▶ 0:16:22Chair Rogers: Good afternoon. This hearing will come to order. The senate armed services subcommittee meets this afternoon to hear from the senior enlisted leaders of our armed forces about quality of life investments across the department of defense. I want to thank all our witnesses for joining us today, and for their service, and to our country. You all represent the backbone of our military.
▶ 0:16:50Chair Rogers: Enlisted service members make up more than 80% of the total force, and you are the voice of those who serve us every day. You see morale, discipline, and readiness of close. We value that perspective and we need it. I commend the services for returning their focus to war fighting, lethality, and moving away from distracting d.e.I. Programs that do not strengthen combat effectiveness.
▶ 0:17:19Chair Rogers: Our military exists to fight and to to win, and to win wars. High standards and discipline matter. I strongly support returning to a culture focused on performance and mission. At the same time, quality of life is a core readiness issue.
▶ 0:17:37Chair Rogers: The department invests billions of tax dollars in critical war fighting capabilities, and rightly so, but too often, the most basic investments that directly support service day-to-day, like housing, dining facilities, and family support are treated as secondary. Taking care of the things that take care of our service members is not a distraction from readiness. It is foundational to it.
▶ 0:18:04Chair Rogers: In recent years, the armed services committee and this subcommittee in particular has prioritized investments to support service members and their families, including increase in pay, expanding access to childcare, improving spouse employment opportunities, and strengthening military health care. We did this because taking care of our people is essential to maintaining a strong and capable military.
▶ 0:18:30Chair Rogers: This hearing is an opportunity to circle back and find out whether those investments have resulted in meaningful improvements and where gaps still exist. I also want to hear directly from you about the initiatives you are leading to support morale and quality of life across your formations.
▶ 0:18:48Chair Rogers: The goal today is to get honest feedback -- identify what needs improvement and make sure both congress and the department are focused on their most important asset -- the men and women in uniform. So thank you for all appearing today. I look forward to your testimony. Ranking member, senator warren?
▶ 0:19:08Sen. Warren: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I'm glad we are taking time to dig into important quality-of-life issues for our enlisted troops. Enlisted members make up over 80% of our active duty forces. They fill critical jobs across the services, from intelligence and cyber specialists to engineers and infantrymen, all crucial to upholding our national security.
▶ 0:19:35Sen. Warren: Too often, these patriotic men and women have to deal with quality-of-life issues that make it harder for them to effectively do their jobs. One big area of concern is the quality of our barracks. We require service members to live in barracks during basic training and initial job training. The very minimum we owe them is housing that is safe. Instead, we have seen health and safety problems for decades.
▶ 0:20:07Sen. Warren: A 20 23 report by the government accountability office was another wake-up call on this issue. The gao found mold-covered walls, sewage pipes that were cracking and overflowing, and rooms heating up to over 90 degrees because the air conditioning units were broken. Several years later, we continue to hear horror stories about living conditions.
▶ 0:20:31Sen. Warren: The navy secretary was so appalled by barracks he visited in guam that he initially thought the buildings he was visiting were condemned. Troops in other services also continue to report that it can take months to address maintenance requests at their barracks. We need real solutions, and we need them now, not years from now.
▶ 0:21:00Sen. Warren: One of the proposed solutions is turning responsibility for these barracks over to private companies instead. I am deeply concerned that we have not learned our lessons from years of this committee's investigations into privatized military family housing, which exposed significant failures.
▶ 0:21:22Sen. Warren: Military family housing is still plagued by reports of unsafe living conditions like mold, lead paint, pest infestations, and more. I sent a letter to secretary hegseth last year, raising concerns about this.
▶ 0:21:38Sen. Warren: Dod's response indicated that it is poised to make exactly the same mistakes in privatizing the enlisted persons barracks, like granting 50 year leases to companies with questionable accountability and virtually no oversight.
▶ 0:21:53Sen. Warren: We have also seen private companies try to take advantage of military families by forcing them to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to receive compensation for things like damaged property from mold, or reimbursement for other financial burdens they face due to terrible living conditions. Dod and congress need to act so that any companies responsible for privatized barracks don't try to muzzle the troops that are living there as well.
▶ 0:22:24Sen. Warren: And bottom line, we just need to invest more in barracks. Congress actually provided funding to dod to modernize and repair barracks, but under the trump administration, dod has repeatedly diverted this money to support border operations instead.
▶ 0:22:44Sen. Warren: In their notifications to congress, they have not bothered to explain why they thought it was appropriate to take money away from rehabilitating barracks, leaving troops in horrible living conditions. I don't think anyone here would want to spend an extra year, an extra month, even an extra day breathing in black mold, just because this administration did not think their health was important.
▶ 0:23:14Sen. Warren: Another quality of life challenge -- childcare. Military families need it to be able to do their jobs. I am deeply concerned that military families continue to face big challenges in getting care for their babies.
▶ 0:23:29Sen. Warren: Getting childcare is already hard enough for parents all around this country, and it can be even more difficult for military parents, who are dealing with nontraditional hours, changing hours, abrupt relocations and deployments. At the end of last year, there were over 7800 children from military families waiting for slots to open up at dod childcare facilities.
▶ 0:23:58Sen. Warren: Someone is going to have to explain to me how our service members are supposed to show up for duty and there is no one to care for their babies. Dod is known for high quality childcare, and I applaud that. It is terrific. But there are not enough slots. And one of the key problems is the dod did not contract and retain childcare providers with its decades-old pay scale.
▶ 0:24:27Sen. Warren: So in the fy 2025 national defense authorization act, congress mandated that dod update its child development program compensation model by april of 2025. But the air force, the army, and the navy all blew the deadline, and 10 months later still are not done. That is making life harder for the moms and dads in the military to do their jobs.
▶ 0:24:57Sen. Warren: Even as dod has been hemorrhaging childcare staff, the trump administration has made it even harder to replace and retain those workers. It has slashed dod's total civilian workforce by 8%. Last year, this subcommittee received testimony about the severe impacts of the civilian hiring freeze reducing childcare staffing and increasing the length of the weight.
▶ 0:25:25Sen. Warren: Although dod has since provided some exceptions to the hiring freeze for childcare workers, I continue to hear about the challenges that families are facing getting these slots, and the challenges you are facing with hiring. We need to do better by our military families and our civilian childcare workers. I will mention a third problem, and that his health care. Service members cannot show up and protect us if they are not healthy.
▶ 0:25:53Sen. Warren: But one of the biggest challenges that service members and their families face is making sure they can access the health care that they need. A 2023 blue star family survey found four in 10 active-duty military family respondents had family members who needed specialty care and had to wait more than two months for a first appointment.
▶ 0:26:19Sen. Warren: President trump's and republican cuts to medicaid threaten to make it even harder for military families to access these types of care. Military families with special needs or lower incomes rely on medicaid for supplemental benefits they cannot get through tricare.
▶ 0:26:43Sen. Warren: As hospitals across the country are forced to reduce services or close their doors because of the medicaid cuts, it could make it even harder for military families to access the care they rely on in the communities surrounding their basis. Every day, patriotic men and women in list so they can protect our country. We owe them everything.
▶ 0:27:08Sen. Warren: It should not be too much to provide housing that does not have black mold, childcare that does not have a 7000 person waitlist, and doctors appointments that are not months away. These are not things it would just be nice to have. If we don't address these issues, we put our military readiness, retention, and recruitment at risk. I look forward to hearing testimony from all of the witnesses today. I think you for being here.
▶ 0:27:37Sen. Warren: These are questions we must address. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:27:39Chair Tuberville: All are witnesses, your written statement will be entered into the record in full. We will have opening statements. We will start with senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, david isom.
▶ 0:27:54Mr. Isom: Thank you, sir. Distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you here today, and thank you for your deep commitment to our war fighters. They are the foundation of our lethality, and it is an incredible honor to represent them.
▶ 0:28:15Mr. Isom: I am grateful for the men and women of the joint force, who serve our nation with quiet professionalism, courage, and integrity, at home and around the globe. I am equally thankful for their families, whose love and support makes their service possible. We are living in extraordinarily complex times, with multiple simultaneous challenges around the globe. But I am comforted every day by the fact that our incredible joint force stands ready.
▶ 0:28:43Mr. Isom: Our joint force works tirelessly to ensure the safety and security of our nation. We must also work tirelessly to ensure that they have our full support and they have what they need to fight and win when called upon. Today, I will talk about the chairman and my priorities and I will reinforce special operations truth number one. That is that humans are more important than hardware. The true strength of our military is not just in our ships or tanks or aircraft.
▶ 0:29:11Mr. Isom: It is the unwavering spirit and the trusted hands of our people, our total joint force. The chairman and I have three priorities. First, we must have a joint force that is properly armed. We must have the right capabilities and capacity we need to fight and win. Second, we must have a joint force that is integrated across all domains within our agency, with industry and allies and partners. Third, we must build a joy points -- joint force that is ready.
▶ 0:29:40Mr. Isom: That means tough training and building muscle memory. This means binkley right about the future and being candid with air force and their families. Underpinning these priorities is our most important asset, and that is our people. We recruit america's best and we must retain this talent by taking care of them and taking care of their families. Chairman, ranking member, and distinguish members of the subcommittee, our people are our strategic advantage.
