[Senate Hearing 110-560]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-560
TECHNOLOGIES TO COMBAT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
of the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 12, 2008
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
----------
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
CARL LEVIN, Michigan, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia JOHN WARNER, Virginia,
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JACK REED, Rhode Island JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
BILL NELSON, Florida SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
EVAN BAYH, Indiana ELIZABETH DOLE, North Carolina
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York JOHN CORNYN, Texas
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
JIM WEBB, Virginia MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
Richard D. DeBobes, Staff Director
Michael V. Kostiw, Republican Staff Director
______
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
JACK REED, Rhode Island, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ELIZABETH DOLE, North Carolina
ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia JOHN WARNER, Virginia,
BILL NELSON, Florida SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
EVAN BAYH, Indiana JOHN CORNYN, Texas
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES
Technologies to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction
march 12, 2008
Page
Tegnelia, Dr. James A., Director, Defense Threat Reduction
Agency; and Director, U.S. Strategic Command Center for
Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.......................... 4
Reeves, MG Stephen V., USA, Joint Program Executive Officer for
Chemical and Biological Defense, Department of Defense......... 15
Cerveny, Dr. T. Jan, Assistant Deputy Administrator for
Nonproliferation Research and Engineering, National Nuclear
Security Administration, Department of Energy.................. 29
(iii)
TECHNOLOGIES TO COMBAT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2008
U.S. Senate
Subcommittee on Emerging
Threats and Capabilities,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:41 p.m. in
room SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Jack Reed
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators Reed, Warner, and Dole.
Majority staff members present: Madelyn R. Creedon,
counsel; Richard W. Fieldhouse, professional staff member; and
Arun A. Seraphin, professional staff member.
Minority staff members present: Lynn F. Rusten,
professional staff member; Robert M. Soofer, professional staff
member; Kristine L. Svinicki, professional staff member; and
Diana G. Tabler, professional staff member.
Staff assistants present: Kevin A. Cronin, Jessica L.
Kingston, and Brian F. Sebold.
Committee members' assistants present: Elizabeth King,
assistant to Senator Reed; Andrew R. Vanlandingham, assistant
to Senator Ben Nelson; Nadia Naviwala, assistant to Senator
Webb; Jennifer Cave, assistant to Senator Warner; Mark J.
Winter, assistant to Senator Collins; and Lindsey Neas,
assistant to Senator Dole.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED, CHAIRMAN
Senator Reed. Let me call the hearing to order. Good
afternoon. The subcommittee meets today to hear testimony on
technology to combat weapons of mass destruction (WMD). We are
fortunate to have started with a demonstration of a number of
technologies being developed or fielded for our military and
other government agencies, including some technologies that are
used here in the Homeland to protect our population.
I want to thank all of the organizations that have brought
these technologies to us today, including the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Joint Program Executive Office for
Chemical and Biological Defense (JPEO/CBD), the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Air Force, the
Navy, and a number of Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories.
I also want to particularly thank Jessica Kingston of our
committee staff for organizing this technology demonstration.
Jessica, you did a superb job. Thank you very, very much.
This technology demonstration is a great opportunity for us
to see firsthand what you have developed and put into the hands
of those who we ask to protect us and to detect, decontaminate,
or defeat threats from chemical, biological, radiological,
nuclear, or high-yield explosive weapons and materials.
We are pleased today to have three experts on technology to
combat WMD. Dr. James Tegnelia is the Director of DTRA, which
is the Department of Defense's (DOD) agency with the lead for
protection against and reducing threats from WMD.
Dr. Tegnelia also serves as the Director of the U.S.
Strategic Command (STRATCOM) Center for Combating WMD. His
agency has expertise and responsibility across the spectrum of
all WMD and supports the combatant commands and other
governmental agencies and their operational needs relating to
these weapons.
Major General Stephen Reeves is the JPEO/CBD at DOD. His
responsibilities include the research, development, and
acquisition of all chemical and biological defense equipment
and medical countermeasures for all of the United States
military.
It is one of the less well-known success stories that DOD
has a single joint program for all chemical and biological
defense efforts. His organization cooperates extensively with
both DTRA and with DARPA, both of which conduct critical
research and development (R&D) on chemical and biological
defense technologies.
Dr. Jan Cerveny is the Assistant Deputy Administrator for
Nonproliferation Research and Engineering at the National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at DOE. The NNSA is our
Nation's expert agency on nuclear weapons and related
technologies. The labs that this agency works with are among
the exhibitors at today's tech demo. They conduct R&D on the
technologies for detecting radiation, and detecting,
monitoring, and analyzing nuclear weapons activity of other
nations.
We hope to learn today about the challenges you all face in
trying to develop these technologies, the successes that you
have had, and how this technology fits into our numerous
efforts to combat WMD. We thank you and all of those who you
work with for your dedicated efforts to keep our Nation and our
military forces safe from these dangerous threats.
We appreciate that your agencies also had a role in the
response to and decontamination of the Senate office buildings
after the anthrax attacks of October 2001. We look forward to
hearing your testimony.
Now let me turn to Senator Dole for her comments. Senator
Dole, please.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR ELIZABETH DOLE
Senator Dole. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
certainly join Senator Reed in welcoming our witnesses, and I
want to thank each of you for your efforts in working to secure
our Nation and our deployed forces against the threats posed by
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
I would also like to thank the participants and presenters
who have gone to considerable effort to bring us the technology
demonstrations we have reviewed this afternoon.
Throughout our history, when this Nation is faced with
threats to our security and to our Homeland, we have called
upon our scientists and engineers to rise to the challenge of
developing the technologies and innovations needed to help
defeat those threats and to keep us safe.
The technologies demonstrated here today are impressive,
indeed, examples of American innovation and the progress we are
making. The threat of WMD getting into the hands of terrorists
remains the preeminent threat to our country and our allies.
Today's hearing will focus on the R&D efforts of the DOD and
DOE to develop technologies to identify, eliminate, interdict,
defeat, or destroy WMD and to mitigate the consequences of a
WMD incident.
I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses regarding
R&D programs under their purview to include the Nation's and
their respective departments' requirements in these areas. How
well their departments are doing to identify, prioritize, and
meet those requirements. How they are coordinating their R&D
efforts with those of other Federal agencies, as well as other
public and private organizations.
I am also interested to know whether the fiscal year 2009
and Future Years Defense Program budget reflects sufficient
priority, resources, and authorities for these important
technology R&D programs.
Dr. Tegnelia, wearing two hats and the responsibilities
that he has in both of these positions, is responsible for
developing, integrating, and providing capabilities to reduce
and counter the threat to the United States and its allies
posed by WMD. We welcome your testimony of how DTRA integrates
and coordinates these disparate efforts to meet the
requirements identified by the Department for combating WMD.
General Reeves is responsible for the research,
development, and acquisition of all chemical and biological
defense equipment and medical countermeasures for the armed
services and for integrating and coordinating all DOD efforts
to develop and field chemical, biological, radiological, and
nuclear defense equipment as well as medical countermeasures
for the warfighter.
We welcome your testimony on how DOD establishes
requirements in this area, how you apportion resources to meet
those requirements, how efficiently DOD transitions technology
into fielded capabilities, and to what extent these protective
capabilities are provided to the Active-Duty, Reserve, and
National Guard components of the armed services.
Dr. Cerveny is responsible for R&D to support
nonproliferation requirements, using the unique facilities and
scientific skills of the DOE national laboratories in
partnership with industry and academia. The core mission of her
organization is to develop the next generation of nuclear
nonproliferation sensors and detection capabilities.
We welcome your testimony on how you prioritize technology
investment and how you coordinate and integrate these R&D
programs within DOE and with other Federal agencies, including
DOD and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Let me again join our Chairman in thanking all of our
witnesses for their service and certainly for appearing here
today and giving us your testimony.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Dole, not only
for your statement, but also for your great collaborative
efforts on the subcommittee. We enjoy very much--I do--your
support and your participation.
Senator Dole. Thank you.
Senator Reed. The witnesses, your written statements will
be made part of the record. So feel free to summarize, to cut
to the point of most importance. We will recognize Dr. Tegnelia
first. Dr. Tegnelia?
STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES A. TEGNELIA, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE THREAT
REDUCTION AGENCY; AND DIRECTOR, U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND CENTER
FOR COMBATING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Dr. Tegnelia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Reed and
Senator Dole, thank you very much for taking this opportunity
to give all of our engineers and scientists the opportunity to
display to you some of the important work that they are doing.
We appreciate this opportunity.
I also would like to tell you that I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you on this panel with two
associates, General Steve Reeves, who our agency works with on
a continuing basis with regard to the chemical and biological
weapons program, and also Dr. Jan Cerveny of the DOE.
DTRA has the responsibility for being the DOD executor of
the Nunn-Lugar program, and we work with the DOE on nuclear
matters associated with the Nunn-Lugar program. So it is a
pleasure to be on the same panel with them this morning.
Sir, as you indicated, we have submitted our statement for
the record. That statement outlines six challenges that DTRA is
responsible for addressing. In order to be brief, I would like
to summarize, if I could, just two of those challenges.
The first one is the subject of loose nuclear weapons and
what we would do about that, and the second one, if I don't
take too much time on that subject, is to just summarize
advancing biological sciences and their impact on WMD.
Those are the two topics that I would like to talk----
Senator Reed. I don't mean to artificially cut you off
either. Take as much time as you like, but you don't have to
just read the statement.
Dr. Tegnelia. Yes, sir. I didn't intend to read, sir.
Let me start with the loose nuclear weapons. As I indicated
at the start, one of the significant purposes of the Nunn-Lugar
program is to secure nuclear weapons, secure nuclear material,
and destroy strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems. We
think we have, over the 15 years, a pretty good track record
with regard to that.
The subject of loose nuclear weapons begins if some of
those safeguards should happen to fail and a nuclear weapon or
nuclear material ends up in the hands of a terrorist group with
the intent to detonate a device either in a city in the United
States or the city of an allied government. That is the topic
of loose nuclear weapons.
Now we are very active in that program and, in fact, have a
capability today to deal with loose nuclear weapons. It is the
capability that we have today and the ability to improve that
capability, which serves as the challenge to the R&D activity.
The fundamental element associated with finding loose
nuclear weapons today is the fact that we either must have
precise intelligence information as to the location of that
device, or it has to pass through a portal on a foreign border
or in a harbor before that device could enter into the United
States. We and the DOE work on those portals, and we have them
deployed outside of the United States to try to find those
nuclear devices.
One of the significant R&D challenges is to increase the
range from a few tens of meters to hundreds of meters and
kilometers. So that we no longer are limited by the fact that
we have to have precise intelligence information or that they
must pass through a portal in order to be able to find it. That
is probably the most challenging R&D task that we have today.
Now we work that problem with the DOE, with the national
laboratories. You may be familiar with the Global Initiative on
Combating Nuclear Terrorism, which President Bush and President
Putin started 2 years ago. One of the elements of that global
initiative is to do cooperative international research
associated with this detection of nuclear material and
detection of nuclear weapons problem, and we work cooperatively
with several other participants in the global initiative on
nuclear detection.
In the event that you find a weapon, the next important
problem is how do you demilitarize it or disarm it? What we
would like to do and are working on is research associated with
how to disarm the weapon at a distance, at stand-off ranges.
Today, you have to be in close proximity to the weapon.
Second, to be able to disarm it in a manner that doesn't
require you to have precise information having to do with the
construction of the weapon. That represents another significant
challenge to us, and we are in the process of working that
activity as well.
Lord forbid, if both of those fail and a nuclear weapon
ends up, or nuclear material ends up in a city in the United
States or in a city of an allied country and there is a
detonation, then two significant problems occur to the first
responders. The first problem is the subject of attribution.
How do we know who did it?
That is an important question because of three points. The
first one is if we know how to attribute, then that serves as a
deterrent in its own right from people doing this kind of an
action. The second thing is it is very important for us to make
sure that we can attribute quickly enough that we can stop a
second or subsequent event from occurring. Then, finally,
should the decision be made for retribution, then the
information that you get from attribution is critical in making
the decisions to do that.
Now you saw several displays around the room today on the
subject of attribution. We are just now at the point where the
R&D is beginning to produce a product which we can field, the
first nuclear forensics capability for the subject of
attribution. The biggest challenge that we have now is putting
that kind of a capability into the field.
The research challenge is to be able to reduce the time to
do that analysis and also to make sure that we are getting good
information from the analysis that we are doing. I will
indicate that Dr. Cerveny's operation in the DOE, the DHS, and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are very active in
developing the capability for attribution.
The last topic that one would address with loose nuclear
weapons is the subject of consequence management. The DOD has
done several exercises with regard to radioactive dispersal
devices (RDDs) or dirty bombs, and improvised nuclear devices
(IND) in Hawaii and in Indianapolis.
We also have been part of a series of interagency exercises
called TOPOFF associated with RDDs. As I mentioned on the
Global Initiative for Combating Nuclear Terrorism, we are now
doing international activities associated with consequence
management.
What we found in those exercises is that INDs and RDDs
represent a very large spectrum of consequences, from few
deaths and minimal economic disruption to large numbers of
deaths and significant economic disruption on the part of both
INDs and RDDs. I believe our local responders and the State
units, assisted by the Federal Government, are capable of
handling the lower end of this spectrum.
Our exercises show that the local responders are capable of
dealing with this kind of an activity. It is when you get
closer to the higher end of the spectrum, where there are
significant yields and significant numbers of deaths, that the
operational and research challenges are in the extreme. That
represents a significant research challenge to us.
You saw some activities here associated with
decontamination. You saw some activities associated with
medical therapeutics for radiation poisoning. Finally, you saw
modeling that was going on in this room to help the first
responders and knowing the very difficult environment that they
are going to be working in.
Sir, ma'am, that completes my comments with regard to loose
nuclear weapons. I would just ask you for a time check. Do I
have a few minutes to talk about biological sciences?
Senator Reed. You are still making sense. Go on.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Tegnelia. Thank you, sir. That is the check.
Let me spend just a few minutes on the biological thing, as
I don't want to take time away from the other members of the
panel.
Biological sciences today represents the most advancing
scientific discipline worldwide. The fact is we are probably in
a situation which is analogous to the dawning of the atomic age
in the 1930s before somebody had really demonstrated or
designed such a weapon. So the fact is that we are in the
process of trying to develop a toolkit in order to be able to
be prepared for the advancing of biological sciences and the
fact that almost every advancing science has a negative side to
it, even though it has been beneficial to mankind.
I believe that our significant challenge is being prepared
for, having the toolkit available for advancing biological
sciences, and I just want to summarize two things very briefly.
The first thing is you are probably aware of the fact that
very important research is being done on the part of the Nunn-
Lugar program. It is creating a series of central research
laboratories in Central Asia, where they are collecting rare
pathogens, centralizing them, and categorizing them. Those
pathogens are challenging us to develop therapeutics that
respond to those pathogens should an entity be able to isolate
them and create a biological weapon from a rare species.
So that is the first problem. How do you detect the
presence of it? How do you understand the pathogens you are
going to be dealing with, and how do you prepare for those?
Then there is a second program to respond to those diseases
should they become present in our forces or to civil society.
Now, General Reeves is going to talk to a program called the
Transformational Medical Technology Initiative (TMTI). I will
just summarize it by saying that DTRA works with General
Reeves's operation to create medical therapeutics that can
respond to this advancing biological sciences activity, and
also produce therapeutics rapidly and safely in order to be
able to respond quickly to the presentation of a new biological
weapon or a rare strain of a particular disease.
Sir, ma'am, with that in mind, I would like to summarize
and just tell you that I appreciate the opportunity to be on
this panel today and represent the effort of DTRA. This is our
10th anniversary. I think it is a witness to the agency's
founding fathers' foresight that they were concerned about WMD
in the hands of terrorists long before September 11 occurred. I
think you can see that there are dedicated people that are
concerned about that.
I also, as you mentioned, in my second hat work with
STRATCOM. STRATCOM is the element of the combatant commanders
who are responsible for making this capability available to the
combatant commanders to help combat WMD. General Chilton, who
is the Commander of STRATCOM, is an asset to us producing what
are highly expensive, and, therefore, scarce units, getting the
concept of operations prepared for those units and getting them
out into the field and exercised in order to be prepared for
this advance of WMD.
So, again, I thank you very much, both for your
participation with our displays and for your attention this
afternoon.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Tegnelia follows:]
Prepared Statement by Dr. James Tegnelia
introduction
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, it is an honor to be
here today to address the technology being developed by the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to combat the threat of Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD). This year, we in DTRA are celebrating the agency's
10th anniversary. DTRA was created in 1998 to consolidate into a single
agency Department of Defense (DOD) elements that had a role in
responding to threats posed by WMD. Three overarching national
imperatives drove that decision: countering terrorism, sustaining the
Nation's nuclear deterrent, and strengthening the Department's WMD
nonproliferation, counterproliferation and consequence management
capabilities. Ten years later, events demonstrate these imperatives are
even more demanding and critical.
I am pleased to report that, in partnership with other U.S.
Government (USG) organizations, industry, academia, nongovernmental
organizations, and allies and friendly nations, DTRA has expanded the
Nation's ability to reduce and, where possible, eliminate or minimize
the threats posed by traditional chemical, biological, radiological,
nuclear, and large-scale conventional explosive (CBRNE) weapons.
This progress could not have occurred without the strong support of
Congress, and I wish to thank this committee for your approval of our
budget request and of the legal authorities we have sought over the
years. I am particularly appreciative of your approval of the full DTRA
fiscal year 2008 budget request, which represented the most significant
change in the agency since its establishment. Your extension of and
revisions to the Counterproliferation Program Review Committee (CPRC)
statute last year will also strengthen the interagency partnerships
that are essential to focusing the full national capability against WMD
threats.
My remarks today focus on the progress we have made in developing
advanced technologies for the Combating WMD (CWMD) mission. I will
address our Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) projects
in the context of the broader DTRA CWMD mission, which also includes
our Combat Support Agency, other operational mission support, and Nunn-
Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program responsibilities. I
will begin with a review of CWMD mission accomplishments and describe
the agency today. My discussion of our nuclear-related technology will
take place in the context of a ``loose nuclear weapon;'' that is, a
nuclear weapon in terrorist hands with its ultimate target being a city
in America. I will tie that discussion to the items that DTRA has
displayed in the back of this room as part of the technology
demonstration. I will conclude with a description of the future for
DTRA.
combating wmd mission accomplishments
DTRA was an organization ahead of its time when it was created
because today's comprehensively defined and structured CWMD mission did
not yet exist. The idea of consolidating a loose confederation of
entities that worked in the WMD arena--the Defense Special Weapons
Agency, the On-Site Inspection Agency, the Defense Technology Security
Administration (DTSA), and the CTR Program Office in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense (OSD)--was something quite new. At the time of its
establishment, the agency was also designated as a Combat Support
Agency and charged with expanding the level of WMD-related support
being provided to the combatant commanders (COCOMs). The new agency was
also assigned responsibility for executing the science and technology
(S&T) portion of the Chemical/Biological Defense Program (CBDP) and was
given responsibility for funds management of all CBDP activities. An
important new feature of DTRA was the Advanced Systems and Concepts
Office, charged with looking at the toughest questions and issues
related to current and over-the-horizon WMD threats, and encouraging
new thinking about how we respond to these threats.
Despite ambiguity on what it meant to ``reduce the threat'' and in
the absence of a comprehensive high level guiding strategy that linked
nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and consequence management with
the deterrence missions of the COCOMS, the new agency came together and
executed its combined responsibilities with greater efficiency. Over
time, changes were made to the original concept for DTRA. The most
notable was an early decision by OSD and Congress that the broad
technology security mission of DTSA more properly resided in the Office
of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
As the Nation came to better understand the nature of the emerging
WMD threat, particularly the attractiveness of CBRNE weapons to
terrorists, the full potential of DTRA became clearer to all. In
addition to executing RDT&E programs and providing operational support,
DTRA helped shape the development of CWMD policy, strategy, and
operational concepts. Within a few years of establishment, DTRA was
widely regarded across the department and among many other USG
organizations as the ``go to'' agency on WMD matters.
A defining moment in the agency's history occurred in December 2002
with the publication of the National Strategy to Combat WMD. This
strategy provides the framework of three conceptual pillars--WMD
nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and consequence management--
that defined the CWMD mission. Subsequent strategy documents such as
the National Military Strategy to Combat WMD (February 2006) provided
more substance to the overarching national strategy. Recent DOD
direction, including the 2006 Quadrennial Review and biennial planning
guidance, has increasingly emphasized the need for expanded
nonproliferation capabilities such as ``security cooperation and
partner activities'' and ``threat reduction cooperation'' that support
COCOM ``Phase 0'' operations to shape more favorable security
environments; better means for locating and tracking WMD and related
materials; expanded WMD elimination capabilities; improved strike
capabilities against hard and deeply buried targets and far more
effective nuclear detection, interdiction, and forensics capabilities.
A second defining moment in DTRA's history was the Secretary of
Defense's decision in January 2005 to designate the Commander, U.S.
Strategic Command (CDRUSSTRATCOM) as the lead combatant command for the
integration and synchronization of DOD CWMD efforts in support of USG
objectives. Shortly afterwards, the CDRUSSTRATCOM established the
Strategic Command Center for Combating WMD (SCC-WMD) to integrate and
synchronize DOD efforts to combat WMD. The Center is working to develop
and maintain global situational awareness of WMD activities, advocate
for CWMD capabilities, and to assist with CWMD-related planning, while
shifting emphasis away from DOD-centric approaches toward interagency
solutions.
