Thank you, Chairman Inhofe.  I’d like to join you in welcoming our witnesses for an update on the readiness and posture of U.S. Special Operations and Cyber Commands.  General Thomas, I would also like to thank you for your extraordinary service and on your upcoming retirement after 39 years of service.  You have ably led SOCOM during difficult times, you’ve done it with great energy, great foresight, and great dedication to the men and women you lead, and I thank you for that.  I also want to thank your family, who have served alongside you and continue to serve with you.  General Nakasone, this is the first time you have appeared before the Committee since the elevation of Cyber Command to a unified command.  Congratulations on this and the recent operational accomplishments of your forces in partnership with NSA and other elements of the government in combatting some of our enemies in the cyber sphere.

SOCOM is unique within the Department of Defense as the only functional combatant command with “service-like” responsibilities for the training, equipping, organizing, and readiness of Special Operations Forces, or SOF.  For that reason, it is appropriate that Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, or ASD SOLIC Owen West joins us today in his role as the “service secretary-like” official responsible for oversight of, and advocacy for, the special operations forces.  Welcome, Mr. Secretary.

Since passage of the ASD SOLIC reforms contained in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, DOD has made important progress, including hiring additional personnel and more effectively integrating the ASD SOLIC into Departmental processes related to budgeting, acquisition, readiness, and personnel management.  These efforts are necessary, but not sufficient to fulfill the intent of the SOLIC reforms.  Secretary West and General Thomas, I hope you will provide your assessment of what more needs to be done and how this committee can continue to support your efforts.

SOCOM, as a microcosm of the broader Department and joint force, continues to adjust to the complex security environment and the focus of the National Defense Strategy on great power competition.  This change will have implications for the Department’s management of SOF readiness, capabilities development, and operational authorities that have not been fully evaluated.  As the demand for SOF continues to grow, we must also keep in mind that there are limits to the hardships we can ask special operations forces and their families to endure.

The United States, along with our allies and partners, face an urgent and continuing threat from information warfare attacks by Russia and other foreign adversaries.  Russia attacked our democracy in 2016 and we must view these attacks with the same level of seriousness and resolve as a military attack.  While we appear to have had some success in countering Russian interference in the 2018 mid-term elections, we should not take this as a sign that we can let our guard down.  We must do more to anticipate and counter these increasingly sophisticated attacks including by ensuring we are properly organized across the U.S. Government and inside the Department of Defense.  General Thomas and General Nakasone, your commands sit at the nexus of DOD efforts to operate more effectively in the information environment and I hope you will give a full assessment of what has been accomplished to integrate capabilities and authorities in this arena and what gaps remain. 

With respect to CYBERCOM, while much progress has been made in the last year, many serious challenges remain.  DOD has developed what appears to be a viable cyber strategy and has conducted a serious cyber posture review.  This posture review identified gaps in capabilities across the enterprise, and the Principal Cyber Advisor’s cross-functional team is defining objectives, specific tasks, resources, and timetables to correct them.  When completed, these activities should greatly increase the Department’s cyber security and the effectiveness of Cyber Command.

The Fiscal Year 2019 NDAA explicitly established that unacknowledged activities in cyberspace conducted below the level of armed conflict are a legal form of so-called “traditional military activities.”  The NDAA also provided authority to the President to take action against sustained campaigns of specific adversaries against the United States, including Russia’s malign influence campaign.  This legislation, along with the recent Presidential direction, provided DOD and Cyber Command with the needed authority to plan and conduct more vigorous actions in cyberspace to defend the country. 

To support such operations, Cyber Command has developed an operational concept to employ so-called “persistent engagement” in line with the National Defense Strategy.  This is an important milestone, which I hope will prove to be an effective model for engaging our adversaries without undue risk of escalation.  General Nakasone, I look forward to hearing more about this operational concept.

We have come a long way but we have a long way to go.  I know with General Nakasone’s leadership, General Thomas’s leadership and soon-to-be General Clark’s leadership, and with Secretary West, we’ll continue forward.

Thank you, again to our witnesses.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.