SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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??–???
2001
[H.A.S.C. No. 107–4]
HEARINGS
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002—H.R. 2586
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
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MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS
ON
TITLE II—RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION
HEARING HELD
JUNE 14, 2001
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
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Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
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SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
BOB RILEY, Alabama
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
KEN CALVERT, California
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida
RANDY J. FORBES, Virginia
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
MIKE THOMPSON, California
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
Harry Cartland, Professional Staff Member
Katherine Gordon, Staff Assistant
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C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2001
HEARING:
Thursday, June 14, 2001, Fiscal Year 2002 National Defense Authorization Act—Ballistic Missile Defense Testing
APPENDIX:
Thursday, June 14, 2001
THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2001
FISCAL YEAR 2002 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE TESTING
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
Meehan, Hon. Martin, a Representative from Massachusetts, Ranking Member, Military Research and Development Subcommittee
WITNESSES
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Kadish, Lt. Gen. Ronald T., Director, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, U.S. Air Force
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements submitted can be found in the hard copy.]
Hunter, Hon. Duncan
Kadish, Lt. Gen. Ronald T.
Meehan, Hon. Martin
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents submitted can be found in the hard copy.]
FBI Report of February 2001
Space-Based Laser Fact Sheet
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers are pending.]
Mr. Andrews
Mr. Hunter
Mr. Weldon
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FISCAL YEAR 2002 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE TESTING
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Research and Development Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, June 14, 2001.
The Military Research and Development subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. HUNTER. The hearing will come to order.
This morning, the Military Research and Development Subcommittee is going to receive testimony from Lieutenant General Kadish, director of our Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). General Kadish will review for the subcommittee the test records of our current ballistic missile defense programs. For each of our systems, he is going to help us understand what capabilities we have demonstrated to date and what remains to be accomplished on the road ahead.
The danger of an unauthorized or accidental launch of a nuclear ballistic missile at one of our cities by one of the major powers already possessing these weapons has been, as all members know, a constant concern. More recently, the proliferation of ballistic missiles has begun to pose a new threat to friends and allies and to our own troops deployed abroad. A lot of these nations acquiring ballistic missiles also have programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear warheads for them.
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Up until recently, the American homeland has enjoyed relative immunity to this new threat. But developing nations have begun to show the ability to stage missiles, the technological leap necessary to produce missiles of great range.
In spite of all this, we currently have no credible capability to defend against ballistic missiles. In fact, I know one of our first questions that I have always tried to ask the SecDef in the last six years is, ''Mr. Secretary, when they make their first appearance, do we have the ability to shoot down a single incoming ballistic missile coming in at one of our cities?'' And the answer is always no.
The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization has a number of programs to address this threat that are in various stages of maturity. Some of our lower-tier systems are making remarkable progress and will soon be moving to the field. Our upper-tier systems, which provide protection against longer-range and higher-speed threats, have been more of a problem. Even so, they have had some successes, too.
And we will hear today that hitting a bullet with a bullet—and that is a term that we hear a lot nowadays on the television debates and in the media—is a science, but it is not a science fiction. In fact, I have had our staff prepare—and, Harry, if you have our poster, you might hold this up at this time, because this is something—if you watch the array of talk shows today, you see people talking repeatedly about the impossibility of hitting a bullet with a bullet.
One thing that we are going to cover today, to lay that to rest, is the fact that eight out of eight times, with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC–3), we have hit a bullet with a bullet. And, in fact, we have hit a missile, a Scud C, going approximately 7,000 feet per second with a Patriot PAC–3 going about 4,000 feet per second, each of those considerably faster than a high-performance .30–06 rifle, which goes about 3,000 feet per second.
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So, not only can you hit a bullet with a bullet, we have been doing it repeatedly, and for some reason that hasn't seeped into the talk shows and the media debates that are ongoing.
Yet, General Kadish today is going to tell us about challenges that remain. And our ability to field urgently needed defenses has been hampered by insufficient hardware, inadequate ground testing and far too few opportunities to test in flight.
In addition, the sometimes overzealous scrutiny that has followed test failures in some of our more visible programs has not helped, but hindered progress. How can we expect our troops to become expert marksmen when we don't allow them to practice and we penalize them when they fail?
Failures are inevitable during the development process. What we learn on the test range from both our successes and our failures helps us to ensure that we will not fail when lives are at stake.
Missile defense needs our help. Each of us has our own ideas about what kind of defense is needed, how much is needed and when it is needed. These questions aside, a comprehensive and rigorous test program is the only way to guarantee that effective defenses will be available when they are needed.
Before we get started, I want to turn to my good friend and ranking member, Marty Meehan, for any comments that he might have.
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But I do want to let our members know, too, we are not asking General Kadish to come over here and lay out the budget for us. He is not able to do this at this time. But what he is able to do is to lay out what we have done so far. And the greatest manifestation of progress in the program is what has happened in the tests: What have we been able to hit? What have we missed?
And one thing that occurred to me as I have gone over the history of testing, not just missile defense systems, but lots of systems that we have tested in the last 10 to 20 years, that is in some cases we had dozens of tests without successes. And for some reason we have evolved now our testing system into a series of political events where enormous scrutiny is given tests and where there is a collective sigh in the news media when there is a miss.
In fact, I am told by many of our scientists that some of our best systems that we have tested many times without success, we learned more from the failures than we did from many of the successes.
And so one thing that I want to let my colleagues know is that my feeling is that we are not going to resolve the problems that I think exist with both sides of the missile defense question.
I think whether or not you believe Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) should be done away with or should be maintained, whether or not you believe that it is going to be possible to have a robust national missile defense, everybody agrees that we should test, see what kind of performance, get the best performance we can possibly get out of the defenses that are now evolving, that are now developing, and validate to our best ability possible the systems that we will have in place to protect not only our troops in theater, but also the millions of Americans living in cities in this country, some of whom are targeted today by nuclear weapons.
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So this is an opportunity for General Kadish to lay out what we have done so far and show the successes, show the failures, and let the members of the subcommittee and the full committee have a chance to ask him about the progress of each one of our developing systems.
So having said that, let me turn to my good colleague, the ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Meehan, the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, for any remarks he would like to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN MEEHAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MASSACHUSETTS, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And Mr. Chairman, also thank you to you for having the meetings we have been having on Wednesday morning with General Kadish and the other services to get ready for these and other hearings. They have been a great help, I think, to me and the other members as well.
This is my first hearing as the ranking member of the Research and Development (R&D) Subcommittee, and I guess we are starting off with a bang.
It is hard to think of a more timely topic for today's hearing than missile defense. I think I am the third ranking member that General Kadish has testified before, at least in his current capacity. And I am sure that General Kadish is looking forward to the day when missile defense hearings are purely routine. I don't think this is the day.
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The last administration proposed a limited ground-based missile defense system and a testing plan that complied with America's sworn international obligations. Even then not all members liked the idea, but everyone understood its intent.
This administration has not so much changed direction as velocity.
Before the review on missile defense, a review General Kadish chaired, the president and other administration officials were trumpeting the need to do away with the most fundamental international agreement ensuring American security, the Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) Treaty. And now we read of plans to accelerate deployment of not a full, tested defensive system, but a small piece of a system that hasn't been proven yet to meet what appear to be arbitrary deadlines.
For a long time, 2005 was the date we were told that a missile defense had to be in place to meet emerging threats. Now we hear about 2004 as being the date that we need to meet.
I am a little skeptical when it comes to missile defense. But it doesn't take a skeptic to understand that the point of deploying a small fraction of a unproven system might not be to shoot down missiles. It might be to shoot down a treaty.
We are here today to discuss testing. The existing plan for testing the proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system was designed to comply with the ABM Treaty. But the message we keep hearing is that the treaty inhibits testing. So either the treaty has changed or testing plans have.
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And I look forward, Mr. Chairman and General Kadish, to finding out which.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Meehan can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. I thank my colleague.
And General Kadish, without objection, your written remarks will be taken into the record. And thank you for being with us this morning.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. RONALD T. KADISH, DIRECTOR, BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE ORGANIZATION, U.S. AIR FORCE
General KADISH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is good to be here.
Mr. HUNTER. The floor is yours.
General KADISH. I would like to start out today using some visual aids. It may be a little bit awkward, but I think the nature of this hearing is such that it is important.
So I would like to start by explaining our approach to testing, describe some of the enabling technologies that we are dealing with and give you a summary of our progress to date. I will also talk about test infrastructure and how important it is to keep that infrastructure viable.
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Despite our high-profile test failures, we have made significant progress in demonstrating our critical technologies. Simply put, I see the glass as half full rather than as half empty, as some of our critics seem to view it.
Today, we are building on a prior investment, our hard work and lots of testing.
Most of the technologies we employ in our missile defense systems can be traced back 20 years or more. Computers critical to all aspects of the BMD mission have been smaller, more powerful, and use less energy. We have larger and more sensitive infrared focal plane arrays, lightweight cryogenic cooling, lighter inertial measurement instruments, lighter higher-capacity batteries, and miniaturized compulsion with extraordinary increases in thrust-to-weight ratios. Interceptors use lightweight structures and components.
I know that is a lot of technical jargon, but simply put, we have made an awful lot of progress in the technologies that underlie missile defense.
Tests have validated that these advances could be integrated into functioning systems. And together they synergistically combine to enable dramatic improvements in hit-to-kill capability. For example, the kill stage used in 1984 in the homing overlay experiment weighed 2,400 pounds. Today's exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, or EKV, is only 120 pounds. So you can see the progress we have made in miniaturization across the broad front of technologies.
While we have come a long way, we still have engineering work to do in areas such as target discrimination, algorithms, high-speed parallel computer processors for multi-color seekers, and automated battle management.
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Now taking those technologies, let me talk about our testing philosophy. Our testing philosophy recognizes that we must have a program for a comprehensive, developmental and operational testing that is both phased and integrated. Developmental testing helps us determine performance and capabilities and identify design problems very early. Later, operational testing helps us evaluate the effectiveness of missile defense systems in realistic operational environments.
We know from other test programs and our own experience that it is less risky to phase our tests sequence by starting with basic functionality and then adding complexities over time, such as counter-measures and stressful environments. Our test program must also be integrated where we use computer models and simulations, ground tests, flight tests and ultimately intercept tests. It is a proven walk-before-you-run, learn-as-you go, development approach to mitigate risks.
The costs of not going down this deliberate path of phased and integrated testing can be very high. If we rush to add complexity to our flight tests, or don't lay the right groundwork, we dramatically increase the uncertainty and the number of variables, thereby making it much more difficult to isolate causes of any failure and correct any deficiencies.
I do not believe it is very helpful to overplay either our successes or our failures. Failure is the price we pay as we develop and integrate very advanced technologies. Over the course of many years, we will experience successes and failures in our testing program. What we must understand is that one flight test, or for that matter even a series of flight tests, does not necessarily prove the viability of the system.
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For example, the Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program experienced 12 failures in the 2–1/2 year flight testing history. The Minuteman I missile program suffered 10 failures in its 3–1/2 year testing program. And the Corona Program to develop our country's first photo-reconnaissance satellite had to survive 12 failures and mishaps before we successfully orbited Discoverer 14.
In each of these cases, program support by our national leadership persisted despite the frustrations of early failure. In the end, these national priority programs all made a profound contribution to our security.
We have come a long way, but it is still rocket science. And building a reliable booster for our missile program continues to be a challenge. The lesson: We can expect problems to emerge during developmental testing; that is why we test.
Birthing a revolutionary system and making it useful is a tough engineering and integration job. When evaluating whether that system can viably perform its mission, we must look beyond isolated examples of testing failures and successes. Ultimately, judgments about overall effectiveness and reliability will require an integrated assessment of many things, to include performance in a testing program.
Now, Mr. Chairman, let me address some of our progress in something we call hit-to-kill or better known a hitting a bullet with a bullet, and tell you why I believe many of the failures we have experienced to date are due more to challenges in engineering and integration of the system than to an inadequate technology base.
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We can see this by looking at what we have done in something we call the end game, the final part of an interceptor's flight, when the guidance system on the kill vehicle acquires the target cluster, sorts the real target from the decoys and debris, executes terminal guidance and diverts maneuvers, and then arrives successfully as aim point to destroy the target. And we destroy the target through the sheer force of that collision. In other words, we are hitting a bullet with a bullet without explosive power.
If we don't reach that end game, we have no way of assessing the ultimate hit-to-kill performance.
If I could have the first chart please.
Many of the failures in our flight tests have occurred before we reached the end game, due to a variety of engineering problems. These must be corrected and we are going to work on that. Nevertheless, since 1984, when we do reach the end game, we have hit the target 15 in the last 17 times. And I would like to point out and walk through this poster a little bit to show you that.
Mr. HUNTER. Yes, that is a little busy, General, so walk it through and you might take us through in, kind of, a basic way with each of the missile systems.
General KADISH. All right. If you start at the bottom of the chart, it is divided into in the atmosphere, what we call endo-atmospheric, and out of the atmosphere, what we call exo-atmospheric battle space.
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And what we have depicted here are all the flight tests we have done on hit-to-kill since 1984. And you can see in the upper left-hand corner what we call the homing overlay experiment that I described earlier. That was 2,400 pounds of equipment, and what we are talking about on the right-hand side, in the upper right-hand corner, is what we have recently accomplished with our national missile defense testing that is a 125-pound vehicle.
Now depending on your perspective, you can arrive at different conclusions about this chart. Critics will look at this and see the glass as half-empty, because we have had a lot of failures; about half of the tests have been failures in terms of intercept. The critics will look and point out the failures we had over the years and talk not only about how what we are doing isn't that missile defense is difficult, but that it is impossible to do reliably.
From my vantage point, however, I see the glass as half full. We have made significant strides since the mid-1980s. In the broad scheme of things, we are still relatively early in the development of missile defenses. What I see here, especially when you look at the past few years, is a steady rise in the rate of our flight tests successes, and an accumulation of evidence that gives me confidence that we are on the right track.
So you can see when we reach the end game, we had 15 of 17 successes. And in the recent years, when we look at the lower endo-atmospheric, we have the Patriot-3 which hasn't missed yet. We are five for five in that program against theater ballistic missiles, and eight for eight against all types of targets.
Mr. HUNTER. General, you might describe in a broad way how close you have to be before you are considered to be in the end game. What does that mean again?
