Rep. Martha McSally is a Republican in her second term representing Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes part of Tucson and stretches south to the border and east to New Mexico.
From her seat on the House Armed Services Committee, McSally has been a strong advocate of fully funding military readiness. A combat veteran who served 26 years in uniform, McSally is also an aviation pioneer, the first female Air Force pilot to fly a fighter plane in combat.
She sat down in her Capitol Hill office with the Washington Examiner to talk readiness, close-air support, North Korea, Afghanistan and the day she stared down the Air Force chief of staff.
Washington Examiner: Let’s begin with readiness. The two-year budget deal has unshackled the Pentagon from sequestration. There’s now $700 billion in defense spending this year, and $716 billion next year. So some people think that the readiness problem is now solved, with the wave of a magic wand.
McSally: Not even close. As one of the few veterans serving in Congress, we know firsthand the challenges that our troops have had with sequestration over the last years. And they have been doing everything they can to do, but I equate the two-year budget deal to putting a tourniquet on a wound.
We’re just trying to stop the bleeding and stop the readiness crisis that we have so that we can start turning it around. But you can’t have years of not enough parts, not enough pilots, not enough training hours, not the ability to be able to do major combat training exercises and then all of a sudden in a very short period of time turn that around, because there are years of experience that are missing in many cases.
It’s going to take many years and increasing the total force number, for us to get to where we’re in a much healthier place, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. I advocated and fought for it, but it’s going take a while to actually see this come to fruition.
Washington Examiner: Some people have drawn a straight line from the things you’ve mentioned, the lack of pilot flying hours, spare parts shortages, and the recent number of military aviation accidents. Can you draw a straight line? Is that why we’re seeing so many accidents?
McSally: I believe absolutely it’s the cause. As someone who was an attack pilot myself, every time we would have a mishap, we would do a full investigation. But in trying to prevent mishaps, we would talk about what’s called the “safety chain of events.” That maybe if one link was pulled out, the mishap wouldn’t have happened. It’s the combination of things over time that ends up leading to those mishaps.
When you have individuals who don’t have the hours that they need, don’t have the training continuity that they need, maybe they have inexperienced personnel working on the airplanes, older airplanes, and lack of parts. You add all those up and you’re creating a high risk. You may be well-rested, there may be good weather, everything may seem like it’s positive from a risk management point of view, but you have all these things going against you.
Washington Examiner: At the Pentagon they refer to this syndrome as “blame the dead pilot,” right? Blame it on the last mistake that was made, when in fact, the pilot may have been put in the situation where the risk was increased.
McSally: It’s infuriating to me. Generally people who are not familiar with what we do for a living think when you have a mishap it’s a binary thing, either a maintenance issue, a part issue, or pilot error. It’s not that simple. We are often putting our pilots in a situation where their risk is high because they’re not getting the type of training and experience that they need.
Washington Examiner: So help me understand. One of the causes is lack of training, but many of the accidents actually happen in training. I mean, if the answer is more training, they’re already in training.
McSally: We’ve got pilots who are flying just enough to train, but if they’re not flying 12 months straight with all the training sorties that they need, both high altitude, low altitude, day, night, doing high threat, low threat, doing air refueling, night vision goggles, all the things that go with it. Air to air, air to ground, then you’re missing the opportunity for them to be building their judgment.
Washington Examiner: Let’s talk about close-air support. You were a fierce defender of the A-10, the aircraft that you flew in combat. In fact one could argue you almost single-handedly stopped the Air Force from taking them out of service. But they’re not going to fly forever. What is the future of close-air support?
McSally: It’s not because I flew the A-10 that I care about it. I flew the T-37. It’s in the boneyard, God rest its soul, right? This isn’t about nostalgia. When you have Americans on the ground, often in very challenging circumstances, on the move, maybe in tough terrain, maybe under the weather, and they need an aircraft that can be overhead and loiter for long periods of time with a lot of weapons onboard and survive a direct hit if needed. There are some circumstances that only the A-10 is going to keep those troops alive, and so that’s why I’ve been fiercely fighting to make sure that the A-10 keeps flying until we have a proven, tested replacement.
Washington Examiner: What about the Air Force’s experiment with the light attack aircraft, which is supposed to do some of the search-and-rescue mission, and might even do some close-air support in a permissive environment?
McSally: The light attack aircraft is not intended to replace the A-10. It’s intended to complement it. I think there may be a role for them where there is little-to-no threat of an aircraft having to deal with some of the surface-to-air threats that are out there. It was never intended to replace to the A-10, but to be sort of additive so we don’t have fourth and fifth generation fighters doing some missions on the low end of the spectrum.
Washington Examiner: The Air Force got a lot of flak when it dispatched a top-of-the-line F-22 to drop a single 250-pound bomb on a Taliban drug lab last year.
McSally: Right, that’s the whole point. When we’re dealing with the counterterrorism mission, there are potentially scenarios where there is no, or very little threat on the ground, where it may make more sense.
Washington Examiner: South Korea. You just were there. What’s your take?
McSally: I led a congressional delegation to the DMZ over Memorial Day weekend. We were there at the truce village standing where the handshake happened between President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un a few weeks prior. And we were there a couple hours before President Moon crossed back over again in secret to meet with Kim.
