SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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64–886
2000
[H.A.S.C. No. 106–39]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001—H.R. 4205
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
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MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS
ON
TITLE II—RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
HEARING HELD
MARCH 1, 2000
MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania, Chairman
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
STEVEN KUYKENDALL, California
DONALD SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio
HERBERT H. BATEMAN, Virginia
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
HOWARD ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
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BOB RILEY, Alabama
OWEN PICKETT, Virginia
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
TOM ALLEN, Maine
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
Stephen Ansley, Professional Staff Member
Brian Green, Professional Staff Member
Robert Lautrup, Professional Staff Member
Jean Reed, Professional Staff Member
William Natter, Professional Staff Member
Erica Striebel, Staff Assistant
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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HEARING:
Wednesday, March 1, 2000, Fiscal Year 2001 National Defense Authorization Act—Defense-Wide Research and Development Programs
APPENDIX:
Wednesday, March 1, 2000
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2000
FISCAL YEAR 2001 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—DEFENSE-WIDE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Pickett, Hon. Owen, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
Weldon, Hon. Curt, a Representative from Pennsylvania, Chairman, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Gansler, Hon. Jacques S., Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; accompanied by Delores Etter, Deputy Under Secretary for Science and Technology; Frank Fernandez, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
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APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Gansler, Hon. Jacques S.
Weldon, Hon. Curt
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted for the Record.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers are pending.]
Mr. McKeon
(iii)
FISCAL YEAR 2001 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—DEFENSE-WIDE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Reasearch and Development Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 1, 2000.
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The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:30 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, Hon. Curt Weldon (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. WELDON. The Subcommittee will come to order. Excuse my voice. This afternoon the Military Research and Development Subcommittee will receive testimony on defense-wide and military service Research and Development (R&D) programs. I want to welcome my good friend and Ranking Member, Owen Pickett, and all Members of the R&D Subcommittee.
We welcome today's witnesses, Dr. Jacques Gansler, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology; Dr. Delores Etter, Deputy Under Secretary for Science and Technology; and Dr. Frank Fernandez, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Thank you for being with us today and I am looking forward to your testimony.
We are going to examine several elements of the Department's R&D request for fiscal year 2001. While much of today's testimony will be very positive, I want to more closely examine some of the issues and concerns that Members have raised and that are shared by this Subcommittee.
During the past five years, this full Committee under Chairman Floyd Spence's leadership, has led a bipartisan effort to increase defense spending by over $43 billion in order to address a portion of the unfunded requirements identified each year by the service chiefs. It has been a continual source of frustration for Members that the Department has not acknowledged any negative impacts resulting from the steady decline in requests for R&D funding. In fact, the Department announced three years ago that R&D funding was programmed to decline annually throughout the fiscal year 1999 through 2003 Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) by a total of 14 percent, and that those reduced levels of funding were sufficient to meet requirements.
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Also adding to our frustration, the Department has briefed the Congress on its annual budget request the last two years and announced increases in modernization funding, and yet only procurement funding numbers were actually increased. In fact, R&D funding was decreased over $3 billion from the previous years appropriate levels. I always thought that the term modernization meant both procurement and R&D. I and Members of this Subcommittee are concerned at the continual reference to procurement as modernization is further evidence that the Department does not place sufficient emphasis on the importance of the R&D investment.
Fortunately, for the Department and the services, over $8 billion of the $43 billion in increases during the last five years were provided by the Congress to correct R&D shortfalls. With this year's budget request, we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Department of Defense (DOD) has apparently reconsidered the need for R&D funding and has increased the fiscal year 2001 R&D request by over $3.6 billion over its own projections provided to Congress just last year. We now can consider a relatively healthy request for R&D funding that is only slightly lower than the level appropriated for fiscal year 2000. The bad news is that the modernization train wreck appears to have already happened in R&D as well as in procurement. In this year's request we are only beginning to see the early casualty figures in the form of cancellations or significant decreases in high priority R&D programs, such as the Air Force Airborne Laser (ABL) program cut by over 50 percent, and the Army's number one priority just last year, the Crusader program, now directed to undergo a major program restructure.
Maybe the concerns recently expressed by several respected defense budget analysts are unfounded, and this growing string of canceled and curtailed programs is misleading. Today's hearing will provide Members of this Subcommittee an opportunity to discuss their concerns with Dr. Gansler and his staff. I urge Members of the Subcommittee to examine the R&D funding charts provided in their packages for this hearing. I gave these to Dr. Gansler yesterday. DOD has provided most of the charts, and when examined collectively, they identify some disturbing imbalances within R&D.
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Several of the charts appear to confirm that the majority of all modernization, in fact, over 92 percent of this year's requested modernization funding, is focused on buying yesterday's and today's technologies, while only about eight percent is left to fund science and technology for the future.
I do acknowledge that many important programs, such as F–22, Joint Strike Fighter, Comanche and missile defense programs are included in the 92 percent near-term modernization. But what about those future technologies needed to prepare our military services to face the changing uncertain and dangerous world referred to so often by DOD leadership?
Another concern is the apparent imbalance of modernization funding between the services and other defense-wide agencies. We are still receiving the details of the services fiscally constrained modernization efforts and, yet, most of the defense-wide agencies appear to be adequately funded. Members may want to hear more about why some of these agencies appear to receive higher priority for R&D funding than the military services.
With that, let me turn to my good friend and ranking member on the R&D Subcommittee, Owen Pickett, for any opening remarks he would like to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weldon can be found in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT OF HON. OWEN PICKETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
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Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The subject of this hearing is, indeed, very important to the future of our defense program. I am pleased that you have scheduled this opportunity to discuss the Administration's modernization plans and priorities, and I join you in welcoming Dr. Gansler and his colleagues with him today.
Given the federal budget limitations under the existing discretionary budget caps, and recognizing the enormous pressures to either maintain or replace rapidly aging weapon systems, I am generally pleased with the Administration's budget submission for research, development, test and evaluation. A proposed investment of $37.8 billion represents some increase over the Administration's projection from last year and maintains a program roughly on par with last year's congressionally appropriated level.
It is worth remembering that the goal of the RDT&E program is to ensure that our nation's warfighters today and tomorrow retain and receive superior and affordable technology. This commitment is apparent in several areas of the budget, such as naval submarine research, where the inclusion of the technology insertion plane for the Virginia Class SSN program provides funding for underwater communications, acoustics, integrated underwater surveillance systems and unmanned undersea vehicles.
This is just a sampling of the new technology that offers the best insurance policy against our nation being confronted with technological surprise. Programs funded elsewhere in this defense budget are for similar promise. Additional investment in the National Missile Defense (NMD) program reflects a solid commitment to this identified need. And the recently forged U.S. Army agreement for the Future Combat System program offers the potential to truly revolutionize land warfare. Yet, some aspects of the RDT&E budget are cause for genuine concern.
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First, the total of 2001 funding for DOD science and technology programs amounts to just $7.5 billion, or only 20 percent of total service and defense-wide research and development. Moreover, the out years of the 2001 Future Years Defense Plan recommends that science and technology (S&T) funding, the very source of innovation, decrease an additional 15 percent over the near term just as DOD is planning to field a revolutionary force based on leap-ahead technologies. I question whether such a constrained funding plan for science and technology can adequately produce the revolutionary concepts and weapons systems that will be needed for this new force.
Second, when I look at the strategy of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) for theater programs, I wonder if the current funding profile for the Navy theater-wide program is based on what is achievable technologically, or if it means that this program will be resource constrained. This budget submission may not include adequate resources to take full advantage of a successful intercept test shot schedule for later this calendar year.
Finally, the budget proposal contains some $42 billion for software acquisition. Software improvements have become a central component of the modernization movement, yet, recent software development initiatives have experienced major cost and schedule overruns. In view of these overruns, we must be very cautious about the cost and software dependency of our modernization plans. I would welcome an in-depth discussion of any DOD initiatives to improve software acquisition practices and procedures.