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General KADISH. I would describe the end game as when the kill vehicle actually reaches the point in time where it is under its own power and/or direction to hit the target.
So we have a basket, if you will, that the system in space has to achieve for that kill vehicle to actually perform its mission. And the end game is from that basket, that point in space where it could launch to do its seeker acquisition and its actual homing maneuvers, on to the actual intercept is what we call the end game, all right? And that is depicted on these charts with the square. So the point being that we have had, especially in the recent time period, some major successes.
Again, the PAC–3 interceptor technology has extended its successes even last month. We are now five for five, as I said, in body-to-body intercepts against theater ballistic missiles. In the Theater High Altitude Defense (THAAD) program, the higher altitude intercept program that we have, we failed to reach the end game in six straight tests, but when we did in the last two tests, we destroyed the target both times and I will talk more about that later.
Mr. HUNTER. Now, that is PAC–3?
General KADISH. That is THAAD.
Mr. HUNTER. That is THAAD.
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General KADISH. We are five for five with PAC–3 at low altitude. We are two for six, or two for two, depending on how you calculate it in the end game, with THAAD, and then the first time we did it in the high altitude exo-atmospheric intercept with our national missile defense kill vehicle, we had an intercept.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. As we walk through this thing, I want to make sure everybody, kind of, understands what we were and where we have gone. In Desert Storm, we were attacked with Scud missiles that were going about a kilometer and a half per second, right? About 1.5 k per second. That is 4,500 feet per second. So that is about 50 percent faster than a .30–06 bullet coming in.
I remember the hearings we had and we had an MIT scientist tell us that we had missed them all and we had the Army come in and tell us we had gotten 80 percent and the members here were left trying to figure out who was closest and maybe we were somewhere in between.
The PAC–3—and I want to get your opinion on this—we now have had eight out of eight successful shots with PAC–3, against about a 1.8 kilometer speed missile. So that is a little hotter than the Scud that killed our troops in Desert Storm.
In your opinion, do we now clearly have the ability, if you had an attack of 50 Scuds on an American troop concentration in Desert Storm, in a similar scenario, would we have the ability with fielded PAC–3 to defeat that attack? And if not fully, to about what degree, so we can get a sense of where we are as compared to where we were?
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General KADISH. With today's PAC–3, based on our progress in the test program, we would have the capability to effectively defend against the Scud missiles that you describe. The difficulty we have is that we don't have many of them deployed now because we are just in the early part of actually producing those systems. So there will be some time before we ramp up as rapidly as we can to rate production. So when the missiles are out there, they will be effective.
Mr. HUNTER. But you are confident that that type of ballistic missile—that slow ballistic missile, the Model T, if you will, the Scud—has been effectively met with an American defender that can handle them in the type of scenario that killed our troops in the Middle East?
General KADISH. That is what our test program has shown us.
Mr. HUNTER. Is that your personal opinion?
General KADISH. That is my opinion as well, otherwise I would not be supporting the PAC–3 movement into production as rapidly as we are.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Thank you.
General KADISH. So because of the results to date, I believe we haven't had the essential technologies to hit a bullet with a bullet as I just described. We don't need some technological breakthrough to achieve this hit-to-kill capability. What we require today and in the years ahead are constancy of purpose and continued sound engineering and testing discipline to accomplish this mission effectively, reliably and affordably.
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Now let me talk about the progress in missile defense in more detail, using this hit-to-kill technology. We are working on a number of fronts to develop and test ballistic missile defense capabilities to counter ballistic missiles of all ranges, and we are testing ballistic missile defense systems that will help us intercept these missiles in different parts of the flight path and we have made considerable progress.
Let me take a minute to show what a ballistic missile trajectory looks like so that we can talk about it in more detail.
This is a simple depiction from launch to impact on what a ballistic missile or part of a ballistic missile, the warhead, goes through. You have the boost phase, the mid-course and the terminal and the mid-course has ascend phase and a descent phase. It is like throwing a ball in the air; it will come down in a trajectory.
Now if you look at the boost phase part of this, that is when the rocket is under powered flight and closest to its launch point, obviously. Then it goes into outer space, becomes ballistic after about anywhere from 100 to 300 seconds of powered flight and coasts on its very high speed trajectory to an apogee in mid-course and then a descent into the terminal phase to re-enter the atmosphere and hit the target.
That trajectory occurs all the way from a few hundred kilometers to many thousands of kilometers with intercontinental ballistic missiles. So there is not only a trajectory associated with every ballistic missile, there is a range associated with it and therein lays the complexity and the difficulty of defending against a broad range of ballistic missile threats.
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So we cannot expect our intercept attempts in each one of the phases of these trajectories to always succeed. But we can improve our chances of success if we have missile defenses to attack the threat in each of the phases of the trajectory's flight. And actually, the earlier we can intercept a missile threat, the better.
The Air Force Airborne Laser Program, for instance, is designed to intercept during the boost phase. This is not a hit-to-kill system; it is directed energy. The National Missile Defense and the Navy Theater-Wide program are designed for mid-course intercept, where you have more time to actually intercept the missile, but you have to deal with countermeasures. The Theater High Altitude Defense (THAAD) and the PAC–3 and the Navy Area programs are in the terminal phase.
And a simple way to think about the defense against ballistic missiles in this context is if you can destroy a ballistic missile in its boost phase, you protect the world against a specific threat location, because in the boost phase, if you get it, it doesn't matter where it was going. If you are in the terminal phase, you are protecting a specific area or a point from any threat direction and that is also a part of the difficulty we have.
Now, with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to show a short video clip of some of our recent tests to demonstrate what we have been able to accomplish. And, again, we shouldn't focus in isolation on our failures, or, for that matter, in this case, our successes, but it is important, I think, to see the perspective of the glass half full, rather than it is half empty.
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What you will see in this series of successful flight test intercepts against short-, medium- and long-range missile threats—and this is a good place to underscore the fact that we need different missile defense capabilities to counter the things, as I said before.
The first clip will show a terminal phase intercept in the lower atmosphere, using the PAC–3. This was Developmental Test 6, which took place last year.
The next clip will go higher in the altitude and will show Flight Test 10 in the THAAD program, which is just below entering outer space. That occurred in 1999.
And the final clip will end by showing Integrated Flight Test 3, which was conducted in the National Missile Defense Program in October 1999.
Mr. HUNTER. Are you going to talk us through these?
General KADISH. I will talk through it.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. So why don't you begin showing the video?
General KADISH. The first one, as I said, was Patriot-3. You will see the target launch. That is notable because in every one of these, we have to have a target.
The target launched, and then we will switch to the Patriot battery at White Sands and you will see the launch of the Patriot-3, where it will be guided through its maneuvers, accelerating to find the target and to get into that basket that I talked about earlier. And just as it gets into its basket, you will see a bunch of white smoke coming out the side, that will indicate that the thrusters were firing to get the final aimpoint against that incoming target.
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And here it goes. That is hitting a bullet with a bullet. There was no explosives on that PAC–3; it was sheer force of the impact that had it go.
Now we are moving upward in terms of the altitude. That is the THAAD target launch. And here is the THAAD missile. And you can see we have an energy dissipation maneuver to keep it on the range, because it is a very fast missile, and you can see it climbing toward the target.
As it separates its warhead, you will see the warhead approaching the target, and they will be labeled here. And you can see the THAAD warhead maneuvering to intercept the Hera target complex coming in, and that is hit-to-kill.
Mr. HUNTER. How fast was the Hera going?
General KADISH. The Hera was duplicating a Scud C from high altitude.
Mr. HUNTER. So it is going about 1.5, 1.8 kilometers a second.
General KADISH. Right. I would rather not get into the detail of the actual speeds, because you get into classified information.
This is such a high altitude over White Sands that you could see that from Albuquerque, about 500 miles away. So this is, again, a demonstration of hit-to-kill.
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Now, the next flight test is the intercontinental range going into the mid-course much higher and will occur in outer space. But before we do that, just to show you the accuracy, these are the final images that seeker saw, and it gives you a chance to see how accurate we can place that target in the sights of that interceptor.
Here is the target being launched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, going into space, 4,000 to 5,000 miles down range. So we are going from shorter to longer range in our targets.
This is the interceptor at Kwajalein Island that will rise to put the warhead in the basket. And the warhead, what we call the EKV, exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, will maneuver to intercept the target. And this is pretty high in outer space. So that is the target. And you can see the interceptor approaching it and hitting it very accurately.
Now, I will show these in somewhat more detail. Now, I will show these in somewhat more detail. Now, we have had failures. But what I am trying to do here is to show you that we have also had successes of the basic technologies of hit-to-kill.
So let me now talk about Patriot-3 and go through each one of these systems in a little bit more detail to tell you where we are. When fielded later this year, Patriot-3 will provide the needed capability to defend our forward-deployed forces, allies and friends against existing and growing short- and some medium-range missile threats. It is the most successful program we have to date, in large part due to the disciplined, walk-before-you-run testing approach that we have.
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Mr. HUNTER. I might say to the members we have apparently 10 minutes on this vote.
General, you have about another five minutes of testimony before questions?
We will go ahead and finish the general's testimony here, it will give us about five minutes to go, and then we will start with questions immediately upon resuming.
So go ahead, General. Paraphrase where possible.
General KADISH. Okay. This gets very technical, but I want to be sure we covered a lot of this stuff.
Could you put up the Patriot-3?
The Patriot program is a good example of the walk-before-you-run testing approach. We raised the bar for PAC–3 after each flight test. We started with the straightforward flight of the PAC–3 missile to test the airframe responses, a test that included no target and was not intended to intercept anything. Once we understood the basic aerodynamics, the missile itself, the target was included to test the characteristics of the seeker and to understand the intercept end game in benign conditions.
Increasingly more complex targets, trajectories, environments were added to include cold and hot conditioning of the missile, helix maneuverings of the target, additional objects in the seeker field of view, salvo launches and multiple simultaneous engagements. So we went from very simple to very complex over time in those tests. And what this shows is the fact that in the last test we actually did what I showed you on the film.
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Navy Area is following the same test philosophy, but is much more early in its test program. We have just done some actual proof-of-concept type flight test. It uses blast-frag as opposed to hit-to-kill, but we expect that by the winter of 2001 we will be in our next test program, and then followed by that later in 2002 with aggressive at-sea testing. Again, we will be using the walk-before-you-run approach.
Could you put the next chart up again?
The THAAD was designed to counter short- and medium-range ballistic missiles through hit-to-kill technologies, as I said, and as a prime example of how, when we stray from proven principles of testing, we are more apt to fail. In sharp contrast to the PAC–3, we initially embarked on an aggressive approach in THAAD and took to what we thought were prudent shortcuts.
The original THAAD program goal was to field a system that met all operational requirements in one design and development cycle. At the same time there was the urgency placed in delivering an interim emergency capability as soon as possible. This schedule pressure, combined with cost overruns, led to shortcuts early in the design, fabrication and quality control processes and the neglect of sound ground testing.
We had focused on schedule and took risks that skipped essential steps in the process. And that led to a string of six flight test failures, several program restructures and additional delays. In retrospect, ground testing in the THAAD program was not rigorous enough and we paid the price.
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But in the summer of 1999, we fixed as much as we could of the program, and this is the result. And I showed you this in the film, but I wanted to make it clearer to the members here. These are the last frames that the seeker saw prior to impact. And it can show you basically two things. One is the accuracy that we are getting out of our system in the hit-to-kill technologies, because you have to have the seeker get that close and to aim at a specific spot.
But it also shows you that the test infrastructure today that we have, in order to get these images right before impact, micro-seconds before impact, and the investment we have made that produces this fascinating detail, has paid off, and we need to continue that.
Navy Theater-Wide had some basic problems as well in their early flight tests activities, but we are on track to produce those. In the National Missile Defense Program, as I said, we are three flight tests into it, but we are one for three in terms of intercepts. But we have learned an awful lot from our failure. And we are taking a walk-before-you-run approach with this program, despite some of the criticism we have taken about not making our earlier flight tests more complex.
So in the overall look at this, I believe that we have the technologies set in the flight test program that when I look at it we have much more positive results than we do negative. But we have an awful lot of challenges ahead of us. And the test infrastructure is not the least among the challenges. We need to have much more robust test infrastructure as we go forward; even though it is adequate for today's needs, we will need to invest more significantly for the future.
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And at this point, Mr. Chairman, I would like to curtail my remarks in the interest of time and go back and redraw these circles, if you would like, during the question-and-answer period.
[The prepared statement of General Kadish can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much, General Kadish.
And what I think, why don't we go ahead and break for this vote. We have a couple of them. And we will come back and we will start with Mr. Meehan as soon as we get back.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. HUNTER. General Kadish, thanks for waiting, and continuing the hearing with us here. You have given us a pretty good status report on the test to date.
We will now move to questions, and I am going to reserve my questions until the end. So I recognize Mr. Weldon for such time as he might desire. I tell my colleagues we are not going to operate under strict five minutes, so take the time you think is necessary to ask the questions and we will try to get full questions, full answers.
Mr. WELDON. I thank the chairman for yielding.
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And General, it is great to see you here and to work with you. You are doing an outstanding job and I and I think all of our colleagues have complete confidence in your leadership.
I appreciate the briefing, and I think you have laid out the facts. The most important thing that I can get across today, and I have a number of questions, but I will only do a few at the beginning and then come around. Hopefully if the chairman does a second round, I will come back with some others.
The key thing right now are the facts, because those who follow these programs understand that the opponents of missile defense are basing their assumptions on misleading or in some cases outright false information. And so the key factor for us is to simply present the facts.
In the last several sessions of Congress, we have had 10 or 15 public hearings a session. I hope my colleague and chairman plans to do the same this year, because the best thing we can do is to have people like you come in, discuss what we are doing, the threats that are out there, what the adversaries are doing, so the American people can see things factually, as opposed to rhetoric.
Part of what I am going to do either now or later on in my statement will be to ask you questions based upon a one-hour special order that was done on Tuesday night by some of our colleagues.
And I am going to do that because I want to pick apart their misinformation. Because when they say these things on the floor of the House uncontested in the dark of the night, then the American people might, in fact, think they are true, or people might quote from them. So later on, I am going to try to get into those factual responses to the statements they made.
