- DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002

[Senate Hearing 107-355]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

S. Hrg. 107-355, Pt. 4

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR
2002

=======================================================================

HEARINGS

before the

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

S. 1416

AUTHORIZING APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002 FOR MILITARY ACTIVITIES
OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, FOR MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, AND FOR
DEFENSE ACTIVITIES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, TO PRESCRIBE PERSONNEL
STRENGTHS FOR SUCH FISCAL YEAR FOR THE ARMED FORCES, AND FOR OTHER
PURPOSES

----------

PART 4

AIRLAND

----------

JULY 10 AND 19, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR
2002--Part 4 AIRLAND

S. Hrg. 107-355, Pt. 4

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR
2002

=======================================================================

HEARINGS

before the

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

S. 1416

__________

PART 4

AIRLAND

__________

JULY 10 AND 19, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
75-349 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2002
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402�090001

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

CARL LEVIN, Michigan, Chairman

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts JOHN WARNER, Virginia,
ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia STROM THURMOND, South Carolina
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MAX CLELAND, Georgia BOB SMITH, New Hampshire
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JACK REED, Rhode Island RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
BILL NELSON, Florida WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado
E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska TIM HUTCHINSON, Arkansas
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

David S. Lyles, Staff Director

Les Brownlee, Republican Staff Director

______

Subcommittee on Airland

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman

MAX CLELAND, Georgia RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
BILL NELSON, Florida PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska TIM HUTCHINSON, Arkansas
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

(ii)

C O N T E N T S

----------

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES
The F-22 Aircraft Program
july 10, 2001

Page

Druyun, Darleen A., Acting Assistant Secretary for Acquisition,
Department of the Air Force.................................... 4
Frame, Lee, Acting Director, Operational Test and Evaluation..... 17

Army Modernization and Transformation
july 19, 2001

Kern, Lt. Gen. Paul J., USA, Military Deputy, Office of the
Assistant Secetary of the Army................................. 43
Bond, Maj. Gen. William L., USA, Director, Force Development,
United States Army............................................. 53

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR
2002

----------

TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2001

U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Airland,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.

THE F-22 AIRCRAFT PROGRAM

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m. in
room SR-222, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Joseph I.
Lieberman (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators Lieberman and Inhofe.
Majority staff members present: Kenneth M. Crosswait,
professional staff member; and Creighton Greene, professional
staff member.
Minority staff member present: Thomas L. MacKenzie,
professional staff member.
Staff assistants present: Kristi M. Freddo and Jennifer L.
Naccari.
Committee members' assistants present: Frederick M. Downey,
assistant to Senator Lieberman; Andrew Vanlandingham, assistant
to Senator Cleland; Eric Pierce, assistant to Senator Ben
Nelson; George M. Bernier III, assistant to Senator Santorum;
and Derek Maurer, assistant to Senator Bunning.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, CHAIRMAN

Senator Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. I thank
the witnesses, Mrs. Druyun and Mr. Frame, for being here. We
are in the midst of three votes, and I appreciate that Senator
Inhofe agreed to come over here. We will try to give our
opening statements and see if we can begin to hear from you
before we have to go back for the second vote.
We are convened this afternoon to hear testimony on the
progress of the F-22 program which we reviewed last year. I
want to put on the record before getting to that subject my
thanks and appreciation to Senator Santorum for his leadership
on this subcommittee.
We work very closely together. We both had the same thought
when the party control of the Senate switched, which was that
nothing on this subcommittee would change except the titles.
So, I appreciate very much working with him, and I look
forward to continuing to do so. He could not be here today, he
took a special trip. I am grateful that Senator Inhofe is here
in his place.
Over the past several years the subcommittee has spent
substantial time and effort trying to understand and take
action on the services' various tactical aircraft modernization
efforts. Today we are going to deal with one major area within
that program, that is the F-22.
Unfortunately, there have been some problems in the F-22
program since we reviewed it last year. For instance,
developmental testing has not proceeded as rapidly as former
Secretary Delaney testified last year that it would. That means
that the Air Force is facing a need to delay the beginning of
operational testing until the Air Force and the contractor team
can complete sufficient developmental testing to ensure that we
have high confidence that the operational testing will be
successful.
Unfortunately, further delays in starting operational
testing will translate into additional engineering and
manufacturing development (EMD) costs. We also understand that
the estimates of production costs have increased by as much as
$2 billion, according to Air Force projections, and more
according to others within the Department of Defense. Now, that
kind of increase will mean that the Air Force will not be able
to buy the total planned number of production aircraft within
the legislative cost caps that Congress has established for
production.
The Air Force is proposing to use funds diverted from
producing aircraft in the near-term to invest in cost reduction
initiatives that may achieve long-term savings. Cost estimates
made this year by various DOD groups appear to be diverging
rather than converging, as has been the case over the past
several years.
Now, the F-22, in my opinion, is a revolutionary
improvement over existing aircraft systems, and that is why I
have supported it and continue to support it. We should expect,
I suppose, to have bumps in the road as we conduct testing on
any program attempting, as this one is, to field cutting-edge
technology. Nevertheless, we need to be diligent in ensuring
that we do not cut corners on developmental testing that have
very serious ramifications if the Department were to begin
operational testing before the system is really ready.
We have had recent tragic experience with the V-22 program,
where, in hindsight, I think one might argue we should have
insisted that the Department conduct more developmental testing
before entering the operational evaluation. We need to hear
from the Air Force and the operational test and evaluation
about the schedule and content, therefore, of the testing
program for the F-22.
This subcommittee expressed concern last year about the
potential erosion of the F-22 testing effort. I said last year
that this erosion could signify that the risk of the F-22
program upon entering the initial operational test and
evaluation may not be as low as we had planned and hoped it
would be. I also said that it would be very short-sighted to
have to scrimp on testing to fit within the EMD cost cap, and
that is why Chairman Santorum and I, and this subcommittee, led
the efforts to allow additional flexibility in the EMD cost
caps to protect testing content in the F-22 program. Protecting
testing content was the right thing to do then, and is the
right thing to do now.
The Air Force and contractor team made substantial attempts
to identify production cost efficiencies after the joint
estimating team identified potential major cost growth several
years ago. Over the past several years, members of the Armed
Services Committee have been asking the Air Force whether there
might be opportunities for investing now to achieve recurring
cost savings as production proceeded. The Air Force answer has
been that the F-22 program would fit within the cost cap.
The Air Force has not indicated there were any additional
financially effective cost reduction opportunities that were
not being pursued because of the EMD or production cost caps.
Nevertheless, the budget now before us proposes production of
13 aircraft, as opposed to the 16 aircraft that had been
planned at this time last year. The Air Force is proposing to
use the additional budget authority freed up by deferring
production of those three F-22s to invest in additional cost
reduction opportunities.
From a broader perspective, however, there is another
troubling note here, and I referred to it briefly a little
earlier in this statement. Until last year, Air Force witnesses
have been testifying that the various production cost estimates
internal to the Defense Department have been converging and, of
course, we all know that reasonable people and reasonable
organizations can differ on such cost estimates, but it had
been encouraging that these differences in cost estimates had
been narrowing.
This year, it appears that the difference between the Air
Force's production cost estimate, which is an increase of as
much as $2 billion, and that from the cost analysis improvement
group within the Pentagon, which I gather is for a production
cost increase of as much as $9 billion, is larger by far than
it had previously been. We need to hear from Mrs. Druyun why
this is happening so late in the EMD program, and what
implications it has for the program overall.
Again, I repeat what I said during my statement, this is a
revolutionary program which I have supported and continue to
support. I think our role in this subcommittee is to make sure
it will come out as right as we can possibly make it come out.
I now want to recognize and call on Senator Inhofe and
again thank him for being here.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAMES M. INHOFE

Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We had a Senate
Armed Services Committee hearing this morning. We had all of
the Chiefs and all of the Secretaries. I expressed to them that
there was a time prior to just recent history when we had the
best equipment, whether it was flying equipment, whether it was
ground equipment, artillery, or anything else. I am not sure
you were there at that time when I was talking about the guy
that came up, and it was always, during the Vietnam War, the F-
105s, F-100s, F-4s, at least they had the notion they believed
we had the very best of everything.
Now we do not, and now we are looking at, from air-to-air,
we have that problem with right now on the market the SU-27s
being sold to potential adversaries. It is better in some
respects than our best air-to-air, which is the F-15, in terms
of range, in terms of range detection, which means they detect
us before we detect them. The same can be said about our air-
to-ground, or F-16. So in order to try to keep up with the
competition, I look at this as something we have to do
everything we can to get it deployed as quickly as possible.
We are now looking at the Eurofighter, the Rafale, and all
of these things coming online, and we have to be up there where
we can be competitive. The only thing we have up there right
now is the F-22, so my major concern, Mr. Chairman, is to find
out whether it is the caps that need to be changed or the
tests. What has to be done to get this so that we are going to
have it deployed and available to save American lives?
That is my major concern with this program.
Senator Lieberman. Well said. I agree. Thank you.
We will now go to the witnesses. Hopefully we can hear from
one or both of them before we have to go vote. I thank them
both very much for being here.
First, Mrs. Darleen A. Druyun, Acting Assistant Secretary
for Acquisition of the Department of the Air Force.

STATEMENT OF DARLEEN A. DRUYUN, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
ACQUISITION, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

Mrs. Druyun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
subcommittee. I am very pleased to provide an update on the
progress of the F-22 program today. As you requested, my update
will include changes in the flight test program, flight test
accomplishments, assessment of the congressional cost caps, and
a summary of where we stand with respect to production cost on
the program.
Air superiority is key to the successful employment of
military powers. Control of the 21st century air battle
requires a combination of low observability, supercruise,
integrated avionics, and high maneuverability to defeat the
emerging fighter and surface-to-air missile threats.
The multimission F-22 Raptor is a key element in the Air
Force's modernization program and its highest acquisition
priority. Late aircraft deliveries are the principal reasons we
are behind in our test schedule. This has impacted the start of
dedicated IOT&E as originally planned in August 2002, which I
will explain shortly.
The Air Force convened two teams of flight test experts to
review the F-22 test program over the past year. In August
2000, the Air Force assembled a team of experts to evaluate the
flight test requirements and make recommendations to improve
flight test efficiencies. One of the key recommendations by the
flight test review team was to slip the start of dedicated
IOT&E by 4 to 6 months.
Slipping the start of dedicated IOT&E from August 2002 to
December 2002 provided an additional 4 calendar months of
flight testing with no impact to the December 2005 initial
operational capability. The Director of Operational Test and
Evaluation in January 2001 this year sent a letter to Congress
stating that the increase in the EMD cost cap by 1\1/2\ percent
was necessary to ensure adequate testing. The 1\1/2\ percent
cap increase equates to $307 million, which is sufficient funds
for slipping the start of the dedicated IOT&E date from August
2002 until December 2002.
The flight test review team also made two other key
recommendations to increase flight test efficiency, both of
which were implemented by the Air Force. The team also
recommended the addition of a fourth mission control team,
which would increase the potential weekly sortie generation
rate from 8 to 10 sorties a week.
Second, additional data reduction analysis would
significantly improve our test analysis capability, which is
very important for efficient flight test operations and anomaly
resolution. After the flight test review team completed their
efforts, I personally assembled the Red Team to conduct a
thorough, independent assessment of the test program's proposed
restructure.
The Red Team was chartered to focus on the findings of the
Air Force team, to provide an independent assessment of the
test program, and present specific recommendations concerning
the test program's effectiveness, efficiency, and adequacy to
verify F-22 system effectiveness and suitability.
The members of the Red Team had a wealth of test experience
to provide this independent assessment. Members of the team
were Mr. John Krings, former Under Secretary of Defense for
Operational Test and Evaluation; Dr. Eugene Covert, professor
emeritus at MIT in the aeronautics and astronautics area;
retired Maj. Gen. George Harrison, former Commander of the Air
Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center; and Mr. Jim
Smolka, chief test pilot of NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center.
Overall, the Red Team was very impressed with the F-22
program and was highly complimentary of the total team effort.
Significant operations and recommendations from the Red Team
included that the restructured avionics and flight test
sciences plan were the results of an orderly process which made
no compromises in safety or technical areas. They praised the
team for first inflight aircraft signature measurements meeting
specification, cited the engine performance as exemplary, and
recommended, amongst other things, that we establish periodic
decision points over the next year to objectively reassess
progress in the test program. We are going to follow through on
that, and the Red Team is going to continue to lead that
effort.
They also recommended that we extend dedicated IOT&E start
date by at least 4 months beyond December 2002 to reduce the
schedule risk and improve the dedicated IOT&E success
potential.
The Air Force has acted on the Red Team's recommendations.
Specifically, we have slipped the start of dedicated IOT&E
another 4 months from December 2002 to April 2003, giving
additional test time to ensure adequate testing is
accomplished. This slip will require additional EMD cost cap
relief above the previous 1\1/2\ percent adjustment. This slip
will not impact the December 2005 initial operational
capability of the aircraft.
During the past few months, the F-22 team has experienced a
significant improvement by setting team records for sorties,
beginning in March 2001. In other words, the results of the
Tiger Team, the test team, and the Red Team are beginning to
take effect. The average over the past 4 months, 36 sorties a
month, and 88 flight test hours per month, has more than
tripled from the prior year average of 11 sorties a month and
23 flight test hours per month.
Presently, we have five aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base
conducting flight tests, and we will deliver the remaining
three EMD aircraft by the end of this year.
The F-22 has achieved several significant performance
milestones in the test program this year. Highlights include
the first flight of aircraft 4005 with a block 3.0 software,
and that software provides the first-look, first-shot, first-
kill for fighting capability, so that has already been
delivered, and we are into the testing of that.
The radar cross-section testing has been unprecedented.
Aircraft 4004 meets the key RCS spec requirements, and if I
could compare that, sir, to the B-2 program with respect to its
RCS testing, it was not until the fourteenth production
aircraft that success in manufacturing resulted in similar
accomplishments for the design spec.
The F-22 radar's performance has been outstanding so far.
On 12 April of this year, the team verified the F-22 radar met
a key design specification for the detection range. The flight
test results demonstrated the radar met 105 percent of the
design requirements.
On May 3 of this year, the flight test engine completed
4,300 engine cycle test cycles at Arnold Engineering
Development Center. I would add not only has this performance
and durability testing been outstanding, but the flight test
program has proceeded since September 1997 with no engine-
related failures.
We recognize there is considerable work to be done to
complete the F-22 test program. We do also want to highlight to
you that the F-22 is successfully advancing through the test
program of this complex revolutionary system. As of yesterday,
the test team accomplished more than 1,230 hours of flight
testing, and we are continuing, as I said, to really pick up
the pace of our test program.
Turning to the EMD development cost cap, the 1997 Congress
enacted a cost cap for the F-22 EMD program. This cap has been
an effective cost-control tool for the program. Recognizing
that the development contract is over 95 percent complete, with
hardware design finalized and key performance parameters and
technical acquisition program baseline criteria so far being
met, we believe that this cost cap has been an effective tool
for incentivizing aggressive cost control across the entire F-
22.
However, the remaining development work focuses on testing
to verify safe and effective operation of the combat fielded
system. Continuation of the EMD cost cap at this time can only
serve to limit testing, which is not the best way to complete
the development program. Given this situation, the Air Force
now believes the EMD cost cap should be eliminated.
With respect to production cost, the F-22 remains
absolutely dedicated to the objective to deliver 339 production
aircraft to the warfighter at an affordable cost. The
production cost will be the key element in the low rate initial
production decision. That decision is formalized by a Defense
Acquisition Board (DAB) review, and that DAB review we are
hopeful will be scheduled sometime perhaps in the month of
August.
Once the DAB is complete, we will submit any revisions to
our acquisition strategy and cost estimates to Congress in
response to the statutory requirements laid out in the National
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000.
An important factor in production cost control is the
implementation of effective cost reduction initiatives. These
initiatives have been known as the F-22 production cost
reduction plans in the Air Force. The F-22 has a well-
structured program plan to continuously pursue cost savings
initiatives.
While the results to date are within the contractual cost
performance target guidelines established for the target price
commitment curve back in 1997, I would like to point out to you
that during the transition from the development into production
we have seen cost growth. The postponement of the low rate
initial production (LRIP) DAB due to the strategic review has
continued to erode subcontractor confidence in this program,
and made them very reluctant to make capital investments to
help reduce costs. It is important to note that the
subcontractors account for approximately 60 percent of the
program cost in production.
The process of defining production cost reduction plans
(PCRPs) has been ongoing since 1997. The F-22 management effort
to oversee and track projects includes an online interactive
database that allows real time reporting and tracking of every
PCRP. If you were to look at that database today, we have over
1,000 items within that tracking system. Clearly, the F-22
program is executing a test program that is focused on no
compromises in safety, and it is also very much focused on its
mandate to deliver a compliant aircraft that provides best
value to the warfighter.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide you with
a brief update on the F-22 program. I would like to submit my
formal statement for the record, and I look forward, Senators,
to responding to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Druyun follows:]

Prepared Statement by Mrs. Darleen Druyun

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss the Air Force's F-22
program. I am pleased to provide an update on the progress of the F-22
Air Dominance Fighter program. As you requested, my update will
include: changes in the flight test program, flight test
accomplishments, an assessment of the efficacy of the congressional
cost caps, and a summary of where we stand with respect to production
costs on the program.

AEROSPACE SUPERIORITY

Control of the vertical battlespace has been, is, and will remain a
major element of United States national security policy. DOD's Joint
Vision 2020 envisions the U.S. military dominating all aspects of a
conflict--full spectrum dominance. Control over what moves through air
and space provides a fundamental benefit to joint forces. Full spectrum
dominance depends on the inherent strengths of aerospace power: speed,
range, flexibility, stealth, precision, lethality, global/theater
situational awareness, and strategic perspective.
Air dominance is key to the successful employment of military
power. Protection of U.S. and allied joint forces is the number one
priority--their protection requires the Air Force to quickly control
the vertical battlespace. Air dominance prevents our adversaries from
using air and space to attack, maneuver, or perform reconnaissance that
could interfere with the operations of our air, land, or surface
forces. Air dominance provides the freedom from attack, the freedom to
maneuver, and the freedom to attack at a time and place of our
choosing. While the U.S. and our allies had air dominance during
Operation Desert Storm, newer and more effective weapon systems are
emerging that threaten our ability to achieve air dominance in the
future. Our forces must be modernized to maintain the edge over our
potential adversaries, which we now enjoy.
Control of the 21st century air battle requires a combination of
low observability, supercruise, integrated avionics, and high
maneuverability to defeat the emerging fighter and surface-to-air
missile threats. The F-22 combines all of these features into an
affordable portion of the Air Force's modernization program. The F-22
and the complementary Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) provide the Air Force
with a comprehensive and affordable modernization plan to exploit our
Nation's ability to control the vertical dimension well into the 21st
century. The F-22 will enable the United States to obtain air
dominance--the total denial of the airspace to the enemy.
The multi-mission F-22 Raptor is a key element in the Air Force's
modernization program and the highest acquisition priority. The F-22
brings a revolutionary capability to the battlespace in replacing the
aging F-15. In the hands of Air Force aviators, the F-22 will dominate
the aerial arena of the 21st century. We appreciate your concern,
support, and funding for our efforts to modernize and sustain the
world's most respected aerospace force.

U.S. TACTICAL AIR FORCE MODERNIZATION

To maintain its viability, our Air Force needs to modernize as the
threat evolves and to avoid technical obsolescence. The Air Force's
ongoing time-phased modernization effort is based on developing the Air
Force's core competencies and striking an affordable balance between
readiness and modernization of the aerospace force. Within our total
force modernization efforts, the tactical aviation modernization
program envisions an evolution of the current F-15/F-16 high-low mix to
a high-low mix of the F-22 and JSF aircraft to provide the most combat
capable, efficient, and lethal air force possible. The proper mix of
the high capability F-22 and the lower cost JSF provides the Air Force
with the necessary combat aircraft to defeat the full spectrum of
potential threats in the first decades of the 21st century at a minimum
risk to the lives of our aviators. Within our strategy, the F-22 is the
high capability force designed to destroy enemy aircraft and attack
highly defended, high-value targets. The lower cost JSF, purchased in
large numbers, will provide the bulk of the attack force once the air-
to-air threat has been eliminated by the F-22. The low cost design of
the JSF relies on the F-22 for air superiority.

FLIGHT TEST PROGRAM STATUS

We are behind in testing right now, but we are not going to rush
testing. Late aircraft deliveries are the principal reason we are
behind in our testing schedule. This has impacted our ability to start
Dedicated Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (DIOT&E) as
originally planned in August 2002. While the Air Force is fully
committed to cost control, we will not rush the start of DIOT&E. As the
table below illustrates, we lost valuable testing time due to late
aircraft deliveries. In some cases, aircraft first flight dates slipped
by more than a year, placing increased pressure on the test program.

AIRCRAFT DELIVERY SCHEDULE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Planned First Current First
Aircraft Flight (JET) \1\ Flight Ferry to Edwards
------------------------------------------------------------------------
4003 July 1999....... March 2000...... March 2000
4004 August 1999..... November 2000... January 2001
4005 January 2000.... January 2001.... March 2001
4006 June 2000....... February 2001... May 2001
4007 September 2000.. September 2001.. September 2001
4008 February 2001... October 2001.... December 2001
4009 July 2001....... October 2001.... October 2001
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ JET is Joint Cost Estimate Team.

In light of the fact we are behind, the Air Force convened two
teams of flight test experts to review the F-22 test program over the
past year. In August 2000, the Air Force assembled a team of test
experts, F-22 Flight Test Review Team, to evaluate the flight test
requirements and make recommendations to improve flight test
efficiencies. One of the key recommendations by the Flight Test Review
Team was to slip the start of DIOT&E by 4 to 6 months. DIOT&E marks the
start of operational testing. Slipping the start of DIOT&E from August
2002 to December 2002 gave us an additional 4 calendar months of flight
testing with no impact to the December 2005 Initial Operational
Capability (IOC). In order to get EMD cap relief for this slip, the
Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) determined in a
January 19, 2001 letter to Congress that the increase of the EMD cost
cap by 1.5 percent was necessary to ensure adequate testing. The 1.5
percent cap adjustment equals $307 million, which is sufficient to fund
the 4-6 month slip (August 2002 to December 2002) to the start of
DIOT&E.
The F-22 Flight Test Review Team also made two other key
recommendations to increase flight test efficiency, both of which were
implemented by the Air Force. The team also recommended adding a 4th
Mission Control Team. By adding manpower for the 4th Mission Control
Team, we increased the weekly sortie generation rate from 8 to 10
sorties. Second, by adding additional analysts at the participating
test organizations, we significantly improved our test analysis
capability, which is very important for anomaly resolution and
efficient flight test operations.
After the F-22 Flight Test Review Team completed their efforts,
which resulted in a revised test program, I personally assembled a Red
Team to conduct a thorough ``independent'' assessment of the revised
test program. I chartered the Red Team to accomplish the following
tasks:

(1) Review the test program findings and recommendations of the
F-22 Flight Test Review (FTR) Team
(2) Provide an independent assessment of the test program
(3) Present recommendations concerning the test program's
effectiveness, efficiency, and adequacy to verify F-22 system
effectiveness and suitability

The members of the Red Team had a wealth of test experience to
provide an independent assessment of the proposed F-22 flight test
program. Members of the team were:

Mr. John E. (Jack) Krings, former Undersecretary of
Defense for DOT&E, and current DOD and NASA consultant
Dr. Eugene E. Covert, former Air Force Chief Scientist
and current Professor Emeritus in the Department of
Aerodynamics and Astronautics at MIT
Maj. Gen. (ret.) George Harrison, former Air Force
Operational Test and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC) commander and
current consultant for GTRI
Mr. Jim Smolka, Chief Pilot, NASA Dryden Flight
Research Center

