific career fields, we appreciate the continued support of Congress in enabling our monetary retention incentives in areas such as Aviation, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Surface Warfare, Submarine Warfare, Naval Special Warfare, and Health Professions Officers. We will continue to work with the committees to solve this challenge.
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Key Task #5: Deliver Quality of Service
Quality of service (QoS) improves force readiness. The Navy is investing in barracks construction and renovations to repair poor and failing unaccompanied housing (UH) facilities.
Childcare capacity and housing quality are crucial, as they contribute directly to positive work environments for our Sailors and their families. The Navy provides high-quality childcare programs but has insufficient capacity, particularly in fleet concentration areas. Improvement requires a comprehensive approach including strategic staffing, new facilities, and leverage of community resources. From our January 31, 2025 data, enrollment in Navy childcare centers is up from 76% of total capacity at the start of FY23 to 88% today, and staffing has grown from 75% of demand at the start of FY23 to 87% today. The waitlist for Navy Child Development Centers (CDCs) has shrunk from 3,400 at the start of FY24 to 2,500 as of January 31, 2025. The Navy has also expanded the Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood program, which provides fee assistance for families that are geographically dispersed or face long waitlists for on-base care, from 6,500 spaces at the start of FY24 to over 9,000 today.
To improve CDC staffing, the Navy deployed 150 supplemental staff across our child and youth programs through a contract with Utah Tech University. This resource fills staffing shortfalls during peak summer and Permanent Change of Station seasons at both domestic and overseas locations. In order to attract quality candidates, the Navy also expanded the staff childcare discount for Direct Care employees. Employee use of the discount increased from 22% in FY23 before the expansion to 32% by the end of FY24.
The QoS Cross Functional Team has made significant efforts to improve Sailor QoS in the Hampton Roads area at Newport News Shipyard. Huntington Ingalls Industries has been awarded the build contract and facility design for the Carrier Refueling Overhaul Workcenter Building which will include Morale, Welfare, and Recreation spaces, private counseling areas, game room, gym and showers, meeting rooms, a Chapel, and a micro market. Construction has begun with an estimated completion date (ECD) of mid-2026. The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery has been working on consolidated medical support to include laboratory, pharmacy, immunizations, and X-rays in the Bank Building at Norfolk Naval Shipyard with an ECD of early 2026. All four of the planned 24/7 Micro-Marts have been opened as of February 2025, providing Sailors better access to high quality, affordable food at all hours of the day. Finally, a parking plan has been finalized to include the construction of parking garage 1, UH/PPV parking and housing, and 37,000 square feet of programmable space for wellness and medical facilities.
We also owe our Sailors quality housing. Too many of our barracks are in poor condition. At the end of FY23, 25% of Navy Permanent Party UH bedrooms had a Building Condition Index of 'poor.' We have driven this pool down to 21% as of the end of FY24, but still have work to do. Our long-term strategy will recapitalize our facilities to eliminate 'poor' housing through focused investments and privatization. The Navy increased its Restoration and Modernization investments to repair inadequate UH and is conducting a comprehensive review of UH to guide future investments.
The Navy is committed to taking care of Sailors. We recognize that primary prevention is our best defense against suicide or sexual assault. In 2024, I signed the Navy Medicine Enterprise charter, codifying Navy Medicine's central role across the Navy.
To deliver great care, we need medical warfighters. We are grateful to Congress for supporting provisions in the FY25 NDAA that increased certain health profession bonuses and authorized promotion boards to consider greater numbers of Nurse Corps officers for advancement. These measures tie into Navy Medicine's bolstered recruiting and retention efforts, which are showing positive results.
We are proud of our success in placing active-duty mental health providers closest to the fight, with 42% of mental health providers embedded in operational units. Mental health resources are available from a wide array of sources, from installation counseling centers to global virtual health platforms. We remain committed to ensuring Sailors and their families have access to quality health care in the face of flat budgets, increasing private sector costs, and the recruitment and retention impacts of the national shortage of healthcare professionals.
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Key Task #6: Invest in Warfighter Competency
To prevail in war, we must train how we will fight. Naval forces need a reliable, realistic, relevant, and recordable LVC architecture to train all warfighters, whether deployed or pier-side. More than 50% of the Fleet already possess this capability. We are focused on expanding LVC to all communities to ensure we can rehearse and operate seamlessly across all domains, echelons, and functions, including manned-unmanned teaming. In February 2025, we successfully demonstrated initial LVC operational capability for Information Warfare from shore to ship.
To prepare our warfighters for the future fight, the Navy is prioritizing Sailor education. The Navy is committed to Naval University System wholeness, giving our midshipmen, officers, and Sailors across the Fleet every opportunity to succeed. We continue to see great results from the United States Navy Community College with over 3,500 Sailors, Marines, and Coastguardsmen currently enrolled in eight different academic programs. Additionally, through other initiatives like LVC training, Ready Relevant Learning, and the Fleet Learning Continuum, the Navy is ensuring our Sailors have the professional knowledge, skills, and training to be ready to meet and excel in its national security tasking.
The Navy's wargaming enterprise is a critical component of our analytic efforts, shaping how the Navy understands joint and combined warfighting challenges, refines warfighting concepts, identifies capability and capacity gaps, and prioritizes investments to close those gaps. The Naval Contested Logistics War Game (NCLWG) series is a key component of the Navy's wargaming effort. NCLWG included direct participation from our allies Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. These efforts enhance interoperability, align sustainment strategies across domains, and ensure our logistics enterprise meets future operational demands. The Navy is integrating sustainment into operational games to ensure a more holistic approach to analyzing the warfighting functions.
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Key Task #7: Restore Critical Infrastructure - Focusing on the INDO-PACIFIC
The Navy sustains and projects operations from its shore installations. The Navy must have a robust and effective shipbuilding industrial base composed of shipyards, original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, ship designers, and supply chains to support our warfighters and warfighting. We are continuing our investment in installations, shipyards, the SIB, and the weapons industrial base to ensure they are resilient and mission-ready and can generate and sustain our warfighters and our warfighting. We are focused on infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific to ensure the Navy and Joint Force can access our installations, dry docks, and other facilities to generate and sustain ready forces for a potential conflict against China. We are targeting investment to the infrastructure that is most impactful for our warfighters, at the expense of other shore facilities.
We are also providing large investments in the health of the industrial base, providing a clear signal to industry. We are exploring ways to invest in industry and increase shipbuilding capacity through multi-year, block buy purchases and investments in workforce development and supply chain resiliency. This requires a whole-of-government effort. The Navy is pulling every available lever to expedite the necessary ships, aircraft, and weapons to our warfighters. To deliver the Navy the Nation needs, we are continuing to partner with industry, academia, the interagency, and allies and partners to improve our ability to maintain existing platforms and solve our most pressing challenges.
Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) Investments. The Navy is committed to this once-in-a-generation investment in our four public shipyards. SIOP is crucial for eliminating maintenance delays of new nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, helping to reach 80% CSR, and ensuring our carriers and submarines can leave the yards on time. SIOP has completed 45 projects across 4 shipyards, an investment of over $1 billion. We have four dry dock construction projects currently under construction. In addition to recapitalization, SIOP optimizes physical shipyard layout for efficiency and to align construction with warfighting requirements. Notably, dry docks at Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyards will be upgraded to meet seismic resiliency criteria.
An additional 49 SIOP projects worth $6.0 billion are under contract. The Navy is taking an integrated approach to installation resiliency by emphasizing initiatives in energy-, water-, and cyber-resilience. SIOP projects improve operational efficiency and strengthen adaptability to current and emerging threats.
