[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 110-41]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
ON
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COUNTERPROLIFERATION, COUNTERTERRORISM, AND
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 21, 2007
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TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
ADAM SMITH, Washington, Chairman
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee KEN CALVERT, California
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
MARK UDALL, Colorado THELMA DRAKE, Virginia
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
KATHY CASTOR, Florida
Tim McClees, Professional Staff Member
Jenness Simler, Professional Staff Member
Andrew Tabler, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2007
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, March 21, 2007, Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense
Authorization Act--Budget Request on the Department of Defense
Counterproliferation, Counterterrorism, and Science and
Technology Priorities.......................................... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, March 21, 2007........................................ 35
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007
FISCAL YEAR 2008 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT--BUDGET REQUEST ON
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COUNTERPROLIFERATION, COUNTERTERRORISM, AND
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Chairman,
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee 1
Thornberry, Hon. Mac, a Representative from Texas, Ranking
Member, Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee................................................... 2
WITNESSES
Jaggers, Terry J., Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force
for Science, Technology and Engineering, Office of the
Assistant Secretary for Acquisition............................ 23
Killion, Dr. Thomas H., Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army
for Research and Technology.................................... 20
Landay, Rear Adm. William III, USN, Chief of Naval Research, U.S.
Navy........................................................... 22
Tegnelia, Dr. James, Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency... 5
Tether, Dr. Anthony J., Director, Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency................................................ 3
Young, Hon. John J., Jr., Director, Defense Research and
Engineering, U.S. Department of Defense........................ 2, 18
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Jaggers, Terry J............................................. 153
Killion, Dr. Thomas H........................................ 122
Landay, Rear Adm. William III................................ 135
Tegnelia, Dr. James.......................................... 104
Tether, Dr. Anthony J........................................ 67
Young, Hon. John J., Jr...................................... 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Questions and Answers Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Questions submitted.]
FISCAL YEAR 2008 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT--BUDGET REQUEST ON
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COUNTERPROLIFERATION, COUNTERTERRORISM, AND
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 21, 2007.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:50 p.m. in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam Smith
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
WASHINGTON, CHAIRMAN, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND
CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Smith. We will go ahead and get started. I apologize
for running late. Everybody here knows how that works. We are
allegedly going to have some more votes here in an hour to 2
hours, so I wanted to get started quickly. I will just make a
couple brief comments, recognize Mr. Thornberry and move
forward. We have two panels of witnesses today to discuss the
science and technology (S&T) budget within Department of
Defense (DOD) and science and technology projects focussing
particularly on efforts to combat weapons of mass destruction.
I will introduce the first panel, and we have with us the
Honorable John Young, who is Director of the Defense Research
and Engineering (DDRE) Department, the DOD; Dr. James Tegnelia,
Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and also the
Director for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, U.S.
Strategic Command (STRATCOM); and Dr. Anthony Tether, who is
the Director of DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency. We are very interested in your testimony, science and
technology becoming an increasingly important component of our
ability to defend ourselves and also properly arm our military.
I am very interested in the projects that you have going and
how we can help make the proper investments in research,
engineering and development and also how we can take that
research, engineering and development and as quickly as
possible, translate it into equipment for our soldiers in the
field, amongst other topics.
And with that, I will turn it over to the ranking member of
the committee, Mr. Thornberry, for any opening comments he may
have.
STATEMENT OF HON. MAC THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS,
RANKING MEMBER, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND
CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome the
witnesses. I agree with you on the importance of the topic, and
I am concerned about the Administration's request as far as
dollar values. Congress significantly increased this area last
year and yet the budget request this year seems to be back down
again. I know in your testimony, a number of you tried to put
the best face you could on that. Looks still hard to justify to
me, but I look forward to hearing your testimony as well as
hearing about some of the specific programs.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. And with that, we will turn
it over to Mr. Young.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. YOUNG, JR., DIRECTOR, DEFENSE
RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Young. Chairman Smith, distinguished members of the
subcommittee, I appreciate the chance to appear before you on
the panel to discuss the Defense Department's fiscal year 2008
research and engineering efforts on the efforts of
counterproliferation and counterterrorism. I will reserve my
comments on the broader DOD science and technology program for
the second panel discussion. I would ask that my written
statement appear at the appropriate place in your formal
record. During my past year as the Director of Defense Research
and Engineering, the entire science and technology team has
actively worked to address many of the conclusions of the
Defense Department's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). As
you are doing with this hearing, the QDR counterproliferation
(CP) and counterterrorism (CT). The QDR described the shift of
the United States's strategic environment over the last two
decades.
The threat has evolved from a few nation state threats to
decentralized network threats from nonstate entities, from
single-focus threats to multiple complex challenges, from one-
size-fits-all deterrents to tailored deterrents for rogue
powers, terrorists networks and near-term competitors. The DOD
science and technology program should change in response to
this new environment and the associated demand for new
capabilities. Countering the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and the capabilities of terrorist networks requires
totally new and enhanced capabilities in the broader area of
censors, persistent surveillance, network management,
information mining, cultural understanding, tagging tracking
and locating, biometrics and other areas.
We are making adjustments to the DOD S&T portfolio to meet
this changing threat. I am pleased to be with the directors of
the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, the two organization playing a
primary role in developing the technologies to address
proliferation and terrorism. I am sure they will outline
specific CP and CT efforts within their respective agencies.
In addition to DTRA and DARPA, the individual services
through their respective S&T programs are making significant
contributions to counterterrorism and counterproliferation
capabilities, and those should come up in the second panel. I
want to highlight some key Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD)
programs which Congress has supported because they are vital
tools for the war on terrorism and counterproliferation. Our
adversaries in these areas are extremely agile, highly adaptive
and use any and all available technology. Thus, we have seen a
much greater need to develop, adapt and harvest technology as
fast as possible. Congress's support of our rapid reaction
programs is critical to allowing the Defense Department to work
with agility and short timelines.
The S&T efforts are the rapid action technology office and
the quick reaction fund are essential to our warfighters who
are daily engaged in the war on terrorism. These programs
complement each other with each focussing on a specific part of
this challenge. In the global war on terror, our adversaries
are learning and adapting quickly as this Nation employs our
best technology, weapons systems tools and tactics. This
reality adds new importance and urgency to the work of every
member of the Nation's defense technology and acquisition team.
I am grateful for Congress's support of the budgets and
programs which allow this team to deliver results for our
warfighters.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Young can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Mr. Smith. Dr. Tether.
STATEMENT OF DR. ANTHONY J. TETHER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE ADVANCED
RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY
Dr. Tether. Thank you for inviting me today to testify
about DARPA's efforts. My written testimony summarizes our
plans and activities across all our strategic thrusts, and I
submit it for the record. As requested, my remarks today will
focus on what we are doing in the areas of counterproliferation
and counterterrorism. With respect to counterproliferation and
our strategic thrusts in the ``Detection, Characterization and
Assessment of Underground Structures'' in part of ``Urban Area
Operations'' is very much on point. Our adversaries are well
aware of our Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR)
capabilities and global reach, so we should expect them to
continue to build facilities, underground and above ground to
hide and protect certain activities, including weapons of mass
destruction (WMD).
In response, DARPA is developing a variety of sensor
technologies and systems, seismic, acoustic, electromagnetic,
optical, and chemical to find, characterize and conduct pre and
post-strike assessments of these structures.
While much of our work in this area is classified, I can
tell you that we are developing sensor systems with orders-of-
magnitude better performance, emphasizing clutter rejection in
very complex environments. With respect to counterterrorism,
our strategic thrust in urban operations is developing
technical solutions to finding and countering adversaries in
urban clutter which are often applicable to the problem of
finding terrorists in the clutter of everyday living.
For example, our Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System
and Technology program, ASSIST, is currently improving the
intelligence gathered and used by our ground troops. It will
allow patrols to refer to and add to the collective experience
of other patrols and specific neighborhoods. Such cop-on-the-
beat intelligence is very useful when you are looking for a
terrorist. Our Wasp micro air vehicle, from our Advanced Manned
and Unmanned Systems thrust, is a small, quiet, reliable and
portable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed for front line
reconnaissance and surveillance. In fact, I have one with me,
if you could bring that up. Wasp is ideal for small unit
operations, both in cities and open terrain, and is an in
operational tests overseas today.
Now, that is a vehicle that has been in combat. That has
flown in Iraq. It was actually--if you notice, you will see a
little bullet hole. It was sent back to us I guess for depot
repair. I wasn't quite sure what the Marines wanted to do with
it. But it was shot at and then continued flying and doing its
mission. Those vehicles--there are 200 of them in Iraq today
with Marines in the Fallujah and Ramadi area. And at last
count, we have over a thousand sorties, those vehicles being
used.
Our Tactical Language and Cultural Training systems are
designed to teach every soldier a bit of the language and
culture needed to interact with the local population. Such
knowledge is key to a smooth relationship with the locals,
which is crucial to counterterrorism. And we have to get the
locals to have confidence enough to tell us what is going on.
We have a very aggressive program to vastly improve machine
language translation. Our TRANSTAC program has demonstrated the
first two-way speech translation in Baghdad, Arabic. While
conversations are limited to certain subjects like checkpoints,
this technology is pointing the way to greatly easing and
improving our work with local populations. Our Global
Autonomous Language Exploitation, GALE program, is designed to
translate and distill foreign language material such as TV
shows in near real-time, and it is already accurate enough that
translators edit GALE's output rather than retranslate the
original material. These translation devices will greatly
improve the speed and depth of our understanding of local
people and their political media environment. This
understanding will be a powerful tool in fighting terrorists
because we will be better prepared to understand the local
situation in real-time and to communicate our intentions to the
local population.
However, our flagship work in counterterrorism is
biological warfare defense, which started at DARPA in the mid
1990's and led to a broader strategic thrust that we call the
Bio-Revolution. Our current drive is toward a portfolio of
technologies needed to reduced the development time needed for
new drugs from years to weeks. More specifically, to shorten
the time needed from an emergence of a zero day or new pathogen
to millions of doses of a therapy to only 16 weeks. Once we
know what we need, we still need to manufacture millions of
doses of it quickly. Our goal is 12 weeks instead of years at
pennies per dose. To do this, we are looking at leveraging the
large-scale industrial fermentation processes used in making
enzymes as well as techniques for farming mushrooms, plants and
shrimps for specific proteins.