Mr. Chairman, we cannot forget that S&T programs of the 1970s and 1980s produced the stealth and precision munitions of the 1990s. It follows that S&T investment of today will yield technological advantages in the year 2015 and beyond. It has long been my belief that such long-term investment strategies are necessary to ensure technological superiority in the future and to also improve our position in nontraditional areas. For example, funding aircraft, noise reduction can positively affect civil-military relations and potentially improve the foreign military sales attractiveness of U.S. aircraft on the international market.
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Recognizing the fact that our nation's military has pressing modernization commitments in the short-term, we must resist following our past practice of expanding procurement by shortchanging R&D investment or favoring development and management support at the expense of advanced technology and both basic and applied research. It is high time that we reinvigorated the military science and technology base, and I hope that the discussions today will lead us to ways to do that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I welcome our witnesses.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Pickett. Secretary Gansler, it is my understanding that you will be the only one providing testimony, but Dr. Fernandez and Dr. Etter are here to support your statement and will answer any questions Members might have. With that, we welcome you. Your statement will be entered as a part of the record without objection and we give you whatever time you would like. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF HON. JACQUES S. GANSLER, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, ACQUISITION, TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS; ACCOMPANIED BY DELORES ETTER, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; FRANK FERNANDEZ, DIRECTOR OF THE DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY
Secretary GANSLER. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, first of all, on behalf of my fellow panelists, Dolores Etter and Frank Fernandez, I want to thank you for what I think is a very important hearing that you are about to begin. I have submitted a prepared statement, and my preference here would be rather than trying to summarize that, since I have already submitted it, I would rather give you in a few minutes a discussion of some of my personal concerns relative to the future of defense research and development. I would like to focus on some areas where I believe the Congress and the Department of Defense can work together to ensure that our nation has adequate R&D activities going on to successfully pursue its national security objectives.
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I see our role not only as current providers—and that is the point I think you made, Mr. Chairman—of the best equipment and support possible for our warfighters today, but also as stewards of the future. The President's fiscal year 2001 budget, I think, moves us aggressively in the direction of balancing these. Our defense modernization program combines increased funding with prudent acquisition strategies, strategies that require us to develop and produce not only the best systems but also the most affordable systems. And this overall modernization program, we believe, will stand as a bench mark for future years, both in terms of the near-term R&D, and equally important, the longer-term science and technology.
Now, in terms of our overall plan, our strategy, if you will, to implement the Revolution in Military Affairs, five areas represent our focus. First, for information superiority, our future security depends on our ability to develop sophisticated, integrated and secure command, control communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, C4ISR systems. The infrastructure here has to be capable of both strategic and tactical needs.
Second priority is to utilize this information. We have to be able to apply adequate resources to the challenge of developing long-range, all-weather, low-cost, and I emphasize that, precise, and brilliant—brilliant in the sense of being able to retarget in-flight—weapons for both offense and defense.
Third, we have to achieve rapid force projection, much greater mobility, and full global reach of our forces. And the Army's new shift in its transformation clearly recognizes that need.
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And fourth, we must develop credible deterrents, and if necessary, defenses against nontraditional threats, including chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, urban combat, information warfare, and large numbers of cruise and ballistic missiles.
Finally, we have to do all of this in a joint and coalition environment. Frankly, unless all of these systems act in concert, they will not achieve their potential effectiveness. So those are the strategic R&D objectives that we put together in terms of the program that we submitted to you. However, I do have several specific R&D concerns that I would like to share with you and I think could form the basis of some of our discussion.
First, I believe we have to maintain our science and technology funding. This year's budget request of $7.57 billion is actually $50 million more after we make inflation adjustments than last year's budget submittal. If we are to meet our commitment to future security, we must retain this S&T funding at least at the current level. This is not only our long-term military need, but it is critical to America's university research and future engineering and scientific manpower. And if you look at the University side, the DOD literally supports about half of all federal support for university computer science and two-thirds for all electrical engineering and mechanical engineering students.
Now, related to this, I think, is the need to attract more top scientists and engineers into defense, both to the defense industry and into the government. When I graduated from college, I chose the defense world because of its technical challenge, its excitement, its energy. Today we are losing out to a commercial non-defense sector which is perceived as more exciting, and in some cases, perceived as more cutting-edge, and potentially, certainly more financially rewarding.
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In this era of increased efforts in recruitment and retention for the armed services, it is imperative that we also find a way to once again attract the top scientific and engineering talent to the defense field. Here, I particularly want to thank the Congress for your initiatives, such as the 1101 Hiring Authority (Section 1101 of Public Law 105–261, the fiscal year 1999 National Defense Authorization bill) that you gave us last year, and I think that sort of thing needs to be extended.
Next in priority, we have to attack the cycle times of our weapon systems from the idea to the deployment. The same breakthroughs in areas such as information technology which have so changed the civilian world have, of course, brought revolutionary change to the military world. Yet, with current cycle times in information technology now measured in months—18 months, for example—our traditional, very protracted multi-year—sometimes ten to twenty year—defense development methods simply cannot keep pace with this evolution. The result is going to be military hardware that is years behind the cutting edge. And even more important, years behind what potential adversaries can obtain in a global commercial market place.
Our continuing work on things such as our Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTD), has allowed us to quickly bring innovative technology through the development cycle and into the arsenal of our warfighters. Another initiative we will use is the establishment of a limited amount of funds put aside to allow the quick development and deployment of emerging technologies, similar to what the Army has had for the last few years and projected into the out years, will call their Warfighter Rapid Acquisition program, their RAP funds.
A related concern here is an essential element in efforts to reduce our cycle times; namely, rapid access to commercial technology. As technological advances continue to appear at such a quick pace in the commercial world, we have to assure ourselves that those advances can be rapidly, creatively, and efficiently integrated into our defense research and development efforts. Use of commercial off-the-shelf products has already become almost everyday in our development efforts.
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For example, one of our ACTD's, in this case the Miniature Air Launch Decoy, has used flight control cards made from Coke machine boards, a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver from the Lincoln Town Car suppliers, and a fuel screen from NAPA Auto Parts. Together with their overall design, this brings the average unit flyway price down to only $30,000 for this very sophisticated weapon. The ability to quickly adapt commercial breakthroughs and products will not only keep us on the cutting edge, but will also help us save valuable dollars for modernization and readiness.
Next, I think we have to begin to consider ways in our contracting for R&D that we can reward greater risks for innovation. Lately, we have been asking private industry to pay more of the costs of expensive research and development efforts. In many cases, however, our relatively small purchases did not provide sufficient incentives for them to take the risks involved. If we are to foster innovation, we must provide adequate financial incentives for these efforts. A profit incentive sufficient to encourage our industry partners to pursue the innovative and nontraditional strategies is required to produce new technologies and new and, yet, affordable systems for the 21st century.
Part of the problem here, I think, in terms of the industrial R&D lies in the fact that we have diminished private industry's independence in the allocation of what is known as independent research and development funds, the IR&D funds. Increasingly, we have forced industry to devote their scare independent research funds, which are typically about five percent of the total acquisition dollars, to projects that DOD has specifically tailored. Industry, therefore, loses its independence, and by inference, its ability to develop innovative technologies on its own.
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I think we have to restore the ''I'' to the IR&D programs. If we can do this, private industry will then be given the chance to creatively initiate research in new and exciting areas using their own ideas. I think, after all, the government doesn't have all the good ideas.
One area where industry should be able to make a significant contribution is in the qualitatively different approaches to developing low-cost military equipment. Our current efforts in the area of remotely piloted vehicles, for example, give us some direction in our shift away from traditional approaches to developing new, often far lower cost and, yet, highly effective, systems and technologies.
Now, if I were to select the most critical R&D need today, I would pick up on Congressman Pickett's statements; it is in the software tools and management techniques. Almost every system we develop involves the dominant use of software today. And many of the problems we face in cost and schedule impacts come from software issues. This is an area where we need long-range research and development efforts to develop new technologies for future systems. And we need short-range management approaches, often those being applied today already in the commercial world.
