SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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1999
[H.A.S.C. No. 106–11]
PROTECTION EQUIPMENT AND COUNTERMEASURE DEVICES
HEARING
BEFORE THE
MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD
February 11, 1999
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PROTECTION EQUIPMENT AND COUNTERMEASURE DEVICES
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Procurement Subcommittee,
Washington, DC. Thursday, February 11, 1999.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:02 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY PROCUREMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. HUNTER. The subcommittee will come to order. This afternoon's hearing is our inaugural one for the 106th Congress and though somewhat different, I believe each of our members will find it very interesting.
Joint Vision 2010, the Joint Chiefs of Staff template for operations and war-fighting in the future, is built upon the foundations of four operational concepts: dominant maneuver, precision engagement, focussed logistics and full dimensional protection.
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According to the National Military Strategy, full dimensional protection requires the employment of an array of active and passive measures that will address all aspects of potential threats, including terrorism weapons of mass destruction, information operations and theater ballistic/cruise missiles.
This afternoon we will focus across the spectrum on these potential threats, ranging from high visibility chemical and biological weapons to less visible lasers and small arms. I would note for everyone that insurance assurance and ballistic missile threats will be addressed in separate hearings to follow later this month.
Additionally, the hearing today will examine actions that are being taken to reduce the risk of so-called friendly fire; that is the loss of lives of U.S. servicemen or damage to U.S. equipment resulting from having been mistakenly targeted by other U.S. servicemen who either did not or could not positively identify an aircraft, ship or tank, for example, as being a friend or foe.
The witnesses from the Pentagon will first discuss the threats currently posed by these weapons and the risk posed by lack of equipment to positively identify friendly forces. They will then discuss what is being done to counter these threats and reduce this risk, the types of equipment being developed or procured and whether or not such development or procurement is adequately funded.
And finally, Lieutenant Jack Daly, a Naval intelligence officer who was exposed to a laser beam while serving as a liaison officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, and I think most folks are familiar with the Russian commercial ship incident off the Pacific Coast, will discuss that incident that resulted in his injury. Lieutenant Daly, thank you for being with us today and for being before the committee.
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I think it is important as we have worked on what I would call traditional weapon systems and the traditional issues that surround these weapon systems not to lose sight of these what you might call peripheral threats that nonetheless may be very effective if employed by our adversaries on the battlefield and may be in a very real way disabling to our ability to prosecute conflicts.
Joining us this afternoon are Lieutenant General Paul J. Kern, Military Deputy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research, Development and Acquisition; Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments); Lieutenant General John Rhodes, Commander, USMC Combat Development Command; Lieutenant General Gregory S. Martin, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition; Major General Richard R. Paul, Commander, Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command; Rear Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, Director of Naval Intelligence; Mr. Patrick Neary, Senior Executive Analyst, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Headquarters, U.S. Army; Mr. Michael Decker, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff (Intelligence), Headquarters, USMC. And as I've introduced earlier, Lieutenant Jack Daly, United States Navy Amphibious Group Three.
Before we begin, let me just call on Norm Sisisky, our distinguished ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, for any opening remarks that he might have.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before we begin today's hearing I want to join you in welcoming all of our witnesses; as a matter of fact, all nine of them. I hope we are able to make good use of their time with us this afternoon.
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Mr. Chairman, I would like to characterize this hearing as a readiness hearing, the readiness of our military to protect against threats to the individual service member. I would also like to point out that this is an important topic for us to consider, important because the consequences to the individual of being ill-prepared for these threats are as grave as for a fighter pilot with an aircraft that can't do the job.
That said, I am dismayed to learn from our witnesses' statements that some of the material or hardware responses to these threats to the individual may not be funded in this year's budget, despite their relatively modest cost.
In addition, I sense there may be some duplication of effort across the services perhaps to pay for the unfunded requirements.
This brings me to the question, how do we rationalize these requirements and the responses to these requirements across the services?
Mr. Chairman, I hope our witnesses can help us better understand this less glamorous but equally important aspect of preparedness, and I look forward to their testimony.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Sisisky.
I would like to begin with the panel members who are providing opening statements. And upon the conclusion of the questions I would then like to ask Lieutenant Daly to come forward and provide his statement.
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So let us begin with General Kern, followed by Generals Martin and Rhodes and then Admiral Lautenbacher.
I also want to welcome the other members of the subcommittee who are with us today and also the very distinguished gentleman, the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Spence, for attending this important hearing.
So General Kern, the floor is yours, sir.
STATEMENTS OF LT. GEN. PAUL J. KERN, MILITARY DEPUTY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY (RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND ACQUISITIONS); PATRICK C. NEARY, SENIOR EXECUTIVE ANALYST, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR INTELLIGENCE, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. ARMY; LT. GEN. GREGORY S. MARTIN, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE (ACQUISITION), ACCOMPANIED BY MAJ. GEN. RICHARD R. PAUL, COMMANDER, AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY, AIR FORCE MATERIEL COMMAND; LT. GEN. JOHN E. RHODES, COMMANDER, USMC COMBAT DEVELOPMENT COMMAND, ACCOMPANIED BY MICHAEL DECKER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF (INTELLIGENCE), HEADQUARTERS, USMC; AND VICE ADM. CONRAD C. LAUTENBACHER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS (RESOURCES, WARFARE REQUIREMENTS AND ASSESSMENTS), ACCOMPANIED BY REAR ADM. LOWELL E. JACOBY, DIRECTOR OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE STATEMENT OF GEN. PAUL J. KERN
General KERN. Mr. Chairman, with your permission I will submit my format statement for the record and summarize.
Mr. HUNTER. Without objection.
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General KERN. I have with me Mr. Neary from our Naval Ground Intelligence Center and after I make some opening remarks I will ask him to discuss very briefly the threat as we see it.
I would also request your permission to submit for the record a copy of our Field Manual 71–2 for our Tank, Mechanized and Infantry Task Forces, dated September 1998, in which I have extracted some pieces which address those specific threats which you commented on that we must be prepared to address.
Mr. HUNTER. Without objection.
General KERN. Also as you noted, full protection is part of our joint doctrine and protecting the force is clearly part of the Army's doctrine as we are fighting now and into the 21st Century.
Specifically we have looked at a number of threats that I would like to briefly walk over here and show you some of the equipment which we have fielded and plan to field to protect against those threats. Specifically we are looking at the lasered threat, which we see is growing and which is addressed in our 1988 Field Manual. We will address the ballistic and frag threat, which we have always had to encounter on the battlefield.
The chemical-biological threat, the chemical which was extremely critical to us in preparation for and execution of Desert Storm, and now the biological threats which we see evolving. And finally, to address your last point on some of the advances that we have made but still have a long way to go in the area of reducing friendly fire and combat identification.
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With your permission, I would like to step over to the side and point out some of the equipment we have very quickly, sir.
I will start by saying this is a pair of laser protective glasses which I was issued during Desert Storm. If you look on the inside you will see that I wear glasses, so there are lenses inside.
Next to that is a polycarbonate which provided frag protection. On the outside the green piece is a 2-notch filter that provides us laser protection in two particular wavelengths. That was what we were issued in 1990 and we have continued to make progress in that, moving from 2-notch to 3-notch filters, some of which I have displayed over here in this box.
And we are jointly then working to the advances with both the Navy and the Air Force as we progress to further threats in that area, which will give us greater protection in other parts of that wavelength.
Mr. HUNTER. Just one question here for the record. Was the pilot in Bosnia who received the laser damage wearing those?
General KERN. He was not wearing those glasses at the time, sir. We have provided to all of our pilots in Bosnia protection. I can show you over here on this—this is a pilot's helmet. At night they are wearing night vision goggles, which gives us both an advantage and a problem.
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Mr. HUNTER. Now Lieutenant Daly, were you wearing any type of protective gear like that?
Lieutenant DALY. No, sir, I was not.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. As I read the pilot in Bosnia's statement, the laser came in from the side.
General KERN. Correct.
Mr. HUNTER. He saw kind of a strobe. Did he have any type of protective capability?
General KERN. At the time that he was lased he was not wearing any protective capability. We have capability for the pilots to wear these lenses underneath their goggles. That was at night that he was lased, so he saw the laser through his night vision goggles. In this case these were flipped down.
He has protection through the lens. There is not a direct light path that goes through there, so his eyes were protected for anything coming through the lens. As he noted to you, however, where he received that laser was from the side. He did not have at the time these protective filters, which at night obviously would restrict significantly your ability to see.
So that is a challenge which we have to figure out how to solve so that when you are operating through these, you still have a side path through which laser light can come through. That is where we are working to solve for the future.
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Mr. HUNTER. OK. So if he had been lased from the front, he would have been protected.
General KERN. Correct, looking through the lenses.
In the daytime when he can put these filters down, you would be protected because it does go across the side. So you are prevented from coming in around the side. However, you cannot wear that at night because of the reduction in the amount of light that you are able then to see. So that is the challenge that we have to work with.
In discussions with Chief McCoy I think we have concluded that we need to make, at least as a minimum, the policy that during the day that you will wear these lenses down in a theater where it could occur and we are working on that at our safety center and through our aviation work at the current time.
You will note in the papers which I have submitted for the record we achieve a level of protection consistent with the threat as we see it. We call it the military-oriented protective posture, or MOPP. That goes from wearing your normal BDUs in the field through the kinds of protection that you see here, where a soldier is wearing an overgarment and the overgarment has a carbon filter on the inside which keeps out chemical and vapor.
The masks that we wore previously, the M17, has now been replaced by a new mask, the M40, which is better and also cheaper, more durable. The new protective garments that we have, the overgarment is also lighter and I can show you the differences in those materials.
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In the future we have a joint program which we are working on called JLIST, which will give another completely much lighter problem.
Now why we allow the commanders to choose that protective posture in the field is because any of these suits, and then when you add on top of it body armor for ballistic protection, causes the heat to rise. And when that heat builds up, that severely restricts your ability to perform military duties.
So we have to make a balance then between a protective level which you choose and the occupation which you are doing. An infantryman clearly, running up and down hills, is going to generate a lot of heat and he will not be able to sustain that over long periods of time.
Our tests with the pilots have shown that with the current systems they can go for about one and a half hours in the military-oriented protective posture fully against chemical and biological agents. With the newer systems we believe we can get that up to about 6 hours by cooling and lighter weight materials.
Ballistic protection, these are the old flak jackets. We have not added on top of that another set of armor. The flak jacket was designed to protect you against fragments, not against bullets. We can add on this ceramic piece then, which will give you protection against 7.62 millimeter.
Mr. HUNTER. On that point have you seen the new fiber material, the suits that essentially look like they are about the thickness of canvas that have been offered in the last couple of years, that have fairly good bullet protection?
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General KERN. I personally have not. The personnel in my laboratory working that have.
This is the joint one. If you came up here and said this is 30 percent weight reduction from this and gives you a significant increase. This is called Interceptor, which we are working jointly with the Marine Corps, and that is what we will both be using in the future.
So we are reducing the weight, which does reduce that workload, and increasing the protection level as we move forward.
So we have covered laser protection. We have covered chemical-biological protection and frag protection.
The last issue, one other point on the floor, the different agent detectors which we use, which give us capability to detect chemical agents that are present. The old M8 alarms are here, Desert Storm era. The new Automatic Chemical Agent Detector/Alarm over here is the new system which replaces that, which gives us a much more durable system. We had a lot of false alarm rates with the older systems; much better reduction in false alarm rates with the newer systems.
The last point on combat identification, this is an M4 carbine prototype mock-up. You can see that it is cut away. On top of it we have a rail which you can mount different parts of the weapon. And on top of here is a laser device that actually has three lasers in it which can be used both for training, which we call our miles laser engagement system, which allows you with the detectors that are on the other end on a soldier here on the helmet, to be used as a training device and that is what we currently use now. It is built in as part of the weapon.
