Rob Portman: “first, I appreciate the ranking member's comments, and I look forward to working with him on this. We talked about this…”

“first, I appreciate the ranking member's comments, and I look forward to working with him on this. We talked about this on the floor a moment ago. This is something the Army has requested. They came late; he is absolutely right. They did make a request in March, in terms of submitting this operational needs statement, but it wasn't until April 22 that they actually validated this high priority need and assigned it to the program manager. So the committee didn't have the opportunity to look at it as they have others. I will say it is urgent, and having just been over there and seeing one of those temporary armored companies about to leave, they need this badly. What they are saying is that the 30-millimeter cannon is necessary to go up against any potential enemy, and the .50-caliber machine gun simply is not. So this is not moving more Abrams tanks into the area. It is taking these Strykers and upgrading them, and they have identified this as an urgent need. So I look forward to working with the ranking member on this. I hope we can work through this, even in the next several days here, to get this done, because it is so important. It will be competed. It is a turret and gun system. It is something that does require an offset, and that offset--by the way, the account the GAO has identified as having a certain amount of funding does have that much room left in it and more, we are told.…”