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We have also got to take the message back to the American people. And as you know, we are doing a major outreach effort this year. We are running conferences around the country; the first will be in Valley Forge at the end of the month. I met with the vice chairman of the European parliament yesterday. We are doing a series of events over in Europe with parliamentarians there. Because when you lay out the facts, I think everyone understands the need to move forward. And we are also doing the same thing with our colleagues.
The first thing I would like to ask you about, General, as you know, last year, at the height of the presidential race, there were a group of about 50 of our colleagues who signed a letter—and I don't think any of them were on this committee—asking for an FBI investigation because there were allegations that you were, in fact, lying; that you were denying information.
Now, that was a lot of rhetoric. There was a big press conference over in the House Triangle. Members got out and ranted and raved and waved their arms in the air because they had evidence that BMDO was not telling the truth, and the Defense Department was denying information to the American people.
Are you aware, General, of what the FBI did in February of this year?
General KADISH. They were involved and came and interviewed all of us, and to the best of my knowledge a report has been issued, and the gist of the report is that it is basically a scientific argument, and has nothing to do with fraud or any other kind of activity.
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Mr. WELDON. Well, you are absolutely correct, and if the chairman will, I would ask unanimous consent to insert the FBI report of February, 2001, which, in fact, clears BMDO and clears the Justice Department, and basically states on the record there was no fraud, there was no misstatement of facts. And that, in fact, the claims put forward by one disgruntled professor from MIT, who has his own agenda for missile defense, in fact, have been proven wrong. It is important that we state that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Now, I haven't heard any clamorings by those 50 members of Congress that, in fact, their assessment was incorrect. And I haven't heard them apologize to you or to the Defense Department for trying to mischaracterize the good job that you have done. But I think it is important for members to know that.
General, the reason why we are moving into missile defense is because the threats are emerging so quickly. Is it safe to say that over the past 10 years we have seen technology move more quickly from states like China and Russia to unstable nations like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea? Is it safe to say that there has been a dramatic increase in that technology?
General KADISH. Yes, Congressman, the way I look at intelligence data, I see the evidence of the proliferation quite starkly, especially as the chairman refers to it, the Model Ts, the Scud missile technology, is proliferating. And that, I think, is to be expected to some degree, because there is an awful lot of information over the past 50 years on how to do this type of technology. After all, it is based on the World War II V–2 German capability.
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So although it is rather ancient in regard to modern standards and technology, it is still very destructive. So we have to worry about that. And any proliferation of these types of activities and technologies is worrisome to us.
Mr. WELDON. General, the missile that killed the 28 young Americans in Desert Storm in Dahrain, what kind of missile was that and what country did it come from?
General KADISH. It was a Scud missile, the kind I just referred to, and it came from Iraq.
Mr. WELDON. If you wanted to improve that missile, what kind of technology would you want to acquire?
General KADISH. Well, that is a wide-open question. Any technology that would advance the state of the art.
Mr. WELDON. Would it include guidance systems?
General KADISH. Guidance systems.
Mr. WELDON. And what is the heart of a guidance system? What kind of components would that involve?
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General KADISH. It would involve computerization, miniaturization of computers, highly accurate, gyro-inertial systems.
Mr. WELDON. A gyroscope? How about an accelerometer?
General KADISH. Accelerometer is definitely required.
Mr. WELDON. Are you aware of whether or not we caught nations giving that kind of technology to Iraq over the past several years?
General KADISH. There is a whole host of proliferation activities going on, and I know that they are going on. I wouldn't want to be specific at this point.
Mr. WELDON. Aren't there arms control regimes that are supposed to stop that proliferation?
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. WELDON. In fact, General, I think you are aware that in 1995, we caught the Russians transferring accelerometers and gyroscopes to Iraq. In fact, I have one of each that I carry around the country. This is a Soviet gyroscope off an SSN–19. Do you know the range of an SSN–19, approximate?
General KADISH. I can't recall at this point.
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Mr. WELDON. About 10,000 kilometers?
General KADISH. It is in the continental range.
Mr. WELDON. It could hit any city in the U.S.?
General KADISH. Yes.
Mr. WELDON. And this is an accelerometer from that same SSN–19. Now these were caught being transferred to Iraq not once, not twice, but three times. Are you aware of whether or not we imposed sanctions on Russia?
General KADISH. It is a little bit out of my lane, Congressman. I am a developer.
Mr. WELDON. But are you aware of whether we did or not?
General KADISH. I am not aware.
Mr. WELDON. Well, I can tell you, General, we didn't. We caught the Russians three times transferring this technology. In fact, over 100 sets of these devices were given to the Iraqis to improve the very missile that sent 28 young Americans home in body bags.
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So it is a little bit disingenuous to say that there is not a threat there. And in fact, the problem is, in my opinion, that we allowed that threat to be increased, because we could have stopped it. But for the past nine years, we ignored 28 times the transfer of technology by Russia and China to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan would not have medium-range missiles today if Russia and China had not been supplying them with the component technology as well as their nuclear program.
Now the arms control advocates in this city, they are great. Perhaps there are some in the room. They claim we don't need missile defense; we can solve this problem through arms control treaties alone. Now, I am not against arms control regimes; I think all of us support them. But you have to enforce them.
You know, General, I think sometimes the very arms control groups in this city cause the hysteria that causes misinformation and opposition to missile defense. Next week, we will host 12 Russian Duma deputies for meetings with our colleagues in the Congress to discuss a broad range of issues, one of which is missile defense.
At the height of our debate on missile defense two years ago, one of my good friends from Russia, a leading academician, Dr. Yevgeny Velikhov, from the Kurchatov Institute, came to my office and he brought this magazine.
He said, ''Curt, I know what America is trying to do with missile defense, and I agree with you. We need to change the dynamic from threatening each other to protecting each other.'' He said, ''We are doing that in Russia. We have an ABM system. We have the best theater missile defense systems that you can build today.'' He said, ''But the people in Russia are fearful of what your real intent is.''
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I said, ''What do you mean, Yevgeny?''
He said, ''Well, look at this story in Time magazine. There is a two-page spread in here, it is called 'Star Wars: The Sequel'.''
Do you remember seeing this, General?
General KADISH. I don't recall.
Mr. WELDON. February, 1999. And in this two-page story on missile defense, up in the corner is a chart—you can't see that chart, it is too small. So I had it blown up. In a story on missile defense, the very arms control organizations in the city, who claim to be for stability, put a chart in that is being read by every Russian citizen in every Russian city because they do get Time magazine.
And what does the chart say? ''Arms control advocates map the Pentagon's top secret plan to wage war against Russia: 1,200 warheads.'' Read the bottom, ''The vast spread of radiation would wipe out more than 20 million Russian people.''
My friend from Russia said, ''Curt, you don't have a problem with the scientists who understand what you are doing. It is those people in your country who are the arms control advocates and the media who scare our people into believing that you really want to take over our country and kill 20 million people.'' And you can't read down there where my staffer's hand is, but let me give the appropriate credit to the appropriate group: Natural Resources Defense Council.
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Just as we have one scientist from MIT who thought he had all the answers, and convinced members of Congress to file FBI charges against the general were wrong, we have to refute that.
And that is why we have a group of 20 scientists, none of whom work defense companies, and none of them work for the government, who have volunteered to become a truth squad.
Now I have another chart here. I want to show the picture of Russia in 1999. We went from 1992—and I am going to close with this and I will ask to come back to a second round—you know, we are hearing all this rhetoric about, ''We are going to destabilize our relationship with Russia and China.''
When you see people in the streets of Moscow, they are throwing weapons at the American embassy. They are burning the American flag. They are putting a swastika sign on the American flag; 20,000 people outside the American embassy in Moscow. In 1999, just seven years after Boris Yeltsin stood on that tank outside the Russian White House and proclaimed a new relationship, America and Russia together.
Why would the Russians be doing—was it because of missile defense? No. Nobody there was talking about missile defense. It was because of the way we handled NATO expansion. It was because of the way we brutally went into Kosovo, without consulting with the Russians and backed them into a corner. And it was because we ignored the theft of billions of dollars of International Monetary Fund (IMF) money that was supposed to go to the Russian people, but we were so enamored with Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin that we ignored what was happening and so the Russian people went out against us.
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And so for those who say that somehow we are trying to recreate the Cold War, remind them of this picture. The Russians that I deal with don't, in any way, shape or form, think that missile defense is the key problem. It is the lack of trust that they have lost. In fact, three times over the past nine years we sent the wrong signal to Russia on missile defense.
General, are you aware of the Ross-Mamedov talks, when they existed in 1992?
General KADISH. Yes, I am.
Mr. WELDON. What were those talks, just briefly?
General KADISH. They were talks between the U.S. and Russia on missile defense activity.
Mr. WELDON. Missile defense. And they were started by what two presidents?
General KADISH. Bush and Yeltsin, I believe.
Mr. WELDON. Bush and Yeltsin. In 1993, what happened to Ross-Mamedov?
General KADISH. As far as I know, they no longer continued.
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Mr. WELDON. The talks were canceled. They were canceled by the American side.
How about in 1996, General? Are you aware of an attempt by our government to cancel the program called RAMOS?
General KADISH. Yes, I am.
Mr. WELDON. What is the RAMOS program?
General KADISH. RAMOS stands for Russian-American Observation Satellite. We have been trying for seven years to have a cooperative development program in sensor technologies.
Mr. WELDON. Now, you weren't at the BMDO then, but which side decided they would cancel the program?
General KADISH. I think it came from our evaluation of the technology at the time.
Mr. WELDON. In fact, it did. And without any advanced warning to Russia, we announced we were canceling the program. Democrats and Republicans came together. Is the program being funded today?
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General KADISH. As a matter of fact, we have ongoing intense relationships with the Russians over this program and reinstituted it. And in the current budget, we have close to $340,000, I believe, against that program.
Mr. WELDON. But the administration tried to cancel it in 1996? In fact, they did cancel it. It was the Congress that restored the funding.
General KADISH. There was an awful lot of controversy about it.
Mr. WELDON. And the third signal we sent to the Russians was in 1997, when we sent our negotiators to Geneva to negotiate two tightening amendments to the ABM Treaty. Are you aware of those two protocols?
General KADISH. You are talking about the demarcation?
Mr. WELDON. Yes, and the multilateralization.
General KADISH. Right.
Mr. WELDON. Now, I went to Geneva. I think I am the only member that went over there and sat across from the Russian negotiator. And I asked the Russian side, ''Why would you want to multilateralize the ABM Treaty? Why do you want to bring in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine?''
He looked at me and said, ''Congressman, we didn't propose that; your side did.''
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General, let me ask you this question: If you wanted to multilateralize the ABM Treaty, would it make it more difficult to amend the treaty?
General KADISH. Congressman, I am not a treaty expert.
Mr. WELDON. But in your own opinion, do you think it would? If you had five nations, instead of two, that are signatories, would it make it more difficult?
General KADISH. I think that is obvious.
Mr. WELDON. Well, perhaps there were those who were so enamored with the treaty, on the American side, that we tried to convince the Russians to multilateralize it, and we convinced them that was our position.
And then we came up with this artificial demarcation, which differentiated theater versus national missile defense. I could not, for the life of me, understand where the figures came from for interceptor speed and range until a year after I came back, and a CIA analyst came over and talked to me about the ENT 2500. Do you know what that system is, General?
General KADISH. That is a Russia air defense system.
Mr. WELDON. Is it a good system?
General KADISH. From what I know about it, yes.
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Mr. WELDON. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the Raytheon people told me if it could do what they said it could do, it is equal to our PAC–3. Do you share that assessment?
General KADISH. At this point, I am a little bit biased toward the PAC–3 system.
Mr. WELDON. But if it did what the Russian say it could do.
General KADISH. If people do what they say they are going to do with it, it is a good system.
Mr. WELDON. Now, what I found out, interestingly enough, General, the negotiation we got sucked into a year earlier had a limitation, in terms of speed to intercept. When I had the CIA analyst come over and tell me about the ENT 2500, he handed me a full-color brochure that was written in English that the Russians were using to market that system to the Greeks and the Israelis. On the back page were the capabilities of the system.
Guess what, General? The demarcation was right above the threshold of a system the Russians had not yet marketed, but a year later would be selling to the international community. Isn't that interesting?
General KADISH. Yes, sir.
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Mr. WELDON. Now, the administration never sent those two protocols to the Senate for three years for their advice and consent, yet, the Russians were convinced that that was the position of America. It wasn't until the Russian Duma attached some of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) II Treaty last spring that the Senate said, ''No way are we going to consider START II, because you put on two unrelated protocols that would tighten up the ABM Treaty.''
In my opinion, General, that is the reason why the Russians don't trust it. And if I were a Russian today, I wouldn't trust us either because we have sent mixed signals on missile defense. We are not backing them into a corner. We just haven't had our act together, in terms of being straight and up front with them. And we can, in fact, work together because the Russians are very successful.
Does Russia have an ABM system today?
General KADISH. Yes it does.
Mr. WELDON. Have they upgraded three or four times?
General KADISH. Yes.
Mr. WELDON. They have.
You think if Russia believed in missile defense they would take down that system?
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Let me ask you this: Under a communist system in 1972, wouldn't it be easy for the leaders to decide they would only protect one city?
General KADISH. I wouldn't presume to understand that, but yes.
Mr. WELDON. Are you aware that the bulk of the Russian population lives in and around Moscow?
General KADISH. As I recall, somewhere around 18 percent.
Mr. WELDON. So if the Russians picked one city, which happened to be their capital, and ignored the rest of the country, they could get away with that because it was a communist dictatorship.
For President Bush to decide that we are going to protect one city in America is political suicide. What city is it going to be? Is it going to Mobile, Alabama, or is it going to be Los Angeles, California?
The ABM Treaty in the year 2001 has no relevance.
General, these are a few of the facts that have to be brought out. And I would encourage my chairman to hold a number of hearings so that we can have a factual discourse, not at the dark of the night when we can get up on the floor and rant and rave without having someone challenge us, but with you sitting here so we can put it on the record so the American people can see the truth, not through the eyes of Dan Rather or Mike Wallace, and not through the eyes of some of our liberal groups that want to scare the Russian people, but through the direct eyes of those people who are charged by the American taxpayers with leading us to defend our people and our country.
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Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Weldon.
And we will let the general get ready for you on the second round. [Laughter.]
General, you will have to do a little preparation.
But thank you for a very thorough question.