▶ 0:30:06Mr. Isom: We have the smartest and most capable joint force in history, willing to pay the ultimate price to defend our nation. They are fulfilling their end of the bargain, ensuring they are ready every day. On their behalf, I'm asking that we uphold our end of the bargain with stable funding they need to succeed, provide the tools and training they need to win and a quality of life that honors their service and their sacrifice. Thank you again for your steadfast support and I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:30:39Neck -- Chair Tuberville: Next, sergeant major of the army, michael weimer.
▶ 0:30:45Sgt. Maj. Weimer: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss -- to speak on behalf of nearly one million soldiers in our formations, the civilians and family members that make up the most lethal fighting force the world has ever seen. In 250 years, the american soldier has been the underwriter of our nation's defense. Our motto is an unwavering promise to the american people. I am proud to report the united states army is stronger every day.
▶ 0:31:16Sgt. Maj. Weimer: Our strength begins with our people. On the recruiting front, we have a significant success story. In 2025, thanks to the incredible work of recruiting professionals, and the patriotism of america's youth, we have not only met our ambitious goal of 61 thousand new soldiers, but we achieved it months ahead of schedule. This success is not a signal to relax. We are committed to sustaining this momentum into the future.
▶ 0:31:42Sgt. Maj. Weimer: I'm proud to say we are also exceeding our retention goals, exceeding 110% of last year's target. Americans join the army to stay in our ranks, to be soldiers. When their focus is diverted from the mission to fight battles against poor living conditions, we risk failure. However, we are fighting uphill to decrease the facility maintenance backlogs with unprintable funding and government shutdowns. Deferred maintenance does not just impact morel.
▶ 0:32:11Sgt. Maj. Weimer: It incurs higher costs later, and potentially exposes our war fighters to health performance threats. Soldiers focus must be on the mission, not on a work order that cannot be filled. Taking care of our people is the foundation for a lethal combat-ready force. The lifeblood of that force is tough, realistic training. We have declared war on distractions. We are relentlessly eliminating burdensome administrative requirements to free up our leaders to do what they do best -- build lethal teams.
▶ 0:32:45Sgt. Maj. Weimer: Every hour a leader spends on a redundant task is an hour they are not training soldiers. Tough training is not cheap. We are actively transforming our training to reflect the brutal realities of the modern battlefield, one saturated with drones, relentless electronic warfare, and contested logistics. We must train for the fight we face today, not the one we fought yesterday. Chairman, ranking member, our people are the heart of the army.
▶ 0:33:13Sgt. Maj. Weimer: They are the engine of combat power. Our commitment to provide them with the quality of life they need, the leadership they deserve, and the cutting edge training required to dominate any adversary. Our soldiers are our credentials. They are the living embodiment of our motto. They are the reason I can sit before you today with absolute confidence and reaffirm our unbreakable promise. We need your partnership and your support. Thank you.
▶ 0:33:41Sgt. Maj. Weimer: I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:33:43Chair Tuberville: Our next witness is master chief of the navy, john perryman the fourth.
▶ 0:33:53Mcpo Perryman: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. It is an honor to represent the sailors and families, active and reserve, who serve our nation at home and abroad. Oversight of military quality of life is not separate from readiness. It is foundational to it. Since assuming the role of master chief of the navy, my focus has been grounded in this simple principal.
▶ 0:34:22Mcpo Perryman: Feel confident sailors with the fighting spirit our nation depends on. Every sailor owns readiness. Every leader develops people. Every command must speak honestly about performance and act decisively to improve it. Quality of life is the human foundation of that vision, especially for a forward deployed navy that spends significant time at sea and away from home. I will briefly highlight three priorities. First, sailors and families first.
▶ 0:34:52Mcpo Perryman: Sailors are our asymmetric advantage, and the stability of their families directly affects readiness, retention, and performance. Barracks, housing, childcare, and health care are not benefits at the margins. They are readiness. When access to care is delayed, when housing is unsafe or poorly maintained, or when childcare is unavailable, sailors lose time and focus navigating problems that should never reach the deck plates.
▶ 0:35:23Mcpo Perryman: Access to medical and mental health care remains one of the most consequential quality-of-life issues we hear of. Readiness depends on healthy people, and family stability depends on dependable care. Continued investment in appointment availability, provider capacity, telehealth, and network adequacy, especially for sailors and families far from military treatment facilities, directly supports operational readiness.
▶ 0:35:51Mcpo Perryman: The same is true for housing accountability, expanded childcare capacity, predictable pcs moves, and enforcing standards in these areas with the same discipline we apply to operational readiness. Second, technical mastery at every level. It didn't -- the navy exists to fight and win at sea. The mission demands technical mastery, from damage control and maintenance to cyber and information warfare.
▶ 0:36:18Mcpo Perryman: Mastery is built through deliberate training, meaningful qualification, and leaders who enforce standards while investing in their people. Where feasible, strengthening organic maintenance and repair capability improves readiness, reduces cost, and builds durable expertise within the force. Third, continuous development and talent management. Retention begins with development.
▶ 0:36:43Mcpo Perryman: Sailors stay when they can see a clear trajectory and when leaders deliberately invest in their growth. A coherent, career-long continuum of enlisted development, anchored in education, relevant training, and transparent advancement pathways produces more competent leaders and a more resilient force. Programs such as the career training continuum and tuition assistance are not benefits.
▶ 0:37:12Mcpo Perryman: They are readiness investments that strengthen retention and ensure we remain competitive for top talent in the demanding job market. In closing, quality of life improvements are operational enablers. When we remove preventable stressors, we increase readiness, strengthen families, and retain the talent the navy and the nation require. I appreciate the committees partnership and I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
▶ 0:37:38Chair Tuberville: Our next witness is sergeant major of the marine corps, carlos ruiz.
▶ 0:37:47Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: Thank you, members of this committee. I'm grateful for your continued interest and support. I've come to realize through my time in this position the quality of service is not a problem to be solved or a fight to be one. There is no start or finish. It is an ongoing way of life, just like proficiency and readiness, health and wellness, professionalism, and morality. There is never a day to hang it up and go home. We are never done.
▶ 0:38:16Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: We in this room have inherited that responsibility. It is an honor place in our privileged hands for however long or short our time may be. What we do today will impact the marines of tomorrow and those who serve a decade from now. The marines continue to train and win because that is our way of life. We have demonstrated readiness, lethality, proficiency, and commitment around the globe.
▶ 0:38:40Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: Over the past year, I have visited recruiters who do the work of finding and making the next generation of marines. Together, they are the gatekeepers of our values, our standards, and culture. On the other side of service, we are planers. The manpower division ensure the best of the best stay in formations. Thanks to their hard work, the marine corps has achieved record retention rates.
▶ 0:39:09Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: Your marines deployed in every combatant command -- I have visited many of them. No matter their rank or occupational specialty, every marine is focused, trained, and ready. Marines all tell me the same thing. They love being a marine. They need better facilities and resources, not because they want to be pampered, but because they want to be more ready, more focused, and the most prepared for whatever the nation needs next.
▶ 0:39:37Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: In my position, I am responsible for the welfare and discipline of marines. But the authority lies with you. It is an act of congress that established the marine corps in 1775. It was also an act of congress that provided the g.I. Bill in 1940 four. Then, in 1958, congress reestablished the pride and joy of the united states marine corps, the iconic lance corporal. It was you that authorized a 14.5% pay raise for our corporals and below in 2025.
▶ 0:40:09Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: You have the power to create lasting change. Together, we will ensure the marines of tomorrow inherit a force worthy of their service. I look forward to answering your questions.
▶ 0:40:21Chair Tuberville: Thank you. The next witness is chief master sergeant wolfe of air force, david r. Wolfe.
▶ 0:40:36Cm Sgt. Wolfe: I represent 660 thousand total force airmen. I thank you for your focus on their well-being. Your help is critical because their quality of life is fundamental to our readiness and our ability to defend the nation. Over the last 50 years, military spending as part of our gdp has been cut in half while our global commitments have grown.
▶ 0:41:03Cm Sgt. Wolfe: At the same time, we face the challenge of an air -- aircraft fleet that has nearly doubled in age over the last 30 years. This has created an imbalance between the demands we place on our force and the resources available to sustain them. Because of this, we have had to make hard choices. It has also encouraged innovation and enhanced a relentless focus on what matters most -- our people.
▶ 0:41:31Cm Sgt. Wolfe: Like any advanced system, people require sustainment. This is not measured and spare parts or fuel, but in family stability and quality of life. I'm proud to report our air force is meeting these challenges head on, and delivering solutions. We met active-duty recruiting goals last year, bringing a ready and talented new generation into our force. We are on track to meet and even exceed our goals for this year.
▶ 0:41:57Cm Sgt. Wolfe: We are also making progress to counter the challenge of our aging infrastructure. We are executing the largest investment in dormitories and over a decade to ensure our airmen have safe, -- a safe, clean place to call home. Child care, with this committee support -- we are making powerful strides by funding 17 new child development centers to directly tackle or wait lists.
▶ 0:42:22Cm Sgt. Wolfe: And while we appreciate the 4% requirement for recapitalization of our facilities, if it does not come with the requisite topline budget increase, we will find challenges in meeting the goal. Over the last few years, the demands for our air force to modernize have been clear. With the announcement of platforms like the b 21, 47, and sentinel, the following question remains.
▶ 0:42:49Cm Sgt. Wolfe: If we are going to have a sixth generation air force, are we going to be able to provide a sixth generation quality of life for our airmen? People and platforms are part of the same readiness equation. When one side of that equation is weak, the entire system fails. We cannot allow that to happen.
