WATCH: In SASC Airland Hearing, Kelly Questions Army Officials on Munitions Shortfalls and Operation Modernization

This week, during a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Airland Subcommittee hearing, Arizona Senator and Navy combat veteran Mark Kelly (D-AZ), the Subcommittee's Ranking Member, delivered remarks and questioned high-ranking officials on the Army's plan to rebuild critically low munitions stockpiles, how the Army is modernizing its operations, and the possibility of partnering with Ukraine on Patriot missile production.

In his opening remarks, Kelly acknowledged the unnecessary disruption caused by Secretary Hegseth's firing of T2COM's inaugural commander: "General Dave Hodne was nominated and confirmed as its first commander because he was the right officer to take on the challenge of merging multiple organizations into a unified headquarters. Then in April, Secretary Hegseth removed General Hodne. At the same time, he fired the Army Chief of Staff, General Randy George, both for no demonstrated reason. I want to acknowledge the work and professionalism of the T2COM leaders despite the complete and unnecessary disruption."

Kelly raised urgent concerns about the Army's contingency plan to replenish munitions stockpiles if reconciliation funding falls through: "Armies need munitions; they need troops. In Iran, there were in excess of ten or twelve thousand strikes conducted and then counter strikes that we had to defend against. […] A number of munitions that are requested in the next budget are requested through the reconciliation process, rather than the regular appropriations process for the Army. So, what is the Army's plan to procure these munitions that we have to replace and rebuild these stockpiles in the event that a reconciliation agreement is not reached?"

Kelly also raised the possibility of Ukraine co-producing PAC-3 Patriot rounds, pressing Tolleson on whether Ukraine could serve as a co-production partner: "Do you think it would be helpful for them in their conflict with Russia, to be able to do some of the co-production you talked about, specifically the PAC-3 round for the Patriot?"

Tolleson said he thinks the Army would be open to discussing it and noted that he would need to get on the ground assessments, but given Ukraine's demonstrated ability to adapt and innovate with UAS technology, he "imagined they could do it."

Sen. Kelly questions Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Jesse Tolleson and Lieutenant General Edmond Brown during a SASC Airland hearing.

Click here to download a video of Kelly's opening remarks. Click here to download a video of Kelly's questions. See the transcript below:

Opening remarks:

Senator Kelly:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join you in welcoming our witnesses. And thank both of you for appearing before the Subcommittee today and I look forward to hearing your testimony. I also want to recognize the servicemembers around the world who find themselves in harm's way as we meet today. While this is a modernization hearing, today's discussion is also relevant to all of them. I understand the Assistant Secretary of the Army for acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Brent Ingraham, is in Europe finalizing some agreements with foreign partners. And that's a reminder that our allies and our partners matter. Mr. Tolleson, we appreciate you testifying in his absence. And, General Brown, thank you for being here.

Last October, Army Transformation and Training Command, or T2COM, was established to integrate force generation, force development, and force design under a single command to better posture the Army to, and this is a quote, "ensure readiness and the speed of relevance," unquote. General Dave Hodne was nominated and confirmed as its first commander because he was the right officer to take on the challenge of merging multiple organizations into a unified headquarters. Then in April, Secretary Hegseth removed General Hodne at the same time he fired the Army Chief of Staff, General Randy George, both for no demonstrated reason. So, I want to acknowledge the work and professionalism of the T2COM leaders despite the complete and unnecessary disruption. General Brown, your experience in the Army Futures Command and Army Combat Capabilities Development Command positions you well to continue the challenging task of establishing T2COM. So, thank you for being here today, and I look forward to hearing an update on how T2COM is enhancing the Army's ability to modernize.

The Army is in the middle of a major modernization cycle, and what I want to understand is how the Army plans to manage all of these modernization programs to get capabilities into the hands of the soldiers more quickly, because, as I think we all recognize, speed matters. Our adversaries, they move quickly. Technology is changing rapidly, and the Army has to be able to identify, develop, test, and then field new capabilities at a pace that keeps up with the threats that we face. In particular, I'm interested in hearing how the Army's six capability portfolios under the Portfolio Acquisition Executives are contributing to the accelerated delivery of warfighting technology. The Army's budget prioritizes major ground combat formations with significant investment in next generation tanks and ground combat vehicles. Ground forces remain the military component capable of seizing and holding terrain, but that's not guaranteed. The battlefield is changing, and I want to better understand how the Army is modernizing its concept of operations in an era of ubiquitous drone technology. The Army is also looking at fires more holistically-offensive and defensive-and recognizing the criticality of layered systems. Operations in Ukraine and Iran validate both the importance of the exquisite systems, but also the importance of the complementary lower-cost munitions. And I'm interested in how the Army is going to build a layered, kinetic and non-kinetic capability that protects maneuver forces and contributes to the joint fight.

