SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    
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26–144
2006
  
[H.A.S.C. No. 109–40]

COUNTERTERRORISM TECHNOLOGY SHARING

JOINT HEARING

BEFORE THE

TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

meeting jointly with

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
[Serial No. 109–34]
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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD
JULY 21, 2005

  
  

  

TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Chairman
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
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JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
JEFF MILLER, Florida
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey

MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
ADAM SMITH, Washington
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
RICK LARSEN, Washington
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
CYNTHIA McKINNEY, Georgia

Tom Hawley,Professional Staff Member
Brian Anderson, Staff Assistant

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

Peter T. King, New York, Chairman
Lamar S. Smith, Texas
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania
Rob Simmons, Connecticut
Mike Rogers, Alabama
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Stevan Pearce, New Mexico
Katherine Harris, Florida
Dave G. Reichert, Washington
Michael McCaul, Texas
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania
Christopher Cox, California (Ex Officio)

Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
Loretta Sanchez, California
Norman D. Dicks, Washington
Jane Harman, California
Nita M. Lowey, New York
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Columbia
Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin Islands
Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi (Ex Officio)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2005

HEARING:
    Thursday, July 21, 2005, Counterterrorism Technology Sharing

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APPENDIX:
    Thursday, July 21, 2005

THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2005

COUNTERTERRORISM TECHNOLOGY SHARING

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    King, Hon. Peter T., a Representative from New York, Chairman, Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology Subcommittee

    Meehan, Hon. Martin T., a Representative from Massachusetts, Ranking Member, Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee

    Pascrell, Hon. Bill, Jr., a Representative from New Jersey, Ranking Member, Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology Subcommittee

    Saxton, Hon. Jim, a Representative from New Jersey, Chairman, Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee

WITNESSES

    Kubricky, Dr. John, Acting Director, Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency and Director Office of Systems Engineering and Development, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security
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    Payton, Sue, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Advanced Systems and Concepts, Department of Defense

    Tether, Dr. Tony, Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense

    Verga, Peter F., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, Department of Defense

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Kubricky, Dr. John

Payton, Sue

Tether, Dr. Tony

Verga, Peter F.

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Documents submitted.]
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]

Mr. Andrews

Mr. LoBiondo

COUNTERTERRORISM TECHNOLOGY SHARING

House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, Meeting Jointly with Committee on Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee, Washington, DC, Thursday, July 21, 2005.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:30 p.m. in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Saxton (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JIM SAXTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY, CHAIRMAN, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE

    Mr. SAXTON. The Subcommittee on Unconventional Threats and Capabilities meets this afternoon in joint session with our colleagues from the Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology to review the process by which the Department of Defense shares counter terror technology with the Department of Homeland Security.
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    I believe this is an extremely important and timely session for several reasons. First, while progress is being made in the war on terror, terrorists continue to demonstrate their willingness to kill civilians in large numbers and growing numbers by killing themselves as well. In fact, a great majority of the suicide bombings in Iraq being carried out are being carried out by foreign terrorists who have come into the country.

    Second, recent events in the United Kingdom (U.K.) As recently as today demonstrate a continued determination to attack the West.

    Third, the reality is that there is a terrorist support network here in the U.S., and very likely terrorist operators as well.

    And so this joint hearing is very important. It is the first of what I expect to be many joint ventures with our friends on the Homeland Security Committee. It is no surprise that the Department of Defense and Homeland Security share similar joint interests across a large range of areas, and we hope to foster and encourage an even greater cooperation that already exists between the two vitally important executive branches of government.

    Nothing that we do in the Congress is more important than national security. Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are the lead Federal agencies in assuring the safety and security of the American public and must work together in a seamless fashion as they work to deter and defend from terrorism.

    Our concern today is technology transfer of tools useful in combating terrorism, a broader topic than one may think. DOD has been working on force protection and installation protection mechanisms for long as we have had military installations, and continues to seek improvements. Not everything done by DOD is directly applicable to DHS and first responders needs, but much clearly is. We understand that much has been done on a largely informal basis to share good ideas between the departments.
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    While that is encouraging news, I believe it would be better to have a more vigorous formal process in place. We don't want to create unnecessary bureaucracy. But we do need to be assured that the good ideas developed by each is made available to both, and most importantly, seriously considered by each other.

    Such a process will likely require some incentives to be effective. We would be interested in any ideas our witnesses have today in that regard.

    With that, I would like to turn to my friend and colleague, the Ranking Member of our subcommittee, Mr. Meehan.

STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN T. MEEHAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MASSACHUSETTS, RANKING MEMBER, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE

    Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me also join you in welcoming our distinguished panelists and commend you for holding this joint hearing. I would like to make a couple of brief comments.

    Without question, the events of 9/11 forced upon our Nation a requirement to redefine traditional approaches to national security.

    Nearly four years since those attacks, after the launching of two major military campaigns abroad and stepped-up security measures at home, these new approaches remain largely unfulfilled. The recent attacks in London, both last week and today, serve as a reminder that we must do all we can to shore up our security here at home. The fact remains that our Nation can do better, and we must. Security screening at air- and seaports is still less than ideal. Rail and subway lines remain vulnerable. And much of our critical public infrastructure has yet to receive the necessary attention and protection.
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    Most frustrating, much of the needed technology is either under development or is currently in use by the Department of Defense. Some of this indeed transitioned; but much, unfortunately, has not. While it is understandable that our troops abroad receive a priority for technological innovations, the transfer of technology throughout the government is necessary to prevent duplicative and redundant efforts. The American people deserve no less.

    I look forward to today's testimony and hope today's panelists will help us better understand the challenges ahead to providing leap-ahead technologies in a cost-effective manner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. SAXTON. Now, I would like to recognize Mr. King, Chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee, for his statement.

STATEMENT OF HON. PETER T. KING, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK, CHAIRMAN, HOMELAND SECURITY, EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SUBCOMMITTEE

    Mr. KING. Thank you, Chairman Saxton. Let me first welcome the distinguished witnesses from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. I certainly greatly appreciate your taking the time to be with us today for this unprecedented joint hearing.

    I also must commend Chairman Saxton and Ranking Member Meehan for their leadership and their willingness to hold this joint hearing. Also, fortuitously, we have in the audience with us today—there is a great interest in them, and actually Congressman Pascrell, Ranking Member, and I met with them just last month in New York—the Fire Commissioner of the City of New York, Nicholas Scarpetta, and also the Fire Chief, Chief Hayden. I want to thank you for being here and taking the time to stop in at this hearing, because this is of particular importance to them and to fire departments and police departments across the country.
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    This joint hearing is vital. It will examine an issue of critical importance to our Nation's success in the war on terrorism, the transfer of military technologies for use by civilian first responders.

    The Homeland Security Act of 2002 provides a broad definition of first responders. It is well established, however, that our Nation's first responders do not yet have the technology that they require to deal effectively with catastrophic incidents, especially those involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive weapons. Indeed in April of 2004, the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City issued a comprehensive report entitled, quote, ''Project Responder National Technology Plan for Emergency Response to Catastrophic Terrorism,'' which identified numerous technology gaps in first responder capabilities.

    Not surprisingly, there is a substantial overlap in the capabilities required by the warfighter and the first responder. Both the warfighter and civilian first responders need to see, understand, communicate, and act in order to save lives and mitigate damage. But the mechanisms requiring such capabilities in the form of new products, processes, and procedures, differ widely.

    Until Congress and the administration established the Directorate for Science and Technology within DHS, there have never been any dedicated research, development, testing and evaluation system for first responders. In contrast, the warfighter has had the benefit of the largest and most advanced RDT&E program in the Federal Government.

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    Given the relative newness of the S&T Directorate and the sophistication and size of DOD, and the need for Homeland security to expedite the development and production of technology for first responders, Homeland Security really has no choice but to leverage military technology to enhance homeland security.

    To that end, I look forward to testimony that may clarify many of my questions regarding the state of technology transfer. And again, I just mentioned in passing, in discussing this with Commissioner Scarpetta and Chief Hayden just a few moments ago, how vitally we see the fact that the Pentagon and Defense Department is out there, and so much of this they believe and I believe can be made adaptable to first responders.

    Some of the questions:

    Do the two Departments have any cooperative agreements in place? And if not, when will they?

    What is the extent and level of communication between RDT&E officials from the two Departments?

    What is the extent of coordination in developing the Departments' respective agendas for technologies that have potential utility for both homeland defense and security purposes?

    What processes, if any, do the two Departments use for identifying and prioritizing military technology suitable for transfer to civilian first responders?
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    What technologies have been transferred by DOD to DHS?

    So these are questions I hope will be addressed during the hearing. And I want to thank all of our witnesses in advance for being with us here today. I look forward to your answers to these and other questions on technology transfer. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Mr. King.

I2I now would like to recognize the Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology, Mr. Pascrell, the gentleman from New Jersey.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BILL PASCRELL, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK, RANKING MEMBER, HOMELAND SECURITY, EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SUBCOMMITTEE

    Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Chairman Saxton, Chairman King, Ranking Member Meehan, and Ranking Member Thompson. I am pleased to be here today with my colleagues from both committees on Homeland Security and Armed Services to explore what is, in my mind, an absolutely critical issue.

    Today's focus is on how technology developed by the Department of Defense in executing battlefield operations can be adapted and used to accomplish the counterterrorism missions of DHS. It has been an area of interest on both panels. I have had some time to look at.
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    It is clear that the Department of Defense has an enormously extensive research and development program.

    It goes without saying that the Department of Defense's superior technology, as well as its ability to quickly bring new technologies to the field, has been one of our Nation's most powerful advantages for decades. But we must now meet the challenges of a different world.

    No longer are our sole concerns centered on military threats of hostile states. We must now deal with a range of potential dangers that lurk from independent actors within our own border.

    For this reason, it is critically important that the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security coordinate their efforts in developing multimodal technologies which could be utilized to meet the critical missions of both Departments. I think that this is very vital.

    And let it be said that Congress recognized the importance of using DOD technology for homeland security even before 9/11. In the fiscal year 2001 DOD authorization, the law that created the fire grant program, if you remember how this got to first base, home plate, we included language requiring DOD to develop a program to identify defense technology that would be suitable for firefighters and EMS providers. The language is very clear, very succinct.

    The fiscal year 2003 DOD authorization expanded on this initiative.
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    Today, I hope I can learn more about the success of these programs. But there has been some notable measure of success already up front. For example, the DOD's Office of Technology Transition has had numerous achievements with transitioning DOD technology to first responder missions. Escape masks, thermal electric cooling technologies, even certain expeditionary fire vehicles that first responders use, were all designed for military purposes when they first came to be.

    But for all the good work DOD has done, I am concerned about the role that the Department of Homeland Security is transitioning military technology to our homeland security mission. In fact, it is utterly unclear to me what role, if any, they have in this endeavor. DHS has no program to actively monitor DOD technology developments or DHS relevant technologies.

    And DHS appears not to have any kind of long-term vision to coordinate counterterrorism research and development projects. I hope that we can learn what DHS is doing, what they need to do to ensure that we are fully utilizing technology developed through DOD R&D. We must work to ensure that R&D money is not wasted. We must ensure that DHS is fully aware of the relevant research being conducted by DOD so that we do not fund similar work.

