Hegseth dismissed criticism of the strikes, which have killed more than 80 people and now face intense scrutiny over concerns that they violated international law. Saying the strikes are justified to protect Americans, Hegseth likened the fight to the war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it,” Hegseth said during his keynote address at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation’s interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.”

The most recent strike brings the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people. Lawmakers have sought more answers about the attacks and their legal justification, and whether U.S. forces were ordered to launch a follow-up strike following a September attack even after the Pentagon knew of survivors.

Though Hegseth compared the alleged drug smugglers to Al-Qaida terrorists, experts have noted significant differences between the two foes and the efforts to combat them.

Hegseth’s remarks came after the Trump administration released its new national security strategy, one that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

During the speech, Hegseth also discussed the need to check China’s rise through strength instead of conflict. He repeated Trump’s vow to resume nuclear testing on an equal basis as China and Russia — a goal that has alarmed many nuclear arms experts. China and Russia haven’t conducted explosive tests in decades, though the Kremlin said it would follow the U.S. if Trump restarted tests.

The speech was delivered at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California, an event which brings together top national security experts from around the country. Hegseth used the visit to argue that Trump is Reagan’s “true and rightful heir” when it comes to muscular foreign policy.

By contrast, Hegseth criticized Republican leaders in the years since Reagan for supporting wars in the Middle East and democracy-building efforts that didn’t work. He also blasted those who have argued that climate change poses serious challenges to military readiness.

“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building,” he said.

Nearly half of the amphibious warfare ships Marines need to deploy often are unavailable due to maintenance, according to a government watchdog. How the Navy currently manages those repairs means jarheads will continue to deploy late to the fight.

The Dec. 3 Government Accountability Office report, which detailed an audit from April 2023 to December 2024 at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, and Naval Base San Diego, California, provided a decade’s worth of data regarding underperforming amphibious warfare ships.

In the report, Marine Corps data from 2011 to 2020 showed that the specific class of ships were available for operational tasks only 46% of the time.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, the Boxer and America amphibious readiness groups — and their associated Marine Expeditionary Units — were hampered with missed exercises and delayed deployments due to the unavailability of the vessels.

The GAO report made four recommendations to the Navy.

Among them, researchers suggested that the secretary of the Navy as well as the Marine Corps commandant refine definitions on amphibious ship availability and establish a period for completing a joint-service plan on availability concerns.

The Navy secretary also should ensure that the chief of naval operations updates ship maintenance policy to clarify that depot maintenance should not be canceled for amphibious warfare ships slated for divestment, the report added.

Lastly, the secretary and chief should establish performance goals for implementing amphibious readiness review recommendations, according to the report.

Lt. Col. Joshua Benson told Marine Corps Times in an email statement that the GAO findings and recommendations align with the service’s perspective on the matter.

“The current state of readiness impacts the Marine Corps’ capacity to support Combatant Commander’s needs, to maintain a 3.0 presence with Marine Expeditionary Units performing heel-to-toe deployments, and ultimately limits our ability to respond to crisis around the globe,” said Benson, spokesman for Marine headquarters.

Navy officials concurred in whole or in part with all of the report’s recommendations.

The Navy currently has 32 amphibious warfare ships in its fleet, one more than the congressionally mandated requirement. Half of those ships, however, are in non-operational status, though they were previously counted as operational by the Navy, even when undergoing maintenance.

But when a ship is non-deployable, Marines are left high and dry.

Earlier this year the sister services reconciled on the definition of non-operational, which now includes ships in maintenance, though report authors dinged the services for not clarifying what types of maintenance would designate a ship as non-operational.

“The Navy considers a ship undergoing an intermediate maintenance period to be capable of stopping maintenance work and getting underway within four days … to perform a mission,” according to the report.

Repair, maintenance and modernization needs, however, can put a ship out of service for anywhere between six months and three years. One ship identified in the report has gone 12 years without deploying.

But when GAO staff toured the amphibious dock landing ship Germantown in October 2023, officials told them, “The ship could not deploy within 96 hours due to the extensive amount of maintenance in its ongoing intermediate maintenance period.”