The Army is also making significant investments in critical enablers, including next generation command and control, next generation aviation, and logistics capabilities for contested and also maritime environments. As the Army increasingly experiments on the edge to field these new technologies, I look forward to learning how it is ensuring rigorous test and evaluation standards. And at the same time, modernization of enduring capabilities that will remain in formations for years to come must be part of the Army's strategy. And I hope our witnesses will provide an update on Secretary Driscoll's "Right to Integrate" initiative focused on accelerating data sharing on the battlefield. Our witnesses face the challenge of balancing support for ongoing operations, sustaining readiness, and modernization, while preserving the technological edge critical to our military's success. And I look forward to the discussion. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Roger Wicker:

Thank you, Senator Kelly.

Questioning:

Round 1:

Senator Kelly:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, armies need munitions; they need troops. In Iran, there were in excess of ten or twelve thousand strikes conducted and then counter strikes that we had to defend against. So, I think it's fair to say the Joint Force expended a significant number of munitions. And a number of munitions that are requested in the next budget are requested through the reconciliation process, rather than the regular appropriations process for the Army. So, what is the Army's plan to procure these munitions that we have to replace and rebuild these stockpiles in the event that a reconciliation agreement is not reached?

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Jesse Tolleson:

Senator Kelly, thanks for the question. That's a great question. You'll see that our missile procurement Army budget, about 82% of the munitions that are requested are going to be in the reconciliation mandatory bucket. We fully support reconciliation. You know, obviously. We really need that to pass so we can continue to expand our munitions production capacity and build out and re-stockpile.

Kelly:

Mr. Tolleson, was the thought to put it in there to increase the likelihood that a reconciliation process is successful because these are critical items?

Tolleson:

Sir, I personally can't answer that question. That determination was made above my pay grade. What I can tell you though, is, sir, is that we are looking at options here in case reconciliation does not go through. It is a concern and I think we owe you more detail on what that plan B would be. I think what we would have to do is essentially, we would work to get to the rate that we needed to get to that was requested in as part of reconciliation, whether that be through renegotiation with the contractor or just reprograming funding.

Kelly:

I think that would be a good idea to have a contingency plan because we need to restock these munitions. And then, General Brown, how is the Army's efforts in identifying and incorporating some low-cost, long-range munitions that will be complementary to current systems?

Acting Commanding General of the Army Transformation and Training Command Lieutenant General Edmond Brown:

Yes, sir. Thanks for the question. I'm actually pretty excited about where we are with low-cost cruise missile. And then you also talk about low-cost containerized munitions. What we've done is we've maintained the pace that we have with our current contracts and our current capabilities. At the same time, we've done really a sequel to think about what can we bring in? There is a lot of private money in defense right now. There's a lot of capability. What we've really started over the last two years is working the use cases because when companies get ready to spend their internal research and development dollars, we've got to make sure we give them the right use cases and vignettes. Some of these companies are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into IRAD to be able to get after these capabilities. We're talking magazine depth that we've got to work on. That's a part of our formations in the future. So, it's not just containerized munitions, but it's low-cost cruise missiles that could complement the programs that we already have the programs of record. We see this as a must do. This is part of the innovation ecosystem that we have to foster.

Kelly:

I was in an underground drone manufacturing facility where some of their drones now have ranges, this is in Ukraine, have ranges in excess of 800 kilometers. I think now that was a year-it was about 15 months ago. And I think now that's even in excess of 1000 kilometers and they're pushing them out. Those things are basically cruise missiles at this point. I mean, they're much slower, right? They're subsonic. And they especially, over the last few days, you could see in open source, the ability to hit, and effectively hit, refineries and do significant damage is increasing. We need to learn from that and incorporate that into our acquisition process to build out, maybe not have them on the shelf right now, but to build the capacity to build them.