    Ensuring that we have the technology to adequately prevent, prepare for, and respond to acts of terrorism must be a higher priority than it is today. So I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and yield back the balance of my time. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.

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    I would now like to recognize the Ranking Member of the full committee, the gentleman, Mr. Thompson.

    Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Chairman King, Ranking Member Meehan, Pascrell. I am happy and pleased to be here at this hearing. I would like to welcome our witnesses, also.

    Today we are joining the Terrorism Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee on the Armed Services Committee. In holding this hearing, by partnering with the Armed Services Committee, we are able to ensure that we have a chance to hear from both the Department of Defense as well as the Department of Homeland Security on their current technology transfer efforts.

    Today we will hear from witnesses representing a cross-section of DOD activities relating to technology transfer. We will also hear from the Acting Director of DHS Advanced Research Projects Agency. The issue of technology transfer of military technology is an incredibly important subject.

    Our most important asset in the war on terrorism is our people. But we must not forget the importance of technology. Advances in technology will help us to meet the changing threats we face.

    Homeland security is a partnership. It is a partnership at the Federal, State, and local levels. But it also must be a partnership among different Federal agencies. We must ensure that there is a system in place for DOD and DHS to work together to efficiently move technology from military application to homeland security uses.
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    A strategy for leveraging this technology and transitioning it from military uses to homeland security is needed. This strategy for leveraging technology must be part of an overall technology strategy that is missing today. We must have more of a focus on technology if we are going to prevent and prepare for acts of terrorism.

    Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the testimony and the answer to some of the questions. I yield back.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. We have a distinguished panel of witnesses for our proceeding this afternoon. I would like to welcome you each to our joint hearing: Ms. Sue Payton, who is Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Advanced Systems and Concepts.

    Mr. Peter Verga, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security.

    Mr.—Dr. Tony Tether, Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known to all of us as DARPA.

    And Mr. John Kubricky, Acting Director of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency and Director, Systems Engineering and Development, Department of Homeland Security.

    We are indeed honored to have each of you here. We thank you for your participation. At the outset, I will state that, without objection, your prepared statements will be included in the record. So if you would care to summarize them, I think that would be a good way for us to present.
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    Mr. SAXTON. So, Ms. Payton, the floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF SUE PAYTON, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ADVANCED SYSTEMS AND CONCEPTS

    Ms. PAYTON. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of these subcommittees, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the transfer of technology in support of counterterrorism response efforts. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Sue Payton. I am the Deputy Under Secretary for Advanced Systems and Concepts, as well as the Acting Deputy Director for Defense Research and Engineering within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics. And as the DUSD AS&C, my portfolio does include programs that really do facilitate the transfer of technology.

    These programs include the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program, otherwise known as ACTD, the Tech Transition Initiative, the tech transfer and tech link programs that are all in part of the Office of Technology Transition previously mentioned here this afternoon.

    I have other programs that continually support industry and industry's participation in technology development and rapid transition of capabilities to our warfighters.

    Since 9/11, the potential for increased terrorist activity both at home and abroad has made a major impact on the focus of our Nation and the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense plays an important but supporting role in proactively mitigating threats to first responders and the communities that they support while preparing for consequence management.
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    In June of 2005, just last month, the Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense published a strategy for homeland defense and civil support, stating that the DOD seeks to improve the homeland defense and homeland security contributions of our domestic and international partners and, in turn, to improve DOD capabilities by sharing expertise and technology, as appropriate, across military and civilian boundaries.

    My office is providing personnel and know-how to support the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense for the Department's technology transfer efforts in support of the first responder community.

    We participate in joint working groups to identify technology initiatives that can assist in meeting first responder needs and to develop investment strategy opportunities that Homeland Defense can provide through collaborative efforts with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

    One working group chaired by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, includes the military departments, the appropriate defense agencies, to identify high-priority technologies with potential applicability to first responders.

    I believe it is very important to note that my organization routinely works with organizations at this table today and other organizations in order to bring the best technology to the first responder community and ultimately to the citizens they support. The Department submitted the Biennial Report to Congress on the activities of the Office of Tech Transition, with specific examples that were mentioned earlier this afternoon of technology transfer to Homeland Security.
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    I would like to summarize some additional activities and technology examples that are provided in more detail in my written testimony.

    In responding specifically to terrorism, the Combatting Terrorism Technology Task Force was established by the Director of Defense Research and Engineering immediately after September 11 to rapidly identify, prioritize, and integrate DOD science and technology initiatives to help combat terrorism.

    The CTTTF works very closely with the technical support working group, which includes a multiagency group lead by the Department of Defense, the FBI, the Department of Energy, and DHS. And many items have been shared. Two specific examples are the counterinsurgency pattern assessment tool and the laser induced breakdown spectroscopy that will provide real-time stand-off detection of explosives.

    In the second example, the Office of Technology Transition, which is a part of AS&C, teamed with Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, and the commercial industry, and joined forces to design, develop, and field a miniaturized water purification system that destroys biological and chemical agents.

    I have an example of the water purification pen here today. And it was funded to continue production of the water purification pen through the TTI project. And at this point, 6,600 water pens have been purchased. We have accelerated this capability into the services and into Special Operations Command (SOCOM) at an estimated rate of 18 to 24 months faster than normal, at a 40 percent cost savings. The small company, Cascade Designs, that developed the water pen, has provided 1,200 units to tsunami relief efforts, and this capability is available on the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule and for commercial purchase. And we also have a more commercial version here that can be used by our firefighters and by folks out on camping trips.
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    Additionally, our advanced concept technology demonstration program provided information-sharing software to the Coast Guard, the Joint Task Force for the National Capital Region, that alerts operators when action is required to manage events; and this software interoperates with disparate Federal, State and local systems. Visualization tools and decision support systems have also been provided.

    I thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today and to answer any questions you might have regarding our current state of collaboration and technology sharing across the Federal Government, especially to counter terrorism.

    I look forward to facilitating the establishment of what Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense England defines as a need for a systematic approach to ensure close coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and other interagency, State and local partners. Thank you.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Payton.

    [The prepared statement of Ms. Payton can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Verga.

STATEMENT OF PETER F. VERGA, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR HOMELAND DEFENSE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
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    Mr. VERGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Members and other distinguished members of the committee. I am Peter Verga, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. I work for the Honorable Paul McHale, a former colleague in the House, who is the Assistant Secretary. And he sends his best regards.

    I would like today to start with just a few basics in a brief statement. The 2005 National Defense Strategy designates securing the United States from direct attacks as our first objective. The Department of Defense gives top priority to dissuading, deterring, and defeating those who seek to harm the United States directly, especially enemies with weapons of mass destruction.

    In this context, homeland defense must be understood for what it is: an integral part of a global, active, layered defense. There is no home game. There is no away game. There is only one enemy to defeat.

    This year, we have completed the Department's first strategy for homeland defense and civil support, as noted by Ms. Payton. And although the active, layered, defense extends across the globe, this strategy focuses primarily on the Department of Defense's activities in the U.S. Homeland and the approaches to U.S. Territories.

    These activities can be generally referred to as lead activities when the Department of Defense executes military missions to dissuade the terror and defeat attacks upon the United States, our population, and our critical defense infrastructure support activities, when, at the direction of the President or Secretary of Defense, the Department of Defense provides support to civilian authorities. This support is part of a comprehensive national response to prevent and protect against acts of terrorism or recover from an attack or a natural or man-made disaster. In these cases DOD provides support to a lead Federal agency.
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    Enable activities in which the Department seeks to improve overall security and defense capabilities of our domestic and international partners and in turn to improve DOD capabilities by sharing expertise and technology, as appropriate, across military and civilian boundaries.

    Today I would like to speak in a bit more detail of the ''enable'' portion of our strategy, especially as it pertains to cooperation with Federal, State, local and tribal authorities. Enabling better national capabilities for homeland security missions is an important complement to DOD's homeland defense and civil support activities. Technology, of course, is a vital component not only in supporting and protecting military forces engaged in the global war on terror and transforming the military and in developing capabilities for our future forces, but also in enabling our civilian partners.

    When I talk about technology in this context, it is not limited to equipment or material only. DOD processes, procedures, training, software, et cetera, all may have value to our partners. Technology transfer represents an important avenue by which DOD can help those local, State, and tribal and other Federal authorities better to protect our Nation and deal with the consequences of an attack.

    For example, DOD is working with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey through the Regional Information Joint Awareness Network to implement a domestic program for information sharing between key local, State, regional, and Federal operations centers. DOD has transferred numerous technologies, such as ground base sensors for the detection of humans, vehicles, nuclear material, and other contraband for use in border security operations by DHS Immigration, Border and Customs components. And the Department has provided assistance to the U.S. Coast Guard to evaluate sensors, such as long-range radar systems and platforms, such as unmanned aerial vehicles that will enhance their ability to conduct wide air surveillance to detect, identify, and track vessels of interest.
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    As Representative Pascrell noted, Congress, recognizing the value of the technology transfer activities, enacted Section 1401 of Public Law 107–314. As required by that statute, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense serves as the senior official in the Department of Defense to coordinate all Department of Defense efforts to identify, evaluate, deploy, and transfer the Federal, State and local first responders technology items and equipment in support of homeland security.

    As part of this effort, DOD has been working closely with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice and has created a process blueprint that is a framework for the systematic transfer of DOD technologies to the public safety community through the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

    In this effort, we have begun a pilot program for that 1401 program, and we are collaborating with the military services, Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L), as noted by Ms. Payton, Technology Support Working Group, Defense Logistics Agency through that technology transfer working group.

    Between February and April of this year, the 1401 working group completed a pilot inventory of DOD technologies and equipment which resulted in the identification of over 800 items with a potential to enhance public safety.

    We are also evaluating a subset of high-priority technologies that could be expedited to the public safety community. And we are working closely with DHS and DOJ in the selection and validation of these technologies, including a meeting scheduled for next month where public safety practitioners will evaluate and provide feedback on six specific technologies, to include an advanced sensor capable of real-time stand-off detection of chemical, biological, explosive, and hazardous materials; an improved protective suit providing chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and fire protection; and an integrated system of technologies capable of providing enhanced situational awareness through improved real-time communications, real-time information-sharing data, and 3D positional information for communications in buildings and in tunnels.
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    Over the next few months, we will continue this 1401 process and expand the outreach activities to first responders. We are going to have a conclusion of the pilot program and the documentation of the lessons learned and process improvement recommendations, finalization of a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice that outlines the process and responsibilities. We are expected to have that ready for signature by the fall. And we are jointly sponsoring an upcoming Technologies for Critical Incidence Preparedness Conference and Exposition in San Diego, California, where we will be showcasing several DOD technologies applicable to homeland security.

    Continued outreach activities and collaboration with nongovernmental organizations focused on technology transfer include the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence, First Link at the University of Pittsburgh, and DOD's tech match program which is part of the West Virginia high-tech consortium.

    We will continue our efforts to transfer competencies between DOD and the civil sector through the technology sharing transfer, and also the sharing of lessons learned from applicable exercises and experience in program management.

    Before I close, I want to mention just a few more examples of the technology transfer of programs that existed prior to the enactment of section 1401 but which are still ongoing and being integrated into that process.