▶ 0:43:10Cm Sgt. Wolfe: We must ensure our airmen have the training, resources, and quality of life to fight today while ensuring our force is modernizing to deter those who challenge our way of life. It is not either readiness or modernization. It is both. We are committed to getting this right. We are proving it in action. We see this committee as an essential partner in that effort.
▶ 0:43:36Cm Sgt. Wolfe: I look forward to your questions and to working together to ensure our airmen have everything they need to fly, fight, and win.
▶ 0:43:44Chair Tuberville: Thank you. Our next witness is chief master of the space force, john f been to vania -- bentivegna.
▶ 0:44:02Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: I am deeply grateful for the recent provisions congress has provided, including adjustments to basic allowance for housing and others. While the recent nda changes represent your powerful commitment, we must continue to ensure compensation remains responsive to the real world market conditions. Beyond direct compensation, we know the overall well-being of our guardians and their families are paramount to readiness.
▶ 0:44:34Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Access to childcare and food security, for example, are essential to quality of life. That is why we are actively addressing these needs through innovations like the program at peterson space for space in colorado, which provides 150 off base childcare spaces, offering our guardians ready flexibility.
▶ 0:44:55Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Additionally, the ndaa pilot program to help improve food security is not authorized across all military departments, giving us broader options to provide enhanced quality and accessibility. To continue these positive trends, both quality of life and quality of service challenges must remain our combined focus.
▶ 0:45:15Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: We must continue to invest in flexible solutions to improve quality of life, like strengthening licensing portability for spouses and expanding modern telehealth services and access for military members and families. Both can provide continuity and enhanced readiness. Our commitment to readiness is more critical now than ever as we face airmen ever-evolving global security environment.
▶ 0:45:44Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: The space is growing increasingly contested. China is quickly expanding space capabilities, and russian development of antisatellite systems presents serious threats to our nation's interests and her ability to defend them. In response to this, 2025 was a year of significant evolution in space force. We made a historic transition with the establishment of combat forces command, enhancing our ability to field integrated combat union -- units.
▶ 0:46:14Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Our operational tempo raised new heights, with 149 launches in a single year, representing a 640 percent increase from the 17 launches into a 19. Even with this progress, to confront the threats of today and tomorrow, doubling the size of the united states space force is a national security necessity . With a force of just over 10,000 uniformed guardians in 2025 -- that was a landmark milestone.
▶ 0:46:44Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: It is insufficient for the missions we have been assigned. To effectively fulfill our national mandate, we must increase our infrastructure and double our size. This critical expansion is not only necessary, but entirely achievable. In five months in 2026, we have already achieved -- exceeded our annual recruiting goal for those who are shipped to basic military training or a delayed entry program.
▶ 0:47:12Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: To support our growth, we must also elevate our quality of service by modernizing and expanding our facilities. Our missions are rapidly evolving, but much of our infrastructure is rooted in the past and cannot keep up with the demands of a larger, more advanced force to train for and execute, in a contested and complex joint multi demand environment. In closing, let me leave you with this message.
▶ 0:47:40Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: To ensure space superiority, the space force must double in size. To accomplish this, we need continued competitive and responsive compensation for service members, who can expect consistent quality of life and elevated quality of service experiences. I look forward to continuing our meaningful collaboration and I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
▶ 0:48:01Chair Tuberville: Thank all of you very much. We have senators going in and out because of votes. We will get as many questions out as we possibly can. At the end, I'm going to give you an opportunity if we did not hit something you want to talk about. We will have a segment at the end. I will start out the questioning and we will start with master sergeant bentivegna.
▶ 0:48:29Chair Tuberville: We kind of refocused our war fighting training standards, merit-based leadership and recruiting. From your perspective as senior enlisted voice of your service, how are these changes being received, and what impact are you seeing on morale and day-to-day quality of service?
▶ 0:48:48Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Thank you, senator. Recruitment for the space force has been phenomenal. We have more individuals who want to be commissioned for the space force than we can take in right now. Doubling in size is absolutely achievable. But I think as a mission-focused service, as small as we are, the guardians appreciate the fact that we are laser focused on the threat and the need to provide space superiority for the lethality of the joint force.
▶ 0:49:18Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Day-to-day leadership at the most tactical level understand meritocracy, focusing on the mission, and lethality of the force is what we are putting emphasis on day-to-day. I think morale is high because of it. It is the feedback I was seeing from my guardians every time I went out in the field. >> as we focus on readiness is the number one priority for the united states air force, what we see is as we give people the resources that they need to accomplish the mission, they immediately respond.
▶ 0:49:50Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: In places where we fall short, that is where we end up having difficulties in accomplishing what it is we set out to do. Our morale is high. We are focusing on standards every day, trying to raise the bar and make sure that our folks understand exactly what is expected of them. When they understand that, they respond. >> -- sgt. Maj. Ruiz: the profession in the service is worth fighting and that is what they do very well, senator.
▶ 0:50:22Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: I would add that when a young marine scenes -- sees effort, they see an investment. They may not see a brand-new barracks being built in their camp, but maybe they see a barracks that is refurbished. For most of our marines, they don't go to an office. The pivot from their barracks room onto the field to do dangerous things, dangerous training exercises.
▶ 0:50:46Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: So to have and to see barracks being refurbished -- that is almost 8000 marines we were able to help because we were able to refurbish 23 buildings. It does wonders for readiness.
▶ 0:51:09Mcpo Perryman: They are happiest when they do the mission. They are least happy when I have them bogged down in administrative duties that do not add to their ability to conduct warfare. The flipside and the other thing that detracts from that is the fact that their facilities, barracks, housing are a distraction. I think continued investment in those areas will improve morale when we are at home.
▶ 0:51:37Mcpo Perryman: But I have seen nothing but extraordinarily high morale when we are out on deployment. >> morel from the street to deployment is high when our soldiers are filled with purpose. That is what I am seeing. Is it always at the highest point it can be? Of course not. And we know that. There are barracks issues we are trying to tackle. We are not perfect.
▶ 0:52:08Mcpo Perryman: Striving for excellence. Overall morel -- they feel purpose from the moment they go to boot camp until they arrive at their first duty station. >> recruiting and retention is good. Morale is high. I travel with the chairman very frequently. Been in the job about eight months. Everywhere I go, I talked to all of our folks, and they are ready. Our joint force is ready to defend our nation if called upon.
▶ 0:52:38Sen. Warren: We have got hundreds of thousands of our troops living in barracks all around the world. In fact, dod requires enlisted service members to live in barracks during basic training and initial job-training. Required, not optional. But dod and the services have failed to address health and safety risks in housing not just for a few years now. It has been for decades.
▶ 0:53:09Sen. Warren: A 2023 gao report reaching back uncovered terrible conditions -- mold covered ceilings and walls, sewage overflows, bedbugs, rodents, cockroaches. These are problems our troops should not have to live with even for a day. But barracks managers report that it takes at least several months to fix these problems.
▶ 0:53:35Sen. Warren: So here we are, a few years later, and these issues have not gone away. A 2025 survey, soldiers reported mold, pests, and outdated and poorly maintained barracks. The survey also found it is still the case that maintenance requests often take weeks or months to address, leading to a frustration among soldiers. Army barracks got a rating of 68 out of 100.
▶ 0:54:06Sen. Warren: For anyone keeping score, that gives them a d+. I heard each of you talk about readiness, so let me ask you, sergeant major weimer -- you are the senior enlisted leader for the army. Does it undermine troop morale and readiness if soldiers report black mold on their ceilings and walls and they can't get anybody to fix it for months on end?
▶ 0:54:29Sgt. Maj. Weimer: Ranking member, thank you. When workorders do not get addressed at the appropriate time, it does affect morale, yes.
▶ 0:54:38Sen. Warren: I assume the same is true for rodents, the same is true for sewage overflows. Look -- we need solutions, and we need them quickly. But we also need the right solutions, and this is what has gotten really worrying. I'm concerned that the services are increasingly looking to privatize the barracks, and we have seen this movie and lived through it already.
▶ 0:55:04Sen. Warren: We have seen what private companies have done with family housing -- poor conditions like black mold, pest infestations, and broken hvac units. Even when companies offer compensation because they have damaged property or they have created financial burdens because someone had to move their family out, had to stay in a motel for weeks on end, they force military families to sign nondisclosure agreements.
▶ 0:55:34Sen. Warren: Think about that. If you do them wrong, treat them badly, and then as part of the hostage taking here, before you will repair it, you insist that they sign a nondisclosure agreement so they can't tell anybody else about what went wrong.
▶ 0:55:52Sen. Warren: At least we know when the government operates the barracks , it does not prohibit the troops from coming to congress with their concerns, going to their leadership with their concerns. I am very concerned that privatization will decrease oversight and accountability, especially if we don't take action here. So I am going to ask a question of all of you.
▶ 0:56:18Sen. Warren: Does anyone here believe that it is appropriate for a housing company to prohibit service members from reporting to their commander or two congressional representatives that a company has failed to remove toxic mold in their room for over 10 months? I will just take a simple yes or no if you think it is ok to do that. I will start down at the sand.
▶ 0:56:44Sen. Warren: >> I think service members should always have access to their commanders to be able to report problems.
▶ 0:56:54Sen. Warren: And be able to tell congress. This is part of what oversight is about. I want to make sure we are clear. >> that chain of command should be well aware of everything going on in that situation that you just declared.
