[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
GPS: CAN WE AVOID A GAP IN SERVICE?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 7, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-44
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
55-293 WASHINGTON : 2010
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania DARRELL E. ISSA, California
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
DIANE E. WATSON, California JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
JIM COOPER, Tennessee LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
GERRY E. CONNOLLY, Virginia PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio JIM JORDAN, Ohio
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
Columbia JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PETER WELCH, Vermont
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
JACKIE SPEIER, California
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
------ ------
Ron Stroman, Staff Director
Michael McCarthy, Deputy Staff Director
Carla Hultberg, Chief Clerk
Larry Brady, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland DAN BURTON, Indiana
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire JOHN L. MICA, Florida
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
PETER WELCH, Vermont MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
BILL FOSTER, Illinois LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts JIM JORDAN, Ohio
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
William Miles, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 7, 2009...................................... 1
Statement of:
Chaplain, Cristina, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing
Management, GAO; Major General William N. McCasland,
Director, Space Acquisition, Officer of the Under Secretary
of the Air Force; and Dr. Steve Huybrechts, Principal
Director, Command, Control, Communications, Space and
Spectrum, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
Networks and Information Integration/Chief Information
Officer.................................................... 21
Chaplain, Cristina....................................... 21
Huybrechts, Dr. Steve.................................... 44
McCasland, Major General William N....................... 37
James, Lieutenant General Larry D., Commander, 14th Air Force
(Air Force Strategic), Air Force Space Command, and
Commander, Joint Functional Component Command for Space,
U.S. Strategic Command; Karen L. Van Dyke, Director,
Position Navigation and Timing, Research and Innovative
Technology Administration, Department of Transportation; F.
Michael Swiek, executive director, U.S. GPS Industry
Council; and Chet Huber, president, OnStar Corp............ 90
Huber, Chet.............................................. 111
James, Lieutenant General Larry D........................ 90
Swiek, F. Michael........................................ 103
Van Dyke, Karen L........................................ 98
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Chaplain, Cristina, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing
Management, GAO, prepared statement of..................... 23
Huber, Chet, president, OnStar Corp., prepared statement of.. 113
Huybrechts, Dr. Steve, Principal Director, Command, Control,
Communications, Space and Spectrum, Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense Networks and Information Integration/
Chief Information Officer:
Followup questions and responses........................ 60, 81
Prepared statement of.................................... 45
James, Lieutenant General Larry D., Commander, 14th Air Force
(Air Force Strategic), Air Force Space Command, and
Commander, Joint Functional Component Command for Space,
U.S. Strategic Command, prepared statement of.............. 92
McCasland, Major General William N., Director, Space
Acquisition, Officer of the Under Secretary of the Air
Force:
Acquisition Improvement Plan............................. 62
Folowup question and response............................ 86
Prepared statement of.................................... 38
Swiek, F. Michael, executive director, U.S. GPS Industry
Council, prepared statement of............................. 105
Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts:
Prepared statement of Mr. Pace........................... 2
Prepared statement of Mr. Parkinson...................... 8
Van Dyke, Karen L., Director, Position Navigation and Timing,
Research and Innovative Technology Administration,
Department of Transportation, prepared statement of........ 100
GPS: CAN WE AVOID A GAP IN SERVICE?
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tierney, Foster, Cuellar,
Kucinich, Flake, and Duncan.
Staff present: Andy Wright, staff director; Elliot
Gillerman, clerk; Brendan Culley and Steven Gale, fellows;
Margaret Costa, intern; Jeremiah Rigsby and Aaron Wasserman,
legislative assistants; Dan Blankenburg, minority director of
outreach and senior advisor; Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk
and Member liaison; Tom Alexander, minority senior counsel;
Mitchell Kominsky, minority counsel; Dr. Christopher Bright,
minority senior professional staff member; and Glenn Sanders,
minority Defense fellow.
Mr. Tierney. Good morning. A quorum being present, the
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs' hearing
entitled, ``GPS: Can We Avoid a Gap in Service?'' will come to
order.
I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and the
ranking member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening
statements, and without objection so ordered. I ask unanimous
consent that formal written testimony from Dr. Scott Pace of
the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University's
Elliott School of International Affairs, as well as formal
written testimony from Dr. Bradford Parkinson, the chief
architect of GPS and the original GPS Program Manager, be
accepted for the record. Without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pace follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. I also ask unanimous consent that the hearing
record be kept open for 5 business days so that all members of
the subcommittee will be allowed to submit a written statement
for the record. And without objection, that's so ordered as
well.