Installation Investments. The Navy is investing in our piers, airfields, aviation facilities, maintenance facilities, and core utilities to meet the Nation's needs. Because shore infrastructure enables global logistics, the Navy is repairing and updating critical waterfront utilities, making structural repairs to wharves and docks, and building and repairing taxiways and hangars. We are investing in our critical utility systems, upgrading water, wastewater, and electrical generation, distribution, and treatment capabilities to improve cybersecurity, resiliency, quality, and reliability and minimize risk to mission. For aviation maintenance, the Fleet Readiness Centers (FRC) Infrastructure Optimization and Modernization Program (FIOP) follows a holistic investment strategy to integrate all infrastructure and equipment investments. FIOP optimizes maintenance, manufacturing, modification, repair, and overhaul infrastructure at naval aviation depots to ensure equipment readiness and improve material availability as fast as possible. Full Congressional support for FIOP will help the Navy maintain our momentum.
The Navy is examining the feasibility of establishing new bases from which to operate in the Indo-Pacific, including in the Arctic, to diversify the Navy's Pacific posture and better position the Navy to respond to increased Russian and Chinese patrols in the high north. We are continuing our investments in Guam, repairing and improving structures damaged by Typhoon Mawar, restoring the Guam breakwater, and supporting the fielding of the Guam Defense System.
Weapons Industrial Base (WIB) Investments. The Navy is investing in critical munitions and building on the FY23, FY24, and FY25 WIB and procurement investments. Our warships must be equipped with the right weapons and payloads for a potential fight and have replenishments nearby. We are investing to expand capacity and add new suppliers across our weapons portfolio, especially of rocket motors, warheads, and engines. Private industry is contributing to this expansion via direct investment. Presidential Drawdowns and unplanned combat expenditures over the past two years have strained Navy's inventories; we must increase our investments to replenish them. The Navy remains committed to working with industry to identify manufacturing challenges and investment opportunities to streamline testing and on-board non-traditional contractors. Additionally, the Navy is investing in its organic industrial base to ensure we can accelerate munitions production in the immediate future.
Red Hill. The Navy remains committed to rebuilding trust with the people of Hawaii and service members, civilians, and families affected by the Red Hill fuel leaks. Joint Task Force-Red Hill has safely removed 104.6 million gallons of fuel - over 99 percent of previously held fuel reserves. We continue to execute the Navy's tank closure plan and associated environmental remediation. The Navy team in Hawaii continues to work alongside the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Hawaii Department of Health to provide water that meets all Federal and state drinking water standards, while transparently communicating with elected representatives, community groups, and the public.
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Update on Navy's Audit
The Navy is committed to achieving a clean audit opinion in 2028. In November 2024, I issued clear direction through NAVADMIN 225/24 to reinforce the importance of the audit to all echelons of the Navy, making it clear that the audit requires ruthless transparency to critically evaluate data and metrics to determine whether we are on track to meet our goals. A clean audit will also demonstrate to the American taxpayers and Congress that we are managing the country's business and funds responsibly. While we have made progress toward this goal, the most difficult part of the journey lies ahead. We must proceed with focus and urgency, leveraging lessons learned from ourselves and other Services to improve our audit readiness and mission effectiveness. Achieving a clean audit will take a whole-of-Navy effort.
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Conclusion
The Navy continues to meet its Title 10 mission - we are organized, trained, and equipped for the peacetime promotion of the national security interests and prosperity of the United States and for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea. We must achieve and sustain our readiness goals to deliver a lethal Navy capable of defending American interests around the world.
To maximize the availability of our ships, submarines, and aircraft, we will continue to improve our maintenance practices. We will continue to innovate, and to integrate innovation into today's Fleet. We will train and equip our MOCs to direct tomorrow's fight. We will continue to recruit and retain talented, dedicated Americans. We will deliver the quality of service that our Sailors and their families deserve. We will invest in our warfighters through innovative training, and we will restore our aging infrastructure.
Consistent and predictable funding is foundational to meeting our readiness objectives, and budgetary instability creates a cascade of challenges. I look forward to working with you to support our Sailors, civilians, and families. The credibility of our Nation's deterrence rests upon ready and capable ships, aircraft, and submarines. The investments we make now will shape the global maritime balance of power for the rest of this century. I could not be prouder of the Navy team that guarantees our prosperity and security, deters our adversaries, and is ready to fight and win. The Navy will continue to work alongside all stakeholders to deliver the Navy the Nation needs. On behalf of our more than 600,000 active and reserve Sailors, Navy Civilians, and Navy families, I am grateful to this committee and to your colleagues in Congress for your steadfast commitment to the United States Navy.
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Original text here: https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/admiral_kilby_testimony.pdf
Acting Assistant Secretary of Army for Installations, Energy & Environment Waksman Testifies Before Senate Armed Services Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support released the following testimony by Jeff L. Waksman, acting assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, from a June 25, 2025, hearing entitled "Update on Matters Within the Jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretaries for Energy, Installation, and Environment in Support of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act":* * *
Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Hirono, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Army's ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support released the following testimony by Jeff L. Waksman, acting assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, from a June 25, 2025, hearing entitled "Update on Matters Within the Jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretaries for Energy, Installation, and Environment in Support of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act": * * * Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Hirono, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Army'spriorities for installations, energy, and environment. In order to deliver on the President's promise to deliver peace through strength, we must have strong, resilient, and reliable military installations and infrastructure. Our ability to protect and project combat power from installations around the world is no longer guaranteed or routine. Installations must be agile and adaptable, matching capabilities to threats to deter our adversaries and demonstrate strength around the world.
Over the last year, the Army has made meaningful progress to increase the adaptability, resiliency, and quality of our installations, but more needs to be done to fulfill our commitment to our Soldiers, their families, and the American people. Working with Congress, we will continue to build on our efforts in 2026 and beyond.
We must ensure predictable resourcing to enable our installations to modernize at pace with our Army's transformation efforts. In support of the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance, we must first target our investments to be in the right locations and in the right types of facilities. These investments will help to ensure our warfighters have sufficient operational and support facilities. Second, we must transform our installations and services to ensure they are not only reliable, but also resilient--able to adapt to new missions while quickly recovering from disruptions and overcoming new and emerging threats. Our installations must stand ready to support not only the Army, but the entire Department of Defense, no matter the mission--whether at home or abroad. Finally, our installations must be efficient and effective to ensure that taxpayer investments are returning value in building warfighter readiness.
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Facility Investments
The Army uses a deliberate process to prioritize military construction and other facility investment, which is used to produce a Facility Investment Plan (FIP)--a prioritized list of projects, by component, under consideration from which the Army develops infrastructure requirements. This prioritization considers several factors from our commanders and senior leaders, including the relative importance of various facility types, the installation's location, and the installation's primary mission. The FIP is used to inform the Army's annual budget request.
The Army continues to work with the other military departments and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to ensure our infrastructure investments are synchronized with the department's mission. We acknowledge the establishment of minimum FSRM requirements for the coming years in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the Army looks forward to working with Congress to develop a strategy to resource this mandate.
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Unaccompanied Housing - Barracks
Our first and highest priority is to take care of our warfighters and ensure they have proper facilities to conduct training and live. The challenge we face is a substantial backlog of deferred maintenance that built up over many years. The Army, with the support of Congress, has significantly increased annual investment over the last few years to address this backlog, but these investments sometimes take a number of years to realize their effect. This year, for the first time, the Army will open the annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey to Soldiers living in our barracks to help assess whether investments in our barracks are improving Soldiers' quality of life. In addition to making long-term investments, the Army is also taking immediate action in situations where living conditions are unacceptable with Commanders moving Soldiers into appropriate living conditions.
Investments in the Army's permanent party barracks with construction and modernization continues to grow. The Army plans to program a portion of the sustainment funding to meet 100% of the requirement for permanent party barracks to prevent accelerated degradation of these facilities.
The Army continues to look for new and innovative ways to maximize our facility investments to improve our barracks quality and reduce the costs to taxpayers. Last year, the Army initiated a privatized barracks project at Fort Irwin, California, where a life-cycle cost analysis showed it is more cost-effective to have a private company build and manage the barracks than to build government-owned barracks. The Army currently has five other locations with privatized barracks, with another two locations under development.