And now, let me recognize Mr. Meehan, the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, ranking member.
Mr. MEEHAN. And if we do rank which cities we are going to protect first, we probably should start with the oldest.
Mr. HUNTER. You have five minutes.
Mr. MEEHAN. Boston might be a good place to start.
General Kadish, thank you very much for your presentation and the video, and thank you for your service to our country. We appreciate it very much.
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I have a couple of questions on the hit-to-kill technology. Isn't hit-to-kill in space, with decoys and multiple warheads and a difficult thermal environment, an entirely different proposition from hitting a Scud-class target in the atmosphere?
General KADISH. There is a different problem. And as I pointed out, in terms of the trajectory, the terminal phase has some advantages in that there are less countermeasures that could survive a re-entry into the atmosphere. But there are countermeasures to hit-to-kill inside the atmosphere; for instance, maneuvering targets and other types of activities. But as you get into space, where we have the mid-course, the ascend phase and a descend phase in outer space, the major problem you have to deal with there are high speeds, multiple warheads and countermeasures; that is correct.
Mr. MEEHAN. The videos show us that when you hit something head on, you get a big bang and, obviously, that would be true for locomotives going in the opposite direction on the same track. But isn't the problem getting on the same track? How much of hit-to-kill is a sensor problem versus the physics of the kill vehicle?
General KADISH. Well, the whole problem of doing hit-to-kill in very, very high closing velocities, in excess of 15,000 miles an hour, is the technology we are trying to prove.
So you have to have sensors that are sufficient to acquire targets at long range, as long range as you can; you have to have propulsion systems that can maneuver the target very rapidly in very rapid impulses to be very precise; and, then you have to have computers to make all that happen in microseconds in order to hit the target accurately enough to destroy it, so it is a major challenge.
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That is why we are concentrating so heavily on testing these technologies, both inside and outside of the atmosphere. We want to see if we can do it and we have. We want to see then if we can do it reliably; that is the challenge before us. And then we have to see if we can do it reliably in the face of countermeasures.
Mr. MEEHAN. Realistically, General, you can use hit-to-kill, you can use a fragmentary, a nuclear warhead or you can use directed energy. BMDO is already at work on two out of the three. Does this commercial for hit-to-kill reflect any reduction in support for directed energy work?
General KADISH. No, Congressman, it doesn't. In fact, we are aggressively supporting the directed energy work, especially of the airborne laser. The presentation today, what I was trying to point out is that the earliest activity we have in hit-to-kill, we have been working at it for some time and it is kind of our centerpiece of kill mechanism, and should we be successful with directed energy, we will add that to the mix and it could be a very powerful combination to solve this problem.
So it is not just one or the other, it is both.
Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, General.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
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Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, in looking at the chart that you brought with you to help us understand the successes and failures of the tests that have occurred to date, in terms of PAC–3 the results look fairly impressive.
And let me just ask you, during Desert Storm, when we were both defending cities in Israel as well as our own troops in Saudi Arabia, one of the issues that became fairly evident was that the—I don't know whether they were decoys or just broken up parts of missile that accompanied the warhead in toward the target caused quite a problem. Has that been solved?
General KADISH. Well, we solve it with a couple of means: improvements of our sensors, the actual hit-to-kill capability, and then in our shooting doctrine where we will shoot at all the credible objects in the threat complex. So we believe we have a handle on that at this point.
Mr. SAXTON. And this chart depicts five out of five successes, 100 percent success rate in the last five tests; is that correct?
General KADISH. That is correct. Now, these are only for the theater ballistic missile. The PAC–3 has the capability against other targets and the last three tests that make up the eight tests that we have done are against those other types of targets, and they also were successful.
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Mr. SAXTON. So we are looking at targets more sophisticated than Scuds?
General KADISH. We are looking at, basically, cruise missiles and aircraft targets, yes.
Mr. SAXTON. And cruise missiles are relatively slow?
General KADISH. They are slow. They fly like an airplane, but at very low levels, and that is why we call them cruise. They are kind of the same idea as the V weapon the Germans used, the buzz bomb, if you will. But they could be very crude like the Scud, or they could be very sophisticated like the ones we possess.
Mr. SAXTON. So in terms of the low endo-range that we are testing in, our success rate has been very good during the last decade.
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. SAXTON. In the demonstration film that you provided for us with regard to the THAAD tests, does the technology that was developed in PAC–3 transfer to the defensive systems in THAAD?
General KADISH. Some of it does. The PAC–3 uses radar as a seeker basically, and that has proven to be very effective. The THAAD weapon system uses infrared basically as its seeker, so it is different types of technologies, but the phenomenology and some of the algorithm activity is transferable. So there have been lessons learned that come as a result of that.
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Mr. SAXTON. Is the infrared tracking done from a ground station or is that part of the defensive device itself?
General KADISH. It is actually in the warhead. So what happens with THAAD is the X-band radar system, is the seeker we use—it is ground-based—is the seeker we use for surveillance and tracking that guides the missile into the basket to release the kill vehicle warhead, and then the warhead actually seeks out the target using infrared seekers and maneuvers to intercept it. So that is fundamentally the way it works.
Mr. SAXTON. Ten years ago, we were having very limited success, it seems to me, or at least the demonstrations that I saw in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. We were having very limited success with then Patriot, it is fair to say.
General KADISH. That is correct. Because it wasn't designed to do that.
Mr. SAXTON. It was designed for airplanes, correct?
General KADISH. We stretched the design margin to do ballistic missile defense from PAC–2. What we did with PAC–3 was we designed it from the ground up to handle the ballistic missile threat.
Mr. SAXTON. So how much of the last decade was required to get from a system that didn't perform as we may have expected it to perform to, to the demonstration level that you have now been able to attain in PAC–3? How long a period was that?
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General KADISH. I believe I calculated around eight years. And despite our successes with PAC–3, we have had schedule and cost problems with that program, and it is fundamentally three years late, because we went and fixed a number of things and ran into some problems.
So, again, I am not trying to overstate the success we had, although it has been good, but we have had some problems programmatically birthing the system.
Mr. SAXTON. Now, you are beginning to exhibit some success in THAAD, is that right?
General KADISH. We had success in late 1999 with two THAAD successes. That gave us confidence enough in the basic functionality of using that system in the range of atmosphere we are talking about, we put it back into redesign. We learned enough about that system to correct an awful lot of the deficiencies that we saw. So that is ongoing right now.
Mr. SAXTON. Would it be fair for someone to speculate that the track of success that you had in PAC–3 might be followed with a similar track of success in THAAD?
General KADISH. In the program we have put together to go forward, we have put all the lessons learned I know how to put into the structure of that program. So we have funded the ground testing. We have funded the test assets. And we have funded the disciplined approach that we used, modeled by PAC–3, into the program.
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And although we are still early and less than a year right now into that phase, the early indications are it is starting to pay off and the indicators are going in the right direction.
We will not have a flight test, however, until around calendar year 2004. But we will have an awful lot of ground tests and component tests that are critical to us starting a flight test program with some success that are ongoing right now. They look good right now.
Mr. SAXTON. When you say you see the glass as half full, are you saying that, in your opinion, we are going to experience the successes in THAAD in a similar way that we did with PAC–3?
General KADISH. I am working every day to make that happen. A lot of talented people around the country are working on that as well, to make sure that we can enter that flight test program with every chance of success.
Mr. SAXTON. Do you believe the technologies that are being developed and employed in THAAD are transferable to upper tier?
General KADISH. As you walk up from the low atmosphere into outer space, I do believe that a lot of this is transferable, especially from THAAD into the more longer range system that we used to call national missile defense.
So, in fact, there are an awful lot of lessons learned that we are endeavoring to share. And, in fact, some of the solutions will be shared as well to these problems. There is a lot of work to do in that area, and there is not as much going as I would like to. But to answer your question, it is traceable and transferable to a large degree.
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Mr. SAXTON. The last tier of protection under development is the boost-phase tier, if you will. And you stated that your efforts are largely carried out with airborne directed energy. Can you just say a word about that, and where we are and how you feel about the program, and where we are in the developmental stage?
General KADISH. That is a very good question, because you might want to ask the question why directed energy or laser capability for boost phase?
And the answer is quite simple, I think, is that if you think about a boosting rocket that you see in any kind of documentary film, although it looks like an easy target, it launches very slowly potentially, but then it achieves great speed as it exits the atmosphere. And it only boosts for about anywhere from 100 seconds to 300 seconds. That is not a very long period of time to have a rocket be launched against it. So using kinetic energy intercepts is very difficult.
If you have the speed of light, as you do in the laser, you can then add seconds, many tens of seconds, to your capability to have multiple shots against that boosting target. And the speed of light, we believe, will be very effective, given the very fragile nature of these boosters as they are boosting into the outer atmosphere.
So we have very high hopes for this technology. We have been working at it since the early 1970s. And we are very close to our first shoot-down demonstration coming up in the calendar year 2003 time frame. So although the Air Force funds and supports this program, we and BMDO are very interested in its capability and application in this regard, and work it very hard to make sure it stays on track for that shoot-down.
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Mr. SAXTON. Well thank you, General. I will stop now and let somebody else have a turn.
I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that just as my colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon, thinks that—and I agree with him—the American people need to know the facts, I do too.
And the fact is that we are well down the road in developing these technologies, as the general has demonstrated here, both in his statement and in answering a variety of questions from members so far.
And I think it is important that the American people recognize that this is, as you said, Mr. Chairman, science, not science fiction, and that we are moving so that in our lifetimes or in the next decade or so we will begin to see the emergence of systems that we can actually rely on to carry out this mission. And I thank the general for being here today to discuss these matters with us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
And Mr. Spratt.
Mr. SPRATT. General Kadish, thank you for your testimony. I found it measured and balanced. And in reading it, I hear you saying that a ground-based, mid-course interceptor is the system that is farthest along, the most mature technology and if we want to field something in the near-term, it is the likeliest candidate. Am I reading you correctly?
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General KADISH. That would be my judgment. We have an awful lot of work to do, however.
Mr. SPRATT. Well, that was my next point. You, nevertheless, are saying, we aren't there yet.
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. SPRATT. Still a lot of work to do.
And I also read you to say, in several different places in your testimony, one on page 2, ''the consequences of not using a deliberately phased and integrated approach to testing can be very high''; on page 10, ''what we require today and the years ahead are constancy of purpose, sound engineering discipline to do the mission effectively, reliably and affordably,'' and you imply that if we rush development that we may get disappointing results. Is that a correct interpretation also?
General KADISH. If we rush development imprudently, I will guarantee that we will get less than satisfactory results. I would not argue, however, that rapid, aggressive development is out of the question for that reason; that it is done prudently with the right amount of resources, taking the right amount of risks, based on some hard lessons learned, and not try to do it economically, if I might use that term, or on the cheap, might prove to be very effective in rapidly advancing fielded hardware. We have done that in the ICBM programs.
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The question is, can we articulate and structure a program that could have those prudent ways of reducing risk and be able to afford them properly, and then march through it as rapidly as we can? So I am not saying that we shouldn't do aggressive programs. But if we do them imprudently or we taken inordinate amount of risk, then we can guarantee ourselves some problems.
Mr. SPRATT. Prudent speed, but deliberate pacing. I mean, that is what I get from the totality of your testimony here today.
General KADISH. Right.
Mr. SPRATT. Would you agree that if you resolve the hit-to-kill question and resolve it satisfactorily and demonstrate under reasonably stressful conditions that you can do this reliably with the EKV that we have now, that then the remaining and most daunting problem is discrimination in the mid-course of decoys and chaff and other things that anti-simulations, simulation things that could lead the interceptor astray?
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. SPRATT. And that is still a daunting problem; wouldn't you agree?
General KADISH. It is one we work on all the time.
Mr. SPRATT. General Welch recommended in his report, in response to some criticism that these early tests were too easy, that they probably ought to be easy and get progressively more difficult, that you should first determine the hit-to-kill capability, perfect that capability and then move on to the more vexing problems of discrimination. Is that what your flight testing calls for?
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General KADISH. That is exactly what the flight testing calls for. And to those who characterize our tests as too easy, I would say that I don't agree with that at all. In fact, we are, as the chairman pointed out, hitting a bullet with a bullet going at very high rates of speed and we have never done that reliably before.
So once we prove that, we will march on to the more difficult challenges inherent in the system, just like we did in PAC–3, where we start out fundamentally basic proof of the design and then march through to stress that design. So that is what we intend to do; that is in our plan.
Mr. SPRATT. Now, to resolve this problem of discrimination and to give your interceptor the best track in the most time after queuing to get out and make the kill, Space-Based Infrared Radar System (SBIRS) Low is an element that is, at least, highly desirable, if not basically essential, isn't it?
General KADISH. That is correct. That is what we believe.
Mr. SPRATT. GAO issued a report in February or March where they indicated that, in order to speed the deployment of SBIRS Low, your current plan was to begin producing some of these satellite systems before we had actually finish the development, and begin deploying at least the first constellation of satellites before we had actually completed the software. Were they correct in that?
General KADISH. As I recall, there was arguments we would have with the GAO over those conclusions. I would have to get a little bit more back into the report.
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Mr. SPRATT. I forget. Is SBIRS Low under your jurisdiction now or is it back with the Air Force?
General KADISH. The SBIRS Low has been with the Air Force. However, we have been asked by the Congress and BMDO for me to oversee it the last year, in terms of budget and programmatic issues, and we have been doing that in accordance with the language.
But I can't recall right now the details of that report, except to say that we have had some disagreement with the GAO's conclusions on that program.
Mr. SPRATT. Well, do you think it would be wise to launch the satellites and put them in orbit before you finish the development or the software?
General KADISH. Again, as I was trying to say earlier, a prudent approach to concurrently producing some equipment while you are still in the development phase has been done successfully in the Department of Defense for many years. And so it is not unusual for us to do that. How well we do it, however, is the question. And I think I would support concurrency in these programs, especially in a program like SBIRS Low, if we take prudent actions to handle the risks.
Mr. SPRATT. Results of a lot of the high concurrency is usually used as sort of a pejorative in the procurement business, though, isn't it? We have mottoes like ''fly before you buy,'' that are the lessons that come from being burned when we didn't have a deliberately paced development.