    There is more detail in my full testimony.

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    Defense Logistics Agency has a program which provides over 17,000 Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies with excess DOD counterdrug and counterterrorism equipment. And the Army has a program which allows State and local governments to participate in U.S. Government purchases of law enforcement equipment suitable for counterdrug activities and therefore realize a significant discount due to large volumes involved.

    Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, I want to again thank you for your leadership in this important area and your continued interest and support of the Department of Defense's homeland defense mission in our efforts to enable civil authorities to better secure our Nation. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have when the time comes.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Verga can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. SAXTON. Dr. Tether.

STATEMENT OF DR. TONY TETHER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

    Dr. TETHER. Chairman Saxton, Chairman King, members of the committee, I am Tony Tether, the Director of the DARPA. I am pleased to be here to talk about DARPA technology and how it is being used for civilian counterterrorism. My written testimony provides information about DARPA for those of you who haven't interacted with us in the past. It also provides significant detail on our interactions with DHS. I would like to summarize my written testimony for you.
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    First I want to say a few words about DARPA and its role in the DOD, particularly for members who may not be familiar with us. DARPA is a defense agency, and as such, reports to the Secretary of Defense.

    We are the Secretary's research agency with a very broad charter. We were created with a mission to prevent technological surprise, such as Sputnik. This has broadened over time to include creating technological surprise to our adversaries. We accomplish these goals by bridging the gap between fundamental scientific discoveries and their military use. Our purpose is to leave no stone unturned. We accelerate emerging technologies and ideas into new military capabilities as quickly as possible.

    Because of this, our research is often described as high risk, high reward, and is intended to bring entirely new capabilities to our military and transform the DOD. Two of the DARPA technologies you are likely most familiar with are the Internet and stealth. Both changed the world commercially and militarily.

    As DARPA was created out of a national crisis, so was Homeland Security Advanced Research P)roject Agency (HSARPA), which is part of DHS. DARPA has easy and robust communications with DHS, particularly HSARPA, because many of the people there are former DARPA employees. My previous deputy, Xan Alexander, is the Deputy of HSARPA. And I think she is here. And because of this, we understand each other and our respective missions, making it easier to transition technologies. In fact, this is really always the best case of coordination. No written document can really replace this.

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    We have several areas of mutual interest and activities and I am going to summarize them for you.

    The richest area for us to share technology is in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense technologies.

    Keep in mind, however, that what we do is for the military. It is not clear that the technology moves directly to civilian applications. Why? Well, the operations are different. Sensor systems for the military where people follow orders and have protective gear is likely to be different than that for a city where avoiding false alarms is crucial. Populations are different. DOD has young, fit people who will follow orders. The civilian population, as we all know, is much broader.

    Sensors, however, is an area where there is considerable overlap. Technology that DARPA started in 1997 is now being used by the post office to screen mail for anthrax and other biohazards today. In fact, Xan was involved in doing that. TIGER, Triangulation Identification for Genetic Evaluation of Biological Risk, is a universal gold standard sensor for detecting pathogens, even unknown and engineered ones. DHS now plans to use TIGER at the National Bioforensics Analysis Center. A single TIGER test can tell them if any of over 3,000 organisms are present versus a normal method of one organism per test.

    HISS, which is hand-held isothermal silver standard sensor, was originally intended to give the soldier a hand-held silver standard biological threat sensor, so he could tell right away whether he was under attack. HSARPA plans to incorporate it into the Nation's biosurveillance system and other DHS programs.
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    SUVO, semiconductor ultra violet (UV) optical sensor, is a new type of sensor using ultraviolet light that will be much smaller and lighter. HSARPA's low-cost biological agent detection program is explicitly building on this DARPA technology.

    There are other sensor technologies we are working on which should be of interest to DHS. Our advanced portal security program is looking at new ways to detect chemical or biological threats in packages. We have some exploratory studies underway on standoff nuclear detection. But this is a very hard problem, and the physics continues to get in the way.

    We also have common interest in remediation and protection. Immune building. The idea here is to make a building safe for internal chem-bio attack by using the Heating, Ventilation and Heating (HVAC) system to protect people rather than spread the agent. DHS is very interested in the overall program. And in particular, they have teamed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other parts of DOD to develop a self-contained portable chlorine bioxide generator.

    Radiation decontamination. Much of the harm of the dirty bomb comes from rendering places unusable. We have a memorandum of agreement with DHS, HSARPA, to develop technology for cleaning up buildings contaminated by a dirty bomb. Now, a memorandum of agreement is used when we are jointly putting in money to develop the same technology. And that is going on in this case.

    Some of the medical treatments we have supported against biological attack will also have use in the civilian world. We work hard to make sure people throughout the government know what we are doing. That includes DHS, NIH, FDA, and we are very open with all of them. Some of our technologies, our canary in a coal mine chip and anthrax-specific assay have gone to National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
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    Immune boosters which boost the body's overall immune response and the effectiveness of the vaccines—in other words, you may not have to take as many shots to be vaccinated against anthrax. NIH is looking at this. There are other technologies that could be of use for homeland security and counterterrorism.

    One last program is a UAV, which we have been developing, a very small surveillance airplane, really 10 inches in width, and it has a very long endurance, over an hour. The Navy is using it. And the Coast Guard is now looking at it for postal—coastal and ship security.

    We are working, continuing on our work to vastly improve machine translation technology. This includes hand-held devices, phraselators, currently in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in fact, the company that produces these appear to be developing beta versions for first responders who go into an area where they might not speak the language.

    We are also beginning a new program called counter improvised explosive laboratory. This helps detect rooms where improved explosives have been made, including Triacetone Triperoxide (TAPT), which was used by the shoe bomber and probably in London. We will also help handle those explosives safely so they can be disposed of.

    I think I have given you a good sample of the activities DARPA is doing which are, or should be, of interest to DHS. As I said earlier, I believe DARPA has an excellent, but informal, relationship with DHS. I see no reason why that shouldn't continue in the future, given the closeness of the DHS and HSARPA—of the DARPA and HSARPA personnel. I will be happy to take your questions.
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    Mr. SAXTON. Dr. Tether, thank you very much. As usual, you have given us a very thorough presentation. Thank you very much.

    [The prepared statement of Dr. Tether can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Kubricky.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN KUBRICKY, ACTING DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY AND DIRECTOR OFFICE OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members of the committee and staff. I am John Kubricky, Director of Systems Engineering Development and the Acting Director of HSARPA, which is an organization within the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate. And thank you for the opportunity today to appear and discuss the role of DHS, and in particular, the role of science and technology in ensuring that we leverage military technology to enhance homeland security through technology transfer.

    The capstone of S&T Directorate's mission is the successful transition of technologies to end users within the Department, to other Federal agencies, and to State and local governments as well as the private sectors. Technology developed for military applications cannot always be transferred in a straightforward manner to civilian operations. Requirements for technical performance, operations maintenance, and for total cost of ownership often impact such transfers.
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    Although the basic scientific principles that underpin particular technologies may be leveraged, significant reengineering may be required to make the technology suitable for homeland security purposes. While the Department has made progress in these areas, there is much to still be done. For example, there is legal and intellectual property framework that is required to make the successful transition of technology to non-Federal entities, which may include CRDAs, or cooperative research and development agreements and licensing arrangements.

    In addition, facilitating the acquisition of homeland security technologies by State and local entities may include grant and direct assistance programs which requires the S&T director to closely coordinate with the DHS Office of Domestic Preparedness, or ODP.

    We recognize the challenges inherent in the S&T Directorate's mission introduced in RDT&E process that requires careful consideration of transition issues right up front. The process requires a program's transition path be documented and approved prior to commencing program execution. And this is a way of helping to avoid duplication of efforts with DOD and other agencies.

    We have identified the organizational and programmatic characteristics that are known enablers of transition. And through this process, we are seeking to embed them in all of our technology development efforts. For example, standards developed by S&T standards program and portfolio are enablers of technology transition. Consensus-driven performance specifications for equipment provides vital information to the manufacturers from the component level to the systems level to ensure that suppliers can accurately assess production costs as part of their business strategies.
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    Our most effective method to date for the transfer of military technologies is what has been talked about already this morning—this afternoon—section 1401. Through this provision, DOD is given the authority to identify, evaluate, deploy, and transfer to Federal, State and local first responders technology items and equipment of homeland security application.

    Development of a technology transfer process to enhance the transfer to the public safety community has been accomplished through a series of interagency meetings between representatives from the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. In July of this year, the agency representatives convened to select six priority technologies, first responders under the 1401 program. Some of them have been mentioned already this afternoon, so I will just talk about a few that haven't been mentioned.

    Defined water mist system, which will provide improved water atomizing nozzles for effective firefighting; a distance learning program for training and simulation, and that will provide virtual training in highly detailed urban environments for emergency situations; and also an ad hoc communications system for emergency use where communications infrastructure doesn't exist; an MOA, memorandum of agreement formalizing the roles and the steps, as has been said before, is in review and we expect to have that signed in the fall of this year.

    DHS Science and Technology Director will leverage technologies from other Federal agencies, including DOD, as we strive to provide the Nation's first responders with the tools, equipment, and systems to enable them to secure our Nation.

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    We see the end state of a technology transition function that provides better ways to identify relevant technologies, to do the user collaboration to help in that identification, to take the intellectual property management and commercialization processes all at a faster pace as equipping the first responders with their most critical needs.

    We will continue to work with the Departments of Defense and Justice under section 1401 to provide innovative capabilities to the first responders and on others on the front lines of homeland security.

    This concludes my prepared statement. And with the committee's permission, I will request my formal statement be submitted. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity, and I welcome your questions.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much.

    [The prepared statement of Dr. Kubricky can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. SAXTON. I have just one short question that I would like to ask at this time just to kind of set the stage for questions that may follow.

    In December of 2002, the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003. And in it was a section which Secretary Verga referred to, section 1401, which is a provision that requires the Secretary of Defense to designate a senior official to coordinate DOD efforts to identify, evaluate, deploy and to designate—to transfer to Homeland Security, related technologies for use for all of the appropriate purposes.
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    We note that that will be finalized this fall. Would you describe, Dr. Verga—or Mr. Verga—the process where we are, and how you see this implementation taking place?

    Mr. VERGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to. The 1401 process is really, from our perspective in particular, the keystone and the centerpoint of how we think we are going to be making DOD's technologies available to first responders.

    We look at it from our perspective again as a wholesale-retail activity. We in DOD are not really in a position to know the needs of a first responder nor to be able to evaluate a DOD technology as it might be applicable in a first responder environment. And so we look to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, because they are much more directly connected to that community to be able to make that link for us.

    And so we have established a working group and a committee that allows that evaluation to occur. We at DOD survey broadly what we are doing both in the research and development area and in the production area, turn that inventory—as I said, the initial one was over 800-some items—over to the committee to work its way through, and then get the direct input from the first responder community as is really looked at by DHS and DOJ.

    As you might imagine, it is sort of like the private sector, you know, who represents the first responder community, who represents the private sector. And we looked to the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to broker that arrangement for us.

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    As I said, we are in the next stages of moving to that more detailed evaluation process. And we think we have laid out a good organizational structure to be able to do that.