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Army Family Housing
Taking care of our warfighters is also taking care of their families. The Army takes care of our families whether their warfighter is at home or not. The Army continues to make significant progress to provide high-quality family housing--both government-owned and privatized.
The Army has made significant investments in overseas family housing, which is mostly government-owned housing. In FY 2025, the Army has planned $752 million for operations, maintenance, leasing, oversight, and construction. We thank Congress for supporting the Army's request to extend certain authorizations in the FY 2025 NDAA--these extensions are critical as the overseas coordination required for some of the projects takes longer than domestic projects.
In addition to ensuring high-quality government-controlled housing, the Army is working to provide the high-quality privatized housing our Soldiers deserve. Over the next three years, privatized housing providers will invest over $2.4 billion for the construction of over 2,000 homes, renovations of 7,000 homes, and other developmental work. Over the last two years, the Army has implemented several oversight reforms to better hold privatized housing providers accountable for maintaining the high-quality privatized housing our Soldiers deserve. These efforts have included strengthening and clarifying enforcement language in ground leases, conducting house-by-house inspections, implementing quality assurance of construction and renovations, and developing a standardized quality assurance maintenance program that will be applicable to all privatized housing companies doing business with the Army.
By the end of FY 2026, the Army will complete third-party inspections of all our family housing inventory. When our inspections reveal deficiencies in work performed, the Army privatized housing provider or installation Director of Public Works reacts quickly to rectify the situation via the housing provider. The Army also conducts an annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey to assess the quality of our homes and keep housing providers accountable for maintaining those homes. I am pleased to report that last year's survey results showed a notable increase in tenant satisfaction from prior years.
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Safety and Occupational Health
The Army needs confident, trained, and fit Soldiers to generate readiness and project combat power. Those capabilities are diminished when our warfighters are taken out of the fight due to injury or unsafe facility conditions. The Army continues to work on decreasing preventable injuries, especially in training environments. Additionally, our investments in modern and safe facilities reduce preventable health risks posed to our Soldiers.
The Army is working to resource and implement the tactical vehicle data record pilot program enacted in the FY 2023 NDAA. These recorders will provide critical data to support mishap investigations and will give us the capability to proactively improve driver and passenger safety by identifying hazards for mitigation. The recorders will also provide the potential for daily monitoring of each vehicle and will give individual feedback for improving driver performance.
Additionally, the Army continues to review the potential risks of blast overpressure on our warfighters and civilians. The Army conducts health hazard assessments for equipment - to include weapon systems - as part of design, testing, and new equipment training. The Army utilizes scientific collection and measurement methods to develop and publish standardized training procedures, providing leaders and Soldiers guidance on proper use, required mitigation steps, and potential risks related to blast overpressure. When new scientific methods or tools are developed or monitoring indicates emerging injury trends, the Army reassesses and publishes updated training guidance.
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Installation Resilience
Modernized installations, which include ensuring access to reliable power and water, are vital to assuring mission success. Given our installations primarily rely on commercial utilities for energy and water, we must ensure they are protected from external disruptions and can quickly recover. Vulnerabilities, both natural and man-made, associated with interdependent electric power grids, natural gas pipelines, and water resources and systems can jeopardize installation security and mission capabilities.
To assess these potential risks to our water and energy systems, 98% of our installations have completed Installation Energy and Water Plans to identify requirements and risks, and to develop mitigation techniques. For example, the Army is deploying microgrids on installations, conducting Black Start Exercises (BSEs), and testing the cyber domain through the Cyber Readiness Resilience Exercises.
In addition to decreasing installation operational costs, efforts to reduce energy and water consumption increase resilience as less water and energy are needed to meet mission requirements if service is disrupted. The Army reduced energy use by 17.8% since FY 2003, and reduced water consumption by 25% compared to a FY 2007 baseline--a reduction of 13.5 gallons of water per square foot.
Army has explored power generation assets that can be combined with specific circuitry to allow the islanding of our installations, providing resilient energy for critical functions, including deploying microgrids. Army currently has 32 operational microgrids at 25 installations.
To test our energy resiliency, BSEs allow installations to experience the impact of a power outage from a service disruption. The Army has completed 20 BSEs, including, eight exercises in FY 2024, and is planning six more in FY 2025 - two of which have been completed and five in FY 2026. In FY 2024, Army conducted our first cyber resilience readiness exercise at Fort Carson and is planning an additional exercise in FY 2025.These exercises focus on understanding the potential effects and consequence of cyber vulnerabilities on energy and water systems that support critical missions, to include power denial as a primary consequence.
To be more efficient with taxpayer investments in our installations, the Army's Office of Energy Initiatives (OEI) continues to explore public-private partnerships that reduce the need for appropriated funding and employ a wide array of energy technologies in support of installation mission operations. The OEI looks to leverage the value of underutilized installation land for the development of energy-generation facilities that will enhance energy resiliency. Rather than a monetary rent payment for leasing installation lands, the Army typically seeks in-kind consideration to satisfy the fair-market value requirement. For energy-generation facilities, this includes the ability to prioritize power from the project to support critical missions during grid disruption. The Army's collaboration with private industry (both public utility companies and independent power producers) has resulted in approximately $677 million of private-sector investment and over $764 million of avoided operational costs for the Army.
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Mitigating Risk and Building OCONUS Resilience
The Army is doing comprehensive energy and water resilience planning at installations worldwide, including in the U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) regions. These forward installations are critical to assuring the Army's readiness and maintaining warfighting skills, with special emphasis on the unique threat picture and host nation requirements in each area. In USINDOPACOM, fuel logistics and vulnerable island locations present unique energy challenges. The Army is building energy resilience across USINDOPACOM by developing microgrids, implementing energy and water efficiency measures, and ensuring adequate fuel reserves to support operations during potential disruptions.
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Nuclear Energy
The Army continues to follow Congress's lead in exploring the viability of nuclear energy as a stable and reliable source of energy for our mission-critical operations. The FY 2019 NDAA directed the Department of Defense to develop a plan to deploy a small modular advanced nuclear reactor for installation resilience, which is being led by the Air Force. The Army continues to monitor the progress of the resulting pilot program. Meanwhile, the Army is quickly working to deliver on the President's directive in Executive Order 14299, "Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactors for National Security", to begin operation of an advance nuclear reactor on an installation by 2028. The Army expects to have additional details at a later date.
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Installation Management Efficiency
The Army still has a large inventory of closed installations that are experiencing increasing costs for environmental remediation before the land can be redeveloped. The Army continues to work to leverage private capital to complete this work so minimal costs are paid by taxpayers.
In FY 2025, the Army completed transfer of all surplus acres at Fort Gillem and Stratford Army Ammunition Plant. The Army also closed Pueblo Chemical Depot and is preparing to dispose of the 7,000 acres of excess land. We also thank Congress for enacting a provision in the FY 2025 NDAA to address the outcome for the former Army Navy Hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
For our current installations, the Army continues to use Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs), Utility Energy Savings Contracts (UESCs), and Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGSAs) to improve installation efficiency and lower facility operational costs across all utilities and services. The Army is working to award nine ESPCs and UESCs totaling $338 million in FY 2025. For FY 2026 and FY 2027, the Army hopes to award another 22 contracts with $570 million in private investment. Resilience enhancements remain a focus for ESPCs and UESCs, including a planned natural gas pipeline providing 16 megawatts of power generation at Fort Irwin and numerous industrial equipment upgrades to improve operational efficiency at Anniston Army Depot. The Army's 160 IGSAs include agreements for environmental services, waste management, and dozens of other community partnerships. Going forward, we intend to increase our use of ESPCs, UESCs, and IGSAs to reduce the long-term costs of our installations.
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Historic Housing
The Army thanks Congress for its assistance in streamlining the management of our historic housing inventory, which encompasses over 30,000 homes, and ensuring compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). Army installations and privatized housing partners may now implement management actions on the inventory of historic housing without further NHPA requirements. The Military Housing Association recommends other services look at the Army's successful programmatic approach to address their challenges in managing historic homes.
