Page 1 TOP OF DOC60–843
1999
[H.A.S.C. No. 106–4]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2000—H.R. 1401
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Page 2 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCON
TITLE II—RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
HEARING HELD
FEBRUARY 25, 1999
MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania, Chairman
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
STEVEN KUYKENDALL, California
DONALD SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio
HERBERT H. BATEMAN, Virginia
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
HOWARD ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
Page 3 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCWALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
BOB RILEY, Alabama
OWEN PICKETT, Virginia
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
TOM ALLEN, Maine
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
Stephen Ansley, Professional Staff Member
Robert Lautrup, Professional Staff Member
Jean Reed, Professional Staff Member
William Natter, Professional Staff Member
Erica Striebel, Staff Assistant
(ii)
Page 4 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCC O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
1999
HEARING:
Thursday, February 25, 1999, Fiscal Year 2000 National Defense Authorization Act—Ballistic Missile Defense Programs
APPENDIX:
Thursday, February 25, 1999
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1999
FISCAL YEAR 2000 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE PROGRAMS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Pickett, Hon. Owen, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
Weldon, Hon. Curt, a Representative from Pennsylvania, Chairman, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Page 5 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCGansler, Hon. Jacques S., Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition and Technology
Lyles, Lt. Gen. Lester L., USAF, Director, Ballistic Missle Defense Organization
Martin, Lt. Gen. Gregory S., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Gansler, Hon. Jacques S.
Lyles, Lt. Gen. Lester L.
Martin, Lt. Gen. Gregory S.
Weldon, Hon. Curt
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Adjustments to SBIRS High & Low
Page 6 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCBallistic Missile Defense Missions
Budgets For Ballistic Missile Defense
Development of the Upper Tier Strategy
National Missile Defense Engagement Sequence
National Missile Defense Evolution—Achievements Over Time
National Missile Defense Funding
National Missile Defense Milestones
National Missile Defense Program Guidance
National Missile Defense System Elements
Summary
The New Threat Environment
The Theater Missile Defense Family of Systems
Theater Missile Defense Elements
Page 7 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Theater Missile Defense Funding
Upper Tier Flight Test Schedules
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers are pending.]
FISCAL YEAR 2000 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE PROGRAMS
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Forces,
Military Research and Development Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, February 25, 1999.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:44 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Curt Weldon (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. WELDON. [presiding] The subcommittee will come to order.
We ask our witnesses to take their seats, and we appreciate you all being here today. I apologize for the delay in starting; we had a markup, and then the Full House was swearing in our newest Member who was just elected this week to replace the Speaker, so we apologize for delaying you.
Page 8 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And from a time constraint standpoint, I have to announce up front that this hearing room is scheduled to be used at one o'clock for another hearing. We are trying to make adjustments to that now which would allow for us to stay longer, but if we are not successful, Members need to understand we may have to expedite the process. That should be enough time, but knowing the way I tend to go on forever, who knows; we may be longer than that. Mr. Pickett is always quiet and doesn't take time.
This morning, the Military Research and Development Subcommittee meets in open session to receive testimony on ballistic missile defense programs of the Department of Defense. I want to welcome my colleague and good friend, Owen Pickett, the ranking member of the R&D Subcommittee, and, eventually, I will welcome Duncan Hunter and Norm Sisisky. We have invited the whole Procurement Subcommittee to meet with us, and I think also that Floyd Spence and Ike Skelton may also join us.
We also welcome today's witnesses, Dr. Jacques Gansler, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, General Lyles, U.S. Air Force, Director of Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and General Greg ''Speedy'' Martin, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition.
I might note at the outset that it is somewhat of a somber day today, as I pointed out earlier. Eight years ago today, 28 young Americans came back in body bags; almost half of them from my state; women and men who were sent to Desert Storm. They came back in body bags because a low complexity Scud missile was fired into that barracks in Tehran, and we did not have the technical capability to defeat it.
Page 9 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The weapon of choice wasn't a truck that Saddam would send into Tehran; it wasn't a truck that he would send into Israel; the weapon of choice was a missile. And that was, as you both know, all three of you, the largest loss of our military personnel in this decade.
It is embarrassing to me, and I know it is embarrassing to all of us, that eight years later we still do not have a highly effective system to defend against these threats, and I acknowledge we are making progress, and I acknowledge the challenges are difficult, but it is extremely frustrating for all of us, and certainly for this Congress, that we are where we are eight years later.
Now, I know the Administration has made much of its proposal to add $12 billion to the Fiscal Year 2000 budget, but many on this committee on both sides know that much of that increase is based on calculated savings from low inflation and fuel costs that may or may not materialize. In fact, most estimates that I have seen make the case that the real new money is somewhere between $1.8 billion and $4 billion. It is not the amount of money that the administration has claimed it is. This committee and the Full Committee in the Congress are committed to fully funding with real money at a minimum the President's requested increase for next year. We think that is a good starting place.
Others would note that much of the increase goes towards a military pay raise, which, as important as it is, does nothing to address the military's growing modernization challenges. We will support the pay raise, make no mistake about that; we will take care of the pension problem, but neither of those discuss the issue of the challenges we have in R&D and acquisition.
Page 10 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The administration has also made much of the fact that Fiscal Year 2000 budget includes a $4 billion increase for military procurement during its modernization. Well, let me point out a couple of facts: the Administration has decreased R&D funding by $3 billion, a more than 8 percent decrease compared to last year's budget. Procurement is an important part of modernization but so is research and development, and R&D is continually being starved for funds apparently to meet other needs. We have seen at the eleventh hour the appropriators have to apply servicewide taxes to pay for big ticket programs that you and I both know are going to get funded, and so the R&D account lines constantly get hit in that regard, and we have got to change that.
Mr. Secretary and General, you know, as I have had discussions with you this year, we are taking a proactive approach in the Congress to begin to get Members to understand that, one of which is to build a virtual reality hearing room here to make R&D more real for Members, and the second is to have a national conference on research in this country each year where we focus on all of our R&D investments, both of which you have agreed to assist us with.
But one of my major concerns—I know Owen shares this—is that we not allow significant cuts in our R&D budget, and we will be there to fight with you and for you in that regard.
The situation in the Department's ballistic missile defense programs reflects this larger budget reality. I am pleased with some of the recent Administration announcements that this year's budget proposal reveals that fiscal constraints have driven key programmatic decisions which undermine their ability to meet the already existing ballistic missile threat, and that threat continues to surprise the military intelligence communities with the speed at which it is increasing. I am encouraged by the Administration's announcement that an additional $6.6 billion has been identified for a National Missile Defense (NMD) that might be deployed—and you are both aware of the vote that just occurred in this committee; I think it was 50 to 3? Fifty to three, and the other ones who were not here, most of them—all of them were co-sponsors of the bill, so the vote would have been much higher had the other few members been here.
Page 11 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
But I am concerned that the Administration is not yet deployed to a system. We all know that even if we made that decision today, we are not going to have a system ready for probably four, five, three years depending upon who you talk to, and we will probably talk about that today. But our concern is that we need to set the policy of this country to move aggressively in that direction, because everyone acknowledges the threat is here today. In fact, I had CIA charts for the members to show that they have now put into a very specific form scenarios where the Taepo-Dong I of North Korea Stage III, the Taepo-Dong II with limited payload capacity could hit the heartland of the U.S., not just Alaska and Hawaii, but with smaller payloads which include a chemical, biological or small nuclear device could hit the continental U.S. That has never been said before.
The failure to commit to deploying a system for which funding has been programmed seems inconsistent at best. It gives rise to natural suspicion that the Administration is not really behind the program, and the funds identified for NMD could turn into a bank account to be ready to pay for other needs; we have seen that time and again in the past. Indeed, a suggestion that NMD funds identified by the administration may be used to implement the Wye River Middle East Peace Accords to be restored to NMD only by the next administration, whoever that it is, just reinforces this impression. Now, I may be for the Wye River Agreement, but, for the life of me, I can't understand why the Administration doesn't come in and say to Congress, ''Let us vote on the Wye River Agreement and the funding to pay for it.'' Why are we backdooring the Missile Defense accounts to pay for something which I would argue has nothing to do with missile defense? And then hope the next administration will replenish those funds, whoever that might be.
I am also pleased the Navy Theater Wide Upper Tier Missile Defense System is being better defined and is more adequately funded through the Future Years Defense Program, but, at the same time, I am concerned that the Upper Tier Strategy being proposed by Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) is more responsive to fiscal constraints than theater missile defense needs. I understand the competing Theater High Altitude Air Defenses (THAAD) and Navy Theater Wide with the winner to get the bulk of the upper-tier firms will certainly motivate the contractors, but the upper-tier strategy is motivated by the desire to sequence the two programs because of lack of funds. It will also delay and may kill the system that experiences greater technical challenges. I can't recall any system that got better when its funds were cut.
Page 12 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The litany of BMDO programs that are strapped for funding is long, and, let me add, this is nothing new to us. We have consistently made this case for four years that your program was not realistic with the budgets that we are being given. Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS)—I remember very well, four years ago? Three years ago, we zeroed out funding for MEADS. At that point in time, Deputy Secretary White raised cain with me. He said, ''Congressman, you can't do this. We need this program. We have a way to approach the missile defense, and MEADS is a very specific requirement to meet a very specific threat that can't be met by PAC–3; it can't be met by other systems, and, even more important, perhaps, is the fact that our European allies have been convinced that we are serious about working with them.''
I said, ''Mr. Secretary, I am not convinced you can fund MEADS. We have got these other programs that are going to require increasing growths in funding, therefore, I think we should cancel the program now; be honest with our European friends and not prolong this debate.''
Well, we backed down to the Administration, and we put the funding back in, and now you are proposing to cancel MEADS. The Italians and the Germans told me they weren't even forewarned of this cancellation. In fact, I have five members of the German Bundestag in my office two weeks ago, and that was their main topic, that MEADS should not be canceled. And what I found a little bit disingenuous was at a time when we were canceling MEADS, Secretary Cohen was talking to the Japanese and the South Koreans about working in cooperation on theater missile defense in the Asian theater. How can you cancel one program while you are talking about starting a new program with Japan and South Korea? It is not consistent with me.
Page 13 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCWhat I would like to ask you to do in the hearing today is I would like you to explain, based on the charts that we were given over the past three years that clearly define the layered approach, differentiating MEADS from PAC–3, what has changed? Has the threat changed? Has the technology changed? Why all of sudden are we putting MEADS aside and saying we will modify PAC–3? My own feeling is it is budget-driven decision, and, if so, let us just say that and get on and have that debate, but if there is a significant change in terms of the layered approach that you outlined to us, I think we need to hear that.
Technology funding is down 50 percent. The second issue is Russian-American Observation Satellite (RAMOS) which I discussed in an earlier session, the Russian-American—to my knowledge the only major Russian-American BMD cooperative program, terminated at a time when Russian-American cooperation in this area is more important then ever. We have heard nothing from the Administration on our Missile Defense bill except that you are going to drive the Russians into a corner. You are going to create havoc at a time when we are negotiating with them on the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Well, I can tell you last fall when the word got out that the Administration was canceling the RAMOS Program, my phone rang off the hook from Russians who said to me, ''Curt, what is going on in your country? You told us that this was a technology program between our two countries to build stability, to build transparency, and, now, without consulting us, you are cutting the funding on it.''
I said, ''I don't know. I will get you the answer.''
I said to my colleagues this morning—and I interact with the Russians frequently—that I haven't received a letter yet from Mr. Lukeem on the Missile Defense bill; perhaps, I will, because I know they have concerns about missile defense, and, by the way, I am going to go over to Russia to meet with Duma and Lukeem and to share our reasons why we are doing this. But I did get a letter from his on the MEADS Program; that letter came last week, and I have gotten calls from Academician Savon.
Page 14 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Now, I know you have a plan, and I respect that plan. You have a list of alternatives and you will describe them today, but, again, we canceled the RAMOS project. I think while there may have been some technical reasons, I think, also, in my own opinion, it was probably budget-driven.
I can understand that all programs have to be rigorously reviewed and that weaker programs get pushed to the end of the line, but when the R&D budget declines so precipitously, many important programs are reduced or shut down, not due to technical difficulties but to overall lack of funding. It is especially egregious in ballistic missile defense programs. When BMD is one of the most critical deficiencies in our military today, and we consider it one of our three top challenges: missile defense, use of weapons of mass destruction in terrorists incidents, and cyberwarfare, the use of information systems to attack our information systems.
I am delighted to have General Martin with us today, because the Air Force is the only service which has really stepped up to funding some of the more important BMD efforts on its own. Thank you, General, for that effort. Yet, the shortage of R&D funds hits the Air Force in the same way. The Air Force, for example, is fully funding the Airborne Laser (ABL) which I believe will be an important part of our theater missile defense architecture and has stepped up to the plate on the Space-based Laser (SBL) program with additional funds and a responsible program that will embody technical advances developed over the next several years.
But I am extremely concerned that the Air Force has to some extent—not to some extent, has arbitrarily cut funding and slowed the Space Based Infared System (SBIRS) High Program which is important to NMD and TMD. I have been convinced—and, perhaps, you will correct me in the record—I have been convinced that we can move up SBIRS High two years earlier than what is currently called for. It is not a technical issue; it is not a technical challenge; it is simply a dollar issue, and I would ask you in your response to respond to that concern. I think the reduction was more of an apparent need to free up funds for other purposes in Fiscal Year 2000. The delay has literally no programmatic basis and, in fact, will end up costing the Air Force and the American taxpayer $0.5 billion in increased program costs and years of delay.