As of September 2024, ships in the Navy’s amphibious warfare fleet include two (LHA) amphibious assault ships, seven (LHD) amphibious assault ships, 13 (LPD) amphibious transport dock ships and 10 (LSD) dock landing ships.

Of the 32 amphibious warfare ships, 16 are not expected to reach their 40-year service life. However, the entire fleet will need to serve beyond that time limit to maintain at least a 31-amphibious warfare ship requirement, according to the report.

That will cost an estimated $1 billion per ship, the report said.

A $9.6 billion deal inked in September between the Navy and shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries to build three new amphibious transport dock ships will, in a few years, help slow — but not stop — the bleeding when it comes to amphibious warfare ship availability.

Defense News reported in January that Huntington Ingalls Industries was uncertain it could deliver amphibious warfare ships to the Navy if an extended pause on the shipbuilding funding continued. Any future funding delays would further exacerbate ship production.

The pause was recommended last week “out of an abundance of caution” by Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, the head of Naval Air Systems Command, which runs the Osprey program for the military, said command spokeswoman Marcia Hart.

The Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force are adhering to the recommended pause, each said in a statement to The Associated Press. The Marines said its pause began on Friday and would run through Monday. The other services are expected to maintain their pauses longer as they look at the cause of the metal failures.

An in-depth investigation into the Osprey by The AP published last month found that safety issues have increased in the past five years, parts are wearing out faster than expected and that the design of the aircraft itself is directly contributing to many of the accidents. The Osprey can fly both like a helicopter and an airplane.

Following that report, lawmakers sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking him to reground the Osprey fleet until solutions can be put in place to address safety and design issues identified by the AP.

The latest near crash, at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico on Nov. 20, had similarities to a crash off the coast of Japan in November of last year that killed eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members.

In the Japan crash, inclusions — or weakened spots — in the metal used for critical gears inside the Osprey’s transmission led to the gearing falling apart inflight and a cascading catastrophic failure of the aircraft. At the time the crew did not realize the seriousness of the failure and did not immediately land.

Lessons from that fatal Japan crash may have saved lived in the latest emergency. While the investigation is not complete, the crew in the Cannon flight received similar warnings shortly after takeoff and lost an engine but was able to quickly put the Osprey back on the ground and survive.

An initial review of the part that broke apart at Cannon has found that similar metal weaknesses may have played a role, but in a different part than what failed in the Japan crash.

Based on NAVAIR’s recommendations, Lt. Gen Michael Conley, AFSOC commander, directed a pause for all Osprey training flights, “which allows time and space for us to understand what happened,” Lt. Col. Becky Heyse, command spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The metal in question is called X-53 VIMVAR. In the Japan crash investigators found that the metal gear that failed had multiple inclusions, or microscopic weak spots in the metal caused by foreign substances getting mixed in during the manufacturing process. Those weak spots can lead to fatigue cracking.

After the Japan crash, investigators reported that there have been seven previous cracking incidents in gears that were likely caused by the same metal weakness.

Since then, the military and Bell Flight, which builds the transmission system and assembles the Osprey at its factory in Amarillo, Texas, have pressed for ways to make that metal stronger.

Since the military started flying the aircraft three decades ago, 64 personnel have been killed and 93 injured in crashes. Japan’s military briefly grounded its fleet again in October after an Osprey tilted violently during takeoff and struck the ground.

SDA is in the process of launching a megaconstellation of missile warning and data transport satellites, but the first two phases of the effort have been delayed due to production issues with some of its suppliers. The problem, which originated during the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the launch of its first batch of satellites by seven months.

Now, the launch of the first spacecraft in its second capability tranche is six months behind — this time due to smaller suppliers struggling to deliver key parts in larger quantities.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Saturday that SDA Director Derek Tournear’s supply chain challenges can serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for the broader national security space community.

“Because of the quantities that he’s ordering, he’s now starting to uncover the challenges that we have with the industrial base,” he said during the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. “These challenges are significant and we need to figure out how to get after them.”