But at the end of the day, DARPA's main thrust is still
core technology. While I have mentioned many systems today, the
real DARPA contributions are the advanced components that come
from investments in core technology such as materials,
electronics, photonics, micro-systems and information
technology.
DARPA has a robust portfolio of programs in core
technology, and I have no doubt they will lead to even more
innovative and effective counterproliferation and
counterterrorism capabilities.
Congressman Smith, Mr. Chairman, I came to DARPA about two
months ago and received about four hours of briefings on our
efforts. Even then I only saw a small part of what DARPA is
doing to keep our forces the most potent in the world. I invite
all of you to come to DARPA to receive more detailed briefings
if you can. But until then, I urge you all to at least scan our
strategic plan, of which you all have a copy in front of you on
your desk, which will give you a better sense of the breadth of
our plans and our ambitions. And with that, I will be glad to
answer your questions.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Tether can be found in the
Appendix on page 67.]
Mr. Smith. Dr. Tegnelia.
STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES TEGNELIA, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE THREAT
REDUCTION AGENCY
Dr. Tegnelia. Chairman Smith, members of the subcommittee,
it is a pleasure to introduce to you today the research and
development program for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. I
would like to cover very briefly three topics. The first topic
is the mission of the agency and the unique capability--or the
unique interaction that we have with the strategic Congressman.
That is topic one. Topic two, I would like to talk to you about
the research & development (R&D) challenges that we face in
combating weapons of mass destruction. And then finally, I was
asked to talk about a piece of legislation which you chartered
in 1994 called the Counterproliferation Review Committee
(CPRC), which allows us to report our R&D and technology and
development activities to the Congress as we make progress and
answer challenges in this counterproliferation area.
Those are the three topics I would like to cover. First
topic is let me talk about the mission of the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. It is a combat support agency with the sole
purpose of combating weapons of mass destruction. Let me start
with combat support. That means we support all of the regional
combatant commanders in their worldwide responsibilities for
combating weapons of mass destruction.
In 2005, Secretary Rumsfeld appointed the strategic command
as the lead combatant command in the war on combating weapons
of mass destruction. That means he has the responsibility to
develop for the regional commanders, to field for the regional
commanders and to exercise their toolkit for fighting weapons
of mass destruction. He has asked DTRA to support him in that
role and we have a unit of STRATCOM in our facility at Fort
Belvoir to perform that function. I mentioned that we combat
weapons of mass destruction. We interpret that to mean the
nexus of weapons of mass destruction with both terrorists and
rogue nations and to make sure that we have the tools necessary
to prevent the use of those weapons.
DTRA is an organization of 2,000 people, 1,500 of them are
Fort Belvoir, the other 500 people are in liaison offices and
field offices in just about every time zone in the northern
hemisphere. Those field offices mostly support our cooperative
threat reduction activity. We have a budget of $2.7 billion,
Mr. Thornberry, down slightly from last year. About $1 billion
of that $2.7 billion is research and development.
And what I would like to do is turn to my second topic,
which are what are the challenges the agency faces particularly
in R&D. In my testimony, which you have for the record, we
address six challenges. Three of those challenges are what I
would refer to as operational, and three of them are focused
mainly on research and development. Let me just list the
operational ones. There is more detail in the prepared
statement. Situational awareness is an operational issue. We
work with the intelligence community to make sure that we
understand the threats to our forces. WMD materiel control. How
do we work with our allies that would like to cooperate with us
in eliminating or reducing the threat of weapons of mass
destruction? In particular, the Nunn-Lugar program addresses
that particular issue. And the final operational one is
associated with supporting our Northern Command as it does its
homeland defense responsibility. We do a lot of exercises and a
lot of training and the like for both the National Guard and
the Northern Command in their homeland defense-related
activities. Those are the operational challenges.
But I would like to do is talk about the three research and
development challenges. The first research and development
challenge is preventing nuclear terrorism. We addressed three
issues associated with that nuclear terrorism threat. The first
issue, which we work with the Department of Homeland Security
and the Department of Energy, is in detection of nuclear
material. How can you find a nuclear weapon? Today, our sensors
are approximately 100 meters capability to be able to find
something with nuclear material in it. We are looking for
orders of magnitude increase in that capability, and we have
some ideas related to that. The second thing that we are trying
to do is build a national capability associated with forensics.
If someone were to use a nuclear device, how would we determine
where that device came from? What would we do to make sure one
event wasn't followed immediately by other events? That is the
subject of nuclear forensics. That responsibility also is with
the domestic nuclear detection office in homeland security. We
provide some important services related to that mission for
them.
And then, the last issue is how do you render safe a
nuclear weapon? If you were actually to get hold of a terrorist
device, how would you make sure that that terrorist was not
able to initiate that device, that we could, in fact,
demilitarize it so it was no longer a nuclear weapon? Those are
the R&D challenges associated with combating nuclear terrorism.
The second R&D challenge is protecting the warfighter against
weapons of mass destruction. The particular issue that we work
there is chemical and biological defense activity. How do you
detect the use of a biological weapon, the chemical weapon? How
is it that you provide therapeutics and prophylaxis to the
individual soldier so that that person is not infected by a
biological weapon or that you can, in fact, defeat that weapon
or cure that disease before it kills a soldier. Those are the
challenges that we work with on protecting the warfighter.
In particular, we are now moving on, is it possible to
provide radio radiological therapeutics to the individual
soldier to help him in a nuclear environment? The last R&D
challenge that we are associated with is helping General
Cartwright in transforming the nuclear deterrent. We work on
two elements of that nuclear deterrent. The first thing we do
is provide him with hard and deeply buried target capability
making use of conventional forces. In that regard, we work with
DARPA to develop both categorization techniques for underground
facilities. We also work with the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) to characterize those facilities, and we work on both
kinetic and nonkinetic weapons for the defeat of hard and
deeply buried targets, again, for General Cartwright.
The second research challenge we do with regard to the
triad is in the area of nuclear effects. The Congress has been
very much interested in the subject of EMP, electromagnetic
pulse. We support the committee that the Congress has chartered
to look at the electromagnetic pulse problem. We do inspections
of our equipment to make sure that they are in the best
condition they can to withstand electromagnetic pulse, and we
also have a program that we work with both the DDR&E and with
DARPA related to hardening electronics to make sure that they
can survive in that difficult environment.
We just fielded one generation of hardened electronics and
are now working together to get to the next generation of
hardened electronics. That completes the R&D challenge. The
last topic that I would like to address with you is, is your
legislation associated with the counterproliferation review
committee? That legislation was provided as part of the 1994
authorization bill, and it set up a review committee of the
Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
the Secretary of the Department of Energy aimed at reviewing
and establishing both the progress that we are making on
counterproliferation technology and the challenges that remain
ahead of us.
If I would presume to make a recommendation to you, Mr.
Chairman, that language has not been updated since 1994. Since
that time and since 9/11, there are significant organizational
changes which have occurred in the executive branch to address
this particular problem.
As you know, the Department of Homeland Security, my
agency, works a lot with the new Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, CP, Counterproliferation, the National
Counterproliferation Center, NCPC and NCTC National
Counterterrorism Center and their activity should be part of
this coordination mechanism. We also now have Northern Command,
which is a very important element in establishing what the
priorities are for our developments of our research and
development activity.
We would recommend that the language be updated to be able
to reflect the existence of these new organizations. I also
would like to recommend--we now report on our findings once a
year. Should we expand the membership of the CPRC to include
those new organizations? We would request that you ask us to
report on a biannual basis because of the scope of the effort
that would be associated with that review. Mr. Chairman, with
that remark, I will complete my remarks, thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Tegnelia can be found in the
Appendix on page 104.]
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, gentlemen. A couple
questions, and I will turn to my colleagues. First of all, I am
curious about the level of coordination. There is a number of
different agencies that have an interest in WMD, countering
WMD, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy,
Department of State. And I know they have efforts ongoing in
those areas. How well do you coordinate? And does the strategic
command sort of take the lead in all of that and make sure that
we are maximizing our resources as well as our plan? If I can
start with you, Dr. Tegnelia and Mr. Young, if you have
comments.
Dr. Tegnelia. Let me start off with the fact that we do an
extensive amount of coordination, and I would suggest to you
that it is broken up into two general areas. The first
coordination activity is associated with a programmatic
coordination. We spent a lot of time with the Department of
Energy, the Department of Homeland Security. I will give you a
specific example in just a second, and the Department of State.
The Department of State provides us requirements with regard to
our cooperative activities overseas.
You may be aware of the fact that the Department of State
has a new initiative called the Global Initiative on the
Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism. We support them in their
overseas-related activities and have presented to their plenary
activities and perform activities with them. With the Domestic
Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), just to give you an example,
the DNDO has members from across the executive branch of the
Department, and DTRA is the organization that is responsible
for making sure that the Department of Defense people are in
the DNDO to make sure that the Department of Defense's
requirements are, in fact, established.
I have a personal interest in that since the top three
people in DNDO are ex-DTRA people. And I guess I am happy about
that, but you hate to lose the talent like that. So we do an
extensive amount of coordination. I personally am from the
Department of Energy on detail for the Department of Defense to
show how that exchange goes. One last comment, we do a lot of
exercising together. We, very oftentimes, at least once a year,
do a series of exercises called top-off which involve all of
the departments of the government that you mentioned in trying
to make sure that we understand the capabilities of one another
and we know how to work together.
General Cartwright plays a large role in that. We just this
week, yesterday, came off of the latest exercise which had a
significant amount of interagency play associated with it,
primarily related to the interdiction mission PSI, prevention
security initiative that the Department of State operates. So
there is an extreme amount of--I believe there is a large
amount of interaction and coordination for that activity. Just
as a coincidence, we have a meeting after this is over with the
Under Secretary of State, General Cartwright and Ambassador
Brill from NCPC and myself to try to make sure that the
coordination keeps going. So it is a very active activity with
it.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Tether.