The Red Team completed their efforts by briefing their
recommendations to the Defense Acquisition Executive, Acting Director
of Operational Test and Evaluation, Secretary of the Air Force, the
Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and SAF/AQ in late May 2001. Overall,
the Red Team was very impressed with the F-22 program and was highly
complimentary. Listed below are the most significant recommendations/
findings from the Red Team:
Commendations
(1) Applauded the F-22 program for doing trail-blazing work in
developing methodologies to test complex, highly interactive and
integrated systems
(2) Praised team for first in-flight aircraft signature measurement
meeting specification
(3) Hailed engine performance as exemplary
Recommendations
(1) Establish periodic decision points over the next year to
objectively reassess DIOT&E and Milestone III (High Rate Production)
schedules. If necessary, reschedule rather than compress testing to
meet unrealistic milestones
(2) Conduct gun testing before DIOT&E
(3) Work with DOT&E to explore additional improvements in avionics
and missile test efficiency
(4) Extend DT&E at least 4 months (beyond December 2002) to reduce
schedule risk and improve DIOT&E success potential
The Air Force has implemented all of the Red Team recommendations.
Specifically, we slipped the start of DIOT&E another 4 months from
December 2002 to April 2003 giving us additional valuable test time to
ensure adequate testing is accomplished. This slip will require an
additional adjustment to the EMD cost cap above the previous 1.5
percent adjustment. This slip will not impact the December 2005 Initial
Operational Capability (IOC). The revised test program now includes gun
testing prior to the start of DIOT&E. The F-22 team has also worked
very diligently with DOT&E to resolve our differences with avionics
testing to include missile shots. Today, I'm pleased to report these
differences have been resolved and are being formally documented in
change pages to the Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP).
Description of Current Flight Sciences Flight Test Program
The current Flight Sciences plan has margin to the start of DIOT&E
and is built on the historically achieved test point accomplishment
rate.
Description of Current Avionics Flight Test Program
The current avionics flight test program plans to conduct 1,530
hours of testing by April 2003. The program maintains a direct lineage
to the original 1,970 hour Green Team baseline test matrix that was
built following a strategy to task methodology. This methodology
involved ACC describing how the F-22 would be employed (strategy) and
the test team building a program to ensure complete testing of those
required functions (task). The Green Team baseline matrix was refined
by the Green Team II activities during the first 6 months of 2001. The
Green Team II identified several ways to conduct more efficient
testing, for example, conducting more tests concurrently and reducing
live open air missile scenarios to only those that required an actual
missile fired to satisfy developmental technical objectives. They
refined the execution plans accordingly and the result was a 1,454 hour
program. Subsequent to that refinement, six missile scenarios were
upgraded back to open air missile shots to satisfy AFOTEC concurrent
operational test objectives and OSD operational test concerns. Gun live
fire testing was also reinstated and the result is the current 1,530
hour program. Smartly refining the test plan while adhering to the
original Green Team philosophy has led to a robust yet efficient
avionics flight test program plan that begins with subsystem testing
and progresses to integrated systems evaluations of the entire weapon
system.
The plan does account for the fact that some test runs will have to
be repeated after anomalies are discovered and corrected. An anomaly
factor to re-fly 33 percent of the test runs is included accordingly.
In addition, not all runs will achieve the proper test conditions on
the first attempt. For example, a target emitter failure during a data
collection run generally would require another attempt to collect the
data. For these and other similar reasons, a factor to re-fly 30
percent of the runs due to test inefficiencies is part of the planned
program. Both the anomaly and inefficiency factors are supported
historically. The F-22 Avionics Analysis and Integration Team and the
Combined Test Force Mission Avionics Test Team will continuously guide
test planning and execution to ensure that the F-22 will be certified
ready for IOT&E when required.
Flight Test Accomplishments
During the last few months, the F-22 team experienced a significant
turnaround in flight test accomplishments by setting personal best for
sorties in March, April, and May 2001. Table below provides flight test
accomplishments:

MONTHLY FLIGHT TESTS: HISTORICAL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Month Sorties Flight Hours
------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 2000.................................. 4 11
April 2000.................................. 10 25
May 2000.................................... 4 6
June 2000................................... 12 19
July 2000................................... 6 9
August 2000................................. 24 56
September 2000.............................. 13 31
November 2000............................... 21 48
December 2000............................... 5 9
January 2001................................ 12 23
February 2001............................... 11 18
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average................................... 11.1 23.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------

MONTHLY FLIGHT TESTS: RECENT RESULTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Month Sorties Flight Hours
------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 2001.................................. 32 72
April 2001.................................. 37 92
May 2001.................................... 49 113
June 2001................................... 28 74
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average................................... 36.5 87.8
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since March 2001, the F-22 team test has significantly increased
the monthly hour sortie rate and monthly flight hours. I attribute this
turnaround to two factors. First, delivery of aircraft to the F-22
Combined Test Force (CTF) at Edwards Air Force Base. Second, the
improved efficiency resulting from the implementation of the F-22
Flight Test Review Team recommendations.
Presently, we have five aircraft at Edwards AFB conducting flight
tests, and the contractor is on track to deliver the remaining 3 EMD
aircraft by the end of this year. The present F-22 fleet at Edwards AFB
includes 2 flight sciences aircraft and 3 avionics aircraft. With the
acceptance of three new Raptors later this year, this will round out
our fleet at eight aircraft. As part of the EMD contract, the
contractor will deliver 9 aircraft. After completing all of its useful
testing at Edwards AFB, aircraft 4001 retired from flight testing
several months ago and is now undergoing live fire testing at Wright-
Patterson Air Force Base.
The F-22 Team has achieved several significant performance
milestones in the test program this year. Some of these accomplishments
are listed below:

First flight of aircraft 4005 with Block 3.0 software
has been completed.
Radar Cross Section (RCS) testing has been
unprecedented. Aircraft 4004 startled the experts by being
under the specification requirement in the critical areas
measured during our DAB criteria test. This has never been done
before and is directly attributable to the very detailed and
rigorous development efforts to ensure a mature low observable
capability for the first airplanes built. By comparison, it
took the B-2 program the 14th production aircraft to make this
same claim.
The F-22 radar's performance has been outstanding. On
12 April 2001, the team verified that the F-22 radar meets the
Acquisition Program Baseline (APB). The F-22 radar APB is the
detection range at which the radar range search mode has a 50
percent probability of detection against a 1 square meter
target. The flight test results demonstrated the radar met 105
percent of the APB value.
AIM-9 launch at 100 degrees/second roll rate has been
completed.
Calendar year 2001 program criteria (see table below)
is on track.

CALENDAR YEAR 2001 PROGRAM CRITERIA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimated
2001 Program Criteria Completion Remarks
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conduct sufficient engine initial June........... Complete
service release testing to
determine engine hot section life.
Conduct full-scale airframe September...... Report only
fatigue testing sufficient to
define life limits and initial
airframe inspection requirements.
Complete F-22 radar detection May............ Complete
range.
Complete F-22 first block 3 July-August.... On Track
avionics AIM-120 guided launch.
Complete first segment of radar August......... Started
cross section (RCS) stability
over time testing.
Establish flight envelope for May............ Complete
Block 2 airframe structures.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avionics Testing
The team has achieved remarkable success with avionics Block 3.0
testing. On 5 January 2001, aircraft 4005 flew the first flight of
Block 3.0 avionics. This event was clearly the most technically
demanding challenge the program faced with regard to completing the
Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP)
criteria. The Block 3.0 software provides and controls the ``first
look, first shot, first kill'' warfighting capability of the F-22.
Block 3.0 provides the multi-sensor fusion F-22 pilots will need to
accurately acquire, track, identify and engage multiple targets. Block
3.0 also provides the ability to employ both the AIM-120C and AIM-9M
missiles. In addition to the successful radar detection range testing,
the avionics system with Block 3.0 has demonstrated the ability to
maintain missile quality track accuracies at impressive ranges and has
successfully demonstrated sensor fusion supporting target
identification. Avionics is no longer a technical issue. Test and
verification of system avionics design is the present challenge.
The avionics flight test pace to date has been slowed due to
aircraft availability. Aircraft 4004 began an upgrade to Block 3.0 on
29 June 2001. The aircraft was originally delivered in a Block 1.2
configuration. While Block 1.2 allowed the program to accomplish
significant testing with aircraft 4004, test utility and productiveness
were limited since Block 1.2 contained only partial CNI and no EW
functionality. As a result, 4004 was restrained from fully contributing
to flight test execution and run completion/burndown. Aircraft 4005
underwent a 6-week modification period to install additional
instrumentation and software stability fixes to maximize test
efficiency and to support the upcoming first avionics AIM-120 missile
shot. Aircraft 4006 entered a similar modification period on 7 June
2001 and will not return to flight test until the latter half of July
2001. These required modifications to increase long-term test
efficiency take the aircraft out of service and have slowed the
avionics test pace in the short-term. Flight test execution planning
continues to balance the accomplishment of test points against removing
aircraft from service for software block modifications so that over the
long-term, the maximum amount of test runs can be accomplished as
efficiently as possible.
Static Testing
Static testing is progressing very well. The team has successfully
completed all of the Air Vehicle Design Ultimate Load conditions,
wherein the whole airframe is subjected to 150 percent of the design
limit load and approximately half of the localized static testing.
Completion of the remainder of the local test conditions is projected
by mid September 2001. No major failures have been experienced in any
of the testing to date. The completion of static testing is
significant, as the test results directly support F-22 envelope
expansion flight testing.
Fatigue Testing
As of 5 July 2001, the F-22 team completed 1,258 equivalent flight
hours (equivalent to 15.7 percent of the 1 lifetime), which means we
are behind schedule for fatigue testing. Per the plan, we should be
over 30 percent complete by now. The team has experienced some down
periods resulting in the program being behind schedule. First, down
period occurred on 26 February 2001 due to excessive motion of the text
fixture ``dummy'' engines, which caused damage to the ``dummy'' engine
and engine bushings. To correct this problem, the team changed the size
of the bushings and made other modifications. Testing resumed on 21
March 2001. Second, down period occurred on 10 May 2001 with a
``dummy'' main landing gear repair. The dummy left main landing gear
trunnion shaft cracked. Analysis error inaccurately predicted main
landing gear door internal loads. Testing resumed on 8 June 2001. Both
of the above failures are not representative of the fleet. Presently,
the team is having problems with the pads sticking to the fatigue
article. The fatigue article is located in an open bay facility, which
is not environmentally controlled. As a result of this situation, the
team is experiencing adhesion problems with the pads sticking to the
fatigue article. At our 28 June 2001 F-22 CEO meeting, I assigned an
action item for Lockheed to assemble a team of experts to fully examine
this adhesion problem. Despite these problems, we should complete the
first fatigue lifetime test by the end of calendar middle of February
2002.
Engine Tests
On 3 May 2001, Flight Test Engine (FTE) 18, the Initial Service
Release (ISR) qualification test engine, completed 4,332 total
accumulated cycles (TACs) of accelerated mission testing (AMT). This is
equivalent to 1/2 the engine design service life requirement in the
specification (full hot section design service life).
While it is clear there is still considerable work to be done to
complete the F-22 development program, at this stage in development,
the F-22 is far more mature than any other aircraft weapon system
program at this point in the development cycle. As of 2 July 2001, the
F22 Team accumulated more than 1,229 hours of flight testing. No other
fighter program has accumulated as many hours at their production
decision as the F-22 program. The table below illustrates this point:

FLIGHT TEST HOURS COMPARISON AT PRODUCTION DECISION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Flight Test Hours
Aircraft # Aircraft in at Production
Initial Lot Decision
------------------------------------------------------------------------
F-15............................ 30 250
F-16............................ 16 460
F-18A/B......................... 9 345
F-22............................ 10 1,229 and growing
------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING DEVELOPMENT (EMD) COST CAP

In 1997, Congress enacted a cost cap for the F-22 EMD program. This
cap has been an effective cost control tool for the F-22 program. The
F-22 EMD program has resulted in a weapon system that is currently
meeting or exceeding all key design goals, and the production
configuration is essentially complete. The EMD contract is over 95
percent complete with all hardware design finalized; all Key
Performance Parameters (KPP) and technical Acquisition Program Baseline
(APB) criteria are being met. The remaining effort on the EMD program
includes efforts to finish integration and testing of final software
build and contractor/government efforts to complete system level
verification and development test and evaluation (DT&E). Another major
effort is required for DIOT&E. Continued enforcement of the cap will
inhibit completion of the development program and will necessitate the
need for future cap adjustments.
Prior to the hardware design being finalized, the EMD cost cap was
an effective tool for making design trades, but given the remaining EMD
work principally involves testing and we have limited funding, we would
only have the option of reducing tests. Given this situation, we now
believe EMD cost cap should be eliminated. Retaining the cap now could
prevent completion of final development efforts and key DT&E and DIOT&E
efforts. These efforts are needed to verify safe and effective
operation of the combat fielded system. The correction of minor
deficiencies can be accomplished and fielded in the initial operational
capability systems if cap headroom allows. Shortage of cap headroom now
would prevent the Air Force from completing minor deficiency and system
level verification tasks.
While the EMD cost cap was useful earlier in the F-22 program, it
now has the potential of harming the test program. During last year's
testimony before this committee (22 March 2000), the former Director of
DOT&E, Mr. Philip Coyle, recommended doing away with the EMD cost cap.
He believed the EMD cost cap was causing many programmatic changes to
reduce costs, which almost always translated into less testing and
increased development risks. He also commented at this point in the EMD
phase, cost reductions are largely test related since the test budget
is essentially the only remaining uncommitted EMD budget. Not only are
testing tasks often eliminated, but there is concomitant inefficient
rescheduling of the remaining tasks. Any further reduction of testing
tasks increases the risk of not being ready to start or successfully
complete IOT&E. In light of these concerns, Mr. Coyle recommended a
most helpful congressional action would be to remove the EMD cost cap
and institute an alternative method for controlling the F-22 program
cost.
Even though we strongly recommend the EMD cost cap be eliminated,
let me assure this subcommittee that the F-22 team remains firmly
committed to cost control. Absent an EMD cap, cost control pressures
still exist for a few reasons. First, this is probably the most
reviewed program in the Air Force. I personally conduct Monthly
Execution Reviews to monitor cost performance. Second, I conduct semi-
annual F-22 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) meetings to ensure the top
program challenges such as cost performance receive the highest level
of corporate attention. Third, at our Quarterly Defense Acquisition
Executive reviews with Office of Secretary of Defense the focus is on
cost performance. Fourth, the government grades the contractor on how
well they maintain cost performance as part of the award fee process.
Finally, the Contractor Performance Assessment Report (CPAR) process
provides annual grades to the contractors on their cost performance,
which serves as an input for future DOD source selections. I'm
confident the above tools give the Air Force and the contractor ample
influence and incentive to control program costs.

PRODUCTION COST

I personally review the F-22 program on a monthly basis and can
assure you that the F-22 government/contractor team understands the
desire and need for close control of F-22 costs. I would like to begin
by affirming that the F-22 team remains absolutely dedicated to the
objective to deliver 339 production aircraft to the warfighters at an
affordable cost. Presently, we have two cost estimates for the F-22
production, both of which exceed the production cost cap of $37.6
billion. One by the Office of Secretary of Defense Cost Analysis
Improvement Group (OSD CAIG) and the Air Force CAIG. We are continuing
to work to narrow the variance between the two estimates. The plan is
to have this resolved by the Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) Defense
Acquisition Board (DAB). While OSD has not scheduled a LRIP DAB yet,
the Air Force is ready to have a DAB now. Once the DAB is complete, we
will submit any revisions to our acquisition strategy and cost estimate
to Congress. A revised acquisition plan has been formulated by the Air
Force and presented to OSD for review and consideration. This plan will
be formally approved by DOD as part of the LRIP DAB process and
submitted to Congress in response to the statutory requirements laid
out in Section 131 of the National Defense Act for Fiscal Year 2000
(P.L. 106-65). Complete details of the revised acquisition strategy
will be released when the internal DOD review and decision process are
complete.
An important factor in us being able achieve our objective of
delivering 339 production aircraft to the warfighters at an affordable
cost is a timely LRIP decision. Everyone understands the importance of
the department's on-going strategic review, but we cannot minimize the
impact this has had on the F-22 program. The strategic review has
effectively delayed our LRIP, which marks the third year this decision
has been delayed. This delay is placing enormous cost pressure on the
F-22 program. Contractors report that the greatest threat to meeting
production program affordability goals is the delay in a LRIP decision.
This lack of program ``commitment'' is perceived as a ``risk'' in the
advertised procurement of 339 aircraft and 777 F119 engines.
Unfortunately, ``risk'' in business base and future business
computations ultimately translate into higher individual lot prices. A
LRIP decision will benefit the program by affirming DOD's commitment to
current and future program execution.
An equally important factor in on cost control efforts are the
implementation of effective cost reduction initiatives. These
initiatives have become known as the F-22 production cost reduction
plans (PCRPs), a critical tool enabling the Air Force to deliver F-22
aircraft within the production cost cap. More importantly, PCRPs will
continue to drive down aircraft costs over the life of the production
program. The continuous cost reductions lower the average unit
production prices and ensure our warfighters get early access to the
revolutionary F-22 capabilities that will enable the United States to
guarantee air dominance well into the 21st century.
The F-22 program has a well-structured plan continuously pursuing
cost savings initiatives. An exceptional management framework is
established to provide real-time monitoring and oversight of cost
savings initiatives. Finally, performance to date is within the
performance guidelines established for target price performance during
the transitioning from development into production. Some deviations
from the plan have occurred, and the F-22 team immediately implemented
rational response to these deviations in order to deliver the program
within the requested and available appropriated production budgets. The
F-22 team continues to make progress in cutting the cost to produce F-
22s. The key management focus for the F-22 team is to constantly pursue
cost savings initiatives adequate to ultimately deliver the program
within the appropriated production budgets.
Accordingly, I would like to briefly describe the status of our
PCRPs. The production cap forms the basis for the team management
approach in establishing the affordability objectives and cost savings
targets for PCRP cost reductions. For purposes of clarity, I will use
flyaway costs as the measure of the cost to produce a jet. The PCRP
program is reducing the flyaway costs for the F-22. The table
summarizes the reductions in flyaway costs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average Unit Flyaway
Production Aircraft Lots Number of Aircraft Cost (In millions of
dollars)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRTV I...................................................... 2 318.5
PRTV II..................................................... 6 259.1
Lot 1....................................................... 10 199.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This table demonstrates that jets are cheaper to produce with each
succeeding procurement lot. The challenge is whether cost reductions
are adequate to deliver the production program within the production
cap.
The process of defining PCRPs has been on-going since 1997. With
the criticality of PCRPs to meet well known program affordability
objectives, the F-22 team built an efficient management structure to
jointly oversee the development and implementation of PCRP projects.
The management effort includes an on-line interactive database that
allows real time reporting of PCRP status spanning idea generation,
approval, implementation, and tracking. The latest assessment indicates
airframe PCRPs are valued at $21.5 billion and the engine PCRPs are
valued at $4.9 billion. The F-22 team's assessment is that
approximately one half of the then-year savings for airframe PCRPs
($21.5 billion) and engine PCRPs ($4.9 billion) are in the production
cost baseline. The remaining PCRPs will be incorporated in future
production lots. The paragraphs and charts below provide you a glimpse
of some of the PCRPs that we are implementing now.
The Radar Transmit/Receive (T/R) module design was updated in three
major areas. The number of Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit
(MMIC) and Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) parts were
reduced and the cycle time reduced for the acceptance test program. Two
MMICs were combined into one and three ASICs were reduced to two.
New high speed milling machines have been purchased at Marietta.
Reprogramming of machining tapes take advantage of the high speed
capability. High speed milling increases quality and decreases
production run time up to 40 percent.
The cost reduction worked jointly by a Pratt & Whitney/Chemtronics
Integrated Product Team addressed the exhaust nozzle transition duct
structural bulkhead, the thermal protection liners and eliminated the
conformal structural spars. The bulkhead was changed from an Titanium
Alloy-C ($200/pound raw material) to a Titanium 6-2-4-2 ($40/pound)
near net shape forging. The revision greatly simplified the
manufacturing process and reduced the processing time. Thermal liner
attachments were changed from a difficult to produce ``shaped'' thin
wall casting to simple threaded rods attached to the transition duct
body. With the new liner attachment scheme the conformal structural
spars, which required hot forming and expensive metal removal, could be
changed to simple flat sheetmetal spars. This change is typical of what
can be accomplished with minor requirement revisions and experience
gained during the development process. Savings per engine are $120,800
with a 50 percent reduction in manufacturing lead-times and weight
savings of 20 pounds.

Thank you for this opportunity to provide you with an update on the
F-22 program, and I look forward to your questions.

Senator Lieberman. Thank you very much. Mr. Frame, why
don't you begin. We will see how far we can get. Thanks for
being here.

STATEMENT OF LEE FRAME, ACTING DIRECTOR, OPERATIONAL TEST AND
EVALUATION

Mr. Frame. Mr. Chairman. members of the subcommittee, I
appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the
test and evaluation of the F-22 program. This is my first
appearance before this subcommittee, but the fourth appearance
from the Office of the Director of Test and Evaluation. I very
much appreciate your commitment to demonstrated performance
through realistic test and evaluation. I look forward to
bringing you up to date on the status of the F-22 test program.
The F-22 has completed 1,224 hours of flight test as of the
end of June 2001. This is approximately 600 hours more than
when the Director testified last year. Previous Air Force plans
for increased test efficiency have not been achieved, and the
number of flight test points flown per hour remains virtually
the same as for last year. The bulk of and more difficult
testing remains. The live fire testing has progressed well, but
some critical tests still remain.
The F-22 program had originally planned for a low-rate
initial production (LRIP) decision in December 1999, but this
was deferred until certain exit criteria were met. The program
did not complete these exit criteria prior to the anticipated
December 2000 decision due to late deliveries of test aircraft
and subsequent modifications to these aircraft. The program
completed all LRIP exit criteria by February 2001.
As the Director testified last year, the principle issue
with the test program is its slow pace and slipping schedule.
Since last year's testimony, the number of lost aircraft test
months increased from 49 to 61. Many of the problems
highlighted in last year's testimony still remain to be
corrected, including brakes, main landing gear struts, and
cockpit deficiencies. As these issues linger, and others
emerge, it is difficult to complete the process of flight test,
fix, and retest.
The program has made some recent progress with the five
aircraft now on station at Edwards. However, as the Director
stated in last year's testimony, there were not enough aircraft
months available to complete an adequate development test
program prior to the start of the planned August 2002
operational test. In January 2001, we supported a 1.5 percent
relief of the F-22 development cost cap, but felt that
development testing would take 9 to 12 months beyond the
planned August 2002 start of operational tests. As a result of
that cap relief, the Air Force changed the start date to
December 2002.
Since January of this year, the Air Force has conducted a
review of the planned development test. As a result, they have
reduced the number of F-22 avionics flight test hours from
1,970 to 1,530 by increasing test concurrency. Though some test
planning efficiencies have been identified, in my view at least
another 8 months beyond December 2002 is needed before
operational tests can begin. As a result of the Air Force-
sponsored independent Red Team review, the Air Force recently
agreed to establish April 2003 as an objective, and August 2003
as a threshold date for beginning the operational test.
This will require further relief in the development cost
cap. I support this, but caution that cap relief for additional
testing is not enough. The development program must maintain
emphasis on finding development problems and devoting the
resources necessary to correct them prior to operational test.
The Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center provided
operational assessment to support the planned December 2000
LRIP decision.
The recent operational assessment reported many of the same
issues from previous years' assessment, recurring issues with
the operational implications are main landing gear strut
settling, environmental control system problems, intraflight
data link shortfalls, and missile launch detect performance.
The operational assessment highlighted the aircraft brake and
hook design difficulties as creating the potential for the F-22
to require longer airfields.
The F-22's performance and flying qualities has been a
predominant part of the flight test program so far. Performance
has generally been meeting expectations with flying qualities
of the F-22 assessed as excellent through the flight envelope
explored thus far. However, a moderate, uncommanded roll-off
has been encountered, and the aircraft has demonstrated a
tendency to dig in during some maneuvers. Flying qualities in
the takeoff and landing configuration are judged to be
outstanding, with the aircraft handling qualities during in-
flight refueling rated as excellent. Flying qualities at both
positive as well as negative angles of attack are superior to
current operational aircraft.
The flight test pilot's assessment is that the F-22 is easy
to fly, and it will be very difficult to enter uncontrolled
flight or an unintentional spin. Flying qualities testing that
remains to be completed is primarily associated with expanding
the flight envelope into more demanding areas. Recent Air Force
planning initiatives have reduced the number of flight tests by
about 25 percent.
While it is not yet finalized, the plan defers content,
leverages concurrency, and, with the user's concurrence,
deletes some test points. Until we see the final plans and
schedule for this, we cannot fully assess its impact on
operational test readiness.
A significant concern is that the expansion of the flight
test operating envelope is totally dependent on the
availability of only one fully instrumented aircraft with the
block 2 structural modifications. This impacts the possibility
of accelerating performance and flying qualities testing while
more rapidly expanding the allowable flight envelope.
This is an extremely high risk situation both in terms of
the large number of test points to be completed, and the severe
impact of unexpected problems that might ground this aircraft
for any extended period. Also, test point completion efficiency
must significantly improve in order to clear the required
flight envelope prior to the start of operational tests.
The F119 engine remains on schedule to support the flight
test program, and has demonstrated good performance. The
current structural test plan represents a 2-year slip from the
plan recommended in 1999. Full-scale static testing was
successfully completed to 150 percent of the F-22 design load
limit in June 2001. Remaining local structural static tests are
due to be completed by September of this year.
Fatigue testing started in late December 2000. The LRIP
exit criterion established in December 1999 was the initiation
of fatigue testing with a goal of 40 percent of first life
completed by the end of calendar year 2000. This goal was not
met and, as of June 2001, only about 16 percent of the first
fatigue life has been completed.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Frame, when you come to a
comfortable stopping point I am going to ask you to do that,
because we have to go and vote.
Mr. Frame. I think this is it. I am about ready to go into
avionics, so why don't we take a break.
Senator Lieberman. The subcommittee will stand in recess.
We will be back as soon as we can. [Recess.]
[The prepared statement of Mr. Frame follows:]

Prepared Statement by Lee H. Frame

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss the testing and evaluation
for the F-22 program. This is my first appearance before this
subcommittee but the fourth appearance for the office of the Director
of Operational Test And Evaluation (DOT&E). I very much appreciate your
commitment to demonstrated performance through realistic test and
evaluation. This commitment has been expressed in your statements and
comments at these hearings. I look forward to bringing you up to date
on the status of the F-22 test program.
The F-22 Raptor continues in the Engineering and Manufacturing
Development (EMD) phase and has completed 1,224 hours of flight test as
of the end of June 2001. This is approximately 600 hours more than when
the Director testified last year. However, previous Air Force plans for
increased test efficiency have not been achieved and the number of
flight test points flown per hour remains virtually the same as last
year. The bulk of and more difficult testing remains to validate major
F-22 design characteristics including stealth, integrated avionics,
weapons integration, improved logistics, and flight sciences addressing
performance and handling qualities. The live fire testing has
progressed well but some critical tests still remain. The details of
test status and performance will be discussed in these six areas.
The F-22 program had planned on a Low Rate Initial Production
(LRIP) decision in December 1999. However, the program did not
accomplish all required LRIP exit criteria prior to the anticipated
December 2000 Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) due to late deliveries of
test aircraft and numerous delays due to modifications to these
aircraft. Subsequently, the program completed all DAB exit criteria by
February 2001.
As the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation testified last
year, the principal issue with the test program is the slow pace
resulting in slipping schedules and little information with which to
assess performance. Since the March 2000 DOT&E testimony, the number of
aircraft test months lost has increased from 49 to 61. Many of the
problems highlighted in last year's testimony still remain to be
corrected including brakes, main landing gear struts, and issues
associated with cockpit design, including lighting and canopy
reflection issues. As these issues linger and others emerge, the bulk
of the difficult testing remains to be completed. This makes it
difficult to flight test, fix, and retest. Since the Director's March
2000 testimony, three of the planned five aircraft have been delivered
and begun flight test at Edwards AFB. The program has made some
progress with the five total aircraft on station at Edwards. However,
as the Director advised Congress in the beginning of this calendar
year, and as he predicted in last year's testimony, the number of
aircraft months available prior to the start of the planned August 2002
Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) were far too few for
the task of an adequate developmental test. The Director's January 2001
correspondence to the defense subcommittees supported relief of the F-
22 EMD cap by the suggested 1.5 percent but also stated that, in his
opinion, the total time necessary to complete an adequate DT&E would be
9 to 12 months beyond the planned IOT&E start date of August 2002.
Since January of this year, the Air Force has conducted an
``executability review'' of the planned developmental test. The intent
was to tailor the developmental test plan to stay within the schedule
dictated by the EMD cap with the additional 1.5 percent relief, which
equated to a planned start of IOT&E in December 2002. As a result, the
Air Force reduced the number of F-22 avionics flight test hours from
1,970 to 1,530, albeit a reduction in hours largely achieved through
increasing concurrency in tests. Although some test planning
efficiencies have been realized through this review, the bottom line
remains the same--more time is needed, at least another 8 months beyond
December 2002 before IOT&E can begin. The Air Force recently agreed to
establish April 2003 as objective and August 2003 as threshold dates
for beginning IOT&E, which will require further relief in the EMD cost
cap. I support this in concept but caution that cap relief alone is not
enough. Flexibility in schedule must re-orient the program to an
emphasis on content. An adequate test program is one that enables us to
understand the weapons system and uncover significant development
problems in time to correct them for operational test and production.

OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT

In the 1991 F-22 Milestone II, the Defense Acquisition Board
directed the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC)
to provide an Operational Assessment (OA) to support the LRIP decision.
The OA began in January 1998 and finished in December 2000. In last
year's testimony, the Director summarized the OA conducted at the
direction of the Defense Acquisition Executive. AFOTEC will perform
another OA to support the certification for readiness to enter the
IOT&E. The most recent OA reported many of the same issues from the
previous year's report and acknowledged that testing is still immature,
making it not yet possible to conclude definitive operational impacts.
Recurring issues with operational implications are main landing gear
strut settling, environmental control system problems, intra-flight
data link shortfalls, and missile launch detect performance. However,
this most recent OA highlighted the aircraft brake and hook design
difficulties as creating the potential for the F-22 to be forced to
operate from longer airfields. Additionally, the amount of support
equipment that will be necessary to maintain stealth characteristics
may affect the mobility support requirements for the weapons system.
Another key suitability issue highlighted in the assessment is the need
to develop interfaces from the F-22 integrated maintenance information
system to a logistics data support system that will be available for
the F-22 IOT&E and initial beddown. Late development of the planned
interfaces may not support operational test and fielding of the F-22.

FLIGHT SCIENCES

Evaluation of the F-22's performance and flying qualities has been
a predominant part of the flight test program to date. Performance has
generally been meeting expectations with supercruise Mach number
exceeding the operational requirement. Flying qualities of the F-22 are
generally assessed as excellent throughout the flight envelope explored
thus far. However, a moderate uncommanded roll-off has been encountered
at one transonic Mach number/angle of attack combination and the
aircraft has demonstrated a tendency to ``dig-in'' during maneuvering
in the transonic region creating overshoots in both angle of attack and
g-loading. Flying qualities in the takeoff and landing configuration
are judged to be outstanding with aircraft handling qualities during
in-flight refueling rated as excellent. Flying qualities at both high
positive as well as negative angles of attack (including with weapon's
bay doors open) are superior to operational aircraft, primarily due to
the advanced digital flight control system and vectored engine thrust
capability of the F-22.
Recent Air Force re-planning initiatives have reduced the number of
flight test points by about 25 percent. While it is not yet finalized,
the plan defers content, leverages concurrency, and with the user's
concurrence, deletes test points. Until we see the final plans and
schedule for flight test point accomplishment, we cannot fully assess
its impact on readiness for IOT&E.
To date, more test points have been flown to evaluate F-22 flying
qualities than all other test disciplines combined. This has provided a
sound basis for the flight test pilots' assessment that not only is the
F-22 easy to fly but also that it will be very difficult for a pilot to
enter uncontrolled flight, or an unintentional spin mode. Flying
qualities testing that remains to be completed is primarily associated
with expanding the flight envelope into areas that have not yet been
cleared for flight testing, such as high g/high roll rate maneuvering,
the high-speed/low-altitude flight regime, and testing with external
stores and weapons.
Expansion of the flight test operating envelope, however, is
totally dependent on the availability of a fully instrumented and
structurally modified test aircraft. The availability of only one
aircraft with the Block II configuration (Aircraft 4003) to complete
essentially all of the flight sciences testing, including structural,
performance, propulsion, and flying qualities, is a significant test
schedule risk. This seriously impacts the possibility of significantly
accelerating F-22 testing in the performance and flying qualities area
and more rapidly expanding the allowable flight envelope prior to the
scheduled April 2003 start of IOT&E. This is an extremely high-risk
situation both in terms of the large number of test points yet to be
completed and the severe impact of unexpected problems that might
ground the aircraft for an extended period. Although it is difficult to
predict problem areas, vertical fin buffet that might require a
redesign, speed brake use causing control surface failures, and the
nose roll-off at a moderate angle of attack are known potential problem
areas. Even if problems are not encountered in expanding the allowable
flight envelope into more challenging parts of the envelope, the test
point production efficiency must significantly improve relative to past
performance in order to clear the required flight envelope prior to the
start of IOT&E.
Without augmentation of Aircraft 4003 with another flight test
asset, our assessment is that the completion of the required testing to
provide an adequate flight envelope to start IOT&E at the threshold
start date of August 2003 is high risk. This date can only be achieved
if Aircraft 4003 significantly improves its test point production
efficiency and consistently avoids even moderate airframe and engine
problems for the next 2 years.

F119 ENGINE TESTING

F119 engine testing remains on schedule to support the flight test
program through the end of EMD. The LRIP DAB Exit Criterion ``Complete
first portion of engine Initial Service Release (ISR) qualification
test'' was completed in November 2000 and the complete ISR
qualification test was done by early May 2001. This represented the
equivalent of about 6 years of operational service engine life and
successfully demonstrated the full hot section service life requirement
in the engine specification. Modifications to correct some minor
mechanical problems that were encountered during ISR testing are being
incorporated into the production version of the F119 engine. To date,
there has not been an engine-related shutdown in the test program
although occasional anomalies have been encountered with the Airframe-
Mounted Accessory Drive. The very good engine performance demonstrated
in ground and flight test, as well as the history of nearly on-schedule
engine deliveries to date, indicate that F119 engine availability for
the aircraft that are dedicated for use in the IOT&E program is
relatively low risk.
Structural Testing
The current structural test plan represents a 2-year slip from the
plan recommended by the Joint Estimating Team in 1999. Full-scale
static testing began in April 1999. Testing was successfully completed
to 150 percent of F-22 design limit load in June 2001. The remaining
local structure static test cases are due to be completed by September
of this year.
Fatigue testing started in late December 2000. The LRIP DAB Exit
Criterion, established in December 1999, was the initiation of fatigue
testing with a goal of 40 percent of first life complete by the end of
calendar year 2000. This goal was not met and as of June 2001, only
about 16 percent of the first fatigue life test had been completed.

AVIONICS

The F-22 flight test fleet will eventually include six aircraft
equipped with a fully integrated avionics suite to support the planned
avionics flight test effort. F-22 avionics subsystems, including the
active element electronically-scanned Northrop Grumman APG-77 radar;
Communications, Navigation and Identification (CNI); Electronic Warfare
(EW); and weapons delivery functions are integrated through two Common
Integrated Processors (CIPs) to provide the pilot with a sensor fusion
combat capability. Development of the complex mission software to
provide this integrated situation awareness capability is a major
challenge. Avionics systems flight test has not progressed as far as
was expected or planned due to delays in hardware and software and late
delivery of avionics test aircraft to the Combined Test Force (CTF) at
Edwards AFB. This limited Block 3.0 software testing on Aircraft 4005
this year.
The Air Force's executability review resulted in selecting an
avionics test plan with approximately half of the number of runs as
previously envisioned. The Air Force has stated that it intends to
maintain the same content as the original 1,970-hour plan in the new
program which will total 1,530 hours if all efficiency and anomaly
resolution planning factors are realized. Although there is moderate
risk in completing this revised avionics test plan, the revised plan
should support readiness for IOT&E.
The Flying Testbed (FTB) consists of the Boeing 757 airliner
prototype as modified to support the F-22 program. The aircraft has
been altered to add the F-22 integrated forebody and Northrop Grumman
APG-77 radar in the nose, as well as winglets above the cockpit
containing CNI and EW antennas. Missile Launch Detector system sensors
are installed in the FTB enabling their performance to be evaluated
against various infrared sources. A simulated cockpit (from which the
sensors are operated) and separate diagnostic display terminals are
installed for use by developmental test engineers. Two common
integrated processors, actual F-22 aircraft sensors, and controls and
displays hardware are installed in as realistic an F-22 simulated
configuration as is possible. Developmental software releases are
installed and evaluated to assist in development of the mission
avionics software prior to installation and flight test in actual F-22
aircraft. This provides a credible flying laboratory to evaluate
avionics performance and assist in software development. The FTB has
proven to be very useful in troubleshooting radar, CIP, display, and
sensor problems. By early June 2001, the FTB had flown over 650 hours
in support of the F-22 avionics development effort.
Section 8124 of the DOD Appropriations Act 2001 requires the first
flight of an F-22 aircraft incorporating Block 3.0 software be
conducted before a full funding contract for F-22 LRIP may be awarded.
In its planning, the Air Force accelerated the need date for this
interim block of mission avionics software from April 2001 to December
2000 in order to meet this exit criterion. Through the Working
Integrated Product Team (WIPT) process, with both the Air Force and the
Office of the Secretary of Defense involved, several lower priority
avionics functions were deferred from Block 3.0 to subsequent
incremental software block releases in order to meet the new need date.
Avionics functions deferred from Block 3.0 avionics until later in the
test program included some aspects of sensor management/sensor track
fusion, electronic warfare, and CNI, along with some built-in test and
housekeeping functions. However, the Block 3.0 software, as flown on
January 5, 2001, in Aircraft 4005, allows fused integrated operations
of most radar, CNI, and EW functions sufficient to detect, track,
identify, and shoot AIM-120 and AIM-9M missiles. This software block
has been extensively tested in the FTB.
Three additional software blocks are planned to be developed and
integrated into the flight test aircraft and evaluated prior to the
start of IOT&E. These are Blocks 3.1.0, 3.1.1, and 3.1.2. Block 3.1.0
software is in developmental testing and will soon be installed in the
FTB. This software block will be installed in flight test aircraft
during 2002 and will include most of the functions previously deferred
from Block 3.0. Block 3.1.1 software will add additional functions with
Block 3.1.2 being the final baseline that will be used during IOT&E to
demonstrate fused integrated operations of all radar, CNI, and EW
functions. Block 3.1.1 will begin flight testing in the spring of 2002
with Block 3.1.2 becoming available toward the end of that year.
Some performance issues with Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) and
with some of the tactical modes are being addressed but APG-77 radar
performance data gathered during flight test on F-22 aircraft show the
system meeting or exceeding specifications for radar detection and
tracking functions. CNI development has been behind schedule and the
subsystems are maturing at a slower pace than expected. EW development
is also behind schedule and has been slow to mature. Integrated testing
of the EW subsystem is proceeding on the FTB.
Avionics system testing has not progressed as far as was originally
expected or planned. Significant delays, primarily due to late delivery
of avionics test aircraft, have limited Block 3.0 software testing in
the F-22. Lack of avionics system stability, resulting in system
failures requiring a 20-minute restart procedure, has required several
modifications to Block 3.0 software. Avionics systems testing on the
FTB has progressed satisfactorily and as of June 2001, three of the
eventual six F-22 avionics test aircraft were flying in support of the
avionics development effort at Edwards AFB.

WEAPONS INTEGRATION TESTING

In order to ensure a very low Radar Cross Section (RCS), the F-22
was designed to carry its air-to-air missile armament internally for
operations in a high threat environment. Two AIM-9 infrared guided
missiles (initially AIM-9M with AIM-9X planned for later
implementation) are contained inside side fuselage weapons bays located
under the wings and six AIM-120C radar guided AMRAAM missiles can be
carried in two weapons bays located on the bottom midsection of the
fuselage. The missiles are launched by rail extension (AIM-9) or rapid
pneumatic/hydraulic launchers (AIM-120) located behind quick-acting
doors. The missile launch sequence, from doors open through missile
launch to doors fully closed occurs very rapidly to preserve the F-22's
stealth characteristics in combat.
Several successful AIM-9 and AIM-120 missile separation tests have
demonstrated the feasibility of internal weapons carriage. Such tests,
to be conducted across the operational missile employment envelope of
the F-22, are key elements of the build-up to guided weapons employment
testing.
Data analysis conducted following the first AIM-120 safe separation
test determined that the standard AMRAAM q-bias command (necessary to
safely maneuver the missile away from the launch aircraft flow field
immediately after launch) would require modification for F-22
employment. The q-bias programmed into the current AIM-120 was
developed based on F-15 ejector launch parameters. A new software
modification to the AIM-120 missile is required to enable the missile
to be fired from the F-22 under other than non-maneuvering flight
conditions. This software modification is currently being developed in
conjunction with the Joint Air-to-Air Missile Program Office. It will
need to be validated on the F-22 and then be integrated into
operational AIM-120 missiles.
The launch of precision weapons is the most critical step in the
flight test program for validation of the integration of avionics and
weapons systems and missile launch and control algorithms. The
algorithms are also necessary for the mission-level simulation in the
Air Combat Simulator (ACS) during pilot training and mission-level
IOT&E sorties. Flight test validation of the Block 3.1.2 software,
which contains full-up closed-loop tracking and missile launch and
control algorithms, is critical to the start of IOT&E pilot upgrade
training. Weapon system delivery testing involving guided missile
launches is required to complete these tasks and provide data from
which performance predictions can be made.
In late calendar year 2000, the F-22 System Program Office provided
a tentative guided weapons test planning schedule to DOT&E. The
schedule assumed about 1 month was required to accomplish each test
scenario contained in the F-22 Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP),
including workups and rehearsals. Since that guided weapons test
schedule was provided, initiation of live guided missile testing has
been delayed by about 5 months with the first AIM-120 guided weapon
launch now scheduled to occur in August of this year. Additional guided
missile combined developmental/operational testing (including
integration of the AIM-9X into the F-22 weapon system and demonstration
of AIM-120 launches from external weapons stations) will not be
completed until after the F-22 EMD program ends in September 2003.
Results of guided weapons testing using Block 3.0/3.1 software are
necessary to provide adequate data for use in validation of the ACS. A
fully validated ACS is essential to much of the IOT&E effort,
especially in the evaluation of those aspects of F-22 combat employment
that cannot be conducted in open air testing due to resource, range and
safety restrictions.
DOT&E recently provided direction on adequacy of the Air Force's
latest plan to execute the air-to-air missile test program contained in
the January 2001 approved TEMP. The Air Force desires to use the
Instrumented Test Vehicle (ITV), a captive-carry version of the AMRAAM
missile that captures pre-launch and post missile launch data
transmitted from the F-22 to the missile, to evaluate weapons
integration and end-to-end performance in lieu of live firings on a
number of the missile test scenarios specified in the TEMP. DOT&E is
requiring that the Air Force validate the efficacy of this approach
prior to a final decision.
Based on the very limited number of unguided missile separation
tests performed to date, we cannot adequately assess the overall F-22
weapons system performance. Forty-three of the 48 planned missile safe
separation tests have yet to be completed. AIM-120 guided weapons
testing in conjunction with the integrated avionics system, has yet to
commence, as do AIM-9M guided missile shots. Some important fully
integrated guided missile test launches will not be completed by the
start of IOT&E and will either be done concurrently with IOT&E or after
the EMD program ends. DOT&E believes the largest development risk to
overall F-22 mission effectiveness lies in the integration of the
advanced avionics suite with air-to-air weapons employment.

LOGISTICS TEST AND EVALUATION

Very little progress was made in accomplishing logistics test and
evaluation objectives during calendar year 2000. Although some progress
has been made this year, nearly 3,400 logistics tasks remain to be
completed prior to the start of IOT&E, and the program is over 2,700
test points behind relative to the logistics test plan schedule
established at the beginning of calendar year 2000. Completion of
remaining logistical tasks prior to the start of IOT&E is a challenge
if the IOT&E effort is to succeed as planned, especially as it involves
maintenance of F-22 stealth capabilities during high sortie rate
conditions and availability of a full-up Integrated Information
Management System (IMIS) capability upon which a successful IOT&E
depends. The test plan, however, has gained coherency and benefited
from the intended dedication of avionics aircraft. The ability to
produce and sustain the required high sortie rate, develop interfaces
to service common support equipment, validate specific low-observable
repair techniques through effectiveness tests, and conduct low-
observable restoration maintenance concurrent with other tasks are
examples of logistics test and evaluation issues that are pending
resolution.

STEALTH CHARACTERISTICS

Stealth is one of the major technological features in the F-22
design and is essential to its intended operational effectiveness.
Testing of F-22 stealth characteristics has included extensive ground
and limited flight tests. Both RCS and Infrared (IR) signatures of the
F-22 have been measured in flight while stability-over-time testing has
yet to be completed. On January 31, 2001, Aircraft 4004 completed the
LRIP exit criterion that required initiation of RCS flight test on an
open-air range. Preliminary data show a direct correlation with
baseline measurements from ground RCS test facilities and inflight RCS
imaging techniques, and provide high confidence in F-22 RCS
predictions. However, due to late aircraft deliveries, a significant
amount of RCS flight test remains to be completed prior to the start of
IOT&E. The first fully production representative F-22 RCS test
aircraft, Aircraft 4008, will not be delivered to the CTF at Edwards
AFB before December of this year.

LIVE FIRE TEST AND EVALUATION (LFT&E)

The LFT&E program continues to progress in accordance with the
strategy and alternative plan that DOT&E approved in 1997, although
some of the testing schedule has slipped. Fifteen of the 21 scheduled
ballistic tests have been completed. Two of the six live fire test
series that have not been completed are intended to assess the
potential for sustained fires. One of these series will investigate
fire in the wing leading edge using a full-up wing and the other will
evaluate the effectiveness of the engine nacelle fire suppression
system given combat damage. Two remaining test series will investigate
hydrodynamic ram damage to fuel tanks located in the wings and
fuselage. The other two test series were originally intended to assess
the capability of the onboard fire protection system in the main
landing gear bays and the aft wing attach bays. Since the Air Force no
longer intends to employ fire extinguishers in these bays, these tests
will not be conducted.
Live fire testing has led to an F-22 wing redesign that replaced
selected composite spars with titanium spars. This design change alone
is claimed by the Air Force to have reduced the vulnerable area of the
aircraft by as much as 50 percent. The hydrodynamic ram test scheduled
for early this calendar year is now scheduled for mid-August 2001. This
test will be an attempt to confirm the survivability of the new wing
design to this widely experienced damage phenomenon. It is important
that the upcoming live fire test with high-explosive incendiary threats
against the F-22 wing be done with flight representative airflows and
structural loads with the wing properly fixed to the aircraft. Prior
tests with the wing mounted in a test fixture have shown the potential
to introduce unrealistic results. A test procedure is in place that
will permit realistic aerodynamic and structural loadings on the wings
of the test article. This test procedure is intended to evaluate the
survivability of the new wing design that was changed as a result of
poor performance during previous live fire tests started in 1992.
Live fire testing showed that there is a substantial chance of fire
from hits on avionics cooling lines in the wing tip avionics bay. The
fluid used in these pressurized lines is flammable. An automatic
shutoff valve was added to the F-22 avionics cooling system in an
attempt to reduce this risk of fire.
Fire and explosion are the leading causes of aircraft loss, and
based on existing data for other dry bays, the assessed probability of
kill given a hit is very high on unprotected bays. Hence, effective
fire suppression is mandatory to achieve a survivable aircraft design.
The decision by the Air Force to remove fire suppression systems from
the main landing gear and the aft wing attachment dry bays, as well as
other factors, have increased the aircraft's probability of being
killed given a hit and estimates are now that the vulnerable area is
some 30 percent higher than the original F-22 specification. The F-22's
vulnerable area estimates could increase further as a result of the
remaining tests. The Air Force has revised upward the vulnerable area
threshold for the F-22. At this time, the aircraft currently meets this
revised higher vulnerable area requirement.
The F-22 fuel tanks represent the largest presented area of any F-
22 aircraft subsystem. The original fuel onboard tank inert gas-
generating system (OBIGGS) design could not withstand the F-22's
vibration environment. Functional testing of the new OBIGGS design
using the Fuel Systems Simulator needs to be conducted. These tests are
expected to demonstrate that the new design achieves the inherent
concentration needed to protect the fuel tanks against explosion. The
F-22 must demonstrate its fire and explosion survivability prior to the
decision to enter full-rate production. The vulnerable area estimates
used by the Air Force assume that the OBIGGS provides the desired
protection.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION

As DOT&E has repeatedly stated over the last 3 years in testimony
before this subcommittee, Air Force efforts to reduce costs and stay
within the EMD cost cap have consistently resulted in plans that
accomplish less testing with correspondingly increased development
risk. These development risks have become greater with elapsed time as
the cost reduction options become more difficult to implement.
The Air Force has implemented several test program reductions and
proposed other reductions. In fall 2000, Air Force schedule estimates
showed that the previously planned test program could not be completed
as originally scheduled and that IOT&E could not be started in August
2002, as earlier scheduled, without clearly unacceptable risks. In
December 2000, the Air Force briefed DOT&E on a plan that would, after
cap relief of 1.5 percent, defer the start of IOT&E by 4 months (i.e.
December 2002), allowing additional time for developmental testing.
Although DOT&E believed that as much as a 9-month to 1-year delay in
the start of F-22 IOT&E was needed to complete necessary developmental
testing, DOT&E supported cap relief and delaying the start of IOT&E. In
May 2001, an Air Force-sponsored independent Red Team was commissioned
to assess the executability of the remaining F-22 developmental test
effort to reduce risk and allow completion of necessary tasks in
advance of the start of IOT&E. Currently, the Air Force is developing a
redefined developmental test plan based on an objective IOT&E start
date of April 2003, with a threshold start date of August 2003. As
mentioned earlier, the Air Force proposed a change to the live guided
missile launch program upon which DOT&E has provided direction to
validate proposed live missile launch alternatives. This proposed TEMP
change is under evaluation by DOT&E.
These reductions in developmental test programs have increased the
risk to successfully completing an adequate IOT&E. Although these
reductions in test content do contribute to relieving schedule
pressures, they may not be enough to allow EMD completion within the
current schedule. Considerable uncertainty remains with the flight test
aircraft sortie rate, and there is some uncertainty regarding the
actual delivery dates of the last three flight test aircraft to the CTF
at Edwards AFB that will permit them to start productive contributions
to the test program. Therefore, I support removing the cost cap because
it will help to focus the program on completing adequate developmental
testing and correcting any deficiencies in preparation for a successful
and adequate IOT&E.