Finally, and I think most critical, to capitalize on our R&D, we must seek to remove the current barriers to interoperability for both our joint forces and those of our allies. Our vision of future combat is joint and coalition warfare. Our ability to operate in such an environment will, therefore, depend on the ability of our warfighters and those of our allies to fight together in a common battlespace environment. This means that we must forge research and development linkages with our allies, and perhaps even increase linkages between the United States and the allied industrial bases.
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From a security perspective, however, we must do all this without compromising the security of classified information and without losing control of vital military technologies. The Department is working now with the Departments of State and Commerce to improve the export licensing processing, to improve our industrial security policies, and to streamline other procedures to facilitate greater cooperation with compatible allies. The challenge, of course, here is to engage closely with our allies while preventing our vital technologies from spreading to others.
In summary, worldwide advances in technology and increasingly volatile geopolitical situations point to a world which will become more violent, possibly more hostile, and certainly more unpredictable, and increasingly filled with adversaries possessing sophisticated, militarily-relevant technology. The nature of warfare has clearly changed, and it will continue to change. While our Department is committed to protecting the Nation and our Nation's interest around the world today, it is essential that we simultaneously prepare for tomorrow. We simply have to stay one technological step ahead of a world where our enemies enjoy increasing access to technology.
This includes attracting more talented engineers and scientists to defense, striving to shorten our cycle times, fostering and rewarding innovation, and assuring our ability to interoperate effectively and securely in coalition operations. Research and development is the cornerstone of those preparations. It is an investment which aims to guarantee that our men and women in uniform enjoy the same superiority on the battlefield, and the same technological edge for the future that has led to our success in the past.
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You, in Congress, are partners in this enterprise, and we cannot succeed without your continuing vision and support of the defense R&D efforts that you have so generously supported in the past. I look forward to working closely with you as we invest in our future successes. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Gansler can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Dr. Gansler. We will begin the questioning before we take time for the vote. Dr. Gansler, in each of the past eight years, we have had the Administration come in and give us a defense budget that Members on both sides of the aisle felt was inadequate. And each year, we would raise the concerns publicly. And Dr. Perry, when he was the Secretary, would tell us, we can live with this budget. It is just what we need. And then we would go back to our offices and the service chiefs would parade into us, and people who worked for you would parade into us, and tell you they couldn't live with those numbers. They were unacceptable.
So each year we put more money in the defense budget pot than what the President asked for. As you know, I cited the fact that in a bipartisan effort, Democrats and Republicans together, put $43 billion over the President's request over the past seven years; $8 billion of that into R&D account lines. The President this year now says, in his last year of office, we need to increase defense spending by $15 billion. Dr. Perry, that same Defense Secretary who criticized us for giving the Pentagon, supposedly, more money than they could use, now says that he thinks, personally, we should spend $10 to $20 billion above what the President has asked for this year.
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My question to him three weeks ago was where would we be today if we would have listened to this Administration on defense dollars. In the R&D area, Dr. Gansler, where would be today in missile defense and information dominance, in weapons of mass destruction, in tactical aviation, if we hadn't plused up the $8 billion of bipartisan funding that we gave you above the President's request, which he called pork every year? Where would we be today?
Secretary GANSLER. We would be, obviously, not as far along as we are today.
Mr. WELDON. You must have listened to Dr. Perry's answer, Dr. Gansler. What would have been the shortfalls? I mean, $5 billion of that went into missile defense. Would we be in a position to deploy missile defense programs as we are now?
Secretary GANSLER. No. I think that is one area, the missile defense area, where the Congress has certainly made a very significant contribution and stepped forward for us. I think we picked up on it the last two years. The President has certainly added the money in both last year and this year, recognizing that need. I think it is clear that now, together, we have a solid program, which I think is the direction we both want to go.
Mr. WELDON. My concern is that we knew what was coming, and this wasn't a Republican vision. Members on both sides of the aisle knew and stated each year what was going to happen. And what offends me is in the last year of this Administration, the President finally says, we are going to increase funding. And oh, by the way, we are really committing the next president to increase that curve dramatically. That is grossly unfair, and grossly unfair not just to the men and women who serve the country—and I am not blaming you for this, you know that. It is grossly unfair to the American people, because I think we have misled them. And now, all of a sudden, we have got this huge need, which even Dr. Perry says there is not enough money in the next fiscal year. Even the nonprofit that Dr. Hamre is going to head up—and I have the highest respect for him—has just done a study where they say we are $100 billion short just to meet the ongoing needs of the military.
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Now, because of that unfunded overall dollar amount, your area of the budget, I think, has been squeezed in an overly unfair manner. Do you agree with that, that you have really taken a larger share of the hit than perhaps procurement has and readiness just because of the nature of those areas?
Secretary GANSLER. I wouldn't actually say that. In fairness, I think there have been cuts in all the areas. I would start, frankly, with quality of life as the primary need that we have for the men and women in the services right now. Housing, for example, something that we are trying to step up to in terms of the privatization and the increased allowances. I think that is absolutely critical. And yet, there is probably over $20 billion of unfunded needs there which we will try to address through the housing privatization initiative; but nonetheless, underfunded. And then I would go on into the rest of the areas; certainly, in terms of maintenance, we have big problems, you know, with our maintenance of this older equipment. And modernization, I would certainly say that we would rather modernize at a more rapid rate of the equipment that is out there now. And then certainly, I would say, if we were in a rich man's world, I would rather have more science and technology as well. But what we tried to do within the total dollars is to balance each of those needs, and that is what this budget represents.
Mr. WELDON. Just one final point before I turn to Mr. Pickett. For the past six years, this Subcommittee has focused on what I perceive to be the three newest and greatest threats in the 21st century: the threat of missile proliferation; the use of weapons of mass destruction in terrorist incidents; and information dominance and the threat of cyber terrorism. In each of the past six years, we have plused up more money than what the Administration asked for. Again, and this is going to be critical of the White House, but not critical of my Democrat colleagues—this president didn't see fit to raise these issues on the radar screen of the American people, which would then have allowed us to meet those requirements.
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Last year's State of the Union speech, the President didn't talk about missile proliferation. He didn't talk about cyber terrorism. He didn't talk about weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the total amount of time he talked about defense in a one hour and seventeen minute speech was ninety seconds, because I timed it with a stopwatch. This year he did a little bit better. But then the day after the speech, he had Secretary Cohen give a major speech on missile defense and our change in policy. A week later, the President gave two speeches; one on cyber terrorism and one on weapons of mass destruction.
My point, and this is not for you to respond to because I don't want you to have to be in a position of criticizing your ultimate boss, but the President did not use the bully pulpit to inform the American people about the real state of the union. If he would have done that, our job would have been much easier and we could have been much more supportive dollar-wise for the kinds of priorities that all three of you have in terms of new emerging technological threats. Mr. Pickett.
Mr. PICKETT. Mr. Chairman, I think that we are going to have to go and vote, if you want to recess for a few moments to give us a chance to vote.
Mr. WELDON. We will recess and come right—it is just one vote—we will be right back.
[Recess]
Mr. KUYKENDALL [PRESIDING]. Mr. Weldon had to step out of the room for a minute, and so I am going to chair for him for just a couple of minutes. Mr. Pickett is next for questions. Mr. Pickett, you have the floor.
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Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Gansler, you made a remark a moment ago that caused me to think about an issue that just occurred to me, which is always bad, I suppose, but you mentioned the independent research and development, which that concept I have no quarrel with. But something that has been troubling me for a while, and maybe I would like to get your comments on it, is this matter about the ownership of technology that is developed with research and development funding. And I am told that in instances where proprietary rights are claimed by certain companies or contractors, then they can skew the weapons development process by the way they manage it. I am speaking, specifically, about what kind of price they put on it, whether or not it is available for some other contractor to use in a related project, and things of this kind. Tell us what is happening with that and whether it is costing the American taxpayers a lot of money to do business that way.