SDA currently has 27 satellites in orbit, part of what it calls its Tranche 0 demonstration layer. By this time next year, the agency hopes to have 160 Tranche 1 satellites operating and 1,000 spacecraft in total by 2026.

Speaking alongside Guetlein, Tournear said while he’s optimistic that small satellite supply chains are catching up to what SDA needs, the agency’s requirements will continue to grow, likely making industrial base issues an area of long-term concern.

“That demand is going to continue to increase,” he said. “Supply chain is always going to be a problem. It’s always going to cause delays.”

SDA is the first Space Force organization to attempt larger satellite buys as a means to improve resiliency and augment capability, but the service is moving toward that model in other mission areas, including GPS and space domain awareness. That means having excess capacity, with satellites waiting in orbit or on the ground to replace outdated technology or defunct systems.

To succeed in that approach, Guetlein said, the Space Force needs more redundancy and diversity in its supply base.

“We do not have the industrial capacity built today to get after this, and we’re going to have to start getting comfortable with lack of efficiency in the industrial base to start getting excess capacity so that we have something to go to in times of crisis or conflict,” he said.

U.S. Central Command said that its warplanes conducted “dozens” of airstrikes on more than 75 sites, including known “ISIS leaders, operatives and camps.” The attacks used B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters and A-10 Warthogs, which have already been flying over the country this month for other attacks.

“There should be no doubt – we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria,” Gen. Erik Kurilla, head of CENTCOM, wrote in a statement. “All organizations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support ISIS in any way.”

In all, around 140 munitions were used in what a separate senior U.S. administration official called a “significant strike” while speaking with reporters Sunday.

CENTCOM is still assessing the strike and said there were no reports yet of civilian casualties.

The barrage comes a day after Syria’s government fell in a dramatic end to the country’s decade-long civil war. The Assad regime had ruled the country for half a century, and its last ruler Bashar al-Assad had cruelly held down a rebellion for years — including the use of chemical weapons on his own people.

The Syrian civil war in part led to the emergence of ISIS in the 2010s and America’s military leading an international coalition to fight the terrorist group. There are now around 900 U.S. personnel in the country, and the international mission in the country is scheduled to wind down within two years.

Assad’s downfall came with his main supporters — Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah — all being weakened or distracted in the last year. When a rebel group began taking major cities across the country over the last two weeks, the government’s military collapsed.

According to Russian state media, Assad has since fled to Moscow.

American government and military officials watched the collapse near its climax over the weekend from California at the Reagan National Defense Forum. Of concern for lawmakers was the future of American forces in the country. President-elect Donald Trump tried to withdraw America’s military from Syria in his first administration and has said the U.S. shouldn’t get further involved in a social media post this weekend.

Speaking at the White House Sunday, President Joe Biden said the U.S. would maintain its positions in Syria — mainly located in the northeast across from the Euphrates River — and continue fighting ISIS.

While Biden said the weekend’s events were a rare opportunity to steady an otherwise war-torn country, the group that took power was once affiliated with al Qaeda and considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

The senior official speaking earlier said America’s government is speaking with a broad range of Syrian groups to offer any help in forming a more peaceful government and monitoring, in particular, Assad’s former stocks of chemical weapons.

The plan also includes a 4.5% pay raise for other troops, more than $2 billion in funding for new barracks and family housing, expanded bonuses and hiring incentives to boost the number of medical personnel in military health care facilities, and hikes child care workers’ salaries to improve availability at military bases.

The quality of life moves — most of which were introduced by House lawmakers earlier this year — are designed to counter recruiting and retention problems in the ranks.

The larger authorization bill still must be approved by the whole of Congress before the pay raise and other provisions can become law. And lawmakers will have to agree upon a new package to fund the larger paychecks before the end of the year.

But chamber leaders expressed optimism that the work can be finished in the next few weeks. The authorization bill is considered must-pass legislation each year because it contains a host of routine stipends and spending authorities, and lawmakers are expected to spend the final few days of session this month finalizing the measure.