Because DTRA and its predecessor organizations had a long history
of providing technical and operational support to Strategic Command
(STRATCOM) nuclear mission, and in recognition of the DTRA
responsibility as the Department's Combat Support Agency for providing
WMD knowledge, expertise, and capabilities to the COCOMs, the DTRA
director was ``dual-hatted'' as the Director for the SCC-WMD. To better
leverage DTRA capabilities and to accelerate the operational stand-up
of the SCC-WMD, the Center was co-located with the agency at the new
Defense Threat Reduction Center at Fort Belvoir, VA, which opened in
November 2005. The SCC-WMD achieved Initial Operating Capability (IOC)
on January 26, 2006, and Full Operating Capability in December 2006.
Thus, there is now a seamless working relationship between the COCOM
responsible for the nuclear deterrent and the integration and
synchronization of the CWMD mission and the defense agency with
technical and operational expertise in both of these missions.
I emphasize this point because it highlights the value of expanded
partnerships and collaborative efforts across the DOD, the USG, the
private sector, and partner nations. Defeating the WMD threat will
require the sharing of situational awareness and the full mobilization
of national and international expertise and capabilities. DTRA's
relationship with STRATCOM and the other COCOMs is a point of departure
from which new interagency relationships across the USG are being
developed. A successful example is the partnership that has developed
between DTRA and the Intelligence Community (IC). Since 2002, DTRA and
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have jointly addressed the Hard
Target Defeat problem through the DTRA Hard Target Research and
Analysis Center (HTRAC) partnership with DIA's Underground Facility
Analysis Center to locate, characterize, and assess the options against
tunnels and deeply buried bunkers related to WMD production, storage,
delivery systems, and command and command and control. This concept of
teaming DTRA R&D expertise with DIA's intelligence expertise has proven
so successful that we have expanded our partnership to encompass the
entire CWMD mission area in the form of the new Counter WMD Analysis
Cell.
The private sector--industry, academia, and non-governmental
organizations--also offer WMD expertise essential to a national effort.
DTRA's predecessor organizations had well-developed ties with non-
government partners that have both expanded and deepened over the
years. For example, through the University Strategic Partnership, DTRA
has formed a close relationship with university consortia led by the
University of New Mexico and Penn State that support our S&T projects
to create the next generation of national WMD experts.
There is also much to be gained by expanding partnerships with
allies and friendly nations. Examples of such partnerships include
structured programs such as the CTR Program to programs with wider
venues, such as the Proliferation Security Initiative and the Global
Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. We in DTRA believe that there
are many opportunities to build and expand regional partnerships and
integrate these as appropriate into global efforts. In addition, DTRA
is partnering with other nations on technology development in support
of force protection, hard and deeply buried target defeat, chemical/
biological defense, and nuclear detection.
Another defining moment in the transformation of our CWMD
capabilities was the reassessment and revitalization of our research
and development program beginning in 2006. Of particular note, we
initiated a systems approach to CWMD which provided greater integration
between RDT&E projects and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) activities,
and focused these efforts on addressing capability gaps. With the
support of Congress, we have added a CWMD Basic Research (6.1) Program
that leverages the basic research being performed by the Services,
DARPA, and others. Congress also supported the establishment of a WMD
Defeat Capabilities RDT&E (6.5) program that will increase our ability
to directly support the special needs of the warfighters.
dtra today
DTRA is now a ``full service'' CWMD organization with programs and
activities that span threat anticipation; collaboration with and
support to the IC; global WMD situational awareness and information
sharing across DOD and the USG; research and development in partnership
with other USG organizations, academia, industry, other non-
governmental organizations, and allies and friends across the globe;
technical and operational ``reachback'' support for an expanding list
of customers; WMD-related planning, exercise support, and subject
matter augmentation for the COCOMs; arms control; cooperative threat
reduction activities; vulnerability assessments and force protection;
support to the DOD nuclear mission; and collaborative training,
education, and workforce development to maximize the national wealth of
WMD expertise.
We are an organization of over 1,900 civilian and military
personnel located primarily at Fort Belvoir, VA, and Kirtland Air Force
Base, NM. Several hundred of our military and civilian personnel are
assigned to field offices and military commands across the U.S., the
Pacific, Asia, and Europe. Civilians make up about 60 percent of our
workforce, with the balance being uniformed personnel provided by the
Services. We are also assisted by an extensive contractor base.
Our $1.2 billion annual direct appropriation includes RDT&E
programs, O&M activities, Former Soviet Union Threat Reduction/
Cooperative Threat Reduction (FSUTR/CTR) Program funding, and
Procurement accounts. DTRA is also responsible for managing the S&T
portion of CBDP, which is about $612 million in the fiscal year 2009
budget request, and serves as the funds manager for the approximately
$911 million in the fiscal year 2009 CBDP acquisition program. This
means that we manage an annual budget portfolio of about $2.8 billion.
Over the past 2 years, we have been developing the concept of
``campaigns''--focused and integrated efforts across the agency and our
appropriations accounts designed to focus on specific efforts to expand
our CWMD capabilities. In addition to integrating our efforts across
the agency, campaigns guide us in supporting departmental and national
CWMD goals, direct our current program, and identify capabilities that
will be needed in the future. Our campaigns span the entire CWMD
mission spectrum and encompass nonproliferation, counterproliferation,
and consequence management. Campaigns directly support the eight
underlying CWMD military missions identified in the National Military
Strategy to Combat WMD: Security Cooperation and Partner Activities,
Threat Reduction Cooperation, Interdiction, Elimination, Offensive
Operations, Active Defense, Passive Defense, and Consequence
Management.
The DTRA campaigns and their recent accomplishments are as follows:
Campaign 1 - Situational Awareness
This campaign seeks to develop and sustain global situational
awareness of WMD and to support decisive action. Capabilities being
sought include: DTRA CWMD Common Operating Picture; a common
intelligence picture of WMD; and expansion of partnerships development
within the CWMD community of interest. This campaign also provides
continuous direct support to the SCC-WMD. Among the products developed
by this campaign and now online are the Situational Awareness CWMD
Information Portal that supports a common operating picture, and the
Interagency CWMD Database of Responsibilities, Authorities, and
Capabilities (INDRAC) that provides the CWMD community of interest a
comprehensive and accessible accounting of agency responsibilities,
legal authorities, and CWMD capabilities. We also established ties with
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Center for Disease Control,
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and Department of State
(DOS) to monitor indications and warnings of biological attacks and
pandemic diseases.
Campaign 2 - Control WMD Materials and Systems Worldwide
DTRA develops technologies, produces concepts of operation,
executes operations and programs, and fosters international
partnerships to prevent the proliferation of WMD or WMD-related
capabilities. Its goals are to improve control over WMD; reduce the
size and shape of the WMD threat; build partner capacity to combat WMD;
and improve capabilities to perform WMD interdiction and elimination
operations. Several significant accomplishments have resulted from this
campaign. In 2007, the DOD International Counterproliferation Program
(ICP), for which DTRA is the Executive Agent, provided 44 training
missions in 16 countries to improve the capabilities of border guards,
customs officials, and law enforcement organizations. DTRA also is
promoting regional CWMD collaboration with the goal of establishing a
global network that strengthens our defense-in-depth against WMD. We
initiated this concept in the Black Sea region by hosting conferences,
sponsoring a regional exercise, and developing links to regional
organizations. DTRA also supported the establishment of STRATCOM's
Joint Elimination Coordination Element (JECE) to perform activities and
operations necessary to train and prepare joint forces and Command and
Control elements to conduct WMD elimination missions. The JECE achieved
Interim Operational Capability in August 2007 through its participation
in Exercise Ulchi Focus Lens 2007 in South Korea.
Campaign 3 - Eliminate WMD as a Threat to Warfighter
The focus of this campaign is to develop and manage applicable
research investment strategies and coordinate science and technology
efforts that provide DOD with operational capabilities, research and
development, and technical subject matter expertise for Passive
Defense, Installation Protection, Consequence Management and System
Survivability. During 2007, DTRA performed mission survivability,
vulnerability, and critical infrastructure assessments in support of
OSD, the Joint Staff, the COCOMs, the Services, other DOD components,
the IC, and DHS at home and overseas. Under joint management with the
Department of the Army, the Transformational Medical Technology
Initiative should provide capabilities against future genetically
engineered biological threat agents for which our present
countermeasures might be ineffective. This ambitious initiative holds
great promise for not only developing broad spectrum medical
countermeasures, but for also paving the way to establishing an
enduring capability for DOD and the Nation to meet the emergence of a
novel biological threat with an accelerated sequence of steps that
result in production of medical products within a responsive timeframe.
The Chemical and Biological Defense Programs seeks to exploit emerging
nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive
science technologies to support detection and individual and collective
protection. We are working with the Army on advanced materials
integration for the next generation ground soldier system, and seeking
opportunities to coordinate early with Major Defense Acquisition System
development programs to determine where more seamless integration of
burden-free protection technologies may render our warfighters immune
from concerns about biological and chemical agents.
Campaign 4 - Protect the Homeland from WMD
This campaign is designed to provide crisis and consequence
management support to the DOD and civil authorities to prevent WMD
attacks and/or mitigate their consequences on the homeland and also
focuses on sharing these capabilities with international partners. It
leverages expertise through education, training, and exercises;
operating concepts; and technologies and tools to develop CWMD-related
homeland defense capabilities. An important element of this campaign is
the Defense Threat Reduction University, which we envision becoming a
premier national capability to integrate Federal, state, and local
CBRNE training and education. DTRA deploys specialized Consequence
Management Teams and provides WMD Reachback expertise and decision
support tools from its Operations Center to the U.S. Northern Command
and the National Guard WMD Civil Support Teams. We share our mission
assurance expertise with Federal, State, local, and non-governmental
organizations to enhance Critical Infrastructure and Defense Industrial
Base protection. DTRA also sponsored the U.S. European Command's
Exercise Flexible Response 08, a command post consequence management
exercise involving multiple CBRNE events. Conducted overseas, this
exercise demonstrates the defense-in-depth that is essential to
protecting the U.S. homeland and relied upon the same basic consequence
management expertise that DTRA could provide in response to WMD events
inside our border.
Campaign 5 - Transform the Deterrent
This campaign is the cornerstone of our continuing support
operations to the U.S. strategic deterrent. Our nuclear safety,
security, control and reliability programs are all integral parts of
our enduring nuclear strategic support mission. Additionally, this
campaign is designed to provide research and development, as well as
operational and technical expertise, to support the COCOMs in holding
WMD and associated infrastructure and leadership at risk through
offensive means. The goals are to provide the COCOMs the capability to
identify, characterize, plan, interdict, target, execute, and assess
any WMD-related target; and to have all offensive options, to include
conventional, unconventional, and nuclear capabilities to dissuade,
deter, and defeat potential adversaries. For example, we have several
efforts underway to defeat hard and deeply buried targets, beyond the
HTRAC which I previously mentioned, including the development of the
Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) which will greatly improve our
conventional hard target defeat capability; and, target assessment
capabilities including expanded reliance upon advanced modeling and
simulation. In August 2007, at the request of the U.S. Central Command
Air Forces, a team of DTRA personnel was sent to the Tora Bora region
of Afghanistan to perform assessments at several cave sites that had
been bombed by the U.S. The technical information gained by this team
has advanced our understanding of the effectiveness of our weapons
against such important targets. DTRA also supports the U.S. nuclear
deterrent by providing tools for hardening critical systems against
nuclear weapons effects and providing support to the STRATCOM nuclear
planning mission. We also provide OSD and the Joint Staff with an
independent assessment of nuclear weapons capable units, and provide
assurance that Personnel Reliability Programs are properly managed at
the nuclear-capable COCOMs. Through the Mighty Guardian Force-on-Force
test series, we evaluate nuclear security policy. We have developed and
fielded the Defense Integration and Management of Nuclear Data Services
program that provides a DOD-wide stockpile database system of record
for nuclear weapons in DOD custody.
Campaign 6 - Business Excellence
Our Business Excellence campaign supports DTRA in its mission
through timely, effective, efficient, and productive business
processes; globally available secure information 24/7; and a diverse,
agile, and highly competent workforce. It is improving, simplifying,
and automating business processes, resulting in greater customer
service and increased capabilities; providing state-of-the-art
information operations support to accomplish mission execution; and
creating robust human capital strategic planning; establishing
effective recruiting, retention, and rewards programs; and facilitating
dynamic career development. Recent accomplishments include the first
successful Agency-wide transition to the National Security Personnel
System; implementation of the Defense Travel System which has resulted
in employee reimbursement of travel costs in as little as 3 days; and
electronic transaction of invoices between vendors, DTRA, and the
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Through these accomplishments,
DTRA has improved business practices enabling realignment of existing
resources to support core mission activities, enhanced responsiveness
to external seniors, partners, and customers, and improved management
visibility and control of agency resources.
Campaign X - Defeat the Threat of Loose Nuclear Weapons
This campaign specifically responds to the challenge posed by
potential WMD nuclear terrorism as outlined in the National Security
Strategy and the National Strategy to Combat Terrorism. Key elements of
this campaign include partnerships with intelligence agencies to
advance warfighters' WMD knowledge base; detection of nuclear weapons
and fissile material at stand-off ranges; establishment of a post-
detonation technical forensics capability that more quickly
characterizes fissionable materials; and providing decision makers with
a spectrum of elimination options that will secure loose nuclear
weapons while eliminating potential consequences. DTRA also performs
the DOD mission of providing radiological sampling and analysis
capability in support of post-nuclear detonation attribution and
forensics as part of the National Technical Nuclear Forensics (NTNF)
program. In 2007, DTRA developed forensics tactics, techniques, and
procedures and tested these in four exercises; procured, tested, and
evaluated equipment; and deepened our relationship with our partners
across DOD, and the Departments of Justice (DOJ), DHS, DOS, and Energy
(DOE). We continue to refine NTNF post-detonation TTP and equipment to
improve operational capability, and will participate in an end-to-end
exercise involving all NTNF partner agencies in October 2008.
I will use Campaign X as the context for highlighting some of our
most important advanced CWMD technology development programs. I will
review the DTRA role in defeating loose nuclear weapons, address the
operational and technical challenges, and describe the broad spectrum
approach being taken by DTRA to address this challenge.
DOE provides radiation detection equipment at fixed locations
overseas and DHS has the responsibility for radiation detection at
points of entry into the United States. As such, DHS is the lead for
the ``home game.'' DOD has responsibility for locating and defeating
nuclear weapons in terrorist hands overseas and, therefore, is
responsible for the ``away game.''
DOD must perform this responsibility in a very stressing
environment with unique requirements. For example, while DHS can field
large detectors supported by an existing infrastructure where size,
weight, and portability are not significant design considerations, DOD
may be called upon to look for a terrorist nuclear device anywhere in
the world, in environments such as deserts, mountains, and jungle. This
means that the detectors and other equipment that we need must be
highly portable, self-sustaining light-weight, reliable and accurate,
and capable of being rapidly deployed with a minimal supporting
``footprint.'' Whereas DHS attempts to defeat the threat at
chokepoints, DOD has to search large geographical areas to locate and
then defeat the threat. Therefore, DOD is far more interested in long-
range surveillance, search, and localization, which makes active rather
than passive detection much more attractive. Furthermore, if operating
in sparsely populated areas, health and safety requirements associated
with active detection may be of lesser concern than inside the United
States.
While DOD has unique requirements and needs, it is fully integrated
into the global nuclear defense architecture of the Domestic Nuclear
Defense Organization (DNDO) and we are fully partnered with DNDO and
DOE in developing detection technology. The urgency is great and the
resources are too limited to permit anything other than a fully
integrated national nuclear defense capability that provides protection
in depth from overseas to the homeland.
We see significant operational and technical challenges in
defeating the threat posed by loose nuclear weapons. With regard to
intelligence, we need to enable greater transparency and cooperation
among the players. From the perspectives of detection prior to attack
and forensics after attack, materials cannot now be easily detected and
characterized. If we are unable to physically gain control of the
weapon, our stand-off options for eliminating or neutralizing it while
still in terrorist hands are quite limited and must minimize collateral
damage.
Campaign X integrates technical and operational approaches to
defeating loose nuclear weapons with the goal of fielding ``game
changing'' capabilities that reduce operational constraints, reduce
equipment and personnel requirements, meet detection coverage area,
increase the probability of detection, and permit more rapid search
over a much larger area.
To provide the warfighters an unprecedented level of information
regarding loose nuclear weapons, DTRA is partnering with the IC to
provide enhanced synergy, collaboration, and fusion capabilities;
develop a persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
capability for WMD production, storage, and processing facilities; and
develop associated battle management concepts.
Our key objective for detection is to provide the capability for
locating and tracking nuclear weapons or nuclear materials at stand-off
distances. We are emphasizing active detection technology and
techniques as the critical enabler. Until we can field active
detectors, we are working hard to improve our existing passive
detection capabilities.
With regard to elimination, we are investing in nondestructive
alternatives and nuclear shut-down devices, as well as improved
targeting options for our existing weapons.
Should a terrorist nuclear device be exploded in the U.S., we must
do all we can to prevent follow-on nuclear attacks. DTRA has
responsibility for gathering the samples needed for post-detonation
forensics so that, with additional information, the national leadership
can confidently undertake appropriate responses in a timely manner. In
addition, post-detonation forensics could provide important clues that
will help us in our efforts to head-off follow-on attacks. Therefore,
we are placing a high priority on developing an accurate, rapid, and
reliable capability to characterize post-detonation materials and
prompt data resulting from nuclear and radiological attacks.
Specifically, we are looking at improved personnel protection equipment
for manual collections, as well as prompt sample collection and
evaluation.
In addition, we are developing and will be exercising a national
strategy for loose nuclear weapon scenarios. Our goal is to provide
tactics, techniques, and plans supporting national scenarios and
capabilities. We are partnering with the warfighters to get additional
capabilities integrated into their CWMD plans. In addition, we are
integrating DOD CWMD capabilities with other U.S. agencies to develop
comprehensive action plans for a variety of scenarios.
dtra tomorrow
As we look toward the future, we face several challenges. First,
all the forecasts we have suggest that the future for CWMD will be more
complex, not less. Second, national CWMD expertise is limited and must
be nurtured and revitalized. Third, resources are finite and stretched
thin, not only in DTRA, but among our partners as well. Lastly, our
relationships with our partners must continue to deepen.
I am confident that our campaigns will be influential in guiding us
through these challenges. Our campaigns have already done much to
identify capability gaps, provide meaningful ways of assessing our
progress in filling those gaps, and maximizing the full potential of
the agency and focusing it on achieving enhanced CWMD capabilities.
DOD strategic planning guidance and our campaigns have identified
several areas requiring increased emphasis in the coming years. These
include:
Weapons Effects
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a well-documented
reduction in the U.S nuclear weapon effects enterprise including
expertise, testing, test facilities, basic nuclear physics knowledge,
research and development, modeling and simulation (M&S), and military
training for operations in nuclear environments. DTRA programs in these
areas similarly have been scaled-back. At the same time, the range of
nuclear threat environments and scenarios continues to grow in number
and diversity. DTRA believes that it must transform the way we support
CWMD by developing deeper understanding of the phenomenology and
effects underlying the WMD threat using advance High Performance
Computing (HPC)-based M&S tools, and providing decision support and
courses of action options for our customers. We are looking at three
related focus areas: knowledge development using HPC-based M&S and
validation testing; tools, technologies, and expertise to enable the
survivability of DOD systems in a nuclear environment; and a
comprehensive suite of analytic tools to support warfighter mission
planning and operations in a nuclear environment.
Nuclear Forensics
We believe that improved capabilities are needed for prompt nuclear
effects data collection and analysis, debris sample collection and
field screening measurements, debris analysis to develop novel
approaches and new technologies for more rapid and precise isotopic
measurements, and data evaluation and knowledge management.
Enhanced Combat Support Operations
Combat support operations have become more than simply supporting
just the COCOMs. Due to the nature of the war on terrorism and the CWMD
mission, combat support now requires an interagency approach. In
addition, DOD's Security Cooperation Guidance makes daily operations in
security cooperation activities a vital element of our Nation's
security. Such CWMD-related activities, in concert with those made by
our allies and friends, help shape the regional security in a manner
consistent with our national security objectives. As both a Combat
Support Agency and as the DOD CWMD Agency, DTRA has a unique viewpoint
and expertise that could assist with the development of a comprehensive
organizational approach for expanding combat support operations,
developing regional counterproliferation strategies, expanding the CTR
Program beyond the Former Soviet Union, and enhancing homeland
security.
Collaboration with the Intelligence Community
How can we more effectively support that community in WMD threat
anticipation? What more can we do to assist with the identification of
proliferation pathways and opportunities for interdicting WMD and
related materials and means of delivery?
Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat
While we have worked hard at developing new non-nuclear means, such
as thermobaric warheads and the MOP, for defeating such targets, we
have learned from recent combat assessments in the field that we have
not progressed as much as we had initially believed. In fact, in this
contest, the defense is prevailing and our offensive capabilities are
at risk of falling farther behind. DTRA believes that we can find newer
and innovative non-nuclear ways of holding such targets at risk. Part
of the solution might be through the development of novel weapons based
on advanced energetic principles. We also need to significantly improve
supporting M&S capabilities.