    Mr. SAXTON. Okay, thank you. We may have some more questions on 1401 as we progress. But at this time, let me turn to the Ranking Member of the Terrorism Subcommittee, Mr. Meehan.

    Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all of the panelists for the outstanding testimony.

    Ms. Payton, I have a number of companies, large and small, in my home State of Massachusetts, that produce innovative technology with a wide range of defense applications.

    What are you doing to provide an on-ramp for industries, small, medium, large, to demonstrate their technologies to the Department of Defense?

    Ms. PAYTON. Thank you, Mr. Meehan. I would like to respond by explaining a little bit about the Defense Acquisition Challenge Program. It was established in 2003. And it is an on-ramp for industry. We have had over 900 proposals that we have received, and subject matter experts have reviewed these proposals. And we have awarded contracts to small, innovative companies all over the country to challenge the Department of Defense that they might have a better mousetrap. They might have a better component in a system that is out there today.

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    And we have money in our budget to look at the affordability, to do testing on the product, and to give it a fair trial with subject matter experts, a very competitive program. But I offer that for your consideration. And we have some cards to hand out here today that have the Web sites. And I have a small group of people that marry up the proposals that come in with programs of record, help small business refine their proposals, and it is starting to get a lot of traction in the department. Thank you.

    Mr. MEEHAN. How about a satellite office up in Massachusetts?

    Ms. PAYTON. I will take that for the record, sir.

    Mr. MEEHAN. I guess a critical issue is one of the greatest obstacles in preventing the transfer of technology from DOD to DHS and how do we get those obstacles removed; and, further, how can we create a greater synergy between the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security and what we can do as members of the appropriate committees to help this effort?

    U.S. Troops in Iraq are currently the beneficiaries of unique sensing and protective technologies. I am familiar with at least two. One is a perimeter guard system to protect against intruders. And the second is a novel back-scatter x-ray imaging device for detecting unseen contraband. Both of them had been developed in Massachusetts. These two companies have reported unique experiences in terms of interagency technology transfers. Back-scatter technology was first used for domestic purposes and has since been picked up by the military. And it is currently being used to detect explosives in Iraq.

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    Is there more that we can do to improve technology transfers in the other direction, looking for military applications for the technologies that are currently used in the homeland security? The second, the perimeter guard intrusion detection system was first produced for military use. The company that developed this technology directly approached local officials in Pittstown as a means to protect critical infrastructures, and now it is being used to protect the water supply of another community in my home State.

    So I am curious, from a Department of Homeland Security perspective, do we have any system for tracking these types of technology transfers at the local level and picking them up for larger use? And how do—what can we do to foster this synergy? What can we do to try to improve technology transfers between the DOD and DHS? And I guess that is a question for all the panelists.

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Let me try to begin by also introducing two folks that are with us. From DOD originally, like myself, Colonel David Boyd is now Dr. David Boyd with DHS. And he has been working technology transition issues with DOD for at least the last 6 months. And Dr. Tether already introduced Dr. Jane Alexander; Xan also is working technology transition issues every day. As a matter of fact, I think she could probably address back-scatter and perimeter detection as well, David Boyd's area where we are having a stand-off from the technology clearinghouse from a contract we just recently awarded.

    Would you like to address the statement on back-scatter, where we are on that program?

    Ms. ALEXANDER. There is a whole series of technologies that we are always scanning for what the best local uses are, and looking for those things that can be moved generally to be used throughout the United States. And as Tony was indicating, we have lots and lots of informal exchange between our organizations. We, in fact, include each other on evaluation panels. And that way we can make each other aware of the technologies we have seen and that might—how they would compete with the technologies that may be being brought forward in proposals.
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    I do want to mention the RTAC program as well. We have a new program starting this year on rapid technology applications, and we are specifically aiming at asking companies who have technologies, either created for a different purpose that need a small amount of research to turn them to use for State and local as well as Federal first responders, or that are in very late-stage development that could be applied. And we will be coming out with a program that is in the $30-plus-million range, with a whole range of topics that we are asking to apply these technologies. And a lot of those would also have application in base protection and some other areas. And so we are hoping to actually draw from the early investment that DOD has made in a lot of these technologies, as well as NASA and DOE and some of our other brother organizations, and then accelerate those into the field.

    Dr. KUBRICKY. That is a good example of how we are leveraging right now and working closely. As a matter of fact, in several programs we have DOD participants sitting as evaluators, technical evaluators, on our source selection and the PDR, program design review, meetings that we have to evaluate contractor performance.

    Mr. VERGA. I would only note, sir, we definitely look at technology transfer as a two-way street. It is clearly not all going in one direction. It is the transfer of, in some cases not necessarily technology in the sense of things, but technology in the sense of tactics, techniques, procedures. The ability to handle situations in ways that others have not thought of is what is particularly valuable to us.

    We have got from—for example, there is a system called disaster management interoperability services, DMIS. It is a program that started in the Department of Defense, was transitioned over to the Department of Homeland Security. And we have learned a lot in the area of information display and information—human factors engineering and how you display and gather information for rapid decision making from our interaction with the folks in the DMIS program.
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    We are a small, closed community. Everybody seeks the same acronym language. That is not necessarily the best way to broadly distribute and understand information. And so working with that community has been very beneficial to us.

    Dr. TETHER. As you all know, that was one of my biggest worries. How do I make sure that people with ideas go to DARPA and get those ideas funded? And we do a lot of talking around the country. We have symposiums. We try to get the word out that we welcome ideas of any kind.

    Since 9/11, we have had a flood of ideas coming from citizens who are concerned and had ideas that they thought could be useful. And, in fact, a lot of those ideas have come to us through the Congress because the citizens really did not know who to go to, even though as hard as we have tried; but they knew they could go to their Congressmen, and you all in turn have sent them to us. And, in fact, there may be a good percentage of those that you have sent to us that we have come up with good ideas.

    One example that I will give you is a company in Maryland, called Hardwire. This was brought to us by Mr. Calvert. It is almost like a radial belt tire. We are using that for armoring trucks. We have found using their technique—and we are shooting at it, this is real data, we are shooting at it—that we can come up with aerial densities that are half that for steel, and they are stopping bullets from going through. And this is something that these folks would never know to come to us.

    This bothers me. But, quite frankly, because they went to their Congressman and he knew enough to send them to DARPA— in fact, he called me up and we had some come over—it is happening. But I wish it was a little bit—I guess I would feel better if it was a little less informal, but I don't know how to change that except to keep talking about what we do and have people come to us and have all of you folks send your constituents to us.
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    Ms. PAYTON. I would like to add that we have a joint robotics program and most recently we have reclaimed some robots from Iraq and Afghanistan that were sent there in 2004. We are refurbishing those robots. And the joint robotics program has a Web site and many of those robots, I think there are 40 of them now, are going to be loaned out to the first responder community. Googling is not the best way to have a process close. But I think the more that we can work a clearinghouse and get better communications through some of the processes that Mr. Verga mentioned with 1401, the better off we will be to establish a little bit more of an institutionalized way of doing business.

    Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. Some weeks ago, Peter King came to us and suggested the joint hearing that we are having today; that he thought it would be a good idea, and I agreed. So Peter, time for your questions.

    Mr. KING. Thank you Chairman Saxton. Thank you for agreeing to the joint hearing. It is very important. My question is to Mr. Kubricky. Considering the vast amount of technology that DOD has, do you have any process in place to prioritize what technologies you would be looking for?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, we do; yes, sir. We have a method of first of all looking, from intelligence data, the threats and then the vulnerabilities, and then we decide where the gaps are that on a priority basis have to be solved first. So it is threats, vulnerabilities, the gaps, and then the vulnerabilities that drive programs that fill those gaps.
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    And it is based on primarily intelligence data but also on user needs. We do have surveys at State, local, and Federal levels and representatives who collect the information. And basically it is more than that. There's emotion involved in terms of what the users really need to get their jobs done, 85 percent of which are State and local first responders, of course, and law enforcement.

    Mr. KING. As far as the S&T technology clearinghouse, you said a contractor went in to set this up?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. KING. What is the target date on that? When do you expect to have that in place?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. The contract has been awarded to an organization already.

    Mr. KING. When do you expect to have the clearinghouse in place?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Productive as far as first part of its output? I believe it is December this year when they go live with the initial Web site and other enabling mechanisms to allow the first bits, pieces of public safety, to be able to use some of their tools, to be able to select equipment.
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    Mr. KING. I will ask you a question and then ask the converse of that question to the three representatives from DOD. For the record, you believe you are getting full cooperation from the Department of Defense as far as the sharing of technology?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir. I haven't seen any evidence of any resistance at all. Are there things that we can do better? I guess we could work 16 hours a day instead of 14, but it is working pretty well. You would think there would be problems with security. There haven't been. We have worked through all of those in Dr. Tether's organization where there are lots of sensitive programs. We haven't had any obstacles at all to get in there and work the ones that we need to know about. Same with Ms. Payton's area and Pete Verga's area. I haven't seen any obstacles yet. If they are out there, we have not confronted them or we have been maneuvering around them.

    Mr. KING. Before the hearing began, Mr. Saxton just asked me about the different levels of security. Are there different levels of security at Homeland Security as opposed to the Defense Department which would prevent that meshing?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Nothing that would prevent it to my knowledge. There used to be levels of SCI that may have impeded some discussion, but they are no longer a problem. They are not there. And lower than collateral, secret collateral, there is a law enforcement sensitivity, but that has not been a problem at all for DOD communications.

    Mr. KING. If I could ask the Defense Department another question without putting anybody on the spot. Do you feel that the Defense Department is maximizing the technology that you have to offer?
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    Dr. TETHER. Yes, I do, at least with DARPA. DARPA is really an organization of program managers and there are about 150 program managers who are there for a very short period of time, for the 6 years, and they are all energized to get something done. So what really happens is at more of a lower informal basis, that these folks are not only developing technologies but they know that their job is to transition that technology to somebody who will use it. And Homeland Security is one of those customers that they always touch base with.

    So there is no real impediment going on that I know of. I encourage it and I think probably that is all that is required. They know that I encourage them to go and find customers and that Homeland Security is obviously a customer that they should check into.

    Now, we do have a problem. You know we are the military. Posse comitatus is alive and well. And so there are things that we have to be careful about in this technology transition. We have had problem in the past where we were developing technologies for the military which people were worried about that they could be used domestically and they did not want them to be used domestically. But that is not a problem between DARPA and DHS, that is just a problem—a larger problem.

    Mr. KING. Mr. Verga, Mrs. Payton, do you have a comment?

    Mr. VERGA. From my perspective—and as I said, this is a good portion of what I do is working with, in particularly, Dave Boyd in this technology transfer area; I think we are making very good progress. Is it possible that they are not taking advantage of some technologies that exist in DOD? I would say that is yes, but that may be because the technologies are not actually appropriate for what they are trying to do, or issues of operations cost or maintenance cost or infrastructure necessary to use them might not be appropriate in the DHS context. And so UAVs being a very good example. The Customs and Border Patrol might not be able to either afford to acquire or long term to operate UAVs on the border. So we have a process in place now where if they need them on a specific case-by-case basis, they can come to DOD and request us to assist them. And we do that, you know, quite often.
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    So I think they are taking advantage of it in a manner that is appropriate for the Department.

