My understanding is that you would like to get to more than 5,500.

We owe it to these men and women to ensure that resources are available for training and readiness activities and to ensure that they have fully functional equipment to get the job done.

I would like to ask you how are you incorporating the shift to the Asia-Pacific as you consider expanding the fleet to deploy the number of ships you need?

So the ultimately goal is 5,500 JLTVs.

I just wanted to note that as a very strong supporter of the Jones Act, not only is the Jones Act important to maintaining our industrial base, but it is a very important part of national security.

Ultimately, if we do not act to amend or replace the Budget Control Act, we could end up cutting, not increasing, the size of the Navy.

I would like to join you in thanking our witnesses for being here with us this morning to discuss how we can get to the goal of a 355-ship Navy.

I commend you for that because that was something that you did internally. You were able to effect a shortening of the time frame for when you would be able to hire the needed workers.

I think we need to be very realistic in the short-term and in the long-term of ways that we can get to this goal.

I just want to make sure that if we need to look at the statutory basis for us going forward with these two kinds of contracts that you all agree are good, then I will explore that.

That cutting would not be done with a scalpel, but rather the meat cleaver that is sequestration.

We do have bipartisan support for eliminating the sequestration, but we have not quite been able to achieve that.