A few examples of the effectiveness of the Army's programmatic approach include $14 million in savings at Fort Leavenworth, $5 million saved replacing historic windows at Fort Belvoir, and over $2 million saved in roof replacements on historic homes at Fort Bliss. These savings and those from other renovations can be applied to current and future housing projects.
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Environmental Compliance and Remediation
The Army remains committed to addressing environmental remediation issues and protecting the environment from unnecessary contamination. The Army continues to look for ways to modernize environmental compliance and looks forward to working with Congress to address the growing costs of compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The Army recognizes that exposure to certain levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) pose a risk to our warfighters and surrounding communities. The Army acknowledges that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established maximum contaminant levels for PFASPFOA in drinking water and the Army will continue to prioritize actions to address drinking water wells impacted with impacts from its releases in a transparent and systematic manner.
The Army has been proactive in addressing PFAS releases on- and off-installation, including the adoption of a risk-based approach to prioritize actions at sites with higher PFAS levels first. This "worst first" approach is consistent with OSD guidance. The Army follows the federal cleanup process to investigate and assess if remedial actions are needed. Of the 345 installations where PFAS may have been stored, used or released, 235 installations are moving to the next, more-intensive level of investigation. Efforts to transition vehicles and facilities from aqueous film-forming foam to fluorine-free alternatives continue to be implemented across the Army to decrease PFAS exposure.
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Conclusion
Providing safe, reliable, and high-quality installations for Soldiers, families, civilians, and defense communities is critical to ensuring the Army can remain adaptable to mission requirements around the world. To maximize installation support of the Army's lethality, we must continually evolve facility investment programs to support efficient and modern installation management. This requires the Army to continue investing in quality of life and the resiliency of our installations and services.
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Original text here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/waksman_testimony.pdf
Acting Assistant Secretary of Air Force for Energy, Installations & Environment Saunders Testifies Before Senate Armed Services Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support released the following testimony by Michael E. Saunders, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy, installations and environment, from a June 25, 2025, hearing entitled "Update on Matters Within the Jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretaries for Energy, Installation, and Environment in Support of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act":* * *
Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Hirono, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support released the following testimony by Michael E. Saunders, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy, installations and environment, from a June 25, 2025, hearing entitled "Update on Matters Within the Jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretaries for Energy, Installation, and Environment in Support of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act": * * * Chairman Sullivan, Ranking Member Hirono, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provideyou with an update on Department of the Air Force (DAF) energy, installations, and environment programs.
Today, our nation finds itself in a strategic competition with our adversary China. The People's Liberation Army is expanding, modernizing, and diversifying its entire military-- including cyber, space, and nuclear forces--at a rapid pace to support revisionist goals and objectives. These developments pose unique and fundamentally new challenges for deterrence, and while conflict is certainly not inevitable, the risk of military confrontation is increased in this environment. This new strategic environment demands that we rebuild the lethal and ready force to provide the warfighting capability our nation needs to compete and win.
To that end, the DAF's Installation Infrastructure Action Plan (I2AP) is re-optimizing our installations to ensure the Air Force and Space Force can deliver combat power with the necessary speed, range, and intensity to deter adversaries and win decisively, if needed.
Throughout every stage of conflict, our installations serve as warfighting platforms and provide the bedrock for our readiness and lethality. They also address quality-of-life needs of our Airmen and Guardians while maintaining readiness to respond swiftly to mission needs, even in the face of attack. Indeed, the ability of our installation to fight through these challenges and quickly recover is critical to success. Our Airmen and Guardians depend on ready and resilient infrastructure, reliable on-demand energy, and safe environments to defend the homeland and deter our adversaries - and we are committed to providing them with nothing less.
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Installation Infrastructure and Readiness
The DAF relies on its Military Construction (MILCON) and Facilities, Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization (FSRM) programs to provide ready and resilient installations.
Yet, solely relying on direct investment at the currently budgeted levels is insufficient to reverse the longstanding trend of deteriorating facilities and failing infrastructure. Our installation portfolio of 177 installations, 69,000 facilities, and 183 million square yards of airfield pavement and is not sized to optimize the vital infrastructure of the current force structure.
Therefore, the DAF is re-optimizing its Air and Space Forces, including installations, to match the pacing threat while focusing on the Department of Defense's priorities to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild the military, and reestablish deterrence. However, approximately two decades of assuming risk in infrastructure investment, coupled with the burden of excess infrastructure, has led to a backlog of maintenance and repair requirements and degraded infrastructure. The Department's I2AP works to mitigate these challenges by setting clear objectives, goals, and key actions to align installations with critical mission capabilities; optimize vital infrastructure; and maximize mission assurance.
To achieve these objectives, the Department is instituting data-driven, proactive policies and streamlining processes. Examples include policies that centralize enterprise funding, focus on the most critical infrastructure, and prevent expenditures on unauthorized or excess facility spaces. The Department is also working to reduce costs to operate and sustain infrastructure through innovative cost-sharing and strategic Plant Replacement Value reduction initiatives.
These initiatives include the potential transfer of portions of installations to other government or commercial entities and expanding utility privatization where data shows it would reduce outages and improve utility system conditions. This strategic framework will guide investments towards modernizing mission critical infrastructure, enhancing resiliency, and curtailing longterm operating and sustainment costs.
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Excess Infrastructure
The DAF currently carries significant excess infrastructure along with a $49.5 billion maintenance and repair backlog that continues to grow. Since 1990, the Department has reduced in size considerably, including a nearly 40% reduction in Active Duty end strength and a 60% reduction in fighter squadrons, but it has only reduced its CONUS footprint by 15%. Moreover, roughly half of all infrastructure across the DAF is currently in a moderate or high-risk condition. While the DAF has prioritized its resources to keep critical mission generating infrastructure (e.g., runways) in good working order, such prioritization has come at the expense of our supporting infrastructure. For example, over 70% of utility infrastructure on DAF bases in the Indo-Pacific are in a high-risk condition. This problem is exacerbated by the highly corrosive tropical or arctic environments of many facility locations and by limited skilled local labor in others. Meanwhile, our buying power has eroded, with construction costs rising roughly 50% in the last ten years and far outpacing the annual inflation rate.
The DAF acknowledges the section 2680 in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025 requirement to fund infrastructure investment at four percent of plant replacement value by FY30. This will help us restore facility condition to acceptable levels, but we will struggle to meet this requirement in full without optimizing our inventory.
Despite these challenges, we are aggressively moving forward with our I2AP, which employs innovative approaches, leverages third party investment, and prioritizes resources to the most critical warfighting needs while driving down the cost to deliver and operate our installations. This includes solutions such as Enhanced Use Leases, Strategic Real Estate Opportunities, and Intergovernmental Support Agreements (IGSAs) that enable the DAF to partner externally with industry, communities, and other agencies for mutual benefits. These solutions also help us identify where we can transfer portions of our installations as a means of reducing our infrastructure sustainment costs.
For example, 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) converted Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts from a Fighter Wing to an Intelligence Wing in 2008. In 2025, we are finally optimizing the base to meet its current mission. When divestment of excess land is complete, it will represent approximately 90% decrease in acreage.
We are also increasing our annual demolition investments, targeting the removal of excess and severely degraded infrastructure. Moreover, the Department recently instituted a policy requiring all new construction and actions that result in adding square footage to our real property inventory to be offset with equivalent demolition or disposal in order to limit footprint growth and the associated sustainment responsibility.
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Military Construction
The Department seeks to execute MILCON investment to support the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance priorities by focusing on preparing our installations as warfighting platforms and deterring our sole pacing adversary.
A significant focus of our MILCON program is to support the bed down of new weapon systems to rebuild the military and reestablish strategic deterrence. Programs like the Sentinel Ground Based Strategic Deterrent and the B-21 Raider recapitalize two thirds of the Nation's nuclear triad and ensure we maintain a credible and capable nuclear deterrent capability. Our program also supports Combatant Commanders, with a focus on Indo-Pacific Command, and their most critical requirements to build a more lethal and ready force. Finally, our program seeks to recapitalize current mission facilities that have outlived their useful life or no longer meet mission requirements. We are also working to enhance quality-of-life for our Servicemembers and their families with new Child Development Centers and dormitories.