    Mr. KING. Mrs. Payton? Do you have anything?

    Ms. PAYTON. I think the operative word is ''maximizing.'' I believe that there is a lot of optimization going on, especially in the fact that when you stand up an agency like the Department of Homeland Security, with the growing pains and the integration that has to happen there—I lived through standing up the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which was a much smaller endeavor, and I really salute the Department of Homeland Security because I understand the limitations and constraints and the problems you face that first year or two when you are standing up a brand-new organization integrated from other places.

    So that is why we are reaching out in Advanced Systems and Concepts, as is DARPA, to try to help out as much as possible.

    Mr. KING. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you Mr. Pascrell.

    Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To Dr. Kubricky.

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir?

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    Mr. PASCRELL. According to a GAO report released in September of 2004, the DHS S&T Directorate has not yet produced a strategy document. How can DHS be coordinating research and development with DOD, or anybody else for that matter, if you do not have a long-term vision of your own research and development efforts? How is that possible?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. We do in fact have a 1- to 3-year document that outlines every program that we are currently engaged in, and we also have an outlook of 5 to 10 years. So we have quite detailed documentation. We have not published it. We have not released it. For one, parts of it are for official use only.

    Mr. PASCRELL. You have a strategy document?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, it is not a strategy document as much as it is a detailed program investment document. So, comprehensive strategic plan; I wouldn't say it is exactly a comprehensive strategic plan, but we are in preparation of that document right now. We delayed publishing that document last year, 2004, because we knew there was a change coming in management in December.

    Mr. PASCRELL. Could you make that report available to this committee?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. PASCRELL. How soon?

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    Dr. KUBRICKY. The second-stage review, Secretary Chertoff's second-stage review is being factored into the document and my guess is it is going to take another 60 days to adjust the strategic plan accordingly.

    Mr. PASCRELL. Because it is defined very specifically what you were supposed to do, September 2004. I think this committee, both committees, should receive that documentation as soon as possible, don't you?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir; we will work to do that for you.

    Mr. PASCRELL. As many of you indicated in your testimonies—I want to ask this of Dr. Tether, if I may—the Defense Authorization Act 2003 called on the identification of a senior official to do the following: to identify, to evaluate, to deploy, transfer to Federal and State and local first responders technology items and equipment of Homeland Security.

    Mr. Verga noted that DOD, DHS and DOJ have coordinated efforts in the creation of a blueprint for a process to enhance this much-needed effort. But why has the development of this process taken so darned long? The act was passed in April of 2002. Both departments appear to recognize the importance of what I would consider should have a swift and efficient transition of defense technology to meet the Homeland Security mission.

    Why is it that you have not yet managed to formalize the process with a memorandum of agreement? You do not have a memorandum of agreement. Why has the institutionalization of this process not been expedited?
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    Dr. TETHER. This is a question for me?

    Mr. PASCRELL. Yes.

    Dr. TETHER. Well, quite frankly, I don't think the question is my question. I think that goes more to Mr. Verga or Mr. Hale.

    Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Verga.

    Mr. VERGA. We did not do it as fast as we should have. I could give you lots of explanations. The Office of the Assistant Secretary was standing up concurrently with the passage of that act. The authorization for the Assistant SECRETARY was in the same act. We have been working hard at it. As it turned out, too, the memorandum of agreement turned out to be more difficult to negotiate among the three agencies. there were processes going on in Department of Justice——

    Mr. PASCRELL. Why is that, Mr. Verga? Why is there a problem of the three agencies—let's get down to the nitty-gritty and beyond all the puff and fluff. Why is it difficult, when there is an order from the Congress of the United States to cease and desist on the bickering that goes on amongst the partners? What has happened? Do you think, first of all, do you think this is important; or am I just talking about a bureaucratic process here?

    Mr. VERGA. No, I think it is extremely important. I know whenever I talk in public, I note about how important this is, and I use generally what are considered to be the most obviously historical examples of DOD military technology which has migrated out to the first responder committee: thermal imaging devices, night vision devices, things that started out with military purposes and have proven to be very, very valuable in that community.
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    I would prefer to concentrate—we are where we are. We are working hard to develop and ensure that this process is effective and efficient so that we can, you know, make up for whatever time we have lost. I can't gain that time back regardless of how well I could explain it. So the people are working very hard.

    I have a diagram of how the process works I would be happy to submit for the record. It is a bit complicated, because it is not simply a question of the black box that works in DOD will work in the Iowa City Fire Department. There is a whole process that you have to go through to see is it maintainable, is it sustainable, is it affordable?

    Mr. PASCRELL. My question is not about process. My question is about results.

    Mr. VERGA. Yes, sir.

    Mr. PASCRELL. That is the nature of the question. We can all get caught up in processes. But the example that you described, you used the example about the fire department. What is so complicated, if we want the desire to protect the American people, what is the complication about getting both parties to sit down and work it out? Tell me what the complication is, so maybe we could be helpful along those lines.

    Mr. VERGA. There is certainly no lack of desire or commitment. That is not—that is not at all evident that there is any lack of that desire and commitment.

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    It is difficult for the Department of Defense as an organization to deal with local government, for example.

    Mr. PASCRELL. Why is that?

    Mr. VERGA. For one thing, we do not generally have mechanisms in place to do that. We do have the National Guard in all of our States and territories. They have connectivities with the local governments. And in cases of processes and procedures and training and tactics and techniques, they are shared on a daily basis, because many of the National Guardsmen might be members of the first responders community.

    But when it comes to actually transferring technology, with the extension of the two programs that I noted that allows those communities to purchase things from the Department of Defense, we have to find a mechanism whereby they can be commercialized so that they are then affordable for that community.

    Mr. PASCRELL. You are not listening. I am sure you are being as forthright as you possibly can, and I am sure if anybody from Defense was sitting in that chair they would be saying the same thing whoever it was. But that is exactly the point. The point is that DHS should have shown—should have more to say in this process; should be deeply involved in this process, rather than it simply be determined by the speed at which Defense wants to move on this. There is absolutely no excuse for what you just said. None whatsoever. And I contend 4 years later that we still do not have at least communication that ends in results between departments.

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    I think what you just said to me, before I get to my final question, I am not going to have time, really bears out what we have heard time and time again. I have not seen real tangible evidence of a marriage, a holy marriage between DOD and DHS. I have not seen it. And today you have supported what I came into this room with. I was hoping you would change my mind.

    Mr. VERGA. If I left——

    Mr. PASCRELL. In fact we are tied up in process, that is our problem.

    Mr. VERGA. If I left you with the impression that we do not have a close cooperative working relationship with the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice in this area, then I have made a terrible misimpression. If you want to count on—I mean, I have on our staff—we have people that work this issue full time with people from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice. That is what they do on a full-time basis.

    Mr. PASCRELL. I am telling you the example that you gave, Mr. Verga, is proof positive of what I am talking about, and I am glad you brought the example up, and not me, about that fire department. This is a top-down situation, unfortunately, and it isn't going to work that way. You are not going to protect the American people that way. I do not care what you say in DOD or what DHS says.

    And this Congress, both sides of the aisle, have been insisting on a bottom-up process of getting results. We do not know what they need on the local level, and that is too bad. That is a shame. I have got no more questions.
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    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much.

    Mr. Thompson.

    Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Verga, in the 2001 DOD authorization, Congress required DOD to identify defense technologies suitable for use for our firefighters and EMS providers. Did we pull together a task force, to your knowledge, following congressional direction?

    Mr. VERGA. Sir, I will have to take that question for the record because I don't know. I was not doing this particular job in 2001 when that legislation was passed, and I simply do not know the answer. But I will be happy to take for the record.

    Mr. THOMPSON. My reason for saying that, I am trying to show how the DOD transfer of technology for other applications should be used just like for other homeland security-related purposes.

    Well, were you around in 2003?

    Mr. VERGA. I was.

    Mr. THOMPSON. In 2003, Congress expanded this language to include technology beyond first responder equipment. Can you explain, to your knowledge, what DOD did in that respect?
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    Mr. VERGA. That, I believe, refers to the 1401 legislation and the efforts we have been undertaking to comply with that legislation. We have complied with the requirement to designate the senior official responsible. We have developed jointly with the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice the working group necessary to make the connection between the first responder community and the Department of Defense to be able to translate the needs of the first responder community to the Department so we can try to meet those needs or discover technologies that we have to be able to do that. And that was that process that I described for you earlier.

    Mr. THOMPSON. That is correct. We are getting the 1401. So now who is the person in DOD charged with handling 1401?

    Mr. VERGA. The responsible official is the assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense, Paul McHale.

    Mr. THOMPSON. Okay. Who is responsible for coordinating it? I am not—I don't want to get into a war on words. But I understand where the buck stops. But who makes it happen?

    Mr. VERGA. That is part of my responsibility as his principal deputy. And I am also the Deputy Assistant Secretary for what we call Homeland Security Integration, so the direct day-to-day responsibility for interaction with the Department of Homeland Security is mine.

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    Mr. THOMPSON. So if there is to be transfer of technology or anything to Homeland Security or any other areas, it would come out of your shop?

    Mr. VERGA. Sir, as you know, the Department is a big department and it is not quite as simple as it might—should seem to most people. We have no technology in the Office of Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense. The technology resides, for example, in the Army or the Navy or the Air Force or in one of the defense agencies. What we do is facilitate the mechanism by which the link-up is made between the Department of Homeland Security or Department of Justice and their State and local customers to the people in the Department that actually have the technology. That is what we are all about. And making sure that those linkages are made; and then that the actual transfer mechanisms are through a variety of provisions in the law that allow the transfer of that technology to occur.

    Mr. THOMPSON. So you really do not have any enforcement authority? Or is there a memorandum of agreement between those other branches of government of service?

    Mr. VERGA. There is extant DOD directive on technology transfer that will, in its next version, include the section 1401 requirements. But I will have to say, we have met no resistance among anyone in doing this. As Representative Pascrell quite rightly noted, we are not—we haven't pushed things over the line yet. We, in fact, are in the process now of sort of getting down to the specific identification and evaluation by representatives of the first responder community of some technologies. That is to say, only in that 1401 process.

    As I noted in my statement and in the statement for the record, there are numerous examples of things and technologies that have already been transferred and are being currently utilized by the communities outside the Department of Defense. The notable example is what is going on in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A lot of good work is being done in cooperation with elements of the Department of Defense in carrying out their responsibility.
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    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon.

    Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an issue I have worked for 10 years. I wrote section 1401. And I wrote section 1707 of the 01 bill. I just wish we had the first responders here. I have the staff sitting behind you here in my office with the first responder groups, and I have reamed them out publicly—this is not in the last year, this is over the last 5 and 6 years—for a lack of response. We are talking about bureaucrats talking to bureaucrats here. I am talking about the firefighters and the paramedics who were in the buildings in New York who really need the technology being transferred to them.

    I just had a meeting with the Commissioner and the Chief of New York City before I came here and they said we have no idea, Congressman; we have no relationship to the needs that we have, The system is not working. And I am going to get specific, since I wrote section 1401.