The junior enlisted pay raise proposal is slightly less generous than what House lawmakers approved earlier this summer, but would still represent a significant financial boost for tens of thousands of young troops whose annual base pay can be less than $30,000 a year.

With the 14.5% boost, all but the most junior enlisted service members would earn approximately that $30,000 annual mark, before factoring in housing stipends and other pay incentives.

Troops ranked E-2 with two years service would see their base salary rise from about $27,000 now to $31,000 in 2025. Troops ranked E-4 with three years in the ranks would see their pay rise from $35,000 a year to more than $40,000 next year.

Enlisted troops ranked E-5 and above would not be eligible for the junior enlisted pay boosts, but would receive the 4.5% pay boost, ensuring that their salaries don’t drop below their subordinates. The extra 10% pay boosts for junior enlisted would go into effect in April, while the 4.5% raise for all troops would go into effect in January.

The 4.5% raise represents the third consecutive year of across-the-board paycheck boosts of more than 4%. For an E-7 with 10 years military experience, or an O-2 with two years experience, the 4.5% raise means about $200 more each month and roughly $2,600 a year in extra salary.

For an O-4 with 12 years in service, the 4.5% raise would mean about $400 more each month and nearly $5,000 more per year.

The authorization bill also calls for Congress to fund $954 million in new housing maintenance accounts, $569 million for new construction of new family housing units and $1.2 billion for construction of new barracks. It requires the Defense Department to designate officials responsible for oversight of unaccompanied housing and increase the frequency of inspections.

The moves follow years of criticism from military advocates about substandard housing and insufficient response to family complaints.

Reforms to medical care and child care systems follow similar criticism. Lawmakers also included language to make it easier for military spouses to transfer professional licenses between states and mandate improved reading and literacy rates for Defense Department schools, also aimed at improving quality of life for military families.

House lawmakers are expected to vote on the authorization bill next week. Both the House and Senate are scheduled to wrap up their work for the year by Dec. 20, although that could be extended if a budget deal for the entire federal government is not reached before then.

This $988 million package will come from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, through which the U.S. buys new equipment for Ukraine rather than shipping kit directly from American stocks. As of last week, the U.S. had just over $2 billion left in the fund.

The latest round will go toward rocket munitions, drones and equipment needed to repair weapons within Ukraine.

“America and our friends have become the arsenal of Ukrainian democracy,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Austin announced the package at the Reagan National Defense Forum, a national security talkfest in California he’s attended all four years in office. During his speech, he defended the Biden Pentagon’s legacy, which has in large part been defined by its support for Ukraine.

After Russia’s 2022 invasion, Austin helped form a group of countries that coordinates assistance to Kyiv. America has since sent more than $62 billion in security aid, alongside $57 billion more from its partners.

Such support is coming at increased cost for Russia. Austin said that its military has suffered 700,000 casualties, a number that is accelerating even as Moscow continues to make slight gains in Ukraine’s east.

Multiple European political and defense officials — from Sweden to Lithuania — are with Austin at the forum making the case for continued aid to lawmakers and people who will staff the incoming Trump administration.

Austin referenced the uncertainty around this transition in his remarks. The president-elect has urged an end to the war in Ukraine, though without committing to an outcome.

“We can continue to stand up to the Kremlin, or we can let Putin have his way — and condemn our children and grandchildren to live in a world of chaos and conflict,” Austin said.

“This administration has made its choice, and so has a bipartisan coalition in Congress,” he added. “The next administration must make its own choice.”

“Growing up, many of my neighbors in Milwaukee were World War II or North Korea veterans, and I had an idea of what service meant because they always spoke to me,” said Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, head of Army Recruiting Command, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“That’s not the same today. I’ve served all over the world, and I’ve moved with my family. We’ve often been the only Army family in neighborhoods off post.”

Army, Navy and Air Force leaders missed their recruiting goals for fiscal 2023. The Marine Corps and Space Force met their targets, but acknowledged that matching those numbers for this fiscal year will again be a challenge.