Senator Lieberman. The hearing will reconvene. Thanks very
much for your patience. That should be it for a while on the
floor. Senator Inhofe, who has been very good to come here
today, has another meeting that he must go to, so I am going to
ask him to do his questioning of the two witnesses first.
Senator Inhofe. I have just a few questions, Mr. Chairman.
I think Senator Sessions will also be coming over. I do
apologize for having to leave. In the 1998 Defense
Authorization Bill we established the development cap for the
F-22 at $20.4 billion, then we came back later in 2001 and
raised it by 1\1/2\ percent, which was $307 million, if it was
determined by the Director, in consultation with certain
parties, that that be necessary. Of course, they came back and
said it would be, and now it appears that your position is that
even with that 1\1/2\ percent it is not adequate. I would like
you to address that in a little more detail than you did in
your opening statement.
Mr. Frame. At the time, we agreed with the 1\1/2\ percent.
At that time we also thought it would still take not just 4
months but 9 to 12 months beyond the August 2002 date, so we
were just looking at the rate of accomplishment of the test
points, the delays that we had seen historically, and we just
basically did a fairly straightforward calculation. That took
us out to July or August 2003 to finish everything. In the last
year we have made actually less progress than we thought we
would make a year ago, and based on that I think the time we
have added has been good, but we are still looking at August
2003.
We have deleted some of the test points, and a combination
of that and the slow progress still leaves us with August 2003
as our best estimate.
Senator Inhofe. Can you put a percentage or money with that
August deadline?
Mr. Frame. In terms of a percentage, or how much additional
cost, I think I would leave that to Mrs. Druyun in terms of the
cost.
Mrs. Druyun. I think the biggest problem that we suffered
this past year was just an absence of the right test aircraft
at Edwards to really make progress with the program. We now
have five test airplanes out at Edwards. The good news is that
we decided last year we were not going to send any more
airplanes out there that were not in the right configuration.
We would fix them in place and then ship them out.
We have now five assets. Our last three assets will be
delivered, test airplanes will be delivered, one in September,
one in October, and one in December. I track them every single
month, and if they slip 1 or 2 days, they are in my office
explaining what the reasons are.
Senator Inhofe. I have been in the Senate since 1994, and
prior to that 8 years in the House. It seems, Mr. Chairman,
every time we develop anything, the C-17, the B-1, the B-2, we
go through the same thing, and there are always opponents of
the platforms that are going to try to exaggerate this.
I do not really see this as all that different than some of
these that we have had in the past, but as far as delays caused
by structural problems, you say you are 15.7 percent into that,
and yet you feel you have had an excessive amount of structural
problems. What do you predict in the future in that area?
I think the buckling of the forward tail boom was one of
them.
Mrs. Druyun. The ultimate loads testing structurally we
have completed. Now we are finishing up the local loads
testing. I believe that the results we have seen to date from
the ultimate loads structural testing show that the airplane is
in structurally excellent condition. We have completed the 150-
percent ultimate loads test that were scheduled.
We had a problem with the test rig that you may recall,
sir, in which the test rig broke and so we had to finish off
that last test, and we did complete that about 2 months ago.
What I find to be interesting is, if you were to go back and
historically look at structural testing--and I lived through
the C-17, when we broke the wing, which I found to be a very
painful part of the development of that aircraft--we have not
seen any major structural problems in this airplane.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Marty Meth of the OSD staff
reported last year that you had an approximately 40 percent
chance of having some sort of major structural issue getting
out to the 150 percent ultimate loads testing, and we have
completed that milestone, and we did not have that sort of
problem.
To try to answer your question regarding the EMD cost cap,
the current cost cap is roughly $20.4 billion. Added to that
would be the $307 million at 1\1/2\ percent increase, and so
that would take you out to about, almost $20.7 billion.
Now, the added time that we need, we have set the objective
as April 2003, the start-dedicated IOT&E, and we have set the
threshold at October 2003. I am the first to tell you that the
April 2003 date is moderate risk. We recognize that.
I think Mr. Frame feels that it is at least moderate risk,
and for that reason, as we go through and figure out how much
additional funds do I need to ask for to complete the
development program, test runs us about $50 million a month, so
I am looking to come up with funding that would cover us,
slipping the start of dedicated IOT&E perhaps as late as the
July time frame, almost literally on top of each other in terms
of the dates with respect to dedicated IOT&E start.
Our objective is to get started in April. If you look at
the test efficiency of this program, it has not been very good
in the past. If you look at what we have done in the last 4
months, having the right assets out there and the right
configurations, I think that we are now beginning to make good
headway, but I am still going to ask for an adequate amount of
funds to cover us for several months beyond April 2003.
I have discussed this with the Secretary of the Air Force,
Dr. Roche, and he believes that is a prudent thing to do, but
at the same time, we also believe getting rid of the cost cap
on development at this point in time is the right thing to do.
The airplane is essentially designed. Now we are in the test
phase. As we find problems, it is typical of testing you find
problems, you go through, analyze them, and you make your
fixes, and considering where we are, 95 percent complete, now
is not the time to skimp on the testing part of the program.
Again, get it finished up and make those necessary
modifications to the airplanes that need to be made to ensure
this airplane meets the operational requirements and its
suitability requirements as well.
Senator Inhofe. Do you think we learned some lessons from
the V-22 that we can avoid?
Mrs. Druyun. If you look at what we have done on the F-22,
the major criticism that we have had is that our program is
very slow. On the F-22 program, safety is our paramount
concern, and when we do not understand something, we have set
that test team, all those test assets, we basically have
grounded them and waited until we understood.
Last year we had canopy cracks. I did not have good data on
canopy cracks with respect to this airplane, and we went
through and did very careful analysis, and it was those sorts
of things that slowed this program down, but I believe it was
the right thing to do.
Mr. Frame. In my view, I think we have stayed very
carefully away from safety problems. I do not think that we are
taking any risk with regard to safety. My concern is not
safety, but the fact that we defer capability. Because of EMD
cost caps we do not have the money to do the test, or we do not
have the money to fix the things that we find in the test, so
it is not just a matter of the testing, it is a matter of
fixing the things and not deferring content out beyond the
operational tests.
Senator Inhofe. I think a distinction should be drawn, Mr.
Chairman. A lot of times the caps are on because there is this
feeling that the contractors have to do the testing, and we
have to make sure we have something that is going to work.
One last question, Mrs. Druyun. What is the maintenance
concept for the F-22? At what stage will the Air Force develop
a public depot maintenance capability?
Mrs. Druyun. That is an excellent question, sir. If you
went back to the joint estimate team of 1997, one of the items
laid into the joint estimate was that they would basically
defer setting up a depot capability until much later in the
production of this airplane, really more like the year 2011
time frame, and that is one of the challenges with the cost cap
in this program, and that cost cap has laid in place. It was on
the basis of what the JET came forward with, which was
deferring setting up a depot capability.
Senator Inhofe. Deferring for how long?
Mrs. Druyun. Making a decision perhaps in 2004, but
actually not laying money until much later in the program. It
could be as late as 2011.
Senator Inhofe. Do you mean keeping it contracted out for
maintenance purposes until 2011?
Mrs. Druyun. Yes, sir, that is correct, and what they were
trying to do was not duplicate much of the test equipment, the
support equipment. As they started shutting down a production
line, they would take all of that equipment and ship it to the
depot that was going to be activated.
Recognizing that we have depot legislation that sets up the
50-50 requirements, we have to obviously be within the strict
limits of the law, and so this is another area where that cost
cap for production was based on deferring depot capability if
we have to. I think that we are very actively looking at moving
up depot activation. That cost cap for production is going to
have to increase to allow us to be able to begin activation of
a depot much sooner, and it is just a rough estimate of at
least $2 billion.
Senator Inhofe. I do not think anyone is going to argue
with you as far as the core aspect of this vehicle. I have been
disturbed for quite some time about the length of time it takes
to get our good, modern, updated platforms into a public depot.
I hope that you do not labor under the misconception that the
administration's request to do away with the 50-50 is going to
be fitting, because I do not believe it is going to be.
Mrs. Druyun. I agree with you, sir.
Senator Inhofe. I do not like the idea of having to rely
upon a national security waiver as a way around this. I would
like very much to visit with you further about that, because I
am very much concerned about doing all we can to get this in
production, but I also want to make sure that we have more
capability to maintain it as early as possible.
Mrs. Druyun. That is where we could come back in and
basically ask for cap relief in production so that we could
begin that activation sooner, because when we set that cap it
was with certain understandings.
Senator Inhofe. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Inhofe. Thanks for
being here.
Mr. Frame, I wonder if it is all right if we go ahead with
the questioning, and we will enter your full statement into the
record. When we are through with questioning, if there are
parts of your testimony that you want to stress, I will
certainly give you the opportunity to do that.
Let me begin by reference to your prepared testimony. At
page 5, you referred to the flight sciences testing, and you
say that, ``the completion of required testing to provide
adequate flight envelope to start IOT&E at the threshold start
date of August 2003 is high risk.'' Do I understand that
correctly, that you are not saying that August is----
Mr. Frame. The reason I say it is high risk is that we have
only one aircraft. If you have it down for any reason, that is
a day-for-day slip. We have some plans for efficiency and
redoing some of these, but there is not a lot of slack. With
only one aircraft, to expect for 2 years for this thing to
operate without any problems I think is just----
Senator Lieberman. So it is high risk in the sense of
future----
Mr. Frame. I do not say it is high risk in terms of its
eventually getting to the performance, although we have only
accomplished about 40 percent of the flight sciences, which is
structures, flying qualities, and engine. We have only about 40
percent of that done, and we are going to do the more difficult
part now. What we have seen so far is actually pretty good.
There are some anomalies that we need to work through, but
in terms of performance, flight performance, it looks pretty
good. The issue is, we have just one test article to get us
there to 2003's test start.
Senator Lieberman. According to that standard, what would
be a date by which risk would be lower?
Mr. Frame. I do not think that you could add 4 months and
say the risk is now low, because you have just one test
aircraft. I think the Red Team said that there was no way of
making that low risk.
Mrs. Druyun. Yes. It is test asset constrained to one
airplane, because it is fully instrumented to be able to do all
of the flight sciences testing, and for that reason it is a
high risk, and it will remain a high risk, but it is something
that we watch very carefully.
Senator Lieberman. Mrs. Druyun, today you indicated in your
testimony that the initial goal for operational testing by
August 2002 was now going to slip to April 2003 and possibly to
July of that year.
Let me ask you what gives you confidence that operational
testing can begin then, in the face of what would appear to be
annual under-performance of the F-22 testing effort compared to
the plan? In other words, what is the basis of that projection,
altered as it is, that you have made today?
Mrs. Druyun. The basis of that projection is, today I have
five test airplanes physically at Edwards in the right
configuration, very important. By the end of this year, I will
have my last three development birds physically at Edwards, and
in testing.
Today, we are achieving an average of 13 test points per
hour, which includes reflies and going through any of the
anomalies. I have gone through this very carefully, and I have
reaffirmed once again that this is consistent with the planning
factors that we laid in place to complete 1,530 hours to get us
to the start of dedicated IOT&E.
Our sorties average 2.2 hours. We fly 3 days a week. I also
have a buffer built in where I can fly up to 3 hours per
sortie, because I have dedicated fuel tanker support at
Edwards, and we also have the ability as well to fly on
Saturdays. If I were to look at what we have done since the end
of March, we have flown an average of five sorties, 13 test
points per hour. We have been flying an average of 2.21 hours
for each one of our sorties. I have flown as high a number of
sorties as 10 a week.
So I feel like what has been our principal problem has been
that we have been asset-constrained. I just have not had the
right flight test airplanes and the right configuration, and we
are finally overcoming that problem.
Senator Lieberman. Let me ask the question whether it makes
any sense to delay the schedule that you have described here in
the interest of reducing risk by allocating more testing time.
Mrs. Druyun. I believe right now, sir, that my ability to
meet a start date of April 2003 is still a moderate risk, and
that is why, as we go forward through our DAB process, and as
we go through our budget process, we are looking at building in
adequate margins to help lower that risk with respect to how
much money I need to successfully complete the development
program.
Senator Lieberman. So you are going to obviously keep
evaluating this, I presume?
Mrs. Druyun. The Red Team that we laid in place, headed up
by a former chief tester within OSD, he is going to come back
and do an assessment on a quarterly basis, and we will continue
to work very closely with Mr. Frame's organization so that we
stay as close together on this as possible.
Senator Lieberman. Let me go on to a few other questions
relating testimony that you have given today to testimony that
Secretary Delaney gave last year. There have been some
significant changes. This is not necessarily bad, but I want to
ask you to explain the changes a bit more.
Last year, Secretary Delaney, in response to a question I
asked about whether the Air Force and the contractor team might
be foregoing some investments during EMD that could yield a
recurring savings during production responded, ``Congress take
no action at this time to delete or amend the cost cap for
EMD.''
In the end, the Air Force did ask Congress to increase the
EMD waiver of 1 percent to the level of 1.5 percent and that
was included in last year's final Authorization Act.
Now, you have a DAB decision on LRIP where the projected
production cost estimates for the program do not permit the
Secretary of Defense to certify that the Air Force can buy the
program within the cost caps. You have now come in and asked to
defer three of the planes to provide more funding to achieve
some of those cost reduction opportunities. I want to give you
an opportunity to explain in a little more detail than you have
in your opening statement about why that change of direction.
Mrs. Druyun. If I could take you back, as we were preparing
for the LRIP decision back last fall, that was scheduled, as I
said, either the latter part of December 2000 or the early part
of January 2001, and it obviously--we could not hold that DAB
until we successfully completed the last of the criteria, and
that was the successful flight of aircraft 4006, which we
demonstrated the first week of February.
But as we were preparing for the DAB, the Air Force cost
analysis group updated its detailed cost estimate, and at that
time it was very clear that we had exceeded the cost cap
established for production, and the cost cap for production is
$37.6 billion.
The Air Force estimate was that we had exceeded it by about
$2 billion, and it became very clear to us that we needed to
make much more investment in the production area to bring down
the cost of this airplane. It also became very clear to us when
we dug through the data that 60 percent of this cost, as I
explained earlier, sir, is with our subcontractors.
If you look at the industrial base over the last few years,
it has greatly weakened. Our subcontractors are losing
confidence in this program, because we originally were going to
make an LRIP DAB decision in 1999. That was postponed to 2000.
We had the change of administration, and the strategic
review that took place, and basically all of this has been
pushed out toward the end of this fiscal year, and our
subcontractors are very reluctant. They will not make any
investments in this program because they do not feel it is
right now a good investment until they know whether we are
going to get into low rate production, which is the reason that
led us to conclude that rather than buy 16 airplanes in the
2002 budget, it made more sense to buy 13 airplanes, and by
buying three fewer airplanes, we were able to carve out $85
million for PCRPs, production cost reduction initiatives that
the contractors have basically identified.
It also was clear to us that there were a number of things
we had to defer in Lot 1. We did not have enough money to pay
for them. Contractors made up-front investments for the early
production assets that are currently in build, or the
preproduction assets that will be used for tests that are
currently in build, and I had to ask the contractors--they
floated the bill for this--if they would float it for another
year so that we could buy the required assets under the Lot 1.
When I look at the amount of money I had to defer, I had about
$163 million worth of deferment, I wanted to add PCRP on top of
that, another $85 million, which now brings my PCRP investment
to $150 million.
Then for Lot 2, I am seeing cost growth, and it is
principally amongst the subcontractors, and that cost growth is
in the neighborhood of at least $150 million, and so when I
added all of that up, it amounted to about $398 million. When I
looked at the cost of 16 airplanes versus 13 airplanes, we were
able to offset those costs and really get a much healthier
production cost reduction initiative program going, where we,
the service, paid for it, not the contractors.
I think that is the major change that took place last year
from when Dr. Delaney was testifying on the program. A lot of
things have happened that very much affected our subcontractor
base, which really drove us to sit back and reevaluate where we
were going, and it really makes sense to defer buying
airplanes, those three airplanes, and push them out later on so
that they will be cheaper when we pick them up at a later time
frame, to get those initiatives in up front sooner rather than
later.
Senator Lieberman. You are confident, based on what you are
hoping to do here, that in fact the later purchases of the F-
22s will be cheaper?
Mrs. Druyun. Yes, but I would tell you, sir, that we still
have a challenge with respect to the issue of cost. Our
estimate back last October was, we were about $2 billion out of
bed. We are in the process right now of going through another
very detailed estimate to see exactly where we are. I suspect
that we are probably more.
It is probably a higher number, and for that reason Dr.
Roche, our new Secretary, has basically asked us to take a
fresh look at the whole issue of cost and how we come up with a
higher fidelity cost estimate, and so one of the things that we
are looking at very clearly in terms of some of the
alternatives is to really focus on what I would term
predictability. I think we have a much better understanding in
terms of predicting the cost over the first five lots, and
really getting a learning curve established.
Something we set in place back in 1997 is called the target
price commitment curve, and this is a contractual curve we set
in place where contractors are allowed to recoup the
investments they have made to bring down the cost of producing
this airplane. I am tracking that very carefully, and I will
tell you for PRTV-1, PRTV-2, and for Lot 1, I am within that 5-
percent band that we have established.
We must stay focused on the next lots, 3 and 4, so that I
can have a realistic chance of bringing it within the cost caps
established by Congress, but I would also tell you, sir, there
are variables in there. One is, when do I activate a depot, and
we had deferred that. If we bring that up sooner, that is
obviously going to affect the cost cap. We are going to
probably defer by at least 2 years a multiyear procurement.
Multiyear procurement does save money, and so there are a
number of variables that would affect that.
Senator Lieberman. Let me come back just to clarify, in
going from the 16 planes acquired down to 13, we are deferring,
not canceling those?
Mrs. Druyun. No, we are strictly deferring.
Senator Lieberman. You said you are going to take a new
look at the Air Force numbers, which are somewhat over $2
billion for the cost of production. Am I right that the CAIG
office in the Pentagon has now projected $9 billion over the
production cost?
Mrs. Druyun. The OSD CAIG has consistently been about $9
billion. One of the new techniques that we have both been
looking at, rather than a point cost estimate, is looking at
really more of a range from the low confidence to a high
confidence. You would find there is not a lot of difference in
their baseline program. Where the significant difference occurs
is the amount of credit that the OSD CAIG gives us with respect
to the production cost reduction initiatives.
I look at a return on investment of about 7 to 1. They are
crediting me with about 4.6 to 1, and that is where a large
portion of our difference is. We are very early in actually
producing airplanes, and there is a question of establishing
where your learning curve is, and how you track down that
learning curve. I personally believe, in order to get to a high
fidelity estimate, it is going to take us at least 2 more
years, where we can stand up with confidence and say we believe
this is the point estimate to complete this program.
Senator Lieberman. Does the review you referred to, that
Secretary Roche has asked you to make, based on the higher than
initially projected cost estimates, include any consideration
or reconsideration of the target buy of 339 planes?
Mrs. Druyun. No. Our objective is still to buy 339
airplanes. Clearly, if you were to talk to the user, that
number was very carefully put together looking at the threats
and the capability that they need to be able to succeed in this
mission.
Senator Lieberman. Obviously, we will want you to keep us
posted on the varying estimates of cost, particularly as they
have seemed to have diverged between the Air Force and the
CAIG, and needless to say, that will have an impact on the
overall budget request over the years ahead for the Air Force
and the Pentagon generally.
Let me come back to the other significant new position that
the Air Force is taking this year, and that is, last year
Secretary Delaney said Congress should not delete or amend the
EMD cost cap. This subcommittee was very focused on that
because of our concern that the cost cap, while it had some
value as an inhibiter of runaway cost, nonetheless was
inhibiting adequate testing.
However now, this year you have taken the position that
today the EMD cost cap should be eliminated. The direct
question I want to ask is, if Congress were to eliminate the
EMD cost cap, can you assure the subcommittee that the Air
Force will not reduce test program content in the absence of
the cost cap?
Mrs. Druyun. Yes, I can very clearly say that we will
continue to work with the OSD test and evaluation organization.
I think that 1,530 hours, our Red Team looked at that and said
it basically is derived out of the original estimate back in
1997 of 1,970 hours.
Today, we have specifics laid out as to what needs to be
done. We have detailed what we call Test Information Sheets
(TISs), and test is obviously paramount in this program. We
need to successfully get through the test period and make those
changes to the airplane that are identified that need to be
made to ensure they meet the requirements, and that is
operationally suitable and effective, and we are not here to
skimp on tests, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Frame, I know you do not get into
the cost estimate business, but do you want to comment on the
exchange we just had about the elimination of the EMD cost as
it affects testing, which clearly is your focus?
Mr. Frame. I think the EMD cost cap does two things. First
of all, it limits how much you can spend on a per-month basis,
and it also puts a target date at the end, and you cannot go
beyond that and still be within the cost cap. Both of those
tend to restrict the conduct of tests, besides constricting the
conduct of the tests.
When you find things that go wrong, you need time and money
and resources to go ahead and do the analytic and engineering
work to fix those things. It is not just a matter of deferring
the fixes: because then we eliminate the capability. There are
a lot of minor capabilities that keep slipping. We get through
a test, we say, well, we cannot do this, we will defer this
until after IOT&E. Each one of those reduces the capability of
the aircraft a little bit, and at some point we get really
concerned, so I think the cost cap should go.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you for that answer. We worry
about this because we want the plane to be up to our
expectations, and safe, but the other concern just from a cost
point of view is that if we find out later on, because we have
not adequately tested earlier, that we have a problem,
presumably that ends up costing us a lot more.
Mr. Frame. That is true. The sooner we find these things
the easier it is to get them corrected. We had some live fire
issues found early on in the tests. They have been
incorporated. They are now in production. Those are the kinds
of things we want to do more often.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you.
Mrs. Druyun, I am going to invoke the ghost of Secretary
Delaney again. He is hovering here today. He testified last
year that the Air Force had found efficiencies within the F-22
program that would enable the program to reduce total test
hours to 3,757, which represented the decline of about 200 test
hours from the year before.
Do I understand you are proposing again this year to reduce
the total number of test flight hours for the F-22 program?
Mrs. Druyun. I am not familiar with what Dr. Delaney
specifically had to say, but I can go back to the original
number of test hours estimated as part of the joint estimate
team back in 1997, and for mission avionics their estimate was
1,970 hours. At the time they made that estimate, we did not
have detailed TISs. Today, we have very detailed TISs that have
been developed and 1,970 hours was a number basically that was
a parametric estimate.
Today, we have a much finer fidelity in terms of that
estimate. I asked the Red Team to look at that area and they
basically said that there is very good correlation between the
two, and that the 1,970 hours really, by the time you wrote it
all down as to what you needed to do, as opposed to what you
thought you would do, now translates to approximately 1,530
hours of testing.
Senator Lieberman. I do not want to misunderstand you. Is
that the comparable figure to the 3,757 hours that the Air
Force gave us as a total test hours plan last February?
Mrs. Druyun. There was a second piece to that. It was
called 1,787 hours for air frame and system test. This is
basically the flight sciences arena, and I do not believe--and
Lee may be in a better position to respond, but I think that
that pretty much remains intact.
I think we have a lot more definition to that as we have
built TISs.
Senator Lieberman. Help me understand if I am using the
right number. I thought 3,757 was the number the Air Force said
last year was the total test hours planned. Has that number
changed any this year?
Mr. Frame. It has. The previous estimate, at least for
avionics, was 1,970, and that is now down to 1,530.
Now, part of how they intend to achieve that is, they look
at running many of the different systems on the aircraft on a
different sortie, getting test points on multiple systems.
Instead of doing the radar and then having another flight for
the communications they can do some parallel work and institute
some savings. We are looking at that. We think they can
accomplish some of that, but that does represent some reduction
in the actual flight hours.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Frame, do you have an opinion as to
whether those changes are appropriate, or whether they increase
risk unacceptably?
Mr. Frame. I think they increase risk. I am not sure
whether they increase risk unacceptably, but what it means is,
if I am trying to do two things at once and I cannot get one
done, or there is a problem, I may end up having to redo a
test.
One of the areas of the flight sciences is maybe we skip
test points. Instead of doing three test points in a series we
go from the first one to the third one because we are
comfortable with the modeling in between. But if we find in the
test that there is something we do not understand, we may end
up having to go back and redo that missing test point and that
would actually take us more time. There is some increase in
risk with skipping test points and I think that is part of the
tradeoff that the Air Force is trying to do to keep this thing
on schedule.
Senator Lieberman. Mrs. Druyun, did you want to comment?
Mrs. Druyun. Yes. Last year, Dr. Delaney did state that our
target for a number of test points that we could accomplish per
sortie was 11.3. Our average today is 13 test points per hour.
I would tell you we actually have built a fairly elaborate
burn-down schedule for avionics, and we do have approximately
33 percent of the time set aside for anomaly factors and about
another 30 percent factor set aside for reflights that one is
going to have to go through.
That is something I asked the Red Team to look at, because
in my opinion, they have tremendous test background. I felt
that they were in the best position to advise me as to whether
or not 1,530 hours looked to be reasonable, and they think it
does look to be reasonable. It does have risk, and as I said
before, we are going to do what is necessary to prove that this
airplane can meet its mission.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Frame, that completes the questions
I have. I wonder if there is anything in your testimony that
you did not get to deliver that you would like to go back to at
this point, and we will see if Mrs. Druyun wants to respond to
what you say.
Mr. Frame. I wanted to mention that I think it is very
important to realize that the culmination of these development
testing are the guided missile flights. Those are the important
tests that look at the aircraft aerodynamics in terms of being
able to get the missile launched, the ability to support the
missile, the avionics ability to track the targets, and support
the missile throughout engagement.
That is a very important part of the test program, and we
have yet to do one of those. We have only done a few, I think
43 of the 48 separation tests remain to be conducted throughout
the envelope to make sure the missile can be launched
satisfactorily. We have yet to do any of the guided missile
launches. I think the first one is due next month, so that is
just beginning to get started.
With regard to the avionics, we have only done about 10
percent of the overall avionics flights, so there is a lot more
work to do there. I think the fact that the bulk of and more
difficult part of the testing is yet to be done is one of the
things that makes us a little cautious about achieving
particular IOT&E dates.
Senator Lieberman. Mrs. Druyun, do you want to respond or
add anything for the record?
Mrs. Druyun. With respect to the issue of missile testing,
I will tell you that we are working very closely with Mr.
Frame's office, and if we need to add more tests for the
missiles, we have actually built that into our schedule. I
think right now there is concern about seven of our captive
carry tests, whether or not they will be adequate, and I am
here to say clearly if they are not adequate, we are prepared
to put the right assets in and actually do the missile firings.
There are a number of areas such as, for example, the wing
roll-off that was mentioned. I just wanted to say very clearly
that this is not a wing-drop issue like what was seen in the F-
18. There has been a lot of confusion on that. The aircraft
basically always rolls 5 to 10 degrees to the left when you
enter the transonic region, and that is between .9 and 1.1
mach.
We can compensate via the leading edge flap software fix.
It is totally transparent to the pilot, and as these issues are
identified we have, I think, a very robust team with Lockheed
and Boeing to work through each one of those issues and
understand them and make whatever changes or fixes need to be
made. It is something that we will continue to work very
closely with our test organization and with Mr. Frame's
organization.
Senator Lieberman. I thank you both for your testimony.
Mr. Frame, it has been a very impressive debut for you
before the subcommittee. This subcommittee has relied on the
OT&E office for the kind of independent evaluation that you not
only give folks at the Pentagon, but you give to us. Mrs.
Druyun, we thank you for your hands-on strong leadership. I
think I feel confident in speaking for Senator Santorum in
saying that we understand the F-22 is the top acquisition
priority of the Air Force.
We feel strongly that the country needs this plane, and we
just want to stay involved in oversight as well as
authorization to make sure that it comes out right. Thank you
for a very good exchange today that I think helps the
subcommittee fulfill its responsibility.
The record will stay open for a week if any of the other
Members want to ask you questions for the record or you want to
submit additional testimony yourselves.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]

Questions Submitted by Senator Rick Santorum

GENERATED COST SAVINGS

1. Senator Santorum. Mrs. Druyun, how much money did lowering the
quantity of planned aircraft purchases from 16 to 13 in fiscal year
2002 generate? How much of this money will go to the incorporation of
Production Cost Reduction Programs (PCRPs), and what is the expected
return-on-investment for these programs?
Mrs. Druyun. Savings of approximately $398 million were generated
allowing the Air Force to fund final negotiated costs for 13 aircraft
and to invest a projected $85 million in Producibility Improvement
Projects (PIPs). While the exact return-on-investment is unknown,
approved PIPs to date have yielded an 18:1 return.