Page 15 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Nor am I satisfied with the way the Air Force dealt with Congress on this matter. It is not acceptable to inform after the fact that the contractors has been ordered to slow work in Fiscal Year 1999 because of a proposed cut in Fiscal Year 2000. After all, it is the Congress that raises the funds, not the Administration. We are the ones that tax the people; we are the ones that provide the funds for you all to spend. We think we should be consulted before the contractors are told to do something based on a decision that may or may not occur in the following fiscal year. This approach denies us the prerogative to review DOD actions and address those it finds to be unjustified.
I am looking forward to the testimony today. I do have the highest respect for you; you all know that. General Lyles, there was some misperceptions a few years ago, and you know publicly I said, I think you have been a stellar leader on behalf of our country, and I restate that today. Dr. Gansler, I have been very impressed with the thought process you use and the approach you take under very difficult circumstances. We are not here to be adversaries to you; we are your friends. We may have disagreements on technologies, but we are here to assist you, and, General Martin, I would say the same for you. I would also like you, at some point in time, to, in your discussion, talk about Arrow and Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) and our cooperation with Israel; extending cooperation to the Middle Eastern countries beyond Israel to include the Gulf States which I think is important because they are so concerned about the growing threat of medium-range missiles.
So, we have an aggressive agenda today, and I apologize for having my opening statement take so long, but we only get to see you publicly a few times a year, so we have to kind of fit it all in at that opportunity we have.
Page 16 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
With that, I will turn to my good friend and colleague, Owen Pickett.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Curt Weldon can be found in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT OF HON. OWEN PICKETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to join you in welcoming our witnesses here this morning but still would like to take a few moments to make some comments about the missile defense programs.
First, I couldn't agree more with the markup that we just concluded of H.R. 4 dealing with the deployment of a national missile defense, because I think it is today's reality and a very obvious thing for this Congress to be doing at this stage of the process.
And, second, I am increasingly concerned about whether or not we are spending our missile defense dollars wisely. You have already mentioned, Mr. Chairman, what the Air Force has done on the Space-based Infrared Systems High, SBIRS High Program, in order to meet other priorities. But when we look at the current proposals for NMD, SBIRS High and Low, THAAD, Navy Area, and Patriot PAC–3, there is a common thread running through all of these that is quite troubling. In each case, when program risks have increased the solution has been the same: slow it down and push it to the right. Mr. Chairman, these programs are already too late and cost too much. This kind of decision making dramatically increases costs and makes a bad situation worse. In my judgment, this approach is not consistent with spending our dollars wisely.
Page 17 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Third, I sense an increasing unwillingness to allow challenging R&D efforts to mature. We must learn to become more patient with the science of hitting a bullet with a bullet for if we are to achieve the near 100 percent reliability that is required, we must allow this science and technology to mature. I believe we need to stay the course and resist the temptation to write report cards on each of these programs after each test.
Fourth, I think we need to guard against successive concurrence between and among the various missile defense programs. If we do not sequence these programs, we risk having four or five major programs simultaneously starved for funds and limping along at inefficient and costly rates.
And, fifth, I think the programs, Mr. Chairman, should be structured in such a way that we reward success in these programs and allow programs that move along quicker than expected technologically to get the funding they need to maintain that acceleration.
And, finally, I think all of us charged with oversight responsibilities need to become more vigilant. We must guard against decision making that is not based on what is in the best interest of the overall missile defense programs—and here I am including all of them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I welcome our witnesses today.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you very much, Mr. Pickett, and before we turn to our witnesses, I don't see the chairman or the ranking member of the Full Committee here. Just one other piece I would like to insert into the record, a letter we just received from Academician Savon, also from Russia, relative to the transparency issue between us and Russia.
Page 18 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
[The information follows:]
I think it is important to read into the record—and I know you received a letter, Dr. Gansler, or you got a letter from Mr. McKelov who is the leading administrator of atomic energy, and he tells us he hasn't received a response yet on this matter. And I quote, ''The danger of not funding RAMOS by the Department of Defense and U.S. Congress cause very concerns on the Russian side, because this work was always viewed by both sides as a possibility to start and further develop joint efforts in securing a strategic stability. Furthermore, we also feel it is important to mention that the joint RAMOS team which consists of Russian and American specialists in the area of space-based early warning systems, the trust and mutual understanding achieved in the course of joint work is a very good foundation for the development of the U.S.-Russian cooperation in the area of spaced-based systems of early warning.'' And that is from Academician Savon, just received by me on the Administration's issue, and we will discuss that.
And one final point—we, I think, try in a very bipartisan way to approach these issues on the facts and on what is best based on the threats that we see. What really irritates me is when the American media distorts what this whole debate is all about. Nothing could have incensed me more than Tuesday of this week when the head of one of the largest institute's in Russia, the Kachartoff Institute, Dr. Yageni Vilikov was in my office. We were discussing joint programs, many of which this Administration proposed and which I support, to allow us to engage their scientific community. He said, ''Congressman, I understand what you are doing in the area of missile defense to protect your people and your troops, but you have to understand that some of the outrageous statements in your country and the media in your country drives a different message in Russia.'' He didn't mention that what the Congress is trying to do is doing that, but he specifically picked up Time magazine, February 22nd, 1999 and opened up to that insert, ''Star Wars, the Sequel.'' And what is really outrageous to me, and it was also to Dr. Vilikov, as we are trying to find common ground and trying to create stability, that Time magazine would insert a story about building stability between two countries and missile defense systems, will have an insert in the corner—and let me read this, for the record—''Destroying Russia—arms control advocates, not the Pentagon's top secret plan for waging war; 1,200 warheads hit 800 targets.'' And it has the targets that supposedly we would take out. Then, it goes on to say, ''Killing zones: the vast spread of radiation would wipe out more than 20 million people. Exposure to 600 REMS in 24 hours would cause certain death within weeks. This is what has been broadcast all over Russia today, Time magazine's outrageous abuse of a legitimate debate and discussion between America and Russia over a new way to move our relationship forward, and, to me, it is absolutely disgusting.
Page 19 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
With that, I would turn to our three distinguished panelists; allow you whatever time you would like to speak. Your statements will be entered into the record, without objection, and we welcome you again to the hearing.
Dr. Gansler.
STATEMENT OF JACQUES S. GANSLER, UNDER SECRETARY FOR ACQUISITION AND TECHNOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. GANSLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me, first of all, say that we appreciate this opportunity. We think it is a very productive and fruitful discussion, and it is a two-way dialogue very clearly, and I strongly agree with you about that article, by the way. That was clearly inappropriate.
I think we all have statements that we would appreciate you just reading into the record. What I would like to do is actually just go briefly through some charts that I put together to try to set the stage, sort of the overview for national missile defense and then ask each of the Generals to give some details.
Do you want to put the next chart up?
[Chart.]
Page 20 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCWell, I thought it would be appropriate to do, and I don't need to do this for this group, but to recognize that we recognize the totally new threatened environment. I mean, these are just—and I think you have a copy of these charts; I know some of them are going to be hard to see from your desk. I hope you all have them. If not, we will make sure you get them. But it clearly is a new threat environment, whether it be the information that you received earlier, as you were referring to, Mr. Chairman, from the CIA, or the news that is out for everybody all over, it is an environment in which we are seeing ballistic missiles and cruise missiles around in increasing ranges and increasing capabilities. I even show on here, for example, what General Tulelli in Korea is worried about, about the hundreds of missiles facing him in North Korea.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
The overall ballistic missile defense area, as we are going to be describing it here today and as we have been focusing on it for the past few years, has the three pieces associated with it: the family of weapons that we talk about for the theater missile defense, including the MEADS Program which I will come back to; the national missile defense program, including the space portions of it, and then the technology-base that includes things such as the Space-based Laser Program and also things like the RAMOS Program are being funded out of this technology base.
Next slide.
Page 21 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC[Chart.]
The total dollars that we have in the program and as presented to you in the 2000 budget, as you can see, is in the range of $4 billion a year covering these three categories. I would argue that all three of these are critically important. It is not a priority question at all. We have the troops being threatened today, so we need the theater capability; we have advancing missiles coming along against them, so we need the upper-tier associated with it; we have the national missile defense that we are now committing to—and I will come back and talk about each of these three—and then we have the technology base that we have to continue, because the threat is continuously evolving, in fact, as was pointed out, very rapidly.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
In the theater missile defense family of systems, I think you are familiar with all of the pieces of it. One of the things that I would try to highlight is the importance of the integration—the Battle Management and Command and Control system. One of the things that we will highlight during our discussions is the fact that you can gain a great deal of effectiveness through a combination of a number of these systems.
For example, while it has been well advertised that the THAAD hasn't been successful on its missile portion of it, the radar portion has been extremely successful. That radar could be used to help in the discrimination for the Navy Upper-Tier System, for example. So, we might be able to get an integration of these systems much more effectively than any one individual system.
Page 22 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Again, it shows the MEADS System. By the way, I would correct you, Mr. Chairman. We have not canceled the MEADS—terminated the MEADS System, and I will cover in detail what we are doing with regard to MEADS. In the same way, we have not terminated the RAMOS Program. In both of these, we have had redirections of them, but not termination of them.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
The overall triad, if you will, that we are dealing with here in the theater area covers the full spectrum, from the near-term, short-term systems that are already here to the longer-term ones. The system defenses that we are now putting together for it, naturally, cover this full spectrum as well. In the boost phase, which is the most desirable place to intercept, if you can, any weapons of mass destruction, are over enemy territory. We are working here on trying to do it with the Airborne Laser System (ABL). And then the ascent phase, the Navy System—if the ship is in the right place; has an accurate atmospheric capability against it, and then we get into the upper-tier systems with THAAD and Navy Theater Wide, and then the lower-tier systems down here for the terminal phase with MEADS, THAAD, Navy Area, and Patriot.
Next slide, please.
[Chart.]
I am doing this to try to set a perspective on the overall program, and that is the reason for just kind of going through these quickly. Within the theater missile defense area, you see the major funding categories for the PAC–3, the Navy Area Systems, the Navy Theater Wide, the THAAD. I will cover in a minute the restructuring of the Upper-Tier Program but also the Airborne Laser and the MEADS Program.
Page 23 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I should emphasize that these are not the inclusive costs, because on the Navy programs, the ships and the radars and the launchers and so forth are those associated with the ship program, but this does cover the software associated with the radars, the missiles, and other portions of it. That is why it is not an exact one-to-one comparison between, say, the Navy systems and the Army systems.
You will notice the MEADS Program, we did restructure this program; we have put in a $150 million for the critical technologies that we feel are necessary for a mobile system defense. In other words, the MEADS requirement is a mobile system. This is one that we are now in discussions with our Italian and German allies. Hopefully, they will take part in this. We have suggested to them—and we feel strongly for the United States—that what we want is a low-risk program that will satisfy the mobile requirement. We think using the PAC–3 missile minimizes the risks and the costs associated with this mobile requirement, but we still need to have a mobile launcher; we still need a radar that will go 360 degrees against the advanced threats, and that what these developments are for. We are anticipating that the Italians and the Germans will participate in this program, and we are now working—we hope to get Congressional and Administration support for the continuation of that program, a long-term program.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Gansler, for the record, your small footnote down there is important for members to understand. You have included, basically, Air Force funding for ABL—
Mr. GANSLER. Yes.
Page 24 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCMr. WELDON.—which is really not a BMDO line item, isn't that correct?
Mr. GANSLER. That is a very important point, Mr. Chairman. What I am presenting here is the Department of Defense integrated picture, and some portions of it are being funded by Air Force; some portions of it are being funded by BMDO, and so forth.
Mr. WELDON. Members need to understand that, because in past years there have been, in fact, separate budgeting processes by the Services, so when you create the perception that there is a stable funding line or, perhaps, an increase, in effect, if you compare it to past years in the budgeting process, there would be a decrease, because that ABL line would be in the Air Force's budget and not in the BMDO budget. Is that correct?
Mr. GANSLER. No. This is not the BMDO budget.
Mr. WELDON. No, but when we look at the BMDO budget—
Mr. GANSLER. Yes, if you were to look at two separate budgets, you would see differences. I am trying to give you the overall Department of Defense—
Mr. WELDON. Right, but up until last year, we always dealt with the BMDO budget separate, and that is the point I am making. I don't want to give people the false impression that we are putting more money into BMDO than we actually are.
Mr. GANSLER. And I don't want to either.
Page 25 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WELDON. Okay.
Mr. GANSLER. What I am trying to do is to explain that I think it is better to look at the total program—
Mr. WELDON. Okay, I understand, and I agree.
Mr. GANSLER.—but there are some portions of it, for example, the Space-based Laser, that are actually being shared by the Air Force and BMDO. So, to have two separate budgets I don't think would present the overall picture properly.
Mr. WELDON. Mr. Pickett.
Mr. PICKETT. Quickly, could you explain the Navy Theater Wide and the Upper-Tier? You have got zeros and then you have got—
Mr. GANSLER. Yes, that is my next chart, sir.
Mr. PICKETT. Okay.
Mr. GANSLER. Just let me get—in fact, why don't we move into that, because it might be easier to see that.
What we did—in fact, maybe you can put that one back for a minute—when we had last year's program, what you would have seen here on the Navy Theater Wide is a much lower level program, because a decision had been made a few years ago, before my time, that we would stress the THAAD Program as the first system to be deployed, and then we would keep the technology going on the Navy Upper-Tier Program, and that would be out beyond the 2010 time period kind of deployment. And, so you would have seen a very different picture here.
Page 26 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Now, what we are trying to do is to restructure it to try and get a much earlier capability with either or both the THAAD or the Navy Upper-Tier, and that is what this next slide is.