▶ 0:57:06Sen. Warren: So you are not in favor of these nondisclosure agreements. >> I am in favor of taking care of the family in that situation. Critics are you wobbling here on me on whether or not those nondisclosure agreements should be permitted? >> I don't think a family should be put in a box where they cannot have accountability and be taken care of, ranking member. I don't -- I have lived in houses.
▶ 0:57:34Sen. Warren: I don't understand how a family gets put in a corner for a nondisclosure. I have to do more research on that. But that 10 month scenario, there should be a chain of command with everything going on in that.
▶ 0:57:47Sen. Warren: I don't understand why you are trying to parse words here. The question is, as part of getting a repair, should any housing operator that is working for the united states government and getting paid by the united states government be able to say to a service member, I'm only doing the repair after you sign an agreement that you won't tell anybody in your chain of command, or you won't tell any congressional oversight committee about what this place was like?
▶ 0:58:18Sen. Warren: >> that right there, ranking member, they should not be able to do. Ranking member, no. >> ranking member warren, absolutely not. >> no, they must not be forced to do that.
▶ 0:58:33Sen. Warren: I appreciate this. This may seem like a little side point, until it is a family that has been put in a box, as you rightly put it, and they have got nowhere to go. Our job is to make sure that our service members are taken care of. I hear each of you saying that. But we have got to make this work on the ground. And I just start with something as essential as housing.
▶ 0:58:59Sen. Warren: Letting these private housing outfits come in and do a lousy job of keeping the housing operational, and then refused to repair it unless people promise to be silent, agree to be muzzled, is just flat wrong. And I enlist your help in beating that out of our operations at the housing level. Thank. -- thank you very much. >> thank you, Mr.
▶ 0:59:29Sen. Warren: Chair, and thank you to all of our senior enlisted leaders for being here today. This is a really important topic for so many of us, making sure we are caring for our families. Thank you for mentioning the first soft truth. I think this is something that everyone of us should live by here in congress, that humans are more important than hardware. We need to recognize that and always start with that. I am just going to make a comment about the military housing.
▶ 1:00:01Sen. Warren: I was married to an enlisted soldier years ago, and I remember living in housing on fort benning and at camp rutter, don egeland, you name it. And being in the south. And I had hoped that since the early 1990's things were changed.
▶ 1:00:19Sen. Warren: I remember living in indianhead terrace on fort benning with roaches that would run from one side of the duplex to the other side of the duplex, because we could not get the exterminator to come due both at the same time. We lived with mold at camp rutter, which is something that is very hard to get rid of. But just because it was that way doesn't mean it is ok, and it should not still be like that way. And we have to do better.
▶ 1:00:48Sen. Warren: We have to do better for our family members. I am going to start, though, with something that sergeant major weimer -- that we visited about the other day. We are going through it right now. Congress is always wrangling with funding bills, our appropriations. We are not getting them out on time.
▶ 1:01:11Sen. Warren: And it is important to recognize that during these shutdowns, with the continuing resolutions, these funding lapses, our military and our military members really struggle through these difficult times. So we have to do a better job of providing program continuity and stability, particularly for those junior enlisted families. We all know that most of them are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
▶ 1:01:47Sen. Warren: Let's start -- from your vantage point, can you speak to how unreliable congressional budgeting and uncertainty in program continuity affect our service members, their families, and of course the overall readiness of the force?
▶ 1:01:59Mr. Isom: Yes, ma'am. Thank you for your question. I will share with you -- I visit the troops a lot. I was just out on the aircraft carrier gerald ford, visiting troops. A common theme, not just about the funding -- it is crosscutting. That is that we need to reduce uncertainty and to create stability in the lives of our service members.
▶ 1:02:26Mr. Isom: The more that we can do together to solve this problem, the better off our service members will be. I will tell you that there is nothing worse than a family and a young servicemember who is uncertain if they are going to get a paycheck. The impacts are tremendous. As you think about their morale, you think about retention of that servicemember over time, that continued uncertainty is a real problem.
▶ 1:02:54Sen. Ernst: Thank you for that answer. Sergeant major weimer, if you could add a little bit onto that as well.
▶ 1:03:01Sgt. Maj. Weimer: Thank you for that. Without trying to repeat too much, that uncertainty -- troopers know they will be paid. They just don't know when. That uncertainty is the heavy weight that is going on at home. And if the trooper is deployed, that is now on the trooper's shoulders, but also the family. You want to know they are in a good spot back home. That has a direct effect on everything that we do.
▶ 1:03:29Sgt. Maj. Weimer: This most recent one, probably more than it had in the past because of the length of time.
▶ 1:03:35Sen. Ernst: Absolutely. My daughter, with her unit, they were establishing their own food bank at the unit. Unfortunately, a lot of those members, the junior enlisted, were partaking of that food bank.
▶ 1:03:50Sgt. Maj. Weimer: We had great partners come and help us -- the army emergency relief fund, a nonprofit, and amazing teammates that came forward. It does not completely fill the gap.
▶ 1:04:02Sen. Ernst: I'm going to jump to child care because I am running out of time. Another key area for improving predictability and readiness is childcare. A number of you have touched upon that. I am actually partnering with senator shaheen on comprehensive ndaa childcare legislation. We talked about this a little bit in our meetings.
▶ 1:04:23Sen. Ernst: We are trying to expand the childcare workforce, improving reliability, hiring, and waitlist tracking, because we do have a lot of families that need that childcare, whether it is at a dod facility or whether it is within the community. So I will start down here. Sergeant major ruiz, why don't you address childcare concerns within your command.
▶ 1:04:49Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: Yes ma'am, absolutely. When you can't have a piece of mind of where your child is going to go, you are not going to be focused. For us, while all of this is happening at lubbock, we have to control what we can't control, and that is taking a look at how we move people. We found that over 40% of the staff are spouses.
▶ 1:05:18Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: If we can just be a little more smart transferring folks and directly hiring, we can reduce the attrition. Another quick point is predict ability of where families are going to go. If we can let you know ahead of time, maybe even 12 months, you will go here and then come back, you could plan better. There are things we are doing on our own to help with that.
▶ 1:05:44Sen. Ernst: That is beautiful, and thank you. That is one thing we are working on, is preclearance for childcare employees at these military child development centers. We know our commanders have a lot of great ideas on that. We are grateful you are working on that. Thank you. >> Mr. chairman, let me state what I hope is obvious, that the greatest advantage we have over an adversary in the world is our noncommissioned officer corps.
▶ 1:06:14Sen. Ernst: I benefited from that personally . I was smart enough to listen to my platoon sergeant. I've waited a permanent assignment to north kansas. Quickly now -- your comments are so important. What is the most substantive complaint you are hearing from the troops? Not just the frequency, but it is really a critical issue.
▶ 1:06:44Mr. Isom: I will go back to that common theme of uncertainty for families, whether it is childcare, whether it is length of deployments -- when are we coming home? It is often the uncertainty about what is next.
▶ 1:07:01Sgt. Maj. Weimer: Senator, it really does depend, but a common thread here recently has been access to health care.
▶ 1:07:11Mcpo Perryman: I will echo that the most consistent comment we have had in our engagements with access to health care.
▶ 1:07:20Sgt. Maj. Ruiz: Barracks and access to health care.
▶ 1:07:23Cm Sgt. Wolfe: Senator, I would echo also the access to health care. The reimbursement rates that are available in communities, the saturation in areas where our folks have a lack of availability for appointments -- all those things impact not only the readiness of the military member, but also their family members.
▶ 1:07:46Cm Sgt. Wolfe: And what we have all seen over the length of our careers is a gradual erosion in availability of that health care for our service members and their families.
▶ 1:07:56Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Senator, I would echo what my teammates said. I would add that I think one of the frustrations I get out from the field is we spend a lot of time, effort, and money in quality of life space, and we have a lot of good momentum. I think the challenge is when you hear us speaking about the things to improve quality of life, when you get down to the tactical level, there is a gap.
▶ 1:08:24Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: A program or project, something we have great anticipation for -- we talk about it. We are not feeling it day-to-day. They're not feeling it on the kitchen table. They are not feeling it when they call for an appointment or are trying to get childcare. That gap -- we just have to get better at all the work we do here to make sure it actually produces the effect we wanted to.
▶ 1:08:45Sen. Reed: Thank you very much. And gentlemen, I can't say enough about your service. Thank you.
▶ 1:08:53Chair Tuberville: Senator sullivan?
▶ 1:08:56Sen. Sullivan: I want to begin by giving a shout out to chief master sergeant wolfe. Good to see you again. I'm looking at your very impressive bio. It has a lot of duty time in alaska. The rumor is that when you are -- someday when you retire, you are going to go back there. Is that true?
▶ 1:09:20Cm Sgt. Bentivegna: Senator --
▶ 1:09:24Cm Sgt. Wolfe: Senator, that is an absolute fact.
▶ 1:09:27Sen. Sullivan: We have more veterans per capita than anywhere in the country. They do this time in alaska and do great things in the military and say, when I'm done, I'm going to go back. To all the great senior enlisted on this panel, we welcome you to follow the lead of your great air force compatriot right here, and come on up to alaska. We would love to have you. Only when you retire. You guys still have a lot more work to do.
▶ 1:09:55Sen. Sullivan: Let me ask down alaska question that is for you, chief master in, and sergeant major weimer. I want to think as well. We have had a high suicide rate in alaska. Very high. But the army and to some degree the air force. With the army, it was a really high number over the last couple of years. I think we have kind of gotten our arms around that.