Additionally, the Department seeks to leverage innovative approaches within our MILCON program to maximize taxpayer dollars and the Department's ability to deliver combat power. We are utilizing Other Transactional Authority provided by Congress to pilot innovative construction techniques and project delivery constructs. The on-going $3 billion rebuild of Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, incorporates lessons learned from the storm which destroyed it and novel approaches to installation planning and construction. This Installation of the Future will be resilient, efficient, and innovative and will serve as a model for future construction.
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Facility Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization
DAF analysis reveals that the current budget can sustain approximately 65% of the enterprise. The balance of the infrastructure is equivalent to approximately 19 installations, further evidence that existing infrastructure investments are spread too thin to effectively maintain the DAF enterprise. Maintenance and repair funding levels have not kept pace with the rising cost of construction, leading to compounding sustainment costs, widespread degradation, and increases in infrastructure issues that adversely impact mission execution. Aging facilities and antiquated control systems further compound these threats, making installations vulnerable to adversaries and placing mission generation at risk.
To mitigate this, the I2AP guides DAF FSRM program investment to address the facilities and infrastructure that are most critical for generating warfighting capability, while also improving quality-of-life initiatives for our Airmen, Guardians, and their families.
Sustained progress requires a long-term vision. The minimum FSRM funding thresholds established in the FY25 NDAA, ramping to 4% of the Plant Replacement Value by FY30, are not merely about maintaining the status quo - they represent critical and strategic investments for reversing years of accumulated infrastructure degradation and reducing the substantial deferred maintenance and repair backlog. This will help us restore facility conditions - but these investments must be applied to an optimized portfolio to ensure they enable our installations to remain ready, resilient, and credible warfighting platforms that our national security demands.
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Spaceport of the Future
Our Spaceport of the Future (SOTF) program is an all-encompassing initiative where the Space Force is taking a comprehensive approach to look at all factors contributing to range costs and launch throughput. SOTF focuses investments into our aging launch infrastructure to ensure the DoD's ability to provide world-class launch capability to public and commercial partners.
These investments are necessary to preserve and advance national security interests and reestablish deterrence with capacity to support launch and test operations on demand.
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Sentinel Program
The Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), first deployed in 1970, is the world's oldest land-based strategic missile system and must be recapitalized to provide the Nation a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent capability. The Sentinel program recapitalizes 450 missile launch facilities across multiple states and upgrades command and maintenance infrastructure to ensure operational readiness through at least 2075. Following the Office of the Secretary of Defense's thorough review and certification of the program, the Sentinel program is moving ahead. The DAF is continuing requirements definition, assessment of acquisition strategies, exploration of the design trade space, and seeking ways to generate competition to drive cost and schedule risk down. Notably, the program office recently decided to minimize risk by pursuing the construction of new silos instead of reusing the existing silos.
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Installation Resilience
DAF installations, both enduring and expeditionary, are warfighting platforms from which the DAF successfully executes its core missions. DAF installations are the foundation of combat readiness and must be capable of supporting the lethality and readiness of the force.
Strengthening installation resilience, reducing reliance on vulnerable energy sources, and rapidly fielding emerging technologies are essential to defending the homeland and sustaining deterrence.
The DAF is utilizing third-party financing and innovative partnerships with industry that modernize our utilities and drastically reduce system outages at our bases. We are also continuously reviewing our utility privatization portfolio to enhance resilience across our installations. The DAF has privatized 25 percent of our utility systems and continues to explore the viability, costs, and benefits of additional systems at several bases. These vital investments deliver improved utility infrastructure, reliable systems with redundancy for emergency preparedness, and greater installation energy resiliency.
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Energy and Water Resilient Infrastructure
In line with recent Executive Orders on Unleashing American Energy and Declaring a National Energy Emergency, the DAF is focused on maintaining national security and military preparedness by ensuring reliable, diversified, and affordable energy at every one of our installations.
Our vision of "Mission Assurance through Energy and Water Assurance" emphasizes sustainment of warfighting capabilities while optimizing resource use through enhanced planning, technology, and process improvements. We assess near and long-term energy and water requirements based on the installation's resiliency needs, cost considerations, and opportunities to leverage more reliable and abundant domestic sources.
The DAF conducts Energy Resilience Readiness Exercises (ERREs), also known as "black start exercises," to help installations assess mission readiness at degraded energy levels.
During an ERRE, an installation intentionally disconnects from commercial power for 10 hours to assess onsite backup power systems and validate (and in some cases, identify) infrastructure and mission interdependencies. This allows us to actively test key enabling systems under "blue sky" conditions to identify gaps in energy and mission capabilities.
Similarly, we are conducting the Water Resilience Readiness Exercises (WRRE) Pilot Program, an initiative designed to help installations assess water vulnerabilities and strengthen response strategies. WRREs will provide critical insights to shape enterprise-wide policies, ensuring all bases are better equipped to manage water risks. There are currently four installations in the pilot phase of the program, Dyess AFB in Texas, Hill AFB in Utah, and Cannon AFB and Kirtland AFB in New Mexico. Lessons learned from these installations will inform broader water resiliency efforts as we seek to reestablish deterrence and defend our homeland.
The DAF is also pursuing innovative solutions to build energy-efficient and resilient systems for improved energy security and mission assurance. We are changing the overall DAF approach to future energy initiatives by exploring diversified energy opportunities such as advanced nuclear, geothermal, battery energy storage, installation microgrids, and other forms of on-site generation that enhance energy resilience. We continue to partner with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to execute prototype agreements with non-traditional defense contractors as we explore the potential for on-site resilient baseload power via geothermal energy. One promising site is Mountain Home AFB in Idaho, and the potential for a second installation is being evaluated.
At Eielson AFB in Alaska, the DAF continues to pioneer the first commercial application of a microreactor on DoD property, laying the groundwork for future advanced nuclear energy projects. Technologies such as small modular reactors and microreactors will help deliver more reliable and resilient energy to our installations. This increased resilience is particularly critical at strategic and austere locations such as Eielson AFB. In addition, we are partnered with DIU on their Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) project, which aims to put a microreactor on an Air Force location that is still being determined.
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Community Partnerships
Community Partnerships are mission force multipliers that promulgate resources and information, reduce costs, increase interoperability, prepare for contingencies and disasters, and unify the civic-base community. The Air Force Community Partnership Program offers a framework through which installations and communities can work together in innovative ways to tackle shared challenges through shared solutions.
Building on the successes of IGSAs under 10 USC Sec. 2679, the DAF implemented innovative applications of this authority to reduce overall operating costs. For instance, Air Force Materiel Command and the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (AZDEMA) entered an IGSA to meet weapon system storage requirements for both new and existing acquisitions. This partnership leverages AZDEMA's manpower, equipment, time, and materials, and the DAF avoids the costs to construct, or upgrade, facilities.
Additionally, Tinker AFB in Oklahoma partnered with the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments to enhance emergency 9-1-1 support. Through this IGSA, Tinker AFB gains access to the existing 9-1-1 system used throughout Central Oklahoma, avoiding the high costs associated with updating or replacing their current system, while also ensuring efficient response times and improved interoperability.
Finally, Andersen AFB will enter its first IGSA with the Guam Department of Agriculture for stray animal management. This is the first DAF IGSA in a U.S. territory and the first where services are shared between the installation-community partners, rather than provided or received from the community partner to the installation. Andersen AFB provides manpower, equipment, and materials, and the GovGuam Department of Agriculture provides shelter, animal adoption services, neutering services, and village education events. This partnership is estimated to save approximately 320 hours for the pest management program by reducing the number of stray animals on the installation. It also serves as a model for future IGSAs across a range of DoD installation support services in Guam.