The slipping interest in joining the armed forces comes as public perception of the military continues to decline, according to recent national polling. Roughly 46% of Americans questioned in the annual Reagan National Defense Survey said they have a great deal of confidence in the American military, a near steady decline from 70% in 2018.

Survey respondents blamed politics creeping into military policies for part of the problem. Among Republicans, more than one-third (38%) said the institution is “too focused on social issues at the expense of a focus on warfighting.” About half of Democrats surveyed (53%) said the military is not appropriately balancing a focus on warfighting and social issues.

The military has been the center of a host of high-profile social debates in recent years, including fights over coronavirus vaccinations, diversity training, abortion access and transgender rights.

But pressed on the topic by senators, military representatives said they are not hearing complaints about politics invading the ranks from potential recruits.

“That does not resonate with the issues that are on the minds of our recruits or what we are hearing from our recruiting force,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, commander of Air Force Recruiting Service.

Instead, service officials said, recruiters complain about inconsistent access at high schools and colleges, limiting their opportunities to explain military service to young men and women. And potential recruits have basic questions about military life, benefits and post-service career expectations that, if unanswered, shut down interest in enlisting.

“Forty years ago, if you had 10 dinner tables in a neighborhood, those dinner tables would each have a parent who served or a teacher who served or someone else who served. Today, it’s only one in 10,” said Rear Adm. Alexis Walker, head of Navy Recruiting Command.

“So, we are trying to fill that narrative space, talk about the positive benefits of service and get out that message that isn’t happening around the dinner table anymore.”

Officials said they are aggressively partnering with veterans organizations and other civic groups in an attempt to better spread that message. But they also acknowledged that other marketing and incentives will be needed to turn around the lackluster recruiting figures of recent years.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s tactical air and land forces panel, told Defense News at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, he is “very disappointed” by the repeated delays in the TR-3 upgrades.

And he warned the delayed TR-3 rollout will create further scheduling issues in the more expansive upgrade known as Block 4, he added.

TR-3 is expected to give the F-35 better displays, computer memory and processing power. But software and integration problems have kept TR-3 from working, and the government has refused to accept the newest F-35s rolling rolled off the production lines of manufacturer Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas.

TR-3 was once expected to conclude in April 2023, but that deadline has twice slipped. The Pentagon and Lockheed now say it could come between April and June 2024.

Wittman said that deadline — more than a year late — is “very problematic, especially since we have a platform that we spent a significant amount of time and money on, and one that we know isn’t up to its full capability because of software inadequacies.”

Wittman said he’s not confident the Pentagon and Lockheed will be able to deliver on the latest mid-2024 deadline for TR-3.

“I want to be positive, but call me skeptical,” he said.

The TR-3 technology is necessary for parts of the Block 4 upgrade, which will include the ability to carry more long-range precision weapons, new sensors, more powerful data fusion, increased interoperability with other platforms and advanced electronic warfare capabilities.

The F-35 Joint Program Office told Defense News on Wednesday that it will respond to Wittman’s concerns directly.

The office noted that not all Block 4 capabilities require TR-3 to function on the F-35, such as the already-delivered Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS; an interim full-motion video capability; and some communications technology improvements.

“As hardware increases and is updated, fusion improvements are integrated and other processing-heavy software is added,” the JPO said. “TR-3 will be needed to power the more advanced capabilities in development.”

The office also said it started delivering the first Block 4 capabilities in 2019, years ahead of schedule. Those capabilities included Auto GCAS, the Navy’s Joint Standoff Weapon variant known as C-1, and the ability to attack moving targets on the ground with the laser-guided GBU-12 Paveway II and GBU-49 bombs.

A technical baseline review on the F-35′s Block 4 development is also underway, as Bill LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, ordered it earlier this year, the office noted.

Technical experts from the Navy and Air Force have spent the last few months evaluating Block 4′s development schedule, hardware maturity, program risks, software tools, and the skill sets government and industry workers need to work on the upgrades.

Lockheed Martin concurred with the Joint Program Office’s response to Defense News and declined to comment further.