Additional considerations are also influencing our strategic
thinking and planning. For example, do we have the right focus on and
presence in Asia and the Pacific? What will be the combat support
requirements for the new U.S. African Command? How might future arms
control treaties and other such arrangements be different from those of
our historical experience? In what ways will CTR Program Expansion
beyond the Former Soviet Union evolve? How can we provide expanded
assistance for Homeland Defense? How can we develop and retain the next
generation CWMD workforce? These are difficult questions, but ones that
we must squarely address.
conclusion
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, what has taken place
over the past decade regarding the CWMD mission has been significant.
We now have a strategy in place, specific mission direction and
guidance, a network of expanding partnerships, focused research and
operational support, and a sound investment strategy--all underpinned
by the expertise and dedication of our workforce. DTRA and its partners
are steadily increasing the Nation's CWMD capabilities.
We still face challenges. Foremost among them is that the threat
posed by WMD is growing. Second, no single department or organization
has an encompassing solution to the problem. Successfully meeting this
threat requires the full integration and synchronization of national
and international capabilities. This is particularly important since
resources and expertise are limited.
DTRA's fiscal year 2009 budget request represents a balanced
program across all of the agency's mission responsibilities to meet the
challenges facing us. It also represents a balance in satisfying near-
term combating WMD requirements at a high level of performance within
available resources, while identifying and developing capabilities to
meet future challenges. I also request your support of the STRATCOM
mission to combat WMD. Our strategic vision is to make the world safer
from WMD. Our budget and programs are designed with that in mind.
DTRA greatly appreciates the strong support that Congress has
steadily provided over the past decade. We hope that you will join us
in celebrating our 10 years of progress by participating in symposia
and other events that we will host during our 10th anniversary year
celebration. I look forward to working with you in further reducing the
WMD threats facing our Nation.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Doctor.
General Reeves? Again, you can summarize, but don't feel
constrained by the clock.
STATEMENT OF MG STEPHEN V. REEVES, USA, JOINT PROGRAM EXECUTIVE
OFFICER FOR CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL DEFENSE, DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE
General Reeves. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am honored to
testify today on behalf of the DOD chemical/biological defense
program, the United States Army as the program's executive
agent, and as the JPEO/CBD.
As requested, I will summarize my remarks. On a daily
basis, we are asked to do three things in this program. First
is support for the force in current operations. Second is to
improve our fielded capability. The third thing is to build for
the future.
It is the rapid pace that Dr. Tegnelia referred to of
chemical and biological technology development and,
unfortunately, its proliferation in the information age and the
globalization of that technology and expertise that tends to
broaden our threat context today. This is going to make
uncertainty the defining characteristic of the present and
future environment. So we now have to prepare our forces for a
much broader array of threats, including toxic industrial
chemicals and materials, while also preparing for future
threats.
To counter that existing threat, in the past year, we have
fielded over 1.2 million individual items of equipment, and you
saw some of the examples of that equipment today in this room.
In coordination with the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), we have provided anthrax and smallpox vaccines
to both our warfighters as well as to the U.S. Strategic
National Stockpile.
We have also strengthened our partnerships over the last 5
years with Federal, State, and local agencies to ensure our
military installations are prepared to mutually support and
interoperate in the civilian communities in which they reside.
We fielded critical incident response and protection
capabilities in support of the National Guard as well as the
U.S. Army Reserve.
As we look to the future, our goal is to ensure that we are
never technologically surprised. Again, as Dr. Tegnelia alluded
to, it is the emerging sciences of genomics and proteomics, and
the tools of genetic engineering that are not only creating
great opportunities for us, but also the potential for our
adversaries to develop new and previously unknown toxins,
viruses, and bacterias.
So we are working with nano biological information and
cognitive technologies to develop a broad spectrum capability
needed to counter these uncertain advanced threats. For
example, we are leveraging information in biotechnology
developments that are enabling us to develop capabilities for
rapid identification and the genetic sequencing of unknown
threats and the creation of a broad spectrum therapeutic
countermeasure that we refer to as the Transformation Medical
Technology Initiative.
We also have multiple interagency and international
partners. For example, in the physical sciences, we work
collaboratively with DARPA and the DHS. In pharmaceutical
development, we work very closely with the HHS.
Even with this progress, challenges remain. Stand-off
identification of chemical and biological agents, developing
detection protection and decontaminant capabilities for all
hazards, common test and performance standards across our
agencies and our operations, and toxic industrial chemicals and
the unique atmospheric conditions in an urban environment for
chemical, biological, and radiological protection.
Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Dole, I do want to thank you for
allowing me to testify today. Your continued support to the
chem/bio defense program is crucial for our military and for
our Nation to succeed in defeating WMD. We fully recognize that
even the smallest use of these weapons can create an
environment of instability, doubt, and fear among our allies
and citizens at home, and we believe we are fielding equipment
and pharmaceuticals for our Armed Forces and deploying
interoperable systems at our installations worldwide to address
this threat.
We are in the process of developing broad spectrum
technologies to counter the evolving threat, and we are working
closely with our interagency partners to defend the Homeland.
With your guidance and assistance, we believe together we are
bringing future technologies forward to protect our military
and the Nation against chemical, biological, radiological, and
nuclear threats.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of General Reeves follows:]
Prepared Statement by MG Stephen V. Reeves, USA
1. introduction
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am
honored to testify on behalf of the Department of Defense (DOD)
Chemical and Biological Defense Program (CBDP), the U.S. Army as the
Program's Executive Agent, and as the Joint Program Executive Officer
for Chemical and Biological Defense (JPEO CBD) regarding technologies
to combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
As stated in the 2008 Army Posture Statement, persistent conflict
and change characterize our strategic environment. We will confront
highly adaptive and intelligent adversaries who exploit technology,
information and cultural differences to threaten the interests of the
United States. While advances in technology are benefiting people all
over the world, extremists are exploiting that same technology to
manipulate perceptions, export terror and recruit the people who feel
disenfranchised or threatened by its effects. The diffusion and
increasing availability of technology increases the potential of
catastrophic nuclear, biological and chemical attacks. Many terrorist
groups and organizations are assessed to be actively seeking WMD.
Today I will address how we in the CBDP do three things to minimize
the impact of nuclear, biological and chemical attacks; we support the
Force and ongoing operations, we field improved capabilities and we
build for the future. My testimony today will touch on all three of
these missions from the perspective of the challenges posed by the
evolving WMD threat. Additionally, I will discuss how we are
collaborating with others to harness the technologies necessary to
generate capabilities for mitigating that threat. First, however, I
will briefly describe the CBDP.
Public Law 103-160 Establishes the CBDP
Enacted by Congress in 1994, Public Law 103-160 designated the
Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical and
Biological Defense Programs as the focal point for oversight of the
CBDP, and it designated the U.S. Army as the DOD Executive Agent for
certain key aspects of the CBDP. It also consolidated all chemical and
biological warfare defense training activities of the DOD at the U.S.
Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear School.
The Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical
and Biological Defense Programs is responsible for overall coordination
and integration of the CBDP and exercises oversight through a Defense
Acquisition Board process.
The U.S. Army, as the CBDP Executive Agent for the DOD coordinates
and integrates research, development, test and evaluation, and
acquisition requirements of the military departments for chemical and
biological warfare defense programs.
The CBDP and the National Military Strategies
Today our Armed Forces execute a wide range of missions from
traditional combat to homeland defense, civil support, installation
protection and consequence management to special operations,
counterterrorism, security and police actions. Our CBDP strategic
context incorporates the guidance from multiple national and military
strategies. Our CBDP strategic context reflects the potential for
layered missions and tasks, operations in and from forward areas, and
maintenance of capabilities and forces to wage multiple campaigns in a
given timeframe.
The National Strategy to Combat WMD established the three pillars
of our national strategy. The pillars; nonproliferation,
counterproliferation, and consequence management, and their four
crosscutting enabling functions form the foundation of a seamless
layered defense. The 2006 National Military Strategy to Combat WMD
supports the national strategy and provides to the Services, combatant
commands, and military planners a strategic framework for combating
WMD. In accordance with this strategy DOD seeks to ``dissuade, deter,
and defeat those who seek to harm the United States, its allies, and
partners through WMD use or threat of use and, if attacked to mitigate
the effects and restore deterrence.''
Based on this strategic framework, DOD developed a force planning
construct. The CBDP utilizes the DOD force planning construct as the
foundation for identification and analysis of required capabilities to
ensure that operations are unconstrained by chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear effects. This vision brings together
doctrine, organization, training, materiel leadership and education,
personnel, facilities and technology in a manner as to eliminate the
burden currently imposed upon our warfighters by chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear defense equipment.
The CBDP uses the ``operational attributes'' or capability areas of
sense, shield, sustain, and shape as core capabilities in which to
categorize chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear technologies
and capabilities. The CBDP provides technologies and capabilities to
sense chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear hazards, shield
(protect) the force from these hazards, sustain the personnel and
equipment while restoring combat power and recovering from the effects
of the hazards, sense the presence of hazards and shape the chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear environment by enabling the joint
force commander to understand the current and predicted chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear situation. These technologies can
often be directly used or adapted to provide the commanders with the
capabilities required to support various aspects of the five
counterproliferation missions which include; passive defense, offensive
operations, elimination operations, interdiction operations, and active
defense. The use of these sense, shape, shield, and sustain core
capability areas support the active, layered, defense-in-depth that has
been established to dissuade, deter, and defeat those who seek to harm
the United States, its allies, and partners through WMD use or threat
of use.
The CBDP is a critical component of the DOD efforts to support
national and military strategies in combating WMD. During the rest of
my statement, I will focus on how the CBDP is providing the best
chemical and biological defense capabilities in support of these
strategies.
2. the new theory of war
The rapid pace of chemical and biological technology development and
proliferation through the information age, as well as
globalization of technology and expertise has broadened the
threat context
These facts make uncertainty the defining characteristic of the
present and future environment. Where once the capabilities of our
adversaries were generally well understood and their intentions
unclear, we now face quite the reverse situation. The intentions of our
adversaries are clear while their capabilities are more varied and
expanding. Jihadist websites and public statements frequently refer to
``decisive strategic operations with Weapons of Mass Destruction.'' The
July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on ``The Terrorist Threat to
the U.S. Homeland'' concludes that ``Al Qaeda will continue to try to
acquire and employ Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear
material in attacks'' This view was again reinforced by the Director of
National Intelligence as recently as February 5, 2008.
We must now prepare our armed forces for a much broader array of
current threats, including toxic industrial chemicals and materials,
while also preparing for future threats.
For example terrorists may soon be able to cause mass casualties,
or create significant socio-economic impacts, that in the past were
only possible for state-run biological weapons programs. Scientists can
already engineer biological agents to enhance their lethality either
through genetic engineering or other types of manipulations. Given the
exponential growth in the field of biotechnology and global access to
scientific information on the Internet, our vulnerability to this
threat may be closer than we suspect.
Toxic industrial chemicals are present everywhere in the
industrialized world and their availability and toxicity make a potent
combination for use both in areas of conflict abroad and by terrorists
at home. The ongoing efforts of nation-states, terrorists and even
individuals to develop and/or acquire these dangerous agents, weapons
and delivery systems constitute major threats to the safety of our
Nation, our deployed troops, and our allies around the world.
Nation-states pose an additional biological weapons threat, and the
weapons they can produce are potentially more sophisticated, and
therefore more lethal, than those made by terrorists. While fear of
retribution may deter nations from using biological weapons against the
U.S., their covert use may be a different matter. States could attack
the United States or its military installations and avoid retaliation
by posing as terrorists.
The threat from the potential use of biological agents is expected
to increase over the next decade as those countries now believed to
have biological warfare programs, as well as additional states,
terrorist groups and even individuals seek advanced capabilities. There
is an increasing availability of biological warfare-related technology,
materials, information and expertise, and publicity about potential
vulnerabilities. Genetic engineering is just one of a growing number of
biotechnologies that could allow countries to develop agents, such as
modified viruses, that could make detection and diagnosis difficult and
may defeat current protection and treatment protocols. Because of the
dual-use nature of the materials needed to produce biological warfare
agents, any country with the political will and a competent scientific
base could probably produce agents.
The chemical threat is no less real, as demonstrated by the
terrorists that used the traditional chemical warfare agent Sarin in
the Tokyo subway system and in Matsumoto 13 years ago. This threat is
likely to also grow in the coming years for several reasons. The
increased availability of chemical technologies, coupled with the
relative ease of producing some chemical agents, as well as the
potential emergence of advanced/future agents has increased concern
that production and use may become more attractive to states or
terrorist groups in the future.
New adversaries drive new relationships between threats abroad and at
home and a new concept of security for the American citizen
Terrorism threats to the Homeland, to our deployed troops, to our
national security interests, and to our allies are the pre-eminent
challenge we face today. While the use of conventional explosives is
currently the most likely attack scenario, al Qaeda and other terrorist
groups are attempting to acquire chemical, biological, radiological,
and nuclear weapons and materials, and have already demonstrated a
willingness to use them. Indeed, today we are more likely to see an
attack from terrorists using chemical, biological, radiological
materials than from nation-states, as the Intelligence Community
indicates that nearly 40 terrorist organizations, insurgencies, or
cults have used, possessed, or expressed an interest in WMD.
Of the potential terrorist WMD threats facing the United States,
those related to biological substances have evolved the most rapidly
during the past 20 years. Unlike nuclear or chemical weapons, a
biological weapon has already been used to attack the United States, in
the form of the anthrax letter attacks in 2001. This still unsolved
criminal attack killed five people, crippled mail delivery in several
cities, and required decontamination efforts costing more than $1
billion.
The deliberate use of toxic industrial chemicals against people,
territory, or property of the U.S. could produce severe consequences.
Beginning in January 2007, insurgents in Iraq began the use of chlorine
cylinders in improvised explosive devices. While to date these types of
attacks have killed fewer people than conventional suicide bombs, it
marked a new phase in the insurgency and has increased concerns that
non-state actors will use toxic industrial chemicals or conventional
chemical weapons in other countries. The risks to the United States by
terrorist use of toxic industrial chemicals and/or chemical agents are
very real with significant potential to affect public health, critical
infrastructure, the environment, and the economy.
In conclusion, over the past two decades, the global WMD threat has
grown significantly more complex and diverse. It has broadened from a
focus on State threats to one that includes both state and non-state
actors. Additionally, the WMD threat is not limited to a specific
region or type of conflict. The threat, as well as our enemies, is
evolving and therefore our strategy must be flexible and proactive.
3. delivering capabilities now and in the future
Supporting the Force: fielding and logistics support
We rapidly fielded many new capabilities and additional increments
of existing capabilities in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. These
capabilities include toxic industrial chemical detectors, protective
equipment, and decontamination capability; reconnaissance vehicles with
enhanced toxic industrial chemical detection capability, armor and
weapons, and; mobile vehicle inspection systems. We continue to provide
in theater daily support for those systems both through resident
Contractor Logistics Support contact teams and our JPEO CBD Chemical,
Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Information Resource Center which
operates on a 24/7 basis and serves as a single entry point for all
requests for information related to the CBDP. This hot line can be
accessed on line or via telephone by Service personnel throughout the
world.
To counter the existing threat we field equipment and
pharmaceuticals to support our Forces and current operation. In fiscal
year 2007, we fielded equipment and pharmaceuticals in 48 States, 19
countries, and 3 continents. This included nearly 7,000 chemical
detectors, over 200 biological detectors, over 2,000 radiation
detectors, over 8,000 specialized protective suits and over 50 warning
and reporting software systems. In coordination with the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS), we have provided over 2 million doses
of Anthrax vaccine and annually provide over 500,000 doses of Small Pox
vaccine. With delivery of this equipment, previously fielded equipment,
and the associated training and doctrine, the U.S. military can better
operate and succeed in the face of WMD on the battlefield. The CBDP
invests approximately $1 billion a year to field capability and to
develop advanced technologies that will allow us to keep pace with the
threat.
Improving Capabilities: our Research and Development
As we stated earlier, the functional construct the CBDP uses to
combat chemical and biological agents is termed sense, shape, shield,
and sustain. Within those functions are specific capabilities and
technologies such as detection, protection, information systems, and
medical systems. We also field integrated systems such as the
installation protection program and the National Guard Civil Support
teams. I will next discuss highlights of the various technologies being
developed and an assessment of where technology development is
proceeding in each.
Sense Capability
The primary roles of sense capabilities are to provide chemical and
biological detection and facilitate warning of a chemical and
biological event so forces can assume a protective posture and avoid
exposure. This is accomplished by deploying multiple point sensors
upwind of forces and several stand-off sensors to scan wide areas not
monitored by the point sensors. The early warning of potential hazards
is critical to mission success. Without it, forces would be unlikely to
react rapidly enough to avoid exposure. Chemical and biological
detection is also used in restoring operations, consequence management
and medical diagnostics.
Our current detector to address this threat is the automated
chemical agent detector. Next year we will transition to the joint
chemical agent detector which will provide improved detection
capability at half the cost, a tenth of the weight and about one
quarter the size of the automated chemical agent detector. This will
allow chemical early warning detection capability to be fielded to more
troops and integrated onto more platforms improving situational
awareness throughout the DOD. Next year we will also field the joint
service lightweight stand-off chemical agent detector as a sensor on
the Stryker Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical reconnaissance vehicle.
The joint service lightweight stand-off chemical agent detector is the
first on-the-move, automated, passive infrared detector.
We have over 100 joint biological point detection systems in our
inventory. The joint biological point detection system is the first
automated system to routinely monitor the air for biological agents and
provide presumptive identification for up to 10 agents via immuno-assay
tickets. Next year we will field the joint biological stand-off
detection systems, the first biological stand-off detector of its kind
in the world. This detector uses a light detection and ranging system
at two specific wavelengths to detect and classify airborne aerosols.
In response to the expanding number of biological threats, the push
for detection technology to keep pace has led to the development of
multiplex biological assays, the use of high-speed, high-throughput
nucleic acid sequencing, linked with bio-informatics, and integration
of multiple technologies in a micro-electro-mechanical systems
platform. The multiplexed biological assays can provide presumptive
identification for 10 plus agents per assay and is being considered for
the next upgrade into the joint biological point detection systems to
expand the number of detectable biological agents. Nucleic acid
sequencing linked with bio-informatics will have the capability to
assess the potential of an unknown organism to be a threat. This
capability will be the foundation for next generation of biological
detection system with the capability to address emerging and unknown
biological threats. Micro-electro-mechanical systems technology has the
potential to significantly reduce the size and cost of detection
devices across the technological spectrum, and will provide us an
enhanced capability to integrate different technologies into a single
detector or platform.
As the CBDP develops new chemical and biological detectors, and as
the nature of the threat and potential means of attack become harder to
predict, it is necessary to integrate the most advanced capability into
as many platforms and installations as possible. To that end, we have
developed the common chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
sensor interface standards. These standards define the architecture,
common component interconnects, power, connector, and communications
protocol standards and specifications that provide a plug-n-play
capability for sensors and detectors through net-centric operations.
The standards facilitate interoperability with command and control
networks by providing a standard set of extensible commands and reports
for interaction with sensors. They provide timelier sensor and detector
information, improved sensor platform independence, improved sensor
portability, and simplified integration of new sensors. The standards
and specifications language will be used for all future sensor
procurements. The standards are modular to support tailoring by
acquisition programs to incorporate the capabilities they need.
Additional sense capabilities that are scheduled for delivery to
the field are the joint biological tactical detection system (fiscal
year 2011). This is a lightweight system that will enhance force
protection and medical response decision. The system will detect the
presence, provide warning and a presumptive identification, and collect
samples of a biological threat agent.
Detection technologies developed and fielded by the CBDP are
primarily used in the passive defense and consequence management
mission areas of the counterproliferation pillar of the national
strategy to combat WMD. However the core technologies can be adapted or
re-engineered for other missions. For example, the immuno-assay tickets
used in the joint biological point detection system are the same root
technology that the National Guard Civil Support Teams use when
presumptively identifying unknown substances such as anonymous ``white
powder'' incidents for homeland defense. The joint chemical agent
detector chemical detectors used by deployed troops for passive defense
can be used by sailors performing an interdiction operation at sea
searching for chemical weapons, or ground forces securing suspect
chemical facilities.
Shield Capabilities
Shield capabilities provide protection to the force from chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear hazards by preventing or reducing
individual and collective (group) exposure. Shield capabilities are
aligned within two areas, individual and collective protection. While
shield capabilities also include those chemical and biological medical
systems technologies that provide approved pretreatments (prophylaxis)
for the warfighter we will speak to all medical systems within the
``sustain'' capability area.
This year we will begin fielding to all of the Services the joint
service general purpose mask. This mask provides enhanced protection
capabilities and reduced breathing resistance. We have also begun
fielding enhanced boots, gloves, and a mask leakage detector to our
forces as part of our strategy to incrementally enhance individual
protection capabilities. Additional shield systems that are scheduled
for future delivery to the field include both fixed wing and rotary
wing variants of the joint service aircrew mask.
