BERGMAN OPENING STATEMENT AT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS FY24 MARKUP

Hearing

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Intelligence and Special Operations subcommittee mark for the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.

Before we begin, I would like to thank Ranking Member Gallego for his support and contribution to the mark as well as the members of the subcommittee for their efforts as we developed this bipartisan subcommittee mark.

The mark focuses the Special Operations Forces and the Defense Intelligence Enterprise to ensure they can support the Department's efforts in strategic competition and counter China. To accomplish this, the Intelligence and Special Operations community must have the appropriate authorities, force structure, flexibility and technically and tactically competent people to accomplish the mission. The subcommittee mark accomplishes this by supporting the Defense Intelligence Enterprise's continued efforts to focus resources to counter China in new domains; reforming the training and management of the security cooperation workforce in order to better support the Geographic Combatant Commanders' efforts to counter China and Russia by ensuring that the United States is the military partner of choice; as well as increased flexibility in the Combatant Commander's Initiative Fund to meet the emergent needs of the commanders. The mark also requires the military service secretaries in coordination with SOCOM and the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict to review the force structure and personnel requirements of special operations forces to ensure they can meet the demands of strategic competition, counter China, and counter violent extremist organizations simultaneously. And finally, the mark codifies the current section 1202 of the FY18 NDAA Support of Special Operations for Irregular Warfare to continue the United States efforts in strategic competition with partner nations to build the capability to resist and counter aggression from nations such as Russia and China.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank our tremendous professional staff led by Craig, and includes Joe Bartlett, Will Johnson, and Zach Calderon; without this team, the mark would not be possible.

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