Secretary GANSLER. Historically, we used to get full data packages for everything so that we could put it out for reprocurement, and that was costing us a great deal of money. And in some cases, we still do that. We, of course, have the data rights if we funded the activity. More recently, in view of the particularly smaller quantities of equipment that we are buying, we haven't in many cases said that it is worth the money to get the full data packages. We still have the rights, however, to them for government use and, you know, we would do that.
An issue which has come up, and industry may have pointed this out to you as well, that is of concern to them, is the fact that work that has been developed under company expense, fully company expense, there are some of the people in the government who are saying we want that data as well. And that is where they will then say, well, that is going to cost you some money for that data. But I think, in general, the data rights issue, other than this one of developed at company expense, has not been a major issue in recent times. And I don't believe that we are overpaying for that data. In fact, as I said, I think we are actually getting—asking for and getting less of it now because of the fact that we, basically, aren't sending things out for reprocurement as much because of the smaller quantities.
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Mr. PICKETT. One other issue is that of the software that you had previously mentioned, and I just ask you if you have in place what you believe to be an adequate system and process for effectively managing and taking full advantage of your investment in the software effort. I think everybody probably sitting up here can think of some horror story they heard coming out of the building over there where some program was initiated in software, and a lot of dollars were spent, and not a whole lot was remaining at the end of the process that could be used by the Department. So do you feel like you have got some process that will take care of this?
Secretary GANSLER. No. In all honesty, I don't believe we have software management under control. That is why I listed it as one of my great concerns today. Not only in the development of software systems themselves, but also, in the development of weapon systems with an enormous amount of embedded software. I mean, we would not have thought in the past that something like Crusader would be impacted by software. And yet, that was a major problem on that program. And so each of our weapon systems now are getting significant impacts from the software area. As a result, what we are doing now is trying to directly address that in trying to develop both the tools and the management techniques to try to address it.
In fact, I have asked Dr. Etter to try to focus our activity in that area. We have a Defense Science Board task force looking into that area. And I might ask you, Dr. Etter, if you would comment on some of the initiatives we have going. And I know Frank is also doing some work at DARPA on the more advanced type of software techniques.
Dr. ETTER. Thank you. Software clearly is a very critical issue for our systems. And as we have looked at trying to do things to try to improve the situation there, we have focused on four different pieces of a strategy. The very first part of this is to try to look at how we can take advantage of the best practices and lessons learned from people that have done large software systems. You know, one of the things that makes this a difficult issue is that our software systems are in many cases some of the largest systems that are being developed in software. So we have very large systems. We also have very complicated systems, because they have to be very robust; they have to handle a lot of different situations, so it makes them more complicated.
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But we do have a lot of lessons learned and practices. We have a group that has helped us learn a lot from those; the Software Engineering Institute is an Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) that has been doing a very good job of helping us understand some of these best practices. They have also developed a process that allows us to measure the quality of the people that are developing software in terms of this. It has caused a capability maturity model. And this is something that in the past we have encouraged people that develop software for DOD to use, but we just recently signed out a policy that now requires people that are developing software for DOD to show that they have a very strong level of maturity through this process or something equivalent. So that allows us to feel that we are getting people with discipline, experience, and a process in place that has merit. So that is one piece of this strategy.
Another thing we are doing is trying to work at collaboration more. We have a number of groups that have shown experience in working with software programs, either in helping find problems in the programs or helping add process measurement skills. We are getting those groups together so, again, they can help each other and we can use that as a resource across all of our programs. The goal here, we would be able to use these kinds of people to come in and help us look at our programs before they get to a point where they are having significant software problems.
The third part of the strategy is education and training. And I think we all recognize that is important in lots of areas. Our program managers need to know what kind of questions to ask of the groups doing their software. They need to know what kind of issues are ones that should be raising concern. So we are looking at trying to provide more education and training.
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And then finally, the science and technology is also part of the answer. We have some very strong programs in DARPA that are looking at things to help us do, for example, embedded software better, helping us to look at reuse of software, helping us try to understand how to design adaptive software that can adapt itself without having to be updated. So I think the science and technology is another very important part of this overall picture. We also have some DSB studies that are looking at COTS. We have recently come up with a handbook to try to help our program managers learn how to use commercial off-the-shelf systems. It is not nearly as simple as it sounds and, yet, it is very important if we are going to leverage things coming out of the commercial world.
So those are four of the areas that we are trying very hard to find improvements in to help deal with the software issue.
Secretary GANSLER. A major part of this problem is within industry itself, bring our defense industry up to the state-of-the-art of some of the commercial people who are heavily into the software, and that is why we felt that the initiative that Dr. Etter mentioned, that I send out a memo saying we will not give a contract to a company that doesn't have these quality management techniques, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Level 3 or equivalent. That will get their attention for sure.
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. I have got a couple questions of my own, and I wanted to touch on them in order and maybe let you address them individually. In the broad area review that we just recently completed, which had to do, I think, taking a look at why did missiles fail—we lost a whole lot of missiles last year—not last year, but over the last couple of years. One of the findings—and I have got just a summary of it—specifically, talks about the reductions in technical personnel, reductions in engineering staff, reductions in FFRDC's oversight capability, as findings of this study. In fact, they said somewhere between 50 and 66 percent of the FFRDC and in-house Air Force engineering support had been reduced.
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And in the proposal of the budget we got this time brought forward to us, it once again has a cap on FFRDC personnel. It is the same cap as last year, 6,200 and something people—206 people. And yet, we don't manage any of those programs by head counts anymore, we manage them by program dollars. Why is the cap even there? Why do we care whether there is a cap in these facilities when we have program dollars to buy this service with and it is our only independent audit source, particularly, from the independent research corporations? I mean, I can see other ways to—at one point we might have needed that, but why do we still keep that cap?
Secretary GANSLER. I think the cap was, as you suggest, put on at a time in which there was a continuing growth in this area of the FFRDC's, and it was felt that in many cases the work that they were doing was something that also could be done by the private sector. The government people like the idea of being able to go sole source quickly to an FFRDC and, therefore, they were putting more and more work in that direction. There is no question that the FFRDC's serve a unique and valuable function. The argument for the cap is simply that we limit them to those areas that are unique and which have the special government relationships, and that the private sector be allowed to do the other work that they are capable of doing.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. I would certainly like to see the cap removed from my perspective, because it is counterproductive now in the environment we are in, because they don't—these people don't build anything and they are the only independent audit we have of private sector research. So if the private sector, whether it is any of our companies are doing it, we have got to have somebody check the work.
Secretary GANSLER. I agree, and I might point out that the cap was put on by the Congress.
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Mr. KUYKENDALL. Well, but it keeps coming back there. A second question, a very short one, with all the launch capability that we are going to need over the next few years to put up our satellites and the like, what program are you using to go and find low-cost launch—lower-cost launch? We have got several companies, I know, across the country that are building cheap rockets and trying to figure out a way to make a living with it. And we have got so many launches coming at us, I think the trouble I find is are we putting the proper, even a little bit of resource in that area which might save us some big bucks down the road, and it might be worth the insurance just finding another source to launch with.
Secretary GANSLER. It is somewhat of a dichotomy in the sense that I completely agree with you that what we need to do is to move toward the lower-cost approaches to the extent we can. The dichotomy comes in that we already have something like 50 percent excess capacity in terms of the space launch industry and the space vehicles. And so we are at this dilemma of do you try to maintain the infrastructure and the support or do you try to bring in additional people, as you are suggesting. What we have done recently is we actually have a rather broad study underway looking at this whole industry structure and trying to come up with some initiatives that can get us in the direction that your question leads to, which is ways of trying to get lower-cost space launch capability, and rockets, in general.
We have got a couple of areas that we are exploring, one of which is, by the way, Transatlantic activities, where you might gain some benefits from joint ventures. And another one that is very appealing to us, obviously, is the way we are taking the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), the next generation vehicle here through the combination of the military need and the commercial need, where about two-thirds of the launches will be commercial, one-third military. And through combining those, we can gain the benefits of the savings that would result from a commonality of the two. In fact, we can even have the benefit of competition as a result of the higher volume, and hopefully, that will drive down the cost as well. So we are very sensitive to the issue that you raise, which is the high cost of the space program.