The unpredictable nature of the evolving threat drives our vision
toward embedding a level of chemical, biological and radiological
protection into our forces' standard combat uniform or tent materials
without degrading their ability to operate. At the same time, we must
provide protection against a wider range of threats tailored to
specific user communities which optimize human performance and reduce
logistical impacts. Technological advances provide an opportunity to
revolutionize our future approach to individual and collective
protective equipment by providing a modular family of systems. These
technological advances are coming from both industry and government
research and development efforts. Technological solutions, such as
imbedded reactive materials and nanofibers, are ready now for further
refinement and development into a joint combat ensemble (family of
systems) that optimizes and enhances protection while meeting the
diverse needs of the ground, mounted, air, and special operating
forces.
A number of new technologies offer considerable opportunities for
achieving integrated low-burden protection against a broadening threat
spectrum without compromising needed performance. One of the most
exciting areas is reticular chemistry, which is described as ``the
linking of molecular building blocks of synthetic and biological origin
into a predetermined structure using strong bonds.'' The most well
known class of these materials is metal organic frameworks which have
already exhibited absorbency potentials that far exceed activated
carbon, and are currently being manufactured in commercial quantities.
These compounds can be tailored to target specific classes of chemicals
that include the high volatility toxic industrial chemicals which limit
the performance of current technologies. Such compounds can be used to
design smaller and lower-profile filters for protective masks and
collective protection systems that protect against the expanding
spectrum of threats. Smaller and lower profile filters decrease weight
and reduce interference of the respirator or protective shelter filter
systems with other mission systems. Another promising area has been the
development of nanofibers. It may soon be possible to produce
particulate filters for protective masks with order-of-magnitude lower
pressure drop, and high efficiency particulate filtration capabilities
that can be built into the clothing. Additional developing technologies
will make it possible to assemble these fibers into nano-composites
that will enable built-in adsorption, reactive, anti-microbial and
sensing capabilities into a thin coating. This could revolutionize
protective clothing and collective protection and produce
unconventional and extremely low burden approaches to respiratory
protection.
Shape Capabilities
Shape capabilities enhance the commander's situational awareness on
the battlefield. These capabilities are the heart of the layered,
integrated, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense
model. There are three capabilities that are being developed and
fielded; a warning and reporting capability, a hazard prediction model,
and an operational effects model.
We have fielded approximately 50 Block 1 versions of the joint
warning and reporting network software that enable warfighters to
seamlessly integrate chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
sensor data into a common command node. We are in the development phase
of the next joint warning and reporting network increment that will
integrate into more Service command and control systems, provide
additional networking capability, and interface with additional
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear sensors.
Near the end of this fiscal year, we will field the joint effects
model. This model will provide warfighters with the DOD accredited
modeling capability to predict high-fidelity, downwind hazard areas and
effects associated with the release of chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear, and toxic industrial hazards into the
environment. The model also incorporates the impacts of weather,
terrain and material interactions into the downwind prediction and
provides enhanced situational awareness of the battle space.
Also in development is the joint operational effects federation
that will enable warfighters and planners to estimate chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear, and toxic industrial material
effects on personnel, equipment, and operations. The joint operational
effects federation will enable the conduct of defensive planning to
minimize or eliminate the threats and carry out effective consequence
management in response to contamination when it occurs. The joint
operational effects federation is expected to begin fielding in fiscal
year 2009.
We are leveraging the advances that we have made in developing
these capabilities to perform consequence management. These activities
include developing modeling and simulation software to assist planners
in estimating the potential human casualty that might result from a
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear attack. Our research
has lead to the building of advanced software tools that allow the
simulation of the hazard environments posed by WMD across a broad array
of scenarios. These scenarios include both military operations and
homeland defense scenarios that encompass high altitude missile
intercepts, urban environments, building interiors, military
installations, coastal and littoral, as well as a variety of military
operational settings. We are also investing in the development of a
sensor data fusion capability to allow the fusion of information and
data from diverse detectors and sources to provide the warfighter with
a more refined common operating picture of the battlespace with respect
to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons.
Sustain Capabilities
Sustain capabilities include decontamination capabilities and
medical capabilities. Decontamination technologies remove and
neutralize contamination and detoxify contaminated material without
damaging combat equipment, personnel, or the environment. Chemical and
biological medical capabilities include both prophylactics
(pretreatments) and therapeutics (treatments).
We have many challenges in this area; to include an ``all-hazards''
decontaminant that places a minimum logistic burden on the operational
forces. Technology advances in neutralization technologies such as
those found in the reactive skin decontamination lotion, which we will
field this year under the joint service personnel/skin decontamination
program, have resulted in a significant (up to 15,000 percent)
improvement in our ability to provide a skin decontamination capability
against future threat agents. We continue to look at technologies that
provide coatings, catalysts, and other means to reduce the logistics
burden, manpower requirements, and lost operational capability
associated with decontamination operations. Our decontamination science
and technology efforts are focused in five areas: 1) decontamination-
enabling sciences: 2) traditional approaches to decontamination: 3)
energetic and kinetic decontamination: 4) smart system decontamination:
and 5) self-detoxification processes.
Developing and fielding new chemical and biological medical systems
technologies provides Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved
prophylaxis, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear medical systems include all pharmaceuticals,
biologics, and devices that preserve combat effectiveness by timely
identification, diagnosis, and providing medical countermeasures in
response to joint service chemical, biological, radiological, and
nuclear defense requirements. The program is developing safe,
effective, and affordable medical countermeasures to ensure the
effectiveness and survival of U.S. warfighters against validated
military threats in a chemical and/or biological warfare environment by
maintaining uncontested global supremacy in the development and
delivery of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear medical
countermeasures. Developing and acquiring new medical chemical and
biological technologies and products entails using government and
commercial best practices to obtain FDA-approval of chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear medical countermeasures and
diagnostics within benchmark timelines. These best practices have
helped keep 80 percent of chemical and biological medical products
(approved or in development) on track in terms of safety and
effectiveness. This success rate is exemplary when compared to the 10-
20 percent of products that achieve FDA approval within the industry
benchmark.
Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear medical systems
technology development is continuously advanced through focus on
partnering with the science and technology base, international
partners, and industry to reduce technical and cost risks, to ensure
regulatory compliance, and to align transition opportunities with
capability gaps. For example, the CBDP is working with the Defense
Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to shorten development time
and decrease the costs of vaccine development. We are collaborating
with HHS to form a joint national stockpile for fielded products and
continued cooperation on numerous developmental products. A joint
stockpile currently exists for the smallpox vaccine and one is being
developed for the anthrax vaccine.
One of our major initiatives in the area of chemical and biological
medical therapeutics is the Transformation Medical Technology
Initiative, which we will address in our ongoing CBDP initiatives to
build for the future.
Improving Capabilities: Dual Use (Military and Civil) and Multi-Use
(across the spectrum of WMD operations) capabilities can
mitigate the new threat relationships and the new concept of
security
Given a common threat to both the U.S. military and the Homeland,
the same basic technologies provide useful increments of capability.
The difference is a matter of engineering to ruggedize, ensure
interoperability, and other environmental and mission attributes.
However, this area poses significant challenges. Among them is the
absence of many national standards for detection and other
capabilities. There are dual standards (one for civil and one for
military) for items such as protective equipment. In addition to the
need to create synchronized standards of performance, another area that
poses a challenge are the differences in test capabilities and
methodologies that frequently exist between a national standard, such
as those established by the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health for respiratory protection, or those established by the
National Fire Protection Association for percutaneous protection, and
the existing military standards and test methodologies.
Two of the ways DOD has worked to address this challenge is the
nonstandard equipment review panel, a process we have set up to apply
in cases where national standards do not exist, and our work with the
Office of Federal Procurement Policy to establish a policy that
facilitates DOD selling equipment and services developed for the DOD to
State and local community first responders. In the case of national
standards, in the long-term we are working through organizations such
as the interagency board for equipment standardization and
interoperability to ensure standards are created where they do not
exist and are synchronized where they conflict. This board is designed
to establish and coordinate local, State, and Federal standardization,
interoperability, compatibility, and responder health and safety to
prepare for and respond to any incident by identifying requirements for
an all-hazards incident response capability.
In a similar effort we are also working directly with the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop integrated process and
procedures for the Biowatch program, to include common reporting
protocols and the integration of Biowatch collection and detection into
our operational networks.
As previously described, we are making progress in the development
of dual use technologies in areas such as detection with our joint
biological point detection system and the joint chemical agent detector
systems.
DOD has also procured and employed numerous commercial technologies
to significantly augment operational military capabilities. These
include chemical detection and identification, biological detection and
identification, radiological, and nuclear detection systems, individual
protection, decontamination and information management, and warning. We
have ongoing efforts to address communications and interoperability. By
leveraging open architecture design and web based communications
systems we are improving the ability for military and civilian first
responders to communicate and to interoperate.
Improving Capabilities: Military-Civil Integration can mitigate the new
threat relationships and the new concept of security
A significant example of both the promise and challenges inherent
in the integration of military and civil capabilities is the
installation protection program. A key component of our support to the
national security strategy of the United States in defeating WMD is
ensuring that we can both protect and project our military forces.
Furthermore, our homeland defense strategy calls for military support
to civilian authorities. Both of these missions begin here at home. To
accomplish this we must strengthen partnerships with Federal, State,
and local agencies to ensure that our military installations are
equipped to both protect the force and support surrounding civilian
communities.
To protect our installations from WMD, we have applied a tiered
concept to ensure appropriate and scalable level of response capability
at each of our military installations. All installations receive at
least a baseline tier of protection, which consists of a set of
training products, planning guidance, exercise scenarios, and templates
for developing exercises and mutual aid agreements. We facilitate the
installation's coordination, and support to with their civilian
counterparts by providing them with the guidance necessary to improve
communication and information sharing through memorandums of agreement.
Such baseline resources are available to all military installations via
the Installation Protection Program web-based portal.
The next level of protection, known as Tier 1, includes government
and commercial off-the-shelf emergency response equipment such as
protective suits, pharmaceuticals and breathing apparatus for first
responders, as well as portable detection equipment, decision support
tools, and mass notification and warning capabilities in addition to
all baseline tier capabilities. The final level of protection, Tier 2,
builds on the baseline and Tier 1 capabilities, and includes an
enhanced decision support system, fixed sensors for chemical,
biological and radiological detection, and protection for mission
critical facilities.
Our approach for ensuring interoperability and military support to
civilian authorities was developed from the 2006 Chemical, Biological,
Radiological, Nuclear and High-yield Explosives Installation Protection
Study sponsored by the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for
Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs and the Joint
Requirements Office. This study highlighted the complexities of a
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear response, identified
interoperability gaps, and reinforced the inherent co-dependency of
installations and the civilian community on the assets and capabilities
of both.
To address the gaps identified within the study, we established the
Installation Protection Steering Group. This group is charged with
overseeing efforts to develop and/or clarify installation protection
standards, transitioning DOD from a previously limited focus to an all-
hazards approach. This holistic approach is consistent with civilian
emergency preparedness and management efforts and will provide for a
more unified response to a wide range of natural and man-made threats.
In addition, through our partnership with the DHS and the
relationships we continue to foster with each of the Services, we have
participated in efforts to leverage existing civilian capabilities such
as those provided by the BioWatch Program and the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office.
In 2007, we collaborated with BioWatch to collocate DOD and DHS
bio-detection technologies on Andrews Air Force Base. This partnership
resulted in several significant accomplishments:
Enhancing assay equivalency work currently underway
between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and DOD
laboratories;
Developing multi-agency (national and local) concepts
of operations for event notification--the genesis for
developing an expanded concepts of operations for the National
Capital Region; and
Relocating collectors within the National Capitol
Region that seeks to optimize DOD and DHS biomonitoring
capabilities--a strong first step in solidifying the national
biomonitoring architecture.
Using up to 25 DOD installations that have
biodetection capability that provides BioWatch additional
geographic coverage.
In addition, we have developed, procured and fielded critical
incident protection and response capabilities in support of the
National Guard Bureau and the U.S. Army Reserve. We have developed and
fielded the Unified Command Suite to every National Guard WMD Civil
Support Team in the country.
The analytical laboratory system provides enhanced sensitivity and
selectivity in the detection and identification of chemical, biological
and radiological agents or substances. The analytical laboratory system
provides a science-based analysis of potentially hazard samples to gain
and maintain a complete understanding of the contaminated environment.
This is done to support informed decisions by a myriad of possible
agencies over and above the typical incident commander or other
official.
The Unified Command Suite is a self-contained, stand-alone platform
that provides voice and data communication capabilities to the Civil
Support Team Commanders and other agencies. It is the primary means of
reachback communications for the Analytical Laboratory System and the
Civil Support Team's, and acts as a command and control hub to provide
a common operational picture for planning and executing an incident
response. In August 2005, we deployed 13 sets of these systems
throughout Louisiana and Mississippi in support of Hurricane Katrina
recovery and relief efforts and they were critical in establishing
secure, reliable communications links for the recovery and relief
efforts.
Building for the future: Broad spectrum capabilities developed through
Technology Mega Thrusts can mitigate the broadened threat
context
As we look to the future, our goal is to ensure our forces are
never technologically surprised. The rapid advances and convergence
among the technology mega thrust areas of nano, bio, information, and
cognitive technologies can assist us to develop the broad spectrum
capabilities needed to counter the uncertain and advanced threat. Nano-
technology is allowing us to manipulate the fundamental properties of
materials that can be used in protective clothing and masks and develop
sensing elements that distinguish hazards across a broad range of
chemicals. By its very nature, nano-technology will enable the
embedding of this protection and sensing capability into not only
soldiers' uniforms, but also across the range of military platforms.
This integration and proliferation of capability will provide better
overall force protection regardless of where troops are stationed.
Advances in bio-technology are enabling the CBDP to do several
things. First, rapid genetic sequencing is providing the information
necessary to understand the means of pathogenicity. Combined with bio-
informatics, this genomic information will allow for the more rapid
identification of unknown threats and development of therapeutics to
counter these threats. Second, bio-technology combined with improved
understanding of the human immune system enables the creation of broad
spectrum therapeutic countermeasures. The Transformational Medical
Technologies Initiative (TMTI) is our programmatic vehicle to harvest,
develop and field these revolutionary capabilities.
Information and cognitive science developments are enabling the
creation, dissemination, manipulation, and effective use of chemical
and biological information on the battlefield. With the rest of DOD,
the CBDP is migrating to a net-centric operating environment. No longer
will information remain isolated or stovepiped. Commanders at all
echelons will have the information they need regarding the chemical and
biological hazard and the necessary information systems tools to take
the appropriate protective, evasive, and restorative actions necessary.
As the sciences behind these technology mega thrusts converge,
there will be technology developments that are broad-stroke in nature
but more integrated into the capability needs of the operational
forces. Genomic research will target convergence of biotechnologies for
detection, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Likewise, developments in
nanotechnology from various agencies will be leveraged for detection,
protection, and hazard mitigation (decontamination) applications. As
``intelligent'' materials and technologies emerge from these efforts,
the processing of information from nano-scale elements will require a
convergence of research in information management, systems, and
cognition as they relate to human factors in the design of future
countermeasures technologies and for training on the use of these
technologies.
Information and cognitive science developments are enabling the
creation, dissemination, manipulation and effective use of information
on the battlefield. The joint warning and reporting network, joint
effects model and joint operational effects federation of models
provide our commanders both situational awareness and analysis. With
this information our forces are prepared to take the appropriate
protective, evasive, and restorative actions necessary for mission
success.
Building for the future: Setting the stage for rapid capability
development across our capability spectrum can mitigate the
rapid pace of threat development
Rapid advances in biotechnology present not only great
opportunities, but also threats. The emerging sciences of genomics and
proteomics and the tools of genetic engineering create the potential
for our adversaries to develop and use previously unknown viruses,
bacteria and toxins.
The TMTI is a system approach to defending against the
conventional, emerging or genetically engineered biological threats.
The approach is to use platform technologies, such as genetic
sequencing, to accelerate the identification of the specific biological
threat agent, development of broad-spectrum medical countermeasures,
and the production of an effective countermeasure. Each countermeasure
will act against the targeted agent by blocking critical molecular
pathways essential to the success of the agent to affect the host.
While efforts like the TMTI are vital to our effort to lay the
ground work for effective and rapid medical treatment against
biological threats, we are using experimentation to assist us in
rapidly analyzing the promise of new technologies to provide us
capability across the WMD spectrum.
We use experimentation to examine how emerging technologies can be
employed by soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen to enhance their
future chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense
capabilities. The joint combat developer for chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear defense conducts joint limited objective
experiments in order to exploit the technological opportunities that
are identified by the Joint Science and Technology Office, Joint
Requirements Office and the JPEO CBD. Experimentation helps to focus
the developmental efforts of the acquisition program managers through a
better understanding of the warfighter requirements which can
ultimately translate into the acceleration of the acquisition process.
A recent successful example of such an experiment was the joint
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear dismountable
reconnaissance system limited objective experiment which has enabled
the acceleration of the second increment of the joint service nuclear,
biological, and chemical reconnaissance system.
Experimentation helps us to better understand the warfighters needs
and to better define the capabilities that emerging technologies can
provide. To map what capabilities are required against emerging threat
agents the CBDP has formed a working group and a toxic industrial
chemical and toxic industrial material task force. The working group is
the focal point for the coordination, alignment, and synchronization of
advanced/future chemical agent defense capability development for the
CBDP. This group provides integration and management visibility of
efforts and provides a framework and plan-of-action for the capability
development of material solutions to mitigate the effects of advanced/
future chemical agents. The toxic industrial chemical and Toxic
Industrial Material Task Force pulls together subject matter experts
across the CBDP community to develop a standard and prioritized list of
toxic industrial chemical agents for equipment and requirement
development across the WMD defense capability spectrum.
Our test and evaluation capability for future equipment must also
evolve consistent with the evolving threat. We have established a
product director for test equipment strategy and support that, working
in concert with the CBDP Test and Evaluation Executive, is developing
the capabilities we will require to ensure future equipment is safe,
effective and suitable.
Building for the Future: A portfolio approach to the acquisition of
capabilities accelerates the exploitation of technological
opportunities and the generation of new capabilities
Under the direction of the Under Secretary for Defense,
Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, the CBDP is working with
Service and joint Major Defense Acquisition Programs (e.g. Joint Strike
Fighter) to provide a portfolio approach exploiting technologies that
deliver required chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
capabilities. This will ensure the major defense acquisition programs
can accomplish their primary missions unencumbered by chemical or
biological contamination. The uncertain nature of the threat and
potential asymmetric attacks in any area of operation requires that
chemical and biological defense capability be integrated, modular, and
tailorable throughout these programs. This portfolio approach
integrates formally discreet areas of chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear defense capability namely detection,
protection, and decontamination into a system-of-systems. Viewing
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense as a system-of-
systems facilitates the insertion of new technologies and, through
them, the development of new capabilities.
Exploiting chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense
technology opportunities will also facilitate future joint operational
concepts. The joint chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
defense concepts must be based on an integrated system-of-system view
where chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense packages
can be modular, tailored to the mission, environment or situation. The
objective is to provide commanders the flexibility to understand and
act on the common operating picture without degrading operating tempo
or survivability.
The common operating picture should include chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear considerations based on data fused from
multiple chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear sensors and
non-Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear sensor sources.
These sensors should be modular, plug-and-play, and operate in a net-
centric environment, meaning they should be transferable from one
platform to another (e.g. soldiers can move sensors from Stryker
vehicles to Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to Blackhawk
helicopters as required.) Analysis and decision tools which integrate
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear and non-chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear information should enable rapid
decisionmaking at the strategic, tactical, and unit level to protect
the force. The goal is for all of our forces to fight and win in a CBRN
environment.
4. globalizing our technology and expertise
International, Interagency, and Industry collaboration can mitigate the
broadened threat context
The CBDP is actively involved in numerous cooperative efforts in
chemical and biological defense material developments through
bilateral, multilateral, and allied agreements and structures. These
include the Australian, Canadian, United Kingdom, United States
chemical, biological, and radiological memorandum of understanding
activities, North Atlantic Treaty Organization joint consultative group
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear activities, and
bilateral forums with the United Kingdom, Japan, Republic of Korea, and
other countries with advanced development efforts in chemical and
biological defense. These venues link the CBDP to government military
and non-military research, development, and test and evaluation
organizations involved in chemical and biological defense materiel
development efforts. The JPEO CBD participates in the foreign military
sales process to enhance interoperability with our allies, and
cooperative development activities under these programs reduce our
development costs through burden sharing and leveraging of others'
significant investments in chemical and biological defense and increase
our access to the broadest possible spectrum of available chemical and
biological defense technologies.
The CBDP is also beginning to increase its leveraging of existing
DOD and broader United States Government presence throughout the world
as it searches for the best and most advanced technologies to meet its
program requirements. Through more than 34 offices in 21 countries on 6
continents, we maintain awareness of all potentially beneficial foreign
technologies that are available to meet our requirements. Together
these efforts will ensure an ability to identify, assess, develop, and
exploit military and civilian technology and materiel developments in
chemical and biological defense on a global basis.