▶ 1:10:26Sen. Sullivan: But can you to speak to that issue? It is in both of your testimony. Not just as it relates to alaska, but throughout the force. And maybe I will let all of you jump in. It is a big issue. My experience in the military, and the marines, you give your troops hard tasks and you train them hard, and you deploy with them.
▶ 1:10:52Sen. Sullivan: When you are focused, sometimes those are the issues that go away. But I would like to get the sense from all of you about what more we can be doing. We are pretty focused on that here in the congress. If anyone is going to get their arms around it, it is going to be our senior enlisted men and all the services. Chief master sergeant wolfe, when you start?
▶ 1:11:15Cm Sgt. Wolfe: Thank you, senator, and you are right. This is a problem that does not just exist in one state. It does not certainly just exist in our country. This is a global issue that happens when I talk to the chief master and of the japanese air force. They have a concern for the suicide problem. This is a human condition problem.
▶ 1:11:40Cm Sgt. Wolfe: What we have noticed is that in places where we can get the funding and the manpower for the mental health technicians that are embedded in units, whether it is military family life counselors or anyone with some training in this department -- when we can embed that care, as special operations command has proven time and time again -- this is a model that works.
▶ 1:12:08Cm Sgt. Wolfe: We can reduce not just the suicide risk, but also the risk for all the other kind of self-destructive behaviors that happen when people are going through life and having things happen to them. Tragedies come, and people have a lot to deal with.
▶ 1:12:26Cm Sgt. Wolfe: So I think if I had a magic wand to wave, I would try to get as much embedded care into our units and all of our services, so that we can have that sensor in their that is a trained professional that can be that outside the chain of command person that can help folks through those times. Really, what that ends up doing -- we have seen it time and again.
▶ 1:12:52Cm Sgt. Wolfe: It keeps them out of a mental health clinic, which should be your emergency room for a mental health problem, and helps them solve and get through those problems ahead of the curve. So embedded care I think is great. Access to mental health. Filling our mental health positions is another piece that we could definitely use some help on. I think there is some ideas that all of us are working on and talking about.
▶ 1:13:23Cm Sgt. Wolfe: We talk together about these issues frequently. We all have the same concerns. If we can figure out how to have a pipeline to keep these positions filled, maybe even using our military spouses, who often have these helping profession degrees already, to get them and, we may be coming to you for some help in that department in the future as well.
▶ 1:13:45Sen. Sullivan: Do you have a view on this? >> I will try to be brief. I don't want to speak for everybody, but this is the topic I bang my head up against the most. Everything is difficult in our portfolios, but this is the one that probably I lose sleep over, if there is one in the portfolio. I remember those days in alaska. We surged.
▶ 1:14:14Sen. Sullivan: We surged all resources to get up there. Part of it is caring. We learned that. Part of it is leadership. You are never going to replace that with a program, with money and a special program. But there are some new things we are trying. We are trying to take the best lessons from we are consolidating those now and we are giving them all to the department, all the services are doing this now.
▶ 1:14:44Sen. Sullivan: Like what happened in alaska, we can learn from it and not just move on. Vr goggles, as a small example. I have not spent a lot of time in the virtual reality world, that is not how I grew up, but they asked me to be a coach in the virtual reality world so I did it and it was one of the most awkward things I have ever done because of the realism. Soldiers are responding to the training for the vr goggles.
▶ 1:15:19Sen. Sullivan: In a couple minutes that is where we are.
▶ 1:15:21Sen. Sullivan: It is a big issue and I know this committee has been focused on it in a bipartisan way. If you gentlemen, who are front lines on all of this with the troops, have ideas for us, make sure you submit them for the record because we want to be very forward leaning in helping what remains a big issue and your ideas, we want to hear them and want to try to implement them.
▶ 1:15:51Sen. Sullivan: Thank you to all of you for your service.
▶ 1:15:52Chair Tuberville: Senator blumenthal.
▶ 1:15:57Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you for being here and for your extraordinary service to the nation over many, many years. I want to follow senator sullivan's questions about suicide, highlighting a particular story, which has been very troubling to me.
▶ 1:16:21Sen. Blumenthal: On december 9, a 20-year-old, beloved son from connecticut, tragically took his own life. Before his death, he was stationed at an air force base in oklahoma. He was interested to the care of the united states military by his family.
▶ 1:16:50Sen. Blumenthal: He had sought urgent mental health care at the base earlier on thebut the military left hima room by himself with an evaluation.
▶ 1:17:10Sen. Blumenthal: I have been the recipient of various disclosures and reports that have indicated to me as many as six suicides may have occurred at the air force base within the last 18 months. My concern is twofold. First, is there an issue at tinker air force base?
▶ 1:17:35Sen. Blumenthal: Second, what concrete changes are being made now to ensure service members crisis are identified, treated and protected before they reach a breaking point? Maybe I can ask you, master chief perryman, whether you are familiar with the circumstances around the death and anything you can tell us about tinker.
▶ 1:18:03Mcpo Perryman: Senator, I am aware of the number of suicides that have happened at tinker over the last year and a half. After the first three or four, air force sent a team out there to do a check on everyone out there to see if there was some commonality between the suicides.
▶ 1:18:29Mcpo Perryman: They found no reason -- they did not find anything systemic. We had unfortunately several more in which a study was conducted by the department and has been completed and we are waiting for that report. It is my understanding that while they were there they found no contagion as part of that.
▶ 1:18:57Mcpo Perryman: To what we are doing about it, I think tinker is an interesting place because the mission there is very unique. People think because they do not go to sea so it must be easy. They spend an extraordinary amount of time the floyd executing their mission -- amount of time deployed executing their mission. They are on an air force base.
▶ 1:19:27Mcpo Perryman: I believe what I have been told, exceptional service from the air force mental health people. Suicide is a tough problem and I agree with the sergeant major of the army that embedded mental health people will only get us so far.
▶ 1:19:48Mcpo Perryman: I think where we have to focus our effort is with engaged leadership and giving our sailors, soldiers, marines the tools necessary to manage life in the military, which I think we are coming to the realization that we should have probably went there earlier than now.
▶ 1:20:14Mcpo Perryman: I think for a long time, people my age think about mental health as one thing and the younger generation think of mental health in a totally different way than us and we have been slow to realize that and slow to institute actual prevention programs like the sergeant major was talking about.
▶ 1:20:34Sen. Blumenthal: I respect your response. I understand that you have so far not found a commonality, as you referred to it. When is the report likely to be available?
▶ 1:20:49Mcpo Perryman: Senator, I am not sure but I will take that question for the record and get back to you.
▶ 1:20:55Sen. Blumenthal: As soon as it is available can you commit to us that it will be made available to us as soon as it is done?
▶ 1:21:02Mcpo Perryman: Yes, sir.
▶ 1:21:04Sen. Blumenthal: I appreciate your answers. I want to raise a general concern, which was highlighted to me by a visit I had just today from an organization that deals with veterans who are involved in the criminal justice system. Many of them have less than honorable discharges, bad paper discharges.
▶ 1:21:33Sen. Blumenthal: The concern is, can we do something to help those members of our military before they are discharged with less than honorable -- I'm not talking about necessarily bad conduct, but people with mental health and may be trauma and posttraumatic stress, some of them from the vietnam era, when the idea of posttraumatic stress
▶ 1:22:04Sen. Blumenthal: With a diagnosis did not even exist. They come out of the military and with a bad paper discharge cannot find a job, they have no availability to be a health care. They raised their right hand and maybe through no fault of their own but simply because they have mental health issues, they rub people the wrong way and got into trouble or whatever.
▶ 1:22:29Sen. Blumenthal: I think more than just suicide, it would be much more cost to give them the care they need. Since many of them are noncommissioned officers or noncommissioned members of our military.
▶ 1:22:45Sen. Blumenthal: Since you as senior noncommissioned officers are probably closer to this problem -- and I deeply respect as senator reed said, your service and the importance of noncommissioned officers -- but it is an idea I would like to throw out there. My time has way expired so I apologize. This is an issue I would like to follow up on and I welcome your thoughts about it. Thank you.
▶ 1:23:12Chair Tuberville: Thank you. Senator duckworth.
▶ 1:23:17Sen. Duckworth: Thank you, Mr. chairman and to you enlisted leaders for being here today. I want to focus my time on helping service members grow their family. You have generational after generation of military service. Everyday our servicemen and women risk their lives to defend this country and many at the expense of having a family.
▶ 1:23:43Sen. Duckworth: I know too many service members struggling with infertility who feel they have to delay having children to save up for ivf who choose to leave the military to afford the care. That is why I have been fighting for years to ensure that tricare covers reproductive care including ivf. We came close last year with a bipartisan solution out of this very committee in the house and senate but speaker mike johnson personally took it out in conference.
▶ 1:24:12Sen. Duckworth: This was done despite president trump's campaign promise that the government would pay for all costs associated with ivf treatment. The commander-in-chief should make good on his promise to military. Infertility is suffered at twice the rate of the general population but the majority of service members who need ivf to have children, the out-of-pocket costs can easily exceed $40,000.
▶ 1:24:39Sen. Duckworth: Tricare only provides limited coverage to military families, far less than we members of congress received. For each witness, and your experience do you believe service members would benefit if tricare fully covered ivf so troops and families would not have to choose between continuing their service and building the families they want? And if each one of you could answer that.
▶ 1:25:03Mr. Isom: I cannot speak personally. I am not an expert on ivf but as a father of six I can appreciate the value of having great children who become great leaders in the future. I appreciate supporting and ensuring we provide over all best possible health care that we can for our service members.