Dr. Tether. From a research viewpoint, we have a joint
program which is closely coordinated with DTRA. We have a
formal memorandum of agreement (MOA) between us that kind of
outlines cooperation, not that Jimmy and I really need the MOA,
but it is good for everybody else that reads it to know it is
okay to cooperate with each other. Generally, once DARPA takes
the technological excuse off the table that something can be
done, that is usually where we end. DTRA goes the rest of the
way and does the intermediate development required to pass it
on for final development to the acquisition program Joint
Program Executive Officer for Chemical & Biological Defense
(JPEO CB) which is under Major General Steve Reeves. There have
been many transitions to DTRA, most notably in DARPA's work in
very broad spectrum pathogen countermeasures which went
directly from DARPA into DTRA's TMTI, the Transformational
Medical Technologies Initiative.
Our program managers regularly interact so there is more
interaction going on, I think, than we really know, and I think
a lot of it is, quite frankly, is one, DTRA does our
contracting for us in this area, and quite frankly, Jimmy and I
are good friends from 25 years. So the people know----
Mr. Smith. That always helps.
Dr. Tether. It always help. It is unfortunate that that has
to be part of the chemistry, but I don't know of any other way
sometimes for that to happen. But we participate in his
reviews. He participates in ours. You know what, I think the
coordination between DARPA and DTRA in this area in particular
is very good.
Mr. Smith. If I could, I had two other quick--I think that
answers my question. Two other quick questions I want to get to
before I move on to my colleagues. And specifically for you,
Dr. Tether, on your research efforts. You talk about your
mission being short, mid and long range in terms of doing the
research. I am just wondering if that has changed at all, you
know, given the pace of operations right now in the military in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the more immediate needs, we see things
in the field, we need them quickly, if you shifted funds toward
more near or mid term research and away from the long term?
Dr. Tether. I don't believe so. I have been asked that
question. I guess we are about well balanced because I can find
50 percent. I can put people in a room and half of them would
say we did, and half of them would say we didn't. Whatever we
are doing I think it is balanced.
Mr. Smith. It would make a certain amount of sense for me,
I mean, the question may have came out wrong, to do that,
actually, given the short-term needs.
Dr. Tether. Well, we definitely have gone back--first of
all, DARPA in the early 1990's, mid 1990's was looking at--at
that time what was called the transnational threat, the threat
without a country, which has currently become known as a
terrorist. And we realized at that time that there were a
couple things, one, that the transnational threat or the
terrorist was going to be small groups of people, that it
wouldn't be a force-on-force fight, it wouldn't be tanks
against tanks. And we started developing technologies in the
90's. We also started our bio program at that time because in
looking at the transnational threat, you say they don't have
any infrastructure. So what kind of major WMD, if you will,
could they bring forth? And obviously biology is one that
doesn't take much infrastructure. So we started our bio
program. Whether it was serendipity or just luck in some sense
when the war started, we had already developed many
technologies, which quite frankly were put on the shelf,
because we got them to the point where we took the technical
excuse off the table, but there was no urgency by anybody to go
the rest of the way.
So what we did do when the war started is we went back and
we harvested those technologies. Now we did spend money, but
the big money was spent in the 1990's. Now, let me just give
you a couple examples. We had developed in the 1990's a
technique to detect people being shot at, on vehicles or just
being shot at. And we had developed it very well. It turns out
that there is no formal requirement in the Army to know that
you are being shot at. Still can't believe that.
Mr. Smith. Some of the folks behind you--there is an
informal requirement, but yes.
Dr. Tether. But that is kind of what stopped it. When it
came time to put the money down, there was no formal
requirement, and that stopped it. In 2002, General Keith
Alexander, who knew about the program and called up the office
and said look, my guys are coming home with their vehicles all
shot up. They didn't even know they were being shot at. I do
remember this program that you had in the 1990's, and can you
do something about it? And we did go and find the contractor
and gave him some money, but compared to the development costs,
really very small, to bring that technology, it is called
boomerang. It is now in Iraq. It is now in Iraq and it is both
for moving vehicles and both for stationary vehicles.
And in fact, there is now an order that came from the Army
to BBN, who is the contractor for 600 boomerangs, 400 of them
being decoys just to stock because they have learned--the word
is out that don't shoot at that vehicle or facility that has
that boomerang because they will shoot back at you. But that is
really what we have been doing for the most part. Yes, it has
been a little bit extra money, but in terms of percentages, it
really has been very small.
Mr. Smith. And Mr. Young, as far as DDR&E is concerned,
short, mid term, have you changed your equation at all in light
of the Iraq War and other short-term demands?
Mr. Young. I don't--I would probably agree with Dr.
Tether's assessment. I think we find ourselves putting more
money in these areas in general, but a balance between some of
the programs I mentioned in the beginning, the Iraq reaction
programs, seek to field technologies in 12 to 18-month cycles,
and I could cite to you several examples that are well
partnered with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) or Homeland Security,
and then some initiatives that are in the budget before you
that are really on 5 to 10-year cycles to deliver new tools in
the space of human social cultural behavioral modeling and
others.
So we continue to have balance. We are working harder at
harvesting and that sometimes takes supplemental moneys and
other moneys, but in the core budget I think we maintain
balance in near term and far term development efforts.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Thornberry.
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you. Mr. Young, I would just like to
ask you to briefly tell us where we are in efforts to make sure
that all of the S&T money we spend across the Department of
Defense is not only coordinated, but spent strategically so
that it is not individual organizations' priorities that are
driving the train, but the needs of the department as a whole.
Mr. Young. It is a great question and a great opportunity
to tell you we worked that process pretty hard, and there was a
process called Reliance that had some benefits but produced a
lot of paper and a lot of meetings, and we have changed that to
what I believe is a more streamlined and efficient process we
call Reliance 21, but it leads the DDR&E team to work with the
services, but it leads the services and the agencies to work
together.
A few weeks ago we had a three-day strategic review with
virtually all the witnesses you will have today presenting
their programs, hearing other services and agency programs, and
then within those areas, we are setting up technology focus
teams, some of those teams look at traditional areas like
materials to make sure we are well coordinating in getting
taxpayer value without duplication in those areas. Some are in
these areas like counterproliferation, where we need new
technologies, we want to push but we want to push in a
coordinated way. Those focus teams are going to go through the
efforts in more detail than you can in that three-day effort,
and then make potential recommendations for adjustment as part
of our 2009 budget process as well as execution year changes in
the program.
So I could talk to you much longer but I want to tell you I
think we are working that process very hard with a
consciousness that we need to get maximum value for taxpayer
dollars. We don't want to do anything twice, and we want to
coordinate the efforts across the whole of the enterprise.
Mr. Thornberry. So how close are we to where we need to be?
Mr. Young. I would tell you--well, the best way to answer
that question is to tell you, for a $10 billion science and
technology effort, I would love to have a database that would
let--aside from senior people have briefings--a researcher at
any lab in DOD go in and look in a topic area and see somebody
else has done something similar, have a discussion and see
whether that effort needs to continue with a harvesting of the
knowledge previously. I don't have that database. We have made
two runs at it.
This year's run at it has produced better data. I am
dependent on the services and the agencies to provide that data
set. In some cases, they have their own tools, and we are
trying to use those tools as is, but do what you often probably
hear about, sir, is middle wear to bridge that to a common
system. But that is one of my highest priorities is to get a
better database tool to ensure collaboration at the working
level beyond high-level meetings and technology focus teams in
certain technology areas.
Mr. Thornberry. Makes sense. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Castor.
Ms. Castor. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen,
with the rapid development of the Internet and our reliance on
information technology, another asymmetric threat is that of a
concerted attack on our information systems and networks,
whether we are talking about banking, finance, transportation,
communication. Could you address the--in your opinion, the
likelihood of a widespread attack on some of the information
systems, be they military, our own military or in the finance
world in this country, and are any of your programs focused on
cyber security? And are any of your programs focused on
countering the emergence of the online terrorist movement?
Dr. Tether. Yes. We have a major part of our program
looking at that. Some people consider our information warfare
as another form of WMD, and I guess it is not quite technically
pure, but if you let it be called a weapon of mass disruption,
then it clearly qualifies you know as an WMD weapon. We are not
trying to necessarily save the world on the Internet, but we
are trying to make sure that the DOD systems are protected and
that no one can get in and basically disrupt them at the wrong
time. And in that, we have several efforts. A lot of them are
in that document you have there, our bridging the gap document.
But we have found out how to handle worms, we have found out
how to handle basically cyber attacks on ad hoc mobile systems.
We are doing quite a bit. Unfortunately the real threats are
not those threats. Those are the noisy threats. Those are the
guys who come in and they want to be known. You know, they are
the hackers and they love nothing more than bringing down
systems. But they are almost doing it for publicity. The
threats that are really the insidious threats are the ones that
come into your system and don't let you know they are there,
and those are the very difficult threats.
And while every detail on that probably is going to be
classified, and I would love to give you a classified briefing
on it, let me tell you, we have major programs in trying to
work that threat, which is the one that we worry about the
most, you know, the enemy amongst us type----
Ms. Castor. Can I ask a follow-up question?
Mr. Smith. Sure.
Ms. Castor. Is there an adequate talent pool coming out of
our colleges and universities that are being attracted to these
kind of positions from our engineering schools and----
Dr. Tether. There is a----
Ms. Castor [continuing]. To work for us? To work for you?
Dr. Tether. I understand. And that is really the problem.
The question, I think you are asking is, are there U.S.
citizens? Because we have a lot of people coming out of
colleges who are in computer science and networking but many of
them are not U.S. citizens. They are here in the United States
going to school. And we really worry about that. We have
programs trying to address that shortfall. And I believe--
people will tell you that the problem is a lack of money, and I
don't think that is the case.