We have multiple interagency partners. For chemical and biological
programs in the physical sciences, we have nine projects being worked
for the CBDP by the DARPA; the performance standardization projects for
biological sampling methods and polymerase chain reaction assay
equivalency with the Center for Disease Control and the DHS; and the
Biomonitoring Memorandum of Understanding governing development of a
coordinated environmental biological weapon surveillance architecture
with the DHS, United States Postal Service, the HHS, and the
Environmental Protection Agency. .For chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear medical systems we are working with the DARPA
to shorten development time and decrease the costs of vaccine
development, and with HHS to form a Joint National Stockpile for
fielded products and continued collaboration on numerous developmental
products. As previously noted, a joint stockpile currently exists for
the smallpox vaccine and one is being developed for the anthrax
vaccine.
We have contracts with over 100 large and small companies located
across the United States. Industry is a key partner in our efforts both
to exploit technological opportunities and to rapidly field commercial
off-the-shelf capabilities. We work with the joint science and
technology office to regularly incorporate opportunities for industry
to demonstrate their most advanced products within the construct of
Technology Demonstration Assessments and Technology Demonstration
Evaluations.
Federal, State, and local collaboration (Military-Civil Integration)
can mitigate the new threat relationships and the new concept
of security
In additional to our national partnerships with the DHS and other
Federal agencies, we have strengthened our partnerships with other
Federal, state and local agencies ensuring our military installations
are prepared to mutually support and interoperate with the civilian
communities in which they reside. We have already mentioned our
partnership with the BioWatch Program and how that has fostered strong
relationships between local BioWatch decision-makers and their
neighboring military installations. The common alerting protocol allows
a warning message to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over
many warning systems to many applications. Improving information
sharing and management is a critical component our efforts to better
integrate with the local community to ensure a coordinated and
effective response.
We have made steady and significant progress in military-civilian
coordination efforts. Interoperability between DOD and civilian
capabilities are paramount to national security. Our strategy is to
enable and facilitate coordinated preparedness planning activities,
working collaboratively with our civilian counterparts to maximize the
efficiency and effectiveness of both our military and civilian assets.
We must collectively ensure that the capabilities we deploy are not
only adequate, comprehensive and scalable but also complementary and
coordinated, to ensure the protection of our most precious assets, our
military and civilian citizens.
5. challenges
We are facing a long-term threat that poses significant challenges
to our success. I would like to provide details on several key points.
Stand-Off Detection
Stand-off identification of chemical and biological agents remains
a fundamentally difficult problem. We are pursuing several advanced
technologies to improve performance, but stand-off technologies are
unlikely to provide the same fidelity of information that the
technology used in point sensors can. To mitigate this inherent
shortcoming, we are using point and stand-off sensors together,
combining the early warning strength of stand-off detection with the
fidelity of point sensing.
Technology Development for Decontamination
There are a range of technical challenges associated with chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear decontamination. Our warfighters
need decontaminants that are safe for sensitive equipment, do not
require an extensive logistic footprint, able to decontaminate a broad
spectrum of agents, are environmentally safe, and pose no unacceptable
health hazards. New technology developments are required to provide
decontamination systems that effectively clean all surfaces and
materials while simultaneously reducing the manpower and logistics
burden. Especially challenging is a single all-hazard decontamination
solution that eliminates all threats while not damaging materials such
as plastics, fabrics, and composites.
``All-Hazards'' Capabilities
Many factors drive us toward providing our warfighters the full
range of protection, detection and decontamination capabilities against
``all-hazards.'' By ``all-hazards'' I mean that the threat can come
from an adversary's use of traditional chemical warfare agents,
advanced/future chemical agents and biological warfare agents, or even
toxic industrial chemicals. These threats can come from state actors,
terrorists, or the individual. ``All-hazards'' can include the effects
of intentional and unintentional releases of hazardous materials to
include natural disasters. These types of threats can be encountered at
home or abroad and in a hostile or benign environment. All of these
variables significantly challenge our technology requirements.
Synchronization of Information Systems with Service Oriented
Architecture
Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear information systems
are evolving to enable automatic collection and fusion of information
from all chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense assets
throughout the battle space, and integrate that data. A significant
challenge is to integrate relevant information into the Services
information systems and architectures.
Maintaining the Industrial Base Capabilities
The chemical and biological defense industrial base is
characterized as small niche defense-centric sectors embedded in larger
commercially dominant industries such as materials, textiles,
pharmaceuticals, and electronic equipment. The ability to maintain a
healthy industrial base--commercial and organic--capable of responding
to wartime surge requirements is a challenge and we work closely with
our Service partners, the Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense
Management Contract Agency, and others to proactively identify, plan
for, and execute strategies that ensure we maintain vital industrial
base capabilities.
Food and Drug Administration and Bio-surety Regulations
All CBDP medical products, by law, must be FDA approved. The FDA
regulatory process is complex, with increasing development costs and
schedules due to many factors, including: additional studies required
to maintain compliance with FDA regulations, increasing cost of
research tools and increasing clinical trial size and complexity. In
spite of these industry-wide challenges, CBDP medical programs remain
competitive with industry benchmarks in obtaining FDA approval for
medical countermeasures.
Policy for the Selling of DOD Equipment to Civil Authorities
We are working with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to
facilitate the sales of equipment developed for DOD to civil
authorities in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2004.
Common Test and Performance Standards
Common test and performance standards across agencies and
operational areas continue to challenge the efficient use of technology
and impede interoperability. We are working with Federal, State, and
local agencies through the interagency board to develop these common
standards.
Urban Environment
The urban environment contains many unique challenges to providing
WMD protection or consequence management capability. The raw materials
present in any urban environment include a broad array of chemicals, to
include toxic industrial chemicals. The urban environment also has very
localized atmospheric conditions with a great degree of variance across
the urban landscape due to differences in infrastructure height,
density and throughways. We are working to overcome these challenges
with detectors, protective equipment and decontamination equipment that
possess both a conventional warfare agent and a toxic industrial
chemical capability. We are also working to upgrade our decision
support tools to account for the unique atmospheric conditions present
in an urban environment and how those conditions influence the spread
of hazards within that environment.
Funding
Our capability development must keep pace with the rapid advances
in science, which directly influence the scope and structure of threat
agents. To do this we must put adequate funding in place to ensure our
capability matches this fast changing and uncertain environment.
6. summary
Mr. Chairman and distinguished subcommittee members, I would like
to thank you for allowing me to provide this written testimony. Your
continued support of the chemical biological defense program is crucial
for our military and nation to succeed in the face of a chemical or
biological attack. We have been successful in fielding equipment and
pharmaceuticals over the last several years to counter the current
chemical and biological threat. We fully recognize that even the
smallest use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon
can create an environment of instability, doubt and fear among our
allies and citizens at home and we are deploying interoperable systems
at our installations worldwide to address this threat. We are in the
process of developing broad-spectrum technologies that we will
integrate into a system of systems to counter the evolving threat. We
are working closely with our interagency partners to defend the
homeland. With your guidance and assistance, together, we are bringing
future technologies forward to protect our military and the Nation
against the chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threat.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, General.
Dr. Cerveny?
STATEMENT OF DR. T. JAN CERVENY, ASSISTANT DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR
FOR NONPROLIFERATION RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, NATIONAL NUCLEAR
SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Dr. Cerveny. Good afternoon, Chairman Reed, Senator Dole.
I am pleased to be here this afternoon to testify on behalf
of NNSA to your subcommittee on the critical nature of work
underway in NNSA and how we work closely with other executive
branch organizations, many of which are represented in this
hearing room, to advance the nonproliferation objectives of
this Nation.
Acquisition of WMDs by rogue states or terrorists stands as
one of the most potent threats to the United States and
international security. The continued pursuit of nuclear
weapons by terrorists and states of concern underscores the
urgency of NNSA's defense nuclear nonproliferation efforts to
secure vulnerable nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear
materials, to detect and interdict nuclear and radiological
materials and WMD-related equipment, to halt the production of
fissile material, and, ultimately, to dispose of surplus
weapons-usable materials.
Our Office of Nonproliferation R&D supports NNSA
programmatic missions by providing innovative technology and
scientific advice. The core mission of the Office of
Nonproliferation R&D is to develop the next generation of
nuclear nonproliferation sensors and detection capabilities, as
you stated earlier.
We execute our programs through a variety of high-tech
institutions and organizations, such as leading universities,
small businesses, industry, and, most importantly, the U.S.
national laboratories. The laboratories are truly our go-to
guys for unique, cutting-edge R&D, and they play a critical
role in transitioning our technology into operational systems
and platforms.
Our programs focus on providing long-term, stable guidance
and funding for R&D through two primary programmatic offices--
Proliferation Detection, or pre-detonation or pre-boom, and
Nuclear Detonation Detection (NDD), or post-detonation, post-
boom.
Proliferation Detection focuses R&D resources on detection
of foreign production of highly enriched uranium, detection of
foreign production of plutonium, and advancing the state-of-
the-art for detection of illicit movement of enriched uranium
or plutonium or special nuclear materials, as we call them.
These mission areas are supported by enabling technology
development in areas like remote sensing, as in our display,
advanced radiation detection materials, and simulation
algorithms and modeling. Further, we have a robust test and
evaluation program focused on ensuring that new technologies
are suitable for transitioning to our operational partners.
The other office in my area, NDD, the post-boom piece,
provides the operational systems and know-how to detect nuclear
detonations anywhere in the world, 24/7, 365 days, whether they
are underground, in the atmosphere, or in space. NDD also
develops the tools, technologies, and science related to
collecting and analyzing forensic information gathered after a
nuclear detonation in conjunction with the work of DHS and
DTRA.
I would like to turn now to NNSA's longstanding close and
collegial relationship with DOD, specifically the DTRA. I am
pleased to be here testifying with my colleague, Dr. Tegnelia
of DTRA. DTRA and NNSA, as well as our collective predecessor
organizations, have nearly 60 years of close technical
cooperation.
From the earliest days of the Manhattan Project through the
nuclear testing era of the Cold War and into our current
programs to counter the threat of WMD, we have enjoyed a
healthy and continuous set of joint programs. A key premise of
the NNSA nonproliferation R&D program is that research projects
may have many different users, those within NNSA, the DOD
agencies, the military Services, the Director of National
Intelligence (DNI) agencies, and/or DHS agencies.
We concentrate on advancing the fundamental state-of-the-
art in the particular technology area and then pass that
technical capability on to a user for incorporation into a
specific piece of equipment or a specific concept of operation.
In the case of DOD, this often means a close association
not only with the R&D components of the various DOD
organizations, but also with the operational components of DOD.
Turning to our continuing interactions with other
Government agencies, I would like to highlight a four-way
memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NNSA, DTRA, the Domestic
Nuclear Detection Office from DHS, and the DNI's Science and
Technology (S&T) Office, wherein we coordinate our radiation
detection R&D programs. Not only do we review each other's
research proposals jointly, we sit on merit review committees
for each other's programs annually and thus benefit from this
very close collaboration of knowing what each other is doing.
We collectively work to ensure that duplication of effort
across the agencies is minimized. But more importantly, we
bring significantly more resources, emphasis, and senior
attention to bear on the areas critical to national and
homeland security.
All of the projects on our display today that I believe
both of you had the opportunity to see have been either
developed in conjunction with DTRA or with DTRA's DOD customer
set in mind. These projects were consciously focused to meet
operational needs and requirements.
In conclusion, I have provided but a few highlights of our
program and touched upon the collaborative interface and
interactions our program has shared with other Federal
partners. We continue to serve as a primary long-term investor
into nuclear nonproliferation R&D technologies to keep our
national and homeland security operational associates on the
cutting edge.
In summary, I would like to thank the subcommittee for this
opportunity to provide information on the critical nuclear
nonproliferation-related R&D underway at NNSA and the ways we
link this work with partner organizations.
With that said, I am happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cerveny follows:]
Prepared Statement by Dr. T. Jan Cerveny
Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the
subcommittee. I am pleased to be here this afternoon to testify on
behalf of National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to your
subcommittee on the critical nature of the work underway in NNSA and
how we work closely with other executive branch organizations, many of
which are represented in this hearing room, to advance the
nonproliferation objectives of the Nation.
i. introduction
Acquisition of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
and related technologies, equipment and expertise by rogue states or
terrorists stands as one of the most potent threats to the United
States and international security. The continued pursuit of nuclear
weapons by terrorists and states of concern underscores the urgency of
NNSA's efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear weapons and weapons-usable
nuclear materials, to detect and interdict nuclear and radiological
materials and WMD-related equipment, to halt the production of fissile
material, and ultimately, to dispose of surplus weapons-usable
materials.
NNSA supports the nonproliferation goals of the Nation through a
broad collection of programs. The Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation
mission is to detect, secure and dispose of dangerous nuclear and
radiological materials. To implement this mission, the Office of
Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation secures civil nuclear and radiological
materials worldwide; helps to secure Russian nuclear weapons material;
detects and deters illicit international nuclear transfers; strengthens
and works to universalize international nonproliferation efforts;
eliminates weapons-usable material; and conducts cutting-edge research
and development (R&D). Some examples of these programs include removing
or securing nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union; installing
radiation detection monitors and capabilities at major border crossings
and seaports around the world--known as the Second Line of Defense
program; and programs such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative
(GTRI) aimed at removing proliferation-sensitive radioactive sources
both domestically and overseas. Our Office of Nonproliferation R&D
supports the various NNSA programmatic missions by providing innovative
technology and scientific advice.
ii. nonproliferation research and development
The core mission of the Office of Nonproliferation R&D is to
develop the next generation of nuclear nonproliferation sensors and
detection capabilities. We execute our programs through a variety of
high-tech institutions and organizations, such as leading research
universities, small businesses, industry, and, most importantly, the
U.S. National Laboratories.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the National Labs to
the research base for national and homeland security. The National
Laboratory system has provided the critical infrastructure and
technical expertise for Nonproliferation R&D for over a half century.
While we supplement and complement our programs at the National
Laboratories with research at universities, small businesses, and
industry, the Laboratories are truly our ``go to guys'' for unique,
cutting-edge R&D. Additionally, the Labs are critical to the transition
of our technology into partner agency operational systems and
platforms.
The programs of the Office of Nonproliferation R&D focus on
providing long-term, stable guidance and funding to the community of
researchers that provides the core of new nuclear detection
technologies. We accomplish our R&D mission through two primary
programmatic offices: Proliferation Detection and Nuclear Detonation
Detection. The emphasis is on developing the vital technologies to
detect and deter nuclear proliferation, and should detection/deterrence
fail, we stand ready to meet U.S. nuclear detonation detection goals
with technology used to characterize a domestic nuclear attack.
Proliferation Detection Research and Development
The first program, Proliferation Detection, focuses R&D resources
within three primary mission areas. These include: 1) detection of
foreign production of highly enriched uranium, 2) detection of foreign
production of plutonium, and 3) detection of enriched uranium or
plutonium being moved or transported--radiation detection technology
focused on advancing the state-of-the-art to detect illicit movement of
these special nuclear materials. The three mission areas are supported
by ``enabling'' technology development in areas like remote sensing,
advanced radiation detection materials, and simulation, algorithms, and
modeling. Further, the proliferation detection program has a robust
test and evaluation program focused on ensuring that new technologies
are suitable for transitioning to the operational communities.
Undergirding all this work is a final research area focused on creating
a fundamental library of physical features (chemical, radiological, and
spectral) of the ``Signatures and Observables'' expected from any
foreign nuclear production program, which in turn provides a basis for
developing new detector capability through either the mission or
enabling technology research areas.
Nuclear Detonation Detection Research and development
Our second program is Nuclear Detonation Detection. This program
has three primary mission areas: 1) manufacture of the Nation's
operational space-based nuclear detonation detection sensors, which are
integrated onto and operated by the U.S. Air Force on the Nation's GPS
and high altitude space systems; 2) development of the next generation
of the Nation's ground-based nuclear detection capabilities such as
seismic detection, hydroacoustics, and infrasound--again integrated
into and operated by U.S. Air Force components; and 3) development of
the tools, technologies, and science related to collecting and
analyzing the forensic information gathered from a nuclear detonation.
The capabilities of the nuclear detonation detection R&D program are
based upon decades of experience gained through the instrumentation of
the U.S. nuclear testing program. The systems we develop for the Air
Force have been, and continue to be, a major component of the U.S.
ability to monitor the globe on the ground, from the air, and in space,
24x7, 365 days per year for foreign nuclear detonations.
The 2006 North Korean test of a nuclear device provides the most
recent example of the efficacy of the cutting-edge technology we
provide the Air Force for this U.S. program. In this case, the ground-
based mission area of the research program had just delivered a major
analysis software upgrade from Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratories to the Air Force. This new upgrade
enhanced the Air Force's capability for geo-locating and discriminating
an underground nuclear blast using seismic measurements, thus improving
the speed and accuracy of information provided to national decision
makers regarding the location, magnitude, and type of nuclear test.
iii. coordination with dod and other federal agencies
I would like to turn now to NNSA's longstanding, close, and
collegial relationship with the Department of Defense, specifically the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). I am pleased to be here
testifying with Dr. Tegnelia. DTRA and NNSA, as well as our collective
predecessor organizations, have nearly 60 years of close technical
cooperation. From the earliest days of the Manhattan Project, through
the nuclear testing era of the Cold War, and into our current programs
to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile and counter the threat of
nuclear proliferation, we have enjoyed a healthy and continuous set of
joint programs. I will concentrate specifically on R&D programs devoted
to nuclear nonproliferation.
A key premise of the NNSA Nonproliferation R&D program is that the
ultimate outcome of any research project may have many different
users--those within NNSA, the Department of Defense (DOD) agencies, the
Military Services, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
agencies, and/or the Department of Homeland Security agencies.
Therefore, we concentrate on advancing the fundamental state-of-the-art
in a particular technology area, and then pass that technical
capability on to a user for incorporation into a specific piece of
equipment or concept of operation that complements their mission. In
the case of DOD, this often means a close association with not only the
R&D components of the various DOD organizations, but also with the
operational components of DOD.
It is not uncommon for the scientists and engineers from our
programs at the national laboratories to be testing new equipment at
locations and in conditions that are not ``ideal'' from a lab bench
researcher's perspective. A recent example includes several researchers
from Los Alamos National Laboratory conducting validation experiments
of a low-light imaging camera in the tropical jungles of Central
America, while accompanying a military unit. This new technology has
the potential, along with other possible uses, to track movement
beneath the thick jungle canopy throughout the equatorial regions of
the world. While this technology was developed primarily for
discovering or tracking the movement of nuclear proliferation
activities, it could potentially be used for counternarcotic or
counterterrorism operations. I mention this specific example because it
illustrates the collaborative relationship we in the NNSA
Nonproliferation R&D office share with our partners to link our
research to real world needs, such as the larger DOD. The camera is on
display in the back of the hearing room.
iv. interagency collaboration
Turning to our continuing interactions with other government
agencies, I'd like to highlight some of our collaborative efforts in
advancing the Nation's capabilities to detect nuclear material. NNSA,
under a Memorandum of Agreement with DTRA, the Department of Homeland
Security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), and the DNI's
Science and Technology Office, has integrated our R&D programs devoted
to radiation detection. Not only do we review research proposals
jointly, we sit on the merit review committees for each agency's
programs, and thus benefit from this close collaboration. We
collectively work to ensure that duplication of effort across agencies
is minimized, but, more importantly, bring significantly more
resources, emphasis, and senior attention to bear on areas critical to
national security.
Our long-term R&D program funds a wide array of cutting-edge
technologies. I have select examples of radiation detection R&D and
technologies under development on display in the back of the hearing
room. In particular, we have one on display that we share with DTRA. We
are presenting a video of the technology on a laptop, while DTRA is
displaying the hardware for the Airborne Radiological Debris Collection
System (ARCS) developed by Sandia National Laboratories. This smaller,
lighter, lower power technology collects particulate debris from an
airborne platform (manned or unmanned) to bring back for analysis. It
provides significantly improved capability over current bulky, heavy,
higher power debris collection systems. Since it's integrated into a
pod, it more flexibly accommodates multiple deployment platforms.
All of the projects in our display have been either developed in
conjunction with DTRA, or with DTRA's DOD customer set in mind, and
consciously focused to meet operational needs and requirements.
v. other technology examples
I would like to draw your attention to another project that has
significant potential in the proliferation detection realm. Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is developing a new type of hand-
held radiation detector called the Pixilated Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride
Detector. This detector uses a small group of crystals ganged together
in an array to provide nuclear direction finding and identification
capabilities not currently seen in commercial or military equipment.
This technique of combining small, high purity crystals into an array
was developed to overcome the problems of larger crystals cracking or
containing inclusions that significantly impair their detection
capabilities.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory created the R&D 100 Award--
winning technology called the Sonoma Persistent Surveillance System,
which offers the first integrated, broad-area, high-resolution, real-
time motion tracking system for surveillance applications. Sonoma is
unique in its ability to provide continuous, real-time video of an area
the size of a small city with resolutions sufficient to track up to
8,000 moving objects for applications such as monitoring traffic,
special events, border security, and harbors. Sonoma's novel imaging
technologies and real-time processing have generated numerous
government program spin-offs, and initial capabilities have been
transferred directly to other government partners. During the past
year, there have been several inquiries about technology transfer and
the potential commercialization of the Sonoma system and its associated
technologies, since it is expected to cost about one-tenth the price of
comparably sized tracking systems.
vi. conclusion
I have provided but a few highlights of our program and touched
upon the collaborative interface and interactions our program has
shared with DTRA and our other Federal partners. We continue to serve
as a primary long-term investor into nonproliferation R&D technologies
to keep our national and homeland security operational associates on
the cutting-edge.
