The Army today is able to produce only enough readiness to meet requirements--and we can only achieve this because of the extra funding made available by the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA).

Without a major change in national strategy to account for a smaller force with reduced capability, the Army will likely experience a period where it is indeed hollow.

what is the current status of our retrograde and reset efforts from Iraq and Afghanistan, and what equipment shortfalls would we face if we were forced to surge in the next 12 months?

When our troops deploy to war, we have a responsibility to provide them the very best equipment.

Fantastic. Thank you.

We cannot do that lightly.

Is 34 the right number of amphibious vessels?

We are never going to remove politics from any of this process, because it is the nature of a democracy.

I'm really appreciative that you're looking at this acceleration, given the need that we know is very apparent.

What is the impact on our national security and the Navy's ability to project power if we are short on amphibious vessels?

You can appreciate where we don't want to build municipal water projects, but we want to help the Navy.

We've all had incidences in our states. A number of years ago, we had an incident in New Hampshire that prompted an early discussion in our state about this where we had a horrible, horrible mad man who murdered a judge, murdered troopers…