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Mr. KUYKENDALL. Last point—and you can just elaborate on this for me more than anything. We have got—a number of our future threats are threats that have to do with cyber warfare, chemical warfare, biological warfare, and you touched on it briefly. Could you elaborate a little further on where the research money is going or how we are focusing research efforts to try to make us more competitive in that environment, from being able to both defend ourself and then at some point perhaps use those as offensive weapons in some cases.
Secretary GANSLER. I should comment that our effort here is focused on the defensive side of the biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. I didn't mean the biological and chemical. I meant just the cyber warfare.
Secretary GANSLER. But in terms of the activity here, we have got to focus first on the short-term in terms of buying the equipment and so forth that you need, the detectors, the uniforms, even the vaccinations that you require. And then the longer-term, clearly, is a research-oriented activity, which is the direction that you are talking about. In fact, let me ask Frank Fernandez to try to cover some of the work that DARPA is doing in this area, because it is really exciting.
Dr. FERNANDEZ. The work that we are doing in the biological warfare defense area and in the information assurance and security are two of our major thrusts at DARPA. In the biological warfare defense area, the work that we have been doing has been broken into several parts. First, advanced therapeutics, which are not pathogen specific, and by that, we are talking about therapeutic second attack, a whole bunch of different kinds of pathogens, so that you can conceive of vaccines that might be good for more than one—broad band, trying to develop ways to do this.
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We have been looking at new sensors to detect attacks, ways that we can sense attacks. The difficulty with detecting a biological attack is that for a lot of the more dangerous ailiens—the concentrations that are lethal to people are so small that it really makes for a very, very difficult problem in sensing. So building sensors to see if we can learn how to do this—and networks of sensors then to track where the agents are going after they're dispersed. The next area we have been working in is advanced diagnostics. Can I get diagnostics from human beings that tell me that they have been exposed to biological agents before they start to show symptoms? If I can pick up one or two weeks on this problem by getting diagnostics before people start to show external symptoms, then the possibility of treatment is incredibly increased in successful treatment.
Those are some examples of the things we are looking at. Some of them are starting to show success. We started this a few years ago at DARPA, this is not a very—in the biological area, this is not a very old area. We are now doing animal testing on some anti-toxins, which now work against some validated threats that we had no anti-toxins for before. We are at the stage where animal testing is going on. If that proves successful, then we will go further. We are the stage where we are starting to understand something about how molecules are expelled in the breath, nitric oxide can determine a person's state of health. And we are looking at seeing if we can do that so that we could have a way to monitor a person's state of health before they start to show the symptoms. For our soldiers, this is incredibly important, and also, for the population at large.
Another example—I won't go too far—we are trying to develop networks of sensors so that we can start to now exploit the one weakness that a lot of these biological attacks and these agents have is that they have no means of propulsion. In general, they have to go where the environment takes them, the wind. Are there ways that we can exploit multiple sensors to be able to track and predict where these things are going with enough time to warn people?
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The final one, trying to develop techniques, perhaps, to make buildings that will self-defend. And one of the things that has come up here is a discovery of a particular kind of filter—this is one of the companies that are making these, and we found them by going out and looking—that have got filters now that can have very, very low-loss filters, which means small pressure drop across the filter, at the same time have high filtration. If this works, we might be able to build filters that allow us to, essentially, immunize whole buildings when there is a threat of an attack. So those are the kinds of things we are doing in the biological warfare.
Information assurance, that is a little different. There, our work is breaking into two parts. The first is how do we find out that we are being attacked? When you have got a very complicated, large network, which has got a lot of dynamics going on because software is crashing, and hardware is having problems, and the Internet is that. It is a very dynamic network. How do you even determine that you have a concentrated attack going on so that you can start to take action? It is a surveillance problem in the classic sense, but a very, very difficult network surveillance problem, developing tools to do that. Then developing tools that let the network continue to operate when it is under attack without shutting it self down, which is one thing you do. Without that, you have no throughput—concentrating on things like denial of service and other factors.
The next thing we will be doing is see if we can extend these techniques, which have started to prove successful because some products are coming out, to the wireless world. A whole different world, the wireless world, which is very important for our military as compared to the Internet world, where now the question is how will we set up surveillance for the wireless world to maintain security of these networks? Those are the kinds of areas that we are pushing very hard on, where DARPA, primarily, is doing the work in the DOD, I think.
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Secretary GANSLER. I might mention, somewhat of a follow-up to the Chairman's introductory comments about the critical areas, the three areas that you mentioned of missile proliferation, weapons of mass destruction, and information security, what we have done is for this year's Defense Science Board, where we focus the Defense Science Board on a particular problem for the—they spend time preparing and then spend two weeks studying it—this is explicitly going to address that area of the biological, chemical, nuclear defense and information security.
And what I think is very important here is what we have done is we have brought in people from the commercial world who are working in these fields. There are people from the biological field where there is a lot of U.S. research going on, who are going to take major part in that. And people from the information security, from the banks and the other systems that are worrying about it commercially, and we are going to bring them into this activity. They are already starting to work on it now. So we are trying to take full advantage of the research being done elsewhere, not just within the Department of Defense. Those are critical problems for us.
Mr. WELDON [PRESIDING]. Thank you. Mr. Snyder.
Mr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you being here today, Mr. Secretary. I had a couple questions. I will just make a general comment in light of some of the things that were said earlier. I have only been on this Subcommittee for a year and only in Congress for three years, but it would seem to me that there has been shared responsibility in some of these budgetary concerns, whether you are talking about resistance to another round of base closings. Subcommittee chairs, I vote for Mr. Shuster's amendment to cut money out of the defense budget and put into transportation. Budget caps, balanced budgets, there are shared responsibilities for these concerns and I appreciate your work in the area.
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I wanted to ask—you had specifically mentioned, both in your written statement and in your statement a few moments ago, about rapid force projection. And while I look at a lot of aspects of the defense budget, and I see progress out there, technological advances—when I look at our ability to project forces around the world as I look ahead, I see that, perhaps, decreasing, potentially, in very dramatic ways. When we talk about the Chairman's concern about weapons of mass destruction, one area that that may really impact on in a great way is our ability to project forces and have forward basing of forces. What in this budget, in the R&D budget, do you see as dealing with this issue of rapid force projection, if anything?
Secretary GANSLER. The most obvious thing here is the Army's transformation program. The fact that the Army is stepping up to the reality that in the types of regional conflicts we are talking about for the 21st century, we are most likely not going to be given the months of time for build-up that we had, say, in the Persian Gulf conflict, that we have to be there, literally, in hours. And we need, therefore, to have equipment that is C–130 transportable, and that is what is driving the Army's transformation right now, the ability to get there within hours and to be there with a force that is capable of doing something, not just simply flying in some soldiers. And I think that is probably the most obvious thing.
Then the continued acquisition of the transport aircraft, the C–17's, the C–130's. If you step back and look at the United States' ability to do this force projection versus our allies, you can see that that is probably their weakest area. And we, fortunately, have put money into that area, and continue to put money into that area.
Mr. SNYDER. But what I hear you saying, though, is that, basically, what we will do is to—while our planes are new and a better method of transport, the methods of transport are going to be, essentially, the same as they have been for decades past. Newer lines of aircraft—and that may be very appropriate. There is only so many—you know, we are not going to beam things up, but it seems to me that we are basically moving things in the same way as we always have as we look ahead. And it may be more difficult to do that in the future.
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Secretary GANSLER. Well, in the logistics area, we are looking at alternative things that will give us—for example, the intermodal transportation, you know, if you think about how we traditionally move—you know, you go by train and then you pile up a lot of stuff at the dock, and then you take it from the dock and put it onto the ship, and then you do the same thing at the other end, and you end up with days, literally, in each of these places, as well as an enormous resource devoted to trying to make the move. We are looking at a lot of things, such as intermodal transportation, which will allow you to go right on through that process. The same thing with roll on/roll off, either for ships or roll on/roll off for aircraft. That is why the Army's requirement is to be able to get right into the C–130, not to take the systems apart and put the pieces into the C–130, but to be able to go immediately in.
