operations, rear admiral boxall, and mr. john pendleton, the structural issues on the u.s. account ability office. i would like to know turn to ranking member, congresswoman met them but i'll of long for any remarks we may have. thank you for agreeing to convene this timely hearing. particularly with regards to the seventh fleet operations in the indo asian pacific region. chairman whitman and i recently returned from japan, where we visited and met with vice admiral sawyer and saw the damage to the uss fitzgerald firsthand. thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. andand boxall, i appreciated our meeting and look forward to the discussion. critical to aiding our oversight mission on this committee. the recent mishaps of the uss fitzgerald and the uss john mccain resulted not only in significant damage to the ,essels, but also the tragic tragic loss of life of 17 american sailors. earlier in the year, we saw two additional mishaps, avoidable as i understand it, also involving surface ships assigned to the seventh fleet. while investigations into the specific mishaps are sti

sailors, including changes to current law. i am deeply concerned by mr. pendleton's written testimony, which indicates 37%, that is over one third, of the training certifications for u.s. navy cruisers and destroyers based in june.were expired as of as he notes, this represents more than a fivefold increase in the percentage of aches fired warfare certifications -- percentage of expired warfare certifications in the last five years. that is the ship's ability to fully be prepared to engage in combat. press reporting paints and even bleaker picture. the mccain had experienced expired training certification in six of the 10 key warfare mission areas. the fitzgerald had expired certification in all 10 mission areas. admiraly spencer and richardson, i don't need to tell you that this is troubling and unacceptable. we acknowledge and appreciate the accountability actions of the navy has taken to date. the navy has relieved to commanding officers, a commander and captain, it has issued reprimands, 20 reprimands to other officers and sailors. since august 23, the strike group and fleet comma

then we'll be conclung. but mr. pendleton, how will you be able to determine when the services are ceving readiness recovery? >> mr. chairman, we -- we're doing a broader body of work, sentially monitoring the recovery efforts. we made a series of recommendations in september of last year. basically saying that the department of defense needed a readiness rebuilding plan that atched the priority it was aiming that it had, that said what the goals were and when hey would be achieved and what it would take in ter omoney and time and that need to be agreement on it from the top. because what we saw when we looked at it in depth was all h rvices were pursuing individual plans izeal but not necessarily being pull together in a department-wide plan. so what we're looking for, is it clear what the goals are d how are we going against those goals? in the case of the hey vinavy, they had a glide path. and our concern was the glide path idn't necessarily constitute exact goals. so he mentioned earlier this is going to knock them off the glide path. so being able to articulate the impacts of