Can I see that now?
[Chart.]
So, what we were facing in putting together the 2000 budget to submit to you was the fact that, clearly, the medium-range threat is growing rapidly, and, clearly, we would like to field something as soon as possible. We were also facing the fact that THAAD not only had cost growth but has had five out of five quality failures recently, and so if everything were equal and you had no growing threat, you would probably say, ''Well, gee, that program is not very successful. Maybe we ought to even think about canceling it and doing something differently or trying to redirect it significantly.''
Because of the fact that this threat is so imminent, we felt that it was really important to continue on with this program but to give us some alternative in the event that it continued to fail. We were very concerned that we had no choice. If that system didn't work, what would we do about this growing threat? So what we decided, given the schedule slips, given the quality of problems and the cost growth we have on that program, we felt that it was necessary to develop an alternative to get something quickly, and that is why we decided to accelerate the Navy Theater Wide System, to add significant money into that program so that we had a choice with the programs.
Page 27 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Now, that one, we had previously, as I said, funded at a very low level. We have now created a program which had previously been our technology effort, and these two are now running essentially in parallel. The idea would be that if both worked, we would then try to continue both of them. If one doesn't, we have an alternative. In the event that one is earlier than the other, we can take advantage of that. In fact, we could even go to the extreme, perhaps, of using the Navy on land with that radar that I mentioned earlier from THAAD that works well. So, we have a variety of alternatives now that we didn't have before, and the idea would be to try to get something early through this competition and using competition, also, to reward success and to encourage the contractors to stop this continuous quality, cost, and schedule problems that we have been running into.
Next slide, please.
[Chart.]
So, what we have created here is an Upper-Tier Program that has both the THAAD flights continuing on with the current systems. They have built missiles that were, in fact, built in the 1994 and 1995 time period. These are the ones that had quality problems. They have gone back and tried to improve the quality of those, so that hopefully we will learn from those flights. We are going to go ahead with those flights, and we have accelerated the Navy Program so that we will also have those flights. If, in fact, these THAAD flights work, we are then in a position to have a review and decide, okay, we can move out rapidly with it. On the other hand, we have now got an alternative, which is the Navy Upper-Tier Program, so that we can make a decision as to where we are going to spend those dollars that I showed on the earlier dollar chart between them. There is enough money in there to continue both programs but not at an accelerated rate. And, so what we are competing in a sense for is the accelerated dollars rather than for the total dollars.
Page 28 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Next slide, please.
[Chart.]
Now, let me move quickly on to the national missile defense side, and we can come back and talk in detail about the theater missile defense as well. The mission as we see it—of course, there has always been the Russian and Chinese missiles. There we have the deterrents as the primary threat—I mean, to prevent the use of them. But with the rogue nations, with the limited capability that we see coming up, we need some limited capability against those, and, therefore, our intent was and is stated here, by the year 2000, to be in a position to make a deployment decision against primarily this rogue threat, but if we had a system, it may also have some backup capability against an inadvertent launch by somebody else. And the idea was to have as open an architecture as we could so that we could continue to evolve it against the evolving threat.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
The national missile defense is also a complex system made up of many parts, as we showed with the theater missile defense system, and, again, a space-based system. I will show you this in a subsequent chart, but we have the current defense warning systems, and SBIRS High is the development of the follow-on to that. The SBIRS Low that we just talked about briefly is the compliment to that for more sophisticated targets. The SBIRS Low is particularly geared now at the advanced threats. We have the radar systems, and I will show how these are all used. The key element here is the kill vehicle; that is the major technical challenge, the intercept vehicle itself. And then a major second challenge is that of integrating all of this through the Battle Management Command System.
Page 29 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Next slide.
[Chart.]
How these all work together, I think you are familiar with, but let me just briefly show. As you can see at the bottom here, the total time we have here is in seconds, you know, a 15-minute type of operation. It is not a long time period to go through first detection with the space system, then tracking and prediction with advanced radar systems, and then the terminal phase where we have the radars tracking, predicting, and then, finally, the intercept, and all of this has to be done in the presence of discrimination among various sophisticated pieces of the booster as well as possible decoys. Now, the assumption for the early periods is that it is a relatively unsophisticated threat that we are trying to shoot down.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
This system, as described here, has been under development since about 1984, but with increasing intensity, as is shown by the marks on this chart, and the most critical point I wanted to highlight was that in April of 1998 we then awarded a systems integration contract to try to put all of this together, and that is the focus of this effort that Boeing is now integrating these systems together with. The critical testing period is out here in 1999 and 2000.
Page 30 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCNext slide.
[Chart.]
The dollars here are showing last year's presidential budget and the proposed budget that we submitted to you to give you a feeling for the change that the Chairman pointed out. We have significantly increased the resources here. We have done two things here that I think are important to point out: one, we did increase the R&D, you will notice, particularly, in the out-years; that is gone now, so that it is much more significant, but in the early years to try to increase the R&D significantly, and this, of course, is where we are taking full advantage of the dollars that you provided in the supplemental, the $1 billion.
Now, in addition, what we have added in is the procurement, so that if we make a decision in the year 2000 to deploy or in 2001 or when we make it, it would be appropriate for us to have the dollars there. That was the one major difference between what we said before when we had a 3+3 Program but no dollars shown in procurement. We now have the procurement dollars shown, so that if we make the decision to deploy, we have the resources to actually do it against this threat.
Next slide, please.
[Chart.]
And the major milestones here that I thought it was appropriate to try to highlight, we are here now on the program. We have a major decision point here for deployment review in June of 2000; that was the original date that we had talked about. You will see at that point what we will have, though, is these four flights to base it on; not very many, in other words, and they will not be with the production booster which will be tested down here. This will be the first production booster flight, and the first interceptor production flights are out here shown in the green, so that what we can do at this point is clearly make a deployment decision in terms of site location, and that is important. We have these environmental studies shown down here for both Alaska and North Dakota going on now. We can make a decision on site location. If we decide at this point that we have not had sufficient technical credibility demonstrated, we can then decide and, perhaps, more realistically, in 2001, that we will then have had the first production booster tested; we will have the results of all of these flights, and we can begin site construction at that point.
Page 31 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
It also gives us this plan, at least a year here, for the negotiations that we are going to be having with the Russians if any treaty requirements take place. When we get through the first production demonstration, we can then actually decide to go ahead with the intercept vehicle. If we have more success before that, we can decide earlier. What we did was to try to put sufficient dollars in for what we thought was still a high risk but realistic program which would yield an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in 2005 as a sort of a last date. We can move that back in based upon an earlier decision, say, in 2000 instead of 2001 and still attempt, perhaps, to make the 2003 date. These are the uncertainties associated with the program based upon the technical demonstrations that we have planned.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
And the last topic is the space-based portion of it, the SBIRS portion of it. Just to give you an idea, because I am sure we will have more discussion today about SBIRS, there are really three pieces to the SBIRS program. There is the geosynchronous Earth orbit. This is the one that is replacing the current satellites that we have, the Defense Satellite Program (DSP) satellites, the early warning satellites. It will give more accuracy than those satellites. The problem—and I will point this out when I talk about our SBIRS decision—is that we have five more of these still left to be launched, and so we have the capability, and the General Accounting Office (GAO) has pointed out you should probably try to use those and all logic in trying to make a decision on SBIRS was heavily influenced by the fact that we have the capability to actually cover the next few years with the current DSP satellites rather than necessarily moving into SBIRS High here.
Page 32 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In the highly elliptical orbit, there are two satellites that are planned: those we would keep on the current delivery schedule, the 2002 schedule, as contrasted to these that we are proposing to move out by two years, the High satellites, and then we have the SBIRS Low which is a more complex, more sophisticated, more difficult, I should say, program which is intended to help us a great deal with the sophisticated threats for the discrimination that will be required against those sophisticated threats in the future. It will also help us, again, in the future for some of the long-range theater systems, and those are the three systems I am going to cover in the next slide on the last of these overviews.
[Chart.]
As the Chairman mentioned, we have made adjustments to the SBIRS in terms of both the High and the Low Program in the submittal that we just made. In the SBIRS High, as we said, it was moved from 2002 to 2004. One of the primary reasons, as I mentioned, was that we have the existing five satellites for the DSP inventory and that we can still meet the TMD need dates when we use the 2004 given the 2005 time period that we were talking about.
It is important to point out here that the difference between the current DSP systems and the SBIRS High when it is deployed relative to these simple threats that we are talking about, the earlier threats against the Nation, the difference is only a couple of percent in terms of the impact that it has and the effectiveness because of the accuracy improvements that it results in.
It does, as I said, support the theater missile defense early date of 2007 which is kind of when we are talking about for either the Navy Upper-Tier or the THAAD Program. The Joint Chiefs of Staff(JCS) have agreed that the 2004 deployment gives them the adequate war fighting for prediction purposes that they need, and so we then face what the Chairman pointed out what is clearly an economic impact as well. We were able, by making the decision to move it from 2002 to 2004 using the DSP satellites, to be able to save a significant amount of money in the 1999–2000 time period in the $400 million range.
Page 33 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
On the SBIRS Low, here we had two experiments going on that were literally experiments, not prototypes.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Gansler, can I go back to that one point? I think it is important. You are saying that by slipping the program to two years, you save additional money?
Mr. GANSLER. No, we save—I am sorry, I didn't say—we save money in these two years, but we actually increase the cost of the program as all programs typically have, if you stretch them out, you put dollars into the outyears.
Mr. WELDON. What was that increased cost that it would be?
Mr. GANSLER. It probably would be—let me point out two things: one is that during this last year time period, the SBIRS High Program without changing the schedule grew significantly in cost, and that was of great concern to us, and we now have a special investigation under way, sort of a special independent cost review team, actually headed by former Lieutenant General Casey. They are actually looking in detail at that, because we are very concerned about that. In addition to that, by slipping out the program, then you also added dollars. We are now trying to determine the magnitude of which of these two are the real cause. I mean, honestly I know that slipping out a program is bound to increase the dollars. On the other hand, there is a time value of money as well that you would have to trade off. What really concerned me was the very large cost increase whether we did it in 2002 or in 2004 on this program, and that is what we were facing. But, clearly, this is not a savings. The actual dollars for the program will go up as a result of that stretchout.
Page 34 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
On the SBIRS Low case, what we had was two programs that also were experiments and also were growing in both cost and particularly what was bothering us there was the schedule. We have very significant stretchouts and cost growth in those. We had learned a great deal from them, and we felt that the right thing to do was to not give up too much in the program to take the dollars from those two that we canceled and move those dollars into the actual engineering program and double, more than double, actually, the engineering program for the SBIRS Low effort. So, what we are doing is trying to maintain the SBIRS Low to the extent we can, moving it from 2004 to 2006 by maintaining the major portion of the program, and we will fold in all of the engineering efforts that would have come from those high cost, late demonstrations and put those into the engineering effort itself.
The launch date of 2006 that we end up with on the SBIRS Low is we think now much more realistic given the complexity of that effort, but it is also consistent with the need for the more sophisticated targets. So, we can go back again in more detail on the SBIRS Low as well.
Next slide.
[Chart.]
And so by way of summary, I think it really is important to point out what I just went through which was an overview of the overall program. It is intended to address both the existing and the emerging missile threats, and it is trying to balance those two things that causes us to have all of the efforts that are covered here. We are trying to do this with an effective architecture that combines many of the capabilities of the various pieces of these systems, and we are trying to do it with the earliest possible deployment while minimizing the risks. That is the earliest possible deployment for both theater systems and for the national systems. So, that is a very brief overview of a very complex program that we have underway.
Page 35 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gansler can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Dr. Gansler. We have never doubted the DOD commitment to missile defense. I guess our concerns are whether or not from the top down you are getting the same level of—and that is not a question I am asking you to respond to, obviously—but I think that has been our concern.
General Lyles, before we start, we have about 12 minutes. We can start now and then interrupt you when we go vote or we can—would you rather start now?
General LYLES. My remarks are relatively brief, Mr. Chairman. I can probably get through them very quickly, and then we can take the break if that is appropriate.
Mr. WELDON. Great, fine.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. LESTER L. LYLES, DIRECTOR, BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE ORGANIZATION, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
General LYLES. Mr. Chairman, as always, it is my pleasure to appear before this committee, in part, because of the very spirited and enlightening and very important discussions we have, but also because of the strong support that we get from this committee and certainly you as the chairman. I would also like to submit my statements for the record, but I have brief comments that I would like to run through.
Page 36 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Let me mention, Mr. Chairman, Members of the committee, that one of our major challenges—we have many major challenges as we try to make missile defense a reality. Dr. Gansler touched on the engineering and the technical challenges we are facing, and in spite of the problems we have had in maintaining our flight test schedules and in accomplishing actual intercepts, I am absolutely confident that we have both the government and industry committed together to take the correct actions to ensure success in all of our programs.
As an example, in an independent assessment of the risks association with our TMD and NMD Programs, General Larry Welch, the President of IDA, characterized our test strategies as a rush to failure. The embodiment of those symptoms was clearly evidenced in our THAAD program as an example.
Since General Welch's report, we have examined all of our programs, and we have added more rigorous hardware and software testing, more simulations, more ground tests, more hardware-in-the-loop testing, and more actual flight tests. These tests were accomplished not to stretch out the programs or prolong the development of our systems but, on the contrary, to maintain and hopefully reduce the schedules by reducing the risk and increasing the chance for success.
The PAC–3 secret characterization flight, which we hope to accomplish tomorrow morning at White Sands Missile Range, is an example of such an additional test. It was added to characterize the algorithms and the sensitivity of the new seeker for the PAC–3 Program before we start our series of planned intercepts leading to an initial production decision.