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This is called a combat identification system. Through a selection of codes here, then you can also put it as a pointing device so that you can point at the target and designate at night and that you can also then encode that and get an interrogation off the helmet, which has a set of antennas and logic built into it, which gives us for the first time combat identification for the individual soldier on the battlefield. We call that SIDS.
Incidentally, they built the same logic in that that they do with your pagers and that gives you about 45 days, 30 to 45 days of battery life on these systems. Most of the time they are off.
In the vehicle we have the next version of that, called the BCIS, battlefield combat identification system. That is a millimeter wave interrogation system. We will only field that to our 1st Digital Division, the 4th Infantry Division, beginning in 2000.
So that covers the area and the type of operations which we are performing. It is an area which we are aware of the threats and which we continually work to protect the soldier; protecting the force is clearly part of our mission.
I would like Mr. Neary to very quickly then talk to those threats. One thing before we do that and incidentally, let me tell my colleagues as the general is talking here, we are going to be a little bit informal and if you have a question, just go ahead and ask him as we go through because I know questions will come to your mind.
Mr. HUNTER. General Kern, let me just ask you a real threshold question based on what you have just shown us. In terms of what we have now, the goggles that you showed us for laser protection, those are available throughout the services now?
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General KERN. The goggles for laser protection are available in the 2-notch and 3-notch filters that I mentioned, yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. Are they on station? Are they deployed presently?
General KERN. They are deployed to the theaters in Bosnia right now. We keep a large number of them in contingency stocks for deployment, such as we did in Desert Storm, at which time they are issued.
Mr. HUNTER. Are there sufficient numbers to provide for a fairly large conflict to provide for the participants? We have enough of them?
General KERN. Sir, in the case of the ground systems, we own more than 200,000, so we think that is adequate. In the case of the aviation systems, the numbers are adequate for the current forces that we have deployed, not for the entire force.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. The inadequacy that you have with the side shield that was illustrated in Bosnia, when can you get that side shield problem taken care of?
General KERN. Sir, during the daylight hours we can do it with the current filters shown on the visors that we have there. However, at night we do not have a solution for that problem yet.
Mr. HUNTER. What is your estimated time of solution? I mean are we looking at years? Are we looking at months?
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General KERN. Sir, I would have to say years right now. I cannot tell you unless there is somebody here who could help me that is in the laboratory, that we have a current solution.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. The chem-bio systems that you show us, how many of the most updated version do we have?
General KERN. Sir, in the Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology, the joint one, the last one I described to you, the lightweight, we are just beginning final testing of that. There are none of those in the field. There are adequate numbers of the others that are in the field and what we do is the lighter weight one will replace them as the shield life expires on the older ones.
Mr. HUNTER. OK, the older ones, we have enough older ones now to protect all of our troops.
General KERN. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. The identification friend or foe system, that is in R&D stage?
General KERN. That is in R&D stage. That one I would have to rate as inadequate at this time. There are no systems fielded.
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Mr. HUNTER. OK. Does anybody else have any questions on these systems he has just described before we move on? Because I think it is important to look at those so he can make any description that is necessary.
OK, go ahead and move ahead, then.
Mr. NEARY. Mr. Chairman, my name is Pat Neary. I am the senior executive analyst for the Office of Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your question about the threats today in terms of these unconventional areas of threat.
I would like to briefly discuss the threats in terms of lasers, ballistics and small arms and chemical and biological weapons. I will begin with lasers.
Laser weapons pose a continuous, potentially growing threat to our soldiers, their sights and their sensors. Currently all fielded laser weapon systems operate on a fix wavelengths, which means they are susceptible to the filters that General Kern described to you.
In the future we anticipate lasers being developed, probably around 2005, that will be tunable, which will allow a countermeasure to our filters and therefore we will have to adapt to that. While technologically that is feasible by 2005, we do not see any countries currently pursuing that in a way that would suggest its realization by 2005.
Lasers have a permanent place on the battlefield as electro-optic and optic countermeasures.
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Mr. HUNTER. Do we know for sure that the Russians, for example, don't have tunable systems now? They have done a lot of work and invested a lot of money in this.
Mr. NEARY. Mr. Chairman, without going into classified material, I could generalize that we know they have done research in that. We can find no evidence of a deployed system in that field and I would be happy to off the record——
Mr. HUNTER. Well, one problem we had with missile defense was we ended up finding out that missile capability was about 10 years ahead of where our agency said it was and they slapped their foreheads and said, ''Gee, we didn't think they would actually buy stuff. We thought they would just develop stuff indigenously.''
Well, the point is I think maybe we need to get into this in a classified session but if the Russians have it, we might be able to presume that at some point it might be for sale.
Mr. NEARY. That is currently correct, Mr. Chairman. They would put a system up for sale fairly quickly. There is a growing market. In fact, within laser weapons, while there is a fairly small number of producing nations right now, there is an active market for countries looking to purchase those systems. And certainly a tunable laser which would defeat our known countermeasures would be very attractive to rogue states and other countries around the world.
Mr. HUNTER. OK, please proceed.
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Mr. NEARY. Turning to chemical and biological threats, virtually all the equipment and the material necessary to produce the biological agents is dual use. And in terms of chemical weapons, first generation agents are over 80 years old and there are Third World or developing states that have third generation, which are some of the most advanced chemical agents.
Nearly two dozen states worldwide have or are attempting to acquire a chemical or biological warfare capability. While the integration of chemical or biological agents into a war-fighting doctrine is a very difficult hurdle for most of these states to cross, the use of such weapons, chemical or biological agents, for the purposes of terror is an attractive alternative for them. It is also a reason why we believe eventually terrorists will pursue the use of these agents.
Russia remains the world leader in terms of chemical warfare technology and there are strong indications that they are attempting to look at a new generation of agents beyond the third generation we are familiar with.
In terms of biological warfare, of course there is a greater number of pathogens that I can discuss there but suffice it to say that our concerns in terms of biological warfare really extends toward the near future when we anticipate the development of genetically modified agents, which will, of course, greatly complicate our ability to detect and to react to.
Concluding with ballistics and small arms, really the current threat within this field is evolving. It is a mature field in which most of the weaponry is already out there on the market. There is, in fact, a glut of small arms and ballistics on the international arms market which is retarding future developments.
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We do not anticipate any revolutionary changes. Probably a continued move toward standardization at the 5.45 millimeter or the 5.56 millimeter in terms of the rounds. There is some interest in sniper rifles or anti-materiel weapons, which are very large caliber individual weapons designed to penetrate light armored vehicles or body armor.
We will see increasing deployment of electro-optic measures, laser sites and the like. And finally with regard to general purpose machine guns, we anticipate because of the requirement for a large, heavy caliber weapon, they will remain standardized in the 7.62 millimeter series.
To characterize that field of ballistics and small arms, evolutionary change, probably no revolutionary breakthroughs. The weapons that are there today accomplish the mission they are designed to do and do it very effectively.
To summarize the three areas I have discussed, Mr. Chairman, the ballistics and small arms, very minor changes. The chemical and biological agents, a very robust, mature threat, one that continues to evolve. The laser threat is one that the technology is mature but the threats are not necessarily quite as mature but we believe it is an area where breakthroughs are possible in the near term. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of General Kern and Mr. Neary can be found in the appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Are you going to talk about battlefield identification?
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Mr. NEARY. I would only note, as I stated in my statement for the record, that we don't normally consider fratricide as a threat, but the fact that we are discussing unconventional threats in general here, it is worthy to note that because of our emphasis on reducing friendly casualties and our emphasis on precision engagement and targeting, we believe foreign military forces or nonstate actors will attempt to induce fratricide in our forces, generally by hugging us, by staying as close as possible to our military forces. This can be done through a variety of methods, including involvement in urban warfare as one technique.
So we believe that is an area where we need to study foreign military forces closely to look for evidence that they are developing that kind of doctrine.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. We have a vote on. I think we have about 7 minutes left. We will go ahead and take the vote and resume in just a few minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. HUNTER. The subcommittee will resume.
Mr. Neary, do you have any final statements to make?
Mr. NEARY. No, Mr. Chairman, I do not.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Thank you and we will go next to General Martin.
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General MARTIN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the progress the Air Force is making in addressing our response to several unconventional threats.
With your permission I will submit the format witness statement for the record. I do have a few comments to make orally.
We are grateful for your interest, your concern and the support you have provided us as we develop effective methods, equipment and systems to deal with these challenging threats. Many of our responses to these threats will require the application of new technology being developed in the laboratories across the Department of Defense.
With me today is Major General Dick Paul, the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory. General Paul can provide a laboratory perspective on some of our initiatives, especially in the areas of laser eye protection and combat identification.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, the people of the United States Air Force are our most important asset. Unless we can protect those who fly and those who support our operational activities in forward-deployed locations, our combat capability will be reduced.
We must also ensure our ability to employ all manner of weapons without endangering our own forces. Countering emerging unconventional threats is an important task that your Air Force takes very seriously. My written statement provides some detail about both joint and Air Force initiatives to counter several unconventional threats.
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I would like to mention a few of the key points about these initiatives at this time but first and foremost, I think it important for us to remember that our primary means of protecting our people is to engage adversary forces in an offensive manner, on their side of the fence and in a manner that prevents and deters them from exploiting unconventional warfare. Nonetheless, we must be prepared to protect our forces against the threats presented by unconventional weapons.
First with respect to the chem-bio threat, as airmen, we share the same chemical and biological threat as our sister services. The availability and complexity of agents such as Anthrax, VX and distilled mustard gas, challenges our ability to operate freely. In addition, the expeditionary nature of our operations requires worldwide protection for our airmen.
In response to the chem-bio threat, the Air Force is actively managing and supporting joint acquisition programs. The Air Force-led joint chemical agent detector will be the cornerstone of the DOD chem-bio early warning and reporting systems. For our pilots we are fielding air crew eye respiratory protection masks, which will significantly increase the protection provided to our air crews.
The Air Force is also leading the effort to standardize our next generation air crew mask to meet the requirements of helicopters and all fixed wing aircraft. We are also working to ensure the equipment we field is sufficient to fight in our more responsive air expeditionary force concept. This means our collective protection shelters must be small and light, while maintaining an increasing level of protection.
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Our airmen need protection from exposure, best provided by chem-bio remote sensing and stand-off detectors and network warning systems, together with vaccines expected biological agents. These current and future efforts will ensure the Air Force can operate jointly across the spectrum of operations while protecting its——
Mr. HUNTER. General, are all those systems in place on the Korean Peninsula right now?
General MARTIN. Not all of the systems that I have mentioned, sir. Some are in development. Some are a part——
Mr. HUNTER. If you had to rate A, B, C, D, E or F, how would you rate, just to give a grade to the chem-bio protection of our tac airfields in Korea, what would you give them?
General MARTIN. Sir, I would say that we are probably in the B minus category.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. Proceed.
General MARTIN. To use a term we were asked to consider yesterday by Mr. Thompson, I would consider our chem-bio capability in our forward areas as adequate, but we are working to improve them.
In the area of laser eye protection, another personal protection concern for the Air Force, we are actively pursuing that type of protection for our air crew and ground personnel from a wide range of lasers. These include military lasers, commercial lasers, foreign lasers specifically developed to damage the eyes or cause temporary vision loss.
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The ultimate goal in developing laser eye protection is to provide an adequate level of defense with full retinal coverage at any angle while allowing visibility of the aircraft cockpit displays and good light transmission for use in night operations.
The Air Force Research Laboratory has been the primary DOD developer of new laser eye protection technologies. Some of the technologies already developed or currently in development include the use of absorptive dyes, holograms, rugates, and some of the samples that you see here today in front of me that we can talk about if you wish.