The Defense Community Infrastructure Program is a competitive grant program designed to address deficiencies in community infrastructure that supports military installation readiness and lethality. Vibrant relationships between the DAF and our installation communities were instrumental to the Department of Defense awarding approximately half of the $100 million in grants awards in FY24 to DAF communities. These awards include $13 million for March Air Reserve Base, California - Grantee: Western Municipal Water District of Riverside; $10.7 million for Peterson SFB, Colorado - Grantee: City of Colorado Springs; $5.3 million for United States Air Force Academy, Colorado - Grantee: Colorado Springs Utilities; $11.6 million for Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota - Grantee: Grand Forks County; and $8.9 million for Rickenbacker Air National Guard, Ohio - Grantee: Columbus Regional Airport Authority.
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Mission Sustainment
The Air Force Mission Sustainment (AFMS) program applies a holistic approach and strategy to preserve mission capabilities at installations and ranges by identifying, assessing, and reporting risk and actions to reduce vulnerabilities. This effort is imperative to ensure DAF installations can generate maximum combat power and lethality without encroachments that negatively impact training, operations and the safety of the local population. To mitigate encroachment, the AFMS program works with DAF, other DoD installations and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to assess seven mission sustainment hazard categories: airspace, land/sea, spectrum, water, energy, weather, and natural/cultural resources.
Our primary objective is to preserve and protect military readiness across the entire operating picture including airspace, ranges, missile fields, and community assets that directly support missions (e.g. community airports, small arms ranges, water/power sources, etc.). The DAF reviews proposed projects (199' above ground level or higher) filed with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), submitted for DoD review pre-filing, or submitted for DoD review from other Federal agencies.
In 2024, the AFMS program managed the review of 90,343 proposed obstructions that were formally filed with the FAA. It also managed the review of ~500 Informal Review obstruction evaluation projects submitted for DoD pre-filing review from developers or other Federal agencies. We coordinated with the Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse
(Clearinghouse), Air Force Flight Standards Agency, other Services, and Federal Agencies to ensure that the proposed activities are compatible with DAF training, testing, and operations.
Cumulative impacts of development continue to increase, causing significant concern for military training routes, special use airspace, radar lines of sight, and certain geographical areas.
In response, the AFMS program has formed temporary Mitigation Response Teams (MRTs) with DoD, the Services, and project proponents to identify compatible development solutions to projects which pose impacts to Air Force testing, training, or operations. In 2024, the AFMS program established 77 formal MRTs, including at least one MRT for each Major Command (MAJCOM), as well as for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Air National Guard, and the Space Force. The AFMS program managed the MRT review process, established MRTs through the Clearinghouse, and facilitated MRT meetings with units, MAJCOMs, Headquarters Air Force, project developers, and other stakeholders. Ultimately, the formal MRTs and Informal Reviews established in 2024 helped to protect DAF and DoD missions associated with hundreds of unique DoD assets, including airspace and ranges, airfields, missile fields, and radars.
The AFMS program also leads DAF efforts in reviewing offshore projects, including providing responses to the Clearinghouse and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. This on-going effort includes continued engagement and collaboration with developers, Department of Navy, and consultants.
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Housing, Dormitories, and Child Development Centers
Quality-of-life for our Airmen and Guardians and their families remains a top readiness priority for the DAF. We continue to focus investment and innovation on our housing, dormitories, and child development centers.
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Dormitories / Unaccompanied Housing
The DAF is on-track to meet the FSRM investment requirements established by the FY22 NDAA. This is part of the largest dorm investment in over a decade. However, we recognize more is needed. Further, we continue to exceed OSD performance goals for dorm conditions since the inception of the metric in FY13. In FY22-FY24, we funded 104 projects totaling $570 million to repair and renovate dorms, HVACs, roofs, and other critical facility systems. Projects are underway or being planned at eighteen installations that will continue our efforts to improve quality-of-life for our most junior Airmen and Guardians.
The DAF unaccompanied housing (UH) inventory includes nearly 58,000 permanent party and over 45,600 training beds. Per FY24 NDAA requirements, interim guidance from DoD established Building Condition Index (BCI, a 0-100 scale) as the UH Uniform Condition Index.
The DAF's overall strategy remains focused on restoring and modernizing dorms with FSRM funds and addressing capacity shortfalls and facility recapitalization with MILCON funds. The DAF Dormitory Master Plan guides this effort by providing the comprehensive forecasts, estimates, and recommendations required to strategically execute dormitory projects when and where they are most needed. Current assessments show 53% of permanent party beds are at or above the target of 80 BCI, and 0.1% of beds are less than 60 BCI.
Training dorms are another key component of our military service members' growth and development. Currently, 69% of training beds assess at or above the target 80 BCI and 0.1% are less than 60 BCI. Notably, the DAF executed seven FSRM projects for $67 million at training dorms in FY23-FY24.
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Family Housing
The DAF is focused on eliminating inadequate housing from the DAF inventory and correcting health and safety deficiencies. In addition to enabling planning studies, designing for future construction projects, and renovating existing DAF-owned homes, the Military Family Housing construction program also supports restructuring Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) projects.
The DAF's Military Family Housing construction program focuses on planning studies and design for future construction - to include projects at Yokota Air Base, Japan to improve homes for Senior Non-Commissioned Officers, Company Grade Officers, and Field Grade Officers
Our Military Family Housing O&M funds efforts to sustain, improve, and modernize our inventory of approximately 15,200 DAF-owned family housing units and provides enhanced oversight of over 52,000 privatized homes. Combined, the family housing O&M and construction programs will ensure continued support for the housing needs of Airmen, Guardians, their families and caregivers, as well as our Army, Navy, and Marine Corps teammates living in DAF-owned and privatized family housing.
The DAF MHPI inventory contains over 52,000 privatized end state unit homes spanning 31 projects across 63 installations. In some cases, the financial assumptions and economics of the deals fall short of expectations through no fault of the project owners. In these cases, the DAF requests funding to restructure to ensure projects don't default on loans and conditions of the homes remain acceptable.
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Commercial Apartment Complex
The DAF is currently pursuing an innovative MHPI partnership with Mayroad (the existing MHPI project owner) for a 142-unit commercial apartment complex at Edwards AFB in California. The project broke ground in September 2024 and serves as the DAF's first-ever commercial apartment complex on-installation. The project is fully financed by private investment (no upfront DAF scoring or cost) and will provide 246 beds in response to housing shortages at the remote installation.
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Lodging Commercialization
Lodging operations on DAF installations are paramount to support the mission and for the continued resiliency of Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Lodging is critical not only during permanent change of stations moves, but also for temporary duty assignments away from home stations. Indeed, these lodging assets directly support mission readiness and capability.
Upgrading and ensuring the long-term sustainment of lodging for Airmen, Guardians, and their families is a strategic imperative for the DAF to maintain readiness and achieve mission success.
The DAF is seeking to commercialize all the on-base lodging in the United States, its territories, and possessions - which currently covers 58 DAF installations. The Commercial OnBase Lodging (COBL) effort would be accomplished through the conveyance of facilities and execution of a 50-year ground lease with no upfront cost to the DAF. The government seeks to apply private sector expertise, resources, and market-based incentives to improve the quality-oflife for Airmen, Guardians, their families, and other authorized travelers while in a transient status. The objective is to provide quality, on-base hotel accommodations that meet the varying needs of a mobile military community through improvements to the on-base lodging inventory and/or new construction, and to appropriately maintain these facilities throughout a long-term business relationship.
Within the DAF, the Assistant Secretariat for Energy, Installations and Environment will serve as the office of primary responsibility for the COBL program and has delegated execution responsibilities associated within the program, including lease administration and oversight, to the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center - who has established a Program Management Office (PMO).
The process to solicit and competitively select a private sector lease applicant and then successfully negotiate and close the lease of installations in groups and phased over several years. DAF anticipates releasing a request for proposal in the Summer 2025.