Page 37 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Another example, in the THAAD program, the THAAD program office and Lockheed Martin, our prime contractor, have conducted a very rigorous set of analyses of ground tests, of subsystem tests, qual tests, and pedigree assessments over the last year to identify and actually to weed out all of the quality control problems that have plagued us to date, all of this before we renew our intercept testing in late March or early April.
And, as you know, Members of the committee, our thorough analysis and thorough things we have done in reviewing the THAAD Program have identified some problems, and those problems have caused some slips in our next intercept attempt, but I know that we are doing the right things to make sure that we are going to have a successful test.
I started my remarks by mentioning the challenges we face in making our program successful. I want to let the committee know, though, that one of the largest concerns that I have, in addition to the engineering challenges, is also to make sure that the programs we are working on are affordable. As you, the Members of the committee, know and the Mr. Chairman knows, you have demonstrated especially your very strong support for our missile defense program. You have authorized us funding; you have given us strong support; you have ensured that we have been focused on our particular efforts that we are trying to accomplish. However, we have actually experienced what I consider to be unacceptable cost growth and schedule slips with some of our programs that jeopardize our ability to complete our developments on time and, more importantly, to acquire the quantities of the systems we need to counter the growing threat.
As a result of this major problem, we are taking a very tough series of management actions to get costs under control and to start now to reduce the projected procurement costs of our systems so that we can get the quantities in the field that we need. These actions include establishing firm cost-base lines based on the actual experiences that we have seen to date in our developments of our programs. This is something that has not been done at all in any of missile defense programs. We are working very closely with our system contractors to verify, validate, and audit their cost assessments to make sure we know what is real and what is not real, perhaps; to work closely with the system contractors to identify and to implement opportunities to control development costs; to work with the contractors and our government teams to identify and implement initiatives to reduce the procurement costs of our systems in the future; to restructure the acquisition strategies and the contract strategies of our programs to incentivize the contractors to implement cost controls just as much as they emphasize schedule performance in the past, and I think this latter issue is a key reason why we have had so many cost problems in all of our programs to date; and, finally, to look at where we might provide award fees or profits to incentivize the contractors to focus on all three parameters for managing our programs, not just performance but also schedule and, more importantly, the cost. These actions and others are being done and must be done in a teamwork manner with all the contractors and all the government stakeholders involved.
Page 38 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. Chairman, I could go on about the actions we are taking and the importance of addressing this very, very significant challenge to our programs. Instead, I look forward to answering any of your questions from you or the other Members and look forward to working with you and the committee to address this particular challenge.
Let me close with just one statement from the war fighter and why we are so much focused on this particular initiative. Last fall, one of our war fighting Commander in Chief's (CINCs), General John Tulleli, from Korea, told Secretary Cohen that he needs missile defense today as soon as possible to counter the 600 North Korean theater ballistic missiles that are targeted towards South Korea. Our bottom line is to make sure we can provide him what he needs, and I am confident that we, with our talented government and contractor teams, will provide him very effective missile defense systems, and I am confident that we can provide them on time. My fear, however, is that we will not be able to provide him the quantity he needs unless we can make sure our systems are affordable just as much as they are effective.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to close right here, and I look forward to your questions, subsequently.
[The prepared statement of General Lyles can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. BARTLETT. [presiding] Thank you very much. Mr. Weldon, if possible, in the interest of time, we would like to keep the hearing going. So, General Martin.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. GREGORY S. MARTIN, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE, SAF/AQ, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
Page 39 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General MARTIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about Air Force programs supporting both theater and national missile defense. We are grateful for your serious interest and concern, and we are also grateful for the support that you have provided and will provide to our programs in the future.
Countering the ballistic missile threat is a complex task, and the Air Force is fully engaged with the Ballistic Missile Defense Office and the other Services to achieve both full dimensional protection for our deployed forces and a national missile defense system to protect our Nation.
I will briefly review the Air Force's participation in both theater and national missile defense focusing on our recent decisions with respect to the Airborne Laser, Space-based Laser, and Space-based Infrared Systems.
First, to start the way the Air Force looks at the problem, we tend to characterize it from a kill chain mentality. The key elements of this complex tasks are to detect, track, target, engage, and assess the effectiveness of our engagements. These are functional elements that form the ballistic missile kill chain. While engagements systems, understandably, get most of the attention, they are just a part of a system of systems which perform the other kill chain functions and enable engagement.
For theater missile defense, the Air Force intelligence, surveillance, recognizance assets, such as the U–2 Rivet Joint, provide for preplanning information. Once combat operations are underway, other assets, including Joint STARS, the Defense Support Program, as you note, DSP, provide near real-time information to our Battle Management Command Control Communications and Computer Systems.
Page 40 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BARTLETT. All right, thank you very much. Mr. Weldon will return momentarily. There are less than four minutes left in the vote, so let me recess the hearing just briefly while I go vote, and Mr. Weldon is on his way back and may walk in the door as I leave. Thank you very much.
[Recess.]
Mr. WELDON. [presiding] The subcommittee will reconvene. I will ask our witnesses to again take their chairs, and, again, we apologize for the delay. I will try to get things started, so we can move along rapidly. General Lyles, were you finished your statement yet?
General LYLES. Mr. Chairman, I had, but there are a couple of key points I wanted to mention, because I think they are germane to some things that we are working together, and it deals with what we are trying to do to control costs in our programs. And when I say that, it is to make sure that we are trying to support the war fighter. I will just mention very quickly the kinds of actions that we are taking to make sure we are getting our arms around the rampant cost growth problems we have experienced in each one of our programs.
We are establishing firm cost baselines for each one of our theater and national missile defense systems, particularly, the theater missile defense systems based on the kind of actual development costs we have seen to date. We have actually never done that before, Mr. Chairman, and that is an issue that we think is very important to understand what our programs really do cost.
Page 41 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We are working very closely with the contractors to verify, validate, and actually audit their cost assessments. We need to make sure the costs that they are telling us are realistic in terms of what it takes to get the job done. We will work with those contractors to identify and implement ways that we can control the development costs to date, so we can make sure that we can get our jobs done and get it done expeditiously. We are identifying and implementing initiatives to reduce the procurement costs in the future, and will I point out in my last statement why I am very, very serious about making sure that is a reality.
We are restructuring our acquisition and contract strategies, something you and I have talked about before, Mr. Chairman. I want to make sure that we are incentivizing the contractors to control cost and performance and schedules for all of our programs. To date, they have been only focusing on schedule and have ignored the importance of making sure we understand what these things are going to cost us in the future. If that means providing larger award fees and profits to them to help them to control the costs, we are willing to do that, and we will be working to try to restructure our contracts to make that a reality. We are looking for other levities like competition at the system or subsystem level to make sure, again, that we can keep our arms around the costs, something that is going to be very important in the future.
I could go on, Mr. Chairman, about all the actions we are taking and why they are important. Let me just close with the one statement I mentioned, before all the Members broke here, why I think it is germane and it is critically important for us to address this topic. It is a statement and perspective from the war fighter. It is a comment made by General John Tulleli, a CINC in Korea last fall, in a CINC conference with the Secretary of Defense. At that time, he told the Secretary that he needs missile defense systems today, as soon as possible, to counter the some-600 North Korean theater ballistic missiles that are facing him and targeted towards South Korea today. His bottom line was ''Get me the capability,'' and he needs the kind of quantities to counter the threat, and I am confident, Mr. Chairman, that with our talented team, the government team, the contractor team, the emphasis to contractors making sure we can get our systems into the field, that we will provide him with very effective missile defense systems. As Congressman Pickett said, we will overcome the science and technology problems. I am also confident we will get them to him fairly soon. My fear, however, is that if we don't watch costs today, we will not be able to provide him the quantities he needs to counter the kind of threat that continues to grow everyday. And, so we are really focused on making sure that we make our systems not only effective but also affordable.
Page 42 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I will close there, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, General. General Martin.
General MARTIN. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Pickett, and other Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the Air Force programs supporting national missile defense and theater missile defense. We are grateful for your serious concern and that support you have provided us in the past and will in the future.
Countering the ballistic missile threat, as you know, is a complex task, and the Air Force is fully engaged with the Ballistic Missile Defense Office and other services to achieve both full dimensional protection for deployed forces and a national missile defense system to protect our Nation. I will briefly review the Air Force's participation in both theater and national missile defense, focusing on our recent decisions with respect to the Airborne Laser, Space-based Laser, and Space-based Infrared System programs.
As the Air Force views the problem, we tend to think of it in terms of a kill chain mentality. The key elements of this complex task are to detect, track, target, engage, and assess the success of those engagements. Those functional elements form the ballistic missile kill chain. While engagement systems, understandably, get most of the attention, they are only a part of a system of systems which perform the other kill chain functions and enable the engagements.
For theater missile defense, the Air Force intelligence, surveillance, recognizance assets, such as the U–2 and Rivet Joint, provide data for preplanning. Once combat operations are underway, J STARS, Defense Support Program, or DSP as you know it, provide near real-time information to our Battle Management Command Control Communications Systems, such as AWAC and Global Broadcast System, to help rapidly initiate attack operations and cut active defense systems but with more cue active defense systems.
Page 43 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The preferred method of countering enemy theater missile operations is to attack and destroy or disrupt theater missile operations prior to launch, what we call attack operations. The effectiveness of attack operations, which can be executed by all services' offensive forces, depends on our ability to detect missiles on the ground, recognize and classify them, and then attack with precision before they can be launched. The Air Force is working hard to improve precision engagement weapons as well as to shorten sensor to shooter time lines required for effective attack operations.
Should we be unable to prevent the launch of theater missiles, we intend to engage them with the Airborne Laser (ABL), the only system designed to destroy the Theater missiles in the boost stage. This capability will give theater commanders the ability to destroy missiles before they place American or allied troops at risk. Over the last year, the ABL has had a number of successes including building a flight-weighted laser module which has already produced 110 percent of design power four years ahead of need.
With respect to the kill chain for national missile defense, that chain requires the same functions as we find in theater missile defense, but the system of system is used differently due to longer flight duration and different threat trajectories. One of the primary surveillance systems required for both theater and national missile ballistic defense is the Space-based Infrared System, or SBIRS, which will provide the Nation with new and improved warning and sensing capabilities. The Air Force recently announced a restructuring of the SBIRS Program that generated much concern. The Air Force is concerned as well with this three-part restructuring—was concerned and this three-part restructuring was only implemented after careful consideration to mission risk and overall BMD efforts.
Page 44 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
SBIRS High first-year launch was recently delayed by two years until Fiscal Year 2004. In the short term, this slip freed up much needed Fiscal Year 2000 funds for near-term readiness and modernization efforts, and, I must add, in an extremely constrained budget environment at that time. Supporting this decision was the longer than expected availability of Defense Support Program (DSP). The slip provides supports and provides BMDO the National Missile Defense C–1 schedule with the SBIRS High IOC in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2006.
The SBIRS Low first launch was delayed two years until Fiscal Year 2006. This decision was driven by both technical and schedule changes. Updated assessments concluded that an Fiscal Year 2004 launch was extremely risky and impractical. A SBIRS Low launch in Fiscal Year 2006 supports the NMD with a full capability by Fiscal Year 2010.
The decision to eliminate two on-orbit demonstrations from the SBIRS Low Program was driven by rapidly diminishing returns on the investment, as Dr. Gansler mentioned earlier. Significant risk reductions have been achieved by these efforts to date, however, these demonstrations were on-orbit experimental packages, not prototype SBIRS satellites, and continued cost growth was consuming program funds that made demonstration of that program inexecutable. Meanwhile, other on-orbit demonstrations have demonstrated much of the technology critical to SBIRS. Given these conditions, the Air Force developed an alternative strategy to ensure SBIRS Low remained executable and on schedule for a Fiscal Year 2006 launch. By terminating the two demonstrations, the Air Force was able to redirect funds towards a more timely risk reduction focused directly on the objectives SBIRS Low designed.
The Space-based Laser, or SBL, may provide the boost phase engagement piece to the NMD architecture. SBL is a global, directed energy space platform focused primarily on NMD.
Page 45 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WELDON. General, on that one point, if those tests were done in 1996 and concluded in 1997, I guess the logical questions is why do we continue to do them?
General MARTIN. Sir, all of the data is still not—has not been regressed and available, but the key reason is that from those previous experiences of Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) and Miniature Sensor Technology Integration (MSTI), we believe we did gain quite a bit of data, but one area that we had not gained the kind of data that we needed dealt with the FDS profile that calls for two satellites. Not only is it a sensor capability but then it is a processing capability and an ability to link back to a follow-on satellite, such as SBIRS Low consolation might contain; the information on the characteristics of the launch to be tracked, the location, and the ability to direct those sensors. That demonstration which nothing else we had was something that we hung onto as long as we possibly could until it became what we felt a liability to the overall SBIRS Low Program to continue with that direction as opposed to putting that money into the PDR phase and, ultimately, the Engineering, Manufacturing, Development (EMD) phase. That was something that we have still not been able to demonstrate, so we have to do the integration effort without the benefit of the demonstration we had planned.
With respect to SBL, it is a global, directed energy space platform focused primarily on NMD with potential military utility for TMD as well. A major step in proving feasibility and utility of the SBL is the Integrated Flight Experiment, or IFX. The IFX is essential to reducing risk from affordable SBL, putting the Air Force to integrate laser components into a space platform and perform testing in the operational environment. Both the Air Force and the BMDO have increased funding for this important technology demonstration through the FYDP to ensure a viable program that will lead to an IFX in the 2010 to 2012 time frame.