EXCEEDING THE CURRENT COST CAP

2. Senator Santorum. Mrs. Druyun, the written testimony indicates
that both the Air Force and the Department of Defense cost estimates
for production of 333 F-22 aircraft exceed the current production cost
cap of $37.5 billion. The Air Force estimate has been reported to be
$2.0 billion over the cost cap and the Department's estimate has been
reported to be $9.1 billion over the cap. Are there differing
assumptions in the development of these estimates? Did either or both
of these estimates presume savings achieved by congressional approval
of a multiyear production program? What steps are being taken to
reconcile the significant differences between the two cost estimates?
Mrs. Druyun. The primary differences between the Air Force and OSD
cost estimates are with assumptions regarding out-year cost reduction
initiatives. While both estimates include projected multiyear savings,
differences remain in other key areas such as return-on-investment for
producibility improvements. We are continuing to work closely with the
OSD Cost Analysis Improvement Group (CAIG) to better understand the
differences in our estimates.

FORTY PERCENT CHEAPER TO OPERATE THAN F-15

3. Senator Santorum. Mrs. Druyun, previous Air Force witnesses have
testified that the F-22 will be 40 percent cheaper to operate than a
comparable number of F-15s. Is this still a valid number? Considering
the additional requirement to maintain the stealth characteristics of
the F-22, how is a savings of this magnitude achievable?
Mrs. Druyun. The current O&S estimate for the F-22 is 28 percent
less than a comparable number of F-15s. This estimate does include
increased costs associated with F-22 stealth maintainability; however,
these costs are more than overcome by the fact the F-22 is more
reliable, maintainable, and deployable that the F-15.

NECESSARY TO RETAIN ADEQUATE TEST CONTENT

4. Senator Santorum. Mrs. Druyun and Mr. Frame, it appears from
your written testimony that you both feel the modified test program
being presented today is not executable within the statutory
development cost caps, even with the 1\1/2\ percent relief allowed to
the cap in last year's legislation. If this is true, what would you
propose as necessary to retain adequate test content, yet maintain
fiscal discipline within the program?
Mrs. Druyun. At this time, I would recommend the F-22 EMD cost cap
be repealed. The EMD cost cap has been an effective tool in focusing
management attention to control F-22 development costs. With the
majority of the development program complete, the remaining effort
principally involves testing. Retaining the EMD cost cap at this point
could constrain the Air Force's ability to complete all necessary
testing required to ensure the F-22 safely and effectively enters
dedicated operational test and evaluation. Even though I strongly
recommend the EMD cost cap be eliminated, let me assure this
subcommittee that the F-22 team remains firmly committed to cost
control. Absent an EMD cap, cost control pressures still exist for a
few reasons. First, this is probably the most reviewed program in the
Air Force. I personally conduct monthly execution reviews to monitor
cost performance. Second, I conduct semi-annual F-22 Chief Executive
Officer meetings to ensure top program challenges such as cost
performance receive the highest level of corporate attention. Third, at
our Quarterly Defense Acquisition Executive reviews with the Office of
the Secretary Defense, the focus is on cost performance. Fourth, the
government grades the contractor on how well they maintain cost
performance as part of the award fee process. Finally, the Contractor
Performance Assessment Report (CPAR) process provides annual grades to
the contractors on their cost performance, which serve as an input for
future DOD source selections. I'm confident the above tools give the
Air Force and the contractor ample influence and incentive to control
program costs.
Mr. Frame. The remainder of the engineering, manufacturing, and
development phase should be focused on ensuring the weapons system
performance necessary for a successful initial operational test and
evaluation. The best way to maintain adequate test content in the
remaining development test and evaluation is to encourage an ``event-
driven'' decision to enter initial operational test and evaluation,
that is, to enter operational testing when performance is stabilized
and ready to demonstrate required capability. The recent modification
of the developmental test and evaluation plan is adequate to do that,
though there are inherent risks. Any future modifications to the scope
of developmental test and evaluation would be judged on the basis of
preparing the system for entry into initial operational test and
evaluation. We look to conduct a rigorous operational test of the
version of the F-22 weapons system that is intended to be purchased.
The current developmental test is vital to ensure that pilots and
maintenance personnel can operate safely in the intended operationally
realistic environment.

RISK OF OTHER STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS

5. Senator Santorum. Mrs. Druyun, with fatigue testing currently at
15.7 percent of one fatigue life, what is the risk that other
structural problems will be discovered that could impact the test
progress? Does the restructured test plan have any provisions for
additional structural problems that may be discovered?
Mrs. Druyun. The risk of a major structural issue during fatigue
testing is low. The F-22 test program has provisions to address minor
technical issues should they arise; however, a major structural failure
would require a reassessment of the existing test program.

ADEQUACY OF NEW TEST PLAN

6. Senator Santorum. Mr. Frame, there is a statutory requirement
for the Secretary of Defense, before the LRIP decision, to certify
``that the test plan in the engineering and manufacturing development
phase is adequate for determining the operational effectiveness and
suitability of the F-22 aircraft.'' In your opinion, is the new,
reduced level of developmental testing being presented by the Air Force
today, if successfully executed, adequate for entry into initial
operational test and evaluation?
Mr. Frame. The criterion for successful execution of the modified
developmental test plan is entry into initial operational test and
evaluation with the capability to complete required air superiority
missions, described in the operational requirements document. The
modified test plan presented by the Air Force has the potential to
produce such a capable weapons system for entry into initial
operational test and evaluation. The new plan is heavily success
oriented. We believe that the start of initial operational test and
evaluation with a weapons system capable of fulfilling the validated
operational requirements is more likely to be August 2003, as opposed
to the Air Force's planned date of April 2003.

[Whereupon, at 4:21 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR
2002

----------

THURSDAY, JULY 19, 2001

U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Airland,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.

ARMY MODERNIZATION AND TRANSFORMATION

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m. in
room SR-222, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Joseph I.
Lieberman (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators Lieberman, Ben Nelson,
Inhofe, and Santorum.
Majority staff members present: Daniel J. Cox, Jr. and Arun
A. Seraphin, professional staff members.
Minority staff members present: Ambrose R. Hock and Thomas
L. MacKenzie, professional staff members
Staff assistants present: Gabriella Eisen and Kristi M.
Freddo.
Committee members' assistants present: Frederick M. Downey,
assistant to Senator Lieberman; William K. Sutey, Sheila
Murphy, and Eric Pierce, assistants to Senator Ben Nelson;
Brady King, assistant to Senator Dayton; Christopher J. Paul,
assistant to Senator McCain; John A. Bonsell, assistant to
Senator Inhofe; George M. Bernier III, assistant to Senator
Santorum; and Derek Maurer, assistant to Senator Bunning.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, CHAIRMAN

Senator Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. I thank
everyone for being here. Today, we are going to review the
status of Army modernization and transformation. I want to
welcome our two witnesses, Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, Military Deputy
for Acquisitions, Logistics, and Technology; and Major Gen.
Bill Bond, Director of Force Development.
I appreciate that you are here. I want to begin by
expressing my admiration for General Shinseki and other leaders
of our Army, including the two who are with us, who, in my
estimation, really have set the pace for transformation for the
other military services and the Department of Defense at large.
This subcommittee has been and will continue to be firmly
behind your effort. The Army has undertaken an ambitious task
here to create a transformed Objective Force beginning in 2010,
to field six to eight Interim Brigade Combat Teams, and to
recapitalize and selectively modernize a large part of heavy
Legacy Force which the country must continue to rely on for the
next 25 years. Unfortunately, I am concerned that the Army has
not been adequately supported in the budget proposed by the
Defense Department this year. In last year's budget request,
the Army buying power actually dropped over 1\1/2\ percent from
the year before. In this year's budget, it appears the Army
modernization funding has once again decreased in real terms.
When you factor in inflation and factor out the money for the
programs transferred to the Army from the Ballistic Missile
Defense Office (BMDO), it looks to me like Army procurement has
actually decreased by $630 million from last year's level. The
research and development account is only slightly better with
an increase of $190 million. It is becoming increasingly clear
that a large part of the Army's efforts to modernize and
transform have to be self-financed.
Last year, this committee, I am pleased to say, tried to
help. We added $1.1 billion to the Army modernization accounts,
all but $14 million of which was for items that were
specifically on the Army funded requirements list. Among those
were the Army's top three unfunded requirements, which are
Future Combat System R&D, the Wolverine Heavy Assault Bridge,
and the Grizzly Tactical Breacher. Unfortunately, in
conference, the Grizzly was dropped, but we were able to add
$650 million to accelerate the second Interim Brigade Combat
Team. At the end of the conference, the Army received a
modernization plus-up of $1.25 billion. That is a measure of
the extraordinary leadership of my predecessor as chairman of
the subcommittee, Senator Santorum. That is going to be a hard
act to follow. What a difference a year makes. While the
overall defense budget was increased, this year's Army
modernization accounts, as I have said, are worse off than they
have been. I continue to believe that we need to spend more on
defense. The military services are underfunded, particularly
the Army. It is obviously more important than ever that we
ensure that scarce resources are allocated to those systems and
programs that contribute the most to transforming the Army to
meet the emerging threats, while maintaining overmatching
capabilities against the current ones.
Accordingly, the subcommittee today seeks to understand the
Army modernization and transformation requirements, the major
programs and initiatives to fulfill those requirements, and the
availability of the necessary funding to do so. Within this
overall context, the subcommittee is particularly interested in
the following areas: an update on the most promising Objective
Force technologies which will most likely require further
development and funding in the near term; an update on the
Interim Brigade Combat Teams, with emphasis on Interim Armored
Vehicle production and testing, including the status of the
side-by-side comparative evaluation and initial operational
test and evaluation, and an update on the recapitalization and
modernization of the Legacy Force with specific emphasis on
aviation, armored systems, trucks, and digitization. I suppose,
more broadly, we need to understand how the Army intends to
prioritize among the competing recapitalization, modernization
and transformation demands in the absence of greater resources.
I said in the absence of Senator Santorum, at our first
hearing, what a pleasure it has been to work with him. It has
been 5 years, I think. When control of the Senate changed, I
said I had a reaction to the subcommittee change-over, which
was that nothing would change except the title of the Chairman.
He did point out to me quickly that I had to do more work. In
any case, I am delighted to introduce the ranking member,
Senator Santorum.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICK SANTORUM

Senator Santorum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward
to working for you for the next year and one-half. I want to
say that it has been a pleasure working with you, and I would
just start off agreeing with everything that is in your opening
statement. I think you have hit the nail on the head.
First of all let me welcome General Kern and General Bond.
Thank you for coming in and testifying. We have a lot of
concerns on this subcommittee about the Army's ability to fund
what you say you want to do. Let me just be very clear about
that. I think Senator Lieberman has laid out the concerns about
recapitalizing, modernizing, maintaining the Legacy Force and
funding the interim brigades, much less doing the kind of
investment that is going to be necessary to reach any kind of
Objective Force in any kind of realistic time frame. On top of
that, I have serious questions about Army aviation and where
that goes and how that fits into this transformation. I have
serious concerns about OSD's commitment to this transformation.
So, I see this as a very serious hearing and a very serious
discussion that must be had as to how we are going to get from
where you are to where you want to go.
I don't see how, what you have on the table and how you
suggest your funding, that gets you there. I think you have too
many balls in the air and I don't know how you will fund them
all. That is a decision that this subcommittee obviously wants
to help you with. We are not here to take shots. We are not
here to pick winners and losers. I think the chairman is very
clear. We want to work with you. We are very supportive of this
transformation. I am not saying be less bold. Maybe what I am
saying is that we have to be more bold. But the way I see this,
from a budget standpoint, resource standpoint, whatever it is,
I don't see how this occurs. I don't see how you get there, and
I am anxious to hear, as Senator Lieberman laid out, how these
different aspects of Army transformation are going to be funded
and accomplished in any way close to the timeframe that the
Army projects it to be done. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Senator. Senator Inhofe,
would you like to make an opening statement?

STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAMES M. INHOFE

Senator Inhofe. I would, Mr. Chairman. We have had so many
hearings recently and, of course, we have had a lot of missile
defense hearings, but we have also had readiness hearings. I
spent 5 years as Chairman of the Readiness and Management
Support Subcommittee and I have to say that Danny Akaka is
extending me the same courtesies that you are extending Senator
Santorum, so I understand why he is appreciative.
I think it is important when you point out what the real
shortfall is in terms of funding, that is a figure I didn't
have, but I have asked my staff to go back and look at that
because that makes it even more disturbing. I agree with
Senator Santorum. The things we are trying to do--and if we are
talking about the Legacy Force and the Objective Force and the
Interim Force, I want to get into a discussion on timelines and
the one thing that I would want to be sure of is that, as we go
through this transformation, you still have to make up for what
has happened over the last 5 to 10 years. I know the problems
with the OPTEMPO. I know what is happening in the downsizing
and the declining budgets. I know that we have RPM accounts
that have been neglected for years. I mean, we have barracks'
roofs that are leaking. So there are a lot of these things that
have to be taken care of and have to be included in the
budgets.
The thing that concerns me, if I could single out one thing
during this process, is that we maintain or we gain--because we
are not there right now--a superior position from our potential
adversaries. At one of our other meetings last week, I talked a
little bit about where we were in terms of our air vehicles--
air-to-air, air-to-ground--and we are inferior today. This is
something America's not used to. It is something we did not
have to face in the years past. We talked about the Vietnam
War, when we had the F100s and F105s and F4s and 86s and 84s.
They were better than what anybody else had, any of our
adversaries. You could agree or disagree with the different
wars but the one thing our fighters knew is they had the best
equipment. We do not have the best equipment today.
If I could single out one area where our equipment is not
the best, it would be in our artillery in terms of range and in
terms of rapid fire. There are four countries, Great Britain,
Germany, Russia, and South Africa, that all make a vehicle that
is better than our Paladin. So here we are sending our young
troops out with equipment that is inferior. I would just hope
that both of the witnesses who are here today will be outspoken
and at least share with us if they are equally concerned. I
asked General Keane last week at a hearing what he thought
about the risk of not having the best equipment. He said--and
this is a quote, Mr. Chairman--he said, ``I think it is
absolutely outrageous to think that we would permit our young
Army soldiers to be outgunned by adversary artillery on the
battlefield today.'' He continued by saying that, ``the thing
that kills soldiers on the battlefield more than anything else
is enemy artillery. We have to be able to reach out and kill
it. We will kill it with joint fires to be sure. But we have to
be able to kill it with close precision fires. We have to do it
at range and we have to have the mobility to do it. We have to
have the lethality to do it, and the Crusader happens to be the
vehicle that is the answer to that.''
So I want to get into some of these systems. We have heard
a strong statement from General Shinseki, and I would like to
have you all be thinking about other areas where we are
deficient, because this is an area we have to do something
about. Mr. Chairman, I feel very strongly about these things. I
am concerned about this interim problem we have. In fact,
during the August recess I will be at Ft. Lewis to see what
kind of work is being done on this Interim Force. So I
appreciate being included in your hearing.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Senator. I look forward to
hearing your report after you return from that visit. General
Kern, would you like to begin?

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. PAUL J. KERN, USA, MILITARY DEPUTY,
OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECETARY OF THE ARMY

General Kern. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the
subcommittee, both General Bond and I appreciate the invitation
to appear before your subcommittee today and to discuss the
Army's modernization budget and our transformation. We thank
you for the support that you have given. As you have noted in
the past years, this subcommittee has been a very strong
supporter of the Army's position and we certainly thank you for
that, and want to continue to work with you in the future. With
your permission, I would like to submit our written testimony
for the record and I will summarize a few points and try to
address some of the comments that you and the members have
made.
Senator Lieberman. Good. Without objection, the full
testimony will be printed in the record.
General Kern. Sir, we have provided a chart that shows
historical trends of Army budgets over the years. I think it
amplifies the comments that you have made.

In the past, we have had to peak to achieve modernization
goals. We have done that twice in the last half of this century
and that is not going back and looking at the history prior to
World War II. It is noted that there is an absence of that peak
in the current programs and the projections and that certainly
supports the statements that both you and Senator Santorum have
given to us today about the future and the concerns that you
have about how we will achieve the transformation.
Despite the declining budgets, the downsizing and the
OPTEMPO, the Army has been busier than ever. I think you also
recognize that there has been about a three-fold increase in
the PERSTEMPO and OPTEMPO. So, there is a mismatch between our
requirements and our resources to achieve all of the things
that we are asked to do.
Now, we believe this fiscal year 2002 budget follows on the
increases that you provided last year. It is a step in the
right direction. Certainly the priorities have been fixing the
people problems as noted by Senator Inhofe, and the declining
base infrastructure, the falling behind in our repair and the
increases that are reflected in pay to keep people at parity.
Clearly, in the United States Army people will always be our
most important asset and despite any investments in equipment
we have to have the best soldiers to continue the process.
We thank you for your endorsement of General Shinseki's
transformation, which has been supported by our new secretary.
Secretary White has come in and added his endorsement to that
transformation. He has added a point that particularly strikes
home to me--that we also have to work at our business
practices. But clearly the focus we will continue to work on is
transformation as we move forward. The Chief's vision has three
interdependent components--people, readiness, and
transformation. Today we will talk about the transformation
component. We will not get into the people and the readiness
sides as we present it to your subcommittee.
We believe that the fiscal year 2002 budget as presented
enables us to focus on our objective, which simply stated is
the Objective Force. So, the three axis chart which we have
been using to describe the three components all are focused on
that Objective Force. The two adjoining vectors, which are
represented by our Legacy Force, the force which we ask our
soldiers today to fight with and so we must maintain the
readiness of that force, and our Interim Force, achieves one of
the shortcomings.
Senator Inhofe, you asked us to address one of those areas
that we find ourselves short in, and that is our ability to
rapidly deploy our forces so that we do not repeat instances we
have found in the past, such as in Operation Desert Shield,
when we deployed the 82nd Airborne Division rapidly to the
Gulf. When they got there they did not have the protective
requirements that our armored forces have, or the protected
capabilities that our armored forces have, nor the mobility.
Again, and more recently we looked at the shortcomings of
Task Force Hawk in the ability to rapidly deploy and move the
United States Army. So, our Interim Force is focused on
overcoming that particular shortcoming, and we can talk more
about that. I would tell you that we are prepared to move out
on a comparative evaluation as requested by the subcommittee
and as in legislation from last year, and we have allocated
resources and time to do that.
Finally, in our modernization strategy, we are moving
towards a balanced modernization and we must take some risk and
we understand that. Our recapitalization of the force is
focused on 19 systems, and General Bond will speak more about
that. Also, the organization of our modernization and Unit Set
Fielding efforts will move us to focus on a networked
battlefield as we take advantage of what we have learned from
past experimentation and development of the digitized
battlefield to allow us to achieve a networked battlefield,
which we are focusing on today, on our counterattack III
Armored Corps.
We have focused the balance of our modernization and
science and technology efforts teamed with DARPA and that now
is moving off into its second year. We will be getting into
another phase of that this fall, as we move into a down-select
of the four teams into either a three- or a two-team
competition as we move into the future.
We will begin fielding of our intermediate operational
capability with the Interim Brigade Combat Teams. That contract
was awarded in November of this past year, after a very serious
review of all those capabilities. The protest, which you asked
us to comment on the impact of, was finalized after some
hundred days, and we believe that we have recovered all of that
schedule that was lost during that protest period of a little
bit more than a hundred days. So, we estimate that will give us
an initial operational capability of April 2003.
In the meantime, we are fielding those systems and
continuing the experimentation with the forces at Ft. Lewis. If
Senator Inhofe has an opportunity to visit that, I think he'll
be impressed with the progress that our soldiers have made in
learning new tactics, techniques, and procedures which are
going to change the doctrine. That is another aspect of that
Interim Force. While it fulfills an immediate shortcoming, it
is also beginning to teach us new ways of fighting and taking
advantage of speed and knowledge. That was one of the precepts
that came out of our Army After Next studies which we are
applying now in a much shorter time frame. So, we expect to
look at the learning that takes place after we field the
Initial Brigade Combat Teams, then move on to the total of six
to eight brigades and the down-select of the technologies which
will take place as we move forward.
You asked us to comment on what we see as most promising in
those areas right now. We see some particular promise in areas
of active protection. We see some particular promises in some
miniaturized components, and the nanotechnologies which are
beginning to materialize, particularly in the areas of applying
MEMS technology to GPS, the global positioning system, and
IMUs, inertial measurement units. We see some real promise
there that will help not only the Army but all the services.
Senator Lieberman. Can you say a little more about that,
within the limits of what you can say?
General Kern. We have looked through some of our initial
work that was done, particularly at MIT, and some of our 6.1
funding, some capability to use miniaturized technologies that
allow us to put on a single chip, a board, actually it is
multiple chips, both a miniaturized GPS receiver, which will
take care of some of the countermeasure issues that we are
looking at, combined with a miniaturized inertial measurement
unit. The two, in coupling with one another, allow us under a
very hardened structure, high accelerations, as you might find
going down an artillery tube or in a rocket or in the flak
jacket of a soldier, the ability to maintain accurate
geographical location anywhere in the world. So, we see great
promise in that technology that the DARPA and the United States
Army are working together on producing in conjunction with
other services.
We also see great promise in what is perhaps one of the
great strengths of the United States. In our network
capability, we like to consolidate the words in one long
acronym of C\4\ISR but command control, computers,
communications, on the one side, as we bring that into the
network capability and intelligence, surveillance,
reconnaissance-ISR. So, our programs with the tactical Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle (UAV), another critical shortcoming in our
budget request that we need to overcome right now, which also
will be part of both our counterattack force and our interim
brigades, is an area that we then also can expand the work that
we are doing, and again on our Future Combat System work with
DARPA and other advanced UAVs, much like the other services.
The other area which I would say is one in which we are
moving up, both within the Army and with DARPA and the others
services, is in robotics and how we apply that to both aviation
platforms and grounds systems. Each of those areas are key
technologies in which we are moving out, which are coming ahead
very quickly and show great promise. We expect to be able to
look at all of those in the year 2003, in the spring, to make a
decision on moving ahead on fielding for the Objective Force
and moving out into development and production. We are using
the metric of a technology readiness level. GAO published a
report on that a few years ago which we found very useful in
being able to measure our readiness to move technologies out of
the laboratory and into production. So, that is the measure
which we will use to make that decision as we move forward in
2003 as well as a great deal of trades between our training and
doctrine on how those concepts are being developed and what the
technology lends to new concepts of how we can fight on the
future battlefield.
We will be spending 64 percent of the Army's RDA budget
over the next few years focused on the Objective Force. We also
have some very high priority systems which you continue to
support and which are in this year's budget--the Comanche, the
armed reconnaissance attack helicopter is moving forward. It
passed Milestone II last year and is now moving into the
engineering and manufacturing development phase. We feel very
confident that Comanche will really be our first fielded system
of the Objective Force, and it will be part of the network
capability of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance,
combined with attack capability. The Army Battle Command
System, which is bringing together what had been a series of
stove-pipe command and control systems, is now integrated into
a single system. We have demonstrated that capability, so we
are pleased with the work that is going on there. The Crusader
system, as noted by Senator Inhofe, is now under test at Yuma
Proving Grounds and we are extremely pleased with the progress
it is making. It has demonstrated 11 rounds per minute, which
is far in excess of anything that anyone else is capable of
doing with a thermally-cooled----
Senator Inhofe. Compare that to the Paladin.
General Kern. We are at best able to do six rounds a minute
with our Paladin and that is not sustained, so we are almost
able to double the rate of fire and we do that with one-third
the crew members and that is the automation. There are almost 2
million lines of software code in that automation.
Senator Inhofe. What's the ratio of sustained?
General Kern. There is no real ratio because a Paladin
Howitzer with an uncooled gun tube cannot sustain that rate of
fire. It has to wait and let the gun tube cool down, or it has
to slow down its rate of fire to do any sustained firing. So,
this truly provides us a much better capability. I would also
add that it almost doubles the range. We have demonstrated
better than 40 kilometers with the Crusader over the Paladin's
20-plus kilometers. We have also demonstrated a four round
simultaneous impact with it, and it is able then to put four
rounds in the air for a simultaneous impact. We know we can
push that further. So, the Crusader gives us a great capability
that is not present in our current Paladin and that is just in
the fire control.
There are some other capabilities which we can demonstrate
to you strictly in the area of mobility. One of the challenges,
and why our priority has been on the Crusader, has been the
inability of the Paladin to keep up with our current force,
much less the future force, of Abrams and Bradley fighting
vehicles. In many of our past experiences in Operation Desert
Storm we had to revert to rockets as opposed to guns because
they could not keep up with the current force. The Crusader is
demonstrating advantages in each of those areas as well as the
fact that we have restructured that program to allow it to be
downsized to a 40-ton platform, and we have added a wheeled re-
supply vehicle which gives us greater air transportability as
well as the ability to have options on how we configure that
force. That has been a very successful program and one which we
are proud of the progress we have made.
The last point I will make is the need for
recapitalization. We have looked at 19 systems of our current
force. I will let General Bond speak in more detail about that.
A very thorough analysis has been conducted on both how we
selected those systems and the intensity of which we are
managing both the improvements of those systems to achieve a
half-life problem that the United States Army has today. The
systems which we fielded in the 1980s are wearing out. Our
operating and support costs have been steadily increasing. It
is a necessity now to insert both new technologies and improve
the readiness levels of our current force.
So, I thank you for the opportunity to have summarized
where we are and with your permission, I would let General Bond
make a few comments.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, General Kern.
[The joint prepared statement of Lieutenant General Kern
and Major General Bond follows:]