But in general, we have looked in the past at other techniques, the rapid ship, for example, you know, the ability to rapidly transport across the water. There is some proposals that have been made to us for the equivalent of large lighter-than-air vehicles that will take very large amounts of transportation airborne. In each of these areas, we think that the biggest payoff comes where we can get a combination of commercial and military transportation.
What we really want to do is to take full advantage of the fact that in the logistics area, the commercial world has really made leaps ahead in the last decade now. I mean, you know with Fed Ex and the things that are being done, we ought to in our logistics system be able to do just as good a job. And so we have been looking at—for example, we have 5,000 parts down at the Fed Ex depot that we are now just sending around by Fed Ex, around the world, as part of our logistics operation.
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A great deal of what one would normally think of as transportation today in the world of the Wal-Mart and the Caterpillar, and the people who are world-class in the logistics area, they are using information technology as much as they are using rapid transportation, because they know where everything is at any time, and they can instantly send it to the right place and get it from the right place. And so one of our major needs in the Department of Defense, an area we are spending a good deal of resources and attention, is upgrading our logistics information systems. That will help us a great deal in more rapidly mobilizing and more rapidly sending exactly what we want.
And equally important is not only getting it there but sustaining it. You know, one of our problems, clearly, is not just to get there in a few hours but to keep the pace up of, for example, sending in smart weapons, and sending in spare parts, and sending in fuel. So that will help us a great deal from the information systems side once we implement that fully for our logistics systems.
Mr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. I would ask you to yield for me just a second.
Mr. SNYDER. You can have the remainder of my no-time.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. At the first part of the question you were answering for Mr. Snyder, it raised an issue with me. These transport aircraft, to make them useful in bad weather, we need to be able to land them in zero/zero kind of capabilities, especially, Pathfinder aircraft. And particularly, if you are a C–130 pilot flying in the first paratroopers, or the first ground troops, or the first system, I don't—I know of at least one system out there to do that that is already in development. And is that being pursued more aggressively, because to me, that is a very inexpensive addition to an existing flightline piece of equipment that magnifies your force projection capability just like that. And it is a matter of within a few months you could have that put in place.
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Are you familiar with any of this technology that I am talking about? I mean, I know they are currently building it, and they are coming around and talking to some of us about it, and it has to do with an automated landing system for probably less than a $1 million a copy for an airplane, and it is already flying on an Air Force test bed.
Secretary GANSLER. I will have to get back to you on that one, because it is not one that I am familiar with. But what I am familiar with, some of the instrumentation that we are now adding, we clearly need for the air traffic control in Europe. We are adding that, the guidance systems, to our commercial transports, and the ground collision avoidance systems—the automated ground collision avoidance systems, that kind of equipment. But the particular new automatic landing system, I will look into.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Please do. Thank you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Thank you. Mr. Andrews.
Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think in the last decade we have fallen, collectively, under the delusion of a safe world and have underfunded defense. And I agree with the Chairman, that in many cases the Administration hasn't asked for enough. I also agree with Mr. Snyder, that the Congress has enacted budget caps and budget resolutions that haven't given enough room either. We have a problem and I am especially compelled by one of the charts that was distributed to Committee Members, and I believe that Chairman Weldon said that, Secretary Gansler, you had this yesterday. It is captioned as Technology Perspectives Fiscal Year 2001 Budget Request, which indicates that five percent of the fiscal year 2001 Budget, the President's budget request, is dedicated to science and technology for the force after next. We are spending 95 cents on the dollar on readiness and modernization, and a nickel on the dollar on what is coming.
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Now, what alarms me about this is that if we have learned anything in the last couple of years, it is that what is coming is coming a lot faster than we thought it would. The pace of change in every field has quickened. And that means that the luxury of decades with respect to the future may be years, and in some case, less than years. With that in mind, I was compelled by a couple of things, Mr. Secretary, that you said. One was about technology refresh and the use of off-the-shelf commercial technology as a way to leverage continued progress. With Chairman Weldon's assistance—myself and some research universities and research institutions in my area, in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, have expressed a great deal of interest institutionalizing a mechanism to assist our decision makers in the military in leveraging off-the-shelf commercial technology. We have been working with Secretary Hamre on this, Mr. Money and his operation, and we, obviously, welcome your input and critical assistance in that regard. We want to look for an institutionalized way that we can train our people, much in the way Dr. Etter talked about, to understand how to maximize those advantages.
The second point that I wanted to make was to commend you on the software standards work that you talked about that you are doing. This is a very dense and difficult subject to follow, but to the extent that a layperson like myself can follow it, I am very encouraged by what I have seen in the last two years or so in this area. I see a proactive approach to create a new set of standards for software acquisition and implementation to follow, as Mr. Pickett said. And I think we are going to see the benefits of that for a long time.
I bring each of those points up in a context of the budget discussion, because one of the ways I think we can catch up to the shortfalls of the past few years is to maximize the leverage of these two concepts: Ride the back of the commercial progress that has been done, where appropriate; and then find ways to troubleshoot our problems and what we have already bought in a less expensive and more productive way.
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Having said that, I wanted to ask a question about information warfare, cyber terrorism, the work that Chairman Weldon has led on that. And I want to ask it in terms of the encryption debate that we have in an ongoing basis. I heard Dr. Fernandez talk about, you know, efforts through DARPA to stay several steps ahead of those who would do us harm through information warfare. And then, eventually, in other aspects of the military to use information warfare offensively. In your opinion, has the Administration made it easier or harder for us to maintain that edge given our more liberal policy now toward encryption export? I would care to ask anyone that question.
Secretary GANSLER. Let me take a shot at it, Frank. You might want to do it, too.
Mr. WELDON. Are you asking them for their personal opinion?
Mr. ANDREWS. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am asking for your personal view. I know the view of the Administration.
Secretary GANSLER. My personal view, and I think it is the Administration's view, is that we have made enormous strides over, literally, just the last two years in this area. I mean, I think we were not really stepping up to that area sufficiently in terms of defense for information terrorism or whatever you want to call it, which includes everything from hackers all the way through a nation states. And we have really made a major transformation; I think, frankly, both within the Department as well as within the Administration, because this is a question that goes well beyond defense alone. It covers law enforcement, so that whole spectrum—and I think having set up some centers, having greatly increased the amount of research, and this current budget has a significant increase for that, having just across the board tried to raise the awareness within the services. And if I look back a couple of years ago to this area, there was almost no research money, and some of the services even going on in this area. In a sense, it is almost an awakening that has taken place just in the last two years in this area. Now, having said that, Frank, you may want to comment on the encryption.
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Dr. FERNANDEZ. Yes. On a personal basis, we are developing a lot of tools. One of the difficulties we have now, because I think in any sensible research and development activity, one has to go to experimentation to find out how these things work at different scales. And one of the things we are groping with now is how do you do reasonable scale experiments to determine how well your information assurance tools work under the case of attack. We can't bring down our own Internet. And yet, a local network with 50 or 60 nodes doesn't give you the scale that you need to find out if things are going to work when you are talking about a network with hundreds of thousands of nodes.
One of the things we are starting to look at is how can you do experimentation to really learn how some of this stuff works once we have built it and tested it on a small scale—a major area for us now.
Mr. ANDREWS. My concern is—and I understand the delicacy of offering your own view—let me offer mine. I think the Administration should be commended, following the lead of this Committee, frankly, in bulking up the research in that area. I think you are right, that a few years ago this wasn't on the radar screen, and I think this Committee put it there—before I got here, the Committee put it there. But it strikes me as counterproductive that at the same time that we are investing more resources into outsmarting those who would do us harm, I think we are making it easier for them to get access to the tools to do us harm.
