Jack Reed

There simply is no room for behavior that humiliates and degrades a fellow servicemember.

The nonconsensual posting of explicit photos of female marines on a public website is repugnant and just plain wrong and inexcusable.

Do you need any additional authority for the National Sea-Based Fund to accelerate these future savings and to increase them?

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

This budget request is a start, but I am afraid it is not enough.

We owe our sailors and marines and all of our men and women in uniform more than that, a lot more.

Russia represents the most significant threat to the United States, not only in their new area denial systems but also in their cyber operations.

The budget that is submitted will not work.

I have not heard a clarion call from the President and also a practical response and solution.

Will the politics of this be difficult? Yes. But the question all of us here must answer is: How much longer will we send our sons and daughters into harm's way unprepared before we get over our politics and do our jobs?

We cannot go on like this. Our men and women in uniform deserve better.

This defense budget request and the additional funding that our military needs is literally illegal under the Budget Control Act.

Restoring readiness, recapitalizing our combat aircraft fleet, and reinvesting in modernization will require strong personal leadership, accountability, and a frank assessment of the Air Force's true warfighting requirements.

I assume you have to do is improve recruitment and retention in order to just fill up the current existing force structure.

In terms of modernization, there is a tendency to make incremental improvements in equipment.

Sixty-six percent. What are the two or three key steps that you have to take, you think, to get from what it is today to that 66 percent?

I applaud the Army for making readiness their number one priority.

We can and must do better.

We have to be much, much better prepared for 2018, 2020, and beyond.

Yes, sir. I would be the first to admit it is not what our workforce is optimized for.

We lack an effective integrated and coordinated capability to detect and counter the kind of influence operation that Russia now routinely and continuously conducts.

Russia's election interference is likely to be a new normal.

Russia is exploiting to threaten the bedrock of our democracy and our shared international institutions.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me focus on the issue of cyber, which you brought up, and I brought up in my comments.