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60–843
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
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ON
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
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WALTER 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)
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C 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
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Gansler, 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
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Ballistic 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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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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.]
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Well, 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.
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[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.
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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.
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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.
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Mr. 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Next 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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As 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?
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General 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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.''
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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.''
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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.
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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.
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Mr. 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—
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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.''
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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?
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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.
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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?
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General 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.
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Mr. 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?
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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 