“The hearing will come to order.

 “Good afternoon, and welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations’ hearing on defeating Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and other asymmetric threats. This is this committee’s first hearing to discuss these issues.

 “The reason we’re here today is that the IED remains the number one cause of casualties to Coalition Forces in Iraq. More than half of U.S. deaths due to enemy action have been the result of IEDs. Although IEDs are not a new threat, they have been used with unprecedented frequency in Iraq and are on the rise in Afghanistan.  They promise to be a weapon of choice for a long time into the future around the world.

 “Since former CENTCOM Commander General Abizaid called for a ‘Manhattan project-like effort’ five years ago to defeat IEDs, Congress has provided nearly $14 billion dollars to DOD’s efforts. This effort has grown from a 12-man Army Task Force to the Joint IED Defeat Organization or ‘JIEDDO,’ which currently employs a staff of about 3,600 government, military and contract personnel.

 “We have two primary questions today.  How is JIEDDO doing against the threat?  What should be the future of JIEDDO?

 “JIEDDO’s mission is to defeat the IED as a weapon of ‘strategic influence’ so today’s hearing will provide an opportunity to hear how the organization is doing in this critical and difficult mission and how we measure success in this fight.

 “We are also here to discuss the future of JIEDDO’s capabilities. While the Deputy Secretary of Defense has made the ‘institutionalization’ of JIEDDO one of his top 25 transformation priorities to complete before the end of the year, it is no surprise that there are plenty of opinions about what to do with an organization or a mission that is well funded. The Department itself has done two recent key assessments.  

 “The Program Analysis & Evaluation (PA&E) study group (we have a PA&E representative here today) recommended leaving JIEDDO intact and to start migrating its budget into the base defense budget. To this point, almost all of its funding has been in the supplemental and therefore not authorized through the House Armed Services Committee. 

 “On the other hand, the Combatant Commanders’ Senior Warfighter Forum or SWarF, while recognizing the accomplishments of JIEDDO, questioned whether some of its capabilities were now mature enough to transition to standard Defense, COCOM or Service organizations.

 “The GAO is also conducting a study on JIEDDO on behalf of this committee, authorized last year.  And our staff has been working with them.

 “In the best of all possible worlds, we’d have enough money to go around for all good ideas.  In this world though, our responsibility is to make sure we can balance funding between many ‘must have’ capabilities.  One question we and the Department have to consider is what we’ll do as other asymmetric threats come along.  Should JIEDDO inherit them or will that dilute its focus which is claimed as its core strength?  Should we build a new JIEDDO-like organization for each new threat as it comes along?  Can we afford that if we don’t transition mature capabilities to standard organizations? 

 “We hope our witnesses today can help illuminate all these questions, if not give us all the answers.

 “Our panel of witnesses represents JIEDDO, the Department and Joint Forces Command:

• Mr. Bradley Berkson
Director, Programs, Analysis and Evaluation
Office of the Secretary of Defense

• Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, USA
Director, Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO)
 
• Mr. Tom Matthews
Director, Warfighter Requirements and Evaluations
Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Intelligence)
 
• Mr. William Beasley
Director, Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology & Logistics)
 
• Major General Jason K. Kamiya, USA
Director, Joint Training Directorate (J7)
U.S. Joint Forces Command

 “Welcome to all of you and thank you for being here.  After Mr. Akin’s opening remarks, I’ll turn to each of you for a brief opening statement. Because we have such a large panel, I ask that you keep your oral statements to 5 minutes or less. Your entire prepared statements will be made part of the record. 

 “The committee met on September 9th in a closed session to discuss some of the relevant classified subject areas. If during the course of this hearing we start to encroach on these areas, we are prepared to reconvene in a closed session right after this hearing and continue the discussion. 

 “Before we begin, I want to acknowledge six distinguished members of the Afghan parliament who are attending today as part of the House Democracy Assistance Commission’s second Committee Operations Seminar. Welcome.

 “On an administrative note, we will use our customary five-minute rule today for questioning, proceeding by seniority and arrival time.

 “With that, let me turn it over to our ranking member, Mr. Akin, for any statement he would like to make.”