Working closely with our counterparts in the Navy and the Army and the Marine Corps, our ultimate goal is to integrate the results of this research into complete wavelength protection against potential agile laser threats.
Currently several hundred FV–8 dye-based spectacles, which you see at the end of the table, are in the field and completing evaluation. In addition, Defense Logistics Agency reports that over 700 spectacles have been ordered by different varying Air Force units since last January. The Air Force Special Operations Command is using 50 HGU 56P eye protection spectacles, as you see here.
In response to the increased concern on the part of the United States Air Force and the United States Air Force's Europe Commander, General John Jumper, the Air Force Chief of Staff recently directed my organization to finalize plans for an accelerated laser eye protection capability in the next year. To meet this challenge, we are examining options to accelerate our laser eye protection Emergency and Manufacturing Development program, which is designed to provide the Air Force personnel with the next generation of laser eye protection.
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With respect to combat ID, I would like to discuss the concern we have with fratricide, specifically the need for combat identification to prevent fratricide and enhance our mission-effectiveness.
In the last decade, the close of the cold war has led to a significant rise in our involvement in coalition and peacekeeping operations around the world. Today many of our new partners and allies employ a variety of weapons and equipment we did not routinely train with in previous decades. This environment, crowded with unfamiliar equipment, makes accurate combat identification a necessity.
There is no one solution to the combat identification problem today. Combat identification is a capability, not a program. To ensure the security of our people, the protection of our partners and the safety of noncombatants, we must employ a combination of doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures and a family of cooperative and noncooperative sensors interconnected by datalinks.
This system of systems will collectively gather and share the information necessary to accurately characterize every hostile, neutral and friendly entity in the battle space. Following the Gulf War, Department of Defense established the Joint Combat Identification Office to oversee joint combat identification requirements and chartered the all-service combat identification evaluation team to evaluate our progress in combat identification, particularly with respect to joint tactics and interoperability.
Simultaneously, the Air Force took the initiative in establishing a combat identification integrated management team chartered with developing a coordinated Air Force master plan for material solutions to combat identification. In their research, based on results from combat identification studies, man-in-the-loop simulations and flying exercises, the CID integrated management team has reaffirmed the system of systems approach required to perform accurate combat identification.
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The technology identified by the integrated management team as the greatest immediate contributor to combat identification is combat datalinks. We already collect some identification and therefore we need a means to share the information among the shooters.
In accordance with joint standards in 1996, the Air Force is fielding Link–16 on our combat aircraft. For some aircraft, which primarily perform air-to-surface missions, the Air Force is installing the situation awareness datalink instead of Link–16. This SADL provides a unique capability to tie into the Army's enhanced position location reporting system network, warning the pilot if his intended target is in the vicinity of friendly vehicles equipped with the EPLRS radios.
The Air Force is working to provide a similar kind of activity to the digitized battlefield on our Link–16 aircraft in the future through the joint sponsorship of the Link–16 variable message format or VMF ACTD.
Datalinks, however, are just one contributor to the combat identification solution. Datalinks and other systems which require active response from the target, what we call cooperative systems, have no intrinsic capability to identify entities which are not connected to the network or that do not share common equipment. Many of our new allies do not have compatible equipment and the neutrals in the battle space may also not be equipped.
Therefore our best improvement will come from fielding noncooperative identification capabilities which can be used to positively identify hostile, friendly or neutral aircraft and ground targets. These noncooperative technology programs are the key to making the identifications we can then distribute across the datalinks.
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One promising noncooperative identification technology that the Air Force Research Laboratory has been developing is the high range resolution radar. If High-Resolution Radar development is successful, this technology could someday contribute to long-range, high confidence identification of aircraft, missiles, ships and vehicles in all weather conditions, day or night. The Air Force is on the leading edge of HRR development and we believe it holds great promise for the future of combat identification.
The Air Force Research Lab is also researching applications of lasers in noncooperative identification systems. The enhanced recognition and sensing radar or ERASER will add new identification capability to forward-looking infrared systems or FLIRs. Using an eye-safe laser, ERASER illuminates the target, takes a high-quality, high-magnification short-wave infrared snapshot suitable for visually identifying the target or using it in an automatic target recognition program. These type of high pay-off, noncooperative identification capabilities may enable our pilots to independently identify targets before they fire their weapons, serving as a complementary system to our Identification Friend or Foe system and datalink networks.
Improving combat ID increases our mission effectiveness and reduces the incidence of fratricide. The Air Force is committing to improving our combat ID capabilities.
In closing let me reinforce the Air Force commitment to our airmen and our joint services. There are no silver bullets to counter the threats we face. We welcome the support from Congress and appreciate the support we have received in the past. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Martin can be found in the appendix.]
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Mr. SPENCE [presiding]. Thank you, gentlemen.
Could you describe the equipment you have with you, like General Kern did, the things you have on the desk there?
General MARTIN. Sure. If we take the first two here, these are really currently available now. They protect our air crews or ground personnel if they're wearing them on the ground from the normal invisible laser systems that we might find.
In other words, we would not know we were being attacked by them. And these are the kinds of systems that we would find in laser designation pods, like Lantern or the Air Commanders Pointers System.
The next set here, where we begin to get into reflective technology and we believe that we could be fielding these in the 2002 timeframe after appropriate tests and evaluation, will begin to give us the ability to not only protect against those wavelengths but also green-colored wavelengths that we find on the battlefield today for purposes of dazzling, distracting and, in some cases, blinding combat members.
The last set that we have here is really where we would like to go. These glasses, which we think we could begin to field in the 2004 timeframe, actually give us the ability to tune to agile laser systems, where we would actually be able to tune the glasses to the wavelengths that we could expect to face on the battlefield, covering all of the bands that we talked about earlier.
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Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SPENCE. Yes, Mr. Sisisky.
Mr. SISISKY. General, are you sharing this with the other services?
General MARTIN. Absolutely.
Mr. SISISKY. You are?
General MARTIN. Absolutely. In fact, I mentioned that the Navy is really working very hard on the second technology, called hologram. It has great promise and we may very well proceed that way, based on how our second generation system goes.
Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
General Martin, with regard to long-range identification of friend and foe, is there an application—the Navy's Aegis system has to some extent been able to identify friend or foe for quite some time. Is there a joint service application for that type of technology?
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General MARTIN. Let me not speak for the Navy but let me, if I could, present my understanding of combat ID of airborne assets and I think with Aegis radar we are talking about that, as with an area of great concern to the Air Force, in three areas.
First, friendly aircraft, then hostile aircraft, then nonhostile aircraft. If we are able to assure ourselves 100 percent of the time that we will know that an airplane or a target out there is friendly, we will still have the problem of determining whether the aircraft out there is hostile or nonhostile.
And depending on the environment we are in, the area, the theater or the closeness of other aircraft that may be friendly, may not be friendly, you can see that even if I know that a group of targets has friendlies in it, I can't necessarily distinguish the unknowns in terms of somebody I could shoot or not.
When we take a look at Communication and Electronics Command that the Aegis system uses, my understanding is that they don't have inherent to the radar an identification friend-or-foe capability on board. It comes usually from correlating other bits of information. But once they have that knowledge of friend or foe, the Communication and Electronics Command capability is superb at tracking aircraft through what we call furballs, through masses of aircraft and keeping track of that particular aircraft.
So there is great confidence that what goes into a fog of war comes out of the fog of war as a known quantity if it started out being known.
The difficulty is that we have found that initially the deployment of CEC was in a computer capability that was way beyond what we could package on aircraft. That has come way down in size and it is possible that we may be able to put it on such aircraft as an Airborne Warning and Control System. Doubtful that we could put it on fighters but probably put it on something like an AWACS, and we are in a very serious study mode right now to determine what the engineering requirements are, what the weight requirements are, what the integration requirements are and, more important than that, the value of that to an actual engagement scenario.
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So I don't know the answer on whether that will prove to be a useful thing to have on the battle but I do know that we are very serious about a tremendous capability that CEC has.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
May I ask one further question, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. SPENCE. Go ahead.
Mr. SAXTON. General, with regard to chemical and biological on the Korean Peninsula, one of the issues that concerns us is the degree of cooperation that we will get from the Japanese and other close-by countries. And it is my understanding that we have not yet been able to solve the problem of decontamination of potentially contaminated aircraft, our aircraft.
Can you tell us whether we are making progress in that area?
General MARTIN. We are making progress, first of all with the JCADS program that we are developing, the chemical detector system which we could carry in aircraft and determine whether the aircraft is contaminated inside or not.
We have also for years been able to do decontamination of our equipment through scrubbing and washing and those sorts of things and recent tests have shown that at the speeds of 400 to 500 knots, most of the chemical residue will be cleaned off the aircraft.
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The internal workings, however, of an aircraft are a problem. So we are at this point relegated to the position that we would intentionally not deploy aircraft into a contaminated zone until we have it decontaminated, which could occur very quickly if there were rain, as an example, and deploy them elsewhere and use inter-theater distribution systems to move the aircraft so that we not cause ourselves problems with allies not engaged in the theater but those allies who are allowing us to transit their air bases.
Mr. SAXTON. But have we gotten to the point yet where we can sufficiently clean an aircraft easily to take off and then land in, say, Japan for whatever purpose?
General MARTIN. Inside an aircraft if we are contaminated I know of at this time no simple way to clean it. External is not a serious problem but internal is a problem, so we would hesitate to put an aircraft in that position.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
Mr. SPENCE. General Rhodes, I have you up next. The floor is yours.
General RHODES. Mr. Chairman, members, staff, we welcome this opportunity to discuss with you the unconventional threats and our on-going efforts to protect our Marines.
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We think it is important that the first thing we do is really take a look at the threat by evaluating it and determine its nature. What we have found is that this is an emerging threat. It is evolving. It is dynamic and it is unpredictable. So this requires us to have continuous formal and informal assessments.
Our formal assessments consist of system threat assessment reports, where we look at specific equipment. It has us looking at mid-range threat assessments, where we look at a particular period in time. We have predeployment threat assessments where when we have units that are going to be forward-deployed, we take a look at that environment which they are going to go visit and work in and take a look at the threats there.
We have regional threats, which look at a specific geographical area. And, of course, we have some technology-specific threats where we look at a specific technology to make an assessment.
We also have many informal threat assessments. These are basically characterized by the ideas and the questions generated through war games, through simulations, through seminars, through the experimentation process, through our professional military education, our schools, as posed also by our intelligence experts, through discussions with professionals, such as have here, and, of course, through the inevitable questions of ''I wonder what'' or ''Have you heard lately?''
Our primary threat assessment organization is Marine Corps intelligence activity. We have members there of all services and reps from most of the agencies. It is located at Quantico, Virginia. It is colocated with the Marine Corps University, the Marine Corps Systems Command, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and our modeling and simulation effort.
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In addition to developing these general threat assessments, the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency also develops specific scenarios for the war games and for specific periods in time. It also looks at and assesses nontraditional threats, those that are imposed by the physical environment, such as the in-stream offload of ships, mines, ports, bridges and the vulnerabilities associated with those.
And last, it also looks at specific areas of concern; in this case, technology acceleration, the availability of technology to other countries and the asymmetries associated with the use of technology.
Their primary focus and efforts are to track the capabilities of those who might declare hostility toward us, to look at capabilities that might be used against us and to anticipate the capabilities and strategies of our potential adversaries.
We realize that the asymmetric threats are a growth industry and that to counter this requires constant development and force protection capabilities.
The Marine Corps does this through its concept-based requirements process, where we look at the future, develop our advanced war-fighting concepts and from those concepts, derive our war-fighting capabilities and determine our requirements.
This is done at Quantico, also, at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. Our goal is to provide fully integrated capabilities for our war fighters. And I say our war fighters because Marines are our most valuable asset and we approach force protection from several different viewpoints.