I mean, I think it is just--we just haven't come up with
reasons, challenges to make this field exciting for kids. You
know, to give them something that they really want to go and
do. So we are trying hard by hiring young professors, associate
professors. Young is not necessarily an age, young from the
time they went and became a professor. With the whole purpose
of trying to come up with ways to attract young people. Many
studies have shown that the number of freshmen going into
colleges 1999 to the year 2003 when asked what they wanted to
do, it dropped by a factor of four for those who said they
wanted to go into computer science. Now that is really a major
worry.
So we are trying hard to overcome that by coming up with
challenge problems, and I don't think it is money. I think it
is just imagination that we just need to come up with the
problems that these people will be willing to come and work on.
So far--to answer your specific question though, so far I
haven't had a problem, but I am worried about the future.
Mr. Young. Maybe I could add a couple comments to that. We
have with the Congress's support a National Defense Education
Program where we provide fellowships, graduate study
assistance-ships to undergraduate and graduate students. We
have been able to award 50-plus and a few more each year and
continue those. The first 10 are now working for us. Each year
of support comes with a year of service requirement, and we are
growing that program. It is a modest but a role DOD plays in
growing that talent pool.
We put before you a new initiative to do some of the things
that Dr. Tether mentioned, provide larger research grants to
some of the premiere young faculty members with a bias toward
those faculty members and have those grants last for a three-
to five-year period, so they can train students and do work. We
ask that all that work be--the people who work on the work be
capable of getting security clearance and the work be
classified if necessary.
So it is a boost to our research program. It is a boost to
the research opportunities for people in the academic community
and frankly, it will be a boost to our basic research knowledge
base. And that initiative, I think, is very important to us and
very important to addressing the challenge you raise. It is a
mix of things, as Tony pointed out, having good work for these
students to do, giving them incentives to pursue the technical
education careers and in working with them to become part of
our team once they finish that education.
Mr. Smith. I realize this is sort of outside of your area,
but the other thing we need to do is on the K-12 level doing a
better job in math, science, computer engineering. Back in my
district, we did a career fair and exactly did that with intel,
because a lot of it is by the time you get to the college
level, you have lost so many of them. I think we have a good
program. The ones that are coming out of college are the ones
who get interested in this.
I think we have still got some just fabulous students
coming out, but it is too small a percentage that is going in
in the front end, not that you are in front charge of K-12
education, but----
Mr. Young. If I could finish one point on the National
Defense Education Program this year, for what we think it will
be, depending on the size, 50 to 75 awards. We had 1,900
applicants and 880 in the end, that turned in final complete
full applications. So there is a pool out there. To your point,
sir, we have a program right now, a modest initiative called
Materials World Modules where we seek where a DOD lab or entity
is partnered with a local community school to give them
training materials that try to bring sports into technical
perspective, you know, composites--use of composites for
support materials and get them interested in that regard, and
we have also included in this budget a shift and an expansion
of that program, again, to try to get people at the earliest
levels.
I mean, DOD can play a modest role here, but I wouldn't
tell you we are driving the train, but we do feel a need to
play a role in attracting those students at the earliest
possible age.
Mr. Smith. It seems to me, if a bunch of fifth and sixth
graders went over to DARPA and saw what you guys were doing, I
think they would say, I want to do that. Because you are doing
some really, really interesting stuff.
Dr. Tether. For one thing, the last part of my written
testimony describes some projects that really are after, just
that we have an effort where we have, again, young professors
that we brought in to come up with ideas. However, the
evaluation of their ideas was not done by us. We made them go
to high schools and brief high schools on those ideas because
we wanted to find out what ideas were exciting to high schools.
Mr. Smith. That is a very good idea.
Dr. Tether. They actually came up with some really neat
ideas, and some really strange ones, like some material that
changes to a car when you say I want a car. Actually there is
no reason why it can't be done. The programming is hard. But
they are under contract, and what they have to do every quarter
is go to a different high school in the country and explain
what they are doing. I mean, just for that purpose.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Saxton.
Mr. Saxton. Thank you very much. First of all, let me
welcome Mr. Young and Dr. Tether and Dr. Tegnelia back. We have
been working together for many years, and it has been
productive, not so much on our part, but for the warfighters
that you serve and for the safety concerns that you always have
in the front of your mind for the American people. We
appreciate that very much, and we know that our country has
benefited very much from the work you do.
So thank you for what you do. And I would also like to
thank and welcome back our old friend, Jean Reed, who I haven't
seen here in some months since he left the Hill. You look right
at home, Jean, and I hope you feel that way.
Mr. Chairman and Ms. Castor, I would like to chime in where
you left off on this high school secondary ed issue that has to
do with developing scientists and computer scientists and
engineers. I think this is really an important subject. And I
came across something a year or two ago which I thought was
quite exciting. I happen to be in New York City, and I ran
across a couple fairly wealthy guys who were able to put $12.5
million into a program each year, their personal money, and the
program worked like this, it said, why is it that kids aren't
getting involved in computer science and science and
engineering interests in high school?
And they concluded it is probably because teachers were
maybe not quite as exciting in those areas as they might be. So
they took their $25 million and each year they go to find--they
find some college graduates who are excited about science and
technology, and they say to them, look, if you will be a
teacher, we will pay for your masters degree in education. You
are already excited about science. We will pay for your degree
in education. And we will give you a stipend while you are
going to school so you can live.
And then when you graduate with your master's degree, if
you go and teach in a high school, we will give you a stipend--
I am just going to use a figure of $20,000 on top of your
teaching salary as long as you are teaching science and math.
And they have had great success in New York City with that
program. An so while trying to build on their success while the
Republicans controlled the House, I introduced a bill that
created a national demonstration program, if you will. I
couldn't get my Republican colleagues too interested in it, but
maybe now we could explore it again, because it is a program
that has shown some great results, and I think--I believe in
it, and I believe it has been successful, and I think maybe we
can look at it again.
Anyway, Dr. Tegnelia, I understand the process that DTRA is
using to pursue technologies under Transformational Medical
Technologies Initiatives, good program.
Dr. Tegnelia. Yes.
Mr. Saxton. Can you tell me a little bit more about how the
chem biodefense program would pursue emerging scientific
breakthroughs that are happening outside the TMTI program? How
do you keep pace with medical breakthroughs when you are
required to use transitional acquisition procedures?
Dr. Tegnelia. Sir, first of all, we have put a lot of
effort into getting the TMTI program off and running. And we
now are at the point where we have got 70-something contracts
underway and going in that particular program. Every year we go
back out with a broad area announcement (BAA) to relook at the
base to make sure that if there are new ideas there, we are
prepared to go out and fund those new ideas under the TMTI
program.
So we continue to keep the pipeline open for new and
interesting ideas. The other thing that we have done because we
are concerned about the issue that you are concerned about is
we started a basic research program. That basic research
program is concerned with not only therapeutics and prophylaxis
and genetics and genomics associated with that kind of program.
It is also into the detection business. So we brought in 26
universities who have new ideas and new people who are in the
process of looking at biological sciences.
So we think that by working with the universities, by
working with the new startup companies who are generating a lot
of these new ideas and having continual programs which review
that, and then working with PhRMA, as they move to put some of
these new drugs into the market, we have a good cross-section
of the people participating with DTRA to do that program. Jean,
maybe you would like to comment on that as well.
Mr. Reed. Yes, sir. If I could for just a moment----
Mr. Smith. For the purpose of our record, if you would make
sure you are on the mike there, and identify yourself before
you offer the testimony.
Mr. Reed. Yes, sir. I am Jean Reed. I am the Special
Assistant for Chemical Biological Defense and Chemical
Demilitarization Programs in the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, and I have oversight for the assistant to the
Secretary of Defense for nuclear, chemical and biological
programs for that functional area. Reinforcing Dr. Tegnelia's
comment, we make a great deal of use of the broad area
announcements announcing, you know, a particular focus area
both with the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative,
but also in the broader area of the totality of the core--of
the core thrusts and the chemical biological and defense
program to invite really the brightest and the best to
participate in that program.
One of the major contributions that the Congress has made
to that program is the use of the chemical biological defense
initiative in which money is added to the program by the
Congress but without any fetters, if you will, in terms of
saying to the Department, pick out those technologies that
appear to have great technical promise and to contribute to the
overall operational capability of the force and pursue those
technologies as opposed to pursuing what might be a specific
earmarked program.
That program has contributed--that the Congress originated
has done a great deal of good for the overall program. But
basically, sir, we are, with the overall program strategy, then
laying out through the broad area announcement process the
ability to, if you will, mind what is out there.
Mr. Saxton. So if something came along outside of the
normal process and it looked like it was promising, it is
something that you might be able to take a look at even though
it doesn't fit within the construct of timelines, et cetera.
Mr. Reed. Yes, sir. There are loads of good ideas out
there, and we are open to hearing those ideas.
Dr. Tegnelia. And we have several mechanisms to make sure
that that would happen. By the way, I should mention, Dr.
Tether is also very much investing in the biological sciences
activity, and he is really stretching the envelope a little bit
with regard to some of the science that he is working on.
Mr. Saxton. Yes, sir. I am aware of some of the instances
where they are being stretched and they are starting to show
some results too. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Hayes.
Mr. Hayes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you.
Lets make a quick visit to Fort Bragg. Are you all familiar
with their group, is it the defense technology accelerator? I
am not sure I am giving you the right name. It is a very
interesting concept, working with particularly former special
forces soldiers who are using private entrepreneurs and others,
developing technology for a whole host of things. Let's talk
about IEDs for a minute. Joint IED task force. Are you familiar
with this group? And if yes, that is one answer. Are you, are
you all familiar with them at all?
Dr. Tether. Yes, I am. They have called me and talked to
me, yes.
Mr. Hayes. Any interaction going on there?
Dr. Tether. Actually, in our case, we have very good
interaction already with Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
Fort Bragg.
Mr. Hayes. I misspoke when I said Fort Bragg. My mind
always says Fort Bragg, but this is outside the gate. This is a
private.