Page 46 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In closing, let me say that the Air Force is proud to be developing many of the systems required for effective, capable theater and national missile defense. The Air Force is committed to an aggressive and productive development of these systems, including the Space-based Infrared System, the Airborne Laser, the Space-based Laser along with continuing the upgrade of our already important ground-based radar system.
Thank you again for inviting me here today, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Martin can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, General. In the interest of fairness, Mr. Bartlett has another hearing, and we will let him go first, and he has promised to keep his questions short, and then we will go in the regular order.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. The other hearing is the pay raise for the military which I think is a good reason to try to make both hearings.
Secretary Gansler, it is my understanding that our German and Italian allies, believing that we have effectively canceled the MEADS Program, will not commit to the plan the administration has for the MEADS technology development until the United States commits to outyear funding, and, as you show in your slides, there is no outyear funding. When MEADS was a full-fledged program, we had a similar problem. Where exactly is the MEADS Technology Program going? If the answer is we don't know, then why are we spending millions of dollars this year? Also, you have been telling this committee for the last three years that there would eventually be a MEADS Program. How can we, in the Congress, and our allies believe that this program is going anywhere with these conflicting statements?
Page 47 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And the second question: I have read in recent news accounts that the cost of a Naval national missile defense system could reach $19 billion, some 75 percent more than a ground-based system. Can you comment on the validity of these news reports?
Finally, it is my understanding that you have decided to cut our inventory of defensive missiles in half in order to pay for the R&D of our systems. While we, in this committee, are particularly interested in the R&D, I am also concerned about when you are going to give the equipment back to the war fighters that they so desperately need? Would you comment, please?
Mr. GANSLER. Yes, let me comment on all three of those questions. The MEADS, starting there—the Army clearly needs a PAC–3 replacement in the long term. These are systems that have been in the field, in some cases, for quite some time—the overall Patriot Systems—and they need the next generation. They also need the mobility that the MEADS offers. So, if you look at the Department of Defense' 15-year fiscal plan, the Army actually has money in the outyears beyond the 5-year plan that they had planned on for systems such as MEADS. In fact, this has been the plan all along and is in the plan now. By putting in the revised program that we have recommended, $150 million for the three years, we are going to be looking at the critical elements associated with a mobile system—the mobile launcher, the 360-degree radar and so forth.
It does, as you point out, leave a gap in the few years between the long-term dollars that are available and the short-term dollars that are there, and we are going to have to be reassessing that as we look into the 2001 and beyond budgets. What we wanted to make sure was that we had a commitment that wasn't a 1-year commitment to MEADS, and that is why we put in this 3-year program so that we were clearly trying to show, both to the Congress and to our allies, that we were committed to the program; that we have an honest need. There is a question of how many dollars are available in which years, and so what we did was we committed to that 3-year program.
Page 48 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
What we feel is very important for the allies and the Congress to understand is that we are trying to develop a concept that minimizes the risk by using the PAC–3 missile which will satisfy the requirements associated with this mobility need and the advanced threats that it is likely to see, and, therefore, focus on the things that are going to be required, both by the U.S. and our allies. We have offered to the allies the fact that this program can be a co-production program with the PAC–3 and the radars, and we are negotiating with them now. General Lyles was over to visit them; I am going in a few weeks to visit again with the Italians and the Germans, and we are trying to come up with a program that is compatible, both with U.S. needs and with the European needs. They have a shorter-term need, in fact, than we do, really.
Mr. BARTLETT. General, since the unique characteristics of MEADS is forward deployability and 360-degree capability for the radar, neither of which PAC–3 has or will have, why are we designating the demise of MEADS if we simply are going to use the PAC–3 missile in the MEADS system? Why do we indicate that MEADS is expiring which is not understood by our European allies?
Mr. GANSLER. I think it is important to recognize that MEADS, like all of our weapons systems, is not just a missile. In the case of the MEADS requirement—which is for mobility, as you point out, Congressman—that what we are doing is simply trying to take advantage of the missile itself, which has the capability required here, and add to that a mobile launcher, which it doesn't now have, and add to that the 360-degree radar, which doesn't exist now. So, those are the things we are paying for.
Page 49 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCAs long as the current missile can do the job, we didn't want to develop another missile. It minimizes the risk, and it minimizes the cost associated with the overall program, and the logic here is simply that we gain the benefits of the existing missile while satisfying the system requirements associated with, as you properly point out, the mobility need, the 360 degrees, the advanced threat that we are going to be seeing for the MEADS time period.
Mr. BARTLETT. So, the MEADS System will survive but, perhaps, with a different missile. Is that what you are saying?
Mr. GANSLER. Yes, the MEADS System will survive. It will use, as the missile for that system, a PAC–3.
Mr. BARTLETT. And quick comments on my other two questions.
Mr. GANSLER. Sure. I can't comment on the press and the validity of the press with their costs. We are now going through costing of the Navy systems in this new plan that I have presented to you today in terms of its total costs, but I can't honestly comment on what the press says about how much more it costs or how much less it costs. Part of the question here in the Navy costing is with the account—the ship and the radars, which are all part of the AEGIS System, which are already there on the 50 ships, and we want to take full advantage of that, so I just can't comment on that article, because I don't know what baseline they were using.
Do you, Les?
Page 50 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCGeneral LYLES. Yes, I can.
Mr. GANSLER. Okay, why don't you answer that one.
General LYLES. Okay, Congressman, the numbers you mention, $16 billion to $19 billion, actually came from the classified study that BMDO did last year and submitted to Congress, a report to Congress. As you might know, we have been directed to provide an unclassified variant of that study, and we are in the process of getting that to Congress.
That number was based on that study looking at sea-based national missile defense capability, and what it represents is a very rough order of magnitude cost range for a stand along sea-based NMD, and the range was roughly $16 billion to $19 billion, but I caution you, again, that was a rough order of magnitude. That included about $6 billion to $7 billion for research and development, $8 billion to $11 billion for procurement, and close to $0.5 million for military construction. Again, a caution, that was just a study, rough order of magnitude. I am not sure which magazine quoted that, but those are the numbers it came from, the report to Congress that we submitted last year.
Mr. GANSLER. And then your third question, as far as the quantity of systems that we are going to be supplying—both the Navy and the Army short-term systems, the lower-tier systems, the PAC–3 and the Navy Area systems—part of the problem here, frankly, is the cost growth of those systems that General Lyles has pointed out. We would much rather have paid for many more of those systems. The PAC–3 System cost has grown dramatically, and given the overall resource allocation, what we are trying to do is to get enough of them out there so that we could at least satisfy the initial requirement, for example, in Korea and in the Persian Gulf, while still keeping enough dollars for the other programs. A major effort that we have under way now in the PAC–3 is to try to address the costs, and, in fact, we are seeing cost growth on the Navy programs as well.
Page 51 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BARTLETT. So, to meet minimum needs, you really need more dollars.
Mr. GANSLER. I think the numbers that are in there now will address the minimum needs. We would like to have more weapons.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Pickett.
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of things, Secretary Gansler. In the different programs—just from the casual information that I am able to get on them, which I know is nowhere near as detailed as what you get—I get the impression that there is a huge lack of uniformity in the way the programs are being pursued. For example, simple things like target missiles and about having the kill vehicles, having the missiles for those being produced in some predictable and cost-effective way doesn't seem to be happening, and I am wondering if you are watching that, and if the program managers are being encouraged to have a balanced flowing program as opposed to spikes up and down where they seem to focus on this part of the program for a while, and then they will turn and focus on something else, and they will look over their shoulder and say, ''Oh my God, I forgot, I was supposed to do thus and so.'' Can you sort of give us a comfort level about what is happening in these areas on all these programs?
Mr. GANSLER. Yes, in fact, I would comment that that was the essence of General Lyles' talk that truly I think your observation is not only correct but also unfortunate that that was the approach being taken. There was a greater emphasis on trying to get something quickly, and so you jumped to whichever the current problem was at the time and not focus so much on sort of the long-term production and the smooth cost efficiencies that should come from the program. That was what General Welch—when he did his independent assessment—this was that so-called rush to failure that he highlighted.
Page 52 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We think it also is clearly a cause of the quality problems that we saw in the THAAD Program, and so what we are trying to do is to make it more of a regular but, nonetheless, still crash program, and we do still have the schedule need. There is a threat that we need to counter. On the other hand, it doesn't do us any good to be panicking or running around here or there and not trying to develop a system that when it works is affordable and, therefore, efficiently produced and in a normal fashion.
So, we are trying to make it more of a regular program in terms of its baselines and its control systems and its quality, dollar visibility, schedule of visibility into these programs as contrasted to just hurry up and do something. But, on the other hand, we can't ignore the urgency associated with the program, and that is exactly what General Lyles was highlighting in his talk. In fact, I just signed out a memo just yesterday, literally, asking General Lyles and the Air Force, on their programs, to give us these detailed baselines and the ability to get that visibility that you are asking for and to try to make these programs more a regular routine effort.
General LYLES. Congressman Pickett, if you don't mind me adding to that, what you just described is exactly one of the reasons why we have in some respects BMDO. It is to make sure we have commonality, synergy, and linkages between all of the programs. One of my major charters is to ensure inter-operability of all the systems, so we don't have spikes or stovepipe developments of each one of the different weapons systems.
You gave the example of targets—we are trying to manage the targets centrally, so we can, one, take the burden away from the individual program manager for having to worry about that, per se, and provide the commonality linkage and savings of having a centralized organization for managing all of the targets for our systems.
Page 53 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Have we gotten our arms around all the problems? Not yet, I grant you that, but that is exactly the sort of issue that we are trying to address.
Mr. PICKETT. Well, I was under the understanding, and there is a rumor a second floating around about what goes on, but one of things that prompted my question had to do with the Targeting Program. As I understand it, these targets cost $8 million to $10 million each for the targets that are going to be used in these tests. That seems like a lot of money to me if you are buying these things the way they ought to be bought.
General LYLES. That is a major issue that just came up recently as one of the concerns we have had raised by the program managers addressing the subject of cost growth. Each one of the program managers were being told separately by one of our target organizations that the cost for those systems would go up. Well, we put our arms around it; my deputy, specifically, Admiral West, looked into it; we went back and scrubbed the cost, and what we have got it down to is a reasonable cost for the targets, far less than the $8 million for all the systems we are trying to develop. That centralized management and making sure that we don't have one organization telling three different other people different things is one of the key things that we constantly have to battle with, and we have gotten our arms around that specific problem. I will be happy to come talk to you some more about the details.
Mr. PICKETT. No, I don't need that. I just wanted to bring it up, because I think it is a very important issue that we need to focus on.
The other question I want you to respond to is one of priorities. It was a year or two ago we were saying that the theater missile defense was the priority program for our Nation, and that meant that national missile defense, presumably, was somewhere below theater missile defense. What is the priority today or do we have one?
Page 54 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GANSLER. In my introductory remarks, I tried to highlight the fact that I think we have now gotten to the point where we have a variety of priorities. In other words, we have the short-term, immediate threat to the troops, and that is, I would say, clearly, a very high priority, and there are missiles—as General Tulleli points out—missiles pointed at him across the border. And then we have the longer-range missiles which are now real, and which, therefore, we need these upper-tier systems to be able to counter at the earliest date, and we have the NMD threat which is now also a real threat, and so we can't afford to say one or the other at this time; they are all high priority.
And I would even argue that the next generation capabilities that we are doing with the Airborne Laser, the Space-based Laser, some of these other systems, are also a priority, but, unfortunately, if you have to say what is the priority, they come a little bit lower, because they are more longer range, and, yet, the payoff can be enormous from something like an Airborne Laser if it works.
Mr. PICKETT. All right. Finally, you had mentioned in one of your slides about rewarding success. What programs—how confident are you that you have got a program in place that will, in fact, do that and ensure that where success is occurring in any of the programs—and I support all of them—that the money is going to flow there to ensure that that program doesn't have to—if it has a lot of success, it doesn't have to wait several months or maybe a year to get to the next milestone to move on with its program? Have you got some way to ensure that that is not going to happen?
Mr. GANSLER. We put in enough money to try to encourage just exactly what you have said. In other words, that system—let us say in the upper-tier competition that I described, if the system works, we have the money in there to be able to go ahead and complete that and do it by 2007 in this case, which in the case of both of those systems, there was not enough money to be able to do that.
Page 55 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We still have the very real possibility of cost growth on these programs, and we also have the very real possibility of not getting all of the money that we have requested from the Congress. I hope that isn't the case, and the Chairman has assured us that isn't the case, but we have had programs where we didn't get the full amount there. So, there is still—assuming we get the money and assuming that we can do the job for what we have now planned it for, we believe there is adequate money to do it if the programs are successful. The ones that aren't, then we will have those resources to shift as we did in the SBIRS Low and in other programs.
Mr. PICKETT. Who will be the decision maker on which program is going to get the funds? Is that going to be your office? Are you—
Mr. GANSLER. Well, I will make a recommendation to the Secretary. The Secretary will make the decision.
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Pickett. Dr. Gansler, I hope that you would not think that we are going to be the problem in giving you more funds in this area, would you?
Mr. GANSLER. Very low probability.
Mr. WELDON. I would ask you to look at our track record. And, just for the record, the comment about the rush to failure, this committee and this Congress gave you a billion dollars each year over the last four years above the President's request, and one of the specific purposes for that was to give you the money for more test capabilities and more test systems to do the kind of testing that the Welch Report criticized us for not doing. And it was interesting that Dr. Kiminski was one of the members of the Welch Commission Report who sat at that table and did not necessarily support the added money we gave for testing during those years.