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First, the basic approach. Every Marine is a rifleman. Every year marksmanship and battle skills training is required. It is linked to promotion.
Second, we are organized. We fight as marine air ground task forces [MAGTFs] whenever we can, where we have the enhanced protection of all the elements and the synergistic effect of that. But, at the same time, we gain an appreciation for the vulnerabilities but the strengths of each section.
And last, force protection itself. It is woven throughout our concept and doctrines and through every aspect of our training.
Mr. Chairman, you asked some specific questions on our current capabilities. With regard to lasers, we work very closely with the Army and we are moving along the same general lines. Today we are using for our troops, and we have 84,000 Desert Storm left-overs.
For tomorrow we are looking at the 7-notch protection for our ground troops. In fact, we have purchased 100 of those now at about $900 a copy and we have put those out on our operating forces for test and evaluation, sir.
As far as aviation, we are working very closely with both the Navy and the Air Force and the Army on these capabilities. Today we have 1-notch protection, just as the other services, but what we are looking for in the future are the 7-notch protection for the glasses, of which we have funded for 4,300 sets at $900 a copy, and we are looking for the face shield, which we have not fully developed but are anticipating 3,500 sets for requirement at about $1,700 a copy.
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With regard to MBC suits, we, like the Army, most of these programs are joint and we are working together on them. We are using the old equipment right now but we are using the JLIST, the new suit. It is funded through the Future Defense Plan and we are going to be purchasing 108,000 sets of the new MBC JLIST through the FYDP.
As far as body armor, we are looking at today's, yes, but we are also looking at the Interceptor and we are fully funded during the FYDP looking at it for about 100,000 sets for our operating forces.
As far as combat identification, I agree with everybody else up here. We discuss this very difficult subject. It is not just technology. It is just as much tactics, techniques, training, procedures. And there are some areas that are directly applicable, where there is an interrogator, and there are others that are situation awareness types, just to improve your overall common tactical picture.
We are working through those. WE have already discussed ASEAT. We have already discussed JCID and those terms. We are fully involved and fully on board, sir.
Mr. Chairman, we greatly appreciate your concerns and the concerns of your committee, your assistance and this opportunity to discuss this important issue with the members of the committee. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of General Rhodes can be found in the appendix.]
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Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, General.
Before we go to the Navy, we had better go back to the Air Force. I forgot—General Paul, do you have a statement you wanted to make?
General PAUL. No, I do not.
Mr. SPENCE. I think General Martin covered it all.
General PAUL. He did.
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you.
Admiral Lautenbacher.
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, Admiral Jacoby and I are grateful for the opportunity to be here this afternoon to discuss this very important topic.
There is not a lot that I can add new to what my colleagues have said but let me first of all ask that my statement be inserted for the record.
Mr. SPENCE. Without objection.
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. Thank you. And I would like to make just a couple of general comments, followed by specifics to the Navy.
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First of all, we are talking this afternoon about asymmetric and unconventional warfare, but we are talking about sort of a limited subset of that. We should all realize that this is not new. We have been dealing with these issues for many years but they continue to evolve and new things come on the stage. So while we have done lots of work, we continue to look for technology and new tactics and techniques and procedures to help us in the future. So we are working with a data base and we are moving into the future.
The second point which I think has been made already to a certain extent but it is a fact that many of these problems are not solvable directly by a single technological silver bullet. They are problems that we work on with technology and we work on with tactics, techniques and procedures. And it is a combination of them. So we have to be far-thinking, far-sighted and work to come up with the best solution.
The next thing is the very word asymmetric, and this follows something General Martin said, it is important to realize that we should take advantage of our asymmetries in going against whatever asymmetries come against us. I think probably the best example you have of that today is theater ballistic missile defense and area ballistic missile defense. If you can keep those missiles with biological or chemical warheads from coming to your side of the line and they fall down on the side of the line of the bad actors who might be shooting at us, it certainly changes the calculus of the war and does a great deal to protect our folks from that disadvantage of those particular threats.
So having said that, people are still very important to the Navy, as they are to each of the other services that are here. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our personal protection in all of the areas. And let me just summarize quickly for you where we are in the areas that we are discussing today.
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First of all, in chem-bio, our ships have always had a certain degree of protection. That protection today is inadequate, of course. The old methods, we had countermeasures, washdown systems. We had the ability to seal up our ships for a certain amount of time. We had decontamination stations. A lot of that was developed during the cold war period.
Today we have newer technology that is coming on line. The ships that we are building today and particularly our amphibious ships have collective protection areas that allow for vast spaces within the ships to be sanitized, much greater decontamination capability.
And, in addition to that protection, the other side is detection. There have been a number of advances made in working with the Army and the Air Force for automated chemical warning systems and automated biological warning systems and we have some of the newer versions of those in place today on our ships in the Gulf.
So the two, detection and protection in terms of our ships, are coming along very well. All of our new ships that will come off the line will have these collective protection capabilities and automated detection systems.
And, of course, individual protection—for people that would be exposed, we participate with the Army. We buy the same kinds of suits that you see on the mannequins over here to my left.
In the area of combat identification, my description of the problem would be almost identical, if not exactly the same as General Martin mentioned. Let me emphasize one thing that the Navy is big on and that is what I would call the common operational picture, the common tactical picture.
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When you take all of the bits and pieces that we have, the cooperative systems, the noncooperative systems, the ability to assimilate data from a wide variety of resources—satellites, observers on the ground, as well as electronic means—radar, intelligence reports—and put it together and get to a point where you have the system of systems, that gives you a great deal of information on what is going on on that battlefield.
So this is an area where we don't see any one silver bullet that is going to solve the problem. But as you keep feeding in, each one of these systems with more information, you develop the ability to fuse that information and build a solid picture, the better you are in determining what is out there, who is friendly and who is not. And we are working with the same programs and the same areas that General Martin has mentioned.
Laser protection. We are doing the same things again that the Air Force and the Army are doing, and the Marine Corps, for that matter. We are buying the 7-notch filter system now. We have 100 of those that we are working with. We have in our program money to buy 3,500, close to the numbers that General Rhodes has talked about for our air crews and folks who go into harm's way.
Again we share research and one of the questions was are we duplicating or are we working on our own? I think this area, if you look at the program lines that we have, you will see a large number of joint programs between the Air Force, the Army, the Marine Corps, the Navy. The research is shared or put together in joint lines. So those are just flat-out joint programs. There is nobody working on the side without sharing this information.
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That covers, I think, where the Navy is right now. Again Admiral Jacoby and I thank the committee for their support over the years and we appreciate the opportunity again to be able to discuss these issues with you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Lautenbacher can be found in the appendix.]
Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, Admiral. You mentioned something about laser as a weapon and hitting a target in the launch phase, I suppose, so it could fall back on the enemy rather than on us. Of course the Air Force has a laser weapon, too, an airborne laser against that same kind of missile, but you get it in the—what do you call that phase when it is up before it starts——
General MARTIN. The boost phase, sir.
Mr. SPENCE. The boost phase. So it takes all those kinds of things and that is very important, laser, as an offensive weapon, too.
Admiral Jacoby, do you want to add anything to what——
Admiral JACOBY. No, Mr. Chairman. It is a combined statement.
Mr. SPENCE. I know you are very much involved in this, too, in the position you hold.
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Mr. Maloney.
Mr. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If it is in order, I would like to go back to General Kern's testimony, if that would be timely at this point.
Mr. SPENCE. Go ahead.
Mr. MALONEY. General, this is really directed to you, although if there is anyone else on the panel who could shed light on it, I would appreciate it.
I wrote to the Secretary of the Army back just before the turn of the year about the Army's procurement of ANAVR laser detecting sets and also ANVVR, laser warning receivers, for installation in the first instance in rotorcraft and in the second instance in Bradley vehicles.
I got a response back just after Christmas from Assistant Secretary Helen McCoy, who said, and I will just read two sentences, ''We realize the tremendous benefit of laser detecting sets and laser warning receivers.'' And later in the letter, ''I assure you laser warning systems for protecting soldiers remain a high priority within the Army and we appreciate the support you continue to demonstrate for these programs.''
I do indeed support the programs because I think they protect our men and women in uniform.
The budget that was then presented this year has in 2000 no funding for either of the systems and, in addition, has no funding in the out-years for either of the systems, although I will comment that the systems are indicated to be an unfunded requirement.
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Let me come to a question but let me tell you what this means from what I understand. The Force One people, first to fight, are not fully equipped with laser detecting equipment. In fact, that limited equipment which is available is shuttled back and forth between platforms. There is obviously a degradation in equipment when that occurs.
The additional platforms that are available to supplement Force One, including aircraft that's being assigned to Bosnia, doesn't have the equipment. And the logistical equipment, the other support of particularly rotorcraft that deal with logistics and things like medical evacuation, which obviously go into harm's way, also do not have this laser detecting equipment.
It seems fundamental to me that a technology that is as valuable as this is to the safety of our men and women should be provided and I was delighted to hear the Army's position that it is a high priority, but I was less than delighted to find out that that didn't mean any money.
So my question today is is it a high priority and what are we going to do about that being a high priority?
General KERN. Mr. Maloney, you are correct in both your assessment that it is a high priority and that it is not funded in the 2000 budget for either the ground or the airborne laser warning receiver.
We have, of the airborne warning receivers, 990 that were previously purchased by the Army. We have some problems with them right now in leaking, just from moisture, that we have to fix. We have currently on the Apaches that will be sent to Bosnia this spring a project that is currently equipping them with a kit so that they can be applied and a process of fixing those—in this case it is only 16 that will be applied for those particular aircraft. We have to fix the problem for the remainder of the aircraft clearly that are over there so that we can use those kits.
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So for the immediate problem we still have work to do to make sure that those receivers are both mounted and adequate for the mission.
The ground systems, we looked at that this year very critically and were not able to fund it within the current budget. We also are looking at, as I showed you over here on the rifle where we have combined a laser warning device with a laser training device, to see for our ground combat systems if we can't do that at the same time.
So that is competing right now as we look at our next submission. It is an area which is a high priority unfunded requirement. Unfortunately, we have a significant number of unfunded requirements in the Army today and I hope to be able to tell you that in the future we can fund them but at this time we have not.
Mr. MALONEY. So just to reiterate, that is where we are. It continues to be a high priority for the Army and it is unfunded but it is a high priority.
If I could just ask a follow-up question, perhaps not to General Kern but to the other services, which is that the other services don't have requirements, unfunded requirements or otherwise for laser detecting systems and I would ask why not?
General MARTIN. Sir, for the Air Force's point of view, we work with the Army on warning systems, the common missile warning system, and are as interested as they are in the laser warning system.
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It is not funded. I think from our perspective and the majority of our aircraft at the regime they fly in, we are focussing more on trying to get the systems out that will protect the air crew member from a lasing incident rather than warn them after perhaps they have already been zapped.
Our view is work this problem and work it to where it is operationally effective. We can use it in all the different flying regimes and the sensor to tell us that we may have lasers in the area is secondary.
General RHODES. Sir, I think you would find that most of the services will go ahead and kind of go down the same line. We have a tremendous number of requirements. We consider them all important and somewhat limited at times resources and must prioritize.
We also consider it important but along with some earlier discussions, we keep each other very closely informed on these matters. We are, to be perfectly honest, hoping the Army solves the answer so that we can copy them and ride in on their coattails.
Mr. MALONEY. If the Navy has a specific comment, I would appreciate that. But if you don't, let me just add one other issue to the discussion, which is that, and this goes to the Air Force's response a little bit, it is a little bit difficult sometimes to say which is the chicken and which is the egg because when you have a warning system, it is possible then to, in my understanding, to then take evasive actions, take other actions which do not, in fact, put the men and women in as much danger as otherwise.