Dr. Tether. No. I understand. I understand. And they are
retired, and they offered to help bridge the gap, if you will,
between what is going on in S&T and their knowledge of the
requirements and they are very helpful. But we are, you know,
there is activity going on, and we are using them.
Mr. Hayes. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. And having just
visited there about two weeks ago, I was very much impressed by
the number of different ideas and people that were coming to
the table. I would think--I am sure you all get hundreds of
cards and letters every day with great ideas, but they really
seem to be doing a good job of vetting some technology that
would help identify IEDs and my charge was, find me a way that
we can explode them in the bomb maker shop, not on the road.
So I just wanted to make sure that that was something that
you all were looking at and again, listening to several groups
present that morning, it would be very helpful, look at them
even more closely if not. Of course, open hearing, IED issue
still is the biggest threat we face. I am confident you are
doing everything you can to----
Dr. Tether. We have a major effort between us and Joint
Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO)
basically using NTC as the--National Training Center in Fort
Irwin, California, to address directly the moving upstream to
try to find out the bomb makers place as opposed to each IED
separately. As you said, it is a little difficult to say
anything more because we might tell them what we are doing, and
these are very smart people who undoubtedly will get a copy of
this hearing.
Mr. Hayes. Yeah.
Mr. Young. Can I add copy to that?
Mr. Hayes. Sure.
Mr. Young. Because of the nature of that threat, which is
very harmful to our forces, the DDR&E team we went through. The
JIEDDO program, had had a series of meetings in the last couple
of months to make sure that program is coordinated. To
Congressman Thornberry's question, we brought--there is a
defense science and technology advisory group. We brought
JIEDDO, the chief scientist in as a member of that group so
they are very conscious at what the service is doing and at
that strategic review we had a month or so ago, they came and
presented their view of the threat and then what they are
spending because JIEDDO is spending money a lot of times on
near-term solutions, increasingly looking at some longer term
solutions with S&T dollars, and then counting on the services
to make some investments in those areas and so we are working
very hard to make sure we have as much momentum as possible in
that space, sir.
Mr. Hayes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. I think what we will do now is we
will go to our second panel. I thank Dr. Tether and Dr.
Tegnelia for their testimony. We have votes coming up quick not
too distant future, so I want to get the other folks up. That
would be Dr. Killion, Admiral Landay and Mr. Jaggers, and Mr.
Young will be on the second panel as well. Thank you very much.
Thank you, gentlemen. I will introduce the new members of
the panel. We have been joined by Dr. Thomas Killion, who is
the Deputy Assistant Secretary General of the Army for Research
and Technology, their chief scientist. Rear Admiral William
Landay, who is the Chief of Naval Research. There is a lot more
after that, but I will just leave it at that. Mr. Terry
Jaggers, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force
for Science, Technology and Engineering. We will get started.
Mr. Smith. I believe, Mr. Young, you have comments for this
panel as well in addition to what you said before. So we will
again begin with Mr. Young.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. YOUNG, JR., DIRECTOR, DEFENSE
RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Young. Chairman Smith, thank you again very much. I
really am grateful for the opportunity to appear and talk about
the science and technology program of the Department of Defense
with this committee. The second year I had the opportunity to
appear before the Congress as the Director of Defense research
and engineering, and I am very pleased with the direction and
focus of the Department's science and technology program. And I
will briefly discuss key elements with you. At the highest
level, the Defense Department's fiscal year 2008 science and
technology budget request of $10.77 billion represents a
continued corporate commitment to strong science and technology
funding during a year with difficult budgetary demands from the
ongoing war on terror. As noted in my written statement, from
fiscal year 2002 to 2008, the science and technology budget has
grown eight percent in real terms, and these years are the
seven highest DOD requests for science and technology since the
current budget process started in 1962.
The military services and DARPA budget and managed the bulk
of defense science and technology funds and thus have critical
roles to play in our program. I am glad to be here with the
service science and technology executives who are all striving
to enhance the capabilities we have for support of our
warfighters. At the next level of detail, we have sought to
ensure that the funds requested for S&T are guided by strategy
objectives. The vision for the defense research and engineering
program is to develop technology to defeat any adversary on any
battlefield.
This vision encompasses both state and nonstate actors as
well as all potential fields of conflict from the physical
battlefield to the cyberspace to other nontraditional
battlefields. The vision is well aligned with the challenges
outlined in the Quadrennial Defense Review. To realize this
vision, we must apply several key requirements. First, the S&T
program must be balanced to address near mid and far-term needs
of the Defense Department. The Defense Department program must
be robust and assure our proficiency across a broad spectrum of
military and commercial technologies. Further, the S&T program
must address urgent needs today while also assuring the Defense
Department is prepared for the future.
We must have an integrated research and engineering program
as discussed earlier, frankly with contributions from the
services and the agencies. The S&T program must deliver the
maximum value for the tax dollar. We have reengineered our
process for coordinating across the DOD S&T program. The new
Reliance 21 process provides a renewed emphasis on integrating
and coordinating the S&T investment of all--across all
components and ensuring that the science and technology issues
are addressed during the DOD budget cycle. Next, a program that
contributes to the development of future science and
engineering workforce. The Department of Defense employs almost
half of all Federal physical scientists and engineers.
Our work requires highly educated, technically experienced
and security-clearable personnel. Programs such as the National
Defense Education Program allow the Defense Department to play
a necessary role in the Nation's efforts to recruit, educate
and train our future scientists and engineers. Finally, a
program that adapts to department needs and the threat
environment. Guided by the QDR and Secretary's strategic
planning guidance task and expert insights, the DDR&E team
established a number of new initiatives within the S&T program
focused on nontraditional DOD capabilities as well as DOD
needs. I would like to briefly highlight a few of these
efforts.
The human social cultural and behavioral modelling
initiative will give the Defense Department needed tools that
can inform U.S. commanders, decision processes and provide aids
to help their understanding of different nations' culture and
infrastructure.
Mr. Young. The QDR highlighted these lessons in stating
current and future military operations will require enhanced
capability to understand social and cultural terrains as well
as various dimensions of human behavior.
Biometrics capabilities are already being employed by the
men and women who are daily engaged in the war on terrorism.
Our initiative in this area will give these warfighters new
biometric tools which are relevant to the unique demands of the
tactical military environment. Tagging, tracking and locating
will be an essential tool across the full spectrum of future
conflict.
Over the past year, the DDR&E and component staffs have
been working with the U.S. Special Operations Command to define
the future capabilities needed to tag, track and locate
military platforms and individual adversaries. The resulting
TT&L science and technology roadmap is funded in the budget
before you.
Beyond new capabilities, our robust Science and Technology
Program has created opportunities to deliver mission-capable
technology to the warfighter. Let me highlight a couple.
Networking is now pervasive in our daily lives. The S&T
networking initiative will identify opportunities to harvest
new advances in military and, more importantly, commercial
networking and communications technology to deliver greater
network-centric capability to our warfighters sooner. The
planned S&T investments will concentrate on network
interoperability, improving capacity, adding bandwidth, and
building networks in mobile tactical settings.
The second initiative seeks to deliver low-cost airborne
communications relays to support theater missions such as
convoy movements. Today, in some cases, aircraft which can
perform other surveillance missions are being pressed into
service solely for communications-related missions.
Energy use on the battlefield is an important logistics
consideration. The DDR&E team led a task force which reviewed
the Department's investment in energy programs. As a result, we
worked with the services to include funds for pursuit of
technologies that can increase the energy efficiency of our
systems and reduce the battlefield logistics' demand for fuel
and batteries.
Finally, the rising costs and complexity of weapons systems
continues to be a priority need for the Defense Department. The
budget initiates a defense manufacturing technology, a science
and technology effort to pursue the development of cost-
reducing manufacturing technologies.
To leverage the Department's investment in super computers,
the budget also includes funds to work in partnership with the
services on a new generation of engineering design tools for
military aircraft, naval ships and radar antennas to create an
initiative which should enable the rapid development of
optimized designs with fewer flaws in the design and better
performance.
Mr. Chairman, fortunately for this Nation, the DOD S&T
program is a broad and comprehensive effort which I cannot do
justice to in a short period of time. I appreciate the chance
to highlight several key priorities, and I am most grateful for
the Congress' strong support for the Defense Science and
Technology Program. I look forward to the comments from my
colleagues and the committee's questions.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, and I appreciate the detailed
testimony that you gave us in our booklet. You are right. It is
too long to go into in formal testimony, but it is very helpful
for us to have it in front of us. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Young can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Mr. Smith. Dr. Killion.
STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS H. KILLION, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY
OF THE ARMY FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Killion. Thank you, Chairman Smith and other
distinguished members of the subcommittee.
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you the fiscal
year 2008 Army Science and Technology Program and the
significant role that S&Ts are playing in supporting the
warfighters today and in achieving the Army's transformation.
I have previously submitted a written statement for the
record and request that it be accepted.
I want to thank the members of this committee for your
important role in supporting our soldiers who are at war today
and for your support of the Army's S&T investments that will
sustain technological preeminence for our future soldiers. Your
continued support is vital to our success.
Our Army S&T investment strategy seeks to mature and to
deliver technologies that will enable a transformed, full-
spectrum future force, while seeking opportunities to spiral
technology into current force systems to enhance today's
capabilities. We maintain a diverse portfolio of technology
investments to exploit the potential of emerging technology in
the near term, while sustaining fundamental research to enable
potentially paradigm-shifting technologies in the future.
In terms of the focus of today's hearing, the Army S&T, per
se, does not have major investments specifically targeted on
counterproliferation. We are certainly investing in
technologies that are relevant to the counterproliferation
mission as it focuses on WMD such as sensors, communications,
battle command, munitions and force protection, but, primarily,
we are a significant partner with the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency and with the joint PEO for chem/bio defense as the
executive agent for major research programs and the source of
an expert workforce and unique national facilities at our
Edgewood chem/bio center as well as elements of the U.S. Army
Medical Research and Materiel Command.
As far as counterterrorism is concerned, it is not an
overgeneralization to say that our entire program is relevant
to the Army's mission to identify and defeat terrorist threats.