    Mr. Pascrell is absolutely right. There is no excuse that we have not yet complied with this section which was signed into law on December 2nd of 2002 of the fiscal year 03 bill. In fact, you knew about this before it occurred, not you personally, but the agency, because I put language—and this refers to the Ranking Member's question, Mr. Benny's question—section 1707 I put in the bill in 2000 calling for meetings of the National Fire Service groups. Mr. Pascrell, they are named in my amendment. You know I called the agency people sitting behind this front table to my office 2 years later and these associations hadn't been called in yet. And the answer was well, we had a fire chief from here.
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    And I said that is not what it says: It says the International Association of Firefighters, the National Volunteer Fire Council, NFPA, the International Association of Firefighters as an association. My staff just contacted them and they said there has been sporadic contact.

    We told you what to do. And this happened before 9/11. The idea of technology transfer is not a 9/11 issue. I was out at the Loma Prieta earthquake walking the freeway with the two chiefs of Oakland and San Francisco 12 years ago. They were working for people still trapped in vehicles that were sandwiched in between the freeway and they were using dogs. And I said why aren't you using thermal imagers? And the fire chiefs of Oakland and San Francisco said to me, Congressman, what are thermal imagers? The military had paid with taxpayers' money, developed this technology 10 years earlier, and they were not even aware we had it.

    We put language consistently. I have offered amendment after amendment after amendment. I have had meeting after meeting after meeting. So maybe the bureaucrats are talking, but I can tell you the first responders are not seeing the results. And that is outrageous. In fact, I put language in this year's homeland security bill again calling for a creation of a technology transfer working group. When that bill becomes law it will be included as legislation. How many times do we have to pass amendments and bills to get the attention of the bureaucracy?

    Let me get down to specifics, since we are talking about how we are patting ourselves on the back of all the good things we do. Let me give you two specific examples.

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    One of the number-one priorities in this country is that we have forest fires that cost us 5 to $6 billion a year and cost lives. I would say that is a pretty high emergency and a pretty high priority. When I chaired the Defense Research Committee, we put language in the bill to take a technology, using our classified and unclassified satellites, to be able to sense the start of wildland and forest fires and transmit that data down to fire departments. The program was developed. It is called FireSat. Do you know that the technology has sat in boxes in Crystal City for the past 6 years while America burns?

    Is that technology transfer? The fire departments in the West that have to deal with the forest fires that consume homes and property, and we have to then fund emergency supplementals, 5 or $6 billion a year, to pay for that; and the technology and the software is sitting in boxes at Raytheon's headquarters.

    The number-one priority for the fire and EMS people in America today—and you talk to any chief, you do not have to be an expert or a career Ph.D.—is to take technology we already have available. So I am going to ask which one of you is working on this program. Since we have mastered GPS technology, both horizontal and vertical in the military—I have seen it demonstrated down at Fort Belvoir when I chaired the Defense Research Subcommittee—since we have mastered the transmission technology to transmit vital signs of human beings, which one of you has a program in place to put a device on every firefighter and paramedic in America that tells the chief officer where they are in the fire scene and how well they are doing? I have been calling for this for 5 years.

    Which one of you wants to answer the question as to where that program is? Is it available, Mr. Kubricky?
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    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir. We do have a program that is one of the rapid transition topics, that we have the RTAP program.

    I will just mention briefly on GPS, one of the physical challenges when you have GPS location devices inside of a building, of course, you have shielding. That is one of the challenges we have to overcome. To make sure we can locate where a person is in the X and Y——

    Mr. WELDON. I am aware of that. But the military has also found ways to overcome that by locating devices at the site and you know that.

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. WELDON. This has been 5 years. Is that system available today?

    Mr. Kubricky. No, sir, it is not. We are just starting——

    Mr. WELDON. This is the outrage of technology transfer. We lost six firefighters in Boston a few years ago when I first started this effort, and they were killed because two firefighters went into a burning warehouse and their air supply ran out. The chief did not know where they were and did not know that they had lost their air supply, so he sent four firefighters in to find them. All six died.

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    We had two firefighters killed in Philadelphia because the chief thought they were two floors below where they actually were when their air supply ran out. They died. We lose 100 firefighters a year. You would think if we were going to talk about priorities, that the safety and the well-being of firefighters and paramedics and police officers would be the top priority.

    I have raised this issue with the staff behind your table and I have raised it with your agencies repeatedly for 5 years and we still do not have a result. So I don't want to hear about rosy pictures about technology transfer.

    Mr. Chairman, it is still not working and it is the responsibility of Armed Services and Homeland Security, on which I am on both of, to demand that we get results. Thank you.

    Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Larsen.

    Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the panel for coming today. I just have a couple of questions.

    Dr. Tether, you talked in your testimony earlier about folks over at DHS and how they come from DARPA and relationships that you have. And I am very curious about what you are doing to institutionalize these relationships. One day we will not be here. One day you won't be here. The folks at DHS will have moved on. But what are you doing to institutionalize those relationships as opposed—your testimony left me with the impression that you are relying on the personal relationships to keep things moving, and I think we need to get beyond that.
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    Can you talk a little bit about that?

    Dr. TETHER. Yes, I can. That is always a good question. And, in fact, I would say at DARPA the process is independent of who is there, the processes that begin back to the program managers. They know they have to find customers for their technology and they find them whenever they can. And Homeland Security is an obvious customer for many of the technologies that we make.

    The fact that today there is myself in DARPA, there is Xan at Homeland Security, makes it a lot easier. I don't know if a piece of paper would change that.

    But we do not have a formal agreement between us. I honestly—we could, in fact we have talked about having a formal agreement, an overarching MOA, if you will, if for nothing more than to say we did. But at end of the day it really comes down to people communicating and having a desire to work with each other. And, in fact, with DARPA and DHA and DARPA, that desire is there and it will always be there, no matter who is there, and I am not worried about it. But we all would feel better if there was a formality to the process.

    Mr. LARSEN. Mr. Kubricky, do you want to comment on that?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. I do think the MOA is a facilitating document, but I do also believe it is relationships from long endurance where we have had successes before. The MOA formalizes the process. Along the way we are trying to institutionalize the RDTD process so it does work as it is intended, and part of it is to draw directly from DOD and other resources.
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    I was also a volunteer fireman. My son is a volunteer fireman right now. Trained in 11 B, that is infantry, so I know what it is like going into a building. And we do have technology challenges that we are trying to get to locate folks and we are working with DARPA and DOD, and the key here is to get affordable solutions that firefighters and rescue personnel can use. The difference being a $600 device, depending on how many you buy, versus a $6,000 device for military application. And these orders of magnitudes are the challenge sometimes that we have to work on to get the affordability as we transfer over from DOD.

    Mr. LARSEN. Mr. Verga, question for you. Homeland—your office just completed an operation with Homeland Security Operation San Juan where DOD, through the National Guard, provided some homeland support mechanism to Operation San Juan along the lines of what you did with Operation Winter Freeze. And through the post-exercise evaluation or assessment or whatever terms you all use, do you look at how—or what technology gaps existed in your operations? Can you give us an example where you did a real live exercise where Homeland Security personnel, DOD personnel, National Guard personnel, as well as local law enforcement, were all involved, what you learned from that, and how that gets back into your system to DARPA or DTRA or to DHS?

    Mr. VERGA. I would be happy to. I am not aware of any specific technology gaps that were identified in that particular exercise, but generally as we work on the operational concepts of how DOD can assist with the missions of the Department of Homeland Security, for example, securing the borders, things like remote sensing of vehicles and personnel in areas lightly traveled come to mind. And that can be addressed by ground-based radar, for example.
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    The use of aircraft, forward-looking infrared to be able to scan traffic at distances and be able to then react to it are the types of things that come to mind in those areas. We use the—we employed occasionally the back scatter X-ray equipment that we have and that was developed for the counterdrug missions.

    Mr. LARSEN. Are those standard parts of your evaluations when you do these kinds of exercises?

    Mr. VERGA. Yes, they are.

    Mr. LARSEN. I will put a word in edgewise. I preach this over and over again whenever I get a chance to see DOD and DHS. You all have a chance to utilize this in 2010. The Vancouver Paralympics will be held in February and March of 2010, about 20 miles north of our border, but it will certainly be a security issue on our side, not just on the north side of our common border with Canada. So a lot of these issues of coordinating technology transfer between departments is going to be very important as we work on any number of exercises. But we are going to have a real live example coming on in 5 years or so, so we need to be sure we are working together.

    Mr. VERGA. I am actually scheduled later this—I guess it is in August to meet with General Lowenberg and the people responsible for that security operation to assess what we can do to make that work very smoothly.

    Mr. LARSEN. I was glad to pass on to General Lowenberg my desire to have DOD be part of that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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    Mr. SAXTON. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Dent, and he will be followed by Mr. Dicks of Washington.

    Mr. DENT. To Mr. Kubricky, my question is who is the clearinghouse with under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 in section 313? Can you hear me now?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Who has the contract specifically?

    Mr. DENT. That is another question I have. But yes, you can start with that.

    Dr. KUBRICKY. The technology clearinghouse will be managed within the S&T Directorate, and we have awarded a contract to Sytech and they will be managing the contract for us.

    Mr. DENT. Was that competitively bid?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. DENT. Why has it taken so long?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. I will have to go back and find out the answer. I did not think it was that long to go through the process to get the clearinghouse underway. But I will find out and get you the answer.
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    Mr. DENT. Thank you.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. Mr. Dicks.

    Mr. DICKS. Thank you. According to our staff, Mr. Kubricky, there still isn't a program at—an identifiable program at the Department of Homeland Security for technology transfer from the Department of Defense. Is that true?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, we have people that are specifically designated to work the technology transfer issues. Now,——

    Mr. DICKS. But is there an office or is there a program? I wonder whether—there is a gap between the three DOD witnesses. Then you are kind of way over here. Now, I have heard all of Tony's discussion about all of his friends who are over there working with you and how everything is wonderful. But I am concerned, too, about the fact that there is a lack of structure at DHS to receive this technology from the Department of Defense. Do you worry about that?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. No, I will tell you the truth——

    Mr. DICKS. Shouldn't there be an office of some sort?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. An Office of Technology Transfer? We have the function of technology transfer assigned to two of the divisions between S&T, one by Dr. Alexander in HSARPA the other by Dr. Boyd in the Office of Interoperability and Compatibility. So they have implicit in their functions and objectives the duty of doing technology transfer programs.
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    Mr. DICKS. Well, I mean, shouldn't there be an office at Homeland Security for technology transfer from the Department of Defense?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Let me go back and revisit that to see if we can structure an office to make it work.

    Mr. DICKS. I think this is one of the reasons we have listened that there is a lot of good work being done.

    Now Tony, you are always—we always treat you with the highest respect. And I think you have done a great job at DARPA, by the way. One of the things that we are concerned about, our committee has had a number of hearings on BioShield. And we had a group of witnesses come in last week and basically what the witnesses said is DHS needs to do it like the Department of Defense does it. In other words, have a development program; that they are not able to get anything done because they have a—DHS does one part of it, they have to decide if there is a risk, and then it goes over to HHS and not much has happened.