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So one might argue that the warning system is at least as important as, for example, the goggles or something else that actually protects when they are, in fact, being directly addressed by these weapon systems.
So there is more to it than simply saying that well, we have to concentrate over here because there is another issue, which is the warning issue, which I think is important.
General MARTIN. Yes, Mr. Congressman, I don't disagree with that at all. We do take very seriously the need for laser warning. It was a question of priority and where to put our best effort.
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. We are working with the Army. We are interested in laser warning sets obviously. We have about 90 sets of AUR–2.
Again I echo the comments of the Air Force. The issue is again priorities and how important that is in installing it. We are interested in it and we are working it but that is what we have right now, about 90.
Mr. MALONEY. I just conclude with a comment. Again what I hear from people that are close to this issue is that people who are actually operating this equipment have some strong feelings that they would like to see the laser detecting or the laser warning systems on board, that there are people in the field who are saying this is something that is important to them.
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So when we structure our priorities, I understand that is always a difficult task but in effect, I am hearing from the grassroots that there is a priority from the grassroots to have this kind of protection available.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER [presiding]. Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. In your comments you very briefly referred to a subject that has often aroused my curiosity and that is how to deal with missiles in the early stage of flight, rather than to wait until they are over our rooftops before we are capable of taking them out, which seems to be the goal that at least is commonly perceived as our primary goal.
Are you aware of our efforts, how far along they are to develop some type of a boost phase intercept or are any of our allies, specifically the Israelis, moving in that direction? Any of you please comment to help us out with this.
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. Yes, sir. I was referring to the Aegis Navy theater-wide capability which is coming on line. The budget will give us more money to try to accelerate that effort, give us an option by fiscal year 2007 to have it fielded.
The flexibility that a ship at sea brings with it is the opportunity to move it into a position where it can catch part of the boost phase. It obviously isn't going to get the very front end of the launch but the chance, with the Navy theater-wide system that works the way it is advertised right now, is to catch missiles in boost phase if you can position them properly, and I think we can do that for most of our allies that are in the littoral and that will allow us to keep the warheads from getting too far across into friendly lines. That is the initiative that I was referring to, sir.
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General MARTIN. Mr. Congressman, I am aware of an Israeli effort to have an airborne-launched boost phase Interceptor. I am aware, I think, of a kinetic kill vehicle that they are looking at. And I think they are working with BMDO on those activities. I have talked to them somewhat about it because one of the concepts they have is to use a UAV. I am not aware of any other efforts at this time.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. How long will it take before the appropriate notch filters are developed to address the threat posed by laser?
General RHODES. Sir, we have some of those that we are putting out in the field right now to test. The Marine Corps has 100 of those which were sent out and I believe Admiral Lautenbacher has some.
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. This is the 7-notch filter system. It's similar to what General Kern mentioned. It has an insert inside it, like the eyeglasses. Then it has ballistic protection on the outside. This is the latest and greatest that we are buying.
Mr. SAXTON. The latest and greatest. How is it working out?
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. We hope we don't have to find out. Again these have just been bought and they are being distributed for use. So again I am not certain about this but I don't think you can go out and find them on board any of the deployed squadrons just yet. They will be shortly, though.
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Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Saxton.
What is the difference between those and the tunable laser protectors that General Paul has?
General MARTIN. I think what you will find, Mr. Congressman, is that the problem that we are all grappling with now is that even with the 7-notch, the lenses will protect you against lasers up to a certain angle of incidence, but coming in from the side we still may have some leakage.
The problem that we are dealing with here is that angular problem so that we can pile onto what the 7-notch does and give full wrap-around capability in case you are lased from an off-straight-on angle.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. Mr. Sisisky and then Mr. Ryun.
Mr. SISISKY. Just to follow on a little bit with Mr. Maloney, what are your unfunded requirements? Does anybody got a guess of how much money you would need to fulfill your requirements? Not just on the thing he was talking about but other things that I talked about in readiness, because I think this is pertinent to readiness. I promise you the chairman will not make you sign a statement like he did your chiefs.
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General KERN. Mr. Sisisky, our chief is on record saying that in the modernization part of readiness, we have $2 to $3 billion a year that we are unfunded at this point.
General MARTIN. The United States Air Force is that same amount, about $2.5 billion over what is currently in the President's budget.
But Mr. Congressmen, were you talking about with respect to just the——
Mr. SISISKY. I am talking about equipping or saving people from injury and death is really what I am talking about.
Mr. HUNTER. Let us let General Kern answer that. So you are talking about the protective equipment with respect to the areas we have gone over—the chem-bio laser? Broader than that?
Mr. SISISKY. Broader.
General KERN. The figures I was referring to is greater than just that area. The protection of our soldiers begins with an offensive pose in order to keep them away from us, as well as the defensive mechanisms that we have described here today and clearly there are others.
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The specific example of the laser warning receiver is about $37 million a year of unfunded requirements for the next 5 years, just for that one specific component that Mr. Maloney spoke to.
Mr. SISISKY. Just one other question. All of this equipment, are you equipping any of the Guard units with this?
General KERN. Yes, we are, clearly. Most of the equipment in this particular area is put in contingency stocks and not issued to soldiers. So as an example, all of the soldiers going to Bosnia, both active and Reserve, have that equipment available to them in country.
Mr. SISISKY. And they are trained on how to put it on?
General KERN. They are trained on it before they go and are qualified on all of it before they go. All of our training systems require us to go through certification process not only in a benign environment but also in the chemical-biological environment that we expect to fight in.
I would say perhaps the one that we have the biggest challenge to determine training requirements, this is laser threat, which is just a difficult training regime to put people into.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Ryun.
Mr. RYUN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have been talking about unconventional threats and one that I would like either one or all of you to discuss a little bit is cyber attack. I know the services spend more time preparing with all of their digital forces and dependency upon computers, what sort of preparation has been made for a cyber terrorist attack. Do you want to respond to that?
General KERN. I will start. We have clearly a great function in information protection. It is not my specific area. Lieutenant General Campbell for the Army is specifically tasked with that particular mission. But we have certification requirements for all of our info systems. We put in firewalls for them. And clearly we run exercises to attack them.
We have an agency called the Land Information Warfare Agency, LIWA, whose specific function is to conduct that type of cyber attack against our own and to evaluate our capabilities.
It is clearly an emerging area that we have a lot to learn. As we know very well, the 14- and 16-year-olds are as good at this as anybody else and sometimes the best. We have a great deal of attention which is being paid as to how we do that in our tactical environment, particularly for the Army where we are building a new information systems organization, the digital forces for the future, and that is a key part of being able to make sure that we understand how it will be vulnerable and how we need to protect it.
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General MARTIN. Mr. Congressman, within the Air Force we have a very serious and significant effort being run by our Air Intelligence Agency and the Information Warfare Center in San Antonio doing state-of-the-art intrusion detection and response.
All of our systems that we have procured or are procuring will fit within the firewall standards that have been laid before us by the Department of Defense and then further netted for complete understanding of who is on the net, that they are authorized and when someone isn't, that we know about it.
The attack mechanisms are also very much a part of what the Information Warfare Center does. But, as you know, the legal restrictions to responding are significant and always a part of their cross-check.
We have Information Warfare Battle Lab for nearly 2 years that is making some great progress in learning the grid environment and not only methods to protect but also methods to exploit it.
Within the space program, hardly a thing we do in space does not go through the wickets of navigation warfare or information warfare considerations and hardening or firewall development.
So I will not claim that we have an answer to all the problems. I will say that we are very serious about it and we have some of our brightest and smartest people working that problem in most of our communications, control and satellite systems.
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Mr. RYUN. If I may ask a follow-up, do you feel that at any point at this time that you have gone through an attack and have noticed a loss of information? You are indicating that you have firewalls up.
General MARTIN. We have been attacked several times and you have read about those attacks in the paper and have known them. We have increased the speed at which we can locate the perpetrators of those attacks. We know that in the unclassified networks what type of activity has occurred. In most cases we will find that it is done by hackers challenged by the opportunity to get inside the net, rather than destroy or pollute the information.
We believe that we have a good handle on the secure nets and although there have been attempts, we are not aware of any intrusions that have caused any difficulty to those nets.
Mr. RYUN. So may I say then that you are in essence saying that the attacks that you have had so far are really by hackers, not by someone truly trying to steal from you?
General MARTIN. I don't know that, don't know that for sure. But in terms of what they were doing in there and what we have been able to gather in terms of the nature of the attack, it does not appear as if there has been a pollution or a disruption of the material.
Mr. RYUN. Incidentally, we are going to have a hearing on the area you just covered, Mr. Ryun, on February 23, so that should be informative.
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Let me ask a couple of questions for the record and I'll tell you what. We will then take a break for the vote and we are going to come back and lead off with Lieutenant Jack Daly.
But for the Air Force, why did the Air Force Chief of Staff recently direct an accelerated laser eye protection capability by 2000? What specifically is being done and is the effort adequately funded?
General MARTIN. The reason that General Ryan directed that we accelerate our activities was as a result of concern expressed by General Jumper, the commander of our air forces in Europe, with respect to the forces that were flying in Bosnia and his belief that we needed to get all of the in-coming air crews and those that are stationed in the European environment into a laser protection of any type as soon as possible.
We are working that now. I don't think you will find the specific dollars anywhere in the budget. People are able to buy them with the impact card but we are now in the process of tracking that and where we need to plus that up within our O&M accounts, we will do so.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Any similar guidance given to any of the other services to accelerate your program?
General KERN. Sir, we did not accelerate in the Army's case the acquisition of them but we immediately have provided all of the protection to our aviators in Bosnia. They were shipped over immediately.
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Mr. HUNTER. OK.
General RHODES. Our aviation units presently that are either in the Gulf or in the Bosnia theater or in the marine expeditionary units [MEU] have the current laser protection deployed with them. And the 100 sets of the advanced capabilities that we purchased, we split those up, with 30 sets to each one of the four deployed areas, so they could have them as ''contingency sets'' in case that occurrence and threat emerges, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. For the Air Force, why is only 50 percent of the Air Force fleet equipped with the air crew eye respiratory protection system and why hasn't it been integrated with your positive pressure breathing suits such that fighter pilots don't have to choose between gravity-induced loss of consciousness protection and chem-bio protection?
General MARTIN. Mr. Congressman, I will need to give you an answer, if I could, later on the reason only 50 percent. I am not familiar with that number.
[The information referred to can be found in the appendix]
With respect to the positive breathing apparatus, we are developing for all of the services——
Mr. HUNTER. I think that is in your testimony.
General MARTIN. Yes, sir, but in terms of the reason we only have 50, it may very well be that the mask that we're talking about, while we are developing, as I was getting ready to mention, the joint service air crew mask, which will allow us to have the Chemical Warfare protection, CW-Biological Warfare protection, with the positive breathing apparatus, it may very well be that we truncated that buy and distributed to the units that needed it while we continue to develop the JSAM mask, which would then outfit all of them.
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The fact of the matter is the positive breathing apparatus and the mask that you discussed there were not compatible, so we had to choose between one or the other. At that point it makes sense to make sure you have the old mask where it needs to be and bring the new mask on. But I will have to check that and make sure that is the rationale.
Mr. HUNTER. The Navy and Marines, the situation with the Navy and Marine fighter pilots?
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. As General Rhodes said, we have the older goggles that are out there and the new ones are coming on line and are going to be delivered at the end of this year. There is funding in the budget through the next four or 5 years that will deliver protection to everyone in the 7-notch area.
Mr. HUNTER. Did you say in four or 5 years?
Admiral LAUTENBACHER. I said there is about 4 years of funding. We are starting now and it is funded for 3,500 sets. They will be distributed as fast as we can get them.
General RHODES. We have basically 300 right now. In fact, the reason I didn't bring one with me is because when my aide went to check one out, they made him sign an equipment custody card for $900 so he could get one and bring it up here with me.