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General KADISH. I am suggesting we need the best of both worlds, and then I think it will work. But you are right, Congressman Spratt, we have to go into it with the right expectations that we are taking risks, because whatever reason why we are trying to accelerate it is a necessary reason. We did that with the ICBM program many years ago and we have done it with some in the past. But when we have problems, they are pretty visible.
Mr. SPRATT. Do you think you are ultimately going to be able to resolve the discrimination problem without something like SBIRS Low?
General KADISH. I believe there are many ways to resolve the discrimination problem that we need to work on. But SBIRS Low is a big contributor to what we can do in discrimination and, therefore, that is why we are continuing to support it.
So we have X-band radar activity. We are looking at other phenomenology as well. But SBIRS is very prominent in our calculation to handle the most advanced countermeasures.
Mr. SPRATT. A lot of people look at the problems of countermeasures, decoys, what have you, and say, ''There is enough risk here, enough probability of failure that we ought to be looking at other systems to develop on a parallel track with the mid-course interceptor.''
And right now the system that has the most appeal, apparently, that seems to be most in vogue, is some kind of a sea-based boost-phase interceptor that goes to a different platform and a different mode of killing the oncoming missile.
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And that tends to be a, kind of, facile assumption made that this system is more or less off-the-shelf; you can take an Aegis cruiser with a SPY–1 radar and you can take these standard boosters and reconfigure them, and, bam, you have, before you know it, a boost-phase kill system on an Aegis cruiser. It is just a matter of adapting a lot of stuff that is already in hand.
Would you agree with that?
General KADISH. I would not. I have looked very carefully at the various capabilities, and we have been at this for some time. And although the presentations and the analysis that I have seen might indicate on the surface that there is some physical chance of making that happen in the near term, we would have to undertake a major development program to make that happen.
Mr. SPRATT. Don't you need a new interceptor?
General KADISH. In my view, we do.
Mr. SPRATT. And a new radar? The SPY–1 is not likely to be able to handle the range or resolution requirements?
General KADISH. It is not so much that it wouldn't be able to handle the resolution requirements, but the attractiveness of having a sea-based activity in the boost phase is you can get close to the launch site, as opposed to maybe some of our more fixed ground-based sites. And the idea of the mobility is very attractive. But what we need, in fact, is a faster alert on the launch, and the radar may be out of position whereas the missile may not.
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So we have to look at other detection mechanisms to actually alert for the launch.
Mr. SPRATT. SBIRS Low.
General KADISH. SBIRS Low. Well, actually a combination of SBIRS Low and High in that early alert and tracking that is downlinked directly.
Now, if we decide to do that in the future, then we have a major development on our hands to make sure that that works. And as I alluded to before in the discussion with Airborne Laser, any kinetic energy booster, you have to calculate the actual flight time and catch up with an accelerating threat missile. So the challenges there are significant, but not impossible, in my view.
Mr. HUNTER. Will my colleague yield for a second?
Mr. SPRATT. Sure.
Mr. HUNTER. I think one thing we want to do in these hearings is make sure we educate everybody and everybody watching the hearing. And you have talked quite a bit about SBIRS Low and High. Could you, just in answering Mr. Spratt's question, briefly explain what SBIRS Low and SBIRS High are, and what they offer to the missile defense equation, if my colleague would indulge me?
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Mr. SPRATT. I think you are absolutely right. I appreciate your interceding.
General KADISH. We do fall into the jargon very quickly in missile defense, so I apologize.
But SBIRS stands for Space-Based Infrared System. And the Low refers to low Earth orbit, and the High refers to high Earth orbit. And SBIRS High is a replacement for the current series of strategic warning satellites we have had for many years; the defense support program. We are postulating a SBIRS Low addition to that constellation to help us with the missile defense problem, both in early warning and tracking, but as well as countermeasure discrimination capability.
So being closer to the Earth helps us with that in low Earth orbit. And there are particular challenges in the infrared frequency spectrum that we have to take into account when we build that constellation. So it uses infrared detection of the heat of the launch, and we are pretty good at that for early warning. Now we are trying to extend it to other uses.
So the SBIRS Low constellation is an infrared space-based detection system.
Mr. SPRATT. Now for SBIRS Low to be useful to an Aegis cruiser, it has to be able to downlink somehow, communicate with the Aegis cruiser, take the information that is acquired. As I understand it, that is still a big if.
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The senior war-fighters council met last spring, as I recall, and they listed the desirable features of SBIRS Low and this was number two. But when the operational requirement document was done, that was not included because it is still not clear that that downlink can be achieved.
General KADISH. That is a challenge technically to have a real-time downlink. But we have not given up on that, Congressman.
Mr. SPRATT. I understand that. And there is a paper to come up here, or at least to be done in the near future—in the next several months, I believe—that addresses those problems.
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. SPRATT. From your domain, or is that again back in the Air Force?
General KADISH. Well, it is the Air Force execution responsibility right now, but we are in partnership on this issue. And we have formed, as a matter of fact, what we call a board of directors where the acquisition executive of the Air Force co-chairs this board with me to talk about these issues and make sure we are all lined up as to what it is we expect.
Mr. SPRATT. So for a sea-based system, you need a new interceptor, major modification to the platform—the vertical launch system—if indeed not a different platform altogether, and some kind of new radar. I put this question the other day, and it was suggested that it might be a pop-up radar. But that again is another whole item to develop, and requires time and requires space on the ship, so that is problematic too.
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Then, ironically, having crossed all these hurdles, it turns out the sea-based system also is subject to countermeasures, the easiest of which or the most notable of which is that if our adversary has a fast-burn booster, one that can get its payload off and boost phase burnout in less than 180 seconds, we have a terribly tight time frame, almost an impossible time frame. So unless our adversary has a slower-burn booster, we may be thwarted altogether by the burnout time.
General KADISH. You bring up an important issue. There is a lot of rhetoric that says only these mid-course systems have countermeasures to them. From a military standpoint, there is a countermeasure to everything that we do, and it is always a countermeasure, counter-countermeasure.
Mr. SPRATT. The history of war is the history of measures and countermeasures.
General KADISH. So there is no system that I know of that doesn't have a countermeasure that is effective to some degree. The challenge is to stay ahead of it and to make the risks that we take using that system prudent.
And so a boost-phase system, we could not expect our adversaries to sit still and not have an attempt to countermeasure it, as well as in the mid-course and even the terminal systems in ballistic missile defense. So I would expect that there would be countermeasures, and we would have to deal with them.
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Mr. SPRATT. In the old days of Strategic Defense Iniative Organization (SDIO), there was a gentlemen named Dr. Younis, I believe, Y-O-U-N-I-S, and I think it was he who gave me the opinion in those days, SDIO, reached the opinion, because they were looking at all of the potential spectrum of possibilities for missile defense, that if our adversary had a boost-phase burnout system of no more than 180 seconds, that that would pretty well preclude boost-phase intercept. Is that still doctrine for BMDO?
General KADISH. I wouldn't call it doctrine, but there are some physical principles that are immutable. Time line is a challenge in boost phase. And to the degree we decide to deal with it in the kinetic energy framework, we have to deal with those barriers. That is why we have high hopes for directed energy, because even at those time lines the speed of light can beat it, in our opinion.
Mr. SPRATT. Well, there is a whole series of countermeasures there that we won't get into.
But let me ask you one last question. As you proceed through these different programs, and in particular as you move the ground-based mid-course interceptor along, have you yet encountered any obstacles put in your way by the ABM Treaty that have significantly impeded your development?
General KADISH. We do all our testing in accordance with the treaty. And to date, we have had some compliance reviews that we make sure we go through the legal process on all our tests, and it hasn't prevented us from doing what we need to do for the ground-based system per se. So we are marching along smartly in accordance with the treaty.
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Mr. SPRATT. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
And Mr. Hayes is next in line, but he is going to yield his time to Mr. Weldon. He has to leave. And so, with the indulgence of the committee, what I thought I would do is, since we have a number of members on the Democrat side, we will go to Mr. Allen next. And then, after he has finished, we will go back to Mr. Weldon to take Mr. Hayes' time, and we will let Mr. Hayes go take care of his constituents on the Capitol steps.
Thank you, Robin.
Mr. Allen.
Mr. ALLEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, General Kadish, for coming here today.
It is no secret I am a bit of a skeptic of a portion of this missile defense system that you have described, and I want to begin by stating the places where I believe we really agree.
First of all, I agree with your approach to testing. I think starting simple and getting more complex as you go along, walking before you run, is exactly the right approach. And I think it is important to test the hit-to-kill system before you stress it with countermeasures. And that really is, I think, fundamental.
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The objection that some of us have is not for the testing, but to the rush to deploy before the system is thoroughly tested. And I will get back to that.
Second, I believe, as you do, that this hit-to-kill technology can ultimately work, that we will get better and better at making a hit-to-kill technology work.
However, what is consistently ignored, both in the last administration and in this one, is the state of countermeasure technology around the world. I expect it will be a long time before I hear any administration that is an advocate of missile defense come here and say, not only is missile technology transferable, but countermeasure technology is transferable as well. And it is much harder to detect when those transfers have occurred.
I do have, sort of, an ongoing objection that I just want to state for the record, which is that, since I have been here for the previous four years, we made a distinction, which I believed was grounded in technology and grounded in different kinds of threats, between theater missile defense and national missile defense.
Many of us who are strong advocates of theater missile defenses, and believe that work should progress on those areas as rapidly as possible, remain very skeptical of a national missile defense system, not because we don't want to protect our citizens, but because we believe employing that system, particularly if we have to abrogate the ABM treaty, is likely to make the world less stable. And to give just one example, likely to set off an arms race between China, India and Pakistan.
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I want to begin by noting a couple of things. It has been a year since the last integrated flight test on a national missile defense system. Over the last few years, we have been talking about 2005 as a deployment date. But Secretary Rumsfeld has basically said, ''We ought to deploy a rudimentary system of some kind by 2004.''
Now, I would grant you that, you know, proliferation goes on, but if you look at the world, if you think about the threat in two components, not only what technology other nations and other players have, but also their interest in attacking us, certainly I think you would have to say, that the threat from North Korea has diminished. They voluntarily extended their moratorium on their missile testing program. And now, at last, this administration is re-engaged in at least conversations about conversations with the North Koreans.
Now, the date selected by Secretary Rumsfeld is 2004, which happens to be the president's reelection year; that may be a coincidence, but I doubt it.
Since you have been operating at BMDO with 2005 as a deployment date now for a number of years, in your professional opinion is there any technological or threat-related reason from moving the deployment date for a rudimentary system up to 2004?
General KADISH. Well, the discussion of what the secretary is talking about now, from my point of view, the decision has not been taken. And so, I am a little bit reluctant to talk about what details might be surrounding anything the secretary says at this point. So from that standpoint, when I can talk in detail, I would like to discuss it either in person or in another hearing. But it would be premature for me to now go into details because those are not final decisions taken at this point.
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Mr. ALLEN. So there has been no decision about 2004? I thought the secretary had used that date. You are just saying, that is not a final date?
General KADISH. Well, the secretary has been discussing a number of things. But the way I have been operating at this point in time is that the future program or a set of recommendations and discussions that no final decision has been made on them as of right now. So I would prefer to have those discussions, if it is all right with you, when we can talk, when we know what the actual decisions are that have been taken.
Mr. ALLEN. That would be fine.
As I said, it has been a year since the last integrated flight test (IFT), and there is to be one in July, next month, I understand. The most recent BMDO fact sheet says you will seek to conduct three integrated flight tests (IFTs) per year beginning in fiscal year 2001. At that pace, you could get 10 or 11 tests, I understand by November, 2004. That would leave you seven or eight tests short of the 21 that was laid out a couple of years ago, as a requirement for complete deployment.
If 2004 were picked as the date, would you agree that that plan would have us deploy a national missile defense system with incomplete testing? Or has there been some change in BMDO's position on the number of tests that should be required?
General KADISH. Again, I would like to talk about that more in detail when the final decisions are taken. However, I would like to say that, from my point of view as a developer, more testing is always better.
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Mr. ALLEN. All right.
General KADISH. However, there are real-world constraints, in terms of how many tests you can do or how many tests you should do, given what you are trying to accomplish per unit time. So these things are evolutionary in nature. And some of the thinking that we have been doing for some time now, and is embodied to some degree in our last restructure of the THAAD program, is that we need to take an evolutionary approach to the development of our systems and the testing of our systems.
And to go back to the THAAD program, for instance, we would start out with some aggressive testing schedules, commensurate with the risk, but against some basic threat capabilities.
And it is not out of the question to do a series of tests against the basic capability of the system; for instance, against one particular threat, maybe, for instance, the No-Dong. Even though we are not through the entire testing regime for all the threats that system would see, that we would be able to declare a capability against the No-Dong missile for the THAAD program after a certain number of tests. And we would do that because we have no capability against the No-Dong threat.
And so, you can take an evolutionary approach not only to the program development, but to the testing program. So you test just enough to get confidence in a very small part of the threat and build from there. And then you could make a decision that says, ''Given that we have no capability to defend ourselves against that threat, it is good to deploy a system for the THAAD, or at least a certain number of interceptors against that threat, and then upgrade the system in a revolutionary way as you do the balance of the testing.''
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So that is one way to think about it that we have been using the THAAD as, kind of, the model for it. We have a configuration one and a configuration two type of an idea. So that is a very viable concept as well, which would not require a full battery of tests to be done against all the final requirements of the system.
Mr. ALLEN. Does it make sense to you in making those decisions in an evolutionary way that you take account of the threat environment? And when I say the threat environment, I don't mean just the technology that is out there, but also the state of the world. If we were able to negotiate away the North Korean missile program, in your opinion, would that be a reason to conduct further testing before deploying a system to deal with a No-Dong?
General KADISH. We always have to evaluate the threat, and that is a larger government activity that just doesn't involve the development decisionmaking process. But the fundamental precept is more testing is better, but we shouldn't test to perfection.
Mr. ALLEN. If I could just make one final comment, we had a presentation from General Franklin the other day, and I would like to ask you, finally, the question I asked him.
Until there was a change of administration, we were talking about a ground-based system with a site in Alaska to deal with an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM)—leave aside all the theater missile programs, which I support. And after the change in administration, I have not heard a word about what has changed in the real world to move toward a much more elaborate system.
