Alaska’s Sen. Sullivan at center of efforts to break deadlock on military promotions

Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan says the actions of his GOP colleague Sen. Tommy Tuberville to put holds on several hundred senior officer military promotions is having ripple effects down through the ranks, disrupting other promotions at bases around the nation including in Alaska.

The effect on morale and retention of experienced combat officers in the armed services, and just the distraction in senior ranks, couldn’t be happening at a worse time given current conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and high tension in the south China Sea.

“This has now reached the point where it is a strategic risk to our forces,” Sullivan said in an interview. The potential loss of combat-skilled senior officers, if it happens, could hamper the U.S. response to crises that are now happening simultaneously.

The controversy with Tuberville, who represents Alabama, may seem far away for Alaskans but Sullivan said at least one senior officer in the 11th Airborne Division at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson is blocked, and there are others affected as well. He did not name the JBER senior officer involved.

Sullivan and other Republicans in the U.S. Senate are working to persuade Tuberville to back off, but so far there’s little progress. The Alaska senator is a member if the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Ironically, the point of the Alabama senator’s objections have nothing to do with the officers whose careers are now on hold but with a Pentagon policy on abortions within the services.

Sullivan said he has been working with Tuberville to find other solutions to his objections, which have nothing to with military readiness but are nonetheless affecting morale in the services, he said.

Congressional approvals are needed for senior officer promotions such as colonels, becoming generals, and generals moving higher in the chain. The blockage at the top, for example colonels waiting to become one-star brigadier generals or brigadiers moving up to major generals, causes ripple effects down through the system.

It is affecting majors who want to colonels, captains who want to be majors and lieutenants who want to be captains. These people are stuck in their positions when the system freezes at the top.

“Senator Tuberville says these people (the senior officers) are not the real warriors. But he’s wrong,” Sullivan said. “These senior officers were junior officers leading troops a few years ago, in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are the most combat experienced soldiers we have.”

“To treat them this way, and risk trashing their careers over some policy issue they have nothing to do with, is a huge mistake,” Sullivan said.

Meanwhile, there are other defense-related issues affected by the politics in Congress. A four-part defense funding package that includes military aid for Iraq and Israel as well as naval ship and submarine procurements for readiness in the South China Sea is bogged down by objections from House Republicans who want to cut aid to Ukraine.

Money for the strengthening the southern U.S. border, the fourth part of the package, is included in this.

Sullivan sees the protection of Taiwan from an invasion across the Taiwan Straits as vital to U.S. interests but the U.S. superiority over China in this area is slipping. “We still have a technological advantage (over China) in vessels and submarines but they are fast gaining a numerical advantage,” he said.

Sullivan has a major concern over how seriously President Joe Biden and his administration see these threats in the aggregate.

“The president’s proposed defense budget for next year has slipped below 3 percent of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product. We haven’t been below 3 percent of GDP for the past 70 years, except for one point in the Clinton administration,” Sullivan said.

“That occurred because the world was then at peace. That’s not the case today.”

Some good news, however, is on how fast the nation’s defense industries are responding in replenishing stocks of equipment and ammunition sent to Ukraine. “We’re now producing 30,000 rounds of 155-milliliter artillery shells a month. That’s double what we were doing a short while ago,” Sullivan said.

The 155-milliliter shells are used in howitzer system. Each shell is 2 feet long, six inches in diameter and weighing 100 pounds.

“This shows how quickly we can ramp up our manufacturing, just like we did in World War II and Korea,” he said.

But again, the continuation of restocking of ammunition and equipment is also linked to funding by a Congress deadlocked in partisan issues.