▶ 1:25:25Sen. Duckworth: Thank you.
▶ 1:25:28Sgt Maj Weimer: I appreciate the pain that some of these families are dealing with with the costs, having known a few of them myself. That is a real issue. >> I agree with my two shipmate s. Anyone who serves their country deserves access to world class medical care across the gamut of anything they possibly need.
▶ 1:25:56Sen. Duckworth: Thank you.
▶ 1:26:01Sgt Maj Ruiz: I agree with my colleagues. It is not just apply to someone who had a physical injury or cannot have the child. Is in the future fight we get into something heavy, it also involves a lot of planning. You are about to go into danger and you want to plan something out, or you have a family history of something and you want to plan this out.
▶ 1:26:29Sgt Maj Ruiz: We do what we can to work with the policy of today but should this come available in the future it should become an option.
▶ 1:26:35Sen. Duckworth: I have talked to many service members who want to freeze the reproductive material prior to going into a combat zone, especially after the lessons learned in afghanistan when so many stepped on landmines and became infertile. >> we estimate there are between 1000 and 1500 airmen who would fall into the category you described.
▶ 1:27:07Sen. Duckworth: Like my colleagues I totally support anything that is going to reverse the erosion of our military health care benefits we have observed over the years and this would certainly be welcome.
▶ 1:27:19Sen. Duckworth: Thank you. >> I echo what my teammates said. Especially when we talked about through our years of service, the decline in access to care to include reproductive therapy to help military families have children. That is definitely something we are concerned about that we have to address. The best care you can possibly get.
▶ 1:27:44Sen. Duckworth: Thank you. I think this is a recruitment and retention issue. This is an issue of basic fairness. When it comes to building families that they so desperately want, our service members deserve at least the level of care members of congress received. I will continue to fight to pass my ivf are military families act.
▶ 1:28:11Sen. Duckworth: I hope that president trump and my colleagues will work with me to fulfill his promise to help military families achieve their dreams. >> you said active duty. Would you also be chasing the reserve component?
▶ 1:28:25Sen. Duckworth: We had to make an ndaa to get it passed. I think if we are going to call up our troops, I think it should be there for everyone. Sometimes in the sausage making in congress you have to make some deals. I think we start with the active-duty families. I would love the coverage to be for everyone who wars -- wears our nation's cloth.
▶ 1:28:52Sen. Duckworth: >> master chief, three years ago the united states navy had the worst recruitment in the over 50 years of an all volunteer force in our military. Last year we had the best recruitment numbers we had in 20 years. What changed?
▶ 1:29:13Sen. Duckworth: >> we got some new leadership at recruiting command that fundamentally changed the way our recruiters approached recruiting, especially gen z. We instituted a recruiting operation center so they could more effectively use their time. They were targeting more viable candidates that would prove more fruitful from the context. -- from the contact.
▶ 1:29:43Sen. Duckworth: Those two things were pretty big. I am a huge fan of our advertising campaign. Our data shows us that resonates extraordinarily well with this younger generation. It is not as cool, yet, as the marine corps -- >> the marine corps did not have a recruitment issue.
▶ 1:30:10Mcpo Perryman: Ok. >> I appreciate the laughter but the marine corps was the steady branch through it all that never wavered. There recruitment was never an issue. The navy had a recruitment crisis. Last year they had the best recruitment numbers in 20 years. You are citing recruitment commands and advertising campaigns.
▶ 1:30:36Mcpo Perryman: And the recruiters themselves, sir. >> why were we not doing that all along? That seems like common sense. What really changed? You think it was as simple as that? For three or four years during a recruiting crisis it was just the advertising slogan?
▶ 1:30:55Mcpo Perryman: It was the performance of our recruiters -- >> they just were not doing a good job? Help me out. What lessons do we learn from it?
▶ 1:31:07Mcpo Perryman: They were trapped in a paradigm that had worked for a long time. They were not as agile as they need to be giving the shifting environments. Again, through effort and significantly reducing the administrative and distracting things they had to deal with to be effective recruiters was one thing. The recruiting operation centers was another.
▶ 1:31:36Mcpo Perryman: I think the other thing we have learned, coming out of this senator, we used to try to get too cute by landing the number of recruits we needed and when you do that you will always miss.
▶ 1:31:53Mcpo Perryman: One thing we have learned over the last three or four years is there is a number between 40000 and 45,000 that we will have to stick to every year and hold there because that creates a constant demand signal for the recruiting nation. It is a noble goal. It will enable us to ensure we have enough capacity and training pipelines to put through sailors at the pace we need them.
▶ 1:32:21Mcpo Perryman: One of the problems -- it is a good problem to have for how successful they have been -- log jammed inside of the training pipeline, we let that capacity after af -- atrophy too much because we are bringing too many people. >> I assume with a really good news with recruitment there is really good news related to morale. Do you see the same?
▶ 1:32:48Mcpo Perryman: Yes, sir. Retention remains incredibly good and we seem to be on a sustainable path. >> what lesson do we learn from that?
▶ 1:32:59Mcpo Perryman: Those of us up here have talked about this. If I can get people in the navy, I can generally retain them. This is why we have focused on setting a steady number. That steady diet will help me be more selective and my retention decisions, once healthy. >> I love the united states navy. I am a proud veteran of the united states navy.
▶ 1:33:30Mcpo Perryman: This is really good news -- the recruitment numbers are really good news and you are a big part of it. I appreciate you. I yield back.
▶ 1:33:40Chair Tuberville: Senator hirono.
▶ 1:33:44Sen. Hirono: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I want to thank you for being here to respond to our questions. This is for the entire panel. Secretary hegseth has called for a review of the effectiveness of women in combat roles. I will just say it is really -- this is an attack on women to call for this kind of review.
▶ 1:34:16Sen. Hirono: I think that he is laying the groundwork to reverse the policy allowing women to serve in combat positions. It also undermines the sacrifice of thousands of female service members who have already met the rigorous gender-neutral standards and have served in combat with distinction.
▶ 1:34:42Sen. Hirono: All you have to do is look at senator duckworth to know that women can very strongly be in those kinds of roles. I want to ask all of you, do you believe the mere fact of women being in these combat arms units lowers standards? Let's start from my left and go down the line.
▶ 1:35:04Mr. Isom: Senator, thank you for the question. I have seen no data there is any lowering of standards or lowering of the readiness of units with the females in those units.
▶ 1:35:20Sen. Hirono: The answer is no?
▶ 1:35:23Seac Isom: Correct.
▶ 1:35:25Sgt Maj Weimer: No, at this time I have not seen anything that leads me to believe there is any issue with meeting the standard.
▶ 1:35:33Mcpo Perryman: Senator, no.
▶ 1:35:35Sgt Maj Ruiz: Senator, no.
▶ 1:35:37Cm Sgt Wolfe: From my perspective, I have served with some of the best war fighters the world has ever known. Some happen to be men and some women. I have not seen any erosion.
▶ 1:35:50Cm Sgt Bentivegna: From the space force perspective, we have not seen any erosion of readiness.
▶ 1:35:56Sen. Hirono: Again, down the line. Do you agree that every service member regardless of gender should be permitted to serve in any role including combat arms if they meet the established standards? We will go down the line again,
▶ 1:36:12Yes Or No Seac Isom: . Yes, if they meet standards.
▶ 1:36:15Sgt Maj Weimer: Yes, senator, it is about standards.
▶ 1:36:19Mcpo Perryman: Yes, senator.
▶ 1:36:20Sgt Maj Ruiz: Yes, senator.
▶ 1:36:22Cm Sgt Wolfe: Yes, senator.
▶ 1:36:24Cm Sgt Bentivegna: Yes, senator. All the specialties are all open to men and women.
▶ 1:36:32Sen. Hirono: When you have a secretary calling for this kind of research, it does tend to, I would say, create a sense of divisiveness. I am planning to introduce a bill that codifies the current dod policy that allows women to serve in combat arms positions along as they meet the required standards.
▶ 1:37:01Sen. Hirono: I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me. I will say this -- especially in a time when recruitment goals are challenging to meet, I think we need to make sure that everyone who wants to serve our country, men and women and others alike, that includes lgbtq and others, that they should have the opportunity to do so. This one is very specific.
▶ 1:37:28Sen. Hirono: I want to ask all of you, the permanent reallocations plays a significant strain on military families. I know you are aware of that. To help reduce the burden I worked to include language to authorize reimbursement for shipping and storing two privately owned vehicles during overseas moves.
▶ 1:38:00Sen. Hirono: . It makes a difference a lot of our military families have more than one vehicle. Maybe the need both to get to work. The military just pays for one. That is a huge burden on families to have to find storage for their second vehicle. It could be thousands of dollars out of pocket if you want to have that second vehicle with them.
▶ 1:38:24Sen. Hirono: My staff has heard from dod that the services are responsible for making any updates to allow for the reimbursement of two vehicles. I want to ask each of the service people what steps you are making to advocate for the important change that would save our service members and their families potentially thousands of dollars. Are you all working to enable service members to store two vehicles?
▶ 1:38:51Seac Isom: Senator, it is my understanding --
▶ 1:38:55Mcpo Perryman: We are waiting for a change controlled by the department. Once that changes, I know the navy will work to figure out how to make that a reality for our navy sailors.