In summary, I would like to thank the committee for this
opportunity to provide information on the critical nuclear
nonproliferation-related R&D underway at NNSA and the ways that we link
this work with partner organizations. I look forward to answering any
of your questions.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Dr. Cerveny.
I want to thank the witnesses for their excellent
testimony. I also want to thank all of your colleagues, some
that are here today and some that are across the globe, for the
work they do. Not only are they employees of DOD and DOE, but
also civilian contractors who work with you. They provide
extraordinary advantage to us as we confront these serious
problems.
I would like to ask a few questions, then recognize my
colleague. I would assume also the opportunity to do a second
round, too. It was excellent testimony. You have laid out
several serious challenges, and I just wonder if each of you
could respond because of your experience. What is the issue
that causes you most concern? Some have already highlighted in
your initial remarks, but you might want to emphasize it or
provide additional perspective.
Also if you were to advise this subcommittee, which, in
fact, you are, what should we focus on? What should we be
making sure gets done throughout the research structure? Dr.
Tegnelia?
Dr. Tegnelia. There is this question, which is usually
asked of our leaders: what keeps you up at night or what is
your worst nightmare? I would second the thought, as I
indicated in my testimony, that it is a loose nuclear weapon in
a city in the United States. I would just suggest that. I think
that is today's current problem.
I just would reiterate, I think you have heard testimony on
this before, that the expansion of the Nunn-Lugar program to
help prevent that kind of danger is maybe the most important
function that we are performing today.
For the future, I think the problem that General Reeves and
I discussed, which is the advancing of biological sciences and
the potential for advanced biological threats is the threat of
the future.
Again, I would suggest to you that in addition to R&D, you
have heard some ideas, I think, in testimony about the idea of
expanding Nunn-Lugar to be able to do worldwide prevention of
these kinds of problems, and the idea of migrating biological
defense tools worldwide, I think, would be a very valuable
thing.
So, in summary, today it is the nuclear problem, and
tomorrow, it could be the biological problem.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Major General Reeves?
General Reeves. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would certainly second for the future threat what Dr.
Tegnelia just mentioned. It is the biological threat that
potentially concerns us the most. As you may know, 4 years ago,
a university in New York, simply by ordering strands of
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) on the Internet, put together a
polio virus. Just a few weeks ago, a California firm announced
that they had created the first synthetic bacteria.
Things that are being done today in high schools, in
colleges just a few years ago were only done by post-doctorate
students. That is how fast the biological sciences are
advancing, and so that certainly concerns us the most.
In the near-term, our experience with the terrorist threat
in DOD is that it is strategically sophisticated, but
tactically very simple. They use what is available, and what is
most predominantly available are toxic industrial chemicals. I
know Congress is currently taking action on securing the U.S.
chemical industry, and I certainly applaud those actions.
As we look at where we need to do additional research,
particularly in understanding the performance of these toxic
industrial chemicals to protect our force is where we are
focusing some of our efforts. Let me just give you a very
simple example.
Many of the models you have seen that show what happens
when a chemical starts to proliferate through an urban area or
over open terrain simply models that chemical. Take something
like boron trifluoride, which is a common chemical that is used
in the semiconductor industry.
When that chemical hits the air, it changes. It changes
into hydrogen chloride. It changes into an acid. Models don't
accommodate for those changes. It has different performance
characteristics. So we need to go through literally our entire
inventory of equipment to look at how do we deal with those
threats, and how do we provide immediate and near-term
protection for our force?
Senator Reed. Thank you. I want to ask the same question of
Dr. Cerveny. But if I may follow up, essentially, the
barriers--as you have said, to entry to the biological business
are much lower than the nuclear business.
General Reeves. Yes, sir.
Senator Reed. The model and the mindset we have applied to
nuclear deterrence and nuclear nonproliferation might not be
adequate because, again, it seems everybody can get in this
business of biological or chemicals, and it raises the question
of even if we are innovative and improvise very well, can we
keep up?
You might comment, then I will recognize Dr. Cerveny. Do
you have a sense--this is a different dynamic than the nuclear
situation?
General Reeves. It certainly is, and I think what you have
to do is look at how do you go about developing the tools for
rapid broad-based identification of these threats. That is
exactly where we are focusing our efforts right now. We are
focusing them on things like genetic sequencing and bio
informatics.
How do we leverage the mega technologies of information
technology and biotechnology to, first, develop a platform so
that we can identify what is going on? Second, you have to
develop a very rapid means of developing a countermeasure and
then ultimately producing that countermeasure.
That is a lot of what the TMTI is all about, is the
identification and having prepositioned, if you will, platform
technologies that we can rapidly build on to develop
countermeasures and, with our partners in DARPA, developing the
manufacturing capabilities to rapidly produce the
countermeasure.
Senator Reed. Thank you, General Reeves.
Dr. Cerveny, the larger question was, as Dr. Tegnelia said,
what keeps you up at night?
Dr. Cerveny. The concerns that I have, have to do with the
three major missions that we have to ensure that we can try to
accomplish them. One is to look at the nuclear fuel cycle and
try to find those who may be trying to proliferate. That is a
big issue for us.
In addition, if we miss that and it does get into a weapon
system, we want to be able to find that weapon system. Then,
God forbid, it should go to the end and a nuclear weapon that
is already full-up gets stolen and detonated somewhere. We want
to be able to do the aftermath, detection of what is going on,
to be able to do all the forensics associated with that. So
those are my three major areas of concern.
Senator Reed. Following up on that, Dr. Cerveny and Dr.
Tegnelia, the National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-
17 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-4
assigned nuclear forensic and attribution responsibilities
across the executive branch. Could you comment on essentially
your responsibilities and how this is proceeding, the
coordination process? If you could start, Dr. Cerveny?
Dr. Cerveny. I am doing some of the research at the front
end. So I have transitioned that both to DTRA as well as to the
FBI as well as DOD and/or other components of DHS.
Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia?
Dr. Tegnelia. Sir, NSPD-17 and HSPD-4 basically indicated
that DHS was the lead in the attribution and forensics
capability. It works with the Intelligence Community (IC),
which has the responsibility to provide the information for
decisions.
DHS broke that activity up into two pieces. One was pre-
detonation and one was post-detonation. DTRA is responsible for
worldwide post-detonation collection of the debris for
analysis. We work with DHS, as I mentioned, as the lead. We
work with the DOE because their laboratories are the people who
are going to do the analysis of these remains of a device and
make the attribution as to who it is technically.
Then we also work with the FBI because the FBI has
responsibility inside of the United States for the
investigation of these types of devices. That is how the NSPD
separates out the responsibilities.
Senator Reed. One follow-up question, Dr. Cerveny, and then
I will recognize Senator Dole. I do have more questions for the
whole panel.
But this attribution process assumes that you have a
database, which you can match up, that you can, in fact,
identify and attribute to an entity or country. How are we
doing on that database creation?
Dr. Cerveny. That database creation, I believe you are
talking about the Nuclear Materials Information Program that is
being created by the IC? Is that what I presume you are saying?
Senator Reed. I am just generally talking about from your
perspective because you were doing research to identify
materiel, but then you have to match it up with something. I am
asking from your perspective, how is that something coming, I
guess?
Dr. Cerveny. Exactly. From the testing era, when we had the
Cold War testing era, there is quite a bit of data from there
from the Russians and from us, from our testing itself. What we
do with that is match against that.
Some of the newer stuff that the proliferants may be trying
to make is going to be a bigger challenge for us because there
is no database on that.
Senator Reed. Any other comments? Dr. Tegnelia?
Dr. Tegnelia. I guess I would add to that that the subject
of broadening that database is under active pursuit by the IC,
and at least my experience is they are paying full attention to
trying to do what you are suggesting.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
Senator Dole.
Senator Dole. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Tegnelia and General Reeves, let me ask you about a
March 2007 report by the DOD Inspector General (IG). It was
highly critical of the DOD's coordination and management of its
combating WMD program. The report's main recommendations were
for the DOD to better coordinate the work of 40 offices
involved with combating WMD, establish a process to measure
performance, clearly identify the use of the funds budgeted for
the program throughout the Department, and propose legislation
requiring that the Federal agencies involved in combating WMD
coordinate with one another.
Could you give me your assessments of the IG report and
what steps has the DOD, including your own organization, taken
in response to the IG report? Could we start with you, Doctor,
and then, General Reeves, ask you to respond?
Dr. Tegnelia. Yes, ma'am. As you indicated, there were two
elements of the report. The first, there were 40 organizations
who were all dealing with WMD. I would suggest to you that the
report was written with data that was done in 2005, and a lot
has happened since 2005 to address the issue that you are
concerned about.
I would suggest to you that having a reasonable number of
organizations concerned with WMD is a strength, not a weakness.
For example, there are 50 civil support teams, all of which are
trained to handle WMD. So having a reasonable number of
organizations concerned with WMD is a strength, not a weakness.
The problem is to make sure that they are all working
together and on the same page. What has happened since that
time is the formation of the STRATCOM as the lead combatant
command for combating WMD. It is that command's responsibility
to get all of these units working together, working in concert
to be able to help both local communities and so on through
Northern Command (NORTHCOM), and also our allies in the process
of doing that.
So my sense is that the situation has changed significantly
since STRATCOM has been on the scene in trying to help
orchestrate the problems that that report indicated.
Senator Dole. Thank you.
General Reeves?
General Reeves. Ma'am, I would second that and add to
STRATCOM, NORTHCOM as well. Those two major commands between
the homeland defense mission and the larger civil support
mission, have helped consolidate a number of the activities.
As you indicated earlier, in the case of the research,
development, and acquisition of equipment, that has, in fact,
all been consolidated under a single office and that has been
an ongoing program now for a number of years, which we continue
to have a very robust single chain of command, if you will, to
execute that program.
Senator Dole. Thank you.
Dr. Cerveny, with the aging and gradual passing of the
Manhattan Project generation of nuclear scientists, our Nation
is facing a loss of scientific expertise in the nuclear field
that will be hard to replace. Recent studies highlighted the
need to replace the retiring generation of scientists who have
the skills to contribute to the field of nuclear forensics
through which scientists can discern the age and origin of
nuclear materials.
Are you finding that this loss of expertise is a problem
the R&D programs are experiencing under your purview?
Dr. Cerveny. It is starting to happen, Senator Dole. Within
5 years, we are probably going to have a pretty serious impact
because of, as you said, the age that these folks are becoming.
They are ready to retire now.
There are younger ones that are coming into the fold. I
don't want to in any way denigrate them, but they don't have
the experience of any of the testing that we have done or even
the Manhattan Project type of information that those senior
scientists have available in their brains.
The younger ones are bright, no doubt about it. But lacking
that experience and finding a way to maybe hook a wire to the
older guys who are retiring heads and do a data dump into the
younger folks would be wonderful. But it is very difficult to
find, and we are working hard on that with the laboratory
community to ensure we do get some of that transition
occurring. It is a challenge.
I did read the report that you are talking about, the
National Academy of Science (NAS) report. It was quite sobering
to read that.
Senator Dole. Right. Yes, and I wonder if there is anything
this subcommittee could do to be helpful? Perhaps by
authorizing some kind of fellowship program to attract young
scientists, more young scientists to the disciplines where you
foresee shortfalls? I understand what you are saying about the
degree of expertise, but in general, do you think there is a
need to just attract more young people into this area, and
could we be of any help in that respect?
Dr. Cerveny. From the standpoint of do we need to attract
more? Yes, and we are working very hard on that. In fact, it is
interesting you should ask. We had a conversation with our
laboratory partners yesterday about how we could do this, if we
could develop fellowships or establish fellowships to encourage
them to potentially come into the laboratory for a short
timeframe and then rotate into the Washington office here in
D.C. to get the flavor of what is going on from the overall
standpoint.
So we are working on doing those sorts of things. Maybe not
to the degree that you are interested in, but we are definitely
working on trying to make that happen.
Senator Dole. Okay, thank you.
General Reeves, how would you characterize our technical
progress in improving the accuracy of our sensors, both
detection of agents and reduction of false positives. What are
the major technical challenges which remain to be solved in the
area of sensor technology?
General Reeves. There are really two major areas. One has
to do with stand-off technology, which is clearly extremely
problematic. In order to identify an agent, be it chemical,
biological, or radiological--presents a large variety of issues
with atmospherics, the type of sensor, and literally where you
can use that sensor.
The second major issue we have is in, as you point out,
false alarms, which is sensitivity and selectivity. That has
gotten progressively better and, I would argue, almost
exponentially better over the last few years. In June of this
year, because there has been so much work not only within the
Government, but also by private industry in this area, we will
be holding a technology readiness evaluation at Dugway Proving
Grounds, where we will allow both laboratories, within DOD and
outside of DOD, and private industry to come to Dugway to
demonstrate their capabilities and then independently evaluate
their technology readiness levels.
It is our view that they have gotten significantly better,
that we can reduce our own investment to some degree for point
sensors in the biological detection area and leverage good work
that has already been done in lots of other areas. So it is
actually a cost avoidance to us.
Senator Dole. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Dole.
Dr. Tegnelia, in your comments, you said that local
responders are proficient in handling a low-yield incident, but
that there is a gap with high-yield incidents. How difficult it
is relative to a low-yield to stage a high-yield, that is, if
the high-yield is something of a probability of 1 percent, then
that gap is not as worrisome if that probability is something
closer to 50 percent.
Can you give us an idea in this session of how much we have
to worry about that lack of capability?
Dr. Tegnelia. I was thinking about that question, and it is
an important question. I would just tell you that in an open
hearing, it is hard to discuss that specifically. But we are
thinking about the question that you are concerned about.
Senator Reed. Fine, fine. It is an important question.
Dr. Tegnelia. Yes, sir.
Senator Reed. It has to be handled in a more confidential
manner.
Let me ask all of you because one of the issues that
perennially arises when you develop technology is getting it
into the hands of the field workers, the people out there that
actually do it. Can you give us a notion of how you think we
are doing in transitioning technology? What are the chokepoints
that we have to worry about? I will ask each witness.
Dr. Tegnelia?
Dr. Tegnelia. My perspective, sir, is that the military
mission of combating WMD is a relatively new operational
responsibility for the DOD. We have just put together the
national strategy and the military strategy for combating WMD,
and we are now in the process of beginning to field
capabilities not only with the individual soldier, which
General Reeves spends a lot of time on, but also unit
capabilities to handle the missions of WMD.
We have done something which I think is extremely important
as a lesson learned from Iraq, and that is how would you
eliminate chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons should you
encounter them on the battlefield? Very important problem.
Something we were concerned about in Iraq.
We have fielded a capability now through STRATCOM, that
could help in South Korea. It is actually deployed now in Iraq,
eliminating these kinds of weapons from the battlefield. That
is a new capability. It is a brand-new thing that has been
developed.
Another example of that is fielding an attribution
capability, which the NSPD, as you pointed out, is just now
calling for. So these new units are coming online through
STRATCOM, and they are being deployed to our combatant
commanders, including NORTHCOM. We are beginning to exercise
with them, and we are beginning to build the capability. So we
are started, but we have a long way to go.
This is, as I indicated, a new mission, and it is now
beginning to get the emphasis to field this kind of capability.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
General Reeves?
General Reeves. Sir, in the chem/bio defense program, we do
three things. First, we have a formal process to ensure that
our investments in S&T transition to advanced development. We
use something called technology transition agreements, which
are a formal agreement between the S&T developer and one of my
project managers to ensure that they are mutually understanding
what that technology is, and they are ready to accept it, and
we have put the resources in place to use it.
Second, we conduct quarterly reviews.
Third, on a biannual basis, our joint staff looks at the
roadmaps to ensure that those investments are reaching to
advanced development and to procurement.
The second thing we do, as I mentioned a moment ago, are
technology readiness evaluations, which are independently
assessed, which gives laboratories and commercial industry the
opportunity to demonstrate their technologies and what their
technology readiness levels are. We use a formal process by an
independent assessor to do that.
The third part, which is just now beginning, and I think it
is an important initiative--and I would specifically compliment
the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center for doing this--is
an educational component. One of the things we need to do with
our researchers and scientists is to get them to understand
that not all technology is necessarily good or useful. At some
point, you have to look at technology from the standpoint of is
it affordable? Can it be produced? Can you sustain it in the
field?
They have developed a formal program to educate their basic
research scientists to help think in those terms and use those
kinds of filters before we make substantial investments in a
technology we discover we can't use in the end.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Dr. Cerveny?
Dr. Cerveny. Thank you. For my program, we have instituted
a whole host of things because a transition for a program that
is a long-term R&D program is considered to be the valley of
death that can occur for research technology that you develop
and suddenly nobody is really interested in it.
What we have tried to do is include the operators and we
actually do include the operators on the upfront of developing
what our roadmaps are going to be and where we are going to go
to ensure we have what their needs and requirements are. In
some cases, that requires translation on our part because
oftentimes our users don't know how to tell us in technical
terms what it is that they want to be made better or lighter or
more power-friendly.
So we have to be able to do that integration in between.
Having the users on our committees for deciding what proposals
are actually going to get funded in an area once we decide
where we are going to go, then having them also in our annual
program reviews for each of the 13 separate programs that we
have, it has seemed to become very easy for us, as the ones
that I showed you back here on our display table, the
integration or the movement, transitioning those to the users
has happened quite easily for us. They have actually been
anxious to receive them.
Does that mean we have solved the entire problem? Not
entirely. It is still a challenge for us, and we do many of the
things that my two colleagues here have mentioned as well.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Dr. Cerveny, the budget request at NNSA for
nonproliferation and verification in fiscal year 2009 is $275
million. That is $112 million below the fiscal year 2008
appropriation. That is a substantial reduction. What is not
going to be accomplished as a result of that reduction?
Dr. Cerveny. The major difference there is the generosity
of Congress when they passed the Omnibus and gave me the $112
million plus-up, which was very kind of them. What I did with
it was place it into the prioritized areas that we have to
ensure that we had full-up proposals funded.
The $275 million actually is level with the real 2008
request that we put in and the 2007 request. In 2010, I believe
we are going to be going up, though that number has not been
established yet for us.
Senator Reed. The fiscal year 2009 budget eliminates a line
called supporting activities. Can you describe what that is?
Dr. Cerveny. Yes, sir. The supporting activities was an
unusual thing that was a leftover--I have been there for 4
years. It was a leftover, none of the other components of NNSA
really showed such a thing. When I inquired what it was, it was
really money that we transitioned into the two major programs
that I discussed, the Proliferation Detection and NDD.
What I did was just transfer those functions that belonged
to them into them. So nothing really vanished. It just moved to
where it belonged.
Senator Reed. I think Congress was persuaded that you
needed the money, and I think we, given what I have heard
today, I am no less persuaded. So it is a substantial
reduction, and the activities, and you are going to have, I
think, a challenging time to manage with all of the
responsibilities with $100 million or so less.
Dr. Cerveny. That is correct. But we have tided folks over
to ensure that we could use the generosity of Congress to cover
them for a year or so, forward funding.
Senator Reed. So we are sort of fasting for a year, but we
are looking for something much better in the future?
Dr. Cerveny. No, I forward-funded specific projects to
ensure that they had continuity to go to their conclusion.
Senator Reed. You have also suggested that you would need
additional funding in the succeeding budgets after 2009?
Dr. Cerveny. Yes. I believe we are going to be getting
that. But I don't know right now. It has not been given to me
yet.
Senator Reed. Okay. Thanks. Let me yield to Senator Dole,
if she has additional questions, and I have a couple more.
Senator Dole?
Senator Dole. Okay. I would like to ask Dr. Tegnelia and
also General Reeves, do you need additional resources or
authorities to more effectively carry out the technology R&D
programs that we have been discussing here today? Do you have
unfunded priorities in your program areas, so to speak? If so,
what are they?
Dr. Tegnelia. I think if I were able to ask you for
additional funds for programs that we are doing, I guess I
would give you two or three examples of things that are
important. The first one is funding the expansion of the Nunn-
Lugar program because it really is the forward defense on
preventing a lot of these things from happening. The ability to
extend that worldwide beyond the republics of the former Soviet
Union would be a very important thing.
The second priority that I would give you, and I recall
your question about young people--when your hair gets my color,
you worry about the next generation of people who are coming
along. I think there is a very simple thing that can be done to
bring this next generation onboard, and that is fund the basic
research programs that the Department is advocating.
That money ends up in the universities, and you can see
behind you some of the examples that the universities are
doing. In addition to getting good technology out, it
introduces this topic to the people who are in school and ready
to come out of school.
I would like to hope that the basic research money we put
in would bring people into DTRA. If they were introduced to it
and they stayed in the field, that would be a win all by
itself. So I would really suggest that you could help us a lot
with funding the basic research program that we have.
The last comment that I would make to you is this idea of
funding the research for the loose nuclear weapons activity and
the international research on the nuclear detection of fissile
material and the attribution activity, fielding attribution
activity. Those things that are all related to the loose
nuclear weapons, those are the kinds of things that I would
accelerate.
Senator Dole. All right. General Reeves?
General Reeves. Thank you, ma'am. We certainly have
appreciated the subcommittee's support in the past on the TMTI,
and we would ask simply that that funding remain constant.