Well, again, good morning. And today the Subcommittee on
National Security and Foreign Affairs will continue its
oversight of the defense procurement with a hearing that
focuses on the technology that most Americans find very
familiar, a GPS, or Global Positioning System. The GPS was
invented by the United States for the purpose of assisting the
military in combat operations, but has now expanded to all
manner of industries from personal transportation assistance to
commercial aircraft navigation to emergency medical response.
GPS is made technologically possible by a group of satellites
known as constellation, positioned in such a manner that when
communicating with receivers on the ground we can pinpoint the
location anywhere in the globe.
As an acquisition program, GPS service falls within the
clear responsibility of the Department of Defense, most notably
the Air Force. However, it affects multitudes of users far
beyond the military. Civilian government agencies rely on it,
as do commercial industries, personal users, and the
international community. Indeed, it is as much a part of the
world's infrastructure as it is a critical system for national
defense. Unfortunately, that reliance is at risk of being
misplaced.
This morning's hearing was called in light of the
subcommittee's requested Government Accountability Office
report entitled, ``Global Positioning System: Significant
Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading Widely Used
Capabilities.'' In this report GAO documents weaknesses in the
procurement of upgrades for GPS satellites, as well as the
negative effect that these failings have had on current and
future efforts. The current block upgrade of GPS, GPS IIF, has
overrun its original estimated costs of $729 million by an
additional $870 million. In addition, the block will be
completed 3 years late.
This is not a new problem for Department of Defense
procurement. We have another situation where the contractor
given total system responsibility for the development could not
execute the job either on time or on budget. According to the
GAO, no major satellite program undertaken in the past decade
has met its scheduled goals. It would seem that GPS is no
exception. What was built as an effort to streamline the
acquisition process instead resulted in a lack of oversight and
control by the Air Force and Department of Defense.
This doesn't bode well for the next GPS block upgrade, GPS
IIIA, which just began in May of last year under an extremely
aggressive acquisition schedule. The Air Force has engaged a
different company and plans greater oversight for this block.
The GPS IIIA contract was intended to be reminiscent of the
days before acquisition reform when the government tracked
contracts closely rather than letting the companies run free.
There's a novel idea. That sounds good. However, like the
predecessor GPS block and so many other Department of Defense
procurements, the contract is a cost-plus type contract,
meaning the government will pick up the tab no matter how
expensive it ends up becoming. This system not only hinders the
accountability on behalf of the contract to the government, but
also hinders the accountability of the government to the
taxpayer.
I look forward to hearing from our Air Force and Department
of Defense witnesses today about how the failings of the past
will be avoided.
Of greater concern even with cost overruns and delay is the
real possibility of a gap in GPS service. The Department of
Defense has a formal commitment to users to provide 95 percent
availability of service, which has been achieved through a
minimum of 24 satellites in the GPS constellation. With the
aging of satellites in the GPS constellation there are serious
questions about whether that availability can be maintained.
I direct your attention to the monitors on either side of
the room. The graphics on the screen depict the probability of
maintaining this 24-satellite commitment. The first graphic
shows the probability of a 24-satellite constellation falling
to roughly 80 percent in the 2011-2012 timeframe. The second
graphic depicts a scenario where if the GPS III block
encounters even just a conservative 2-year delay the
probability of maintaining a full service constellation drops
precipitously starting October 2013, possibly going as low as
10 percent by 2018.
In light of recent history I am troubled if we are wholly
relying on the hope that the GPS acquisition schedule holds as
it stands today.
This brings us to a second and equally important set of
issues. How is the Department of Defense preparing for this
potential occurrence and what impact may there be to users if a
gap does occur? The reality is from an acquisition perspective
we are nearing the eleventh hour. The President's fiscal 2010
budget terminates funding for the primary GPS back-up system,
LORAN. That puts a lot of pressure on DOD to ensure that GPS
meets all user needs; a precarious position to be in if a gap
is looming.
What are the Department of Defense and the Air Force doing
to prepare users for what could be a shock to the system?