We have all seen in the ongoing global war on terror, that
defeating this threat is a full-spectrum mission, ranging from
special operations to stabilization operations in the presence
of an adaptive and aggressive insurgency to conventional
warfighting against organized forces. Our Science and
Technology Program seeks to enhance current capabilities and
implement innovative solutions that will equip our soldiers
with the tools to be victorious anywhere in this spectrum and
beyond.
I would like to emphasize two other points.
First, just as the Army fights as part of the Joint Force,
we in the S&T community collaborate with the other services and
defense agencies to develop technologies jointly to achieve
greater efficiency and speed in solving problems. A significant
example here is our joint effort with the Air Force and OSD to
develop joint precision airdrop systems for efficient force
resupply.
Second, while our focus is necessarily on the near- and
mid-term, we must sustain our commitment to basic research for
the next generation of warfighters. Our budget requests funds
research across the science disciplines. However, we have also
focused research in specific areas with high innovation
potential such as nano science, biotechnology, immersive
environments and network science, seeking unique and, in some
cases, unanticipated applications for the future Army.
In closing, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
the opportunity to testify before this subcommittee to sustain
your support for Army science and technology investments. I am
proud to represent the efforts of thousands of Army scientists
and engineers dedicated to providing our soldiers with the best
possible technology in the shortest possible time.
I will be happy to answer any questions you or the members
of the subcommittee may have.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Killion can be found in the
Appendix on page 122.]
Mr. Smith. Admiral Landay.
STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. WILLIAM LANDAY III, USN, CHIEF OF NAVAL
RESEARCH, U.S. NAVY
Admiral Landay. Chairman Smith, distinguished members of
the subcommittee, it is an honor to appear before you today to
update you on the progress of science and technology efforts
within the Department of the Navy. I would like to thank the
subcommittee for its interest and support in naval science and
technology.
I also have previously submitted my written testimony and
request that it be entered into the record.
The naval science and technology challenge is to enable
revolutionary operational concepts that support the vision of
the Navy and Marine Corps as laid out by the Secretary of the
Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the
Marine Corps. They envision a force that is joint,
expeditionary, distributed, persistent, forward-deployed and
capable of defeating a competitor in major combat operations or
in various scenarios in the global war on terror.
To meet this challenge, our S&T enterprise must focus on
developing not only tomorrow's Navy and Marine Corps but also
the one after that, yet be nimble enough to rapidly address
critical problems addressing today's fleet and force, we must
do three things exceptionally well.
First, we focus on areas that provide the biggest payoff to
support the Navy and the Marine Corps. Second, we must be
innovative in our thinking, in our science and in our business
processes, because every dollar spent in overhead is a dollar
not spent on science and technology. Third, we must continually
improve our ability to rapidly transition our science and
technology efforts into acquisition programs and into the fleet
and force.
The fiscal year 2008 President's budget requests $1.67
billion for an S&T portfolio that accomplishes what I have
described. That reflects approximately a two percent growth in
constant year dollars over the President's 2007 budget request.
The Navy and Marine Corps leadership recently approved and
updated a Naval Science and Technology Strategic Plan. It
ensures the alignment of naval science and technology with
naval missions, future capability needs and an evolving global
technological landscape. It ensures that science and technology
have a long-term focus but is responsive to the near-term
warfighter needs.
The S&T plan specifically identifies 13 key areas for
science and technology investment that will have a high payoff
in supporting the Navy's and Marine Corps' warfighting visions
and needs. I have addressed those areas in my written
testimony, so I will not list them here, but, in order to
execute that strategy, we are focused on addressing the
changing global S&T environment in the following ways:
We must monitor, assess and leverage emerging science and
technology in a global manner. The increasingly rapid movement
of technology and innovation around the world demands that we
be able to take advantage of emerging ideas in science,
regardless of where they originate.
We must maintain an investment portfolio that is balanced
between the long-term scientific discovery that comes with the
basic research program and the near-term focused product nature
of the advanced technology development programs.
We must focus on delivering value to today's sailors and
Marines, while ensuring that the well of new and novel
technology development remains deep in support of the next
generation of sailors and Marines.
Finally, we must focus our efforts on the transition of
technology and innovative concepts to the warfighters. We are
not about science and technology. We are about science and
technology in support of our sailors and Marines.
The Navy WMD detection program is developing technologies
to detect smuggled nuclear weapons and WMD materials in a
maritime environment. Our research benefits from a continuing
partnership with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is
a silent member of the Senior Executive Service that works with
us on specific naval applications and technologies that they
are needing.
Similarly, our Large Vessel Stopping Program will develop
nonlethal technologies to provide the Navy the capability to
stop and/or to restrain uncooperative, large marine vessels in
support of search interdiction in counterterrorism operations.
We have a near-term focus on Iraq and Afghanistan and a
long-term focus on strengthening the Navy's ability to meet any
challenge and to adapt to any security environment. We have
made adjustments to our portfolio to address the emerging S&T
needs of the Navy Expeditionary Combatant Command as it will
shortly commit forces to the fight along the rivers in Iraq.
We are moving away from functional roles and
responsibilities toward a greater integration of capabilities,
a more effective partnership between research and acquisition
and a broader vision of how to achieve shared goals with DDR&E,
the Army, DARPA, and the Air Force research organizations. This
is evidenced by new directions in our Navy science and
technology plan, by real increases in the President's 2008
science and technology budget, and by the fact that
approximately 15 percent of our research portfolio involves
partnerships with other DOD organizations.
I believe the state of our science and technology
investment is sound and represents careful stewardship of
taxpayer dollars and will make significant contributions to our
warfighters as they serve in defense of the United States both
today and well into the future.
Thank you again for your continued support.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Admiral.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Landay can be found in
the Appendix on page 135.]
Mr. Smith. Mr. Jaggers.
STATEMENT OF TERRY J. JAGGERS, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
THE AIR FORCE FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING, OFFICE
OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ACQUISITION
Mr. Jaggers. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee and
staff, thank you. I, too, have submitted written testimony that
includes a more expansive list of area force S&T activities,
but for the purpose of this testimony I will submit my comments
to the counterproliferation activities.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to provide testimony
on the fiscal year 2008 Air Force Science and Technology
Program. As the Nation adapts to a new security environment
filled with unconventional and nontraditional threats, so the
Air Force adapts to fight the global war on terror and the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Air Force
continues to rebalance and to focus its core S&T competencies
to aggressively pursue new technologies focused on countering
these new threats of today, while modernizing our systems for
tomorrow.
Air Force leadership recognizes the value of its S&T
program to provide a wide range of technology options to enable
us to achieve our vision of becoming an integrated air, space
and cyber force capable of rapid and decisive global engagement
anywhere, anytime.
This is exemplified in our fiscal year 2008 President's
budget request, which at approximately $1.9 billion reflects a
$66 million increase in core S&T funding. This translates to
1.6 percent real growth from the previous year. These
investments sustain a strong and balanced foundation of basic
research, applied research and advanced technology development
needed to support future warfighting capabilities.
My written statement delves more deeply into ongoing
research to counter traditional threats by reducing our
dependence on foreign oil through the evaluation of alternative
fuels, the development of improved engine technology such as
the highly efficient embedded turbine engine and the adaptive,
versatile engine technology, the interoperability between
manned and unmanned vehicles, the launch of operationally
responsive tactical spacecraft experiments, the development of
airborne-directed energy capabilities, and research in both
bio- and nano-inspired materials. Today, however, I would like
to present our focused research efforts on counterproliferation
and counterterrorism.
Created in response to the Quadrennial Defense Review, our
Air Force technical vision guided many of the counterterrorism
and counterproliferation initiatives in this budget request.
Born from the Air Force kill chain to find, fix, track, target,
engage, and assess the enemy in a traditional theater, we have
added ``anticipate'' to the front of this kill chain to inspire
our scientists to develop new technologies that predict our
enemies' intentions before they act and ``anything, anywhere,
anytime'' to the end of the kill chain to focus the need for
more research in the ``24x7'' tagging, tracking and locating of
terrorists and WMD in what is now a global theater of war.
Anticipating enemy actions is a difficult challenge.
Working with the U.S. Special Operations Command, our Human
Effectiveness Directorate has a program under way to apply
mathematical techniques from economics, psychology, sociology,
and market science to quantitatively assess and optimize the
impact of information operations in an effort to anticipate
enemy leadership intentions. They are conducting basic research
to investigate the role of culture on cognition and behavior,
applied research to create cultural research tools, and
advanced technology development to demonstrate the decision-
aids, models and simulations required by the warfighter.
We are proud to be leading DOD in this area; and our
researchers, along with those of the Army and Navy, have worked
closely with DDR&E in developing their human social, cultural,
and behavioral modeling program, a program which complements
ongoing efforts to fund areas the services have not yet had the
resources to cover.
In addition, our Sensors and Information Directorates are
collaborating on near-term efforts to improve command and
control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance by
using closed-loop simulation capabilities to better predict our
adversary's actions. By exploiting data from multiple network
sensors, providing object-tracking and identification,
including data fusion and global change detection techniques,
this effort will allow automated, predictive identification and
the tracking of space, air and ground vehicles with ultra-high
confidence.
Efforts funded within our basic research program at the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research are already yielding
exciting results in counterterrorism and proliferation. AFOSR
started funding a University of California San Diego effort in
fiscal year 2002 to study photoluminescence quenching effects
in certain polymers to understand how these effects might be
used in integrated nano sensors to strengthen our warfighter's
ability to anticipate threats and acts of terror.
A by-product of this basic research--and I, too, have a
little show-and-tell that I would like to bring up. A by-
product of this basic research contributed to the development
of a low-cost and robust improvised explosive device detection
sensor, currently being commercially marketed for use in field
settings such as security checkpoints at airports, stadiums and
amusement parks.