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General Franklin's answer was much like the one you just gave, which is, sort of, more is better. And all other things being equal, whether it comes to missile defense or something else, more is better. But in the real world we have to make tradeoffs that relate to cost and the effectiveness of the technology and the effect on other arms control agreements.
Is there anything that you can point to that has happened in the last eight months that, in your opinion, calls for a more elaborate national missile defense than the system we were discussing last September, October and November?
General KADISH. I am not quite sure how to answer that except to say that if you go back and read the president's statement that President Clinton took to defer the decision, there were some doubts raised about this system. And one of the main ways to handle countermeasures that might introduce fragility in a particular system is to have a broad range of activities in parallel so that you can reduce that fragility, and we call it layering of the defense. We have done that on the theater side in a classification of the shorter-range missiles.
So that is why we have a PAC–3, that is why we have a THAAD, that is why we have a Navy Area and a Navy Theater-Wide idea and even an airborne laser. So when we put those in the mix, you have a broad range of defense in depth through layering, so you take more than one shot in different regimes and with potentially different technologies.
So when you are talking about long-range threats, the idea still applies. So to the degree that we thought the system was limited and we were building an extremely limited system, to the degree the national leadership judged it to be fragile, that is what has changed.
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Mr. ALLEN. Okay. General, thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, if I could just reserve the right to submit some additional questions in writing, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. Sure. Without objection. In fact, this is an information-gathering session, so for any members who want to submit additional questions, please give them to the general.
And, General, I want to move to Mr. Weldon, who will take Mr. Hayes' time. But just to follow up on a couple of questions Mr. Allen asked myself, if I could, and that is while the North Koreans are talking to us, they have now developed and fired this so-called Taepo Dong-2, the TD–2; is that not true?
General KADISH. I believe that happened in 1998.
Mr. HUNTER. And that missile is a very fast missile, is it not?
General KADISH. Yes, it is.
Mr. HUNTER. It, right now—
General KADISH. It failed, however.
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Mr. HUNTER. What is that?
General KADISH. It had failed in that test, but the technology demonstrations in that test were very troubling.
Mr. HUNTER. The North Koreans, to date, have proliferated their technology and some of their missiles to other nations, some of which aren't friendly with us. So I think we could assume that if that missile now exists and it is a fast missile, it is capable of overwhelming our theater systems right now, like PAC–3; isn't that true?
General KADISH. That is correct. The PAC–3 wouldn't be able to handle that.
Mr. HUNTER. So by the mere fact that the North Koreans are talking with us about halting their own development of the TD–2 doesn't mean necessarily that that hiatus will continue, nor does it mean that other nations that might receive the technology they have developed to date will simply field the TD–2 themselves; isn't that right?
General KADISH. Yes.
Mr. HUNTER. So the discussions with the North Koreans aren't a panacea.
The other thing that occurred to me is that the ABM Treaty has been talked about, although you didn't come here today to argue the ABM Treaty, and it has been offered up as the great peacemaker during the Cold War between the United States, and something that stopped or halted proliferation.
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But if I am not mistaken that treaty was signed in the early 1970s, and immediately after the signatories put that treaty to bed, the Russians embarked on the most ambitious missile-building program; offensive nuclear-tipped, missile-building program in their history. And they built 758 SS–17s, SS–18s and SS–19s during the 1970s. Do you have any remarks on that?
General KADISH. Well, I think at least my reading of history would show that the total number of nuclear weapons in the world went up after the ABM Treaty was signed and that is just a historical fact.
Mr. HUNTER. Although if you look at the same book or the same journal, it lays out the 758 missiles that the Russians built and fielded and aimed at us after we had signed the treaty. I think the number of missiles that we built and fielded after that was practically none. So the ABM Treaty had a great braking affect, if you will, on the U.S. strategic program. It had, apparently, an accelerating effect on the Russian program.
We have talked about—Mr. Allen mentioned this, the fact that the initial test schedule that was laid out for national missile defense will not have been met, or it will be a close call in the least, when we make the decision to deploy. As I said earlier, when we started this discussion, I think that is common ground for Democrats and Republicans, is that we want to have a lot of tests, and we want to have a lot of validation.
And so my question to you would be, if you had the bucks, would you make this testing regime, including component testing and simulation and all the foundational testing for flight testing, and your flight testing program, would you make it more robust across the array of defense systems?
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General KADISH. Absolutely.
Mr. HUNTER. What would you do? Just tell us real briefly, and then I will move on to my colleagues.
General KADISH. Well, I think we are going to have to invest, first of all, in our test infrastructure, because when we are talking about long-range missiles, we have to test in the long-range test range in the Pacific. So there are major modifications we would like to do to make that a more capable test range.
So that means, potentially, radars, more intercept and target launch capability. The fact that we actually have to develop targets to test against, and when you discuss countermeasures, we will have to actually build countermeasures that do not exist to test against. So the infrastructure is going to need major upgrades, in my view.
In addition to that, the programs need more robust ground testing and subcomponent testing, which means more money in terms of the program cost. But those are prudent things to do.
I would also add more what I would call campaign testing so that we could, in the case of the long-range ground-based system, test up to eight times a year instead of the potential three that we had planned earlier. Because the program we embarked on a couple years ago, called national missile defense, was a very limited program where we thought we were taking very prudent risks with the testing.
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If we want to make that more robust and more realistic, then I would add more tests per unit time and I would also add more complexity sooner to the mix. But we would have to change the way we test and accept some risk in the failures as well.
So there are a broad range of events and activities that I could postulate should we be allowed to get the resources to do them.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay. Thank you very much.
And Mr. Weldon? Then we will go to Mr. Andrews.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, thank you. I just want to correct for the record, the coverage area for the Moscow ABM system is in fact 60 to 70 percent. I had my staff check with the intelligence community while we were in between. So it is actually 60 to 70 percent of the Russian population is covered by the Moscow ABM system.
General KADISH. I stand correct.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you.
General, I was intrigued with the line of questioning by my colleague, Mr. Spratt, because I think it is an important point. He mentioned that General Welch, and I think you agree with him, said that the current state of the preparation of the program does not include testing against countermeasures at this point in time. Is that correct?
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General KADISH. Well, he recommended the walk-before-you-run approach that we used in PAC–3 and others. We were trying to jump start our test program, so our initial plans are rather ambitious. And in order to be more commensurate to the risk, we took a step backwards and said, ''We want to make these tests less complex from a countermeasure point of view and not try to do too many things.'' So we accepted General Welch's recommendation and, in fact, did that.
Mr. WELDON. In fact, the opponents of missile defense try to always have it both ways. They criticize us for not yet dealing with countermeasures, yet, in fact, that is exactly what the program calls for.
And on the countermeasures issue, isn't it true that we have tried to do countermeasures ourself during the history of missile defense, Strategic Defense Iniative Organization (SDIO), and wasn't it extremely difficult for us to build countermeasures?
General KADISH. Mr. Weldon, that is absolutely true.
One of the problems we run into in the discussion of countermeasures is that we tend to separate our discussions, especially when we are being criticized, to the actual postulating and building a countermeasure, whether you can build balloons, if you will, that simulate the reentry vehicle. And in and of itself, the technologies and the ideas of building that countermeasure seem pretty straightforward, and any, you know, Ph.D. from a good school can actually do that.
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The problem is much broader than that, however, in that you first have to build the countermeasures and actually make them work effectively in building them, but then you have to integrate them with the weapon system, which is a major challenge.
In fact, that is where we have most of our developmental challenges. It is not so much once we get the subcomponents invented, but then when we start putting together to make them work in a very complex system effectively, that is where we have our challenges. And the same is true for countermeasures.
So when we talk about countermeasures we ought to talk about all of it, the integration as well as postulating the countermeasure-of-the-day type of activity. So the integration is just as challenging as the countermeasure development.
Mr. WELDON. Doesn't it seem a little disingenuous to you, General, that those who say that there is no threat that we should worry about coming from countries like North Korea, turn around and make the same argument, ''Well, wait a minute, North Korea can build all these extensive countermeasures''?
You can't have it both ways. If they can't build the basic offensive system, for which we should have concern, doesn't it seem disingenuous that then we say, ''Well, wait a minute, they can build countermeasures that we can't defeat''?
General KADISH. It always puzzled me, in terms of that.
Mr. WELDON. Puzzled you also.
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Let me ask about testing. General, many of the opponents of missile defense criticized us for the Congress rushing to get programs into place. Let me as you this question: Did the Congress, this committee in particular, increase funding for missile defense over the past six years? And if so, by approximately how much?
General KADISH. The Congress has increased over the six years. And I think it has ranged anywhere from $300 or $400 million to up to $1 billion a year.
Mr. WELDON. I think if you look at the six-year total, it is around $5 billion that we have plused up.
What has the bulk of that money gone for? Has it gone for testing?
General KADISH. Yes.
Mr. WELDON. So the very critics who fought us in increasing that funding for the past six years, and who said, ''There they go putting more money in the missile defense,'' actually were criticizing us for doing what they now say we should have done. Is that correct?
General KADISH. Having an argument about testing resources is always a challenge.
Mr. WELDON. Isn't that interesting that they now say, ''You should have done more testing.'' But back when we were increasing funds for testing over the past six years, they criticized us because they are putting more money in for testing. And that was, by the way, supported by both parties.
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Let me ask you about a quote that Dr. Keller made when he headed up the mitigation program for Boeing. And we asked him, on the record, whether or not the technology was, in fact, at hand. And he said, ''It is not a technology challenge anymore, it is an engineering challenge to put the systems together.'' Do you agree with that?
General KADISH. I agree.
Mr. WELDON. So the technology is, in fact, at hand. It is a question of engineering.
General KADISH. We still have some work to do in the technology are. But, by and large, I think it is—
Mr. WELDON. General, do you recognize this photograph?
General KADISH. I am having a hard time seeing it, Mr. Weldon.
Mr. WELDON. Well, how about this one? [Laughter.]
Do you recognize that one? What is that, General?
General KADISH. SS–25. [Laughter.]
Mr. WELDON. What is the range of an SS–25?
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General KADISH. It is an intercontinental.
Mr. HUNTER. Now cover your left eye. [Laughter.]
Mr. WELDON. What is the range of an SS–25?
General KADISH. It is intercontinental range.
Mr. WELDON. About 10,000 kilometers?
General KADISH. Right.
Mr. WELDON. The actual number is classified, but approximately how many of these mobile-launched, 10,000 kilometer missiles the Russians have?
General KADISH. They have enough to be operationally effective, I believe.
Mr. WELDON. Over 400 of these missile launchers?
General KADISH. I am not sure of the exact number.
Mr. WELDON. Well, it is over 400. The exact number is classified.
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Now, these are carried on the back of trucks. So they drive them all over to keep us from knowing where they are. Is that correct?
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. WELDON. Now, I don't know of anyone in this body that believes that the Russians are going to attack us. That is not the issue. No one is—and certainly not me. And, in fact, I will be hosting 12 Russian leaders next week in Washington for discussion. None of us believe they are going to attack us.
But if I am not mistaken, each of these SS–25s, if they are given the appropriate launch codes, can launch that missile. Is that right?
General KADISH. That is right.
Mr. WELDON. So if one of these units, which travels throughout Russia gets the launch codes and launches that one missile, what would we do? Are they preprogrammed at certain American cities?
General KADISH. I would assume so. Their targeting doctrine is different, and I am not familiar with it, but I would assume so.
Mr. WELDON. So what would happen if one of these units got the launch codes and either deliberately or accidentally launched one missile? What would you do as our commander of BMDO?
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General KADISH. I would be a bad day for the United States.
Mr. WELDON. A bad day. What if we were willing to say, Los Angeles, or let's just pick perhaps a smaller city, maybe Cincinnati. Would it wipe out the city?
General KADISH. Well, if we have a nuclear event anywhere in the continental, or the entire U.S., it would be major problem.
Mr. WELDON. Now, what is the likelihood of that ever occurring? Because the opponents will say, ''Oh, there you go, Weldon, you are just creating hypothetical.'' What is the likelihood of that happening?
General KADISH. It hasn't happened yet.
Mr. WELDON. Let's talk about January, 1995. Do you remember the incident when Norway was going to launch a three-stage rocket into the atmosphere? Do you remember that?
General KADISH. Yes, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Did they notify Russia in advance?
General KADISH. As I recall the details, there was a space launch notification.
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Mr. WELDON. So they notified Russia in advance they are going to launch a three-stage rocket. And what did Russia do when they launched it?
General KADISH. I would have to review the sequence, but I think the history shows that they got a launch notification and the product was threatened.
Mr. WELDON. That is right, exact. In fact, the week after Boris Yeltsin admitted that Russia, in fact, put their ICBM system on alert, which meant they were within a matter of minutes, 15 to be exact, from launching one of these missiles at an American city. Three people were responsible for that decision. Do you know who they were, General, at the time?
General KADISH. The National Command Authority in Russia, I believe.
Mr. WELDON. In Russia, do you know what that National Command Authority includes?
General KADISH. I imagine the president.
Mr. WELDON. That is right, the president and the defense minister, who at that time was Pavel Grachev, and the general in charge of the command staff, Kolesnikov. Yeltsin acknowledged that with seven minutes left, he overruled Kolesnikov and Grachev. I can't imagine the phone conversation between Yeltsin and Clinton or Putin and Bush if one of those missiles were launched.
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Do we have any defense against that missile once it is in the atmosphere aimed at one of our cities?
General KADISH. Not today.
Mr. WELDON. What would we do, just notify the people of that city to move? About how much time would it take for that ICBM to hit one of our cities?
General KADISH. Less than 30 minutes.
Mr. WELDON. Less than 30 minutes and we have no defense against it today?
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. WELDON. And yet in 1995, Russia was very close to launching an ICBM because they misread a Norwegian rocket launch that they had been notified of in advance. Is that factual?
General KADISH. As far as I know, that is correct.
Mr. WELDON. General, in terms of the capabilities that we have, we know the Russians are moving in the same direction. Are you familiar with the system the Russians have, or allegedly have called the S–500?
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General KADISH. Yes, I am to some degree. I have had some information about it although it is pretty sketchy.
Mr. WELDON. Now, their best systems are the SA–10, the SA–12, the S–300, the S–400, the S–500 would be a fairly robust system, correct?
General KADISH. If you read the brochure, yes.