Department of Defense and users need a robust dialog in order
to ensure that user requirements are met and funded, users are
prepared for any possible reduction of service, and the GPS
industry can be involved in discussions about potential
mitigation strategies.
GPS is a critical asset in our economy and to our security.
It's unfortunate that we may find ourselves in a position of
weakness because we've not yet learned to get our procurement
house in order. My hope is that today's hearing will provide
the opportunity for all parties to come to the table to air and
address concerns and to bring public attention to this
important matter.
Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we all know, GPS is
an important asset to the military and for civilian purposes.
The chairman explained very well the problems that we've had;
cost overruns, significant delays with an ex-version of GPS in
terms of the satellite systems. Now, we know that the next
generation will come, and that is slated to be on time at this
point. We want to make sure that the problems we've had
recently don't plague the new system coming up.
There are obviously problems with the procurement system
that we have at DOD, and I look forward to the testimony and
seeing what we can do better in the future. Thanks.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Flake. The subcommittee will
now receive testimony from the first panel before us today.
Ms. Cristina Chaplain currently serves as a Director for
Acquisition and Sourcing Management at the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, where she has responsibility for GAO
assessments of military and civilian space acquisitions. Ms.
Chaplain has also led a variety of Department of Defense-wide
contracting related and best practice evaluations for the GAO.
Ms. Chaplain holds a B.A. from Boston University and a M.A.
from Columbia University.
Major General William N. McCasland is a Director of Space
Acquisition in the Office of the Under Secretary of the Air
Force, where he directs development and purchasing on space and
missile programs to Air Force major commands, product centers
and laboratories dealing with acquisition programs. He has
served in a wide variety of space research acquisition and
operation roles within the Air Force and the National
Reconnaissance Office. General McCasland holds a B.S. from the
U.S. Air Force Academy and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
And Dr. Steve Huybrechts currently serves as the Principal
Director for C3, Space and Spectrum, in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, where he has oversight responsibility for
most of the Nation's military space, command and control
communications, navigation warfare, meteorology, oceanography
and spectrum allocation activities.
Would you like to take on some more responsibilities?
Previously he was assigned to the Air Force Research
Laboratory, where he was responsible for selecting and managing
many of the Nation's highest priority space experiments, as
well as directing the Air Force's research portfolio of
spacecraft power structures and control technologies. Dr.
Huybrechts holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available
today and sharing your substantial expertise. It's the policy
of the subcommittee to swear in witnesses before they testify,
so I ask you to please stand and raise your right hands. If
there are any persons who will be submitting testimony along
with you, please ask them to rise and raise their right hands
as well.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Tierney. The record will please reflect that all of the
witnesses answered in the affirmative. All of your written
testimonies will be submitted on the record, so everything that
you have written down and submitted to us will be there.
We allocate about 5 minutes for people to make an opening
comment. You will see the amber light come on when there's
about a minute left. When the red light comes on, the floor
opens and you drop through if you go to the 5 minutes. But
generally we try to hold off on that drastic thing and we'll
let you go a little bit over because we value your testimony.
We want to hear what you have to say, but we do want to have a
chance to have some questions and answers and get to the second
panel as well.
So, Ms. Chaplain, if you would be kind enough to start.
STATEMENTS OF CRISTINA CHAPLAIN, DIRECTOR, ACQUISITION AND
SOURCING MANAGEMENT, GAO; MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM N. McCASLAND,
DIRECTOR, SPACE ACQUISITION, OFFICER OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF
THE AIR FORCE; AND DR. STEVE HUYBRECHTS, PRINCIPAL DIRECTOR,
COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS, SPACE AND SPECTRUM, OFFICE OF
THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE NETWORKS AND INFORMATION
INTEGRATION/CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
STATEMENT OF CRISTINA CHAPLAIN
Ms. Chaplain. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,
thank you for inviting me today to discuss our work on the
Global Positioning System. We perform this review for your
committee in light of the criticality of GPS to the military,
the economy, and many, many individual users, as well as
challenges that have been facing the acquisition programs.
We've issued a comprehensive report which is available on
the GAO Web site. The report covers our findings on the
acquisition of the satellites, the ground control equipment,
the military user equipment, as well as the larger coordination
of GPS. Today I just want to highlight what we believe are the
most important takeaways of our work.