Sir, I will pause at my written point here to explain what
that is. You have seen in the security checkpoints in the
airports that they take a swab and they wipe down your hands
and then they put it in a large machine that is not on wheels,
but it is a very expensive and large, relatively immobile
machine. All of that is contained in that device, and what that
does basically is--you take, more or less, a lint brush, which
Tim just pulled out, and you wipe it on people and their hands
and their clothes, and then you stick the paper in that. And,
in the field, they can look through that binocular port there
and actually get not a spectral signature of the material or
the chemical residue but actually see a go/no go or a pass/
fail. So it is very portable, lightweight, and it is actually
available in the commercial market, too. Actually, the work we
did in the basic research led to the production of that by
DARPA, and that is how we are getting it to the field.
Equally challenging is the ability to prosecute the kill
chain against targets anywhere, anytime. This requires research
in tagging, tracking and locating terrorists or WMD anywhere on
the globe ``24x7.'' One such project that could facilitate
tracking by using unmanned aerial vehicles is called Synthetic
Interface Research for UAV Systems, or SIRUS. This research in
human effectiveness will enhance an operator's ability to
acquire, assess and act on information.
A supporting research program is leading to the development
of a multi-sensory modeling database that will provide
automatic target recognition and combat identification
enhancements to improve Blue Force tracking as well as the
capability to enable future covert targeting and tracking by
the year 2011.
In addition, we are exceptionally proud of our research in
biotaggants as a transformational technology to
counterproliferation and acts of terrorism. Biotaggants attach
either a passive-identifying material, or taggant, to a
biological warfare agent that can then be read by line-of-sight
spectroscopy or an active taggant that is activated by radio
frequency energy so it can be read through walls. In the
future, use of these biotaggants will revolutionize our ability
to track WMD around the globe.
In the near term, however, our Sensors Directorate rapidly
developed the Angel Fire electro-optical staring array.
Deploying with the Marine Corps this year, Angel Fire is an
airborne wide-area, image-gathering, persistent electro-optical
sensor array that distributes real-time imagery straight to the
warfighter. Angel Fire provides the capability to zoom in and
observe more closely any area within the collected image cone
as well as allows the playback of significant events,
essentially providing a ``Google Earth, TIVO-like'' capability
to monitor areas of interest.
On September 6th, 2006, the Secretary and the Chief of
Staff of the Air Force directed the establishment of a new
operational command for cyberspace. The cyber technologies we
are developing within our Information Technology Directorate
will provide this new command with capabilities similar to
those developed for conventional Air Force employment, such as
strike or reconnaissance systems. This research not only
postures us to combat traditional threats in cyberspace but
those emerging unconventional threats as well.
Technologies being developed include cyber platforms with
the mission of destroying worms or viruses, thus bolstering our
information assurance capabilities. An example of this is the
Air Force Research Laboratory's Defensive Cybercraft, which
essentially acts as a defensive intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance asset to not only defend against attacks but
begin to locate and track terrorists and other bad actors that
choose to wage war in the cyber domain.
Coupled with the aforementioned game-changing research in
directorate energy, nano technology, hypersonics, and
biotechnology, the Air Force's S&T investments in cyberspace
will position us well to counter future disruptive threats
facing the Nation.
The initiatives I have described will not be without their
challenges. The Air Force S&T program is in a time of great
change as we reshape our scientist and engineer workforce,
retool our processes under the Secretary's Air Force Smart
Operations 21 Initiative, understand the S&T required to meet
the demands of the cyberspace mission, and move toward a
capability based planning construct using focused, long-term
challenges, or FLTCs.
Despite the challenges facing the Air Force S&T, we are
emboldened to tackle these challenges head on as we prosecute
the global war on terror and counterproliferation. Our fiscal
year 2008 budget builds on the past S&T successes and our
traditional core competencies, a future tech vision with a
clear focus on counter and new security threats and reflects my
five guiding S&T principles: first, to value our scientists and
engineers; second, to ensure a balanced portfolio between the
near, mid and far term; third, to focus our investments on
needed capabilities; fourth, to honor commitments with our
mission partners; and, fifth, to continue to hone and improve
our tech transition processes.
Air Force leadership has shown their commitment to the Air
Force S&T program by, again, maintaining positive real growth
of the S&T budget, and we feel we are investing in those areas
critical to the Nation's defense.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity to
present testimony, and thank you for your continued support for
the Air Force S&T program.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Jaggers can be found in the
Appendix on page 153.]
Mr. Smith. I appreciate all of your testimony.
I have a couple of quick questions, and then I will turn to
Mr. Thornberry.
First of all, Mr. Jaggers, you mentioned in your testimony
you are conducting research to investigate the role of culture
and the predictive modeling of societies. What does that mean
exactly? Could you explain that program a little bit more?
Mr. Jaggers. What we are trying to do--and we are doing
this, actually, in collaboration with the DDR&E as well as
other services, as well as a larger interagency community,
including the intel community, as well as the warfighters.
The competency that the Air Force brings to bear on this is
our Human Directorate that really builds on past experiences
and successes with modeling human behavior of pilots, looking
at fatigue, looking at the human effectiveness of our pilots
during long-duration missions and that sort of thing. We take
those models that we have done in those areas plus the
expertise of psychology and try to understand the cultural
differences in other societies and create models based on
mathematical algorithms and statistics to try to predict the
behavior of other cultures. The competency we bring to the
larger community is obviously leveraged by others to support
the intel community and others.
What we hope to get from this larger activity here is
trying to understand what action an enemy may take as a
predictive signal or cue to tip us off on to what they might
take as far as a counter-error or anything that would harm or
put our air assets or any Air Force assets at risk of threat.
So this is part of our technology vision of anticipating enemy
actions, working with OSD and others to try to see the cues and
the tip-offs, but based on----
Mr. Smith. That answers my question. Thanks. I appreciate
it.
There is something Mr. Killion mentioned--it might have
been Mr. Young--about developing manufacturing technologies to
help reduce the time frame that it would take. That is
something that I think would be enormously helpful.
As you know, we have--pick your favorite program and start
calculating how long it has taken to develop it. It is
enormously frustrating, not to mention enormously expensive,
and some of this--I mean, Joint Strike is trying to push the
outer laws of physics, which are more flexible than most people
realize; and, you know, that is fine, but there are some other
things that--it seems like we ought to be able to come up with
our fighter planes, our ships, our big ticket items, airplanes
quicker than we are.
Is there some hope here that we are going to be able to
take that maybe from 20 years down to 10, or how is that
playing out specifically?
Mr. Young. Boy, I would agree with your desire for hope.
I am hesitant to advertise it as such, but some of the
initiatives I mentioned are targeted to that. The tool I
mentioned will seek to build models where now you can design an
aircraft ergonomically and then go into a structural model and
optimize the structure. We have efforts that usually take hard
manufacturing problems and apply technology to making timelines
shorter, the costs lower. We would like to take a step back and
invest in a more general space, just like we do in materials or
electronic devices. We would like systems to come faster and be
lower cost.
Mr. Smith. And I think a lot of that also is a decision--
the further we can sort of narrow the range of what is
possible--because you do want to push the envelope. You want to
try to come up with the best piece of equipment you can. You
want to test some theories out. We can test those quicker. That
is not going to work. We are not going to go down that route.
We are going to focus here. That would be enormously helpful.
Mr. Young. Could I add one more comment?
Mr. Smith. Certainly.
Mr. Young. Maybe we will say the same thing.
Within that space, one thing that takes time is the amount
of software and capability we put in systems these days; and so
across all of the services we are looking at initiatives here
to better reuse tools. We have already done the auto generate
code, all of the steps that will let us develop more code with
fewer flaws in it, because that is a significant timeline in
our efforts, and Army Secretary Bolton and Tom have been
leaders in saying we need to work on that space. The DDR&E team
wants to work in that space. I think all of the services are
inclined.
Dr. Killion. What I was going to mention is not that area.
It is a real challenge for us. The initiatives we have
taken are in our specific programs where we would combine an
investment in the technology development with an investment in
manufacturing technology. A good example there is our Flexible
Display Center at Arizona State University where we are
partnered through them with industry, and not only are they
exploring the boundaries of what we can do in terms of
developing displays that are flexible like this sheet of
paper--high brightness and lower power and so on--but also the
manufacturing methodologies and tools that would go into
building such displays at an affordable cost and at a
production scale. So at the same time you are developing the
technology, you are optimizing the methods by which you could
produce it.
Mr. Young. Maybe I could briefly respond.
Congress asked us, as we take programs into the system's
design and development phases, to make sure the technology is
ready, which is exactly your comment, Mr. Chairman.
We intend to apply also what Tom mentioned, manufacturing
readiness, so the DDR&E team is already providing that
information to the Under Secretary of Defense for the
acquisition of technology readiness so that, hopefully, those
phases will take less time and cost less. Because we again,
from another angle, brought mature technology and the ability
to produce that technology to that problem.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Thornberry.
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to get back to a topic. You all were here when we
were talking about the importance of getting and keeping top
quality people to work in facilities. My understanding is that
there are, in some facilities at least, demonstration projects
which grant extra flexibility in the hiring and in the
evaluating of employees and that when the new national security
personnel system comes into effect that the way it works now is
that these facilities can take whatever is the most flexible in
order to manage that workforce and hopefully get and keep the
kind of people we want.
If all of that is right, how many facilities have these
demonstration programs--and do you all have an opinion about
this intersection between the new national security personnel
system and the demonstration programs that they already have?
Admiral Landay. Well, I would start off, at least from the
perspective of the Navy.
Our Naval Research Lab, for example, is under one of the
lab demonstration programs, and I think it is doing exactly
what you would like to have as it gives the commander and the
technical director of that lab greater flexibility not only in
rewarding the performance of folks in the lab based on their
contribution but some additional flexibility. It is probably
not as much as they would like in order to be able to hire and
bring folks on board.
My headquarters, the O&R part of that, is under the current
standard government service; and I can tell you from where I
sit they are two completely different worlds. I envy the guy's
ability who works for me to do things that I would like to be
better able to do, so whether that is national security or
other lab demos, I think moving in that direction is a
significant benefit.