Page 56 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Let me go through—during my time period now since I yielded to Mr. Bartlett earlier—I want to go through with you, General Lyles, some very specific comments made by Dr. Peller who is the Lead System Integrator (LSI) contract director who I know you work with on a very close basis. These comments he has made relative to the NMD technical challenges, and I would like you to either agree or disagree or whatever qualifying statements you would make. These are directly taken from him relative to NMD technical challenges, and I will go through them one at a time.
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Quote, ''Most of the arguments about the technical challenges facing NMD are about the Battle Management Command Control Communication (BMC4) and the hit-to-kill scenario.'' Do you agree with that?
General LYLES. I agree, yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. ''BMC4 is easier to do for NMD than it is for TMD, because the deconfliction of the battle field is much less difficult.''
General LYLES. I agree. It is still a complex issue. He is doing a sort of a relative comparison, but, yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. ''As for hit-to-kill, our Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicles (EKVs) operate in that fairly benign environment of space where it is much easier to see and maneuver in than around and above a busy Earth-bound battle field. Thus, it is easier for hit-to-kill for NMD with the only problem being at closing speeds or higher in space.''
Page 57 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. Yes. From the physics and engineering aspect, technical aspects, that is a true statement. We have got to demonstrate it and make sure we have the systems that are reliable to do it, and we haven't done that to date, but the physics are correct.
Mr. WELDON. How about his comment along this line, ''This means that computers must operate fast, and we must have faster firing jets and faster firing jets have been routinely demonstrated for about six years now.''
General LYLES. Again, that is true from a relative standpoint. Again, we have to demonstrate it, and show that we can actually make that happen, the engineering aspects of it.
Mr. WELDON. ''Another technology that is being called difficult is the ability to see incoming targets from other debris. There have been two secret flights for the EKV, one by Boeing and one by Raytheon. Both prove that they can do the job meaning that we have two solutions at hand.''
General LYLES. The discrimination issue is an extremely hard one. His statement is correct; those two fly-by tests were very, very successful; yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Peller goes on to a response to an interview on July 31st by Bill Gertz for Air Force magazine. Question: ''What is your biggest challenge?'' And his response, ''The aggressive schedule is our biggest risk. As for the technical risk, I have zero doubt about getting it to work.''
Page 58 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. I think that is correct. If you don't mind me adding, both Dr. Peller and I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, R&D Subcommittee yesterday.
Mr. WELDON. Right.
General LYLES. He did a show and tell on the complexity of the problem. The thing that I think is very, very germane to that comment is that we are not talking about inventing new science, but the engineering and integration of making things work together is a very, very daunting challenge. So, when he says technology, he was referring to the science part. We don't have to invent anything; we have to make what we do have work.
Mr. WELDON. Integration.
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. And, finally, in the interview: ''Isn't hit-to-kill high risk?'' His response: ''Yes, the first few times in testing, but there is considerably less risk here than some of the other programs on which I have worked, like the space shuttle, for instance.'' Do you have a comment on that?
General LYLES. He made that statement, again, yesterday. I am not familiar with all the complexities that John worked on in the space shuttle program, but, just inherently, because of all the different things that we are looking at, it was very complex.
Page 59 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WELDON. But you acknowledge that he did make that statement in the record before the Senate yesterday.
General LYLES. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. General Lyles, you and I had a discussion about an idea that you had already actually been working on which was to, in the NMD area, perhaps, we could bring in some outside scientific experts to assist. Would you just give me a quick status of that and whether or not you are pursuing that?
General LYLES. You and I discussed a list of potential candidates of people who have been recommended to you, like Dr. Al Flax and others, to help us look at the basic engineering, the basic sciences of what we are trying to do. We are engaging with that group. In addition, as I mentioned to you, we had already started working with the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences who want to help us in working with these others to be sort of a peer review group for looking at the basic sciences.
Just as the statements you just made from Dr. John Peller, the kinds of things that have not actually been looked at to most preeminent scientists in this country. The engineers, the program managers have obviously been working on it, but just as a check to make sure we really understand the complexities and making sure we are focusing on the right things, we are about to engage those groups whether it is one body or two bodies to help us to do that peer review and provide advice not only to me but also back to the Congress.
Page 60 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCMr. WELDON. Back to NMD just briefly—we have referred to General Welch several times—NMD's 2005 launch has been called high risk, I believe, by Dr. Gansler. How would you compare that, then, to General Welch who has called the 2005 launch medium risk?
Mr. GANSLER. That is just a judgment. I mean, I think it is a question of how one views it. If we talked about the 2003, I would say that was very high, and I would say this was high. I think it is just a matter of how we score. I have found, frankly, from industry when I used to get personnel reviews by military people, they were always 99.9 percent. We have a different scale of rating; I may be a more critical judge than Larry was.
Mr. WELDON. There are a lot of unfounded statements flying around as typically happens in this debate, and our goal, as you know, has been to deal very specifically with the facts and to hold people accountable for what they say. Let me go through some statements that we got from BMDO, General Lyles, and ask you to agree or disagree with them, on the record, relative to hit-to-kill intercept test failures. And this is in the BMDO, and if you don't know the exact answer, that is fine, but I think you will be familiar with most of these.
The first one—and I would like to quote these, for the record, and have you respond—''Eighty-six percent of hit-to-kill intercept tests were direct hits when the interceptor actually entered the final phase or end-game. Problems have not been seeker challenges but rocket or kill vehicle problems, technologies demonstrated long ago.''
General LYLES. That is exactly correct, and I am trying to find the actual numbers, but—
Page 61 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WELDON. That is fine.
General LYLES. Eighty-six percent, six out of seven—when we have gotten into the end-game, 6 out of 20, or 30 percent, if you look at all of the hit-to-kill attempts that have been made over the last 15 to 20 years.
Mr. WELDON. So, you agree with this entire statement.
General LYLES. Oh, yes, sir; exactly.
Mr. WELDON. Next statement: ''Both tests against Inter-Continental Ballistic (ICB) and velocity targets reached the end-game and were direct hits.''
General LYLES. That is correct from the two tests that were done like that in the past.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you. Third statement: ''Eighty percent of theater missile range tests which reached the end-game achieved direct hits.''
General LYLES. That is correct; again, from the data, yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Next statement: On THAAD, 28 of 30 flight test objectives have been met. Of five intercept attempts, failures were due to quality control or pre-end-game issues, not hit-to-kill.''
Page 62 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. That is correct. We have yet to demonstrate even getting into the hit-to-kill, the end-game for THAAD. So, the statement is absolutely correct, yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Let us do some comparisons. The A–9 Sidewinder had 13 straight failures before its first success. Are you aware of that, General?
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Is it a pretty successful program now?
General LYLES. It is very successful.
Mr. WELDON. How important is it to our military today?
General LYLES. A–9, all of the air-to-air missiles that we have are extremely important for that mission that they conduct.
Mr. WELDON. But it had 13 straight failures.
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. How about the Poseidon? It has had only 4 full successes out of 20 in early testing. Is that correct?
Page 63 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. That is also correct from the data, as I understand it.
Mr. WELDON. Only 4 out of 20 in the early testing.
AEGIS, one of our key systems—I am a big supporter of AEGIS—in 1993, in April, only 4 out of 15 to 16 targets were successfully engaged. Are you aware of that problem?
General LYLES. I was not aware of that particular one, but I have heard somebody quote those kind of statistics, yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. In fact, from my colleagues, there were congressional hearings in the Senate and the House in 1984 and 1985 on the whole issue of whether to proceed with the AEGIS System because of the failures, and, yet, would you agree that is one of our most—Dr. Gansler, is that one of our most capable systems today? How important is AEGIS to us?
Mr. GANSLER. Oh, it is critical.
Mr. WELDON. And it is a very successful program, am I right or wrong?
Mr. GANSLER. Correct.
Page 64 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WELDON. Does this mean you can have failures early on and then have a successful program?
Mr. GANSLER. Sure.
Mr. WELDON. Is that what R&D is all about, Dr. Gansler?
Mr. GANSLER. That is why they call it R&D.
Mr. WELDON. How about, in 1991, did we have problems with the Spy I Radar that we eventually solved? Are you aware of that General Lyles?
General LYLES. I don't know the specifics. I do know there were some problems early on in the program as it was getting started.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you. I think when we talk about technology, everything needs to be put into perspective. As you know, and I have told you this many times, I don't want to rush you to do things that we can't do, but I think we need to base the debate in this building on the facts as they are, and we can disagree once the facts are presented, but the facts are the facts, and we need to proceed in a way that lets you, the scientific leaders, and industry tell us what is the best technology; what is the best time frame to work through? And if we have those agreements and if we work together, I think we can accomplish the desired end result. Do you both agree with that process?
Page 65 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCGeneral LYLES. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. One other point: It has also been raised that, perhaps, we are going to spend huge, excessively large amounts of money. My understanding is the requests for NMD this year is 800 and some million dollars. Is that correct? In new monies, 800 and some million dollars? $836 million, staff tells me. Is that correct?
General LYLES. Above what we had previously planned.
Mr. WELDON. If we take that amount of money as a percentage of the total procurement and R&D budget for next year, which is $89.4 billion, my math—and I am not very good at math—but it comes out to less than 1 percent of the procurement and R&D budget. Would you agree with that?
Mr. GANSLER. Yes.
Mr. WELDON. And we have a threat that is here, right? Dr. Gansler?
Mr. GANSLER. Definitely.
Mr. WELDON. General Lyles?
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
Page 66 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCMr. GANSLER. We also have a threat against the troops and against the midships. The rest of those R&D dollars are also going for things—
Mr. WELDON. I understand.
Mr. GANSLER. —we consider to be important threats as well.
Mr. WELDON. And this committee has increased funding in each of those areas, and we also have the threat of the use of a barge or a truck bringing a weapon of mass destruction in, and long before a presidential speech was given in January of 1999, this committee has plused up funding in each of those areas far beyond the administration's request, because we saw that threat coming. But as we started off this hearing with, the only major loss of life, or the largest loss of life in this decade, was by a weapon of choice in a delivery vehicle that was a missile, correct?
General LYLES. That is correct.
Mr. WELDON. One final point—and this is a key one to me, because I think the R&D base is critical for us in the entire account line of R&D. I am very upset that we are seeing the cuts in the 6.1 and 6.2 account lines which is where the seed corn of our basic research is done at the university level, and we are going to pay the price for that down the road.
General Lyles, in the area of BMDO, with the growing emphasis on hardware systems, BMDO's base technology has been in sharp decline. Would you agree that we should take special steps on focusing a recovery of our technology base, such as, perhaps, earmarking funds for the specific technology area and, perhaps, in the range of 6 to 10 percent of BMDO's budget?
Page 67 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. Mr. Chairman, that is actually one of my goals, if you will, a stretch goal, to try to get our technology budget up to about the 10 percent level. Today, we are about 6 percent, which is actually equal to most of the R&D levels in the rest of the Department, but because of the critical nature of this problem and the concerns about the future, I would like to have about 10 percent, at least in terms of a stretch goal anyway.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you both. Mr. Spratt.
Mr. SPRATT. Me? [Laughter.]
No, I understand, but I thought that I came last.
I appreciate the opportunity, and I very much appreciate the excellent testimonies from each of you, and I think you have demonstrated that we have got problems, but you are systematically and rationally adjusting them. I like the way, General Lyles, that you have laid out the intercept testing for the NMD Program so that you are pushing the freeze of the design until the latest possible date, and that is another reason we don't want to rush development of these systems, because optimizing them for a very difficult mission is going to be critically important.
Let me ask you a couple of questions about THAAD. THAAD is being developed, basically, to meet its requirements, the so-called (ORD) Profile for the Operational Requirements Document. The Navy Theater Wide System is being developed in two phases: Block I is a version that wouldn't meet the requirements of the ORD; Block II will meet the requirements, but it is basically a paper system right now. If you have this, sort of, fly-off, this competition between the THAAD and the Navy Theater Wide, how do you account for or factor in the fact that one system with THAAD will meet its ORD requirements and its—be configured to meet its ORD requirements, but the competitor will not?
Page 68 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. Congressman Spratt, one of the things we know that we have a challenge in doing literally within the next 60 days is to lay out with concurrence of all parties and all stakeholders the decision criteria for that selection, that down selector competition. We know right now it is essentially a dissimilar competition. We recognize that that is one of the things we will have to come to grips with. The challenge we have and I have given to my people is to work with the Army, work with the Navy, work with the Joint Staff; lay out what the criteria is for evaluating those systems in the year 2000 and 2001, so we can understand and make a fair recommendation to Dr. Gansler, and, him, in turn, to the Secretary as to which programs should be the lead program.
We, in all honestly, don't have the criteria completely flushed out yet, but I have a responsibility and actual action to get that done by April; get it up to Dr. Gansler, and get approval for that, and I would certainly be very happy to consult or at least discuss with the Congress what we are recommending in that regard. We don't have the final answer yet.
Mr. SPRATT. We will have full flight test, I believe, for the THAAD this calendar year, and I believe the first one starts late next month, you said?
General LYLES. End of March or beginning of April would be the next intercept attempt for the THAAD Program.
Mr. SPRATT. Now, let us be optimistic and assume that all of these intercepts are successful. What do you do then about your decision to try to designate one as the lead system, the other as the follow-on system?
Page 69 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. One of the key things that we would look at—and it is going to be a major part of our decision criteria—is not just performance of the flight test. The two other things that we are concerned about are schedule performance and cost performance in the program. We need to look at all of those factors before we make a decision as to how we are going to proceed. If that is going to be successful in all of its tests, I would be extremely happy. We then have the option of recommending to the Secretary that we proceed on with the THAAD Program; still continue, because it is funded, the Navy Program, but still have the opportunity in a couple of years to evaluate the two to see how well they are both doing. We have sort of given ourselves a wide variety of options, and I think that is a good position to be in.