But we have 300 of them right now for the spectacle-type and we are working also, along with the other services, on the joint face shield-type and we have determined our requirement is for 3,500 of those and we expect those to cost about $1,800 apiece, sir.
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Mr. HUNTER. For the Army and the Marines, are your body armor programs fully funded? And if not, why?
General RHODES. Sir, in the Marine Corps we are fielding the Interceptor at this time. The first sets are out in the fleet and we will have through the FYDP, we are planning on purchasing 108,000 sets.
Mr. HUNTER. Are they fully funded?
General RHODES. Yes, sir. I believe we have plus or minus 105,000 operating forces at this time.
Mr. HUNTER. How about the Army?
General KERN. Sir, in the case of the Army, the Interceptor, that has just gone under contract so they have not been delivered to the field yet for any of our forces. We have 5,000 sets that will be on order. I cannot tell you that we have fully funded it for the entire replacement of the 200,000 plus sets that we already have out in the field.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Are you guys working together, incidentally?
General KERN. Yes, sir.
General RHODES. Yes, sir, definitely.
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Mr. HUNTER. Is there good coordination between the Army and the Marines?
General RHODES. Yes, sir.
General KERN. It is the identical equipment.
Mr. HUNTER. And special operations people? Is that what you are saying?
General KERN. That is where we started this program from, was the Ranger body armor.
Mr. HUNTER. You know, I had some of the scientists from Livermore bring me in two things. One, they brought in one of the flak jackets that a Marine had worn in Somalia. He had lost his arm because obviously the jackets, the vests, don't have arms, don't have arms on them, and he had been shot in the arm.
They also brought in this new material. I think it was a DuPont material, very thin. It had a couple of rounds in it. They had been shot with fairly slow-moving projectiles, looked like pistol bullets. But it had stopped them effectively. It was very light stuff.
So the question—I was going to bring it down here but I think they came and retrieved it before we had the hearing. The argument was that if you had this light stuff, you could have arms and legs. You could literally have like a range suit, if you will. It was a lot lighter than the flak jacket or derivations thereof.
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Have you guys looked at that stuff, the new stuff, the new fiber stuff that looks real light? It had about the consistency of canvas.
General KERN. Sir, I know our laboratories have looked at it. I have not received any reports on it myself yet as to how it compares in both cost or ability and protection levels.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. How about taking a look at that if we hook you up with some of the national laboratory people?
General KERN. Will do, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. Let us get Lowell Wood to send them another suit of that stuff. He came and got his suit back from me before I could use it.
We are going to run to the vote. When we come back, Lieutenant Jack Daly, United States Navy, is first up.
I have a couple more questions for the record here. Let me just ask you these questions and maybe you can get them into the record.
For all of you, how does a Joint Service Combat ID Office function? And are there service-unique requirements for combat identification equipment? If you could answer that for the record.
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Second, for the Army and Marines, what's the status of the Army's battlefield combat identification system, BCIS, and the combat identification for the dismounted soldier, CIDDS, program? What is the status of the Marines' SIMLAS Plus system? And don't the Marines have a BCIS requirement for their combat and other vehicles?
And last, how do the CIDDS and SIMLAS Plus programs differ? What is the difference between them?
So if you could answer those for the record and if you need a little redescription of the question, Mr. Thompson will be happy to give that to you while I am voting. I will be back in a minute.
[The information referred to can be found in the appendix.]
[Recess.]
Mr. HUNTER. The subcommittee will resume. We are happy to invite Lieutenant Jack Daly, United States Navy, as our next witness.
Lieutenant Daly, I have had a chance to talk with you sometime ago and look over all of the records leading up to and describing the events that you went through with respect to lasing by a Russian commercial ship.
I want you to know that your discussion on that day a couple of months ago was one of the reasons we had this hearing today because it brought to my attention the fact that while we are preparing along our traditional lines in terms of weapon systems and tactics and strategies, these systems you might call peripheral systems, meaning lasers and chem-bio and other things, and I think the testimony evidenced this to some degree today, are not given as much as they need in terms of resource and what I would describe as a sense of urgency to develop.
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And I know we are going to get into some other areas besides that but I want to thank you for the long discussions that we had and I think you are to be commended for not only describing the situation that you were involved with yourself but for inspiring this hearing.
So I thank you for being with us today. What I would like to do is to simply turn over the floor to you and ask you to describe to the subcommittee what occurred to you and your own analysis with respect to what that means in terms of America's national security and where we should be going in terms of that policy.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. Thank you.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and the committee for allowing me to appear today. This is truly a rare situation and an honored situation for myself.
I have prepared a statement which I can read and will provide for inclusion in the record of today's proceedings. I would also ask that my written statement be made part of the record.
Mr. HUNTER. Without objection.
Lieutenant DALY. The purpose of this statement is to provide an account of my personal experience based on the facts surrounding the events of April 4, 1997 and its aftermath. This is not to be considered the official position of the Navy, however.
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Unfortunately, this is not the only lasing incident that has occurred and left U.S. military members wounded. The October 1998 lasing of the U.S. Army helicopter crew over the skies of Bosnia has left another pilot and a crewman with similar physical complaints and career concerns.
Notwithstanding current agreements and treaties, specifically Protocol 4 of the 1980 Certain Conventional Weapons Convention, lasers still pose a significant threat as inhumane weapons. Despite the fact that Protocol 4 bans the use of blinding lasers, loopholes in that definition of the term are being exploited.
By definition, a laser is only considered banned under the current treaty if it causes permanent blindness. However, lasers not included under this definition are still capable of causing serious injuries and unnecessary suffering, as well as being potentially blinding.
As a direct result of several reports of lasers being aimed at commercial airlines during take-off and landings, the concern has now been raised that this, in fact, may be a new form of terrorism. Therefore it is imperative that the United States take a firm stand against a proliferation of these inhumane devices and protest their use as weapons. Equally critical is the need for additional efforts to be taken to counter and protect our troops from the damaging effects of lasers.
Prior to my transfer to the staff of Commander Amphibious Group Three last year, I was stationed at the Canadian Pacific Maritime Forces Command, Esquimalt in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. My intelligence liaison assignment with the Canadian Armed Forces was under the auspices of the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Directorate, CNON–2, foreign intelligence liaison officer program managed for the Office of Naval Intelligence.
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On April 4, 1997 I, along with a Canadian Air Force pilot, Captain Patrick Barnes, were wounded aboard a Canadian CH–124 seeking helicopter when we were lased while on a surveillance mission. This surveillance mission was tasked against the Russian flag merchant ship KAPITAN MAN, which at the time was located just five nautical miles north of Port Angeles, Washington in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
As a result of this lasing, both Captain Barnes and I have suffered irreparable permanent damage to our eyes. Captain Barnes has been permanently grounded as a result of this incident and has lost all flight qualifications. He will never fly again due to his eye injuries.
A statement that the Pentagon released to the press on June 26, 1997 that our injuries were healed was erroneous. Both Captain Barnes and I continue to suffer agonizing, chronic pain 24 ours a day from this incident and our vision continues to deteriorate with little expected relief since there is no known effective medical treatment at this time.
The pain symptoms we have experienced since the day of the incident have not diminished but have actually increased in severity. The only form of even momentary relief that either one of us can rely on is sitting in the dark with our eyes closed, yet lately that does not seem to help that much. The possibility that one if not both of us will lose some degree of our vision or become totally blind does exist.
Chief Warrant Officer Steven McCoy and Sergeant Juan Villareal, who were injured in the Bosnia incident, have similar complaints and based on initial information, may have similar injuries to those of Captain Barnes and myself.
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To make matters worse, the exact type of device that was used against us is still unknown. The decision made by the White House and State Department personnel to notify the Russian Embassy of the intention to board and search the KAPITAN MAN to find the laser device used guaranteed no evidence would be found. The State Department directed that the actual time of the search be limited to no more than 2 hours and further restricted it to the common areas of the KAPITAN MAN only.
What followed from this point forward was a coordinated effort to disprove this incident had ever actually occurred. Evidence was altered, ignored, omitted and refuted. Subsequent investigations and reports that followed served only to divert attention from the facts. Despite claims to the contrary, no formal or thorough investigation has ever been conducted into this series of events. As a direct result, crimes went unpunished.
On October 6, 1998 I sent a letter to the Attorney General of the United States outlining my concerns regarding this incident and its handling but to date I have received no reply.
As a direct result of this incident, the policies of two nations, Canada and the United States, were influenced insofar as all surveillance of this type, specifically close-up rotary wing operations as that conducted on April 4, 1997, were canceled and precautionary measures had to be put into effect.
In previous documented cases of the use of lasers against surveillance, the tactic was to aim the device at the pilot and/or the person with an optical aid, such as binoculars or a camera. I was using a camera. Therefore it is plausible to conclude that as we circled the KAPITAN MAN a laser was turned on us, knowing that it would, in fact, cause harm. In essence, this incident left Captain Barnes and I as victims of what could be alleged and argued was a hostile act in an undeclared war, an act of terrorism and, at a minimum, a Federal crime within our own territorial waters.
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By way of background, the Russian flagship KAPITAN MAN and others like her transit the Puget Sound on a regular basis and are suspected by the intelligence community to be conducting surveillance against our ballistic missile submarines and our carrier battle groups operating out of the Puget Sound area. Evidence exists in the intelligence community that indicates that the Far East Shipping Company or FESCO vessels actively support the Russian military.
Since the end of the cold war era, these vessels now freely transit our waters and enter our ports under the guide of commercial fishing and merchant shipping and engage in a variety of criminal activities in addition to their intelligence collection roles.
The information amassed during my investigation into the activities of these vessels and their affiliations is far more complex and the tentacles are spread over a far greater area. These activities include but are not limited to former KGB involvement, Russian mafia and organized crime activity, to include extortion, murder and prostitution, as well as alien, drug, technology and weapon smuggling.
What many fail to realize is that despite apparent improvements in relations between Russian and the United States, a deadly game of illegal intelligence activity and Russian organized crime within our own borders. Based upon these facts alone, it is reasonable to say that our national security is in jeopardy and may, in fact, have been compromised.
The fact remains regardless of all other circumstances surrounding the incident of April 4, 1997 that I, Lieutenant Jack Daly, United States Navy, and Captain Patrick Barnes of the Canadian Air Force suffer permanent eye damage as a result of laser exposures during the surveillance flight conducted against the Russian flag motor vessel KAPITAN MAN. A U.S. Army helicopter crew was also injured by a laser. According to Warrant Officer McCoy, the actual beam he viewed during the lasing and later described to me had the same signature as that of the emanation in the picture I had taken of the KAPITAN MAN.
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Have we not sent a very dangerous message to anyone with an ax to grind with the United States, a message that comes across that you can commit a hostile act or crime within U.S. borders, injure U.S. servicemen and women around the world?
I personally believe our national security has been jeopardized and our nation weakened as a result. Considering the ever-increasing instability around the world, particularly in Russian with its numerous nuclear weapons and internal strifes, our national security depends on increased vigilance now more than ever before.
In fulfilling my duty as a naval officer and while upholding the oath that I took to protect and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, I was wounded in the line of duty, as were Warrant Officer McCoy and Sergeant Villareal.
That notwithstanding, my greatest concern is that our naivety and ignorance will continue to foster complacency and a false sense of security that will prove to be our undoing.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to this honored body for providing me this opportunity to appear before you today. I sincerely hope that the events as I have described them are not repeated, causing even one more person the pain and suffering we have had to experience.
[The prepared statement of Lieutenant Daly can be found in the appendix.]