My sense is we have looked between the national security
personnel program and the lab demos. I think we are still
wrestling because the lab demos tend to be more comfortable to
the labs because the labs have been doing them for a while, and
they are comfortable with them. I think the context of all of
them are the same, and so I think that was really the intent.
I will tell you that one of the challenges is you would
like people to be able to move back and forth between
organizations. I would like to bring people from my labs into
headquarters. I would like people from my labs to go work in
Army labs and be able to hire Army lab people in my labs, and
if we all get multiple different personnel systems, that
sometimes becomes a real challenge for us. So, you know, having
a very common system, I think, is critical, but flexibility, I
think, we are all very much supporters of.
Mr. Thornberry. I will be interested to know what other
facilities, if you all could provide for the record, have a
demonstration project; and if you have an opinion about those
flexibilities and how they will be impacted by the new national
security personnel system, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Young, the Office of Force Transformation was largely
folded into your organization. I do not expect an answer now,
but can you get somebody to provide the committee what happened
to programs that they had under way once it got folded into
DDR&E so that I can see what happened to those specific
initiatives?
Mr. Young. We will get you a longer answer, but what I want
to assure you is that every program they had continues, and I
put them with one of the stronger people on my team, Ben Riley,
who has managed a lot of our counterterrorism and rapid
reaction response efforts and is working with them to continue
what they are doing and working with them to vet, if you will.
As a first stage of new ideas they have, we expect that program
to continue.
Mr. Thornberry. Good. I would appreciate the more detailed
answer, but I appreciate your answer here.
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. I just had a couple more questions
before we wrap up.
One of the things Mr. Thornberry said at the outset is that
the overall fiscal year 2007 budget for the Science and
Technology and the DOD, I believe, is maybe down a little. It
sounds like the Air Force is up from 2007, but just, you know,
we ramped up for a couple of years because of the global war on
teror (GWOT).
An acceptable answer is that there are needs elsewhere, and
we all have about 35 top priorities around here, and that is
part of the problem. But just within your own little world,
very important world, where do you see that money being in a
flat budget line as proposed in 2008?
Mr. Young. I am probably the right person to start, and I
would refer back to my initial comments. There has been eight
percent real growth since 2002, and we are historically in
constant dollars at a period of time of the highest level of
R&D investment in general.
I believe the leadership comment, which I agree with, would
be we have to size the S&T investment to meet the needs of the
Department, so I do not know if a metric that says three
percent or two percent is right. I know we are beginning to
look at that, and I have asked my team to take a look at that.
I can cite for you an example. I asked Dr. Tether to take a
look, and we find that we have selected 20 percent of the
selectable proposals, but I do not think we have enough
fidelity to tell you those 20 percent are the absolute A-plus
proposals and the next ones are all Bs or the next ones are all
Cs, so we need to get better metrics and build the program from
the bottom up.
This year, I am very pleased we were able to move over
across the Future Year Defense Program (FYDP), up over $1
billion, into these newer technology areas where we needed
investment in human social, cultural, behavioral, biometrics,
tagging, tracking, locating. I would be less comfortable if I
were to tell you that money limits prohibited us from investing
in those areas, because we have those investments, and the
services continue to make those core investments that they must
make in engine technology or emissions technology, and the Army
grew their emissions investment.
I think the program is whole, and then we end up back with
you, to your point, that we do not have enough metric data to
tell you if we desperately need another dollar or if we had
another dollar we would spend it well or if we had another
dollar we would spend it on a B or C effort.
Mr. Smith. Does anybody else want to----
Dr. Killion. I would echo what John says in that I believe
we are, of course, challenged in terms of the fiscal
environment we are in. We are at war. I am supporting an Army
that is engaged all over the globe in terms of the S&T program,
and how much the Army has available to invest in S&T as opposed
to other considerations in the budget is always a challenge. I
think we are making smart investments today. We have tried to
balance the portfolio as best we can, protect our basic
research program and, very reasonably, it is about 18 percent
of our S&T program.
Another consideration is in terms of what you really want
to be able to do at the end of the day, which is transition the
technology coming out of S&T. So just plugging up the S&T
budget is not going to help us very much. Yes, you will have
more things in the mill, but you also need to be able to take
that and turn that into real systems that go into the hands of
the troops, and that is the part of the equation that has to be
addressed.
Admiral Landay. If I may add to that, I would agree. We
have had this discussion very aggressively, probably, in the
last year in the Navy as we have been looking through all of
the science and technology. There is a need to have some basic
level of very broad science and technology, because nobody can
tell you with 100 percent clarity what the problems are going
to be 5 and 10 years down the road.
The challenge, of course, is we could make that so broad
and so deep that, you know, the things that you have to do in
the near term you cannot do. So Secretary Young said, I think,
we all struggle with how much is enough and how do you know you
are at least focusing in the right broad areas.
The other challenge that we have, as Dr. Killion mentioned,
is, in the end, it has all got to transition, so there is a
real effort to look at science and technology but focus it on
those areas that you think really do support the Department or
your particular department.
I think the thing we all wrestle with the most, as
Secretary Young said, is not do you have enough, but when new
areas emerge do you have the ability to get into those new
areas while you are continuing to do work in the good science
areas. I think that is what we all really, really focus on.
Mr. Jaggers. And I will be brief, because my comments
certainly reflect the comments of my peers here.
The Air Force, as you know, is modernizing virtually
everything in the Air Force from space to air; and the trick,
as Dr. Killion said, is trying to balance the S&T that supports
the modernization of those assets and ensuring that, in the big
Air Force, some of that Air Force investment can handle the
through-put of the S&T being pushed to the modernization
programs.
Then the other trick, as Admiral Landay said, is trying to
pursue transformational or revolutionary technologies and then
balancing that tech push with, again, a through-put to handle
that tech push or directed energy, for example, trying to
understand the effects of directed energy and create platforms
that can handle directed energy.
So, in the Air Force, we are fortunate to actually be on an
upward slope for S&T investments, but I think that reflects,
quite frankly, on the overall modernization strategy in the Air
Force.
Mr. Smith. I think you should submit a more formal answer
on your budget situation. Not now. Just have your staff sort
of, you know, get into some of those details on the funding of
the A programs and the B programs. If you could have someone
send that over to the committee, that would be great.
The last area I want to ask about--it is a quick question
that might have a long answer--is alternative energy. In each
of your areas, what are you investing in in terms of finding
alternative sources but also in improving efficiencies? I think
the greatest area this is in is batteries, you know, improving
battery life. What is sort of, you know, right there that could
help us in those areas?
Mr. Young. Let me offer--certainly I will be brief and will
tell you the energy task force that the DDR&E team led--and the
real leader of the team, Al Shaffer, is behind me--looked
across all of the services at everything in the Department,
including facilities work. I think we could submit for the
record the investments we identified that were in the budget
for those programs, and then we identified gaps and
opportunities and needs, and we put some new initiatives in the
budget, which we can identify for you, also.
Mr. Smith. Why don't we do that? Because this is the kind
of thing that could be a very long answer. If you could just
submit to the committee, to my office--you know, somebody from
your office--here is what we are doing on alternative sources
of energy and increasing energy efficiency. I think that would
be probably the best way to do it.
Mr. Smith. Mrs. Drake, do you have questions?
Mrs. Drake. I just have one question, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Young, thank you for being here, and I am sorry I could
not be here for the whole meeting.
But there are plans to terminate the Medical Free Electron
Laser Program in fiscal year 2008. Can you provide us with a
good rationale for the abrupt termination of this program,
especially in light of all of the discussion that we are having
right now about making sure we have absolutely the best care
for our wounded warriors?
Mr. Young. I can add for the record, but I will give you a
quick summary of it. It fits with the discussion we had.
At the start of this budget season, my office was handed a
bogey to cut about $35 million and about $300 million across
the FYDP within the programs that are strictly within DDR&E
cognizance, and then there were new things I was asked to do or
felt we needed to do for the warfighter. So when you do that,
you have to go through and cut things, and several things were
trimmed. We trimmed basic technology demonstrations (TDs). We
trimmed several projects.
This one we cut because, at this stage in time, we have
been investing in medical free electron lasers for 25 years
now, and we spent over $400 million on this program. I think we
need to ask ourselves whether we should continue in that vein
or open the door to a different idea of what we need to do in
that area. The program is being done. There are quality
programs. Some of them address combat casualty care. Some of
them address basic medical technology. Because it is far beyond
now the medical free electron laser. Some are not even laser-
related.
So there are programs in the Department, particularly in
the Army, some in the Navy, and medical advanced technology
where these entities could compete, and they could compete to
provide solutions for combat casualty care that might or might
not--you know, in their case might involve laser technology or
might not, but it would be open to other spaces. But limiting
this program to the providers under the guise of the medical
free electron laser I felt we needed to move beyond after 25
years and $400 million.
Mrs. Drake. I guess, Mr. Chairman, it just leaves in my
mind the medical reason you would do that and how it is going
to impact our troops that we are not going to have this program
that we had for 25 years, and we are not going to have this
type of treatment that we have had for 25 years.
So, obviously, you have looked at that and feel comfortable
that this is an okay thing to do and that we are not removing
something that our men and women would need?
Mr. Young. Well, again, as I cited, we have several medical
technology programs that invest in a broad set of solutions to
our medical issues where their ideas are the best ideas. They
should compete and offer those solutions. They can also compete
within the National Institute of Health budget that has grown
by something like 100 percent, but at some point in time, the
Defense Science and Technology Program needs to move on to
other technology instead of being limited to a certain area and
a certain set of technologies.
You could rightly discuss whether we need more money in
combat casualty care, given the situation we find ourselves
engaged in in the war, but even then I would advocate it ought
to be open to every technology that can address those issues
and not limit it to a set of people who work from medical free
electron perspectives.
Mrs. Drake. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thanks.
Mr. Thornberry, do you have anything further?
Mr. Thornberry. No.
Mr. Smith. Well, thank you very much for your testimony. I
look forward to continuing to work with you as we move through
on our authorizing the budget. Thank you. It has been very,
very informative. I appreciate it.
With that, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:39 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 21, 2007
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 21, 2007
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