▶ 1:39:08Sen. Hirono: Since you are waiting for someone else to determine whether they can do that -- just to address some of the real needs of the service members, would you all agreed it would be a good thing to respond to this particular need?
▶ 1:39:33Sgt Maj Ruiz: Yes. The two vehicles, if I could, we are pushing it and we want that to be available, but the portion, what I would add if all of the services immediately started allowing for two vehicles to go to any location, it would likely break every one of our budgets. Just caution.
▶ 1:39:57Sen. Hirono: I realize there is a cost factor. I think this is an example of addressing a need that has been brought to our attention. There should be an adequate response to that. I do not think this is a matter of previously wanting two vehicles, etc. Other examples of the quality of life of our service members can be approved. This is one of them.
▶ 1:40:28Sen. Hirono: Thank you for whatever you all can do to make this happen. Ok, thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:40:35Chair Tuberville: Senator wicker.
▶ 1:40:38Sen. Wicker: Thank you very much, Mr. chairman. I want to thank you and senator warren for conducting this hearing. I have been listening from my office on television. I am heartened by the participation of members. We are benefiting from your testimony. But do not believe anyone has asked about junior rotc yet.
▶ 1:41:09Sen. Wicker: Let me ask about that and I will direct my question first two major ruiz. I have been an advocate for high school junior rotc in all the branches. I have been a little frustrated from time to time on the ndaa.
▶ 1:41:30Sen. Wicker: We have raised the number of allowed junior rotc detachments in the past and that was not necessarily father. We have raised the floor. These branches must find other high schools to expand junior rotc in.
▶ 1:41:53Sen. Wicker: I think junior rotc is a great recruiting tool for the services. But also it is a citizenship builder. It involves young men and women in the high schools that volunteered to do a harder thing. To adhere to requirements that other students are not willing to do, to go above and beyond and apply themselves.
▶ 1:42:24Sen. Wicker: At the same time they do learn quite a bit about the military and my hope is some of them will go on to military service. Sergeant major ruiz, you go first. Do you agree with me on the benefits of junior rotc?
▶ 1:42:51Sen. Wicker: Do you agree with the think tanks like the rand corporation that has said this is an absolute plus for american young people?
▶ 1:43:01Sgt Maj Ruiz: I do, senator. It is a great program. It has been around for a long time. Our service members have transition back to the civilian community, they find a home and have the ability to give back again. Giving back to our country. We should not let go of it. I would like to work with you.
▶ 1:43:24Sen. Wicker: Does anyone else wish to comment about that? I saw some people nodding their heads.
▶ 1:43:36Sgt Maj Weimer: I would love to but we know from personal experience that junior rotc inspires a call to service. In the army, we are going all in on this. We are doing it in an intentional way to make sure we have quality programs as we expand them because it is our reputation.
▶ 1:43:55Sen. Wicker: The point that senior -- sergeant major ruiz made about the retired members, are national guard members, reservists who are back in the community, the federal government pays a good portion of that salary. The school districts are getting an experienced instructor for sometimes half price.
▶ 1:44:25Sen. Wicker: It is a good investment. Sergeant major weimer, since you volunteered, I will ask you to comment on this. In terms of the servicemen with spouses and families, what is the quickest thing this committee or this congress could do to help them on a day-to-day basis?
▶ 1:44:53Sgt Maj Weimer: Senator, that is a good one. You are giving me a massive opportunity for myself, my teammates.
▶ 1:45:01Sen. Wicker: Your teammates at the table can be thinking of their answers.
▶ 1:45:05Sgt Maj Weimer: Spouse reciprocity is something you have helped us with tremendously but we are still stuck in some states, senator. Expanding that would be tremendous. The ability for the remote work -- we have seen benefits from that. Those would be overnight quick wins for all of us.
▶ 1:45:30Sen. Wicker: Is that a state matter? Reciprocity?
▶ 1:45:35Sgt Maj Weimer: It is, senator. There are quite a few estates on board that are moving out and some we are working with.
▶ 1:45:42Sen. Wicker: Does anyone else want to jump in? I know it has been a long hearing. Thank you very much for your participation and for your suggestions. Also, if anyone else wants to submit answers for the record, just scratch your head. I would appreciate that. I yield back.
▶ 1:46:03Chair Tuberville: Thank you. Senator warren.
▶ 1:46:07Sen. Warren: Thank you, chairman. Seac isom, I have something I want to ask you about. If over half of enlisted service members left the military within just one year of joining, with that constitute a crisis?
▶ 1:46:27Seac Isom: Yes, ma'am.
▶ 1:46:28Sen. Warren: If you found out the reason for this attrition rate was low wages, what would you try to do?
▶ 1:46:39Seac Isom: I would come to you and asked for higher pay.
▶ 1:46:40Sen. Warren: Ok. And if we give you the money to do that, what would you do with that money?
▶ 1:46:46Seac Isom: We would pay those service members and hopefully increase recruitment and retention.
▶ 1:46:52Sen. Warren: You might remember we started this by noting we have a waiting list of more than 7800 children who are waiting for their childcare slots and not getting them. The principal reason is we do not have enough people. Do you know what the attrition rate is for people who are hired to be childcare workers for our military right now? Don't know. It is 50%.
▶ 1:47:22Sen. Warren: That is why I started with that hypothetical. It is 50%. When you go ask those people -- we have actually interviewed them and done studies -- what is you leave? These were people who were attracted to the work, who like babies, who like little kids, who liked working in a military setting, who liked the fact that the schedules are different and it is part of their contribution. You know what they tell us is the number 1 reason to leave?
▶ 1:47:52Seac Isom: Low pay?
▶ 1:47:54Sen. Warren: Low pay. The year before last we got into the ndaa that our military services would have money, and that they would upgrade their pay scales by april 2025. We can agree it is now past april 2025, right? Which services have failed to do that? I am a little disturbed that you do not know any of these numbers.
▶ 1:48:25Sen. Warren: The army, the navy and the air force have not yet changed their pay scales, which might be the reason we have 7800 children waiting for care. I appreciate that everyone says they care about childcare, quality of life, all of it relates to readiness. You have the tools from congress. We have already given them to you. And you have not picked them up and use them.
▶ 1:48:55Sen. Warren: So here is my question for the army, the navy in the air force -- we will be back here a year from now, we do this every year, we are doing this on video right now. When I come back to ask these questions a year from now, are we still going to have a waiting list that is 7800 babies along? Or will we have whittled that waiting list down because we are actually hiring enough childcare workers to get the job done?
▶ 1:49:24Sen. Warren: Can I hear, please, from the army?
▶ 1:49:28Sgt Maj Weimer: Our goal --
▶ 1:49:31Sen. Warren: I'm not asking your goal. Are you going to get it done?
▶ 1:49:35Sgt Maj Weimer: We will move out with a purpose.
▶ 1:49:38Sen. Warren: Navy?
▶ 1:49:40Mcpo Perryman: I believe the navy has taken advantage of the increased pay scales authorized by congress to the point that our current staffing is that 87%, which is up from the 60's in roughly fy '22. Our unmet needs sits at about 1400. We have significantly increased my childcare fee assistance.
▶ 1:50:08Mcpo Perryman: I do think, to your point, we have moved out with the authorities, we are making significant progress in reducing our waitlist. Another thing we did inside helping childcare workers is for anybody who works for us, their first child is free. And then their second child is reduced further.
▶ 1:50:29Sen. Warren: That is great but that does not reduce your waiting list. Do you think it is ok to have a waiting list of 1400 kids?
▶ 1:50:39Mcpo Perryman: I do not think it is ok.
▶ 1:50:41Sen. Warren: Have you updated your pay scales that you were required to do by april of 2025? Your information is wrong?
▶ 1:50:51Mcpo Perryman: In my prep I was told we upgraded our pay scales.
▶ 1:50:57Sen. Warren: My numbers told you that have not. How about the air force?
▶ 1:51:02Cm Sgt Wolfe: Same as the navy. My information is we have upgraded our pay scales.
▶ 1:51:08Sen. Warren: How long is your waiting list?
▶ 1:51:13Cm Sgt Bentivegna: Right now we have about 2700 with unmet need across the air force and that is not where we want to be.
▶ 1:51:18Cm Sgt Wolfe: We are seeing initial indications that the first child free is having an impact because it is helping us keep people longer. We are seeing some impact. We do not have enough time with that policy in place to know for sure. We think we have about a 7%-8% bump from that policy by itself. We are absolutely committed to making sure the number goes down over time. You have that commitment.
▶ 1:51:47Sen. Warren: Over time can we just keep in mind that parents cannot wait? They do not have a year that they can just set aside while they are waiting around on a 1400 42700 child waitlist. They have to have childcare now. Our position should be there are extra slots so they are able to pick up the slot.
▶ 1:52:16Sen. Warren: Space command, marines, you nailed it. Let's keep it up because that is what we have to do. We cannot say we are a military that cares about families if we pretend to care about childcare and then we have a waitlist of 7800. This is what oversight is about and I hope when we come back next year I will be offering congratulations to everyone of you because we have no babies waiting for the care they need. Thank you.
▶ 1:52:45Chair Tuberville: Senator. >> no further questions. Just a couple of comments. . There have been some great topics of discussion, whether it is the housing issues, the childcare issues. In particular the brain health issues that were brought up. I like to think about it in that way that his brain health, not just mental health.
▶ 1:53:11Sen. Ernst: With our troops, we need to think of the brain as an organ. It is an exquisite organ. Just when we need that care, just like any other organ in the body, we need to seek care and encourage our troops to seek the care and get the proper care for that organ. Think of it is brain health. We want to make sure their organ is healthy.