And I want to, again, state for the record something some of us have stated in this Committee before, that issues of national security should triumph issues of commerce. And I am very, very concerned that the recent trend toward liberalization in this area is dissipating some of the edge we have earned in the last couple of years and making it much more difficult and much more expensive for us to maintain that edge in the future. I commend you on what you are doing though. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. WELDON. Thank you. Doctor, did you want to add anything to that? Do you have any personal feelings?
Dr. ETTER. I would just add a couple of updates on some of the things we are doing. We have for 2001, $10 million identified specifically for basic research programs, looking at information assurance in areas that are related to this. So I think this is another move in the right direction, because most of that will go to universities, which is where a lot of the basic research is being done. I would also add, this is another area that we work closely with some of our allies in this area, because it is a concern internationally. And so we have some very strong programs with some of our allies to look at information technologies and the problems of understanding when one is under attack.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you. Mr. Sherwood.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Gansler, you highlighted that long-range, all-weather, precision munitions are critical to our future capabilities. And you know, with what we have all seen in the last few years, we certainly agree with you. What are we doing with regard to the development of these technologies that will make these weapons affordable?
Secretary GANSLER. In fact, that was exactly the point that I think we need to emphasize. And that is why in my oral statements I emphasized that affordability is probably the primary consideration right now, because I think we know how to make the weapons, but we have not yet figured out in a lot of areas is how to make them affordable. Some of them, we have been extremely successful in reducing the cost, the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), for example, has turned out through really an acquisition strategy more than almost anything else, not a technology but an acquisition strategy to significantly—dramatically, I would argue—reduce the cost of that weapon.
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Some of our other weapons are still too expensive, frankly, to get in the quantities that we need them. I mean, if you think about a ballistic or cruise missile defense system, you have to have quantities of them out there in order to fend against significant numbers of potential, even short-range, ballistic missile threats. And in that case, we have to figure out ways that the defensive system can be dramatically cheaper so we can afford to get more of them. And that is an area that we are focusing a great deal. In fact, some of our Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) research now is focused on trying to figure out lower-cost approaches. We have also put—frankly, put a little extra pressure on Dr. Fernandez to try to have DARPA focusing quite a bit on low-cost precision weapons, because I think that is the area where, if we can get them to be precise and low-cost, then you have got a major step forward. Frank, you may want to comment on that.
Dr. FERNANDEZ. Yes. It is a nice thing to say, but the question is how do you do it? One is with an acquisition strategy so you can buy better. The technical approach that we are taking, which is very risky, is can we take some of the intelligence out of the weapon and put it into the network targeting system. So the weapon gets an update. That is not a very complicated task for a weapon, but now, the surveillance network and the fire control network has enough precision to give the weapon, essentially, an update in flight so that then it can hit moving targets—a simple seeker, as compared to a very expensive seeker. And that is the major approach that we are doing. We are going to try to do that from space also. First from aircraft, and then if we can learn to do it, to do it from space—to look, to see if we can hit moving targets with precision by getting our targeting accuracy from the surveillance and tracking network, as compared to the missile. And that is what we are trying to see if it will work. Again, information technology is driving this. The networks are driving the ability to do this, whereas in the past, we couldn't do this kind of stuff.
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Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you. Last year I asked some questions about the future requirements for high-powered vacuum tube electronics, and I was wondering how we were coming on that. And also, what are our new developments and how are we doing in new directions with high-power semi-conductors.
Dr. ETTER. We do have programs in both of those, and our concern in both of them, that they are important areas for the Department of Defense, and typically, not programs of large commercial markets. So we have studies underway. One of these has just recently come through, where we are trying to decide what is the appropriate investment, and I am afraid I don't have the numbers in mind. I can get those for you. But we are looking at both of those as important areas that we have to continually make sure that we are doing the things to have what we need to keep our systems viable.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Could you communicate with me about—
Dr. ETTER. I will, yes.
Mr. SHERWOOD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Sherwood. Dr. Gansler, yesterday you met with Baroness Symons (of Vernham Dean), as did I, and I think Dr. Etter—I don't know whether, Frank, you did or not—from Great Britain, who is the Minister of State for Defense Procurement in Great Britain. They are going through a major privatization effort now of their Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) operation. It has become very controversial in the U.S. about where they are going. For the record—if you don't want to comment publicly, can you give us any concerns that you have, satisfaction you have? I have invited her to come back and testify, and I have invited the people heading up that change to testify so that we can better understand what they are doing. But if you have any comments on the organization of DERA and its implications on us, either now or for the record, maybe a more in-depth analysis, I would appreciate that.
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Secretary GANSLER. I would be happy to comment on it. We have been working on this. Dr. Etter, personally, has been working heavily on it and so have I. As you know, for a long period of time, we have had an extremely close relationship with the U.K., and we have shared technology, we have shared intelligence, we have shared legal systems, and so forth. And so it is very appropriate for them to ask for our comments about a major restructuring that they are going through in terms of their objective to try to either partially or fully privatize this outstanding world-class research establishment that they have.
Because it is so world-class and so outstanding, and because of the extreme cooperation we have had with them, we are doing some sensitive work in that laboratory as well, and historically, have been doing it in both the normal defense activities and in the intelligence activities. And so we want to be assured that the same security controls and the same lack of conflict of interest and so forth will remain after the restructuring. So we are working closely with them and simply making suggestions to them. It is obviously their choice of which way they are going to go, but because they are interested in maintaining the same good relationship we have had in the past, they have asked for our suggestions and advice.
We are confident that we will be able to work out an arrangement with them which will continue to protect the security, confidentiality, and proprietary nature of the work that is being done, while still allowing them in one form or another to move toward some kind of privatization. And that hasn't been finalized in their country, so as that evolves, we will continue to work with them, and we have got a good working relationship, so we are comfortable that we will know which direction they move and that we will be comfortable with it when they are finished.
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Mr. WELDON. Thank you. One of the programs that is coming under increasing scrutiny, not necessarily because of any problems with the program, but because of the pressures being driven by the dollar shortfall, in the tactical aviation area is the Joint Strike Fighter program. This Committee has been focusing on what we saw as a shortfall coming for the last five years, working with both Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and General Accounting Office (GAO), we saw the numbers and said we just can't in the current budget environment do all three programs at the level the Pentagon wanted to do them.
Some are now advocating pushing back or even canceling the Joint Strike Fighter program, so I want to give you a softball, Secretary Gansler, and let you talk about the importance of the Joint Strike Fighter program, if you believe it is important, and why we should not allow that program to slip or perhaps be compromised simply because of budgetary pressures.
Secretary GANSLER. I feel very strongly about this. I think it would be a catastrophe to allow it to be either slipped or canceled. And the reason is, primarily, the fact that we have a very big problem coming up in terms of the number of aircraft that we need. The Marines, obviously, are facing a very near-term replacement problem. The Air Force, though, is facing a large number replacement problem with the F–16's in terms of they are well beyond their intended age and will be certainly well beyond it in the out years. I mean, we now have an average age of our fighters in the Air Force about 20 years. These were designed for 15-year life, and by the time we get to the Joint Strike Fighter, it will be like 30 years. If you look out into the out years, you will see that the F–16's are dropping off and we have no replacement unless we have the Joint Strike Fighter coming in as planned. And even as planned, there is going to be a drop-off somewhat. And if it slips anymore than that, it is in serious trouble.
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Now, the problem is you can't replace that with the F–22 because of its high cost. The F–22 is a very critical air superiority aircraft. It is sort of like a silver bullet in terms of its high cost, and you don't buy a lot of those because of the cost, but you need some of them. On the other hand, the Joint Strike Fighter is designed to be both a high performance and a low-cost capability, including stealth. And it is clearly a next generation capability that we have designed to be low-cost, and so, therefore, can be bought in high quantity and, in fact, with our allies. It will be an international aircraft. We expect to build about 3,000 of them, and it is that large quantity that helps in terms of reducing the cost.