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Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Lieutenant Daly. Let me ask you to tell the subcommittee in some detail what your experience was when you were surveilling the Russian ship the KAPITAN MAN and what occurred within say the next 24 hours after you returned to home base.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. The flight was as routine as it could possibly have been. There were no indications of any kind of threat from the KAPITAN MAN.
Mr. HUNTER. You might explain this was a Russian commercial ship that had moved inside Puget Sound, through which our submarines travel.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. That is correct. She was making her transit. She was inbound to the Port of Tacoma, Washington, one of her normal stops.
Mr. HUNTER. And in the old days those ships were forbidden to come inside.
Lieutenant DALY. Essentially sir, during the old days and during the cold war era, the actual vessels resembled a type of fishing trawler, versus commercial vessels. With the change in relations with Russia, we no longer see those classic fishing trawlers strewn with antennas. We now see a greater effort through these commercial vessels, these roll-on/roll-off merchants.
Mr. HUNTER. How big is the KAPITAN MAN? It is a big ship, isn't it?
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Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir, a very big ship. She is about 18,000 dead weight tons.
Mr. HUNTER. OK, please describe for us what occurred that day.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. We had launched out of the Canadian Air Force base in Victoria to conduct the surveillance mission against the KAPITAN MAN. We took a southwesterly track from the base to the Straits of Juan de Fuca. And as we went feet wet or we got over water, our first contact was the USS OHIO, which was on the surface outbound. We flew one pass down her portside.
The KAPITAN MAN had already passed the USS OHIO at about a range of less than a mile. We had the navigator on the aircraft check that for us and we proceeded back on a westerly track to do our three passes around the KAPITAN MAN so that I could shoot the photographs I needed.
Mr. HUNTER. What happened after you returned? Did you see anything unusual or feel anything unusual during the flight?
Lieutenant DALY. No, sir. Everything was normal during the flight. We did not get any indications of any threat whatsoever. It seemed like a routine surveillance flight from the extent that everything went off like clockwork.
It wasn't until we actually returned to base and I turned in the camera for the photos to be processed that there were indications that something may have been wrong. Those first indications came in the form of my imagery analyst, a U.S. Navy intelligence specialist, approaching me in my office and asking me the following questions.
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The first question he posed to me was, ''Are you having any problems with your eyes?'' I confirmed that I was indeed experiencing some pain in my right eye. I attributed it to the fact that I had stuck my head out the door of the helicopter on numerous occasions and that I may have gotten some type of debris in my eye.
His second question was was I experiencing any type of a headache. I confirmed that yes, in fact, I did have a headache. It seemed isolated to the right side of my head. It was a little disappointing because I was getting ready to go to Australia for 10 days on the Canadian nickel for a conference, so I thought I was coming down with a flu or something.
What he said next shocked me. He took one of the pictures I had taken, frame 16 specifically, laid it in front of me and said, ''I believe you may have caught a laser beam during your surveillance measure.''
I immediately understood the ramifications of making a statement such as that so I pretty much put him through an inquisition to make sure that he knew what he was talking about, and he convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt that the emanation that showed up in that particular frame was unusual and not exactly as it should look, considering it was a picture with the portside navigation light in the frame.
The signature on that light was unusual in the fact that instead of it being a deep, dark red, it had a red ring with an inner orange-yellow ring and a white center, very similar to the laser that Warrant Officer McCoy described he saw during his flight.
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Mr. HUNTER. You discovered later that there is also a light on that ship at that particular area?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. That is the normal position for the navigation lights on that class of vessel.
Mr. HUNTER. Then you went through a fairly extensive medical analysis. I know because I read the reports. And would it be fair to characterize the conclusion of the medical examiner, the doc, that you had lesions on your eye that were consistent with laser wounds?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. With laser hits.
Lieutenant DALY. That is exactly correct. There was evidence of four to five subtle lesions on the retina of my right eye and it was discovered in the initial testing in the days following the incident.
Mr. HUNTER. And provide for the committee, too, I know you probably have some copies of those somewhere, that medical report and any others that you think are important to the committee for our record.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir, I will.
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Mr. HUNTER. OK. As time went by, what has happened in terms of your medical condition from your perspective, in terms of how you feel?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. Over the last 22 months that I have had to live with this injury, as I mentioned in my statement, the pain seems to have become more severe. I have not been without pain since the day of the incident. All medical treatments that have been attempted thus far have been futile.
My vision is deteriorating. It waxes and wanes as far as the acuity of my eyes. Some days I am 20/20; some days I am 20/40. But most of the time the constant deteriorating effect that I have on my vision is the actual lesions have turned to scar tissue and I now see those clearly as I look at a light background.
Mr. HUNTER. Let me go to the KAPITAN MAN for a minute. This incident took place in this last year; what year?
Lieutenant DALY. It was on April 4, 1997.
Mr. HUNTER. April 4, 1997. The KAPITAN MAN was boarded in 1993.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. On other occasions it was boarded, too, as I understand. And they found—one thing that I thought was interesting when we went down through the equipment list of equipment that was found was that one piece of equipment was a piece of equipment that is consistent, in fact exclusively used for surveillance of submarines. Is that right?
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Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. And explain what that is.
Lieutenant DALY. In April 1993 a combined U.S. Customs and INS boarding team went on board the KAPITAN MAN and conducted a search under the normal rubric of their jurisdiction to do so. During the process of that search they came upon a device known as an expendable bathy thermograph or an XBT. The particular model, the T7, that was stamped on the device that they confiscated, they traced back to Sippican Corporation in Marian, Massachusetts and through research it was determined that that specific model was designed strictly for military use in the realm of anti-submarine warfare.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Let me ask you. Let me go to the situation with respect to the Russian ships coming down the sound. Why don't you describe that geographic situation to us?
Lieutenant DALY. Well sir, that specific area in the Pacific Northwest of the United States that borders Canada is a natural chokepoint, a chokepoint being in that its navigable waters are restricted because of the land masses on either side.
As you come into the Straits of Juan de Fuca from the Pacific Ocean and transit either north to Vancouver or south into Seattle and Tacoma, the land mass creates an even further restriction down there in the Puget Sound.
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One of the problems is that Bangor Submarine Base is also down in that same area so these ships and our submarines and our aircraft carriers stationed in the Pacific Northwest will have occasion to pass, in most cases too frequently.
Mr. HUNTER. Has it been your experience that Russian commercial vessels show up fairly frequently there in the straits where they do have occasion to pass very close to our submarines?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. It is a regular route that is run by the Far East Shipping Company between Vladisvostok, Russia and Tacoma, Washington, as well as Vancouver, Canada, and they come in on a frequent basis. I would say there is probably a gap of not more than a week at any one time where there isn't one of these vessels in port or inbound or outbound the Puget Sound.
Mr. HUNTER. Did you have any protective goggles and are they made available to folks that are operating your type of mission?
Lieutenant DALY. Sir, no, we did not have any protective type of equipment. We had no reason to believe that there was anything that we should be concerned about. This was a commercial vessel conducting free trade between the United States and Russia. Other than our suspicions of what it was really involved in, we knew of no threat from lasers or any other devices. At that time we did not even ask for those protective devices.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Lieutenant Daly.
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Mr. Sisisky.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you for being here, Lieutenant. The chairman has asked you a lot of questions. You made a statement that there was not a complete investigation at any part of this?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. SISISKY. What do you mean by complete?
Lieutenant DALY. Well sir, there are a number of individuals, specifically members of the boarding party who went on board the KAPITAN MAN on the 7th of April, 3 days after the incident, who have not been interviewed by any of the investigative bodies. There is some specific information that they have relayed to me when I have essentially debriefed them that did not make it into any of the official reports or into any of the investigation reports.
Mr. SISISKY. Was that true of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence?
Lieutenant DALY. Sir, as far as I know, the House released their conclusions of their investigation in early October and up to that point in time, I also understand that those individuals that I am referencing had not been contacted.
Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the HPSCI investigation be made part of this record. Thank you very much.
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[The information referred to is classified and is retained in the Committees file.]
Mr. HUNTER. Without objection, yes.
And Lieutenant Daly, the size of the KAPITAN MAN impressed me. That is a big ship. When I heard of the incident I thought it was going to be a fishing trawler but it is a big ship.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. How many people were in the boarding party that went on a day later?
Lieutenant DALY. Sir, it was actually 3 days later, after the incident occurred, on Monday evening, the 7th of April. My understanding is that there were a dozen personnel. It was a combined U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Safety Office, U.S. Naval Intelligence officers, one FBI agent as a Russian linguist. And although there was an NCIS agent in the company, she did not actually get on board the vessel.
Mr. HUNTER. And how big is that ship?
Lieutenant DALY. It is about 18,000 dead weight tons, a very sizable commercial vessel. It is a roll-on/roll-off vessel, similar to our maritime preposition vessels.
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Mr. HUNTER. That is a huge ship.
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. How long did the boarding party stay, the searching party?
Lieutenant DALY. Sir, they were limited to 2 hours.
Mr. HUNTER. Obviously, Lieutenant Daly, it appeared to me when I looked at this that this party could little more in that time than simply walk down the halls, open the door, look in, close it and go on to the next compartment. And what happens if we would have had 150 illegal aliens jammed in one of the rooms, they might have found them, but you didn't really expect them to find a laser lying there on the desk of a Russian officer who is about ready to be court-martialed, did you?
Lieutenant DALY. No, sir, not after they got a 24-hour notice. They could have pretty much reinvented the wheel by that time, in addition to their sister vessel being at the same pier and may have walked off in a gym bag with one of the crewmen, as far as we know.
The Customs officers that had boarded that vessel on numerous occasions conveyed to me that it would normally take them a period of 2 days with 10 men and dog teams to even do a half-adequate search of that vessel because of its size.
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Mr. HUNTER. But the vessel had how much warning?
Lieutenant DALY. Twenty-four hours notice.
Mr. HUNTER. So even if you had had 1,000 people, you wouldn't expect any incriminating equipment to be found, would you?
Lieutenant DALY. No, sir. You are absolutely right.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Pitts, did you have any questions? Go ahead.
Mr. PITTS. Was the ship larger than 60 feet?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. PITTS. It was?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir.
Mr. PITTS. You talked about frame 16 that the person who worked for you or in intelligence said it could be a laser or it was a laser?
Lieutenant DALY. He said that it could be a laser emission.
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Mr. PITTS. Did anybody confirm that after that in an official position?
Lieutenant DALY. Sir, the Navy's position was that that was, in fact, a portside navigation light. However, the opinions of the laser experts at the U.S. Army Medical Research detachment in San Antonio, Texas, their physicist looked at that picture and as far as he is concerned, it is 50/50 as to whether that was or was not actually a light or a laser.
Mr. PITTS. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. And Lieutenant, did any other traumas occur to you during your lifetime that may have left these lesions on your eye that are consistent with this?
Lieutenant DALY. No, sir, absolutely not. I have never had any problems whatsoever with my eyes. I have always been pretty proud of the fact that my eyes were my greatest asset, as far as I was concerned. And off the record I will admit that I have always like the song ''Jeepers Creepers'' but in this case it is a little different right now.
Mr. HUNTER. Let me ask you, going to your opinion as an intelligence officer. We are letting these commercial ships—you know, this committee voted unanimously, almost unanimously to ban COSCO, which is the China Ocean Shipping Corporation, after they had smuggled a couple of thousand machine guns into this country and did some other things, to ban them from taking the naval base at Long Beach. So we are familiar with these state-owned corporations that act in many ways to carry out military operations for their respective states; i.e. China and, in FESCO's case, Russia.
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Does having these ships come down the straits and pass in close proximity to American submarines provide a difficult problem for us?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir, I would say that it does. Considering what our suspicions are about their intelligence collection roles, their criminal activities and the mere fact that if they are exploiting our submarines, they are exploiting our most vital strategic asset.
