00:00This is back, Chair, and I recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Norcross.
00:03Thank you, Chairman, and thank the witnesses for coming here today.
00:07As you can see, how excited we are about the defense acquisition reform.
00:13And the folks that you're seeing here are the ones particularly on the hardware committee
00:16on what we're dealing with day in and day out.
00:19So we talk about building capacity, and we've seen across our industrial base,
00:23not just for defense, but our country, outsource so much of what we used to do.
00:30And how do we bring that back?
00:32A couple years ago, we passed the Mines Act, which talks about domestic content.
00:36And the idea of buying American is a great concept.
00:39But there are details.
00:41Not just to buy it to buy a reason.
00:43It's to build that capacity so when we need to use it, it's going to be there.
00:48And one of the most difficult things in building that capacity is building the workforce,
00:52the skilled workforce.
00:54You don't order that and get it in two weeks.
00:57That takes a generation.
00:58So the idea of domestic content is incredibly important.
01:03So when we talk about the awareness the department has in major acquisition programs, it was 55%.
01:11And there's all kinds of Swiss cheese, how they can get around that.
01:15And what the Mines Act did over seven years was to increase it to 75%.
01:19Not just for the sake of buying American, which is a great concept, but to build our capacity.
01:25Not just to say for a year, but over the years.
01:29Part of that in the 24 NDAA was that we were to get a report due in December 24.
01:38That has passed.
01:39We have not received that.
01:40So, Mr. Duffy, first and foremost, will you make sure that we get that report in a timely fashion?
01:46Because the idea of not knowing what contains our domestic content is a real issue that we've been dealing with.
01:56Yes, sir.
01:57We'll get that to you.
01:59And that goes on year to year so we can understand what is coming down.
02:03Because coming through the pandemic, we learned the hard way.
02:06And certainly much of what we're doing here today focuses directly on building our capacity.
02:13I just want to shift a little bit.
02:14It was mentioned the right to repair the intellectual property of a company.
02:19So, we want more off the shelf.
02:22Great concept.
02:23But then we immediately get into something that was developed by a corporation for a profit motive.
02:31And yet, you want to have those intellectual rights to repair it.
02:34This is an extremely difficult issue to talk about, particularly when we're building, let's say, for a vehicle that's built on a commercially available.
02:46The idea of just turning it over is something that is going to be a problem.
02:52The F-35 is the old way.
02:55We, unfortunately, don't own that.
02:57And we're paying for it as we go down the road.
03:00But how do you balance the right to repair, what we need in the field at the appropriate time, versus a company's intellectual property?
03:14It can't be all cases all the way.
03:17We took a stab at this in the NDAA.
03:19But this is going to be an ongoing issue, particularly when you're asking off the shelf.
03:25How are you going to deal with that?
03:26I think it's a very important and excellent question.
03:31And I think we have to be creative about how do we – is there a surgical way to get access to the data that we need in order to enable us to repair and sustain the systems
03:44without violating the intellectual property protections that are the profit motive for corporations
03:51and are really the enabler of our industrial capability.
03:57And so I don't – sitting before you have the answer today, but I assure you I understand the complexity of the issue.
04:03And it's one that we have some of our best folks.
04:06Sustainment is an ongoing challenge, and just thinking through how do we – when you're competing for resources,
04:12how do we ensure that we have that adequately addressed so that we have operational readiness is a high priority of mine.
04:19And this is an important element of that.
04:22So I assure you we are getting after this problem in trying to figure this out.
04:26So each one of the hardware committees is very much focused on that to make it work for both sides
04:32because that innovation is the very issue that we want to capture and move on.
04:37With that, I yield back.
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