Should additional funds become available, we would
certainly like to apply funds towards advancing stand-off
technologies, both in chemical and biological detection as well
as looking at the next generation of chemical threats and
biological threats, and finally at automating certain sampling
processes, particularly for biological detection, which has a
very broad-based application across our systems.
In the area of procurement, our services are particularly
interested in rapidly fielding the next generation of
protective masks which we have just produced called the Joint
Service General Purpose Mask, as well as the next generation of
chemical agent detectors, which, at the moment, are half the
cost of the current detector. They are a quarter of the size,
and they are a tenth of the weight. So they are very anxious to
get them in the field.
We will be happy to provide the subcommittee a complete
list.
[The information referred to follows:]
The U.S. Army has a list of underfunded priorities and is provided
by the Special Assistant (Chemical and Biological Defense and Chemical
Demilitarization Programs).
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Dole. Thank you.
Dr. Cerveny, Dr. Tegnelia, in 2005 the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office (DNDO) was established within the DHS to
improve the Nation's capability to detect and report
unauthorized attempts to import, possess, store, develop, or
transport nuclear or radiological material for use against the
United States. How does DNDO coordinate its efforts with DOE
and DOD, both of which have responsibilities related to nuclear
detection and homeland defense against nuclear threats?
Has a division of labor been established that is workable
and eliminates seams and gaps?
Dr. Cerveny. We work quite closely with the DNDO. They are
part of that four-way MOU that I mentioned earlier. The DNDO
transformational R&D office is the one that we work the closest
with. The coordination we do with them is extremely tight in
that we fund maybe one half of something and they will fund the
other half of something, and we coordinate it closely and then
transition the data and information back and forth as it is
needed.
With the DNDO office, we have had a very close collegial
relationship with them transitioning information back and
forth. There has been no difficulty with us working with them.
Senator Dole. Doctor Tegnelia?
Dr. Tegnelia. Senator, we also have a good working
relationship with DNDO. I mentioned to you this important area
of working on longer-range nuclear detection devices. We do
that on this joint MOU between--with DNDO as the lead, with DOE
and DTRA. We share test facilities. We do joint tests together,
and we work international programs together as well as in DNDO.
I have a personal interest in it because the top three
people in DNDO are ex-DTRA people. The community, especially
where you are concerned with things like nuclear detection and
characterization, is a small community, and we share people. We
share people on a continuing basis to make sure that we are
coordinated.
Senator Dole. Thank you very much.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
If I may, I don't want to go too long, but a couple of
other questions. Dr. Tegnelia, in response to Senator Dole's
question about the bench, if you will, for scientists, et
cetera, it underscores that one of the key allies in this
effort are university research programs, basic research.
One area that I have heard is not sufficiently supported
with programs is radiochemistry. I am just wondering if, in
your view, that is right and, two, what are the other areas of
shortage that we might think about in the future? Because
without these talented scientists, this is a much more
difficult problem.
Dr. Tegnelia. First of all, the subject of radiochemistry
is the key technology associated with this problem of
attribution, and Dr. Cerveny might comment on this. But my
sense is we are using capabilities that were built in the
nuclear weapons laboratories that go back quite a ways, and
building the next generation of nuclear chemists capable of
being able to do these 21st century problems is extremely
important to us.
We put a lot of basic research into that particular
activity aimed at finding new radiochemistry techniques to
reduce the time and put in modern equipment to reduce the time
of analyzing these nuclear events that we have. So that is a
very important area.
I keep emphasizing, and maybe I am beginning to get
repetitive here on the subject of nuclear detection. The
problem doesn't start if you can't find the nuclear device. So
detection really is extremely important, and there has not been
a lot of money that was put into innovative ideas associated
with nuclear detection.
Like I mentioned in my opening statement, we do that with
the DOE. But bringing the universities into this problem to
come up with new ideas is also an active area of research for
us. I think the people are interested in trying to do that kind
of work.
Just to give you a vignette: we are relatively new in the
basic research activity. This is our second year. You have
helped us a lot with the research there. In our second year,
when we went out with our advertisement for new ideas in
combating WMD, we got 1,000 proposals back from the
universities to fund this work.
So there is a demand out there. The ability to spend basic
research money well in the universities is there, and I think
it gives us this dual benefit of new technology as well as
people introduced to the topic. So I would encourage that kind
of work.
Senator Reed. Let me skip to Dr. Cerveny and then ask
General Reeves the same question about shortages. Dr. Cerveny?
Dr. Cerveny. The radiochemistry is in the forensics arena
that we are discussing here. As the NAS study that we just
recently mentioned, when Mrs. Dole mentioned it and asked me a
question about it, indicates that to manage the entire system
the way we have it, if there are just less than 10--somewhere
between 4 and 8--Ph.D. graduates per year, we would be able to
replenish the entire workforce within about 5 to 10 years.
The number of people who do this work in the laboratory are
really quite small. It is not a huge number of folks who are
doing this and have this kind of expertise. So it is wonderful
that we have the individuals who are senior and have the
significant experience that we would like to do the data dump
from. But at the same time, we do need to find the replacements
and get them learning how to do the same sorts of things that
they do.
Is there a shortage of radiochemists? Yes and no. From the
yes side, the shortage is that they don't have the experience
that we need, and that is where the lacking really is from the
standpoint of what I do. Now from the standpoint of some of the
other components, perhaps they need them for a different reason
because there really is a deficit. But for me, it is the
experience that I need for them to attain, and we are working
on trying to get that for them.
Senator Reed. Major General Reeves, your comments about the
shortages and chokepoints in terms of talented scientists?
General Reeves. We absolutely recognize the problem and
share the concern. As Dr. Tegnelia alluded to, combine the
aging workforce with a precipitous drop in math, science, and
engineering graduates, and you have a pretty bad recipe.
We engage in a range of programs in DOD as well as in the
Army to address the issue. The good news is we have seen a
small uptick in the number of biotechnologists or
multidisciplined biologists. But hard math, hard science,
engineering as an aggregate remains problematic.
Some examples of what is going on inside the chemical and
biological defense program, the Edgewood Chemical and
Biological Center is engaged with eight different universities
and colleges, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, on
an internship basis. The Army Medical Research Institute at
Fort Detrick, MD, is engaged with four different colleges and
universities on the same type of program. The chem/bio defense
program itself funds some interns and postdoctoral studies.
Congress actually has indirectly assisted us in something
called the Veterans Reassignment Act, which allows us to
rapidly bring into the Government noncompetitive people. So as
we look at our veterans, we look for those who have hard
science backgrounds, and we get what we call a two-for. We get
someone who has not only the military background and experience
and brings that operational perspective to us, but also the
hard science background and then be able to apply that to the
technology problems that they know are there.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, General.
Senator Dole, if you don't have any additional questions, I
would ask that the witnesses be prepared perhaps to respond to
written questions, if the staff would develop those questions.
I want to thank you for excellent testimony and a wonderful
demonstration, and you have outlined some significant
challenges. So we will need your help going forward, just as we
have needed it today.
Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.
[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]
Questions Submitted by Senator Carl Levin
anthrax vaccine procurement
1. Senator Levin. Major General Reeves, the Department of Defense
(DOD) has been procuring a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved
vaccine to protect its personnel against anthrax. Last year the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded a contract to
procure the anthrax vaccine for the Strategic National Stockpile, and
the DOD has not awarded a new procurement contract. Is DOD committed to
ensuring that its personnel continue to be vaccinated and protected
against anthrax?
General Reeves. Yes, DOD is committed to ensuring that its
personnel continue to be vaccinated and protected against anthrax. DOD
and HHS have recently entered into an agreement for a common anthrax
vaccine stockpile. Using a single U.S. Government contract,
administered by HHS, we anticipate a cost avoidance of approximately
$10 million annually. A single contract also ensures sufficient
procurement to maintain the industrial base.
2. Senator Levin. Major General Reeves, how does the DOD plan to
obtain additional anthrax vaccine doses for its personnel? For example,
will it order them through HHS (through a consolidated stockpile), or
will DOD procure additional vaccine separately?
General Reeves. The DOD will obtain anthrax vaccine through the HHS
Strategic National Stockpile.
3. Senator Levin. Major General Reeves, what mechanism does DOD
have in place to ensure that our military forces will have a reliable
and adequate supply of anthrax vaccine for the next 5 years and beyond?
General Reeves. The DOD interagency agreement with the HHS/Center
for Disease Control and Prevention will ensure that our military forces
will have a reliable and adequate supply of FDA-approved anthrax
vaccine at least for the next 5 years. This agreement meets the
requirements for the Strategic National Stockpile established in
Homeland Security Presidential Directive-21, ``Public Health and
Medical Preparedness.'' It also implements a single integrated anthrax
vaccine stockpile management system as recommended in the Government
Accountability Office Report 08-88, ``Actions Needed to Avoid Repeating
Past Problems with Procuring New Anthrax Vaccine and Managing the
Stockpile of Licensed Vaccine''. The agreement provides for a single
U.S. Government contract for anthrax vaccine and results in a cost
avoidance of approximately $10 million annually. The agreement also
takes into consideration the need to ensure sufficient U.S. Government
procurement to maintain the industrial base.
The HHS contract awarded to Emergent BioSolutions in September 2007
is for the delivery of 18.75 million doses of anthrax vaccine through
fiscal year 2009. With the current 3-year expiration dating of the
vaccine, this product will remain available to support DOD and other
government anthrax vaccine requirements through fiscal year 2012. When
the FDA approves the pending 4-year expiration dating in a previously
submitted Biologics License Application amendment, this would extend
vaccine availability to fiscal year 2013. It is my understanding that
HHS is already preparing its contract strategy to include future
deliveries beyond the already contracted 2009 date.
transformational medical technology initiative and alternative
approaches
4. Senator Levin. Major General Reeves, the DOD is pursuing a
program called the Transformational Medical Technology Initiative
(TMTI) to provide broad spectrum protection against a variety of
biological threats, including newly engineered threats. Is the TMTI
program intended to provide protection against known biological
threats, such as botulinum toxin? If so, which threats are intended to
be covered?
General Reeves. The TMTI program is intended to provide protection
against known biological threats such as viral hemorrhagic fevers
(e.g., Ebola and Marburg) and intra-cellular bacterial pathogens (e.g.,
Tularemia) that we have little to no existing capability to counteract.
The TMTI capability will also allow us to respond rapidly to new or
emerging biological threats, particularly new viruses and bacteria.
TMTI is not specifically targeting known biological threats where some
capability already exists, such as botulinum toxin, smallpox, and
anthrax. Our core medical advanced acquisition program has, or is in
the process of, developing specific vaccines or therapeutic
countermeasures for these biological threats.
5. Senator Levin. Major General Reeves, in addition to TMTI, what
other approaches is the DOD taking to address the established
biological threats, such as botulinum toxin and Ebola?
General Reeves. In addition to TMTI, the other approaches the DOD
takes to address established biological threats include the Chemical
and Biological Defense Program's core medical science and technology
(S&T), and advanced acquisition development programs and the purchase
of off-the-shelf FDA-approved antibiotics. Our core medical research,
development, and acquisition advanced acquisition program investigates
and develops diagnostic systems, therapeutics, and vaccines to address
established biological threats. This includes the FDA-licensed anthrax
and smallpox vaccines and current development programs for botulinum
toxin vaccine and plague vaccine. Vaccine development for equine
encephalitis and ricin are ready to begin as funding becomes available.
Diagnostic systems are also available based on assays developed from
genomic reference materials (antigens, nucleic acids, and antibodies).
______
Questions Submitted by Senator Jack Reed
greatest technology challenge
6. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, Major General Reeves, and Dr.
Cerveny, you are all experts in the area of technology for combating
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). If there were one technical
development you most want to achieve in the next 5 years, what would it
be?
Dr. Tegnelia. Unfortunately there is no single technical
development that will immediately put us in a position of considerable
advantage over our adversary. The threats are diverse and our
adversaries will always adjust their tactics to take advantage of our
weak spots. It is therefore critical that we continue to build balanced
programs in which we very carefully weigh the risks and benefits
between investments in evolutionary technologies. Technologies that
deliver incremental advances of our current capabilities and game-
changing technologies which carry much more technical risk yet place us
in a position of having a much-needed considerable advantage over our
adversary. While such revolutionary technologies have been identified
across the spectrum of WMD threats, they are still many decades away.
Key capabilities that we seek to develop include:
Global situational awareness infrastructure in which the
rapid fusion of intelligence data leads to decisive yet
appropriate U.S. Government action within the course of hours
Broad spectrum or platform therapeutics that can be quickly
modified and manufactured (over the course of days or weeks
rather than years) in sufficient quantities to respond to an
emerging biological threat
Long-range stand-off detection of WMD threats
Long-range stand-off neutralization of WMD threats
Rapid forensic analysis to support the attribution process
General Reeves. The one technical development we most want to
achieve in the next 5 years is improving our stand-off detection
technology, so that we can provide the warfighter and others with a
significantly enhanced early warning capability. Our existing chemical
agent stand-off technology can only detect vapor out to a limited
distance. We are addressing this technological limitation through
identifying and implementing new technologies, and by developing an
early warning capability through a system of systems approach.
We are investigating many different technologies that can
potentially improve our stand-off ability, such as active and passive
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technologies and hyperspectral
imaging. We are also looking at ways to maximize the effectiveness of
these technologies through enhanced signal processing. Enhanced signal
processing allows the technology to better differentiate between the
hazard and the atmospheric background that is present.
Dr. Cerveny. Of all the technical challenges we face, we feel our
most pressing problem is significantly improving our ability to
consistently, accurately, and from a distance, detect and identify
shielded Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU). We are attacking this very
difficult technical problem from several directions and in conjunction
with our research and development (R&D) partners in DOD, Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), and the Director of National Intelligence
(DNI)/S&T.
7. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, Major General Reeves, and Dr.
Cerveny, is there something that Congress or this subcommittee can do
to help you achieve that goal?
Dr. Tegnelia. I greatly appreciate the committee's strong support
of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) fiscal year 2008 budget
request. The additional funding provided for stand-off nuclear
detection, consequence management, and WMD defeat basic research will
greatly assist our efforts in these critical mission areas. In
addition, the expansion of the interagency membership of the
Counterproliferation Review Committee will significantly strengthen
partnerships among the Combating WMD community of interest. Our fiscal
year 2009 budget request will carry us down the path that you endorsed
last year, and I request your support for this program.
General Reeves. Yes. The continued support of Congress and in
particular, the continued cooperation between this subcommittee and the
Chemical and Biological Defense Program, will be of significant help in
achieving this goal.
Dr. Cerveny. All the requisite congressional actions and
authorities have already been put in place to allow this work. On the
serious problem of locating shielded HEU, we face many challenges, both
scientific and technical. Congress has provided much needed assistance
over the past few years, which has made our task more manageable. We
look forward to continuing progress in these key areas.
capability gaps
8. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, Major General Reeves, and Dr.
Cerveny, in an area as dangerous as WMD, we must be careful to ensure
that we do not allow critical capability gaps to develop into
unacceptable vulnerabilities. To the extent you can discuss on an
unclassified basis, what capability gaps have you identified, and what
steps are you taking to close such gaps?
Dr. Tegnelia. The United States Strategic Command Center for
Combating WMD (SCC-WMD) is in the process of identifying capability
gaps and analyzing solutions to close those gaps. Specifically, the
SCC-WMD completed or is completing detailed assessments of the
following CWMD missions: Offensive Operations, Threat Reduction
Cooperation (TRC), Security Cooperation and Partner Activities (SCPA),
National Technical Nuclear Forensics, Foreign Consequence Management
(CM), WMD Defeat, and Radiological and Nuclear Stand-off Detection.
Based on these assessments, several cross-cutting capability gaps
were identified and are being addressed. The most critical of these
involve the limited production and availability of actionable
intelligence on WMD proliferation networks and global WMD events; the
duplication of efforts and unnecessary expenditure of time, resources,
and money caused by the lack of coordination between national agencies
and the lack of clear guidance on WMD-specific goals, policies, or
strategies; and insufficient capability to predict, model, and execute
operations resulting in little to no collateral effects.
Some steps taken to close these gaps include the development of the
Situational Awareness CWMD Information Portal and the Interagency CWMD
Database of Responsibilities, Authorities, and Capabilities to increase
coordination; the completion of a full capabilities-based assessment on
the CWMD Offensive Operations mission area which lead to the
development of a WMD Defeat Initial Capabilities Document (ICD) and a
Radiological/Nuclear Stand-off Detection ICD; and the completion of a
needs assessment for SCPA and TRC. The SCC-WMD is also leading an
assessment of the CM mitigation requirement of the Geographical
Combatant Commanders (GCC). This assessment will address requirements
necessary to mitigate an overseas Chemical, Biological, Radiological,
and Nuclear (CBRN) event, and identify the assets that GCCs could offer
in a Foreign CM situation. Finally, the SCC-WMD completed a detailed
capabilities-based assessment of tasks, capabilities, and solutions for
conducting National Technical Nuclear Forensics. The DTRA worked with
SCC-WMD to develop forensic tactics, techniques, and procedures, which
will be validated in upcoming exercises. Additionally, SCC-WMD and DTRA
work continuously with other members of the broader CWMD enterprise to
be responsive to warfighter operational needs.
General Reeves. The Chemical and Biological Defense Program has 43
programs of record to address capability gaps across the spectrum of
needed chemical and biological defense capabilities. Some of these
capability gaps present us with a more difficult challenge than others.
Difficult challenges include technologies for stand-off detection. They
also include decontamination, detection, and protection capabilities
across the entire spectrum of threat agents.
The steps we are taking to meet these challenges include
determining the ability of existing government and commercial off-the-
shelf capabilities to rapidly address these gaps, either as an
individual technology or within a system of systems approach. We have
identified our challenges in these areas to academia, industry, and the
S&T base and they have helped us to identify emerging technologies that
can contribute to closing these gaps.
Dr. Cerveny. In fiscal year 2006, my office embarked on a
considerable effort to develop strategic plans to identify the critical
capability/technology gaps of the nonproliferation community, drawing
inputs from the R&D and user communities. With these capability gaps
identified, we generated long-term technical roadmaps to focus our R&D
efforts to meet current and anticipated future capability needs,
including the shielded HEU problem discussed previously.
intelligence community interaction
9. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, Major General Reeves, and Dr.
Cerveny, the Intelligence Community (IC) is a critical partner in our
overall efforts to reduce and eliminate threats from WMD, as you noted
in your testimony. How are your research and technology development
programs informed by threat analyses of the IC?
Dr. Tegnelia. DTRA is acutely aware that the WMD threat is
constantly evolving and that timely and accurate intelligence is
fundamental to the application of sound Research, Development, Test and
Evaluation (RDT&E) programs. Across the Combating WMD mission, DTRA
works closely through established channels with the IC to improve
situational awareness of current and anticipated threats, and to
provide technical information that will support the IC in its mission.
We also collaborate with the IC on special projects of mutual interest
and conduct periodic S&T exchanges to share the latest information on
the threat. Lastly, our RDT&E programs are based largely upon threat
assessments from the IC, as well as combatant commanders' evaluation of
shortfalls in operational capabilities and the opportunities provided
by the promise of maturing technologies.
General Reeves. Our research and technology development programs
are informed of threat analysis via the IC through both formal and
informal means. The formal means includes IC participation in
developing, and review of, program documentation such as the System
Threat Assessment Report and Joint Threat Test Support Package. These
documents feed the requirements development process, product
development, and test and evaluation process for each program. Other
formal means include incorporating into our program planning and
execution information contained in threat documents such as the
Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Capstone Threat
Assessment developed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
Additional means of providing programs up-to-date threat information
includes liaison between the Joint Program Executive Office for
Chemical and Biological Defense and the IC. The Joint Program Executive
Office for Chemical and Biological Defense has a full time senior staff
intelligence officer to coordinate with the IC and to keep the entire
command informed regarding the existing and emerging chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear threat.
Dr. Cerveny. The IC provides information critical to our technology
development and requirements roadmaps. Additionally, our
Nonproliferation R&D program managers and our laboratory researchers
hold appropriate security clearances and are well-informed of threat
analyses from the IC. We use the results of the threat analyses to
guide and steer our investments in R&D to ultimately develop sensors to
meet the present and future nonproliferation threat. As I noted in my
testimony, there is a four-way Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
between Domestic Nuclear Defense Organization (DNDO)-National Nuclear
Security Agency (NNSA)-DTRA-Director of National Intelligence (Science
and Technology) identifying requirements and methods for collaboration
and cooperation relating to nuclear detection technology development
amongst the parties of the MOU.
10. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, Major General Reeves, and Dr.
Cerveny, how do you interface with the IC in general, for example, by
providing some of the expertise of your organizations to support their
assessments and analyses?
Dr. Tegnelia. The DTRA has always sought to support the IC with our
technical expertise, but we need to do more. Such interaction between
the Nation's technical base and IC is especially important in the
assessment of WMD threats, which by nature are both technically
complex, and conjoined with potential courses of action to deter,
reduce, or defeat those threats.
Historically, the IC has engaged DTRA with questions related to
nuclear weapon effects (as an example, to support assessments of
threats from electromagnetic pulse (EMP)) or vulnerabilities of foreign
military systems). However, the DTRA relationship with the IC has
broadened and deepened as the Combating WMD mission has matured.