Brown:

Senator, one thing that just to add on that, I think that there's a capability for us to recompete some of the capabilities that we already have planned. An example is PrSM Increment 4. We're doing just that in that space.

Round 2:

Kelly:

Mr. Tolleson, would you regard the Ukrainians as one of those partners?

Tolleson:

Sir, I would say yes.

Kelly:

So, do you think it would be helpful for them in their conflict with Russia, to be able to do some of the co-production you talked about, specifically, the PAC-3 round for the Patriot?

Tolleson:

Sir, I think we'd have to work out the details and understand how that would actually work and function, and we can get them out of country just depending on what that conflict would be. But I think from our foxhole inside the Army, I think we would be open to discussing that.

Kelly:

And is your sense that they would have-they seem to be capable to do very technical things. Do you think that they would have the capacity to do that at this point?

Tolleson:

You know, sir, I would have to defer to my SAG-U team that's overseas right now there to get more of an assessment as to whether or not they could actually have the capability to produce an exquisite air defense munition like Patriot or like PAC-3. However, seeing how they've been able to adapt and bring out things like UAS and launched effects, I would imagine that they could do it.

Kelly:

Okay. I think that would be a good thing to look into. And then General Brown, you mentioned the vehicle protection system that's built into the M-1E3. So, without going into too much detail, my understanding is that this is an integrated counter-UAS capability, at least part of it, and it's not based on any broad-based counter-UAS architecture outside, like it's organic to the tank. And then, if you could clarify that. And then the other question is, is there a similar system within the XM-30?

Brown:

Yes, sir. There is a similar system. So, the capability is a vehicle. There's a base kit, but then you can put different capabilities inside. It's not just for counter-UAS. You know, it still is protecting against other direct fire. So, it could be a UAS. It could be some other type of munition. So, what we're looking at is things like obscuration. We're looking at just simple things at how it could knock down something that's coming at it, how it could shoot maybe an automatic machine gun that shoots just like the phalanx gun on a ship that we used for our SeaRAM over. It's the same principle. But what it does is, we've got to have that brain on the inside that says, don't shoot all of your capabilities at the first thing that comes. You have to be discretionary and make sure that you're using the right tool for the right job.

Kelly:

Is it the same system for…?

Brown:

It's similar, yes, sir. Because of where the crew is and where the soldiers are. Obviously, XM-30 is going to be carrying soldiers to be able to dismount, whereas the M-1E3 wouldn't have that many. So that's really the difference. There'll be a little bit more on the XM3-0, but it'll have a different lean on the on the M-1E3.

Kelly:

Okay. And then, also for you, General, how is the Army incorporating autonomous ground vehicles into this effort? The Ukrainians had some success in especially medevac autonomous ground vehicles. They also had some that had, I don't know, a 30 or 50 caliber machine gun on it that they were able to capture some enemy troops. Are we looking at those systems as well? Or are we, I think we talked a little bit the other day about the M-1E3, maybe you alluded to-or maybe it wasn't the M-1E3, but just some autonomous ground systems, if you can comment there.

Brown:

Yes, sir. Last fall we did an EXTECH event where we actually brought out-we went through and did 600-we had 600 industry partners that put in. We picked 40 and then we did a competition. We got down to 20. And those 20 are out with First Brigade 1^st Cav at Fort Hood right now going through and actually using their autonomous systems inside that brigade. So, we're learning from that. With the pathway for innovative technology, we've begun to start transitioning some of those capabilities. We can give you a full rundown on that.

Kelly:

And what are the autonomous ground systems? What are the missions for those?

Brown:

Yes, sir. So, breaching. You know, we always start off with what are the things that we don't want soldiers to be doing? We want we don't want to trade blood for first contact. So breaching, minefields. If we're talking about doing reconnaissance, doing security in some cases, doing obscuration, doing chemical biological testing, these are the types of things we want our autonomous systems to be able to do, as well as we want to thicken the formations that we have. So, it's not about replacing one for one. It's just like CCA in some of the other services, we want to actually thicken those formations so that we have autonomous and semi-autonomous systems in the formations. And we actually learned this as working with the Ukrainians. That's where we got the start.

Kelly:

And did you have clearing a minefield in there as well?

Brown:

Yes, sir. Breaching. Yes, sir.

Kelly:

All right. Thank you.