Mr. SPRATT. Having followed this from more distance than you, but, nevertheless, followed it for a long time, I am disappointed, too, in THAAD and in the contractors' performance to date, but I have always viewed these two programs as complimentary rather than competitive, and I would like to think that we can still bring them along in that fashion and not have some mutually exclusive trade-off between one or the other.
If I am not mistaken, THAAD performs missions that Navy Theater Wide probably can't perform. It has more mass; it can destroy an ongoing warhead with submunitions in it, in particular, with chemical submunitions. On the other hand, the Navy Theater Wide is a hot missile, and it can move out in a hurry and intercept targets that THAAD couldn't reach. So, the two serve a purpose, and it is not true that THAAD also has longer legs, can reach out further, so that it is a better system for deployment?
General LYLES. Actually, Congressman, given the power of the rocket motor on the Navy Upper-tier and the fact that it goes after threats in the ascent phase, it actually has the longer legs if you are comparing it like a race, which can actually go further? But the two are very much complimentary. The one thing that came out loud and clear in all the analysis we have done over the last year to look at the scenarios and how you might use the two systems, we have sort of reinforced the need for the multi-tier, multi-platform capability, the complimentary nature of having both sea-based and land-based Upper-tier Systems.
Page 70 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SPRATT. So, you are not taking a tilt towards a system where we would have to select one because the other—?
Mr. GANSLER. It was more of an insurance policy than it was a winner take all. The idea is to—right now, we had no choice. If we go ahead with the proposed program where we are accelerating the Navy Program, we are still viewing it as a compliment, and we are still viewing both systems eventually if they are successful being deployed. What we are trying to do is to get something early in which we had confidence, so we are putting in the extra dollars to try to get both of them going at full speed.
Mr. SPRATT. With respect to SBIRS High, and SBIRS Low, in particular, it has been my understanding for a long time that you are using a different chemical in the medium for the focal plane away and that to test its ability to cool repeatedly as you cut on the cryo-cooler and cut it off, cut it on, and cut it off when the system gets cubed, there is no substitute for testing it in its actual deployed mode or at least some comparable demonstration. You are now foregoing two demos, but you are putting them on the end of EMD. Is this—what do you do about proving the cryo-cooler and the focal plane medium?
General MARTIN. Mr. Congressman, you are correct that that is a very difficult issue that we are working through the program that General Lyles sponsored, the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) Program, gave us some insights, however, and the difficulty that you are referring to is to make sure that we can transition from a system that has a background of the Earth to a system that has a background of space and differentiate between the two and then track it with fidelity through its trajectory.
Page 71 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
But much of that information was given to us by both the MSX experiment and the Miniature Sensor Technology Integration (MSTI) experiment. But that is not to say that we got everything that we needed, and, as I mentioned earlier, we are still crunching the data; it is not all in to tell us what pieces of that problem we have and what we don't have and what we need to do between now and the EMD phase to minimize any risk we would have in production.
Mr. SPRATT. But the question is can you reach that level of satisfaction without an actual demonstration?
General MARTIN. We don't know. In fact, as we go out with our Request for Proposal (RFPs), one of the areas that the contractors may come back in with is the need to do some sort of a flight demonstration as a part of the SBIRS Low program, not as a separate demonstration effort which Flight Demonstration System (FDS) and Low Altitude Demonstration System (LADS) were. And, in addition, we are in the process of amending that to make sure that they come forward with that kind of assessment and what the costs and benefits would be.
Last, we are in the process now of chartering an independent assessment team that will, in addition to what we were doing with SBIRS High, that joint estimating team, we are also taking a look at the technology required for the 2006 operational system capability or launch and where we are today and what it will take to give us the assurance to solve, among many problems, that particular case and whether we need to do a flight demonstration or not that is integral and a part of the overall SBIRS Low Program.
So, a long answer, we don't know for sure. We have gotten a significant amount of information, but we are going to ask some serious experts that question and have them come back with their assessment over the next 90 days.
Page 72 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SPRATT. The SBIRS Low slip is for technical development—
General MARTIN. Yes.
Mr. SPRATT.—maturation of the system. The SBIRS High system is more for budgetary reasons, but you feel comfortable in making that decision.
Mr. GANSLER. Budgetary plus the fact that we had the extra DSP satellites available, the five satellites. In fact, we wanted to use those, because they were available, and the overall result would not significantly impact the performance of the weapons systems.
Mr. SPRATT. Thank you very much.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Spratt. Mr. Hostettler.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony.
I was intrigued and encouraged by one of the slides that I saw, actually all of them, but especially slide number 7 dealing with the development of the Upper-tier strategy, and I assume this is somewhat in response to the request by General Tulleli from what is going on North Korea. Is that—?
Page 73 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GANSLER. Partly, in fact, when the President called in the CINCs last fall and asked them what their priorities were, one of the priorities, clearly, that came out from a number of the CINCs, not just General Tulleli, was for capability against the increasing threats from ballistic missiles. It was also the fact that we saw it. I mean, the press had it, and the charts that I showed. Over the last year, there has just been this evolution, including the North Korean launch, which when combined with the fact that we didn't have an answer to it, caused us to say we need to do something more about it, and that was the point that we were just making that we felt we needed to develop an alternative not just to continue to count on that one solution that we had which was the THAAD, but to try to also increase the funding on the Navy systems so we would have an early option if we needed it.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Right, and as that has taken place with regard to theater missile defense, you also stated in response, I think, to Mr. Pickett's questions with regard to the priorities, what are the new priorities? And you said, we really can't afford to necessarily, as a result of the growth in the existing and emerging threats that the—the acceleration, I should say, in the existing and emerging threats, we don't necessarily have the luxury to say, ''Well, it is definitely TMD all over.'' Rather now, it is much more a hodgepodge, you could say.
But what encourages me is that there has been a change in the philosophy of the TMD development, and that is that in the lower part, competition will be used to get early deployment and reward success. I guess my question is because we now know that the threats are accelerated and we know the threat, according to Secretary Cohen, is here today with regard to even national missile defense and the threats are there, why can't this same philosophy be used with regard to development of a national missile defense? We have always talked about the rush to failure, and I am sure you don't want to do that even with this new approach to TMD. Why can't we assert that same philosophy with regard to NMD as well?
Page 74 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GANSLER. Well, we think we have, and that was the point that I was trying to make with the chart comparing the older approach we had to NMD to the one we now have, and it was last year's budget, literally, and in this year's budget, we have significantly increased the R&D on NMD, and we have significantly—well, we made it from zero to a commitment now to putting dollars into the deployment side. So, there is a very significant difference between our NMD approach before and our NMD approach now. There is a very significant difference, as you point out, between our TMD approach before and our TMD approach now. So, we do feel that this submittal to the Congress for the 2000 budget represented a very significant step in both the NMD and the TMD areas.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. So, we are not talking about budgetary constraints when we talk about NMD development and deployment. We are meeting what we need to do as a result of the emerging threats, and there is no questions asked with regard to other priorities within the Defense budget much less the rest of the budget, discretionary budget, to say we are meeting the threats. We are actually accelerating the development and deployment of the system.
Now, how does that—how do we resolve that? I know we are using the five extra—the Defense Support Program satellites, but how do we resolve that with the SBIRS slips? How do we say we are doing everything we can, and the thing is that we know that we are going to spend more money in SBIRS in the outyears, and we have made that decision to do that. How are we resolving the fact that we are accelerating National Missile Defense, but we are letting SBIRS slip? I know as a result of the response earlier, SBIRS Low may be as a result of technological problems, but why is that? How do we resolve those two things?
Page 75 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GANSLER. The SBIRS Low, as you said, was because of technological problems. The SBIRS High—in both cases, the slips, we feel, do not affect the performance. They are not the critical element in the path associated with developing either the national or the theater missile defense system, and it is because they are not the critical element in the path that we can afford to let them slip and still satisfy their requirements.
As was pointed out earlier, for example, on National Missile Defense—I guess the chairman pointed out—the two critical areas are the integration of all of these, the Battle Management Control System and the software associated with that and the hit-to-kill missile. So, those are the things that are going to drive the schedule and the technical feasibility of the system. It is not whether we get the extra two percent from SBIRS High versus a DSP, and so that is the reason we can make those statements. We still have to keep pushing on the critical elements that are driving the schedule, and that is the approach that we are taking.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. So, the ultimate deployment date is going to be the earlier—the possible deployment date is going to be earlier as a result of what we are doing in the new budget for NMD as, perhaps, for the TMD.
Mr. GANSLER. We have much higher confidence in being able to make the schedules that we have shown as a result—and, frankly, the committee has helped us a great deal there, and, Mr. Chairman, I certainly didn't mean to imply earlier in my comments that the extra supplemental that you provided and the additional dollars you provided have made a very big difference to this program; they clearly have.
Page 76 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you. We appreciate the questions, Mr. Hostettler. Mr. Taylor.
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, I heard with great interest some very positive remarks to the questions from Chairman Weldon as to the different tests that have been run and the success rate. Just for my own curiosity, are there any tests like that where decoys or CHAFF or other things that we would probably encounter in a real attack included in that scenario or is it a straight just one missile versus one missile type?
General LYLES. Well, Congressman Taylor, we use what we call threat representative targets that have the threat representation actually blessed by the intelligence community, our best assessment of what is out there. That is the kind of thing that we actually fire against. It is classified, we can't talk about it now, but to show you as an example, in the NMD Program, the two fly-by tests that took place last year, actually about a year and a half ago and about a year ago, which were very, very successful, the CHAFF'd decoys, the other things that were represented in those two tests were very, very sophisticated sort of threat scenarios, and I would be very happy to come show you or any of the other Members exactly the results of those tests and what they actually represented. I think you will be very surprised and pleased to see what we were trying to counter. So, we use realistic threat representative targets.
Mr. TAYLOR. Again, I realize where Chairman Weldon is coming from based on what happened to his soldiers in his State, and we need more crusaders in Congress. I think it is great that he is doing that. I just don't want any of us to misspend the public's money or spend it in one place where it would be best spent in another.
Page 77 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Congressman Bartlett has made, I think, an excellent point, at least to me and I think to this committee of the potential for an electromagnetic pulse against Americans somewhere. Given the possibility that several of these rogue states could acquire not just one but several nuclear missiles—I will outline the scenario: the first missile going 50 miles up, exploding over the target to an electromagnetic pulse; other missiles are kept shielded and fired an hour, half hour, whatever adequate time necessary so that their mechanisms are not fried, but fired in a follow-on attack. Is that scenario being considered as you develop this system, because based on some of the things that he has said, it certainly causes me to believe that that is something that could happen and something we should be preparing for? I mean, I was told just a few weeks ago—and I guess I have to be very careful what I say—but many of our even fairly simple systems would be fried in such a scenario, and I am talking about simple weapon systems. And so I was wondering if something as sophisticated as this could be hardened?
General LYLES. Congressman, I can't quote exactly the level of potential EMP and the kind of scenarios I know that Congressman Bartlett has discussed with me and others. I can tell you that all of our systems from the standpoint of NMD, particularly, are being designed with considerations towards survivability and nuclear hardening, if I can use that terminology. The levels of those things, perhaps, debatable as to whether or not they are sufficient, and, again, I can't get into the specifics in an open hearing like this, but we are looking nuclear survivability—nuclear hardening and survivability as part of our design requirements.
Mr. TAYLOR. Well, could I ask you to get back to me on that—
Page 78 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. Yes, sir. We would be very happy to do that.
Mr. TAYLOR.—at the appropriate time?
General LYLES. We would be very happy to do that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Taylor, for excellent questions. Mr. Bateman.
Mr. BATEMAN. No questions.
Mr. WELDON. No questions? Thank you. Mr. Allen.
Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hate to ask you to go over ground that you have probably already plowed today, but I had a speech I had to give and so missed some of your remarks. But I want to compliment you on what I understand has been a major effort to reduce risk in the theater and national missile defense programs, and it would be very helpful to me if you would—when you look at the supplemental money that Congress provided, my understanding is that a good deal of that went to reduce risk in a variety of these programs—it would be helpful—you may have done it already—if you could give me a quick overview of how that money is used to deal with the kinds of issues raised in the Welch Report and how you think you may have reduced the risk inherent in the theater and, to some extent, national missile defense programs.
Page 79 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. Okay. Congressman, let me give you a couple of generic answers, and then I will try to give a couple of specifics. General Welch's study and the panel that supported him addressed the concern that we are relying on all of our viability and testing relative to flight tests, and we weren't doing an adequate job on the ground testing, all the hardware-in-the-loop testing, the software-in-the-loop testing, the simulation testing, all of those things that you need to do or should do to give yourself some confidence that you are ready for a flight test and that the flight test is going to be successful.
You really should only use flight tests to validate your models, if you will, not to do the fundamental testing of all the different aspects of a complex problem, and in some respects that is what was happening with our theater missile defense programs.
We actually had a wakeup call about this sometime before the Welch Report, but certainly afterwards, we have gone back and examined all of our programs. We have added additional hardware testing, ground testing, simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and we have actually, in some cases, added some additional flight tests but not to use them to validate all of the critical elements; that is not, again, the thing you want to do.
