“Good afternoon, and welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations’ hearing on transforming the United States Military’s foreign language skills, cultural awareness, and regional expertise capabilities.

 “To address today’s strategic and operational environments, the Department is training and equipping our military force, not only in conventional combat skills, but also in the skills needed to conduct missions across the full spectrum of operations.  Those missions include fighting terror, conducting counterinsurgency, building partnership capacity in foreign countries, carrying out stability operations and humanitarian relief, and building coalitions.  All of these missions highlight the need for greater foreign language proficiency, cultural awareness, and regional expertise. 

 “A year ago, Deputy Secretary England identified strengthening cultural awareness and language skills as one of the Department’s top 25 transformation priorities to be completed or substantially advanced before the end of the current administration.  The Department reports that it has made significant improvements and has completed a substantial portion of the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap.  But, there is still much more to do. 

 “The Subcommittee met with Dr. David Chu, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, earlier this summer to discuss the progress that’s been made and the challenges that remain. 

 “Dr. Chu articulated the Department’s goal as developing a culturally sensitive force that can communicate worldwide at the strategic and tactical levels.  He said, in his view, the Department also needed to create a system that produces senior officers who can communicate U.S. policies and aims to non-English speaking populations in their own language and that those senior officers should be able to directly communicate through the local media and interact with their foreign policy establishment.  Among the challenges that remain, Dr. Chu said that more work needs to be done to better identify what our specific language, culture, and regional expertise requirements are. 

 "We can all agree that some level of foreign language skills, cultural awareness, and regional expertise is important for today’s military.  But, figuring out the optimal levels of proficiency and how we distribute those capabilities throughout the force is, no doubt, challenging. 

 “I hope our witnesses can address: (1) what our overarching vision and goals are -- particularly with respect to the general purpose forces; (2) how we can take that abstract vision and translate it into operational requirements, expressed in terms of proficiency levels and the right mixture of foreign language, and cultural and regional capabilities for individual personnel and units depending on their mission, and echelon; (3) what we risk giving up in terms of other readiness training in order to attain those capabilities; and (4) conversely, what we risk if we don’t develop these capabilities? 

 “We have witnesses from each of the Services, whose job it is organize, train, and equip this transformed force.  They are joined by witnesses from the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, who also have a central role in these efforts.  Our witnesses serve as the Senior Language Authorities in their organizations and are charged with overseeing the implementation of the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap and understanding the totality of the language needs of their organizations.  The perhaps surprising complexity of this issue is reflected in the differences among the Services in whom they've appointed as their Senior Language Authority.  We have a mix of personnel, operations, and intelligence leaders.

 "We are joined today by:

• Mrs. Gail H. McGinn
 Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Plans)
 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness)

• Brigadier General Gary Patton, USA
 Senior Language Authority
 Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff/J-1

• Brigadier General Richard Longo, USA
 Director of Training, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

• Mr. Joseph M. McDade, Jr.
 Director, Force Development,
 Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower and Personnel
 U.S. Air Force

• Rear Admiral Daniel P. Holloway, USN
 Director, Military Personnel Plans and Policy Division
 U.S. Navy

• Brigadier General R.M. (Dick) Lake, USMC
 Director of Intelligence
 U.S. Marine Corps

 “Welcome to all of you and thank you for being here.  There are six of you and the Subcommittee previously discussed the Department-wide viewpoint with Dr. Chu. So, with your agreement, in the interest of getting to the question and answer part of the hearing as quickly as possible, I’m going to ask only the four Service witnesses for brief opening remarks. We’ll make all of your prepared statements part of the record.”