Rep. Forbes’s Congressional Oversight Topics for 2015

In a short piece last month, Rep. Randy Forbes outlined several topics he will explore this coming year as HASC Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman.  He has long showed great interest in UCLASS requirements definition, so it is not surprising to see that issue on his list. Nor is it surprising to see that the sequester’s continued effects on defense readiness and procurement, the overall defense budget’s adequacy for supporting U.S. grand strategy, and the Defense Department's offset strategy initiative are also on his list.

There are a few unanticipated topics, however, that I'm quite happy to see he called out:

We also need to focus on developing new concepts of operation for conducting naval resupply missions in contested maritime environments, conducting joint operations in a communications degraded or denied environment and conducting air operations from austere, dispersed, or degraded airfields. Finally, we need to develop a munitions strategy that focuses on deploying new advanced munitions for land-attack, anti-surface, and mine warfare, and, just as importantly, procuring a healthy stockpile to have in storage ashore and afloat in the region.

ID readers know that the ability to operate effectively under cyber-electromagnetic opposition is one of my own major areas of interest. So are the strategic implications of advanced ordnance producibility and inventory management; the latter aspect is inseparable from combat logistics. These topics, and combat logistics in general, simply do not receive the attention they deserve from the U.S. defense analysis community. Hopefully any hearings Rep. Forbes may be planning to hold them over the coming year will help change that.