This COBL initiative would affect approximately 3,100 Non-appropriated Fund DAF Lodging (DAFL) personnel, who may be eligible for either reemployment priority, severance pay, or voluntary or involuntary retirement benefits. Just as when the Army privatized its lodging, the DAF expects the selected project owner will offer positions to many current DAFL employees.
The COBL initiative is incorporating key lessons learned from previous innovative real estate programs to ensure high performance. Under COBL, the selected project owner would earn fees based on Installation Commander and lodging customer feedback. Reports, approval process, response triggers, and the incentive fee structure would be consistent with the successful Army's Privatized Lodging program. DAF's COBL PMO would perform frequent site visits and direct oversight of both operations and recapitalization of the portfolio over the 50-year lease period.
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Child Development Centers (CDCs)
We continue to strive to provide a high quality-of-life for our members and their families.
At the heart of that goal is affordable, accessible childcare for our Airmen and Guardians. Like our dormitory strategy, the DAF is using a two-prong programmatic approach to improve CDCs: targeted FSRM investment to address facility condition concerns and MILCON projects to increase capacity and recapitalize. While no CDCs in the DAF portfolio are failing or in poor condition, we know we still have work to do. Generous congressional support in recent years has enabled the DAF to initiate the design of additional CDC projects for inclusion in future President's Budget requests.
The Child and Youth Facility Master Plan facilitates project advocacy by identifying CDC MILCON and FSRM projects that address child and youth facility conditions and capacity challenges. Out of the 35 MILCON projects identified, 13 have been authorized and appropriated, adding approximately 1,800 spaces. One project was funded with O&M, 13 are in active design to add another 1,500 spaces, and 18 additional projects are in planning to validate requirements.
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Environmental Stewardship
Part of reestablishing the warrior ethos is an unwavering commitment to the well-being of our servicemembers and their families. It remains among our highest priorities to ensure the health and safety of those who live and work on our installations and those who reside in surrounding communities. We appreciate the support of Congress in our efforts to address Perand Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) and make further progress in our Environmental Restoration Program.
Our proactive PFAS strategy is yielding positive results, and we remain dedicated to making incremental gains in addressing this complex challenge. The DAF looks forward to continued appropriations support to maintain our PFAS efforts. These efforts include PFAS investigation and cleanup, on-base and off-base drinking water monitoring, Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) replacement facility repairs, and AFFF disposal and research and development. As of December 31, 2024, the DAF expended $68.7 million to transition from AFFF to fluorine-free foam or water only; 36% (192 of 541) facilities have completely removed and disposed of all AFFF and 86% (1,008 of 1,175) of vehicles are complete. We are currently on-track to meet the FY20 NDAA compliance date, with the extension Congress has enacted.
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Environmental Restoration
We remain focused on being good stewards of the environment by preventing spills and releases, while also meeting our cleanup obligations under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Investigation objectives and environmental response actions performed under these statutes aim to reduce risk to human health and the environment in a risk-based, prioritized manner at approximately 15,000 restoration sites across our active and closed installations. Much of our restoration program focuses on the DAF PFAS response, though we continue to address legacy sites.
The DAF PFAS Strategy is built on the following objectives: (1) Protect human health and the environment; (2) Transition from fluorine-containing products to fluorine-free alternatives and minimize potential PFAS release or exposure risk; (3) Fulfill cleanup responsibilities related to PFAS releases at DAF sites; (4) Invest in new PFAS Alternatives, and treatment and destruction technologies; (5) Integrate PFAS mitigation into compliance programs; and (6) Engage and collaborate with stakeholders (local communities, states, Federal agencies, and Congress). Through the end of Fiscal Year 2024, the DAF expended $2.3 billion identifying, investigating, and responding to PFAS releases.
On April 10, 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency published Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for PFAS for public drinking water systems, requiring sampling by 2027 and compliance with the new limits by 2029. The DAF is actively mitigating PFAS impacts to meet the MCLs in on-base drinking water systems under our purview, and addressing impacts to off-base private drinking water wells linked to our activities. In alignment with DoD policy, DAF is also incorporating the final PFAS MCLs into our cleanup program. We continue to investigate, clean up, and conduct interim response actions to address our past PFAS releases, all of which will significantly increase DAF's requirements.
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As we continue this important work, the DAF is committed to open communication with communities concerned about the potential environmental impacts of PFAS. We actively engage with residents and collaborate with local Restoration Advisory Boards to continually improve and ensure our community outreach programs are transparent, inclusive and responsive.
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Environmental Quality
As trustee for more than 8.3 million acres of land, including forests, prairies, deserts, wetlands, and coastal habitats, the DAF understands the important role natural resources play in maintaining our mission capability and readiness. We remain fully committed to a comprehensive and integrated approach to conserving environmental, natural, and cultural resources. The environmental quality program funds mission sustainment and environmental compliance with applicable regulations across several media areas. This includes natural and cultural resources management, environmental planning, hazardous waste storage and disposal, hazardous materials management, healthy air and water quality, and completely funded Air National Guard clean-up. Additionally, the program supports ongoing habitat and species management for 123 threatened and endangered species found across 54 identified DAF installations. The program also provides for continued cooperation, collaboration, and leveraging of manpower and other resources with other Services, Federal government agencies such as the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and applicable state fish and game agencies.
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Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Sites
Our BRAC cleanup and property transfer program continues to facilitate environmental restoration and property transfer activities at 34 former DAF installations closed through prior BRAC law. We remain on-track to transfer the remaining four former installations by 2031.
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Operational Energy
The DAF remains the largest consumer of fuel in the Department of Defense. We have implemented a full range of strategies to increase our operational agility and mitigate our contested logistics risk in theaters like the Pacific. An energy-optimized fleet allows the warfighter to fly greater distances, increases loiter time for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, and increases payload range. Our recent efforts resulted in a $222 million fuel cost avoidance, with $64 million of prior year expired funds recouped and reinvested to further enhance combat capability and mission assurance.
The Mission Execution Excellence Program (MEEP) incentivizes Airmen to optimize use of aviation fuel in preparation for future conflict in a fuel-constrained environment such as the Indo-Pacific theater. Since May 2022, MEEP has saved over 14 million gallons of aviation fuel, valued at $52 million, and has expanded from four participating squadrons to 29 total force C-17, C-5, and KC-135 units.
Improved tools and software lead to more battlefield effectiveness. For example, training software, like Extended Reality Air to Air Refueling (EARL) trainers, creates more effective training opportunities for aerial refueling by providing pilots and boom operators with a highly realistic extended reality capability across multiple aircraft. Time spent training on EARL stations can offset time spent in live-flight sorties, allowing for more crews to be trained in less time, reducing stress on aircraft and schedules.
Engine optimization technologies, such as those currently deployed by commercial airlines, reduce fuel burn and increase engine performance, reliability, and time on wing for DAF aircraft. Efforts include a compressor blade coating which, if implemented across the C-17 fleet, is projected to spur an estimated $20.9 million in fuel and maintenance savings annually (based on FY25 fuel prices). Additionally, engine detergent and foam washes can restore efficiency and power while reducing fuel consumption by 0.5 to 1.15%. The incorporation of a detergent additive into the Air Force's engine wash contract has yielded significant additional benefits, including enhanced engine performance through improved removal of carbon debris and soot, resulting in restored engine efficiency and power output.
Drag reduction initiatives, like technologies currently used by commercial airlines and foreign militaries, reduce fuel consumption and improve operational range and capability of the current fleet of Air Mobility Command aircraft. In partnership with the Air Force Research Lab and Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, we are implementing drag reduction technologies across our legacy aircraft, which has the potential to decrease drag and increase fuel efficiency by 1-8% for our existing fleet. In addition to increasing operational capabilities, most initiatives have a return-on-investment of less than three years. For instance, the C-17 is currently undertaking a 6-month logistics service test for 3-D printed microvanes that is projected to provide up to 1.5% drag reduction and 1.5% fuel savings across the 222-aircraft fleet.
