Kelly Ayotte

I expressed concern about the Marine Corps' decision to deactivate one of three Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons (MPS), MPS-1, in the Mediterranean.

From a perspective of naval readiness, how important are the public shipyards and the Federal employees who work at these yards?

I think we need to understand, though, that it's not going to be the same for our guys on the ground.

I had a Special Forces guy come up to me, saying that the night before, the A-10s really saved their butts.

I think it's a really important step forward for victims.

This is something that I think is a very important step forward to make sure that victims have advocacy for them and within the system.

It's important, but unless I'm missing something, we're doing this pretty quickly.

It's going to be very tough.

We can ask them, but the damage we would do to them would be irresponsible.

Below 450,000, we don't think we'd be able to do it.

We couldn't do that at 420,000.

What risks are we taking on by doing that?

Even without sequestration, we're proposing significant reductions, are we not?

Any objective analysis of the global security environment demonstrates that the world is becoming more--not less--dangerous.

When Congress fails to provide proper training and equipment, we risk being confronted with two unacceptable options: deploying troops into harm's way who are unprepared or failing to respond in a crisis.

Congress has a sacred responsibility to make sure that those who have agreed to serve have the best possible training and equipment.

I also want to pass along my condolences to those who have suffered at the Naval Station at Norfolk.

No, this level is not sufficient.

Isn't investing in our acquisition workforce likely to pay for itself many times over in lower acquisition costs?

Mr. Powner, how does DOD determine which approach to use for which program?

Mr. Powner, what programs are not using this incremental approach?

As I understand it, the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2010 charges the CMO of DOD, in consultation with the Comptroller, with revising a FIAR plan which describes that specific actions must be taken to ensure that the financial statements of DOD…

For a system like ECSS, was there one accountable leader? Was anyone held accountable for the failures?

On the Dashboard issue, as I read the GAO report, I see that essentially we can save a pretty substantial amount of money.

Section 804, as Senator Ayotte, the ranking member, mentioned of the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2010 directed that DOD develop and implement a new acquisition process for IT systems based on the 2009 Defense Science Board (DSB) report.