Joint Prepared Statement by Lt. Gen. Paul J. Kern, USA, and Maj. Gen.
William L. Bond, USA

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the fiscal year 2002
Army budget request and the status of Army modernization and
transformation. It is our privilege to represent the Army leadership
and America's soldiers who rely on us to provide them with the
capabilities they need to execute our National Military Strategy
throughout the world. The programs, schedules, and funding levels
described in this statement, however, may change as a result of
Secretary Rumsfeld's strategy review, which will guide future decisions
on military spending.
We thank the members of this subcommittee for your important role
in support of the ongoing Army transformation initiative that began in
October 1999. Your support has allowed the Army to begin concrete
measures to implement the goals and objectives of the transformation
and to ensure that the Army remains the world's preeminent land force.
This transformation will continue over the next several decades. Your
continued advice and support are vital to our success.
One of the chief reasons that the Army transformation has enjoyed
widespread support is the recognition of the complex and changing
strategic environment that we currently face. A transformed Army is
designed to meet the challenges of the 21st Century operational
environment by employing advanced warfighting concepts and using new
equipment that features significantly enhanced capabilities derived
from leap-ahead technologies. The combination of new warfighting
concepts, Future Combat Systems and highly skilled soldiers will ensure
that the Army maintains full spectrum dominance and is capable of
fighting and winning our Nation's wars--decisively.
Military power alone is not sufficient to face the security
challenges of today and tomorrow, but there is also no doubt that a
national and international effort to secure and advance our interests
cannot succeed without a prudent and ready capability to use military
power. Security challenges know no boundaries, and the post-Cold War
world presents its share of instability. We do enjoy, however, a period
of relative strategic calm without a single immediate major military
threat to our vital interests. We also face a period of dramatic
technological proliferation and advanced capabilities that offer both
promise for us as well as future risks. This overall environment
provides the Army the opportunity and the need to, as President Bush
said, ``move beyond marginal improvements to harness new technologies
that will support a new strategy.''

NEAR- AND FAR-TERM READINESS--MAINTAINING THE BALANCE

In the 1990s, the Army faced declining budgets, downsizing, and an
operational tempo that has increased threefold since the fall of the
Berlin Wall. This has resulted in the sacrifice of far-term readiness
to pay for our non-negotiable, near-term readiness contract with the
American people. The mismatch between requirements and resources forces
us daily to prioritize among operations, force structure, readiness,
and modernization. The Presidents budget for fiscal year 2002 is taking
the initial steps to address this mismatch. In the final analysis, the
Army has had no other recourse than to mortgage its future, in terms of
modernization and installation support, to maintain near-term
readiness. This imbalance between near- and far-term readiness needs to
be corrected. Future readiness, along with the current readiness of our
force and the related quality of life of our soldiers and their
families, depend on creating the proper balance.
We have articulated a vision for the future that we believe
addresses both our near- and far-term readiness challenges and meets
the demands of the future operational environment with a transformed,
strategically responsive force ready to accomplish its mission
throughout the spectrum of operations. The vision is about three
interdependent components--people, readiness, and transformation. The
Army is people--soldiers, civilians, veterans, and families--and
soldiers remain the centerpiece of our formations. Warfighting
readiness is the Army's top priority. The transformation will produce a
future force, the Objective Force, founded on innovative doctrine,
training, leader development, materiel, organizations, and soldiers.
The vision weaves together these threads--people, readiness, and
transformation--binding them into what will be the Army of the future.
Within the latter of these, is the transformation of the Army's
operational force; this is the focus of our testimony today.

ARMY TRANSFORMATION

The budget for fiscal year 2002 enables the Army to continue the
transformation, though not at the optimal level. Army transformation
focuses its main effort on an endstate--the Objective Force. Two
adjoining vectors support this main effort. The first is the Legacy
Force, which is the current force in the Army, both light and heavy. We
must allocate sufficient resources to reverse the downward trend of
mission capable rates for some of our systems, and we plan to do this
by modernizing and recapitalizing the Legacy Force. We will modernize
by selectively procuring new systems and will recapitalize by returning
remaining systems to a near zero time/zero mile standard, thus
restoring them to a like-new condition. The other adjoining vector is
the Interim Force, comprising six brigade combat teams. These combat
formations are designed to meet an immediate warfighting requirement by
filling a capabilities gap at the mid-point in the spectrum of
operations that neither our light nor heavy forces can fill at this
time.
Transformation represents the essence of the Army's vision and the
necessary change required to make sure the Army of the future is
prepared to meet expected requirements by fielding adaptable and highly
capable units. The ability to harness the revolutionary advances in
technology, coupled with an understanding of the changing nature of war
and the overall strategic environment, creates the opportunity and
imperative for the Army to make dramatic changes in transformation.
This transformation will not occur overnight, but will require a period
of up to 30 years to identify, develop, produce, and field new
capabilities throughout the Active and Reserve components.
Transformation will be a continuous process throughout this period, but
its completion will be phased because of the time needed to develop,
evaluate, and incorporate revolutionary technologies; the limitations
in resources available to fund the effort; and the concurrent
requirement to maintain the readiness of the Army at all times.

MODERNIZATION STRATEGY

The Army has developed a modernization strategy to implement
transformation while at the same time assuring adequate readiness of
the Army throughout this decades-long process. This modernization
strategy is a coordinated and comprehensive approach of focusing all
efforts and programs on building capabilities by equipping and
organizing forces. This strategy is best described as one of ``balanced
modernization'', which seeks to develop and field combat-capable units
through an appropriate mix of selective fielding of new equipment
(modernization), rebuilding and upgrading existing equipment
(recapitalization) and preserving needed elements of current equipment
(maintenance).
A key process that is integral to this balanced modernization is
Unit Set Fielding. It is both a process and a strategy that modernizes
the force through a family of systems approach to fielding. Unit Set
Fielding involves the synchronization of individual system fielding
plans into a single unit fielding schedule to streamline the fielding
process. Unit Set Fielding represents an important shift in emphasis in
the Army toward providing improved capabilities as a package to
organizations and not just fielding isolated systems. As part of a
coordinated array, this disciplined modernization strategy goes beyond
just equipping Army units. It also incorporates the manning,
sustaining, training, organization, and installation requirements to
ensure that an increased capability is being fielded, and not just
pieces of equipment. The Army leadership has made their preference
clear--we are even willing to field fewer individual systems in the
future in order to ensure that more coordinated sets of systems and
capabilities are incorporated into Army units, thereby significantly
increasing overall force effectiveness.
Specifically, this balanced modernization strategy consists of the
following major components and priorities: 1) science and technology
efforts to enable timely fielding of the future Objective Force and, in
particular, the Future Combat Systems (FCS), which will be the
foundation of that force; 2) fielding of immediate operational
capabilities through the Interim Brigade Combat Teams (IBCT), which are
outfitted with the new Interim Armored Vehicles; and 3) maintaining and
improving essential warfighting capabilities of the existing Legacy
Force which is needed to preserve unquestionable military superiority
for possible missions in the near term.

OBJECTIVE FORCE AND FCS

The Army's ultimate goal for transformation is the Objective Force.
Operating as part of a joint, combined, and/or interagency team, it
will be capable of conducting rapid and decisive offensive, defensive,
stability and support operations, and be able to transition among any
of these missions without a loss of momentum. It will be lethal and
survivable for warfighting and force protection; responsive and
deployable for rapid mission tailoring and the projection required for
crisis response; versatile and agile for success across the full
spectrum of operations; and sustainable for extended regional
engagement and sustained land combat. It will leverage joint and
interagency reach-back capabilities for intelligence, logistical
support, and information operations while protecting itself against
information attacks. It will leverage space assets for communications;
position, navigation, and timing; weather, terrain, and environmental
monitoring; missile warning; and intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance. The Objective Force will provide for conventional
overmatch and a greater degree of strategic responsiveness, mission
versatility, and operational and tactical agility. With the Objective
Force, the Army intends to deploy a combat capable brigade anywhere in
the world in 96 hours, a division in 120 hours, and five divisions in
30 days. Our ability to quickly put a brigade-size force on the ground,
with the balance of a division following a day later, fills a current
gap for credible, rapid deterrence. The Objective Force will offer real
strategic options in a crisis and changes the strategic calculations of
our potential adversaries. The Army with Objective Force capability
will provide the National Command Authorities with a full range of
strategic options for regional engagement, crisis response, and land
force operations in support of the Nation.
Future Combat Systems is one of the essential components for the
Army's Objective Force. The FCS is more than just a single combat
platform. Rather, it is the collective, related family of systems that
pull advanced technologies designed for future use to the present so
that we provide desired combat capabilities early, with the ability to
add planned enhancements over the life of the systems. The FCS is
envisioned as a digitized land combat capability and system-of-systems,
which will have a multi-mission role. It will include mounted and
dismounted teams, manned and unmanned systems, and air and ground
components--all linked within a network of Command, Control,
Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance (C\4\ISR). It will be capable of destroying an enemy by
fires, maneuver, and assault, and is also capable of seizing and
controlling terrain. Additionally, the FCS is intended to be as lethal
and survivable as our current heavy forces, yet much more deployable
and strategically responsive. Over the next 6 years, the Army will
demonstrate and validate FCS functions and exploit high-payoff core
technologies, including composite armor, active protection systems,
multi-role (direct and indirect fire) cannons, compact kinetic energy
missiles, hybrid electric propulsion, human engineering, and advanced
electro-optic and infrared sensors.
At this point, the Army investment is in the form of aggressive
science and technology (S&T) efforts to identify and develop the leap-
ahead technologies needed as the basis for revolutionary change and
improvements in the Objective Force. Army S&T funding and efforts are
partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in
a collaborative effort to give the greatest impetus to this priority
effort. The fiscal year 2002 budget funds FCS demonstrations of system-
of-systems functions and cost sharing technologies. The Army's goal is
to identify the technological solutions in the 2003-2004 time frame to
permit production and fielding of the FCS by the end of this decade.
These are ambitious goals, and therefore the Army is devoting 96
percent of its total S&T funding directly to support programs needed to
develop Objective Force technologies, with 37 percent of this amount
specifically in support of the FCS. Overall, as an indication of the
priority being placed on the future force, the Army is devoting 64
percent of its total Research, Development, and Acquisition funding for
the next 6 years to systems that are projected to be part of the
Objective Force.
The Comanche reconnaissance and attack helicopter will be the first
Army Objective Force system to be fielded and is the air component of
the FCS. The fiscal year 2002 budget continues our efforts toward
achieving this important capability. The Comanche is a uniquely capable
system that incorporates the latest technology available, especially in
the area of digitization, sensors, and low observable technology
advances. Although Comanche will be fielded as part of the Objective
Force, its digitization will be compatible with Legacy and Interim
Force systems. Comanche will provide a lethal combination of
reconnaissance and firepower.
The Army Battle Command System (ABCS) is currently envisioned as
the internetted network that will enable the C\4\ISR capabilities of
the Objective Force. ABCS is the Army's component of the Global Command
and Control System (GCCS) and is a complex system of systems that
provides the mechanism to receive and transmit information among the
joint forces. This advanced capability will significantly advance the
ability to expand situational awareness of the battlefield to every
echelon of the force, thus dramatically improving the ability to
increase the speed and effectiveness of all tactical decisions.

INTERIM FORCE

To fulfill an immediate operational requirement and provide a
capability that does not presently exist, the Army is also in the
process of organizing and equipping Interim Combat Brigade Teams
(IBCTs) as the basis for an Interim Force to provide valuable
capabilities to the regional CINCs as well as the National Command
Authorities. These organizations will make use of existing off-the-
shelf technologies along with more rapidly deployable equipment and
structure to provide a responsive and capable force that effectively
complements other existing forces. The IBCTs will offer great potential
for use in a wide array of possible contingencies, ranging from peace
enforcement missions such as in Bosnia and Kosovo to warfighting
missions like those in Panama and Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
The equipment foundation of the IBCT will be a family of Interim
Armored Vehicles (IAVs) which will be capable of being transported by
C-130 type aircraft and also have enhanced characteristics for greater
effectiveness in a variety of operational missions. Last year, Congress
supported the IBCT concept with an additional $600 million for IAV
procurement and for organizing the second IBCT. We are very grateful
for this support. Thus far, the Army has already reorganized two
brigades at Fort Lewis, Washington, into the IBCT structure, has
awarded a contract for the initial procurement of the IAVs, and has
made the necessary fiscal decisions, aided by congressional support, to
provide funding for fielding six IBCTs. The Army will train and test
soldiers and leaders in the doctrine and organization of these new
units to ensure that they can respond to operational requirements. An
IAV-equipped battalion-sized element will undergo training and initial
operational testing and evaluation to guarantee system suitability and
effectiveness. Innovative applications and technology insertion in
supporting forces will complete the IBCT package and enable initial
operational capabilities for the first IBCT in 2003, and full
operational capabilities by 2005. The fiscal year 2002 budget procures
326 IAVs with operational fielding of the first IBCT beginning in 2002.
The IBCTs are projected to remain an invaluable component of the Army
for more than 20 years.

LEGACY FORCE

While the development of the Objective Force and fielding of the
Interim Force are critical components of the Army's transformation and
modernization strategy, they will take many years to implement fully.
Throughout this period, the Army continues to balance its enduring
commitment to readiness and its obligation to support any and all
missions assigned by the National Command Authorities. The current or
Legacy Force is the means of fulfilling that commitment to the Nation,
and the Army's modernization and investment strategies devote the
resources required to maintain adequate readiness while the evolution
of the Army to a technologically advanced force takes place over the
coming decades. For the next 15 to 20 years, the existing force will
represent the bulwark of the land forces of the United States, and they
must be maintained in sufficient readiness and capability to perform
all potential missions. The nucleus of this force will be the
Counterattack Corps, which is based upon the Army's III Corps in Fort
Hood, Texas. In balancing its resources, the Army decided that this
Corps will receive the highest priority for recapitalization and
modernization efforts in order to ensure its peak readiness and
capability for warfighting missions. As a result, it will receive
modernized systems such as the M1A2 System Enhancement Program (SEP)
Abrams tank, the M2A3 Bradley, Crusader, as well as other new or
upgraded systems in a variety of areas. III Corps consists of both
Active and Reserve components, all of which will be modernized to
ensure that the Counterattack Corps is ready for any and all missions.
While all of the systems planned for the modernization and
recapitalization of the Counterattack Corps are important, the Army
believes the Crusader is crucial to our ability to decisively win the
Nation's wars.
The Legacy Force is an aging one due to the impact of a skipped
modernization cycle that was one of the results of the ``peace
dividend'' associated with the end of the Cold War. Currently, 75
percent of major combat systems exceed engineered design half-life and
will exceed design life by 2010. Many of our major systems are, or soon
will be, older than the soldiers who may be taking them into combat. We
therefore find ourselves in a downward spiral of devoting more and more
resources to maintaining aging equipment, with commensurate fewer
dollars to procure new equipment to meet emerging national security
requirements. The end result is that the Army must devote sufficient
resources to preserve the combat capability and superiority of our
forces as a strategic hedge during the period of transformation. The
Army's modernization and investment strategies accomplish this by
supporting a combination of very limited but critical modernization
programs, rebuilding and upgrading currently fielded systems to extend
their useful life, and, finally, maintaining those other systems needed
for continued readiness of the force.
In the area of limited modernization programs, some systems warrant
emphasis as significant contributors to the quality and effectiveness
of the Legacy Force. The first of these is the Crusader, a fully
digital and networked fire support system that provides major increases
in the range, accuracy, rate of fire, lethality, mobility, and
survivability over the current M109 series of cannon artillery. This
advanced system is also a technology carrier for future systems and
will employ more than two-dozen cutting-edge technologies for the first
time in a ground combat vehicle. For example, the state of the art
cockpit, the fully automated ammunition handling system, the integrated
composite armor, the advanced electronics architecture and the
revolutionary new cannon assembly are a partial list of some of the new
technologies being introduced in Crusader. The technologies in Crusader
allow the Army to employ tactics and doctrine for the first time that
rely on cockpit automation, robotics, and information exploitation in
lieu of soldier performed tasks.
Another new system of particular importance is the High Mobility
Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which is a wheeled version of battle-
tested and proven Multiple Launcher Rocket System (MLRS) that is
transportable by C-130 aircraft. This more deployable version will
provide tremendous early-entry firepower and flexibility and will be
capable of using the entire range of MLRS rockets and missiles,
including the longer range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS)
munitions. This system will also continue to serve in the future as an
important means of responsive fire support for both Interim and
Objective Force units.
The rebuild and upgrade of key existing systems, recapitalization,
is a significant and essential component of the overall modernization
strategy. The fiscal year 2002 budget takes a step in this direction by
providing additional funding to depot maintenance in preparation for
recapitalization. The Army has determined that we preserve readiness
best and most cost effectively when we retire or replace warfighting
systems on a 20-year Department of Defense (DOD) modernization cycle.
Today, 12 of 16 critical weapons systems exceed this targeted fleet
average age. Recapitalization expenditures improve safety,
supportability, readiness, and warfighting capabilities and have the
additional benefit of reducing operations and support costs that
otherwise would be far higher. The recapitalization process, while
addressing selected and critical systems, is focused on building combat
capable units. The Army will recapitalize its fleet unit by unit to
ensure maximum warfighting capability. The Army has established a
selective recapitalization program that will restore aging systems to
like-new condition and allow upgraded warfighting capabilities for a
fraction of the replacement cost. So far, the Army has made final
decisions regarding the recapitalization of its aviation platforms,
Apache, Blackhawk, and Chinook. In arriving at the conclusions, Army
leadership looked at various cost factors, available funding, and
length of time expected to keep the system in inventory. For example,
the Army is buying what is needed in terms of capability, safety, and
reliability to keep the Apache platform flying until we introduce
Comanche. This is called focused recapitalization. With Chinook,
because a replacement for this platform is much further in the future,
we will fully recapitalize the system. A lack of resources, though,
prevents us from recapitalizing the entire Chinook fleet. Along with
conducting cost/benefit analyses on Abrams and Bradley, the Army also
added the dimension of orchestrating their fielding only where the
configurations complemented one another. For example, M1A2 SEPs will
only be fielded with M2A3 Bradleys. This decision will reinforce the
Unit Set Fielding concept, which results in the most capability given
the available resources.
Although the Army recognizes it may not have sufficient resources
to recapitalize all of our fleets to the same capability level, it is
our intent to seek sufficient resources to ensure we upgrade or rebuild
to a near zero time/zero mile standard as many Active and Reserve
component units as practical. We must maintain the readiness of the
Legacy Force until the Objective Force is operational.

INVESTMENT STRATEGY

To implement the Army's modernization strategy in support of
transformation, the Army prioritizes its investment of limited
resources over time. Implementation of transformation requires hard
decisions and clear priorities among competing needs, and that is the
essence of the Army's investment strategy. This strategy represents a
paradigm shift and is characterized by a new emphasis on the
development of systems and technologies that will support the future
Army, the Objective Force.
To accomplish this, the Army has already made tough choices. We
have canceled or restructured seven major Army procurement programs and
a significant amount of planned spending between fiscal years 2001 and
2005 has already been shifted internally to focus efforts and directly
support our transformation initiatives. Once again, this is not devoid
of risks--many of these canceled or restructured programs remain valid
warfighting requirements, and their absence may place our soldiers at
higher risk in combat.

PROGRESS TO DATE--SUMMARY

The Army has made great strides in implementing the transformation
process, which was announced by the Army leadership only a short time
ago in October 1999. Tough decisions have been made to reprioritize
resources to support these new priorities. The Army has taken
aggressive steps to accelerate essential S&T efforts to identify
revolutionary new technologies for our future Army. Two brigades have
been reorganized at Fort Lewis as the foundation for the new IBCTs, and
they are presently undergoing training to develop the appropriate
warfighting tactics, techniques and procedures for their missions. The
Army has awarded a contract for a family of IAVs to equip these units
and provide invaluable new capabilities for use by regional CINCs and
the National Command Authorities. Finally, and very importantly, the
Army has made the needed decisions to maintain and extend the combat
superiority and readiness of the current force until the future force
is completely fielded. Congress and the Department of Defense have
responded positively by providing both strong support in principle as
well as essential additional resources to help establish critical
momentum. There is still much work to be done, but the Army has moved
out.
This statement today is intended to reinforce and add to the
understanding of what the Army is doing now and planning to do in the
future to make transformation a reality. Continued support will be
required to preserve the momentum of transformation while
simultaneously preserving the Army's capability to fulfill its enduring
responsibility and commitment to the Nation to deliver decisive victory
on the ground when our national interests are threatened.
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittee, we
thank you once again for this opportunity to discuss with you today the
fiscal year 2002 Army budget request and the status of Army
modernization and transformation. We look forward to your questions.

General Bond, please proceed.