Mr. WELDON. And the Russians claim it is better than the ENT 2500. Now the ENT 2500 capabilities are right below the demarcation threshold that we got sucked into in 1997, which the Senate wouldn't ratify. And if the S–500 is better than the ENT 2500, doesn't that logically assume that the S–500 was being designed by the Russians to break out the very demarcation protocol they had sucked us into? Doesn't that logically follow? If it is a hotter capability with a more aggressive engine that has a longer range and faster speed?
General KADISH. Well, if that is the case, yes, but the other logic train is that it is an improvement on the current capabilities, which has more to do with effectiveness than capability. So that could also be true.
Mr. WELDON. But if it had a faster capability, which when I met with Deputy Defense Minister Mikhailov in Moscow last June, with Cohen, he told me it would be faster, more accurate, and have a greater range than anything Russia currently has, which includes the END 2500. If the END 2500 is right below the threshold that the liberals want us to agree to, in terms of demarcation, the arms control crowd, then that means the S–500 was being designed by the Russians to break out of that very demarcation.
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At the same time, we were being told by that demarcation to limit our THAAD and Navy programs. Isn't that correct, we were under those limitations?
General KADISH. We had those limitations on the program. But we also had technology challenges to get there as well.
Mr. WELDON. But we also knew that we had to abide by that artificial limitation imposed by the arms control negotiations that resulted in that protocol, isn't that correct?
General KADISH. We are operating under them today.
Mr. WELDON. The point is that this is not about backing Russia into a corner. This is not about starting an arms race. It is about giving us a capability we don't have.
For those who say we should worry about truck bombs, we worry about truck bombs. And that is why this committee has consistently increased funding for detection of chemical, biological, nuclear and terrorist devices. But the fact is, we have no defense against this kind of an attack, if an accident.
And that is really what the president is talking about. He is not talking about somehow destabilizing our relationship with Russia or China. And he is not talking about giving us a veto. Even if we build a system that you are currently working on, if the Russians want to wipe us off the face of the Earth, can they not still do that?
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General KADISH. It is an extremely limited system and, as with any defensive system, if you have more arrows than you have shield then you have a problem, and that is the case with the Russians.
Mr. WELDON. So the Russians believe in missile defense. They are still building systems. We believe in missile defense. They believe in deterrence, we believe in deterrence. So isn't the next logical step for us to work together with Russia on some limited programs to build confidence?
General KADISH. It would be a good thing to do that.
Mr. WELDON. And aren't you looking at that right now?
General KADISH. We are aggressively pursuing, as I said, the RAMOS program again. I would welcome other opportunities to work with the Russians in this area.
Mr. WELDON. In fact, I think what is happening, General, before I went over to Moscow, two months ago, as you know, I called you on the phone, right after I had talked to the secretary of defense with the president on Air Force One, and I said to all three of you, ''Is it correct for me to characterize the Russians, that we are still waiting for them to respond to us on our offer to work together?'' And you replied in the affirmative, as did Secretary Rumsfeld, as did the president. Is that still our position today?
General KADISH. Yes.
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Mr. WELDON. So the fact is that we have offered to work with the Russians in a more aggressive way.
My own characterization is President Putin thought he could drive a wedge between us and our European friends last fall by not accepting our challenge, but by rather proposing to work with the Europeans. We are now turning that around, and President Bush is turning that around as we sit here today.
And so I think in the end, perhaps, the direction that you are taking us is the right direction, because our ultimate responsibility is to defend the American people, our troops and our allies.
And aren't we also continuing to work with our allies? Aren't we still doing the MEADS program with the Germans and the Italians?
General KADISH. That is correct. We are hoping that we can move quickly on MEADS after Germany ratifies the program. So yes, that is a major part of our international cooperation.
Mr. WELDON. And aren't we still working with the Israelis on the Arrow and the THEL program?
General KADISH. That is correct.
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Mr. WELDON. And aren't we working with the Japanese on approaches to their own security?
General KADISH. Yes.
Mr. WELDON. And haven't we had discussions with the Arab nations about some cooperation for their concerns in air defense?
General KADISH. There is a whole host of consultations going on across a broad front with our allies.
Mr. WELDON. And aren't we very closely working with the Brits?
General KADISH. Yes.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Andrews.
Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, General, for your testimony and for your excellent insight and your service to our country.
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You have an immense technological challenge. We together have an immense diplomatic challenge. It is obvious that there is great skepticism in other corners of the world about the desirability and utility of these systems that we are talking about this morning.
One of the hopeful situations that I think may help us in convincing our allies to join with us in this venture is the changing nature of threats that we now face.
I think the one thing that may bind us and our allies together on reconsidering the meaning of the ABM Treaty perhaps, cooperating on investment and testing and research perhaps, is that I think we are now living in an age where—certainly in addition to, maybe in eclipse of—threats from nation-states, there are threats from organizations which are not nations, individuals and other terrorist groups which are not formally organized as a nation.
With that in mind, put your crystal ball out for a minute, do you think that 25 years from now highly powerful explosive devices will be much larger or much smaller than they are today?
General KADISH. Much smaller.
Mr. ANDREWS. Do you think that they will be, relatively speaking, easier to build or more difficult to build?
General KADISH. That depends on who is doing the building and what competency they have. But technologically advanced countries should be able to move that technology along. Just as we have very powerful conventional weapons today that we didn't have 25 years ago I think would be the analogy.
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Mr. ANDREWS. And do you think it is an accurate characterization that we are living in a technologically transparent world; that you can try to hide things, but you just can't? Is that a fair statement?
General KADISH. Try to hide things? I think the way I would put it is that globalization of our economies and the interdependencies are such that that pushes you in a direction of having high tech across the entire world.
Mr. ANDREWS. Do you think it is more likely or less likely that a scientist in Nigeria would have access to the technology necessary to make a nano-sized explosive 25 years from now than he does today?
General KADISH. I think that is a high probability.
Mr. ANDREWS. That he would be more likely to have it.
General KADISH. More likely.
Mr. ANDREWS. One of the things that I think we need to shift this debate to is the fact that the threat that you are working so diligently to preclude is a threat that a lot of people haven't thought about yet. Certainly, it is the rogue missile. Certainly, it is the accidental launch. But I think it is also the cheaper, smaller, more lethal point of attack, mode of attack capability which is coming in the future.
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With that in mind, I think there is the possibility of building a multinational, multilateral coalition around the defense of civilized nation-states against the proliferation of such weapons of death. I think that the MEAD program is a potential vehicle to get that done. And I want to ask you two questions about it.
One is that if we were unlimited in budgetary constraints, how much would you want for that in fiscal year 2002?
General KADISH. There is a luxury in being unlimited. If I might, I would like to take that for the record, because I would like to answer very precisely.
Mr. ANDREWS. Sure. And I understand it has to be answered in the context of reality too. I understand that. I appreciate that.
General KADISH. But with that assumption, it implies that we want to move aggressively as soon as possible to deploy that capability.
Mr. ANDREWS. Second question is, in your military judgment—I realize you are not a diplomat; this is not your purview—do you think it would be wise for us to broaden the MEAD partnership and enlist more allies in it?
General KADISH. To the degree we can overall increase our cooperative efforts with our allies, I think it is a good thing.
Mr. ANDREWS. Now, I know by definition that the MEAD process and technology is not exo-atmospheric, a word I did not know before 10 o'clock this morning. Putting aside the political limitations on moving this to an exo-atmospheric-type program, assuming that it could be politically achieved, can it be technologically achieved?
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General KADISH. Well, we would have to have a different interceptor, because MEADS was based on an air defense as well as a point defense system similar to PAC–3, only it makes it more mobile. In fact, our plan is to use the PAC–3 missile for that system. So we would have to postulate a THAAD or a naval system, or a new development of a much more capable interceptor and sensor suite to go higher into the atmosphere. So it would be a new program, basically.
Mr. ANDREWS. I think that one of the most promising areas of cooperation here is the understanding—and it is a dreadful understanding—that the greatest risks that we may be facing down the road are not frayed relations between nation-states.
We wouldn't be doing this to gain the upper hand on the Russians or to give the NATO allies the upper hand on the Russians. We would be doing it because it is quite conceivable that 15 years, three decades from now, a non-state terrorist group would have access to a weapon of mass destruction that is very small and very difficult to defend against.
You have testified that we could do a lot with a more robust testing infrastructure. I would anticipate that you would want to answer this for the record after consultation, but I would like to know how robust we need to be in the fiscal year 2002 budget. And I understand that that answer is a function of the speculation about 2003 deployment or 2004 deployment, which is accurate. But I would also like to know in dollars and cents what you think a more robust testing infrastructure would look like, and what we might do to help you accommodate it.
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General KADISH. I would be happy to answer that for the record, because I think we will be able to talk in some detail about it once the budget amendments are clear.
Mr. ANDREWS. I think it was said by one of the members, and I forget which, that there does seem to be clear bipartisan consensus on the proposition that credible, independent, frequent, accurate testing is in everybody's best interest. If we say that, we ought to fund it. We ought to pay for it. And so I would be interested in hearing your assessment of what it would take.
Final question that I have is—if it touches on an area that is classified, please tell me and I will ask it in an appropriate setting—I think that one of the intriguing aspects of this system is its multi-layered, multi-tiered approach. And your chart educated me about the various challenges and risks and opportunities to catch a missile at various phases of its path.
What thinking have we done, what research have we done, about the prevention of firing in the first place, not as a diplomatic proposition, but as a technological proposition? Have we thought about the question of whether it is possible to paralyze an opponent's missile system without them knowing it, so they can't launch it in the first place?
General KADISH. I think that is beyond the charter of my organization.
Mr. ANDREWS. Do you think it should be within the charter of your organization?
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General KADISH. I would like to get in a classified forum to talk more about it. But those are what we classify as attack operations. And there are a whole host of things that could be done, and we need to talk about them in a classified setting.
Mr. ANDREWS. I would appreciate that, welcome that opportunity.
And I would like to thank the chairman for conducting what has been a very informative and useful hearing. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman, and I thank him for his very insightful questions.
General, we have looked at the price tags on some of our testing, and our very alert staff has noted that—and I think we had some agreement from you to the effect that you have a little standing army that basically attends the tests. And there is a lot of preparatory work that has to be done. So we have a certain sunk cost in the testing base, if you will. And it would make sense to capitalize on that sunk cost by having more tests, when in fact they are beneficial to the program.
That was at least one message that I took from having discussions with you. Is that still your opinion?
General KADISH. It is, and it all depends on the maturity of the program, where we are in the development cycle as well. So it is a multi-faceted problem, but fundamentally that is the idea.
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Mr. HUNTER. Okay. I take it right now you are putting together your preferred testing schedule and some of the things that you would beef up in terms of the support functions and, along with those priorities, a price tag?
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. HUNTER. Okay.
The fine gentleman from New Jersey is also the head of the terrorism panel, and I know you have been busy the last couple of days, and I think there is a lot of overlap here between our operations.
Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I am going to leave here. We have a hearing at 1 o'clock this afternoon on that panel, so we will be hustling off in that direction.
But first, I would like to ask the General some questions about the Navy area theater missile defense program which has been slightly touched on here by Mr. Spratt earlier. First, General, first of all, for people who may be listening, who are not familiar with naval terms, Aegis ships are ships that are built for a variety purposes, the basic one of which is to employ a vertical launch system to launch cruise missiles, Tomahawks, I guess, for offensive purposes; is that right?
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General KADISH. There is that, but the primary purpose is to do air defense for the fleet, and extend that over land where appropriate.
Mr. SAXTON. Yes, sir.
General KADISH. So the standard missile is an air defense missile and that is what we focus in on in these discussions.
Mr. SAXTON. Yes, sir. Thank you for that clarification. You are absolutely right.
And, in effect, the Aegis ship will create a defensive dome around or over, surrounding the fleet; is that right?
General KADISH. That is the capability. It is a very wonderful capability for the country.
Mr. SAXTON. As a matter of fact, it has been said at times that the dome that it creates, with a variety of defensive weapons employed to create that dome, is or was or pretty much impenetrable; is that right?
General KADISH. It is pretty good.
Mr. SAXTON. It is pretty good. Yes, sir.
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General KADISH. It is pretty good.
Mr. SAXTON. And in order to create the eyes to look out to see what may be a threat to the fleet, there is a radar used which is called the SPY–1 radar, which has nothing to do with spying, but is probably an acronym for something that I don't know. But the SPY–1 radar sees 360 degrees 100 percent of the time; is that right?
General KADISH. It is a phased-array radar that has a broad range of coverage. I think it needs certain orientations like any radar, but it is a major technological achievement to put that radar on the Aegis fleet.
Mr. SAXTON. And without that radar, we wouldn't have the dome that I described.
General KADISH. Right. The radar is critical to detection, just as we have it as a foundation for our missile defense systems as well.
Mr. SAXTON. Now, it is my understanding that that radar is very capable of meeting the needs of the Aegis ship for the existing mission, but it has also been suggested that some modifications to it need to be made for the missile defense program, or that an additional type of radar needs to be added to the Aegis ship; is that correct?
General KADISH. That is correct. That is what we believe we need to do, right.
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Mr. SAXTON. Are we looking at modifying the SPY–1 or adding an additional type of radar?
General KADISH. We are, and that has been in ongoing discussions for several years on how to do that.
Mr. SAXTON. Okay. So the picture is not exactly clear on that as to how we would proceed to get a different band of radar, I understand.
General KADISH. Right. What it boils down to is that the current radar is what we call an S-band radar; it has a certain wave length. And the idea is, do we need something of a shorter wave length like X-band that we use with our other missile defense systems? So there are good technical arguments on both sides and it is a difficult choice to make, but we are proceeding across a broad front, investing as much as we can on both technologies.
Mr. SAXTON. There would also need to be some modifications made to the ship to accommodate defensive ballistic missiles; is that right?
General KADISH. That is correct. The longer-range missiles that we, in terms of threat, would require much larger missiles than we currently have.
Mr. SAXTON. Is the architecture of the ship such that those modifications can be made?
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General KADISH. All the studies I have seen believe that that is true. We believe we could make appropriate modifications.
Mr. SAXTON. It would involve enlarging the diameter of the vertical launch tubes?
General KADISH. That is correct.
Mr. SAXTON. Would they have to be made longer or deeper?
General KADISH. Potentially, yes.
Mr. SAXTON. Does that create any problem with getting in the way of radar or any issues such as that?
