WASHINGTON — Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown avoided setting off any major fireworks during his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday to function the following chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, maintaining his popularity as a nonpartisan officer.
But he forcefully laid out the impact that a blanket Senate hold on tons of of senior military confirmations, including his own, is having on the readiness of the joint force.
“We’ve got strong deputies, but at the identical time they don’t have the identical level of experience going forward,” Brown told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Along with the senior officers, there’s an entire chain of events that goes right down to our junior officers. And that has an impact.”
Brown said the holds on senior military officers instated by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., also prevents junior officers from moving up the chain of command, hindering their careers. He noted that if the Senate doesn’t promote the senior officers, they continue to be of their current positions, “blocking the spot for another person.”
Moreover, he said it impacts the families of staffers and junior officers as well, stopping them for planning their futures amid uncertainty over where they’ll be based.
“Whether it’s school, whether it’s employment, whether it’s the incontrovertible fact that they already sold their home because they thought they were going to maneuver and at the moment are living in temporary quarters, that creates a challenge,” said Brown. “We are going to lose talent. The spouse network is alive and well, and the spouses will compare notes.”
Tuberville began a blanket hold on senior military confirmations in February, demanding that the Pentagon rescind its latest policy providing paid travel leave for troops to travel to receive abortion services in the event that they’re stationed in states where it’s not legal. He was not within the room when Brown outlined the impact his military holds have had.
Democratic lawmakers are reluctant to devote limited floor time to confirming otherwise non-controversial military nominees often confirmed unanimous consent, even for senior leaders like Brown. Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., noted on Monday that it could take 84 days to verify all 253 promotions held up on the Senate floor if senators did nothing but vote on them for eight hours a day.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who chairs the military personnel panel, noted that Tuberville’s hold will soon affect roughly 650 military confirmations, significantly lengthening that 84-day timeline.
‘Nonpartisan’ goals as chairman
President Biden in May nominated Brown, 60, to be the nation’s next top military officer. If confirmed, he would succeed current Joint Chiefs chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley.
During his hearing, Brown was praised by most senators for his experience and leadership ability, and he appeared to have broad support on the committee.
Brown stressed to senators how necessary it’s to keep up the military’s distance from politics in his hearing, and pledged to set a private example of remaining nonpartisan if confirmed as chairman. Still, he couldn’t avoid questions on several controversies which have ensnared the armed forces in recent times, including racial and variety issues and the COVID-19 vaccine.
Brown said he would expect the remainder of the force to exhibit the identical nonpartisanship he promised to display — but he also asked civilian leaders not to drag the military into political debates.
“We’d like to remain out of politics, and stay nonpartisan, nonpolitical,” Brown said. “And at the identical time, advocate that our civilian leadership to not bring us into political situations.”
A simmering debate over whether diversity and inclusion initiatives were appropriate within the military erupted late within the hearing, when Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., began his questioning of Brown by asking, “Do we now have too many White officers within the Air Force?”
Schmitt criticized Brown for signing onto an Aug. 9, 2022, memo titled “Officer Source of Commission Applicant Pool Goals,” that updated the service’s racial, gender and ethnicity demographic goals for the pool of officer applicants.
That memo, which was also signed by Air Force Sec. Frank Kendall, then-Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones, and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond, called those applicant goals “aspirational,” and called for Air Education and Training Command and the U.S. Air Force Academy to give you diversity and inclusion outreach plans to realize those goals.
Schmitt pointed to the memo’s goal of getting an applicant pool that’s 67.5% White, and characterised it as saying that’s what the service’s population of officers needs to be. This, Schmitt said, would amount to “a discount, essentially, of about 9% of the White officers.”
Brown said the memo was on application goals, not what the actual makeup of the officer corps needs to be, and that the chances were based on nationwide demographics.
The Air Force was not advocating for racial quotas, Brown told Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Unwell., that are against the military’s policy.
Throughout the hearing, Brown said the Air Force’s efforts to enhance diversity are necessary to provide airmen of all backgrounds a likelihood at excelling.
“All they need is a good opportunity to perform,” Brown said. “And by providing that fair opportunity, they don’t want to be advantaged or disadvantaged or discounted based on their background.”
In his own roles as a fighter pilot, instructor and commandant of the Air Force Weapons School, Brown said that he desired to earn all his advancements based on his own merits, not due to his background.
“I didn’t need to be the perfect African-American F-16 pilot,” Brown said. “I desired to be the perfect F-16 pilot.”
Recruiting challenges
At the identical time, he said, the Air Force needed to make an effort to succeed in out to multiple populations across the nation, in order that they know what opportunities are on the market, while not compromising on their qualifications or merit.
“Young people only aspire to be what they find out about,” Brown said. “In the event that they don’t know anything concerning the military, and we don’t outreach to them, we may miss some tremendous talent. But they’ve got to be qualified, because we’re a merit-based organization.”
And with the military facing serious recruiting challenges, Brown said it would be much more necessary for officials comparable to himself to “reconnect with the nation” and talk concerning the opportunities military service can provide.
Some Republican senators also pressed Brown on what he would do as chairman to revive to service about 8,000 troops who were kicked out of the military for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Brown indicated an openness to allowing a few of those discharged troops to reapply and return to service on a case-by-case basis, so long as the vaccine refusal was the one negative mark on their record. But he noted that, as chairman, he wouldn’t be within the chain of command to make such decisions, and will only offer his advice to leaders of the person services.
Schmitt said allowing those troops to reapply isn’t ok, and said they needs to be reinstated with rank and back pay.
Lessons from Ukraine, and modernizing
Brown also endorsed multiyear procurement as a method to bolster munitions production, pointing to the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 budget request for multiyear authorizations to purchase items just like the Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System. He argued that doing so would “help provide predictability to the defense-industrial base, to their supply chains and to their workforce.”
He noted that the war in Ukraine has “exposed” underlying issues within the defense-industrial base, comparable to the flexibility to surge munitions production. Moreover, he endorsed a Pentagon plan to transfer weapons from U.S. stockpiles to Taiwan under the identical authority that President Joe Biden has used to arm Ukraine.
Brown said that munitions sent to Ukraine and Taiwan “are somewhat different just based on the environment that they’re operating in, but there are some which might be similar.”
Asked about lessons drawn from the Ukraine war, Brown said the conflict has highlighted the importance of air power.
“From my very own perspective as an airman, the worth of airpower and having watched what either side has been capable of do or not do, however the value of modern air defense and the way that’s been helpful to the Ukrainians in defense of their nation,” said Brown.
He also highlighted how logistics challenges have hampered Russia’s would-be-conquest of Ukraine, and the issue of measuring a military’s will to fight. Moreover, he said it stressed the worth of using intelligence before a crisis occurs.
In his three years as Air Force chief of staff, Brown has pushed his service to modernize and prepare for a fight against a complicated adversary comparable to China — an effort he dubbed Speed up Change or Lose.
Brown reiterated the importance of modernizing to find a way to satisfy a brand new threat, even when it means sacrificing one’s “own parochial interests.”
That generally is a challenge, he acknowledged. But he pledged to hold that mindset into his latest role heading the joint chiefs, if confirmed.
“The challenge there’s having all of our service members understanding the massive picture, and why that is so necessary, why we want to modernize, and what’s at stake,” Brown said. “You then step away from your personal parochial interests after which we do what’s best — not only in your a part of the organization, but what’s best for your complete organization.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.