I walked out of that visit more hopeful than I have been in the past. I’m a skeptical optimist and that’s not an oxymoron. We are at an historic opportunity to see a different path forward on the Korean Peninsula. This administration has inherited a pretty rough situation. And they are using the diplomatic and economic elements of national power to create unprecedented pressure while ensuring that we are having a deterrent of having military force that is ready to fight tonight.
Kim is out of options, quite frankly, and he is not negotiating with us as a near peer. A lot of people have equated this to Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev. Look, North Korea is a failed state. It is on the verge of collapsing. His choice is to take the gracious fig leaf that has been offered to him, to save face in some ways I think and take a different path for his country and his people. The choice is his. It won’t end well if he doesn’t take it.
Washington Examiner: So how long can the United States go without conducting major joint military exercises with our South Korean allies?
McSally: Well, we exercise all the time and we train every day so I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding of what’s happening, what’s not happening. Every single day the A-10 pilots in the 25th Fighter Squadron are going to work, are doing training missions, and making sure that they’re ready to go fight their mission.
Washington Examiner: So just because there is no big named exercise with a press release touting how many ships, planes and troops are taking part doesn’t mean that there’s not training going on?
McSally: They are going to work every single day and training. That’s what you do. When you’re not in combat, you are training. I certainly have concerns about a long period of time going on without having these major training exercises because we learn lessons as new human beings come into the theater.
Washington Examiner: What about Afghanistan? Our strategy in Afghanistan is different from the strategy of annihilation we used against ISIS. In Afghanistan, the U.S. and NATO partners are trying to put pressure on the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. Fifty years ago in Vietnam, when the U.S. employed a similar strategy designed to inflict so much pain on the Viet Cong that they would negotiate, it turned out we couldn’t do it. How confident are you that this strategy is going to work?
McSally: I was in Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and was part of the initial leadership team to execute the initial combat operations in Afghanistan. I later on deployed my squadron of A-10s over there. There have been a lot of mistakes and I think mission creep and losing our eye on the ball of what our vital national interests are in Afghanistan in the past [were both problems].
So this administration is trying to clean up that mess, get us more focused regionally, but also unshackle our military working with the Afghan security forces to be able to take out the bad guys, to create the space for the Afghans to provide a better path forward for their country.
Washington Examiner: That’s the theory. Is it going to work?
McSally: We’ll see. I’ve been frustrated over the years. I’m at least grateful that this administration took a fresh look at it. Ultimately, it’s not our responsibility to turn Afghanistan into a 21st century vibrant, economic, liberal democracy with a little L. Our responsibility is to keep Americans safe, to make sure we don’t have a failed state in a region. It’s not our responsibility to reconstruct Afghanistan.
Washington Examiner: Twenty-five years ago, I was a young reporter who had just started covering the Pentagon for CNN and one of the first big news conferences I attended was when Defense Secretary Les Aspin announced the change in policy that opened up jobs for women in combat roles, and you were there to be introduced as one of the first female fighter pilots.
McSally: Right, I remember it well.
Washington Examiner: It was well known at the time that the then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak was not in favor of allowing women fly combat aircraft.
McSally: Yeah, it wasn’t just a rumor, he testified before Congress with some pretty strong words. I think I remember, this is paraphrased but, somebody asking him, “You’re responsible for organizing, training and equipping our Air Force, and you’re saying you would rather take a less qualified man over a more qualified women to fill these cockpits?” And his answer was, “Yes. I know, it’s just how I feel.” So here is the leader of our Air Force, you know? Leading the way from the top.
Washington Examiner: So I brought with me just a couple of clips from C-SPAN and the reporter’s voice that you’ll hear on this video is me, questioning McPeak in April of 1993.
McSally: Oh my God, that’s awesome.
Jamie McIntyre: [To McPeak] Are you comfortable with this decision you have to carry out?
Gen. Merrill McPeak: [On video clip] Yeah, I’m comfortable with it. I had a full opportunity to state my view. The secretary made a decision, so I’m comfortable with it and there’s always a small chance that I was wrong.
Washington Examiner: So if you didn’t know McPeak, you would think that was just a bit of self-deprecating humor. But if you knew Gen. McPeak, you knew that he really did believe there was only a small chance he was wrong.
McSally: Right. Right. Absolutely.
Washington Examiner: So I have this picture of you here.
McSally: Yeah, you can see the look on my face. It was on purpose, by the way. I’ll give you a little context. You know, they had put us through some Pentagon media training as well, right? They kept saying, “Cut. Try again, Capt. McSally. You know, you can’t have that snarky look on your face and you definitely can’t say, ‘Well, he was wrong.’” I would say things like that in our practice. They were like, “You have to really watch what you say.”
And so I was like, “OK, well I’m gonna show you with my body language exactly how I feel.” So it was on purpose, arms folded, side eyes over to him, you know making sure that my sort of protest of what was going on in his heart was well registered, even as a young female captain getting ready to embark on this journey.
Washington Examiner: What was that like, and how has it changed in the 25 years since then?
McSally: The only reason I was an instructor pilot is because I had ovaries. If I was a guy, based on how I performed in pilot training, I would have been able to have selected a fighter. I mean, I have always said unemotionally, if we want the best fighting force, why would we have 50 percent of our population not competing for these positions?
Washington Examiner: So has the culture changed in 25 years?
McSally: I think it has. I mean it was a pretty challenging transition for us for sure, thanks to some of the culture set from above, but we were tough and we were certainly ready for it and many women have now become fighter pilots in all services and flown in combat and commanded at many levels and done amazing things to save American lives.