The only way I see to alleviate any of that problem, and I know this gets into a litany of legal ramifications, would be to restrict those vessels from entering ports in the Pacific Northwest.
Mr. HUNTER. OK. Well, Lieutenant Daly, I want to thank you for being with us. We indulge in fictions, as you understand, and for many years one of the fictions that this committee labored under was that the Krasnyarsk radar, this monumental, huge, mammoth radar in the Soviet Union, was a component of their ABM system.
The official line from Russia was always that it was not and the official line from our government for a long time was that they accepted the Russian line. And, of course, after the breakdown of the Soviet Union I believe it was the general who built Krasnyarsk said, ''Why, of course, it is an ABM radar.''
The official line from the Soviets has been that nothing happened to you, that they didn't have any laser on board. And I think the official line from our State Department has been that the evidence is inconclusive.
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We can't change that. And it would certainly be the dumbest, most negligent Russian officer in the history of FESCO who would accidently leave the laser system sitting on his desk for the small boarding party to find. In fact, he would probably have to lead them to it or they might miss it, anyway.
In my judgment as chairman of this subcommittee, you were lased. I have looked over all of the material and all the medical records. You were lased and my recommendation, incidentally, that I am going to write to the CNO is that the damages, the lesions on your eyes be treated in every aspect as service-related because they came directly from that incident.
Beyond that, for my small part as part of this government, I want to issue you an apology for what I consider to be a little bureaucratic runaround and some cosmetic fiction-fixing that we indulge in when we send communications back and forth to nations like Russia with whom we have fairly sensitive relations and accept some fairly lame explanations for things that occurred.
You have given rise to the bigger problem and that is the security problem that is posed by having commercial ships very close to American submarines that are moving back and forth to home base and necessarily coming in close proximity to them and based on their timing, being in a position, if they have the wherewithal and the intelligence-gathering capability, to damage in my estimation our security with regard to undersea warfare.
So I think we need to look at that. And I am almost inclined to think that the simpler thing to do is to close up the straits in the same manner that we had them closed before to commercial shipping emanating from Russia. So that is something that we are going to have to debate and look at.
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I want you to know that your testimony and your discussions that we had earlier a couple of months ago I think led us to reexamine this whole area of laser utilization. I learned a lot. I learned that we have done a lot of research in that area, a lot of development, and so have our adversaries.
I also think that we are going to see this technology proliferated in the same way that our missile technology was proliferated to the effect that our intelligence agencies came up to us and acknowledged that they have missed by a number of years the time schedule under which the North Koreans, for example, and others were operating to develop ballistic missiles.
And their answer was that they never thought that they might actually buy some of this stuff from other nations. They thought they were going to have to develop indigenously, reinvent the wheel, so to speak.
I think that the terrorist nations with respect to laser warfare are not going to reinvent the wheel. They are going to lay some money down. And if you can blind a helicopter pilot or damage him for a very small amount of money, then you don't have to have a sophisticated system to defeat that asset. So I think we are going to be seeing that around the world, just as we have in Bosnia.
What I can offer to you, and I think we have to offer to all of our people in the uniformed services, is that this committee is going to press hard to field defensive systems quickly. This is not an area where we can afford R&D forever or to put off for long periods of time the choosing of systems. I think we have to get some decent systems out in operations fairly quickly and then try to improve those systems incrementally. But I think we have to get some out there.
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And from the testimony today, it appears that we are moving along. We have some basic systems in place that can defeat most lasers. But if you have any comments in that area, and I am especially concerned about this idea that the spectrum can be adjusted and thereby defeating defensive systems that we have put in place, I would be happy to hear about those. Do you have any comments on that?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. I believe that the key to our efforts as far as countermeasures and production is concerned, it is absolutely critical that we have better intel on the systems that do exist out there elsewhere in the world. For the most part we may be limited in some of our research and development for the countermeasure and protection devices that you have seen here today to what we currently know, based on our own systems, as well as the limited amount of information that we have available to the intel community based on other systems.
When you are faced with a problem, a laser device that can cause damage to the human eye, something that can be developed, built in your garage or in your basement workshop, you have a considerable problem now that needs greater emphasis.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you.
I had, incidentally, Lieutenant Daly, I had a question or two for Admiral Jacoby. Admiral Jacoby, could you come up and take the table there for a minute?
I wanted to ask you with respect to the KAPITAN MAN, when we went through and looked over the piece of equipment and the analysis on that piece of equipment that we pulled off of it in 1993, did you examine that?
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Admiral JACOBY. No, sir, I am not aware of the XBT from the 1993 timeframe, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. OK, you are not aware of that. Have staff got that analysis and the description of that equipment? I know we had that earlier today. Do we have that? OK.
The reason I ask you that, when I examined that, we went back to the original equipment manufacturer and that is one of eight or nine types of that piece of equipment. That is one that is used, by description of the manufacturer, exclusively for the detection of submarines.
Now it would appear to me that if you pull that off a Russian commercial vessel that is in the practice of moving in very close to our subs on this transit down through the straits and we pull it off of them, off of that ship, and we discover that that piece of equipment is utilized in the detection of submarines, that that is a pretty serious thing. And it appears further that at least no actions were taken by the United States in terms of limiting the KAPITAN MAN or any other Russian ship from coming into the straits and remaining or continuing to operate in close proximity with American submarines.
Are you up to speed on that at all?
Admiral JACOBY. Sir, the KAPITAN MAN was being watched carefully. It was a suspicious ship. Its patterns were unusual. The reason, quite frankly, that Lieutenant Daly and that Canadian crew were flying that day was in response to the fact that we were trying to attempt to determine what types of activities they were engaged in and develop a pattern and be able to pin down the suspicions that we had concerning that ship and other Russian ships that exhibit the same kinds of behavior.
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Mr. HUNTER. OK. What is your feeling? Since you have developed an area of expertise with respect to those Russian ships that seem to transit in coordination with our boats coming and going, do you think first that there is a pattern, that they do put themselves in position to come in close proximity with American subs?
Admiral JACOBY. Sir, that is the pattern that has been developed over time, the proximity.
Mr. HUNTER. It is a pattern?
Admiral JACOBY. Yes, sir. There are numerous instances of close encounters and deviation from track and timing and so forth to bring merchant ships in close proximity to our transiting submarines. So that is an area that we are trying to focus attention on and determine what, in fact, collection or other types of activities might be engaged in.
Mr. HUNTER. If you understand that, that there is a pattern, it is not simply a coincidence, a lucky booking that they happen to show up when our subs are transiting, and you accept, and I will have the staff give it to you, the analysis on this piece of equipment that is anti-submarine equipment that was pulled off the KAPITAN MAN, wouldn't that and shouldn't that lead us to a banning if you will of at least that ship from an area where it can surveil American boats?
I mean, we are allowing it to come in even after we pulled off surveillance equipment, sub surveillance equipment off that ship. We are allowing it to continue to reenter and we are torturing ourselves over what it is doing, but whatever it is doing, it is continuing to do it with our permission.
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Admiral JACOBY. Mr. Chairman, you are past my area of purview in terms of banning of ships but the information concerning those patterns is known in various areas of the U.S. Government where those kinds of authorities do reside.
Mr. HUNTER. Lieutenant Daly, any comments on that?
Lieutenant DALY. Yes, sir. If I can clarify, some of these early reports from the early 1990's pretty much up until about June-July 1996 when I first became aware of this concern about these activities up in the Pacific Northwest, were conducted by agencies and for whatever reason that remains unknown at this time, the extent and the details of all this information may not have been passed in in a timely fashion to Naval Intelligence authorities. We first got our really significant briefing on this issue back in June-July timeframe of 1996.
Mr. HUNTER. How often do the FESCO boats, and that is the fleet to which the KAPITAN MAN belongs, the Russian corporation, shipping corporation, how often do they transit the straits? Is it a daily basis, weekly, monthly?
Lieutenant DALY. Sir, I would say it is a combination of almost daily to weekly.
Mr. HUNTER. OK.
Lieutenant DALY. If I can use the term coverage, it seems like there is fairly constant coverage of the Puget Sound area.
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Mr. HUNTER. Admiral, do you have anything to add?
Admiral JACOBY. I just checked, Mr. Chairman. It is regular but I couldn't pin it down in terms of numbers of transits per week. I would have to go and do some research and get back with the answer to that.
[The information referred to can be found in the appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Would it be fair to say that if we reinstated the policy of not allowing the Russian commercial ships in the straits, it would make this job less complicated, our security problem less complicated?
Admiral JACOBY. Mr. Chairman, we had various policies for various ports in the cold war period, many of which had to do with prior notification and obviously prior notification gives opportunities for——
Mr. HUNTER. It seems like this is a pretty important place because we have our submarines there.
Mr. Sisisky?
Mr. SISISKY. Is it within the 12-mile limit?
Admiral JACOBY. Yes, sir.
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Mr. SISISKY. I always used to have to laugh. I tried the Port of Hampton Roads, tried to get the Polish ships in. They are doing business in Baltimore and New York and they wouldn't let us do it. They said they could take pictures. Well, you could take a rowboat and ride up right next to a carrier there. I mean the dinner ships are all riding up the river. People are taking pictures. I thought it was a little silly, but there were other reasons, which I can't talk about, why they——
Admiral JACOBY. Sir, I was on the Second Fleet staff on two occasions and we worked that problem real hard about what the vulnerabilities were.
Mr. SISISKY. You remember what I was talking about?
Admiral JACOBY. Yes, sir, I know exactly what you are speaking of, sir.
Mr. HUNTER. Admiral, is there anything else you would like to add here?
Admiral JACOBY. The only thing that I would like to add, Mr. Chairman, is thank you for the opportunity for Jack to appear today. I think he has described the problem that is difficult to detect and unpredictable in nature and is going to be a challenge for us, as the other people that spoke today have so characterized. And it is an issue that is going to be with us for the long haul.
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Mr. HUNTER. Thank you.
I think we are going to do some good things for the country as a result of these hearings and we are going to have to spend some money, I think, in some of these areas, perhaps change our policies.
Thanks for being with us to all of our witnesses. We appreciate it.
One last thing, Lieutenant Daly. Since I am pretty familiar with our Intelligence Committee, I want to let you know I went over and got a briefing on the information that they expended and I do want you to know that is not a large agency. It has just a couple of staff guys and actually they spent a lot of time in proportion to the amount of people that they have. They spent a lot of their time and a lot of their resource working on this problem.
I will say further I don't think I am putting words in their mouth but I think the committee is concerned about some of the national security areas. The Intelligence Committee is concerned about some of the national security problems that we have just discussed here, also, as a result of this.
So I am going to try to work with them and move out and try to come up with some solutions. Some of them may be easy but some of them may be very difficult, especially with respect to the commercial shipping traffic.
Nonetheless, I think you have done a good service to the country in bringing this to our attention and we are going to accomplish some things as a result of it.
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So thank you for being with us and to all the rest of our witnesses, let me tell you what this committee is interested in. We are interested in getting stuff in the field.
R&Ding stuff forever, it may be good in some areas where you have a political block to actually fielding something like a national missile defense but not having a system in the field, and I am thinking about the entire array of systems, whether it is laser protection, chem-bio or this friend or foe ID system, we want to make sure that you have this stuff and we want to get it quickly and we don't like 5-year plans and 6-year plans and even 4-year plans. It shouldn't take us longer than it took us to win World War II to come up with a friend or foe identification system or to come up with a lighter armor system.
So we are going to be monitoring you and working with you and trying to prod you along because I think there will be a time in the near future when uniformed people defending our interests around the world come into contact with some of these peripheral weapon systems, to our detriment if we are not ready for it.
So we are going to push hard this year to field stuff. And if it takes a little extra money, please let us know about that. We are also working to try to get a few extra dollars into the procurement budget.
Thank you very much and the subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
February 11, 1999
[This information is pending.]