▶ 1:53:41Sen. Ernst: Also, a closing comment because as someone who served as an engineer in the U.S. army reserves and the iowa army national guard, we live in an incredible culture of warriors and embracing the warrior ethos. I was always brought up that we are a soldier first, regardless of our mos.
▶ 1:54:07Sen. Ernst: What I would say, too, is when we are talking about her warriors, never forget the other spokes of that wheel that makes that interim -- technicians, our truck drivers, our maintainers, fuelers, we are all an important part of today's military.
▶ 1:54:33Sen. Ernst: So, god bless you all, god bless our warriors, but please, as we are talking about the entirety of the force, never forget every single one of us can be a point of failure, and if we are not all strong, that means the warriors on the front line will also fail. Let's also remember to recognize every single one of us that serves in uniform. God bless you all for everything you do. Thank you for a great hearing.
▶ 1:55:03Chair Tuberville: Are you ready to reenlist?
▶ 1:55:06Sen. Ernst: I am. [laughter] you have another question?
▶ 1:55:13Chair Tuberville: I have a couple questions here a quick. Does anyone want to follow up on the suicide in their purview? Anyone want to say anything? >> suicide is a challenge that all of the nation is trying to tackle.
▶ 1:55:36Cm Sgt Bentivegna: In addition to our ability to hire health care professionals -- I think we all agree it is a lot of work on a tactical level -- how do we get leadership involved and the rank-and-file involved? From the space force perspective, as we stood up we had the opportunity to look back at some challenges.
▶ 1:55:59Cm Sgt Bentivegna: That is one of the reasons why, at least from a cultural perspective, the guardian commitment, what it means to be a team member and team leader at the tactical level, one of our core values to try to get a read of some of the isolation and loneliness.
▶ 1:56:17Cm Sgt Bentivegna: In addition to professionals in the health care system, it is the work at the tactical level and culture that all of us are trying to create some members feel connected and they do not have to get to extremes to the point where it is a crisis and we have to rely on the medical community, that we have that connection and camaraderie among one another.
▶ 1:56:37Chair Tuberville: Thank you. Well said. Anyone else?
▶ 1:56:43Sgt Maj Ruiz: It is the 21st century. One little point of data. For an organization that is about humans, the marine, we can do so much better with how we develop a young person today. It is different. We must bring them up in a different way. We were talking about it. In my day there was someone smoking a cigarette and leading the information. Those days are over.
▶ 1:57:13Sgt Maj Ruiz: Some may be sad about that. I'm not interested in that anymore. This is different. These are our children, grandchildren who have up to take the helm. With the point of data, imagine that the platoon sergeant knows that someone did not get sleep in the last two days. A shirt that tells me how dehydrated they are.
▶ 1:57:40Sgt Maj Ruiz: It is the 21st century where we can use all of these ai predictive things to help, as a tool. You will never replace the human connection. But the time is here to get after the things that sergeant major of the army and seac, come from that world. They are able to invest in they are able to invest I and that is how they create lethal teams. It is right at our fingertips.
▶ 1:58:10Sgt Maj Ruiz: I would appreciate the help in the future.
▶ 1:58:11Chair Tuberville: As we finish this up, if you have something on your mind I want you to bring it up. Starting at the end.
▶ 1:58:20Seac Isom: Thank you for this entire committee. We appreciate the focus that you are putting on people. I will just say that we as leaders have to remember that every service is different. Each one has unique demographics and unique problems. Every location is different. A problem in guam looks different than alaska and pensacola, florida. A top-down solution does not always the best approach.
▶ 1:58:52Seac Isom: I advocate for flexibility for services to find solutions inside of their own services and for local commanders at those based to try to find solutions because the local solution is often better than the top-down. Thank you for all you do.
▶ 1:59:07Chair Tuberville: Thank you.
▶ 1:59:10Sgt Maj Weimer: Thank you. I hope today one of the things you see from all of us is how close we are. Services have equities. That is just how it works. We are in the people business. We are actually tight. My teammate to my left is new but his predecessor is sitting behind me because jim and I are tight, we are close. Dave is not here anymore but we are still tight. Dave wolfe is here.
▶ 1:59:43Sgt Maj Weimer: This is who we are. There is nothing we deal with that is easy. I learned that three years ago. We want to make sure, since you give us the opportunity, that is one thing the committee walks away with.
▶ 1:59:56Chair Tuberville: Master chief?
▶ 1:59:58Mcpo Perryman: I appreciate the opportunity and very much thank you for holding the hearing. I appreciate the light you put on us, whether it was barrick's or childcare. I think everyone in this room knows, left to our own devices, my building and this building will just buy me stuff. Loves kits.
▶ 2:00:27Mcpo Perryman: I have a lot of contracts for warships, airplanes and all kinds of things. The thing that gets shorted in the budget are the things that impact the quality of service of our sailors. Not just our quality of life -- sometimes we get too narrowly focused on housing and -- in the quality of the training that I get to the enlisted member.
▶ 2:00:55Mcpo Perryman: The quality of my peers, the hangars, we are the richest country in the road with the strongest navy but when we drive on our base it is not obvious those first two sentences are true. I appreciate your continued partnership and look forward to engaging with you in the future.
▶ 2:01:15Sgt Maj Ruiz: Thank you for the opportunity. Just one more thing that maybe your influence or membership and other committees, I feel like I'm also the sergeant major of the marines of the past. Today, thousands of marines exited for the last time the marine corps base.
▶ 2:01:36Sgt Maj Ruiz: Building momentum in their lives as the exit -- I will not be able to keep all of them -- I can't and frankly I do not want to -- the best of the best get a seat at the table. But for those the transition, especially for the culture we have, the ability to transition from active duty or the reserve component, whatever they are serving in, straight to a first responder, that they are not waiting 12-18 months to go to
▶ 2:02:10Sgt Maj Ruiz: School. And in between time of the paychecks run out and the medical gets expensive and life hits them, I worry about service -- suicide. If I can transition them faster to those areas -- shipbuilding, whatever it is. I met with the secret service director. Build a pipeline with the marine can go straight from the last day of active duty to your school. 21st century, eliminate the barriers. Let's get after it.
▶ 2:02:39Sgt Maj Ruiz: In turn, communities get a leader a lot quicker to be the next mayor, congressman, congresswoman and take over the helm of america.
▶ 2:02:49Cm Sgt Wolfe: Thank you, chairman. Ranking member. We really do care about these issues just like you do. We appreciate your continued advocacy. One of the things I have noticed in a couple of short months in this job is we do have resilience problems in a lot of areas. One area I have noticed we do not have any resilience problems is in the bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is very resilient.
▶ 2:03:17Cm Sgt Wolfe: As I look at the issues that have come before this committee today, there are common themes in each one of those areas where bureaucracy sometimes keeps us from delivering what our folks need. Anything this committee can do to continue to put pressure on extra rules that are not necessary and things that block us from being able to deliver what we need to to our people, we look forward to that opportunity in working with you in the years to come.
▶ 2:03:48Cm Sgt Wolfe: Thank you.
▶ 2:03:52Cm Sgt Bentivegna: Chairman, ranking member, thank you for the opportunity to talk about these important topics. Quality of life -- we talked about this -- having stable, reliable budgets really would be helpful as we plan these things out. Help with reliable, stable funding will help us get after challenges we talked about today. In the flexibility. Having flexibility. One size does not fit all. It is really important.
▶ 2:04:22Cm Sgt Bentivegna: Ranking member warren, you talk so passionately about childcare. With so much goodness and effort, child care and the community, homes, spouses with childcare in their homes, having the funds and the authority and flexibility to get after some of these challenges in multiple ways is so helpful to cut through some bureaucracy and actually provide impact to our
▶ 2:04:52Cm Sgt Bentivegna: Service members and families. Thank you for all the help on that. I appreciate it.
▶ 2:04:55Chair Tuberville: Thank you to all of you. This has been good. We need this. We need more of it. I coached a football team. You could have all the equipment you want but if you do not have the players, you do not have a chance. We need players. We need men and women to fight and sign up to defend our country. About six months ago I had a family come into my office here on capitol hill. Career military. Five kids 12 years old and under.
▶ 2:05:26Chair Tuberville: Not one of them is healthy because they were in a home for years that had mold. Somebody should go to jail. It probably should be us up here. If I had a magic wand we would take 5% and add to the ndaa every year because $1 trillion, $50 billion goes to food, childcare, health care, whatever it takes to continue to build the best military in the world. If we do not do that, it will not happen.
▶ 2:05:57Chair Tuberville: As sergeant major said, we have ai coming but that will not take the place of the soldier. It will not happen. We cannot count on that. We can count on new training but you cannot tremulous you have people. You cannot have people unless you have families there taking care of.
▶ 2:06:14Chair Tuberville: It is embarrassing we have those five kids that will never live the life that most of us about the chance to live because of stupidity of not following up and helping a family that has put their husband or their wife has put the life on the line to serve in the military. It is just sad. Hopefully we can continue these dialogues. Hopefully we can help all of you. We appreciate your service and what you have done for our country.
▶ 2:06:43Chair Tuberville: Continue to push our soldiers hard, trained them hard. You never know what is down the road. We live in a dangerous world. Thank you to the families, also. Thanks to all of you and thanks for what you do. Let's continue to have the best military in the world. This hearing is adjourned. Thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]