Finally, we are investing in the Blended Wing Body (BWB) demonstration aircraft to rapidly field new technology that meets the demands of modern air operations. In 2023, the DAF partnered with DIU to prototype an improved aircraft design that provides more aerodynamic efficiency than today's tankers, bombers, and cargo aircraft, enabling increased range, loiter time, and fuel offload capabilities for the DoD. As a result of this competitive process, DAF selected JetZero to demonstrate this new capability by 2027, which is projected to improve aerodynamic efficiency by 30 percent. In addition, part of the capability development strategy for this effort includes to garner private investment and significantly augment Air Force funding.
To date, $65 million in private funding and in-kind support has been captured, including investment from two major U.S. commercial airlines. The project remains on schedule and recently completed a Demonstrator Critical Design Review in May 2025.
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Conclusion
The DAF Energy, Installations and Environment portfolio is aligned with the Department of Defense priorities of restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military, and reestablishing deterrence by increasing the lethality, readiness and warfighting capability of our installations.
We remain committed to aligning installation infrastructure to mission critical capabilities and optimizing our footprint while ensuring our installations have the resilience necessary to support Air and Space Force operations in a contested environment. With the continued support of Congress, I am confident our installations will continue to facilitate combat power projection with enough speed and intensity to be decisive for the Joint Force while also supporting our Airmen, Guardians and their families.
Thank you for the opportunity to update you on the DAF's programs supporting energy, installations, and environment. We appreciate Congress' continued support for our enterprise and look forward to continuing to work closely with you.
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Original text here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/saunders_testimony.pdf
A.G. Bondi Testifies Before Senate Appropriations Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies released the following testimony by Attorney General Pamela Bondi from a June 25, 2025, hearing entitled "A Review of the President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Department of Justice":* * *
Good afternoon, Chairman Moran, Ranking Member Van Hollen, and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to appear before you today to present President Trump's Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget for the Department of Justice. I look forward to working with you to ensure ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 9 -- The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies released the following testimony by Attorney General Pamela Bondi from a June 25, 2025, hearing entitled "A Review of the President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Department of Justice": * * * Good afternoon, Chairman Moran, Ranking Member Van Hollen, and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to appear before you today to present President Trump's Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget for the Department of Justice. I look forward to working with you to ensurecontinued support for the Department of Justice and its many critical missions.
President Trump's FY 2026 Budget proposal totals $34 billion for the Department of Justice to support our law enforcement priorities. During my confirmation hearing, I stated that my overriding objective would be to return the Department of Justice to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously enforcing the law.
This $34 billion request reflects a commitment by the President and me to reduce crime, enforce our Nation's immigration laws, and support our local, State, and Tribal partners.
First, the Department of Justice is working hard every day to combat violent crime. With the extraordinary help of our Federal, State, local, and Tribal partners, the Department of Justice, in the first 140 days of the Trump Administration, has brought charges against MS-13 gang members all across the country. We have utilized terrorism and RICO charges to prosecute members of Tren de Aragua (TdA). We have arrested over 200 child sexual abuse offenders. We have moved resources to help solve thousands of open investigations into violent crimes committed against American Indian and Alaska Native people (AIAN). That effort involves providing more resources than ever to support Operation Not Forgotten on Tribal territory nationwide. To continue our successes, the President's Budget includes $18.3 billion to our law enforcement components and the U.S. Attorney's Offices. These funds will enable the Department to dismantle the worst criminal organizations and continue to target the most violent offenders domestically and abroad.
Second, the crisis at the border continues to pose a serious risk to our national security.
Enforcing our immigration laws is the Administration and the Department's top priority. To that end, the President's Budget proposes $844 million for the Executive Office for Immigration Review. To ensure that our immigration system works properly, we must secure our Nation's borders, and we must guarantee that our laws allow us to process, hold, and remove those who violate our immigration laws. Through the President's Budget, the Department will improve its ability to enforce our immigration laws and combat illegal immigration.
The President has also proposed $2.8 billion for the U.S. Attorney's offices, including additional funds to enable U.S. Attorneys to more effectively work with Federal, State, and local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute the increasing volume of immigration-related criminal offenses, particularly the serious immigration and border-related crime and apprehensions occurring along the Southwest and Northern borders.
President Trump and I have established or reinvigorated three Task Force that will enforce the Administration's priorities. The Homeland Security Task Forces, established in Executive Order 14159, will work in every State to end the existence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations and dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks, particularly those involving children. Joint Task Force Alpha has been reestablished and will target human trafficking and human smuggling. And finally, Joint Task Force Vulcan, created during the President's first term, will target TdA and MS-13.
Finally, it is incumbent on Congress to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Under this bill, funding provided to the Department would be directed towards the hiring of immigration judges, attorneys, and staff, as well as state and local governments to aid them in incarcerating and removing illegal aliens. With the enactment of this bill, the Department can continue the important work enforcing our immigration laws and securing our border.
Third, the United States is in the midst of the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. Ending the scourge of dangerous opioids and other drugs is one of the Department's most pressing missions. To aid that mission, the Budget invests $10.1 billion in anti-drug programming, of which $4.9 billion supports federal law enforcement and prosecutors and $788 million supports our State, local, and Tribal partners. These resources will empower the Department to identify and dismantle the drug trafficking organizations driving the opioid crisis and contributing to drug-related violence in our communities.
Our efforts thus far illustrate our capacity to translate funding into real results that keep Americans safe. Since January, the DEA has seized 37.4 million pills of fentanyl and 4,200 pounds of fentanyl powder. In February, the Department announced the conclusion of Operation Double Down, a successful operation that dismantled a major Sinaloa Cartel network on the West Coast and resulted in the seizure of 1.7 million fentanyl pills. In May, the DEA executed its largest single fentanyl bust in history, seizing over 400 kilograms of fentanyl in one operation spanning six states. These seizures represent lives saved and families protected. These are just two examples. Every day Department components are removing drugs from our streets and prosecuting those who facilitate their sale.
Fourth, as noted in my confirmation hearing, a strong prison system is necessary to make America safe again. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is not only responsible for keeping violent criminals off our nation's streets but also for providing those in prison the tools that are needed to break the cycle of recidivism. For years the BOP has suffered from mismanagement, understaffing, inadequate funding, and low morale. Under the President's and my leadership, we will do better.
The President's Budget requests $8.9 billion for BOP's Salaries and Expenses including nearly $227 million in additional program funding to address critical staffing shortages across the nation. In addition, the President's Budget will also build on the significant progress made by the First Step Act enacted during President Trump's first term. The President's leadership on criminal justice reform demonstrates what is possible when a President is unafraid to do things that have been deemed "too difficult," and to reach across the aisle to bring about real solutions.
Finally, the FY 2026 Budget continues my commitment, and the commitment of the President, to finding savings in the Department, reducing inefficiencies, and delivering value to the American taxpayer. The Department is expeditiously implementing its Agency Reduction in Force and Reorganization Plan (ARRP) in FY 2025, and this budget request builds on those efforts. In FY 2026, the Department will merge components that work in overlapping areas.
This will make the Department more efficient and make our law enforcement and grantmaking work more effective. We will also reallocate resources that support investigations into drug enforcement and organized crime organizations so that they are more directly in the hands of agents and prosecutors on the ground. The President has directed a transformation of the Federal bureaucracy, and the Department will emerge from this work with greater ability to focus on its missions that matter to the American people.
Chairman Moran, Ranking Member Van Hollen, it is my pleasure to highlight our efforts to be good stewards of the resources and authorities bestowed on us as we strengthen the Department's ability to ensure safety, security, and justice for all Americans. As Attorney General, I am committed to making the Department of Justice run as efficiently and effectively as possible, without adding to the burden on the American taxpayer. I am working diligently to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components. Thank you for your continued support of the Department's financial needs, and for the opportunity to present our FY 2026 budget request. I look forward to working with you through the upcoming fiscal year to ensure that the Department of Justice remains on solid financial footing and can accomplish its mission of keeping Americans safe. Thank you.
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Original text here: https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/attorney_general_bondi_testimony.pdf