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM L. BOND, USA, DIRECTOR, FORCE
DEVELOPMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY

General Bond. Mr. Chairman, Senator Santorum, distinguished
members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you today with Lieutenant General Kern. I am the
Army's force developer and the focal point for the Army's
warfighting requirements process. I will briefly expand on
General Kern's comments regarding Army recapitalization and
Unit Set Fielding.
As a result of the extended period of constrained resources
brought about by the end of the Cold War, coupled with years of
operating at a higher OPTEMPO, Army modernization efforts that
ensure our far-term readiness have been sacrificed to pay for
near-term readiness. The result of that sacrifice is a skipped
modernization cycle. That is portrayed graphically by the chart
provided to you. We have already made tough choices and
accepted risks to set the conditions necessary to transform--
canceling or restructuring seven major Army programs, all of
which remain valid warfighting requirements. We have also
internally shifted a significant amount of spending to focus
Army efforts and directly support our transformation
initiative. But to ensure our ability to fight and win the
Nation's wars, there are some risks we cannot take. Most
importantly, we cannot afford to skip another procurement
cycle. We cannot afford to keep mortgaging the future of the
Army to pay for readiness today.
Today's Army Legacy Force guarantees our warfighting
readiness until the Objective Force is fielded in the next
decade. However, over 75 percent of our major combat systems
exceed the half life of their expected service life. The cost
to operate and sustain this Legacy Force is staggering. In
fact, costs increased 10 percent each year for the last 3
years. The Army needs to find a way out of these spiraling
operating and support costs.
Our transformation plan accounts for an aging equipment
problem through a program called selective recapitalization,
which rebuilds and upgrades the most important equipment items
to a like-new condition. What I am talking about here is
finding those high-cost drivers that drive our operational
costs, those parts that cause the system to be non-mission
capable, and replacing those versus replacing the entire
system. Doing this in an equitable fashion will increase return
on investment.
Senator Santorum. Excuse me. I thought you said two things
here. You said your high cost drivers, but then you said, the
key components for mission capability. Aren't those two
different things?
General Bond. They are two different things.
Senator Santorum. OK. So, you said the same thing. That is
what I am trying to figure out. Which is it?
General Bond. It is both. We address the high operating
costs--those things, those parts which cost the most to
replace, and those parts which cause the system to be non-
mission capable. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive but
they are in a lot of cases.
Senator Santorum. That cost the most to replace or cost the
most to maintain?
General Bond. The cost to replace, in this case, and the
cost in time because sometimes they are a low cost item but
they cause the system to be down multiple times because they
have to be replaced.
General Kern. Sir, if I could give you an example. In the
Apache program, the front end of the Apache is the target
acquisition/pilot night vision system, and it is a first
generation FLIR capability. It is the single most costly piece
of equipment to keep it flying. It costs us a significant
amount and that has been increasing. We have a capability
improvement to bring a second generation FLIR into that, at the
same time significantly reducing the cost of operating that
system. So, it is a high cost item but it also gives us a new
capability at the same time. So, the recapitalization of that
would include bringing in something like that.
General Bond. In addition, there are small parts within the
Comanche or the Apache that fail on a regular basis, causing
the increased non-mission capable time for the Apache. These
parts can be very inexpensive, but because they're hard to get,
because of the usage factors requiring them to be hard to get,
it causes that time to be exacerbated. Those are the kinds of
parts for which we need to re-engineer and provide a better
maintenance capability so that they are not having to be
replaced, even though they are not the high costs items like
the TADS/PNVS. Do you understand?
Senator Santorum. Better understand, yes.
General Bond. The transformation plan accounts for aging
equipment problems through a program called selective
recapitalization, which rebuilds, as I talked about, and
upgrades the most important equipment items to a like-new
condition. If sufficiently resourced, recapitalization provides
three distinct advantages. First, it will improve the safety,
supportability, readiness, and capabilities of our warfighting
systems. Second, it is the cost effective alternative to
purchasing new systems. For example, purchasing a new Apache
helicopter costs approximately $24 million. Recapitalizing an
existing one costs about $10 million. Third, recapitalization
costs will be partially recovered through reduced operations
and supports costs. In fact, we estimate the cost to
recapitalize UH-60s will be recovered in less than 7 years. The
readiness and sustainment task force, along with the
shortcomings that were discovered during Task Force Hawk, are
also being addressed during each one of these and I can let the
committee rest assured that every single one of those safety
concerns in the aviation area are being addressed during this
recapitalization and modernization. So, they will all be
covered.
We are also changing the way we field our equipment to our
warfighting organizations to recognize that our combat systems
are increasingly reliant on each other. Instead of fielding new
equipment one system at a time, we are synchronizing the
fielding plans for each battalion or brigade, so that a number
of related systems are delivered within a coordinated Unit Set
Fielding window. Unit Set Fielding synchronizes the delivery of
new equipment--modernization--with rebuilding and upgrading of
existing equipment--recapitalization--and maintaining needed
elements of current equipment--maintenance. Unit Set Fielding
also addresses requirements to man, sustain, field, train, and
organize each unit. It includes installation support and
training requirements so that we maximize our investment. For
example, an M1A2 SEP battalion costs between $270 and $350
million. But without expanded ranges our soldiers cannot train
on these tanks to their full ability. Without modernized motor
pools, and all required spare parts, we cannot maintain them
efficiently. As a result, we only realize a portion of our
investment in combat capability. Unit Set Fielding will ensure
that we receive the full amount of combat power we pay for.
The Army leadership has made its preference clear on this
issue. We are willing to field fewer individual equipment items
in the future to ensure that more complete sets of equipment
and system capabilities are fielded to our Army units. Without
question, the Army has paid a price to maintain near-term
readiness. Nevertheless, we continue to do the best we can with
what we have in resources. The fiscal year 2002 budget
continues to enable transformation although not nearly at the
optimum level. With those funds available, we have prudently
invested in the most promising research and technologies for
our Objective Force. With your continued help, our Army will
remain ready to meet our challenges and achieve our
transformation vision.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your invitation to appear
before this distinguished subcommittee, and I look forward to
your questions.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, General. Thank you to both of
you. I am going to suggest that we do a round in which we ask
questions for 7 minutes each. I want to start with a few
questions on budget priorities overall. I mentioned some of the
numbers in my opening statement. In the fiscal year 2002 budget
request, the Army has specifically highlighted Interim Armored
Vehicle, Comanche, Crusader, and Shadow Tactical UAVs as the
key components in its procurement request. I want to know
whether you believe that the fiscal year 2002 budget request,
with the kind of decrease that I fear is there compared to
2001, can adequately support these programs.
General Kern.
General Kern. Sir, we believe the request as submitted for
the year 2002 does fully fund those programs. We looked at the
priority of those. We have also submitted an unfunded
requirements list of priorities which shows some shortfalls in
the predominate areas in those systems which you have
mentioned. We have made it our priority to fully fund those
systems.
Senator Lieberman. Do the numbers that I have come up with
seem generally correct to you, as we take indication of
inflation and the transfer of programs from the BMDO?
General Kern. I think we have done a number of studies on
that but they are about the same that we have concluded there
also. There are two pieces that we look at as being different
from the submission from the fiscal year 2001 budget, that is
those pieces which came to us from the BMDO, the Patriot, and
the MEADS program. So, if you take them out and you look at the
total, we believe we are about, in real dollars, and then-year
dollars, not in constant dollar terms, about $414 million ahead
in our RDT&E and about $450 million behind in procurement.
Senator Lieberman. So, it is a little bit different from
the numbers I came up with but still obviously being $450
million behind in procurement is significant. Your answer was
that you feel that within the Pentagon request for 2002, you
have been able to fund those highlighted programs. How about
some of your top unfunded requirements. What are they?
General Kern. Sir, most of those fall into the area of
OPTEMPO anti-terrorism, delayed repair on our installations and
some Reserve component money. The biggest single one that hits
into our area is in the recapitalization area which General
Bond described, and we believe we are about $566 million short
there in our request.
Senator Lieberman. Let me come at this from a somewhat
different perspective in this question. Assuming that your
modernization budget remains constant but with no increase in
real terms, or even decreases in the last 2 years, how will the
Army prioritize among the competing Objective, Interim, and
Legacy Force requirements?
General Kern. Sir, that is probably the hardest question
Secretary White and General Shinseki have to deal with in terms
of balancing those priorities. We believe that you cannot
separate the three components of our transformation. However,
we must keep them in balance. So, we must continue with the
science and technology and the research and development
investments in the Objective Force. We must continue with the
fielding of the interim brigades, both to overcome the
shortcoming of our strategic deployability and the
survivability of our forces in theater and at the same time, to
learn new Objective Force tactics, techniques, procedures, and
doctrine development. We believe that the balance, and clearly
there are many more systems in the United States Army than the
19 we have chosen to recapitalize, but just picking on those
systems, we believe is the prioritization effort that we have
undergone as to where we must put our current investments.
A great deal of work has been done in aviation systems and
we will continue to do that. As you have noted, in the aviation
modernization plan we are eliminating our Legacy aircraft as
quickly as possible starting with the Cobras and the AH-1s, and
we have made some very tough decisions in the past year on the
Apache procurement, where we reduce the total number in order
to achieve a better capability and overcome some of the
readiness shortfalls that we are currently seeing. So we have
in this budget and in the work that we have done in the past
year, worked very hard on prioritizing and balancing those
requirements.
Senator Lieberman. So, the answer that I hear is that you
are going to try to spread the research that you have roughly
equally among the Interim, Objective, and Legacy Forces so that
you will be moving forward toward your goal in each of the
three.
General Kern. That is correct, sir. I would tell you that I
think I have the same picture that you do where somewhere
around 2005, 2006, when we make the decision that the Objective
Force systems which we have in development are mature enough to
move into the production phase, and General Shinseki's goal
that he set out for us is to field in the first decade, that we
must have our first units begin fielding around 2008. If we are
successful in doing that and we do not see an increase, there
is going to be a major challenge for all of us to resource the
next generation of the United States Army.
Senator Lieberman. That will come around what year?
General Kern. The tough years, I believe, are going to be
around 2005, 2006.
Senator Lieberman. Let me ask a few specific questions
about aspects of the Legacy Force. I know the Army has revised
its acquisition strategy for the procurement of the A2 model of
the family of medium tactical vehicles. I gather there are only
two competitors for the contract and as such, we need to be
assured that the Army conducts a robust test of the vehicles
submitted. Can you tell us what steps you have taken to ensure
that that they will be tested?
General Kern. Sir, we have initially, as challenged by many
members over here, looked at the number of miles which we had
planned and we have increased that to achieve pretty close to
20,000 miles per vehicle in our testing of eight vehicles for
each of the manufacturers. We will include in a very thorough
test the sufficient off-road and on-road OPTEMPO of that
vehicle to ensure that we do not make the same errors that we
did in previous testing on the A0 procurement. Finally, there
will be soldiers involved in that testing to ensure that the
human factor issues are accounted for in the designs that are
presented to us by the competitors. We have worked this
competition very hard to ensure that we both meet the needs of
the United States Army and get the best product for the United
States Army and the soldiers of our future. We also have taken
into account the recommendations made by Congress in this
competition. We believe it is fair and I would ask that you
support it as we have constructed it today. I believe it
answers all of your questions.
Senator Lieberman. Good. Thank you. Just one more quick
associated question because my time is up. Does the schedule
ensure that there will be no break in the production of the
current A1 model until the A2 passes production verification
testing and a full rate production decision is made?
General Kern. As the schedule is planned and laid out right
now, that is one of the factors. There will be no break in
production. We will watch that very closely.
Senator Lieberman. Good. Thank you, General Kern.
Senator Santorum.
Senator Santorum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me move to
the Objective Force first. You have your modernization cycle
and you talk about trying to get a proper mix on Legacy Forces
and we have this big investment in the Interim Force and
Senator Lieberman asked a question about how you are going to
balance all of them. From what I see, my concern is that you
are moving forward with decisions on your Objective Force in
the technology of 2003 and yet we see your RDT&E is not
particularly robust. You are talking about transforming with
very little resources here. You are talking about a leap ahead.
You are talking about transformation. You are talking about a
new generation, and you are going to be making those decisions,
at least some of them, next year, for fielding that force you
said, I think 2008 was the number that you suggested, or at
least early in the next decade, I think was maybe the term you
used.
General Kern. Our objective is initial operating capability
in that time.
Senator Santorum. Right, so you have to begin in what--5,
7, or 8 years? I guess I just really have some serious
questions as to whether you are going to be able to do that
given the resources that are being applied to that Objective
Force at this time. Are you going to be prepared to make that
call and are we going to have the knowledge that we need to
move forward? My concern is, I mean, I am just looking at
numbers. This is your chart. I am just looking at numbers and I
just do not see how you have a sufficient amount of resources
dedicated to the foundation for making those decisions go
forward.
General Kern. To answer your second question first, I
believe we have sufficient resources dedicated to research and
development in the science and technology pieces. To answer the
question, the technology is available and ready for us to apply
to a development. We will use the metric of the technology
readiness level as I described earlier, which we have
confidence in and will provide us a good answer. I cannot
absolutely tell you that science and technology is going to
produce on schedule. Research sometimes has surprises,
sometimes things come in earlier than you predict and sometimes
it takes longer and more resources to get to those. But our
indications today are that we have made significant progress in
the investments that have been made, particularly with the help
of DARPA. Some very innovative steps have been made that will
support that. So, I am reasonably confident that the resource
level applied against the science and technology is sufficient.
We have done a lot of reprioritization in the past years and
focused our effort on getting the answers that we need. We will
continue to do that. I will tell you that General Shinseki
spends a great deal of his time, as well as all the rest of the
senior leaders, grilling us on exactly those questions. So,
there's a great deal of leadership attention being paid to that
part of it.
The second piece is a little more difficult--are there
going to be sufficient procurement dollars to acquire these
systems and to finish the RDT&E, the 6.4 phase when we are
getting ready to go into production? That I believe is going to
be a significant challenge for the Department of Defense
because we are going to be competing with other systems and it
is going to be a significant challenge for the United States
Army to achieve the balance of current readiness with the
investments required in that future force. So I do not
underestimate the difficulty in achieving those, but I do know
the lessons of the past of the United States Army when we
failed to do that--we literally paid the price in blood. So the
United States Army must be prepared, and with the support of
Congress, because we fully understand the way the Constitution
is written, to make those investments.
Senator Santorum. What makes this cycle different? What
makes this cycle different with respect to, I mean, what you
are telling me is you are ready, you'll be ready next year or
sometime soon after. You feel confident that you'll have the
technology to field a Future Combat System, that we are not
just going to do technology research here. We are going to go
with a whole new Future Combat System for this Objective Force.
You feel confident that you can get there? What makes this
restructuring, or modernization cycle, so fundamentally
different that you can do this less expensively than in
previous cycles? Again, using your own chart.
General Kern. Senator, I do not know if I can do it less
expensively. I do know we need to take the steps towards those
investments that we know we have to take with the technologies
available in this country and apply them to our systems. I
could take you through a couple of alternatives.
Senator Santorum. But my question is, can we get to the
leap-ahead technology without a higher amount of investment in
RDT&E? Can we get there?
General Kern. The basic research, as I said, again, I think
is adequately resourced. It is in the final phases where, when
you get into the final development, what we referred to in the
past as engineering, manufacturing, and development, when you
take those prototype investments and must transition them into
a production-ready capability. There are some positive
indicators in today's world through modeling and simulation.
Many of the models which we use in development can drive
production. That is the way the triple seven was built and that
is the way we are doing Crusader right now through solid models
that allowed us, in the past, to make changes in design, which
are physics-based, not just drawings, and allow that to
transition to production. So, there are some indications that
we would be able to do it faster and less expensively than we
have in the past.
There are other pieces of the chain and we are going
towards, much towards, miniaturization of electronics where the
basic production requirements are very expensive. So, if you
look at the investment in building a chip factory, it is
billions of dollars. The cost of producing the chip is pennies.
There is a difference in how you are going to invest and we are
looking at different technologies.
I do not expect that the future systems are all going to be
made of homogenous armor or even some of the different systems
that we use today. I expect we are going to see composites and
there are going to be some different industrial processes
required for these future systems. I believe, also, that our
propulsion systems on the ground are going to follow very much
from what is being done in the commercial sector today.
Where we in the United States Army have only invested
literally a few hundred million dollars in the development of
new engines, the commercial sector is investing billions of
dollars. So, technologies that are emerging in hybrid electric
power and fuel cells are things that we are going to have to
leverage as we move from what we have done in the past into the
future. So it is difficult to predict how much of that
leveraging will save us money and how much we, in the Defense
Department, are going to have to do for our own.
Senator Santorum. I also have a question. How much of that
leveraging gives you the leap-ahead technology that is superior
to somebody else's that is off-the-shelf? But that is another
question. Go ahead.
General Kern. There are two parts to that Senator and that
is one of the reasons why the Interim Brigade is so critical.
It is not just the technology; it is having the soldiers that
understand how to use that technology in the environment of the
battle space. There are examples where we have been working
with experimentation with the Fourth Infantry Division, which
we will conclude with a division exercise this fall where we
understand how to use network battlefields. We have taken a 25
percent reduction in our combat power, with our current
platforms, by applying those technologies to that future
battlefield by networking those systems. We have demonstrated
that to ourselves through analysis and through field
experimentation in a recent exercise out at the National
Training Center. That works, but you can cover a larger area.
There is risk. So, that is the piece that we must not only have
the technology, but we also must have soldiers that can use
that technology to their advantage.
I have a classic example of walking a Civil War
battlefield, and I could take you out to Manassas, or we could
go to Gettysburg. If you look at the artillery pieces that were
on those battlefields, they were rifled artillery, capable of
shooting 5 or 6 kilometers without any problem. They were lined
up, however, as an infantry support weapon hundreds of meters
away from the opposing forces. So, we have the Union and the
Confederate forces using indirect fire weapons of today as a
direct fire weapon a little bit over 100 years ago. They had
the technology, if they had backed those systems off the front
of the hills that they were on, to fire them indirect. They had
teletype that they could have used for communication with
towers for observation, or balloons for observation, which they
also used. They did not put the pieces together. So, it is not
only that one must have the technology, but you have to
understand how to apply that technology to the battlefield.
The work that we are doing out at Ft. Lewis with the
Interim Brigade starts us down that path of learning how to use
these new technologies. We are going to move from convoys that
can go today at best about 30 miles an hour, at the very best,
to 40 and 50 miles an hour. That sounds like a simple thing to
do, but I would ask you to line up any 20 vehicles that you
want to pick and try to move them at 50 miles an hour and keep
that as a coherent unit. That takes a different tactic. There
are some who suggest that we ought to be able to go 200 miles
an hour. Now, that is clearly a leap ahead when you are
operating in a ground plane of environment in urban conditions
that we have to operate in. So, there are a whole series of
things like that that must happen, not just having the
technology in hand. That is the challenge that we face in the
United States Army--taking that technology and applying it to
the battlefield.
Senator Santorum. Thank you.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Santorum.
Senator Ben Nelson.
Senator Ben Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like
to welcome our panel as well, and thank you for your time, to
help us as we begin a mark-up of the Fiscal Year 2002 Defense
Authorization Bill. As I have listened to the discussion today
and focused on what the goal of an Objective Force is in your
discussion about how we might be able to reach that goal, there
are a couple of questions I have regarding that. One is in
looking at the skipped modernization cycle, but looking at it
not so much as the skipped modernization cycle but to look at
it in terms of how much is being put into procurement and into
RDT&E. I assume that we do not start off with the idea of how
much money we have before we decide what we are going to buy. I
assume we start off looking at what it is we need and what
kind--and I am talking about assets of course, what assets we
need--and then determine what that is going to cost. I assume,
also, that the fact that there are some projections of lower
amounts of money here out in the future could be because we are
projected to have less money, but could it be because we are
looking at some economies of adding on to existing technology,
improving technology? That is my first question. Are we faced
with trying to figure out what we are going to buy with limited
funds because of reallocations within the military based on the
Secretary's study? I am a little concerned about what we are
doing here, whether we are starting with the objective or
whether we are starting with the method of getting the
objective.
General Kern. Senator, I will start and I will let General
Bond address the force development area, that clearly is in his
bailiwick. We believe very strongly in the Army that you start
with a strategy and not with a resource limitation. So you need
to match your strategy and what your overall policy is with
requirements and then identify how you are going to resource
those requirements, both in terms of people and in terms of
equipment and training.
Senator Ben Nelson. What the available resources, on some
sort of reasonable basis, might be.
General Kern. We also believe that there are some advances
in technology that allow you to do things in the future that
you have not been able to do in the past. As I noted earlier,
we have learned that in networking the battlefield, at which we
really believe we are leaders in the world, we see some
tremendous capability that we have not had in the past. That
is, a situational understanding of knowing where we are, where
our friends are, using our intelligence requirements to
understand where the enemy is, and being able to control the
tempo and space in the battlefield. That is one area where we
believe that we can leverage today. We believe that we will
clearly leverage the joint capabilities that the other services
bring, the precision capability of our air and naval forces,
into the Army's battlefield. This will be key. In the end,
though, it is going to be a soldier on the ground that wins
America's wars and that is where we must pay our attention, and
those investments are the ones which we will look at in terms
of resourcing.
General Bond.
General Bond. Yes. Senator, from my perspective, as we look
at this, to take the three axes that we work with, Objective,
Interim, and Legacy Forces, we have to try to work a balance.
We want to make the leap-ahead technology capabilities to
transform this Army to the Objective Force. That is our goal.
We are going to take some interim risk in trying to do this
with an Interim Force to develop those tactics, techniques, and
procedures, with the objective of being able to determine how
we need to fight with this force. We are willing to take more
risk because of where we stand in the world today with the
Legacy Force. Consequently, as I try to balance these
resources, trying to make sure I am able to transform, do that
interim step, and taking the risk with the Legacy Force, that
is where the crux of the matter lies. That is where the near-
term risk lies, with the Legacy Force. That is where we are
taking operational risk today.
The requirement within the Army is to modernize and
recapitalize the entire force. I cannot afford to do that. All
I have the resources for in trying to do that balance is to do
the III Corps, to develop those three and a third divisions
with that full modernized capability that can be our hammer in
which to retain dominance in the world. We are willing to do
that. I think that is the balanced way we need to look forward
to and that is when General Kern talks about being able to
support the science and technology. That is where we are taking
the risk in being able to get those dollars to provide.
Senator Ben Nelson. If we are faced with a missile defense
system, for example, which may or may not adversely affect your
budget as directly as it may affect some of the other services'
budgets, unless we start borrowing from all the services to
find a pool of money to pay for that, does that adversely
impact what your projections are for procurement for the years
beyond 2002?
General Bond. Certainly, if you decremented our budgets, it
would adversely impact us.
Senator Ben Nelson. So, you are assuming that whatever it
would be for anything additional on missile defense would be in
addition to what you are anticipating for your asset budget,
capitalization budgets?
General Bond. Yes sir. Senator, that would have to be an
assumption we make or the Army will not have the ability to
move forward.
Senator Ben Nelson. Well, how would that square with the
Secretary's efforts at reorganization and reorganization within
the military today to try to find some economies and/or some
savings that might generate some funds for other projects? I
assume nothing can be wrung out of what you are proposing here
for procurement.
General Kern. I would say first, Senator, that debate is
ongoing and so there are no conclusions to that at this point.
We are thankful for the successes of our missile defense
programs. Certainly, we in the Army have participated in that.
The ground based missile defense has an Army program manager.
THAAD has an Army program manager and Patriot PAC-3 has an Army
program manager. Those are all hit-to-kill technologies which
we have participated in and benefit. We believe very strongly
that ballistic missile defense is going to be critical to the
survival of all of our forces on future battlefields.
Senator Ben Nelson. As well as theater defense?
General Kern. Theater defenses are critical to our forces.
The strategic defenses, I think, are the debate which is yet to
come and how that will be achieved, but from my perspective,
the Army has a minimal procurement and RDT&E position right now
and we have achieved a very delicate balance to move forward in
the future and if we were decremented from that, it would be
very difficult.
Senator Ben Nelson. But if the missile defense system
becomes a bigger part of the assets of the military, that could
affect your prioritization of what your current and your future
projected assets might be. Is that correct?
General Kern. Senator, I do not think it will affect the
Army's prioritization of the assets from an overall DOD
perspective. You may be correct.
Senator Ben Nelson. OK. Thank you.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.
Senator Inhofe.
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The longer we talk
about these things, the more problems I see out there.
Senator Lieberman. I am having the same reaction.
Senator Inhofe. Some have been arguing that the Army is
going to have to pay for some or all of this transformation
either by force reductions or canceling some of the programs
needed to recapitalize the Legacy Force. Now, first of all,
either one of you, have you looked at this argument? Then
second, have you assessed the risk that would come with these
reductions if this were the case?
General Kern. I guess I will take a stab at that, Senator.
Yes, we clearly have looked at the arguments and the balance
that is required. We believe that the United States Army, in
its role as the dominant ground force, is necessary to win
America's wars, and I do not think there's an argument on that
part of the debate in the balance. We also believe that daily
engagement in the occupation of the United States Army in our
deployed forces is one which is going to be part of the debate,
and you have all listened to the balance between a change of
strategy, of whether it is going to be two MTWs or something
less. But on a daily basis, the United States Army has people
deployed in engagement around the world and we still have
follow-up forces in the Sinai, the Balkans, Korea, and around
the world that have been part of what we must also balance in
that equation. So, there is the current piece of it that we
must deal with as well as our ability to then engage in some of
those which are less clear today in predictability in terms of
where our next battlefield may be.
It is that balance that must be achieved by the United
States Army to meet our day-to-day mission requirements around
the world as well as to be able to win future wars against
threats that are emerging in some cases, as you have noted,
where we may be overmatched. We want to regain the edge so that
we send our forces in, as we have stated in the past, we do not
want it to be a fair fight. We want the U.S. soldiers to have
the upper hand when they go into battle.
Senator Inhofe. That is the reason for the second part of
that in looking for those resources by canceling some of the
programs needed to recapitalize the Legacy Force. That is where
the risk comes in, I would say. Would you agree with that? If
we have to take some of our programs, that would modernize the
Legacy Force and it is going to increase the risks for our
troops and put them in with over-matched equipment.
General Kern. That is a calculated risk that we have taken
as I mentioned earlier. We have not chosen to recapitalize the
entire United States Army, but we have selected 19 prioritized
systems there that give us the best return. Are those the
correct 19? We will continue to assess that in terms of
priority. Are there sufficient resources to both recapitalize
that force and develop the modernization force where we put our
priority on Comanche, Crusader, tactical UAVs and the automated
command and control systems, as you noted? So, we have gone
through that prioritization effort and believe we have a good
balance. The challenge is to continue that balance and make
sure that that in fact happens.
Senator Inhofe. You see, this is my concern, Mr. Chairman.
We are talking about 2002 but I am wondering now about 2003 and
2004, where we are headed. I will leave the Crusader alone, but
I do want to reread just the first and the last sentence
attributed a couple of days ago to General Keane, to ask you
both if this characterizes the problem as you understand it
too. He said, ``I think it is absolutely outrageous to think we
would permit our young Army soldiers to be outgunned by
adversary artillery in the battlefield today.'' Then the last
sentence was, ``we have to do it at range. We have to have the
mobility to do it. We have to have the lethality to do it and
the Crusader is the answer to that.'' Do you agree with that
statement?
General Kern. Senator, I agree 100 percent with that
statement and I would add to it. If you look at the chart that
we provided, when we chose to modernize the last time we did
not include artillery.