Trying to slip it, I think would be wrong because of the need that we have for the quantities. I think what we may well end up doing is having early deployment of a system that has extreme military value and then add to it later capabilities as the avionics and as the weapons systems evolve. But I definitely believe either—certainly, canceling it—we have no alternatives. And trying to delay it, I think would be a serious problem for us in terms of the air superiority that we require and the delivery capability that we require for the out years.
Mr. WELDON. Well, I agree with you. And as we discussed yesterday, the Marine Corp would especially be hampered by the lack of a Joint Strike Fighter because they need a replacement for their Harrier (AV–8B), so we have to have that. But there are some who, again, with the budget pressures we have, would rather make a short-term decision, which would cost us dearly, I think, in the future if we did something like cancel or even slip the program.
This Subcommittee has focused aggressively on the issue of information dominance and I want to commend you because your response has been, I think, more than adequate, as I said to Dr. Hamre, frequently. I, especially, want to again commend the Army's Land Warrior Information Activity (LIWA) facility. It is state of the art. I am convinced it is the best information dominance center that we have in the entire federal government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And that is why I have proposed that we establish a fusion center using that model that would—John Hamre has agreed could be funded by DOD, but would involve all 28 federal agencies who have an intelligence component so that all of our classified and unclassified data systems could be fused into one center where massive data mining could take place so that we can profile regions, and leaders, and threats to the command officers to make decisions about appropriate responses. Because information dominance is not just about protecting our systems, but it is about using information to help us in a warfighting mode or in a defensive mode. So I just want to encourage you to continue that effort.
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Dr. Fernandez, I think you mentioned the Sec. 1101 of Public Law 105–261 as a pilot program, or you did, Dr. Gansler. And we want to continue to help you there. In fact, we think the Administration should be doing more. In last year's defense bill, in our hearings—we are going to have another hearing next week on this issue, I think it is next Wednesday—I tried to convince the defense department to establish a program similar to what we have done for our medical personnel, where we bring young people in, give them undergrad and graduate degrees, with the stipulation they are commissioned in the service, much like we have done with doctors, and must serve the service for a period of four or five years. Because it is impossible for us to keep up with the software engineers that can go into the private sector and the other information dominance personnel when they can make three or four times in the private sector what we pay them.
So while I applaud you for the Section 1101, I think we have got a far broader issue. And I know the President just regionally proposed an Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program, and that is a good start. But I still think we ought to look at creating an entry level commissioned officer program to bring the next warfighters of the 21st century on board who are going to be the people who can help us in the field of information dominance and cyber terrorism. The other thing we suggested is that the DOD look at a Commander-in-Chief (CINC) cyber, someone who would have the full authority to deal with the issues of cyber terrorism and information dominance. They are moving in that direction but, still, we think that has got to be a primary focus.
I want to give you the chance, Dr. Gansler, to respond, publicly, to the concerns raised in a news article about weapons of mass destruction suits. Unfortunately, the information was not released. The appearance was that our soldiers are at risk. I met with you yesterday and you briefed us. Would you please give that briefing briefly today for the public.
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Secretary GANSLER. These were the chemical protection suits, that there was an article in the paper and also, I think, on the radio that had some misinformation in it. There were no people put at risk, none of our men and women in the services. There was no faulty equipment that was shipped overseas. We have full records of where all the equipment is. It is now planned only to be used for training, just to make sure. But the equipment has all been tested and checked out, and we are now, of course, replacing it with the next generation of systems as rapidly as we can. And so, the issue which was described in the paper is just simply false.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you. Dr. Gansler, in your testimony, I think it was your third strategical for R&D, you said it was to achieve rapid force projection, and global reach, and greater mobility, all of which I support you on fully. Both you and the Secretary have identified the new Army transportation as a key effort—transformation—as a key effort to pursue that goal. Would the Army's, what I would call small 16 percent share of modernization funds in fiscal year 2001, does DOD believe the Army has adequate funds to pursue your strategic goal as you have outlined?
Secretary GANSLER. It is going to be very difficult, because the Army is, as you suggest, going through a transformation and, yet, has to be ready to fight tomorrow at the same time. So the Army has to devote a significant share of its resources to the readiness of the current forces and the maintenance of the current equipment. In looking at the total distribution of the dollars, the Army has tried to balance that against this transformation and move rapidly—and I frankly think, extremely rapidly and very positively—to step out into this transformation. So we are very pleased with the initiatives that General Shinseki and Secretary Caldera have taken to move the Army rapidly towards this transformation, recognizing that they still have a good deal of resources that must go to the sort of day-to-day readiness issues that they have to face.
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Therefore, the balance of where they spend their money relative to trying to worry about the long-term future versus the short-term, in trying to balance that out, the Army has shifted its procurement account. I mean, frankly, if you look at fiscal year 1998, they had $7.3 billion set aside for procurement. In 2001, they have $10.4 billion, and in 2005, they will have $14.2 billion. They have, essentially, doubled the procurement over that time period.
That is quite impressive, given the resource constraints that we are living under. But nonetheless, they still have the overwhelming share of their resources devoted to the current readiness, current modernization of maintenance, essentially, of the older equipment. Naturally, if we were in a rich man's world, this is an area we would want to see much more money going into it. But I think, given the resource constraints, I think they have done a good job in balancing it.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Gansler, if we come up, magically, with some extra funds, would you support us adding money into the S&T account lines?
Secretary GANSLER. I never turn down money.
Mr. WELDON. Do you think that those account lines could use some extra funds?
Secretary GANSLER. Well, as I said, I think within the resources we had, we have balanced this well. I think we have a good solid program. If there were more money available, obviously, we would try to spend it as wisely as we can.
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Mr. WELDON. Dr. Etter, could you use some more money in the S&T account lines, both officially and personally, your opinion, please?
Dr. ETTER. Yes, to both. Thank you.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Fernandez, could we use some extra money in the S&T account lines, both officially and personally?
Dr. FERNANDEZ. Absolutely. I had to turn away a lot of good ideas this year. I just had to turn them away.
Mr. WELDON. How much—if you had a blank check, how much could we give you that you could spend wisely?
Dr. FERNANDEZ. At DARPA?
Mr. WELDON. Yes.
Dr. FERNANDEZ. I bet you I could usefully spend at DARPA, in addition to our present budget, I would say $100 to $150 million a year.
Mr. WELDON. How about you, Dr. Etter, any ballpark figures? This is off the record now. We are not talking about the President's budget. This is your wish list.
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Dr. ETTER. I think my focus would be on the basic research, 6.1 category, and I think we could easily put another $30 to $50 million wisely into that.
Mr. WELDON. You are a lot more conservative than I was thinking, but that is good. Do you want to add to that, Dr. Gansler? Come on, you can add to it. Let's get it up a little higher. You cut it by $1 billion from last year's appropriated amount. We have got to get close to that $900 million figure that is a shortfall. We are about half-way there.
Secretary GANSLER. It sounds like an auction here.
Mr. WELDON. Well, I agree with you, and we are going to work on that as a priority because we think it is a gross inequity. And we feel that that is the future seed corn for us, and we have got to put more money in there. I would ask you, Dr. Gansler—I have not asked you this question before, but for the record—we have done it for the other leaders—if you would give us your wish list, if we had extra money, where would you want it to be within your account lines? Dr. Fernandez, if DARPA had extra money, where would you want it within your jurisdiction? Dr. Etter, if we had extra money, where would you want it within your jurisdiction in a priority order?
Now, again, this is your personal request. We have asked the service chiefs to do the same thing. We have asked BMDO to do the same thing, so we are asking you to do the same thing. Give that to us for the record so as we deliberate over the next month, and do our markup, and if we feel that we can provide more money, we want to do it where you think it would do the most good.
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[The information referred can be found in the Appendix.]
With that, I have no further questions. Do you have anything else you want to ask? Anything else on Minority? We thank you for being here. Thank you for your service. You are all doing a great job. We appreciate it. We are just going to try to get you more resources. This hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:10 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
March 1, 2000
[The Appendix is pending.]