    And all of the witnesses—these are the outside companies—said maybe we ought to use the defense model where you have a development program, an R&D program, and then if the—I noticed you have bugs to drugs in your statement. They are not able to get something accomplished because they do not, I think, have the people or the resources in order to move one of these projects from R&D into development and get it funded both in R&D and in development.

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    Do you have any ideas on that? Is there a way that the DHS could use the defense model in order to try and solve this problem?

    Dr. TETHER. Well, I have been asked that question many times. And the facts are, they could. In fact, HSARPA—first of all, a place by DARPA or HSARPA is created out of crisis. You do not create something like us without it being something to spur you. We are out of the norm in the Department of Defense. We are—if it hadn't been for the fact that we really are very close to the top, the other antibodies would have come and killed us a long time ago.

    So I told them that you have to decide—people have to believe that you have a crisis on your hands. And if you have a crisis on your hands, then a solution is to create a DARPA-like organization. Now in the BioShield case, I think you call it the valley of death. You know, where you have companies that are coming up with drugs, BioShield is a customer. If it ever gets to the point of getting through phase three, that is good; you have created a customer that people feel that we have done it.

    What DARPA does and what we have done for many years, in fact our whole way of doing business, is to mine the far side. Find those people with the ideas and basically take those ideas as rapidly as possible to what we call the ''near side'' or to make it into a product for the services to buy.

    So that is missing. That is missing in the case of HHS and all of that. You have plenty of people who are doing the far side ideas. They have ideas. And then you have BioShield who is like the services. But there isn't an organization whose whole job is applied research, taking those ideas and getting them to the point where they would be accepted.
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    Mr. DICKS. And you fund it, though. That is the other problem these companies have. DHS and HHS do not want to fund the development. They want the companies to do it. Well, you wouldn't get a lot of development——

    Dr. TETHER. We wouldn't get any development. Well, I take that back, that is not quite true. But the fact is we have companies come in—the difference between DARPA and a lot of other places is that we will fund an idea with no data. We will place a bet on an idea. A lot of other places require you to have the data. And that is a difference. But that is what we do. That is why we leave no stone unturned.

    Mr. DICKS. Should we take BioShield and give it to the Defense Department? In other words, just admit that because of the lack of resources and, frankly, talent, DHS and HHS can't do this job? We ought to give it to the Defense Department and let you guys do it in order to get it done. We need to—I think this is urgent. You talked about chemical, biological. These are the big threes. This is where millions of people are going to die, potentially. And for us to let the DHS-HHS thing go on without any results—and I guess, look at what is happening in London. This is an emergency and it is not being treated as an emergency. And one possible thing to do would be to give this to the Department of Defense and say, you take it over. You help us develop these drugs that are necessary to deal with these problems.

    Dr. TETHER. It is a feel-good solution, but I don't think it would work.

    Mr. DICKS. Why?
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    Dr. TETHER. The Department of Defense, as I said earlier——

    Mr. DICKS. You are developing the same kind of drugs for your soldiers for chemical and biological and nuclear exposure.

    Dr. TETHER. True. And we have a problem sometimes getting those drugs, after we have shown that you can do something, getting them to the next stage. But we have a system in DOD. WE have DTRA. We have the Army. What we try to do is develop drugs—in fact, our own claim to fame is ''one drug, many bugs. And'' the reason we went that way is that we wanted, to have one of those bugs be a commercial bug, so we could get the pharmaceuticals interested in developing that drug for a commercial reason, because nobody would make a business developing drugs for Ebola. It is such a rare occurrence that you would go out of business.

    But BioShield did not go far enough. BioShield said after you spend hundreds of millions of dollars, we promise to buy it. But they never told anybody how much they would buy. How could you have a business plan when nobody is telling you what the volume is going to be at the end? But the Department of Defense, I don't think—I think you have to make the other people, whose jobs it is to do it, do it.

    Mr. DICKS. And they simply aren't doing it. There are 50 different things we should have an MTA for, and we have four of them. It just isn't happening.

    Dr. TETHER. But the D in DARPA is Defense. And I explained DARPA-like. Make it happen. But we are not set up to do it. You would destroy—destroy is probably too strong a word. But you would dilute DARPA's mission, which really is prevent technological surprise.
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    Mr. DICKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Dicks. Mr. Steve Pearce, the gentleman from new New Mexico.

    Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Following along a little bit on that line, Dr. Tether, how much—since 1958 DARPA has been in existence—how much has your budget been in that period of time?

    Dr. TETHER. The total sum?

    Mr. PEARCE. Yes, more or less.

    Dr. TETHER. Let's see, let's assume we averaged out—up until about 1980, the budget was running about $300 million a year. From 1980 to 1990, it was probably about $500 million a year. I don't know. So what do we have, 5 billion, 6 billion? Probably a total of maybe $15 billion.

    Mr. PEARCE. And your budget today is how much?

    Dr. TETHER. It is $3 billion a year today, thanks to Congressman Saxton.

    Mr. PEARCE. So, if you were to name—your task is to prevent technology surprise. I understand the stealth. And you mentioned one other. If you were to name five ways that we have interdicted technological surprise since 1958, what would the top five on the list be?
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    Dr. TETHER. Well, that is why I also said——

    Mr. PEARCE. Give me a list. I only have 5 minutes. And I am 5 minutes late to an appointment now. Just a list.

    Dr. TETHER. I would say that most of our activity has really been to create technological surprise. Stealth, for example, created technological surprise for our enemy. The idea of preventing technological surprise was to never again let——

    Mr. PEARCE. I understand the concept. I read your paper. But five. You have got stealth.

    Dr. TETHER. I would call stealth a creating technology.

    Mr. PEARCE. I understand. I will take any five. You can go creating——

    Dr. TETHER. Let me take it for the record. I really have a hard time thinking—of prevent—I can think of many creating technological prize.

    Mr. PEARCE. Five, creating. I am going through my time pretty quick here.

    Dr. TETHER. On creating technological surprise, Predator, Global Hawk, JSTARS, we have some satellite programs.
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    Mr. PEARCE. Did any of your processes anticipate the IED explosive devices in Iraq?

    Dr. TETHER. Yes.

    Mr. PEARCE. So why is it that we do not have stuff in Iraq today? Why is it that we have languished—and keep in mind, there are two places in New Mexico that produce those. One in my district for $7,500 a whack and another one up north for 7,500 or 8,500 a whack, and a competing unit for $75,000 a whack; and we have been buying more of the $75,000 units than the $7,500 ones, and the ones that perform at a higher level we are buying fewer of. They are cheaper, they perform better; and still today we are killing kids in Iraq because we just haven't anticipated the technology; and once we saw the technology, we did not get on it.

    I know this is not at the point that it begins to occur it is no longer your function, we have been surprised. But still, someone should be asking these questions about technology.

    Dr. TETHER. The IED is a very tough threat.

    Mr. PEARCE. We have a sensor that is almost 100 percent accurate. It is 100 percent effective stopping it. It is built in my district, I have been to see it. They bought about 100 to 200 units here and there, sometimes up to 1,000, but we need many, many in Iraq and we still do not have it fully deployed because we keep going back to the big vendor that produces them at $75,000 a whack.
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    Dr. TETHER. Let me ask you to do this. As I said earlier, we do get lots of inputs from you all. How about having that company contact me personally?

    Mr. PEARCE. We have had them talk to everybody in DOD. It gets very frustrating. I will take your card after the meeting.

    Mr. Verga, you mentioned the remote sensing on the border issue. Was DOD involved with ISIS program with IMC?

    Mr. VERGA. I am sorry?

    Mr. PEARCE. IMC, that is a $239 million boondoggle that did not put cameras everywhere they were supposed to. Sometimes when they put them up, they did not hook them up. Sometimes when they hooked them up they did not work; $239 million supposed to secure our southern border, and it looks like maybe all of it was squandered. I am asking, was your department—you talked about border security and border sensing. Was your department involved in that?

    Mr. VERGA. To my knowledge, no. But I will take the question——

    Mr. PEARCE. This all, then, fell under Homeland security; is that right?

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    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, it was under Homeland Security, but it was outside of my directorate. I do have an analysis that I will be glad to send you of what happened.

    Mr. PEARCE. I saw the analysis in The Washington Post I suspect the 3 pages there of analysis there would tell me——

    Mr. DICKS. Will the gentleman yield just for a brief second? I think we have the same problem on the northern border.

    Mr. PEARCE. Yes, they were both borders, but I am only worried about the one that I represent. But it is a good point.

    So we had 239 million, and I am sitting here trying to contemplate how effective all of this technology exchange is and what kind of juice we get at the end of the pipeline, and right now I do not feel a great sense of promise.

    Do you have—I mean, it goes back to the DARPA question. Been sitting here since 1958. We have to get a sheet handed to us to list five significant technologies since 1958; and 15 to 16, 18 billion bucks, and three a year now. At some point you say what are we getting for our money, frankly? Because we did not anticipate the Twin Towers. We did not anticipate the IEDs. And when do we anticipate and try to put something on the border, it doesn't go in effectively.

    What do I tell my constituents who ask me why do you let this stuff go on?

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    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, I think it is being addressed in the second-stage review that Secretary Chertoff has stood up. He has reevaluated the way we do RTD&E, test and evaluation. In some cases, ISIS is an good example, they have certain organizations in DHS, has gone out and bought equipment and tried to install without doing necessary testing and evaluation, and is holding contractors responsible for performance.

    So under the second-stage review, one of the things that we are shaping is the way we do acquisition test and evaluation, and the way we do contract management to make sure we have milestones in there for delivering on performance.

    So I think you will see a change as these are implemented over the next several months. It is not going to take years.

    Mr. PEARCE. Those changes that you implemented, could I go back and find out the employee that finally signed off the $239 million boondoggle on the border? Could I find out which employee was responsible?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. I am not sure about in the past.

    Mr. PEARCE. Now, under the changes that Secretary Chertoff has put in, I could find out the single person who said yes, this is a great system, I am going to go with it. And, after the performance was not there, I could find out the single person. It is going to be written up in their file. I don't see why they should be continued to be employed by the government. You are tracking it down to that specific? We are going to hold people for the millions and billions they are spending; is that right?
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    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir. Under Science and Technology's process, we have accountability for every contract that is signed up to the source selection authority. So we know who that person is that made that decision to go under contract.

    Mr. PEARCE. And you have got some mechanism to do something when they are grossly negligent?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Under the government regulations, yes, sir.

    Mr. PEARCE. Which means no. We only have one department, that is DOD, where we can actually fire people now.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you for the good questions, Mr. Pearce.

    You know, it seems to me after hearing the discussion today, that it would be appropriate to point out that while our country has been fighting wars for years, we have never fought one like this one. And as I go about my daily business both here and back in New Jersey, I oftentimes think of how perhaps many of us do not really understand the gravity of the situation that we are in. And I am not saying that you are among them. But many of us Americans have—I think we should redefine a word that is commonly used in this country for many reasons, which is a one-word oxymoron. That word is ''permanent.'' we have all decided collectively that the things we see around us, the things we are used to, the institutions that we operate in, are all permanent. And when you stop and think about it, none of it is permanent. And it seems to me that that permanency that we had is threatened more than perhaps it has been at any time in our country's history.
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    And therefore the frustration that you hear from some of our members who understand that permanent is not really permanent when it comes to the war that we are engaged in, that we need to change our institutions to be able to make sure that what the American people expect to be permanent is in fact permanent. And that is the reason for the frustration.