It was a conscious decision to take some risks. I would
tell you again in 1991 following Operation Desert Storm we had
an Army systems modernization program in which we had to
significantly reduce our investments. When we made those
prioritizations at that time, and we looked at the shortcomings
of our forces which we had deployed to the Gulf, our biggest
shortcoming came out in our indirect fire artillery. The
investment strategy then shifted into the Comanche and the
Crusader, giving us the reconnaissance capability as well as
the indirect fires. While I am at it, I would like to correct
something I said earlier on the Crusader in answer to your
question. I said, and gave you a little more specifics, the
sustained rate of fire for the Paladin is four rounds per
minute. I believe I said six. You can only do that, and I did
not give you the final answer, for 3 minutes.
Senator Inhofe. That is why I said, let's go to a sustained
comparison.
General Kern. When you sustain it, it is only one round per
minute. So, you have four rounds per minute for 3 minutes and
then you have to shift to one round a minute.
Senator Inhofe. With each of the systems that are produced
today and on the market for anyone to buy, Iraq, Iran,
Pakistan, anybody else, of those four countries, each one of
those is superior to the Paladin. Do you agree with that?
General Kern. Yes, sir.
Senator Inhofe. When we were talking, we had the Joint
Chiefs in and the Secretaries. We asked them to update us on
the shortfalls and they had talked about between $48 and $58
billion, but then with this new budget, about $30 billion. To
break that down, the Army's portion of that was, I believe,
General Keane said $9.5 billion and then we elaborated on that
and he talked about the backlog of RPM accounts. I do not know
why we are not talking a little bit more about these. These are
the things that are supposed to be done at that very time when
they're first diagnosed. Are we adequately taking care of the
program that is going to make up for this backlog in property
and maintenance? I would suspect that if I went back to Ft.
Bragg today in a rainstorm that I would stay in the barracks
and I would get just as wet as I did 3 years ago.
General Kern. You are correct, Senator. The fiscal year
2002 budget and the priorities that were made starts to attack
that problem. We are increasing the RPM investments that are in
this budget submission request here. It does not get to 100
percent and it does not address the accumulated backlog and
repair. So, it just begins to address those issues and does not
solve them, as you have noted. But it is also the reason that
there is no significant increase in our procurement budget. So,
the point that Senator Lieberman noted, we made that trade here
for military pay and for attacking the repair shortfalls in our
priorities. But it does not solve them.
[General Kern provided supplemental information, the
information follows:]

Warfighting Requirements

The amended President's budget for fiscal year 2002 represents a
balanced program that will allow the Army to remain trained and ready.
This program provides near-term capabilities demanded by the warfighter
and lays the foundation for strategic responsiveness and dominance
through the Objective Force. The fiscal year 2002 Army shortfalls in
the areas of transformation, people and readiness total $9.5 billion.
Included within these shortfalls are additional resources necessary to
meet warfighting requirements such as: $566 million to accelerate
recapitalization of the counterattack corps to meet Department of
Defense goals of maintaining an average fleet age at or below half the
system's expected service life, $1.9 billion in current force
modernization to ensure combat overmatch and be able to supplement the
capabilities of the Objective Force until transformation is complete,
and $300 million to fully fund ground and air Operating Tempo at
established readiness levels.

Senator Inhofe. I see. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has
expired but I have one more question.
Senator Lieberman. Well, go right ahead.
Senator Inhofe. General Shinseki had said--I am looking for
the date because I had asked the question. He said the Army
could use another 40,000 troops in order to accomplish the
current mission profile. This has long been a discussion of all
these various deployments that we have right now. Do you agree
with them in terms of what the needs are?
General Kern. Senator, I certainly agree with our Chief.
[Laughter.]
But I would also, if I could just give you a specific
instance in the areas that I deal with. In contingency
contracting, we have taken most of our contracting officers out
of our commands who wear a uniform and have turned that over to
civilian contracts, and that is okay. We are able to sustain
that but now those young soldiers that we send on
contingencies, we send them down to observe plants, for
example, the commander of DCMA, the Defense Contract Management
Agency, that oversees the Apache helicopter in Mesa, Arizona,
just spent 6 months deployed to the Balkans doing contingency
contracting. So, it is that type of repetitive impact on our
people which I even see in the acquisition of our systems which
General Shinseki referred to as this continuous problem. When
you look at that in terms of retention of people, that is
something that we must address.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Inhofe. Let's start a
second round. I wanted to ask a few questions about aviation
modernization. I understand that the first prototype Comanche
will complete its work and stop flying in September. That would
leave only one prototype to meet the test objectives. I also
understand it would cost $25 million to modify the first
prototype to take the mission equipment package and another $25
million to continue to fly it for another year. I wanted to ask
you, General, is the Army convinced of the risks of the program
in having only one flyable prototype is low enough to forego
those investments?
General Kern. Senator, that has been a concern since we
started out the program with only one prototype flying. We did
all our initial flight testing with only a single prototype. No
aviation program in history has ever done that before. We
brought on the second prototype to begin the integration of the
mission equipment packages into the next phase of it once we
have confirmed our aviation performance envelope with the first
prototype. Our investments have been in the first prototype to
prove out the aviation envelope in its mission requirements
without the mission package on board, just dummy weights to
simulate that. With the second prototype, we will integrate our
mission equipment and do that development, but we did not have
sufficient funds to update then the first prototype to that
same level of proficiency.
If we were going to make that investment, we probably
should have made it a year or two ago to significantly improve
our schedule. Our challenge today is that if we added that just
to build the second prototype and bring it up, I do not think
we would gain any significant advantage in time. I would
suggest, however, that there are other risk mitigation areas in
which we could apply that and it would be our challenge then to
determine what would be the better use of the investment.
Senator Lieberman. Let me go back to the Legacy Force with
a few specific questions that are before the subcommittee. The
Army has reduced the number of M270 multiple launch rocket
system (MLRS) launchers in each MLRS unit, which has freed up
launchers to go from the active Army to the National Guard. At
the same time, the Army is upgrading launchers to the M270A1
version for eventual fielding to both the active and Guard
battalions that support the counterattack corps' mission. I
understand that there are two battalions of M270 launchers at
the depot waiting for all of the associated support equipment
needed to field those battalions. The Army has an unfinanced
requirement of $37.6 million for that equipment. Is that a
higher priority than upgrading additional launchers to the A1
configuration?
General Kern. I will let General Bond comment on the
priority, but it is an active debate right now within the Army
as to how to balance our investments with the multiple launch
rocket system. We have two systems which have that capability--
the M270A1 and the one which we have in development, the
HIMARS. The HIMARS is the wheeled version of the multiple
launch rocket system which would allow us to deploy that on
C130s. So, as we have looked at the recapitalization of the
M270 multiple launch rocket system we are currently looking at
the mix of those two systems and trying to determine what is
the most effective way to both upgrade to the A1 and then bring
on the HIMARS as quickly as possible. That prioritization
effort is ongoing right now and that is where that money which
you had addressed would have to be competed. I will let General
Bond comment.
General Bond. Sir, it's a sin to have that much combat
power sitting in a depot for that amount of time. That is one
of the things that I have tried to work on with our sustainment
personnel and that task force in which to get that funded. From
my point of view, we really need to get that capability out to
the field. To say whether it is more important than providing
that A1 capability, that becomes a technical issue partly
because of the new weapons systems that are coming out and the
missiles that can only be fired from the A1 capability. Right
now, I am really working hard to try to be able to fund that
and make sure that happens while continuing to be able to
modernize to the A1 configuration and to try to transform into
the HIMARS capability.
Senator Lieberman. We want to continue to work with you on
those matters. The subcommittee has had some interest expressed
in the procurement of additional heavy equipment transporter
trucks. I wonder if you could give us the Army's position on
that. Maybe more specifically, I would ask, do you feel that
you have met all your wartime requirements?
General Kern. Senator, I would like to provide a complete
answer for the record on that issue. The heavy equipment
transporter, the HET, is not in our unfunded requirement
priorities right now and there is going to be a debate on the
entire size of the force whether we have sufficient resources
to meet that equipment. We are trying to lighten up our force
right now, moving towards lighter equipment, and that is part
of the equation. I would note, however, and thank the
subcommittee for its efforts in the past to give us the heavy
equipment transporter, this is one of the real shortcomings
that we found during our deployments to the Middle East where
we were using everybody else's equipment as we borrowed it.
[The information referred to follows:]

The Army's requirement for Heavy Equipment Transporter Systems
(HETS) is 2,484. At the end of fiscal year 2002 funding, the Army will
have procured 2,344 HETS. Upon completion of the fiscal year 2002
procurement, the Army will be short 139 HETS at a cost of approximately
$80 million. The HETS shortage resides primarily in National Guard
divisions. Requirements for critical early deploying units have been
met. Should additional funds become available for the procurement of
HETS, the Army would procure the HETS to meet existing shortages.

General Bond. I would also say, Senator, that it is one of
the priorities within the recapitalization efforts. I need that
capability to transport our M1s and M2s. Consequently, that
teaming arrangement with the contractor in the depots should
provide us additional capability, at least to meet the interim
capability with that kind of task force.
Senator Lieberman. OK. Noted. Quick question about the
Blackhawks. The Army plans to fund the Blackhawk acquisition, I
believe, at 12 this year, which certainly seems to be an
insufficient rate to meet the outstanding requirement of 330 or
even the anticipated requirement of 240 proposed by the
modernization plan. The National Guard's Adjuants General of
the 50 states have asked us to add an additional 20 UH-60L
utility helicopters and 6 HH-60L medivac helicopters this year
and support a 5-year multi-year procurement of 60 a year. Would
you agree that the Blackhawk acquisitions remain an unfunded
requirement of the Army?
General Kern. Yes, Senator, I would. I think it is an
unfunded requirement. We have listed that, I believe, at about
$107 million as the shortfall and unfunded requirements for the
Blackhawks. Our priority is to get them distributed among the
Army National Guard and solve that problem as we take the UH-1s
out of the force.
Senator Lieberman. Let me ask a futuristic question. You
mentioned robotics in your opening statement and we were quite
interested. We had some interesting testimony over the last
couple of years, and I believe it was in last year's DOD
authorization bill that we actually set some goals for unmanned
equipment across the services by 2015. If you can give us a
quick glimpse at how work is going within the Army on robotics.
General Kern. Sure. We have a number of programs that are
addressing robotics. Clearly in the air we have the tactical
unmanned aerial vehicle, which is not a fully autonomous
system, but it begins to give us that capability in aviation
platforms.
On the ground plane, we have a number of programs in our
science and technology within the Army that are moving forward.
They have completed recent testing of our robotic systems
there, and while we are able to move autonomously, we have not
completely solved some of the sensor issues associated with
that. We can move it about 15 miles per hour with relative
confidence with a robotic vehicle. Also, if it runs into a wall
of straw in a field it looks like a wall to the robot and so it
will turn and detour, whereas if I had a tank I would drive
through that field that was planted there. So, there are issues
like that in our development that we need to deal with.
We have developed a lot of interesting things, and we have
found that a robot does not really care that is up or down,
left or right. Yet, when we ask a human to design something, we
design it for a person to be sitting in there who is either
left handed or right handed and how they can see. While there
are a lot of people who are concerned about the initial
development of turning the robot right side up, the answer is
we really do not care. If it flips over, you just keep on
moving in the direction until you get to where you want and
then you just have to make sure the sensor points in the right
direction.
Senator Lieberman. That is definitely an advantage over
your average human being.
General Kern. Yes, sir, it is. We have DARPA projects that
are working with them and we work jointly with the Marine
Corps. In fact, the joint unmanned robotic program in
Huntsville is headed by a Marine Lieutenant Colonel working
with us. We are working a number of systems there that look at
robots that you can wear on a backpack and when you can get in
an urban terrain that will go up a set of stairs. It will map
the inside of a room and provide you capability so that you do
not have to put a soldier in there, which is a very dangerous
place, inside a dark room. There are efforts that are looking
at using sonar on those robots to actually do the mapping. So,
we are finding some interesting results of that, with some good
results in terms of being able to produce a robot.
Now, I suggested that why in the world would you ever want
to strap it on a soldier's back as opposed to having the robot
follow you like a mule and carry your pack? We believe there
are some things, again, that we think of in terms of human
behavior, when we really need to understand much more in terms
of robotic behavior. But I would also suggest that what we have
learned is that fully autonomous robotics on the ground plane
are very difficult to solve all the things that you and I solve
just walking around on a day-to-day basis. So, there is a lot
of cognitive behavior that you have that a robot finds
difficult to deal with. Some have suggested that the robot is
probably the dumbest soldier we will ever have to teach
anything. But once you've taught it, it is easy to teach the
next million of them. So, the challenge is how do you do that
learning and training experience within robotic systems.
We also are going to have major logistics issues, which we
have to understand. Like many of our systems today, robots rely
on battery power and our infantry battalions are literally
carrying thousands of pounds of batteries, to keep them re-
supplied. We must address that issue early on as to how we are
going to be able to do that on the future battlefields. I guess
the simple answer is we have made a lot of progress. We
understand a lot more today, but for ground operations there
are significant challenges in robotics which we still must
learn how to work through.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks for that report. I appreciate it.
Senator Santorum.
Senator Santorum. Thank you. I want to talk a little about
the Interim Force and the side-by-side test that is going to be
done as required by this subcommittee and by Congress. We had
some concerns about the testing and the size of the test and at
what level the test would be done and we signed off on letting
Phil Coyle handle it at the time but since he left, I guess the
deputy director agreed to comparing two companies performing 36
platoon size missions. These are two brand new brigades, an
operational concept. You just gave me a very good speech about
how it is not necessarily the equipment, but it is the system.
It is how we integrate this and how we function as a unit. All
of this is important. Yet, we are doing the side-by-side test
at a platoon level. What are we to gain from this test if the
key to our moving forward and leap ahead is in large measure
how we integrate this in a warfighting concept in this brigade
or this company? Yet, we are only doing tests on a platoon
size. I am trying to square what you tell me is the future and
how we are going to integrate modernization to how we are going
to test this new concept.
General Kern. Senator, just before I came over here, I had
a conversation with Major General John Marcello, who is the
independent tester for the Army. He commands our Army Test and
Evaluation Command and he has worked with Mr. Coyle previously
and the new director of operational tests in developing the
plans for the testing of the Interim Brigade Combat Team. In
our process of acquiring systems, we put the majority of our
effort on the initial operational test and evaluation, the
IOT&E, and that is what allows us to go into full-rate
production. That is a very extensive test. It is at a brigade
level, which will have battalion headquarters represented as we
go through that test. We have made a great deal of our
investment in terms of getting the soldiers ready so they will
move from the work that they are doing today through company
and then battalions as we field the systems to get ready for
that test, and that is where the training, operations, and the
sustainment of all of the systems will take place.
We have also planned then to address the comparative
evaluation required in the side-by-side testing and we find,
that in our overall evaluation, it is a subset of that total
test that we will do over at the end of that period when we get
ready to go into full-rate production and we must past that
test. The difference is, as we have looked at it and discussed
it, it is basically the M113A3 that we will use as the
comparison test and the comparative evaluation of a side-by-
side.
We have done a significant amount of work in analyzing that
capability. We did it first through analysis and we did that at
both Ft. Knox and at Ft. Leavenworth where we have our training
and analysis capability. We have significant amounts of data on
how that worked. We have done it in gaming. JANUS is the war
game we used at our company and battalion level to do that and
that is fairly finite. We did it in our bid sample where we
asked the equipment to come in, we did some comparative
testing. We did soldier loading of the M113 and the other
systems which were proposed, and one of the challenges there is
that a fully equipped squad of soldiers has a difficult time
fitting into the M113A3. We concluded that and we can
demonstrate that. We know that there are relative advantages of
tracks versus wheels depending upon the environment you put
them in. We have done a lot of studies and analysis on that.
So, all of these add up to an accumulation of data that is a
comparative analysis of what we have today versus where we are
going and what those future battlefield requirements might be
as we see them.
We have concluded, and our choice has been made and
challenged through the court system, or through our Government
Accounting Office, not through the court system, and we have
done a lot of work in understanding that we made the right
decision. So, we are prepared to do the testing which is
required. There's a cost, we believe, of about $23 million to
do that in 2002 but we do not believe that it is going to give
us any significant new answers that we do not already know. But
we will add it and we will report back to you as required, but
the $200 million of testing that is going to go into this
Interim Brigade Combat Team will end up in lots of different
developmental tests, human engineering factors tests, and
finally in an operational test, which will really give us the
conclusive answer that we made the right decision and are ready
to go to full-rate production. That will not be until we get
toward 2003. So, we have an extensive amount of planning to
accomplish the side-by-side comparative evaluation as required.
We believe that it is sufficient at the company level to do
that, to give us the information, particularly when you add it
with all the other analysis and evaluation that I described and
then we will add that to the total compilation of information
that we get at the IOT&E. But we do not honestly believe that
it is going to give us that much more new information.
Senator Santorum. General, another question on the Interim
Armored Vehicle (IAV) and that is the submission of a Selected
Acquisition Report (SAR), which is required and has yet to be
sent to Congress. You talked about all the work that you have
done and all the studying you have done. First, a question. Why
has that not been sent? Second, again, according to Title X if
low-rate production quantity exceeds 10 percent of the total
number of articles to be produced, as determined by the
Milestone II decision, the Secretary of Defense must include a
reason in the SAR and since what we are talking about here is
about 50 percent of the vehicles being produced, why haven't we
gotten a reason for exceeding the 10 percent? Or maybe you can
give me the reason why we should exceed the 10 percent.
General Kern. In the Defense Acquisition Board, which
allowed us to move forward, we addressed those issues as going
beyond the low-rate initial production. These systems are
different in that they are somewhat off the shelf and that the
systems are being produced. So, the low-rate initial production
was really designed as a criteria for something which is going
into new production. So, you did not launch into a production
of an unknown. So, that debate took place and is accounted for
in the acquisition defense memorandum which will be part of the
SAR background data when you receive it. I hate to blame things
on our headquarters, but we have had a change of administration
since we have done that and the SAR. We have made our input,
but it has not made it over to you, sir.
Senator Santorum. I just want to pick up on something
General Bond talked about. Maybe this is a question out of
ignorance but I am sure you can fill me in on this. You talked
about this hammer of a three and a third division corps that
you are going to fully modernize and recapitalize. The obvious
question to me is, what is the relevancy of the 6 and two-
thirds that you are not doing anything with or you are doing a
minimal amount with? How relevant is the remainder of that
force? When I hear Senator Inhofe talk about General Shinseki
saying he needs 40,000 more troops, which is another three and
a third divisions potentially. I am just trying to understand
how all that fits together with this force that we are trying
to put together and the priorities of spending.
General Bond. Well, that is a good question, sir. But as
someone said before, quantity has a quality all its own. That,
coupled with the idea that not all of the nations will
modernize and our potential enemies will modernize to the full
capability. We have had to take some risks. We would like to be
able to fully modernize all of those divisions, all of those
forces, to give them that combat overmatch. But we cannot
afford that and transform this Army. What we have chosen to do
is to try to take those divisions, that counterattack corps,
that we would need to be the hammer, that you would need to
have that combat overmatch if, in fact, we went against an
adversary that had the T90 capabilities and provide them with
that modernized capability, instead of spreading it over all
the divisions of the Army. The tactic would be, I believe, to
try to have force presence to be able to hold the enemy, to
bring in a counterattack corps, and to use that as the hammer
in which to re-establish that dominance over that force and
achieve the objectives that the National Command Authority
would then dictate to us. Is it the optimum way to do it? No.
Is it what I would like to do? No. But using the resource
constraints that we have in trying to take the opportunity now
to transform and with the current posture in the world that we
have, we think we can take some risks there and do this. If in
2 or 3 years or 5 years down the line we find that the
adversary has increased beyond where we think we are, those
technologies that we have been applying and working toward the
Objective Force could easily be transformed and provided to our
Legacy Force and provide that capability. We have to take some
risks. We have to make some choices. The Army has chosen to
take the risk in that force and to try to be able to transform
this Army.
Senator Santorum. Can you give me, and maybe you are not
the right person to ask, but that seems like a very significant
amount of risk. Can you compare with that, let's say, the other
branches of the service and their capability, their hammer
versus your hammer? I mean, how much have they recapitalized?
Have they modernized? As a percentage of their forces, how much
risk do they have to assume versus how much risk the Army is
assuming here?
General Kern. Quantitatively, we can really only talk to
the Army, but I believe each of the services has similar
problems of aging equipment and how much money you need to
invest--whether it is re-engineering an aircraft or whether it
is trying to, in our case, re-engine an Abrams tank. We feel
the risk clearly in the United States Army as we have done that
and we have made some calculated judgments. About 1,200 tanks
are of the very best capability, in being able to recapitalize
the rest of them to a modern capability but not to the same
level is prudent and something which we can do. We also believe
that if you are not, it is very easy to get stuck in the past
and not be willing to let go. But as General Shinseki describes
it, it is wing walking. You cannot let go of one hand before
you grab on with the other. That is the balance that we are
trying to achieve and the risk that we use in our judgments.
Senator Santorum. If you can answer my question because I
have to run. My question is, how do you stack up versus the
other forces, the other branches.
General Kern. My personal opinion is that we are a little
bit worse off than the other services.
Senator Santorum. A little bit worse off or a lot worse
off?
General Kern. My personal opinion is probably a lot worse
off. [Laughter.]
Senator Santorum. Let me throw out an additional concern.
You are a lot worse off, you are taking a lot more risk, and
even doing that, we do not see how you get to fund your
Objective Force and your Interim Force. So, what you are
telling me, General, is we are willing to take that risk
because we think we are going to be able to then insert X force
here. What we're saying is, I do not see how you pay for X
force. So, you've assumed all of this risk, you have shrunk
your effective hammer, and we still do not know how we get to
the transformed Army. I mean, I do not want to speak for you,
but that is what I am sitting here looking at and that is not a
pretty picture from my perspective.
General Kern. It's a good point, sir. The question is, do
we know we have to transform them? We cannot stay in the Legacy
Force if we are going to continue to be the dominant Army and
the land force of the future. I think that General Shinseki has
shown significant insight in being able to realize that we must
transform it. It is an issue we wrestle with every day, sir,
and it is something for which I do not sleep well at night.
Senator Santorum. I am just concerned that when you are
wing-walking that you are going to let go and you are not going
to be near the wing that you need to grab on to.
General Kern. Senator, I think all of us share your
concern. We expect that we are going to have to continue to
work through these issues with you to find the right balance as
we move forward. But I do believe that the transformation
strategy that the Army leadership has laid out is the right one
and that we must address each of the pieces that are a part of
that transformation. We must do the investment in the science
and technology to get the Objective Force. We have to make up
for the shortcomings with the Interim Force and learn new
doctrine and techniques to allow us to use the technology for
that future force. We have to put the investment to keep the
forces that we have today ready to fight when called upon. So,
while I am not comfortable that there are enough resources to
do all of it, I believe we have to address each of those
pieces.
Senator Lieberman. You are right and you know we are asking
you to address each of those pieces. Maybe you are a little or
a lot worse off than the other services because, as I said at
the outset, you are ahead in the transformation process. I just
think we are asking you to do an awful lot and you are trying
to do it and we are not giving you the resources to do it well.
We are going to come to a point before long where the risk is
going to be unacceptable in the short term and/or we are not
going to see the practicality of getting to the Objective Force
because we are not giving you enough resources to do it.
So, we want to work with you, and I thank you, General Kern
and General Bond. Your testimony has been very responsive to
our questions. Please again give our regards and appreciation
to General Shinseki. I hope within the constraints that
unfortunately we are operating under here because we have
committed a lot of our national resources already to other
causes, that we can find a way to advocate and to get you more
money. That is certainly the goal of the subcommittee on a
bipartisan basis. I thank you. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:16 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]