General KADISH. No, it is major problem is getting that size of a missile safely on board an Aegis weapon system and integrated into the overall weapons system itself.
Mr. SAXTON. All right. Now, let's assume that we are capable of making those technological advances and changes to our roughly 50 Aegis cruisers or some portion of them. They would be mobile; obviously, ships are. And we would be able to use them as prepositioned, defensive, missile defense platforms; is that correct?
General KADISH. That is the attractiveness of having a mobile sea-based platform, is that you can move it to be in the proper place.
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And, in fact, one of the attractiveness that I really like about the mobile platform is that you can earlier into the trajectory if you place the platform correctly. So instead of being in the mid-course descend phase, where you have the major challenge with countermeasures, the earlier you get in the ascend phase you have a better shot at killing the warheads, and that is a function of mobility. So it is very important that we explore these technologies.
Mr. SAXTON. Would it also be fair to say that assets other than military assets could be protected by platforms such as Aegis equipped with missile defense systems?
General KADISH. Absolutely. To the degree that we can have our defended areas increased, it becomes territory and population defense, as opposed to specific point defense.
Mr. SAXTON. Presumably, if a terrorist type threatened to fire a missile at New York City we could protect New York City with an Aegis-type platform equipped?
General KADISH. Depends on where it came from and the capability of the system. But the sea-based approach allows us great flexibility to handle threats if we have an intelligence warning of that nature.
But the technology is still challenging, just like it is in the ground-based; same issues that we face. It complicates the situation a little bit more by having it on a naval vessel with the safety considerations and other things. So the value of a maritime platform is extremely high, from that standpoint.
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Mr. SAXTON. And how would you characterize the status of the program?
General KADISH. Well, the Navy Theater-Wide is a mid-course system. And primarily, again, short- and medium-range missiles, and that is the advantage of mobility. We are a little bit behind in the program. We haven't fully funded it in past years as much as we would like. So it is about three or four months away from its first test.
And I have high hopes that once we get through the Aegis LEAP intercept test, which is the demonstration program for Navy Theater-Wide, that we could move rapidly into making that a full-fledged program.
Mr. SAXTON. Would there be a deterrence role for this system?
General KADISH. There is a deterrence role for every missile defense system, in my view.
Mr. SAXTON. Well, thank you, General. It has been a great hearing. And we appreciate you being here very much.
And, Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions at this time.
Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Saxton. And thanks for your contribution to the subcommittee.
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And Mr. Larson.
Mr. LARSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And, General, thank you for your patience and perseverance. I don't know if I was in your seat I might have needed a lifeline from Regis to answer some of those questions. But I think it demonstrates the unbelievable knowledge, in many respects the passion that so many people on this committee have for this issue. And clearly, Mr. Weldon, Mr. Spratt and the ongoing efforts of Chairman Hunter to make sure that this committee is fully educated are certainly appreciated by everyone.
But as someone who tucks his children in at night and rarely thinks about the perils that we could face, let me applaud you as someone who worries about that on a daily basis for everyone in our nation.
General KADISH. Thank you.
Mr. LARSON. In listening to the many questions that were raised this morning and this afternoon, now, I certainly concur and agree with an integrated approach that has a constancy of purpose and that is extraordinarily robust. And clearly, I share the same view that, frankly, that Mr. Allen does, with regard to the need for making sure that we have the most robust testing and that you are given the opportunity to defend this nation.
My concern has been, as a member of the committee, if it were not for Mr. Hunter and his laboring to make sure that we are constantly updated to the extent that we can be by the members of the armed services, that with regard to an overarching strategy, I am wondering if you have met with Mr. Marshall and have discussed how this strategy, from your standpoint, ties into the optimum plan that we are told we are going to receive.
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General KADISH. I have had no recent conversations with Mr. Marshall. I did a year or so ago. And the overall framework from those discussions, I don't think we have any difference in our view of missile defense.
Mr. LARSON. Well, I guess my frustration stems from the fact that, you know, we have a budget that we have to deal with. And just about everyone that has come before us to date, from purely a military perspective, doesn't seem to be providing the input. And we can talk about everything from our war colleges to our various armed services that are looking to defend this nation on a number of fronts.
And when your responsibility in Congress is to develop a budget, it is worrisome, especially if you are going to be faced with the issue of having to choose between, let's say for argument's sake, the F–22 and the Joint Strike Fighter and more money for strategic missile defense. And it is troubling for us who have to make these decisions. I can't help but imagine it is probably more troubling for those of you who have ultimate responsibility for the defense of the nation.
And I want to thank the Chairman here because he truly has been the bridge, as has Chairman Stump. And it is my only hope that—and I am sure that Secretary Rumsfeld has got his—there is a method to what he is driving for, but it is unclear, to me at least.
At this point, I take heart in what John Murtha has said that it is Congress that appropriates. And getting information like we have had today is extraordinarily helpful to us when it comes to those decisions. And I just want to thank and commend you for your ongoing efforts in this area.
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General KADISH. Thank you, Mr. Larson.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for his very thoughtful questions, and let me go to Mr. Taylor, who is extremely patient, and I am sure has a couple of questions.
Mr. TAYLOR. I am patient? I haven't had to put up with this grilling, so General, thank you for being here and putting up with all of us.
General, I think to date I have seen two basic groups of my colleagues. We have one group that says, ''You can have all the money you want and I don't care if you ever hit a missile.'' I see another group that says, ''I don't care if you can knock down every missile, you can't have any money.'' I think it is time for a third group in here that says, ''We think you can solve the problem. We have already given you $63 billion. So when do we get some solutions, because there are other needs out there?''
Mr. Weldon mentioned six years ago. Well, six years ago there were almost 400 ships in the Navy fleet. Today, we have barely over 300. In six years, that is how much the fleet has shrunk. I am sure my Army colleagues could tell you about the 900 Hueys that need replacing. I am sure that some of your colleagues could tell me about the 141s that need replacing. We can go down the list of all the things we need to do.
So I want to give you a couple of scenarios and you tell me what is the probability that the military as a whole and your group in particular could prevent this from happening. Someone in the near-Korean Peninsula, be it the Koreans or the Chinese, announce their intention one week in advance to fire one intercontinental ballistic missile to the West Coast of the United States. What is the probability that you could stop it?
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Second scenario is a terrorist group announces that, within the next seven days, they are going to fire a missile off either Cuba or a waterborne platform and hit a Gulf Coast or an East Coast city.
Third scenario is a terrorist group says that within the next 30 days, they are going to bring a nuclear device in in one of the 1 million cargo containers that come into our country from overseas and other countries every month.
Fourth scenario says that between now and the end of July, they are going to spray either anthrax or smallpox from either a cropduster or a mosquito control-type truck and kill 100,000 Americans.
Now, I would also ask you to consider as a part of your answer, of all these things, which is the easiest and cheapest way to kill 100,000 Americans, and of which method could the culprit or culprits have the most deniability should it be another nation, rather than just a rogue unit actually performing this.
General KADISH. Mr. Taylor, those are certainly frightening scenarios.
Mr. TAYLOR. You would also admit that, with the exception of the smallpox, which is probably the most difficult of the bunch, every one of them could happen?
General KADISH. They could, but their fatal mistake, in my view, was giving us a warning.
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Mr. TAYLOR. Well, I add the idea of the warning because I think it shows us how far we have to go in the solution. It is not something that just happens. You actually have some warning that it is going to happen. So if you had seven days' warning, could you stop a missile from the Chinese peninsula?
General KADISH. In my view, Congressman, and this may sound very parochial, but if we had warning of that happening, it would be tantamount to a declaration of war, and this country would be in full swing and have an immediate and violent reaction to those threats—
Mr. TAYLOR. Could you stop the missile?
General KADISH.—assuming the diplomatic issues are not in play here.
And if I could beg your indulgence, but even in the terrorist scenario, I hate to speculate, but we have many resources available in this country that are very good. And with any warning that is credible, we can marshal an awful lot of resources to prevent this kind of damage and, should it occur, to save as many lives as possible. And I would hope that this country would not forgive nor forget any threat of this nature should it be carried out.
Mr. TAYLOR. You know, I appreciate that answer, but let's walk back through this. Could you stop a missile today, after we have spent $63 billion, coming from Korea, China or Soviet Union, as Mr. Weldon pointed out? What is the probability that you could stop that missile?
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General KADISH. If your question is, if we had to wait until it is launched, we would have no capability. But my considered military judgment would be, that would be the last thing we would do is wait for it to be launched.
Mr. TAYLOR. I guess the reason I wanted to say that was I am trying to give you the optimum conditions to stop it; that you actually know roughly where it is coming from and you have some advance warning. Even then you couldn't stop it could you, sir?
General KADISH. If it was launched, that is true. My point, however, is that if we had that kind of warning, it would never be launched.
Mr. TAYLOR. Second one is the ship coming from fairly close by, and as we both know, there are a heck of a lot of ships out there and a heck of a lot of platforms out there off the East Coast and the Gulf Coast. Again, could a missile be stopped if it is launched from the hold of a ship, a cargo-looking ship?
General KADISH. No, it can't, as of today. However, with warning and the resources we have, I would say that we would endeavor not to let that happen.
Mr. TAYLOR. All right, third scenario. And it is an accurate number that 1 million container-equivalent units come into our country every month from somewhere else. What are the chances of searching those 1 million cargo equivalents and keeping a nuclear device from coming in?
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General KADISH. Well, if you design the scenario such that we have no ability to know enough about the threat, then we would have an impossible situation about searching those cargo containers. But with the proper intelligence capabilities that we have applied, as well as our antiterrorist approach in this country, I believe we have a good shot at making that not happen. Not that it isn't a significant threat, as you point out, but we don't have a missile defense in place today, so whatever is shot at us is going to get through.
Mr. TAYLOR. If you were the person trying to harm a large number of Americans, of those four scenarios which is the easiest: least technologically difficult, least cost, fewest number of people that could make it happen?
General KADISH. I am not sure how to answer that question because I am not a specialist in terrorism, nor am I skilled in carrying out these types of operations. But to the average American, I would say that there would probably be a large weight of opinion over the 60-day anthrax-type of approach. However, there is great risk for the attacker in that regard because of the capabilities this country has in monitoring those types of things.
However, if you are talking about a weapon of prestige where the threat could be credible and it could be articulated, where we have absolutely no defense, as you point out, even as we do with antiterrorism, it is the missile threat; we almost went to war over Cuba missiles in 1962. And if we were threatened once again, I imagine we would have the same reaction.
But you are right, we do not have a missile defense to protect us at this point.
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Mr. TAYLOR. You know, I am probably reading between the lines at my colleague from Connecticut's comments, but I guess it could be surmised that he was inferring that maybe we would be better off spending that money on F–22s. I come from shipbuilding country. At some point, I have to decide in my mind whether or not we would have been better off with that same $63 billion having built 12 carriers, or 70-plus destroyers, or fill in the blanks of any number of other platforms that we would actually have something for it.
So getting to the point of having something for it, when can I tell my constituents that we have a workable system, capable of stopping that scenario coming from the Chinese or the Koreans?
General KADISH. I think the answer is within the next 10 years, and potentially in the next three years with the constancy of purpose that we have shown in the previous investments. We have $60 billion that you alluded to. I assume that is the money you are referring to that we have spent since 1984 or 1985 on missile defense issues.
And I guess the best way to respond to that is that the legacy of that is PAC–3. The legacy of that investment is THAAD. The legacy of that investment is our SBIRS program, the space-based infrared system. The legacy of that investment is our long-range missile defense capabilities that we are trying to develop. And the legacy of that system is our maritime capability.
And we have come along way, as I have tried to articulate today, not without our troubles, but we have proven some of this technology. It took the last 15 years to mature enough to get to the point where we are on the verge of fielding PAC–3, which would handle some of the short-range missiles from Cuba, if you will. On the verge of fielding in mid-decade our THAAD program. On the verge of fielding mid-decade and the end of this decade a missile defense system capable of protecting the entire country, and our allies, for that matter.
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So the investment that we have put into this area is starting to pay off. And I think the way you should answer that question, what we could do in these scenarios, is that we will have closed at least one door of threat where we have no defense today. And that is against a launched ballistic missile that threatens either our country, our allies, or our deployed coalition forces. And that is at hand in the next 10 years.
Mr. TAYLOR. Well, General, thank you again for sticking around.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for recognizing me even though I am not on your subcommittee.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for his contribution and for the contribution he is going to make in Mississippi shrimp.
General, thank you. And following up on Gene's last question, I think what you established initially in the hearing, which is, at least what we do have, and we are ready to deploy it after eight straight successful tests, is PAC–3, which can shoot down effectively the types of Scuds that killed our troops in Desert Storm. So we can't handle the Maseratis, but we can handle the Model Ts. And what we have to do is move up that capability.
So thank you for being with us. Thank you for your patience.
So we have a vote, so we are not going to harass you any longer. But I think you did a great job in laying out the testing program, where we are at, and what we need to know now is where we need to go.
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And if you could, maybe for the record and for the members, have your folks prepare maybe just a little one- or two-pager that lays out the different species of our missile defenses. Maybe start with PAC–3 and go up through THAAD and Navy Area-Wide and Navy low-tier, and describe the tests just very briefly that we have had, and we now know PAC–3, eight for eight, and what your projecting regimen is, and just a brief statement about what areas we are looking for improvement in, where we are trying to get out of the next tests.
And of course, I think what this subcommittee has conveyed, I think pretty effectively, on a bipartisan basis is, regardless of what we think about the ABM Treaty, we all want you to do as much testing as possible. We know that when people talk about the maturation, the maturing of technology, it doesn't mature as a function of time or exposure to the sun. It matures as a function of doing things with it. And so, if you accept the testing regime to include everything including the simulation and component testing and all those things that lead up to a good flight test.
Let us know what you think we need to be doing. I think that is something the committee would like to have. We would like to have that for the record. If you could lay out how you think the regime of testing could be made more robust and more productive, whether they are tests that will have a low probability of success or a high probability. Obviously, we want you to do the tests that give us the most value. And I think that there is pretty much a consensus that that is money well spent.
So please give us, if you could, just a little summary sheet. We will get that out to all the members who didn't make the hearing.
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And thanks for your patience. Thanks to your staff and thanks to our staff for putting this thing together, and we will see you next time.
General KADISH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it.
[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
June 14, 2001
[The Appendix is pending.]