Another thing we have done in terms of addressing risk is to make sure—this is also part of the Welch Report—that we have the kind of additional hardware on hand and use money to buy them, so if we did have a problem, we didn't have to wait a year and a half before we had another system that we could test. A specific example, two years ago, in National Missile Defense, we had a failure of a very, very simple problem. A contractor technician wired something wrong, wired the positive to the negative terminal, and we lost a target. We had to wait literally a year a half almost before we had another target. So, we have gone in and procured more targets so if we have scenarios like that and we solve a problem, we don't have to wait until we buy a new target to get it on hand. Those kinds of things were parts of what were addressed in the Welch Report, and the risk reduction money that Congress has been so generous about getting to us, we are trying to address those kinds of things to make sure that we can prepare ourselves for success for all of our programs.
Page 80 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. ALLEN. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Allen. Mr. Riley. Bell has to wait, Mr. Riley.
Mr. RILEY. What?
Mr. WELDON. I was only teasing. Bell has to wait, I said. It is your turn, you are up.
Mr. RILEY. Dr. Gansler, as I sit here and listen to this discussion today, and I heard figures this morning that there has been over $50 billion that has already been spent on these programs. I saw a chart that we are going to spend $1 billion to $2 billion every year to develop these programs. And you think where these systems will be deployed all over the world, and you think of the risk factors that other countries have, what are we doing as a Nation to get other people to participate in this? We have got some tough questions, some tough priorities, whether it is pay raises, quality of life, OPTEMPO levels, increasing the floor structure, we have to make some tough choices, and it seems to me like it—after we have spent $50 billion, we are still—just on the R&D on these programs. What is the possibility of getting some of our allies to help in paying for some of this development cost? I would assume Japan has the same risk that we do, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, countries all over the world, Great Britain. How many of our allies today are helping with development costs, and should we shoulder the entire burden for developing a system that eventually will be deployed all over the world with our allies?
Page 81 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GANSLER. Well, let me comment, first, that it has really been in the last year or so, in my impression, that the allies have stepped up to the recognition of the threats that we have been saying over the last four or fives years were coming—there was the ballistic missile and cruise missile threats. It has been an interesting experience to talk to, in some cases, our European allies and try to convince them of these threats in the last few years and then suddenly to see over the past year their recognition that these are really there and that they ought to be trying to address them.
In the systems that we have been discussing with them, frankly, the places where we now have people associated with us or in the case MEADS, the Italians and the Germans; in the case of the Middle East, it is Israel where we have been sharing some costs with them on the Arrow Program, and we have recently begun rather extensive discussions with the Japanese about what for them would be a national missile defense system but may well use a Navy Upper-tier System. Those are cost-sharing programs, each of those three. But beyond that, the rest of the world, as I said, I think is starting to recognize this as an imminent threat to them; starting to spend money on it, but, to date, there hasn't been any joint discussions. We have been trying to encourage that. I bring it up during my discussions with my counterparts in NATO quite often, for example, and we have just recently, I guess a few weeks ago, had a meeting with my counterpart in Japan to try to have the same kinds of discussions. In fact, I think next week, my counterpart from Israel is coming to talk again about it. So, we are having discussions with those countries, and in two weeks I am going over to talk to Italy and Germany again about MEADS. So, there is, I think, a growing interest in this area with them, but, to date, the dollar value has been relatively small.
Page 82 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCMr. RILEY. Well, again, after the amount of money that we have spent on development, with the amount of money that you today say that we are going to spend on development, that seems like that would be a priority for your office. I was in Israel last week, and I had an opportunity to discuss this with them. Outside of the United States and Israel, I don't know that anyone else is doing the development that we need to do—and I am going to turn this thing off, if I could figure out how. [Laughter.]
But with the type of dollars that we are talking about, literally, in the billions of dollars that ultimately will come out of their R&D account; it will come out of a modernization account—it just seems like that we, as a Nation, should adopt a policy that this should be a priority to get our allies, to get the other countries that will ultimately benefit from our development costs to participate in, so we don't have to make as many hard choices, and I don't think we will, if we could get the NATO allies, if we could get Japan to participate in this.
So, I guess I conclude by saying this war is a priority now. To me, that would be a priority for your office, to make sure that the money is going to be there for development and that it becomes a participatory process of all the countries that ultimately will benefit from it.
Mr. GANSLER. Congressman, I think it is even more than just a money issue. It is also an inter-operability requirement. When you picture a missile threat against a coalition set of forces, which we will clearly have in the future, and when there is multiple nations and if they have systems that are all different and not inter-operable, we will all go for the first missile, and the rest will all come through. We have to have systems that operate together, and, therefore, it makes sense for them to be, perhaps, developed together.
Page 83 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. RILEY. Well, but it seems like what will happen is that we will spend the development dollars; we will initiate a system; we will deploy a system and after it is fully tested and operational, then other countries will probably be a customer for that, but that still doesn't do anything for these extremely high developmental costs. So, again, I hope we can do that.
One other question, if I could. It seems to me—and I certainly don't know that much about missile defense—but anytime you have a chart, it looks like you are treating THAAD and NTW almost the same. Maybe it is because I don't understand it, but it looks like a blue water system with no mountains, no ranges, no interference would be a totally different system than the THAAD Program that deals with these land-based obstacles. Assume—after you make the decision which one of these that you want to progress with or spend the most money on—assume it is the NTW. How is that going to relate back to a land-based system and the potentials of different obstacles and terrain that you don't deal with with NTW?
Mr. GANSLER. You will need a land-based system; we have no question about that. In fact, one of the things, that as I mentioned earlier, we found that the THAAD radar, the ground-based radar, has been very successful in some of the demonstrations and capabilities that we have shown, so at the worst case, if the THAAD missiles didn't work and you needed something right away, you might even consider using this Navy missile on the ground. I mean, the commonality here is that they are both intercepting outside of the atmosphere. Exoatmospherically, there are no mountains and so forth, so that there is a commonality up at the intercept domain; there is a gross difference in where they are deployed.
Page 84 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOCMr. RILEY. So, what you are saying, then, that mountain ranges would not affect the radar system on a NTW?
Mr. GANSLER. No, no, no. The possibility of if you had a ground-based system which wasn't near any water and you had to have a ground-based system fully deployed, you would have to have a missile there, and you would have to have a radar there; now, there is no question about that. And then the alternative is out in the middle of the ocean you have the ship-based systems. What we are trying to do is to develop a system as quickly as we can that will work. We are trying to look at the Navy approach and the Army approach, and we are eventually going to have a system on the ground; we are eventually going to have a system in the water, and we are not picking between them. We are saying which one can we get faster with higher probability with higher confidence, so we are going to fund both. And then one of those two, hopefully, will, or both, hopefully, even better, will be successful.
Mr. RILEY. So, both of the programs will be treated equally, one just more equal than the other.
Mr. GANSLER. One more accelerated than the other, yes.
Mr. WELDON. I thank our colleague. The articulate, Mr. Andrews.
Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the compliment and for the time.
My questions are centered on the NMD Program. I think there has been a remarkable and, in my view, positive evolution on this issue. I am new to the committee but not new to the issue and know that very recently there was significant debate about whether an NMD venture was appropriate at all, and I am happy to report that the consensus of this Congress is it is. I enthusiastically promote that consensus, and I think we should give credit to Chairman Weldon and Congressman Spratt, in particular, in galvanizing bipartisan support for this, and to you, gentlemen, and the ladies and gentlemen whom you work with, for providing us with an excellent process and product to go to our colleagues and talk about, and I thank you for that.
Page 85 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
My concern is that I think it is imperative that calendar year 1999 be the year that we move from rhetoric to reality in this program, and in slide number 9, Mr. Secretary, I know that you restate the Secretary of Defense's position that 2000 is the year that we are to be in a position to make a deployment decision. I wonder if you could outline for me under what circumstances we would not make a decision to deploy?
Mr. GANSLER. The measures that the President has stated, in fact, in this area have to do with, first and foremost, the question of are we ready technically? In other words, do we have a system that we would have confidence to deploy because it works? I mean, that is the first and most critical test. The second one, which I think we all more or less passed, is the threat test; the third one being the affordability question, and the last one being the treaty implications of it. We want to evaluate all four of those over the next year and make a decision.
Mr. ANDREWS. With respect to the testing prong of that, the first of the four, which tests are yet to be done that would permit us to make a conclusion about this?
General LYLES. Actually, we have yet to add our first intercept test, the actual intercept with the national missile defense system. We have a series of four tests that will take place hopefully before this deployment rating is reviewed, the milestone that is listed there for the summer of 2000.
There are a couple of other key points. Even with those tests, we are using a surrogate for the booster, because we haven't developed a new booster yet, and that new booster won't be available until about our seventh flight test, so there is some uncertainties as to the viability of how that would work.
Page 86 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GANSLER. Let me raise an issue—if you look at chart 14 that you have there, and you see the milestones that General Lyles is referring to with the four integrated flight tests prior to that decision point, and then subsequent to that, the first time we would test the production booster in the second quarter Fiscal Year 2001, and then the first time we will actually have an interceptor, that is the production interceptor, coming out in the beginning of 2003.
Mr. ANDREWS. Let me ask you a question that is related to costs, but implications go far beyond costs. In your opinion, do we have sufficient funds called for in this year's budget and in your future plans to go forward with deployment if the tests are successful? My concern is that we may have a continued high level of testing technical success but be limited by a self-imposed shortage of funds to do the deployment that we need to do. If all these tests work optimally—which I assume they will not—but if each of these tests work optimally both in terms of when they are done and the result that they obtain, do we have enough funds built into the plan here to go ahead and aggressively make the deployment steps that are necessary?
General LYLES. Congressman Andrews, the profile we have laid out, the funding we have laid out, supports the profile for each year and the amount of dollars to support what we think is the likely deployment date of 2005. We recognize if everything works flawlessly, if the threat is imminent, and a decision is made to take higher risks and to do something earlier, we would have to rephase the dollars that we have. The amounts of the dollars is roughly about the same; the phasing, however, would be out of sequence, and we would have to take that action to rephase the dollars.
Page 87 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. ANDREWS. And we all acknowledge that that is a political judgment, not a technical one. Again, based on the assumption that the optimal result obtained, both in timing and the result of the tests, the decision as to how quickly to deploy at that point would be more of a political decision driven by budget than it would be a technical one driven by science. Is that right?
General LYLES. Well, you omit the other factors that Dr. Gansler mixed in—the treaty implications, the operational effectiveness, not just looking at whether the technology is feasible, but is it operationally effective as a total system, in addition to looking at the cost and other factors.
Mr. ANDREWS. I certainly appreciate that the cost and treaty issues are complex, and they don't suggest a necessary answer, but I think you would agree that cost and treaty considerations are principally political. They are not determined in a laboratory; they are determined here.
Let me ask you the flip side of my first question: Under what circumstances would you suggest the acceleration of the deployment timetable that has been set forth?
General LYLES. I think it is just as we just described. If everything is working flawlessly in terms of the technology; we demonstrated and have great confidence from the testing that we really have this knocked down, we know exactly how to do it; we have confidence even in things like the booster, which, perhaps, will not have its final configuration, but we are confident from the testing, the flight testing, that that will work. From a technology standpoint, I would feel confident recommending to Dr. Gansler and to the Secretary that, perhaps, we can accelerate the technology and production activity. Then, those other factors come into play.
Page 88 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. ANDREWS. If I may, just with a comment rather than a question to conclude—and this is one person's, one Member's opinion—I would want to go on the record, and I sense there is a lot of other Members of this committee who want to go on the record saying that these accounts should most certainly not be looked at as early candidates for raiding should other needs come along in supplementals or other areas, be they implementation of foreign policy agreements or other military priorities. I think that what Mr. Weldon and Mr. Spratt have done, again, with your outstanding professional assistance, is to begin to build a bipartisan merit-based consensus for the need to do this, and the Secretary's testimony when he was here a few weeks ago before the Full Committee certainly resonated—made that consensus resonate.
It is a fragile bipartisan consensus, particularly within the party in which I am a member, and I would just suggest to you that one of the most effective ways to blow apart that fragile consensus would be to look at these final decisions that you would not make but to those who would make it, I think we need to tell them that one of the quickest ways to blow apart that fragile consensus would be to look at these accounts as easy money that could be picked up to solve other problems. We feel very strongly that that is not what it ought to be.
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you very much.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. Excellent comments and excellent line of questioning, and we thank you all for being here. I would just ask, for the record, General Lyles, we did not get into as much detail as I would have liked on the whole issue—approach and confidence-building with the Russians. I don't want what we are doing misinterpreted by the radical arms control crowd in this country who is attempting to abuse and misstate what our purpose is here. And, for the record, General Lyles, would you go through the work that you are funding with Dr. Keith Payne and Dr. Shamiken, which I believe is BMDO funding, in building confidence-building between Russian leadership and alternatives in terms of strategical issues. That is very important, along with your efforts and alternatives, for continuing the RAMOS concept with the Russians, so that we make a signal loud and clear to counter the kind of garbage that we saw in Time magazine this week that that is not what our purpose is, and anyone in the arms control crowd who is going to try to scare the Russians—talk about destabilization—scare the Russians into believing something that doesn't exist here, that that is not what we are about. So, I would appreciate it if you would provide that for the record.
Page 89 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
General LYLES. Yes, sir.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. And just one final comment. General Martin, I really was very upset with the Air Force not giving the Congress any preindication of your decisions. I would just ask in the future that you would at least give us a heads up on both sides as to what you are doing, not the day of but a little bit in advance of so that we can work with you, because we are supportive of what you are trying to do.
You have been very candid; we appreciate it; we are behind you all the way, and we look forward to continuing a solid working relationship.
The hearing stands adjourned, and I want to especially thank Mr. Bateman and Mr. Sisisky for their consideration of our going over by about 11 minutes. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
February 25, 1999
[This information is pending.]
Page 90 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