Perhaps the best example of this new level of interaction is our full-
time participation in the DIA's Underground Facility Analysis Center
(UFAC). DTRA engineers and scientists (which include members from our
industry performer base) are embedded in the UFAC, providing
engineering assessments about the construction, operation, and
potential vulnerabilities of hardened and deeply buried targets. This
close coupling not only improves the intelligence end product, but
provides unique and timely insight to support DTRA research in weapon
and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) concepts.
The challenge ahead for DTRA is in providing such support across
the entire WMD threat spectrum. To this end, we have launched a project
with DIA to establish the ``Counter WMD Analysis Cell.'' The objective
of this cell is to better integrate DOD and its interagency Combating
WMD partners with the IC in the collaborative analysis of long-term,
complex WMD threats.
General Reeves. We routinely interface with a number of
organizations within the IC, to include various offices within the DIA,
Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, the National
Ground Intelligence Center, and the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence
Center. Our coordination and collaboration with the IC includes
informal information exchanges, requests for briefings, quick reaction
responses to time-sensitive issues, attending scientific and/or
intelligence related conferences and exhibitions, or formal requests
for threat information via the Community On-Line Intelligence System
for End Users and Managers. A specific example is the scientific and
technical intelligence conferences hosted by the National Ground
Intelligence Center on our behalf. The IC is consistently responsive to
the Joint Program Executive Office's needs, and we enjoy an excellent
collaborative working relationship.
Dr. Cerveny. In general, NNSA's Nonproliferation R&D Office
interfaces with the IC during R&D program reviews, proposal
evaluations, and research proposal selection boards to coordinate and
deconflict R&D thrust areas. Our technical program managers and lab
advisors also serve as advisors to IC organizations as requested/
needed, above and beyond the general close collaboration/coordination
of our programs. Often, our Nonproliferation R&D serves dual function
as a technological foundation for the IC to develop systems.
challenge of stand-off detection
11. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, Major General Reeves, and Dr.
Cerveny, it seems that for all areas of combating WMD it would be
extremely useful to be able to detect weapons or materials at stand-off
distances. What do you see as the current limits for stand-off
detection, and what do you think we can realistically achieve in the
next decade?
Dr. Tegnelia. Current fielded technology employs passive detectors
that measure gamma and neutron radiation. Hand-held systems can detect
a significant mass of fissile material (HEU or plutonium) at ranges of
a few meters. Large vehicle or aircraft mounted systems can detect at
ranges of 20 to 30 meters, with sufficient monitoring time.
Unfortunately, the use of shielding and other countermeasures can
greatly reduce detection ranges. Few of these specialized detection
systems currently exist in the DOD, and most are employed by special
units that are tasked with interdiction missions. Our research program
emphasizes active detection techniques that can greatly enhance
detectable signatures from fissile material, even in shielded
configurations, as well as meet operational requirements of our
warfighters including ease of deployability and sustainability, small
physical footprint, long range, and persistent surveillance.
The system with highest technological maturity is the stand-off
photo-fission effort. This program has been under extensive
development, test, and evaluation over the last several years, with a
planned field demonstration this fall. A detection range of 100-200
meters will be shown. Further enhancements to this technology may allow
detection ranges of several hundred meters. The system employs a very
high energy x-ray beam to interrogate an area, and cause fission in HEU
or plutonium which enables its detection.
We are also pursuing interrogation systems employing protons,
muons, and gamma rays. These alternative technologies have significant
merits including ranges that could exceed a kilometer, but are
presently only in the early stages of R&D. Within the next decade, and
with sufficient resources, initial operational capabilities based on
photo-fission systems should be a reality, and several alternative
technologies should be matured to the point where early operational
assessments are possible.
General Reeves. Our current limit for chemical and biological
stand-off detection is the maturity of the technology available. We do
think that some new technologies will mature within the next 5 to 10
years (such as active and passive LIDAR technologies and hyperspectral
imaging technologies), and that those technologies, combined with the
system of systems approach may provide us with a means to provide early
warning of chemical and biological hazards delivered in any state
(aerosol, liquid, or vapor) out to ranges of 5 kilometers and beyond
within the next decade.
Dr. Cerveny. The issue of stand-off detection is a complex one and
is approached differently by our R&D partners. For nonproliferation
applications, we are certainly interested in increasing stand-off
detection capabilities. Using passive detection, current limits of
detection for unshielded nuclear material are generally in the range of
several meters. Using advanced detection technologies like direct
radiation imaging, detection can be extended to perhaps several 10s of
meters in the most favorable of circumstances. For shielded nuclear
material, which may prevent the emission of radiation, passive
detection is much more challenging and may only be possible within
several meters from the source, and perhaps not successfully at all.
Active interrogation (using external sources of radiation to increase
the radiation emission from nuclear materials) can increase detection
distances and detection confidence for both shielded and unshielded
material.
unfunded priorities
12. Senator Reed. General Reeves, at the hearing you mentioned that
you could supply a complete list of your underfunded priorities, if
requested. Please supply that list.
General Reeves. The U.S. Army has a list of underfunded priorities
and is provided by the Special Assistant (Chemical and Biological
Defense and Chemical Demilitarization Programs).
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
nuclear consequence management
13. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia and Dr. Cerveny, you are both
experts in nuclear technology. The nightmare scenario that is most
frightening to many of us is a terrorist group acquiring a nuclear
weapon and detonating it in an American city. How do you believe we can
best prevent such a catastrophe, and how do you believe we can best
prepare to manage the consequences of a nuclear detonation in an
American city?
Dr. Tegnelia. Real time, actionable intelligence that identifies
pathways and sources of terrorist nuclear proliferation is vital. In
addition, we must continue to improve detection capabilities so that
they are more effective at longer ranges and against shielded material.
The development of advanced forensics capabilities will contribute to
deterrence, assist in preventing follow-on attacks from the same
source, and provide critical information upon which the national
leadership may take appropriate action. In addition, we need to
vigorously exercise these capabilities.
Dr. Cerveny. Terrorist detonation of a nuclear weapon is indeed a
nightmare scenario and preventing it is a priority. First and foremost,
preventing it means keeping the materials, technology, and expertise
needed for a nuclear weapon from falling into the hands of terrorists.
Without the material (HEU or plutonium) there can be no weapon. For
that reason, NNSA is focused first on securing, removing, and
downblending fissile materials all around the world. We are also
working to detect and deter illicit shipments of nuclear material. NNSA
works with various other U.S. Government agencies, including the DOD,
the IC, the DHS, the State Department, the Department of
Transportation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department
of Justice, to accomplish many of these tasks. And we are working to
strengthen the capabilities of other countries to do similar work,
because the U.S. cannot do this task alone. The Nonproliferation R&D
mission space does not include consequence management; therefore, I
defer to my interagency colleagues to address consequence management.
14. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia and Dr. Cerveny, what are your
organizations doing both to prevent and prepare for such a catastrophe?
Dr. Tegnelia. The DTRA provides technical support to the IC to
assist with the identification of potential proliferation pathways and
sources. In coordination with our interagency partners, DTRA has the
responsibility for executing the DOD portion of the nuclear defense
mission, including the development of stand-off detection capabilities
that meet DOD operational needs, and, as part of the National Technical
Nuclear Forensics (NTNF) program, executes programs designed to provide
high confidence technical conclusions about an attack to support
attribution, facilitate government action, and stop subsequent attacks.
DTRA also plays a key role in the exercising of these capabilities
with the combatant commands (COCOMs) and our interagency partners.
Specifically, DTRA directly supports COCOMs with a number of training
events on an annual basis. The following are highlights of recent
exercises focusing on nuclear and radiological incidents:
Dingo King 2005: Exercise Dingo King 05 (DK 05) was a DTRA
sponsored nuclear weapon accident exercise conducted from 22-26
August 2005 in Kings Bay, Georgia, designed to exercise
Federal, State, and local emergency response and consequence
management (CM) actions. The response included extensive DOD
and Department of Energy (DOE) participation; local emergency
responders; County and State government agencies; field
involvement from other Federal agencies; and national play at
higher level headquarters at U.S. Northern Command and the
National Capitol Region.
`A Kele 2006: The `A Kele Project was a State of Hawaii DOD-
led and Defense DTRA-supported series of events designed to
explore State and on-island civil and military response to the
detonation of an improvised nuclear device (IND). The project,
conducted from 15-16 August 2006, in Honolulu, HI, included a
Command Post Exercise and three imbedded Field Training
Exercise vignettes. Additionally `A Kele included a series of
training sessions for participants and a Tabletop Exercise/
Senior Leaders Seminar designed to provide key leaders with a
challenging forum for discussion of key issues related to the
response and recovery process required following an IND event
in Honolulu.
National Level Exercise 1-07 (NLE 1-07) Vigiliant Shield 2007
(VS07) Nuclear Weapons Accident (NUWAX) Venue: The VS07 NUWAX
Venue was sponsored by DTRA and was independently controlled
and assessed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (DMAFB) in Tucson,
AZ. Held in December 2006, the VS07 NUWAX Venue was the first
NUWAX exercise to fully evaluate the response procedures
detailed in the National Response Plan and the updated Nuclear
Weapon Accident Response Procedures manual. It was also the
first NUWAX exercise to integrate a Joint Field Office into
incident response operations. As a result, many practical
lessons were learned regarding incident response and
interagency coordination.
DTRA Support to U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) in preparation
for TOPOFF IV: DTRA provided assistance to the PACOM staff, its
components, and other agencies in their preparations for TOPOFF
IV, one venue being a radiological dispersal device event in
Guam. TOPOFF IV involved more than 200 domestic and
international organizations, ranging from governmental agencies
at all levels to private industry and non-profit organizations.
The exercise took place in three American cities as well as
elsewhere in North America, in a U.S. territory, in Europe, and
in the Pacific region. Lessons learned from TOPOFF IV have
applications for response and recovery to major natural
disasters.
At each of the above exercises, DTRA deployed Consequence
Management Assessment Teams (CMATs) to the affected COCOM as well as
augmented the Joint Staff Crisis Action Team in the National Military
Command Center. DTRA also provided 24/7 reachback support for modeling
and additional subject matter expertise. DTRA also maintains awareness
of, participates in, and is a funding advocate for Advanced Concept
Technology Demonstrations.
Dr. Cerveny. As mentioned, NNSA is focused first on securing,
removing, and downblending fissile materials all around the world.
Within my own office, we are working hard to develop the technologies,
tools, and techniques needed to detect the production and movement of
nuclear materials. This effort includes advancing the state-of-the-art-
for-detection technologies. We also contribute to developing post-
detonation nuclear forensics capabilities in support of WMD
attribution, in the event that our efforts at prevention fail. A major
goal of our nuclear forensics program is to transition Cold War
capabilities and methodologies to meet contemporary challenges. More
specifically, we fund prioritized long-term investments, integrating
capabilities and expertise at national laboratories, academia, and
private industry with the goal of providing technology for prevention
and preparation. Our focus is to develop long-term R&D programs that
provide the technical means to detect the production and acquisition of
special nuclear materials, nuclear material movement, nuclear
detonation detection, and post-detonation nuclear forensics. In
addition to strengthening prevention efforts, detection technologies,
and interdiction programs, our efforts support NNSA's Office of
Emergency Operations and other response agencies of the federal
government (NNSA/DOE offices, DOD, DHS, FBI, FEMA, DTRA, and others)
tasked with the massive response needed in the event of such a
devastating catastrophe.
15. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia and Dr. Cerveny, how well do you
think our Government is doing to prevent and to prepare for such an
attack?
Dr. Tegnelia. The DOD has invested heavily in technologies that
should continue to improve our capability to interdict and render safe
a nuclear device and, therefore, prevent it from detonating inside the
United States. The National Technical Nuclear Forensics program is a
critical component in the effort to dissuade our enemies from utilizing
a nuclear device against us. Knowledge that we will be able to trace a
device back to its source and rapidly strike back is a powerful tool in
our deterrence arsenal.
DTRA believes there has been substantial progress in preparing to
meet such an attack. The National Guard has been particularly
aggressive in developing capability to deal with the aftermath of a WMD
attack. It has developed and fielded 57 full-time WMD Civil Support
Teams, which are supported by the 24/7 DTRA Reachback capability.
Additionally, the Guard is developing Chemical, Biological,
Radiological, Nuclear, and High Yield Explosives (CBRNE) Enhanced
Response Force Packages (CERFP) that have the ability to perform search
and rescue in a contaminated environment, decontamination operations,
and medical triage and initial treatment. We understand that there are
12 CERFPs currently in the Guard force with an additional 5 authorized
and funded by Congress.
DOD has also identified the requirement for brigade-and-larger-
sized CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces that, upon
activation, will consist of both Active and Reserve units. The response
and effectiveness of these Guard, Reserve, and Active Forces will
depend upon the magnitude and number of WMD attacks the Nation faces.
Additionally, through its exercise programs, the U.S. Government is
better prepared to face the specter of a nuclear attack.
Dr. Cerveny. I feel that the United States is making progress in
integrating national expertise, infrastructure, and capabilities to
meet the challenge.
Both prevention of and preparation for a nuclear attack requires
the collective efforts of multiple governmental agencies, leveraging
investments to develop and maintain national capabilities. Since
September 11, the U.S. Government has been developing methodologies and
has been defining responsibilities for all participants. Agreements
such as the four-way radiation detection document I mentioned
previously are good examples of the mechanisms the government uses to
prevent and prepare for such an attack.
nuclear detection research coordination
16. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia and Dr. Cerveny, both the NNSA and
the DTRA are conducting nuclear detection technology research. How is
this work coordinated between your agencies, including the DTRA long-
range stand-off photo-fission work and the Germanium Spectrometer?
Dr. Tegnelia. The interagency research portfolio and its
coordinated investment strategy are summarized in the ``DHS Joint
Report on Research and Development Investment Strategy for Radiological
and Nuclear Detection'' Report to Congress (October 2007).
DTRA works closely and directly with NNSA's Office of
Nonproliferation Research and Engineering (NA-22), as well as the
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) to coordinate and review
research efforts. Details of this coordination were established in a
formal MOU between the interagency, dated June 2007. Interagency
coordination meetings occur regularly throughout the year to inform and
communicate each agency's research portfolio, de-conflict funded
research activities, and identify areas where mutual support can
expedite research objectives. Workshops are planned and organized that
address technical areas of mutual interest. A large interagency and
national laboratory workshop was held last October specifically to
address active interrogation technologies, to include the stand-off
photo-fission work, and to develop a coordinated roadmap for these
large scale efforts. The interagency also mutually participate in
research proposal development, research proposal reviews, and funded
research program reviews. Where joint investment is made by DNDO and
DOE, such as in the germanium spectrometer and other advanced
detectors, we work to ensure that efforts are complementary rather than
redundant.
Dr. Cerveny. As I mentioned in my testimony, NNSA and DTRA (and our
predecessor organizations), have had an ongoing collaboration of
efforts in nuclear detection technology research for nearly 60 years.
There are numerous examples of cooperative R&D activities over this
long partnership, and in fact several ongoing projects arc either co-
supported or leveraging both organizations' investment. The two
technologies you've mentioned are excellent examples. Portable
accelerator development and specialized sensor development for active
interrogation via photo-fission are longstanding investment areas by
both organizations. NNSA has provided support for the basic technical
development, and DTRA is supporting development of the hardware
necessary to deploy such capabilities on small mobile platforms for
field use. There are several current High Purity Germanium (HPGe)
detector development efforts ongoing and of interest to both
organizations. By far, the most visible effort consists of the design
and fabrication of a large array of very sizable HPGe detectors in a
detection system designed for airborne platform pods. This system is
being designed for long operation times in harsh environments and would
be very valuable where operations offer limited time-on-target
opportunities. Various organizations within DOD, including DTRA and
several COCOMs, are engaged in taking this capability to a field
demonstration in the near future.
17. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia and Dr. Cerveny, what are the
challenges associated with detecting the most dangerous materials,
namely, HEU and plutonium?
Dr. Tegnelia. Special nuclear materials, i.e. HEU and plutonium,
are of course radioactive and are the key ingredients of nuclear
explosives. Detection of these materials is dependent on our ability to
detect the radiation that they emit, usually gamma and neutron
radiation. Unfortunately, these emissions are relatively weak, and with
some forethought can be effectively shielded. HEU in particular is very
difficult to detect. In metallic form it emits very few neutrons, and
has very few gamma ray emissions at detectable energies. Some of the
difficulties associated with HEU detection were raised in the April
2008 issue of Scientific American. Detection is further limited by the
rapid decrease in detectable radiation as distance from the material
increases. Our research efforts are focused on overcoming these
inherent challenges, with emphasis on active techniques that can
greatly increase the signatures emitted by HEU and plutonium, even when
shielded and at significant stand-off ranges. We are also pursuing
passive detection technologies that more effectively detect the
radiations emitted by these materials, and can distinguish threats from
background radiation.
Dr. Cerveny. Since both HEU and plutonium are radioactive special
nuclear materials, they are detectable and identifiable by their unique
radiation emission signatures. Detection techniques rely on the
radioactive emissions of both neutrons and gamma rays from these
materials. Not only is the presence of these emission particles
important, but their energy content is as well. The difficulty resides
in the low rates and low energies of radioactive emission for both HEU
and plutonium, but especially for HEU. In many cases, the low emission
rates dictate very long detection times. In addition to low emission
rates, detection is made difficult by the preponderance of radioactive
materials in the natural environment (background), which, in some
instances, presents a radiation signature very similar to the threat
materials. In addition, articles in the normal stream of commerce may
contain legitimate and harmless radioactive materials. These materials
are often referred to as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials
(NORM). Examples include ceramic building tile, bananas, kitty litter,
et cetera. At radiation portal installations, these NORM sources often
cause false alarms. Finally, the radiation signatures from threat
materials can be attenuated or ``shielded'' from detection by barriers
between the threat source and the detector. High density materials,
such as lead, are very effective gamma ray barriers, while low density
materials such as polyethylene are effective at diminishing neutron
emission. Therefore, a determined adversary has options to conceal the
threat. Effective detection efforts must overcome these challenges to
provide both a high confidence and a high probability of material
interdiction capability. The NNSA, along with its partner agencies
including DTRA and DNDO, is working on a broad spectrum of novel
detection technologies that will provide continual improvements in our
national capability to detect such threats.
massive ordnance penetrator
18. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator
(MOP) is a research project to develop and test an air-dropped weapon
to defeat hard targets. Additional testing on the MOP is needed before
operational integration commences, but I understand that there is not
enough funding in the fiscal year 2009 budget request to complete the
MOP testing. What additional testing should be completed before
integrating the MOP on the B-2?
Dr. Tegnelia. Congressional budget increases in fiscal year 2007
and fiscal year 2008 for the Air Force already have been used to start
critical long lead time MOP integration tasks with the B-2 bomber. No
additional DTRA funding is required in fiscal year 2009 to support
testing in advance of MOP operational integration with the B-2 bomber.
The DTRA fiscal year 2009 budget request includes approximately $1.2
million to continue development of the MOP, consistent with Air Force
fiscal year 2009 budget request and plans. The DTRA fiscal year 2009
funding would be used to conduct scaled fragmentation and penetration
experiments to improve the accuracy of MOP phenomenology modeling
within DTRA's Integrated Munitions Effects Assessment (IMEA) tool that
is used by the COCOMs for weaponeering of Hard and Deeply Buried
Targets (HDBTs). DTRA is currently transitioning the MOP technology
development effort to the Air Force, and is not programming DTRA
funding in fiscal year 2010 and beyond for the continuation of such
work. However, if the Air Force MOP/B-2 integration program is
accelerated, DTRA may support future testing to measure MOP lethality
against representative HDBTs.
19. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, what would the additional MOP
testing cost in fiscal year 2009?
Dr. Tegnelia. Since additional DTRA MOP testing is not required in
fiscal year 2009, no additional funds are required.
radiation hardened electronics
20. Senator Reed. Dr. Tegnelia, from its predecessor agency, the
Defense Nuclear Agency, DTRA has the DOD lead for understanding
radiation effects on electronics. These effects are of great importance
to various space systems, including those systems that have to provide
survivable protected communications. What is your assessment of the
health of the DOD ability to keep pace with industry in developing
radiation hardened electronics?
Dr. Tegnelia. The health of the DOD's radiation hardened
microelectronics capability is measured by the available technology to
meet user needs for strategic space or missiles systems on the DOD
Radiation Hardened Oversight Council (RHOC) roadmap. The DOD approach
for radiation hardened microelectronics is to partner with industry for
access to high volume and near-leading-edge products that are less
expensive and have proven performance. This approach enables the DOD to
leverage industry's development costs and efforts.
Presently, the commercial semiconductor industry has placed
unhardened 65nm technology into high production and is advancing toward
having an unhardened 45nm technology production capability by 2009. The
current state of the DOD radiation hardened microelectronics is at
150nm and was developed under the now completed $278 million
Accelerated Technology Program managed by DTRA. The 150nm technology
will meet DOD requirements through 2012 at which time systems on the
DOD RHOC roadmap begin to require 90nm radiation hardened technology.
The DOD is in the early stages of demonstrating the application of
90nm radiation hardened technology that would be produced in commercial
high-volume foundries. However, in order to provide flight qualified
90nm technology, additional investments will be required in 2010 and
2011 to keep pace with the RHOC roadmap requirements beyond 2012.
[Whereupon, at 3:52 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]