In short, all three acquisition programs have had major
issues in development which have had major consequences for GPS
users. The GPS IIF satellite acquisition program, for example,
as you mentioned, was delayed 3 years due to an array of
issues, including requirements changes, a loss of expertise in
building the GPS satellites on the contractor side, lax program
oversight, and technical problems that the program is still
dealing with. This, coupled with the aging of satellites in
orbit, the decrease in the number of satellites that were
planned for the IIF program, and scheduled risks going forward
with the IIIA program, presents the risk of a capability gap.
Military user equipment acquisitions have also been delayed
considerably due to funding shifts and diffuse attention. This
has also had severe consequences for users. DOD purposefully
reopened already manufactured satellites 10 years ago to
install capability that would lessen the effect of jamming of
GPS for military users. But today because of delays in the
production of military user equipment we may not see that
capability be taken advantage of for another 10 years.
Last, because of developmental delays, ground control
equipment for GPS cannot presently support some capabilities of
the newer satellites in orbit. With regard to the potential gap
in satellite capability our analysis, as you said, shows that
if both the IIF and IIIA programs are executed on schedule,
there's still just an 80 to 90 percent probability that the GPS
constellation will stay above 24 satellites. With a 2-year
delay the probability drops to as low as 10 percent.
A couple notes about our analysis. One, we largely
replicated the methodology employed by the Aerospace Corp. and
relied on their reliability parameters. We matched the results
of our analysis of what could happen without the delay with the
results for Aerospace Corp.
Two, there are measures available for the Air Force to deal
with the gap, such as turning off a secondary payload for
periods of time. But this produces other tradeoffs that need to
be considered. Moreover, such measures may not be able to
compensate if there are long delays in schedule.
Three, our analysis is based on the commitment of the Air
Force to maintain a 24-satellite constellation, and many users,
civilian and military, have expressed a desire for 30 or more
satellites, particularly to assure coverage in mountainous and
urban areas.
Four, the Air Force insists that it's on a good track to
meet the schedule for the IIIA program, and we agree that it is
and commend the Air Force for taking a number of actions to
make the program more executable. However, it's important to
remember the program is still in its early phases. The Air
Force anticipates shaving off 3 years of what was done for the
IIF program, and it is still not clear whether the IIF program
has overcome its schedule problems. Also, the program is not
merely replicating IIF, it is aiming to build GPS on a much
larger satellite bus, increase the power of the military signal
by a factor of 10, and add a new signal, all of which could
create technical and design difficulties for the contractor.
Last, as you said, no major space program in recent years
has been delivered on time. Some programs that have also tried
to adopt better practices for development have still run into
schedule delays. As we pointed out in other work, some space
programs are facing delays as long as 7 years. So in our view,
there are reasons to be concerned about the schedule for GPS
IIIA. Moreover, as mentioned before, even without a delay
there's still up to a 20 percent chance the constellation will
fall below 24. Clearly that alone warrants attention from
senior leaders and everyone involved with GPS, which our
recommendations are focused on and which the DOD concurred
with.
Before I conclude I would like to point out that we also
focus on a larger coordination of GPS among civil agencies, the
international community, and others. This is a very broad area
which was frankly impossible to audit comprehensively in the
time that we had. But it was clear through our discussions and
analysis of documents that there is confusion on how civilian
agencies should get their needs met by GPS, and frustration on
DOD's part, which is focused on keeping the program executable.
I look forward to the discussion of today's second panel
because it will also shed light on the degree that users are
aware of risks facing the program and whether they are in a
position to manage those risks. That concludes my statement,
and I look forward to talking more about the report.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Chaplain follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
General.
STATEMENT OF MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM N. McCASLAND
General McCasland. Good morning, Chairman Tierney, Ranking
Member Flake, distinguished members of National Security and
Foreign Affairs Subcommittee----
Mr. Tierney. May I ask you to pull the mic closer to you
and make sure it's on.
General McCasland. Yes, sir. There we go. Yes, sir. I'm
Major Neal McCasland, the Air Force's Director for Space
Acquisition in the Pentagon, and it's a distinct privilege to
address you on the Air Force's management and execution of the
GPS program. I've provided a written statement for the record,
so will limit my opening remarks.
GPS provides accurate location and time information in all
weather, day and night, worldwide. It's vital to military and
civil activities, including mapping, aerial refueling, weapons,
search and rescue operations, banking, Geodetic Survey, and
agriculture. The Air Force, as the developer, operator, and
steward for GPS, is committed to maintaining GPS as the gold
standard for positioning, navigation, and timing information.