Wittman said the F-35 program needs six more test beds of aircraft to focus entirely on rapidly trying out the TR-3 software improvements. The current limited testing infrastructure has led to slow progress on ironing out the problems with TR-3, he said, particularly when the software shuts down.

“What’s happening right now is, even the structure of how you do testing and development with the software has resulted in its failures,” Wittman said. “If you have six test beds, you can fly the aircraft and do things simultaneously, so your learning curve gets a lot faster.”

Wittman said the TR-3 woes show the Pentagon needs to change its mindset to put an earlier focus on software in program development.

“For years, the Pentagon has been a hardware-centric organization,” Wittman said. “In today’s world … software needs to be at the forefront, then hardware needs to follow that.”

That will be even more important as the Air Force moves forward with its collaborative combat aircraft concept, which seeks to team autonomous drone wingmen with F-35s, Wittman said.

He wants to see the Air Force and the Joint Program Office set up an effort to more closely track the software process and upgrades day by day.

“We do a great job in manufacturing the hardware elements of what the aircraft can do,” Wittman said. “But all the things that we design the hardware around are only enabled if you have the software. We kind of have gotten things backwards.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced Replicator in late August as a mechanism to field large quantities of innovative systems to deter adversary aggression. The first iteration is focused on producing thousands of small autonomous systems and sensors on an 18 to 24 month timeline.

To meet this target, the Pentagon will solicit new capabilities but will also rely heavily on increasing quantities or speeding up production and fielding of systems the military services are already pursuing.

Speaking with reporters Dec. 2 on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum here, members of a select commission exploring options for improving the Pentagon’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution process, or PPBE, said Replicator would benefit from many of the recommendations the panel is considering.

Underneath the fast-paced procurements that will drive Replicator is a need for the kind of data, funding flexibility and agility that could come from sweeping budget reforms, according to Ellen Lord, member of the PPBE reform panel and a former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

For example, she said, in order to make decisions about where it wants to speed up fielding or increase production among existing programs, the Defense Innovation Unit — which is leading efforts to identify and vet candidates for Replicator — needs a clear picture of what all of those efforts are. That requires a common database used by all the services and Pentagon budget and planning agencies to input program details and drive decision making.

The department will also need flexibility to reprogram funding as well as other tools — all things the PPBE commission is exploring through its work.

“I think you could use that as a use case to say, ‘Gee, what would make this process simpler when we have an emerging need, we have emerging technologies?,’” Lord said.

Connecting strategy with funding

The PPBE process is the Defense Department’s system for connecting its strategy with funding needs, which ultimately produces the budget request the White House delivers to Congress on an annual basis. The process has long been criticized as too cumbersome and slow, requiring planners to project program needs far in advance of receiving funding. That cycle has delayed major programs and impeded technology-heavy efforts from getting the most up-to-date capabilities.

In the fiscal 2022 defense policy bill, Congress established a bipartisan commission — made up of former defense officials, lawmakers and industry executives — to review the PPBE process and make recommendations for reforming it. The commission released an interim report in August and plans to deliver the final one in March.

The interim report included 13 recommendations that members think could be enacted immediately — things like improving communication with Congress, updating information systems and streamlining data sharing throughout the department.

The commission has been gathering feedback on another 10 recommendations from stakeholders, including Congress, DoD and the acquisition workforce. Those suggestions include giving the Pentagon more flexibility to reprogram funds, allowing the services to start work on new programs while operating under a continuing resolution and making congressional appropriations available for two years instead of one.

Lord said those conversations haven’t resulted in major changes, per se, but have added depth to the report and led to a few new recommendations.

Jamie Morin, once the director of the Pentagon’s cost assessment and program evaluation office, noted that while buy in is important to the commission, the department doesn’t have to implement any of its proposals.

“We’re writing a report,” he said. “The department may choose not to do any of it. Even if the department did choose to do some of it, Congress might choose not to. Congress might choose to mandate things the department doesn’t want. We are not trying to build a perfect Swiss watch of a system here and hand it over to them and say, ‘Take it or leave it.’”