    Now, let me just kind of try to walk through this process, if we can, to see if there is some way that we can make progress. I understand that today there is a great effort on the part of folks in Homeland Security—and I know your staff that is sitting behind you real well, known them for years, and you have great people working for you. and I know there is a great—I have worked with DOD for 20 years myself, and I know the dedication and commitment of the folks in DARPA and the folks in the Department of Homeland Defense. There is no question about any of that in my mind.

    And yet we haven't been able to accomplish the task, as has been pointed out, of sharing technology, which is so important in fighting the war on terror.

    Now, as I listened to the discussion, very early on in the hearing I got the impression that a lot of sharing is, in fact, going on. And I think that is true, and let me just ask as a first question:

    Is it true that a lot of sharing is taking place and could each of you spend 1 minute giving some examples of how that sharing is taking place?

    Dr. TETHER. Well, the answer, I believe, is yes; and in my written testimony and my verbal testimony I went over several of those examples of activities that are ongoing right now, from having joint programs—we are putting money in for coming up with decontamination against dirty bombs—to technologies that DHS is using in their procurements.
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    There is great sharing going on. But there is not any formal activity. It really is the entrepreneurial spirit of ''get that product out there.''

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, I would say also there are a lot of interoffice agency working groups that have not been formalized. We are doing it out of personal heroics, improvised explosive devices, for instance, there is constant, weekly, daily collaboration between DOD and DHS, S&T and other parts of the intelligence community. And in the intelligence components of DOD there is also quite a constant collaboration. I would say that is daily, as well as——

    Mr. VERGA. To the specifics, a bag for hazardous materials to help first responders transport hazardous material devices; chemical agent decontamination systems that are foam-based, broad-spectrum effectiveness against various chemical, biological agents; techniques and protocols.

    We produced a little flip book for people of how do you do a mass decontamination, post-event restoration in the biological area. The many, many kinds of chemical and biological detectors that have been deployed around the country are just but a few examples.

    Ms. PAYTON. Yes, sir. We have nuclear quadruple resident department systems. It is a way to detect bulk explosives. And we have two units right here that came out of the Naval Research Lab that are being used through the Department of Homeland Security. We have an IntraLink van which is a command and control system with communications that we deploy for FEMA during hurricanes that comes out of NORTHCOM.
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    We have a correlator set of software that is every minute watching for airplanes that go into restricted areas. I know we have had 2,000 airplanes scrambled in the last couple of years because of that kind of sharing of information.

    I think we are doing it. I think that we need to do it better.

    Mr. SAXTON. In 2005—I mean in 2002, in December, the President signed into law a National Defense Authorization Act which had it in Section 1401, which provides for a formal mechanism for sharing to take place. I guess there are a couple of questions.

    First of all, where are we? I am told that a memo is supposed to be signed this fall that will actually put in place a formal mechanism to enhance the transfer of technology at least one way, maybe both ways.

    Mr. VERGA. That is correct, sir. What that memorandum of agreement will do is codify what has been going on over the past—with greater intensity over the past year.

    We have developed that process that evaluates DOD technologies, compares them against the needs of the first responder community as expressed through the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, and also lets unmet requirements of the first responder community be looked at.

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    And then we had a cooperative evaluation process where we get together and looked at various technologies to see their applicability and then figure out how we will make that transfer. Is it something that the first responder community can buy through one of the existing mechanisms? Is it something that has to be modified to be useful to the first responder community? Is it something that has to go into the commercial development world because the DOD version of it is just too expensive or too complicated?

    And then the outcome of that isn't supposed to be, is the deployment of that technology to the first responder community through mechanisms that are available to DHS and DOJ, such as grants or other types of programs.

    Mr. SAXTON. Would it be fair to say that the process has been developed and largely implemented and that the memo is now going to be signed to formalize the process?

    Mr. VERGA. The process is not being inhibited by the lack of a memorandum of understanding.

    Mr. SAXTON. Will the process change once the memo of understanding has been signed?

    Mr. VERGA. No, sir.

    Mr. SAXTON. Once the memo of agreement, the memorandum of agreement is signed, will it provide significantly rigorous framework and institutional incentives to ensure true sharing and collaboration? And is that process that you envision, after the memorandum of understanding is signed, currently in place?
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    Mr. VERGA. I think this hearing will provide a great incentive for more rigorous enhancement of this process and making sure that we follow through on what we say we are going to do.

    Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Kubricky, what is your take?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, I would say the same thing, but—as far as it will accelerate the process, but honestly I think the rigor with which these people are meeting to lay out an agenda and get things done is already there.

    Again, it goes back to the statement I made before. I think the process of signing the MOU will simply formalize what we have already been doing. If anything happens out of the process to change that MOU, we are going to add other accelerating mechanisms there, add methods of being able to do our jobs better to transfer the technology.

    Mr. SAXTON. Well, I think that you agree that you have been working toward the memos; it has just taken a long time to get the formal agreement in place, and in a month or so it will be there finally.

    We look forward to watching this process mature, and hopefully, the transfer of technology will take place in an efficient, rapid fashion so that we Members on this side of the dais won't be frustrated.

    Mr. Pascrell, I think, has some more questions.
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    Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Kubricky, let me pronounce your name right. I apologize.

    Kubricky; is that correct?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. PASCRELL. Is that correct?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Yes, sir.

    Mr. PASCRELL. The total, if I am adding correctly, amount of money available to Homeland Security with regard to the R&D budget is 1—this is in the 2005, the current year—is $1.2 billion for R&D.

    I added up all the subtitles, subgroupings, et cetera, and I know that the research and development budget for fiscal year 2005 for DOD—and I understand the tremendous amount of hardware and tremendous amount of work and science and technology that goes into it—is $68.6 billion for research and development.

    Now, we have a crisis, you would agree with me, in trying to protect mass transportation in this country. There are 14 million people who use mass transit every day, 1.8 million use the airways. A lot of people. And I know the Secretary wishes—he probably wants to take those words back, because I know he didn't mean it the way it came out, but all people are important.
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    If you just looked at the subway systems in the metropolitan areas—just the subway systems, not even the buses—of what is needed to review underground for the most part, and the tunnels, the cars—I mean, you know that there is—we need a whole review of what 14 million people use every day. So that we not only send a message—we are good at sending messages; we want to send a message—but we want to improve it because those areas that we make less vulnerable become less attractive to the terrorists. It has been proven. The National Academy has proven it over and over again.

    You can't tell me, you can't—not that you tried to—you can't tell me that $1.2 billion of science and technology research and development is enough to do the job just in looking at what is underground in communication, in transportation in this country, can you?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. Sir, we would like to have more, if possible.

    Mr. PASCRELL. But do you need more?

    Dr. KUBRICKY. We are, let's say, prioritizing the threats and vulnerabilities. But the procurement, the real procurement part of this goes on by the operational and organizational elements within DHS.

    The Science and Technology Directorate that does the research and development doesn't really procure. We develop, modify, transfer technologies from DOD to adapt them and get them ready for procurement. So if we test out TBSS, this is one good example of Tactical Ballistic Survival System that was developed for SOCOM for Special Forces use, and we developed a modification program for the Coast Guard and for Border Patrol agents that are operating over water, we don't do that procurement.
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    We do the R&D to make the modifications, to do the test and evaluation; then we set up a procurement package so they can buy those. So that is much larger dollars. Whereas, in DOD, part of that $60-plus billion is for L-Web, and we typically don't do low-rate initial production or preproduction kinds of buys.

    So we have a fairly good portion of dollars today for the amount of high threats and vulnerabilities. And if you pick the bio watch cities—for instance, in the subways here in the metro district—the areas that have most of the population are protected with instruments like bio watch.

    So we have gone after the highest threat targets to deny or to reduce the vulnerability, but to deny those targets, to make them less attractive for attack.

    Mr. PASCRELL. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I don't want us to be in homeland security an ibid, an op. cit., or a loc. cit., an addendum.

    It is either going to really do this and really have a vibrant department and a vibrant oversight in the Congress of the United States, or we give everything to the Defense Department. And I don't think that would be wise. And I support the defense budgets. So it has nothing to do with that.

    I don't want you to be a sidebar. And you know, I am concerned. It took us a hell of a fight to get here, to be a committee, mind you.

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    So we all agree that homeland security is significant. But we need to do some tangible things that result, rather than simply worry about the process, because Homeland Security has been late on every report just about that they have handed to the Congress.

    So we need to improve that, as well. And we need to be here to try to help you do your job. And that is what this is all about.

    Thank you.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. I think Mr. Verger wants to say something. Before he does that, I would just like to comment on your comment.

    We need two agencies. I work every day with the agency that is in charge of taking the fight to the terrorists. And I think we are doing a pretty good job. I think it is a difficult mission.

    The President said in 2001 that this would be a long, hard fight, and he was absolutely right. But we also need to secure the homeland, and that is what the Department of Homeland Security is maturing in their capabilities of doing. We never had—we never had to approach it this way before because we never faced this threat.

    Dick Cheney said in this room, in 2000—in 1991, he said, I have got good news and bad news. He said, The good news is the threat is going to go away—I am sorry; I take that back.

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    He said, The good news is, the Soviet Union is going to go away. He said, The bad news is, the threat isn't; it is just going to change.

    And what we see here, what we are trying to work through is how we can take the guys—the agency that takes the fight to the bad guys and transfer the technology to the new guy on the block that is in charge of the new job that is necessary because of the new threat, the changed threat that Dick Cheney talked about in 1991, the threat of terrorism.

    This is an important task that we all have to work through together, helping a new agency benefit from the technologies—I don't want to call it an old agency, but different agency.

    Mr. Verga, you wanted to say something.

    Mr. VERGA. Sir, I appreciate that. What I want to do is express the appreciation and the interest of the two subcommittees holding this hearing. I think it is very important. We are absolutely clear that the measure of success and effectiveness is not a good process. It is getting the technology into the hands of those that need the technology. And I commit to you that the next time we discuss this situation, we will be able to demonstrate that we have, in fact, done that.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you.

    Dr. Tether.

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    Dr. TETHER. And I would like to say that DARPA is not waiting for an MOA to be signed to transfer technology to the Department of Homeland Security.

    Mr. SAXTON. We are real interested in that, one technology that you are doing. One drug for all the bugs.

    Dr. TETHER. I understand.

    Mr. SAXTON. That is a big deal. And we heard on the—and this doesn't have to take but a minute—we heard on the radio this morning that there were explosions again in the U.K., and the question was, why weren't they forceful?

    And one of the suggestions as to why they weren't so forceful had to do with, were they trying to spread a biological substance? And I don't think they were. I think we would probably know something by now if they were. But this is a big deal.

    We are not only dealing, as we all know, with explosives and guns and traditional kinds of warfare. We are looking at the potential use of chemicals against civilians and biological weapons against civilians. And it keeps many of us awake at night. And I know it does you, too, in both departments.

    Mr. Pascrell, thank you for hanging in here with us until the end of end of the day. Thank you for being here and for being conversant with us on these very important subjects.

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    Thank you.

    [Whereupon, at 4:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]