As your committee has noticed, and this hearing is
evidence, a sure GPS capability is critical to the success for
many missions, from humanitarian relief to military operations.
The Air Force is committed to continuity of this critical
service. To that end, sustainment of the constellation is our
No. 1 priority.
In addition, we continue to make improvements to the
constellation, including new civil signals, more jam resistant
military codes, new receivers, increasing accuracy, and
integrity of the service.
The foundation for success, both technically and schedule
wise, lies in our mission assurance process. Mission assurance
is a disciplined application of management system engineering
and quality principles over the entire life cycle to ensure
mission needs are satisfied. It's a culture we've worked hard
to rebuild at the Space and Missile Systems Product Center that
permeates the GPS team as ingrained throughout all its
functional disciplines.
Simultaneously, senior leadership across the Air Force,
Departments of Defense, and Transportation have committed to
GPS program success. This shared goal enhances capability
synchronization, budget advocacy, and stability and provides
the support we need to deliver and execute our plan.
The Air Force, sir, is committed to maintaining GPS as the
premier provider of positioning navigation and timing services.
We have a high confidence plan to sustain and modernize this
critical national capability.
Thank you for inviting me here today. I'm ready to answer
your questions.
[The prepared statement of General McCasland follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Doctor.
STATEMENT OF DR. STEVE HUYBRECHTS
Dr. Huybrechts. Good morning, Chairman Tierney, Mr. Flake,
distinguished Members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify
before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs.
Mr. Tierney. Can I ask you as well to pull that closer to
you. That would be helpful.
Dr. Huybrechts. I'm sorry. Is that better?
I have also provided a written statement for the record,
and General McCasland has gone through much of DOD's position
so I'll limit my opening remarks.
My name is Steve Huybrechts. I'm here today representing
Mr. Grimes, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Networks and Information Integration. As stated before, I'm the
Principal Director for Communications, Command and Control,
Space and Spectrum.
GPS does play a major combat support role today in both
Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The system plays
an ever increasing role in a wide range of DOD missions,
including counterinsurgency operations, force and
infrastructure protection, collection of intelligence, and
strike of time critical targets.
I appreciate the chance to again highlight the importance
of GPS to a wider audience and the importance of keeping
funding for GPS across both defense and civil lines stable.
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you
again for the opportunity to speak to you today. We greatly
appreciate your support, and I look forward to continued
collaboration.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Huybrechts follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Well, thank you for what I can only term as
minimalist testimony. It was both you and General McCasland. I
don't want to be overly critical on that, General McCasland,
but I read your testimony and heard what you have to say and
some would term it as happy talk in the context of what we're
doing here. And I understand the Air Force is excited about its
mission or whatever, but we have some serious difficulties here
in issues that I think have to be confronted on that.
Let me start. Dr. Huybrechts, at least your written
testimony did address the two questions that the Government
Accountability Office posed. And so, Ms. Chaplain, let me ask
you, has the Department of Defense as far as GAO is concerned
responded as you would anticipate and as you would have hoped
with respect to the two issues and recommendations that you
presented?
Ms. Chaplain. The Department of Defense concurred with both
recommendations.
Mr. Tierney. Have they done anything about it?
Ms. Chaplain. The report just went out, so I don't see what
they've done yet. In describing their concurrence they've
pretty much said the leadership structure that's in place for
GPS serves them well. And what we're concerned about is that
there's a lot of people that have a hand in the GPS program,
and it's not always clear who's really in charge of the
program.
That gets to be particularly troublesome when it comes to
the user equipment. Each military service develops its own user
equipment that goes on every kind of weapon system you can
think of. And that's where we see a huge delay, getting that
user equipment onto weapon systems. So the military services
have their control over that issue. Acquisition, technology and
logistics have control on oversight over the acquisition side
of GPS. The NII office is designated as the lead office for
GPS. And there's also many, many other players involved with
GPS.
So again in our view what we were hoping to see was just
strength and kind of leadership focused on GPS because of the
potential capability gaps, because of the risks in acquisition,
and because of the criticality of GPS to everybody in the
Nation.
Mr. Tierney. Dr. Huybrechts, are you that person? Are you
the one that draws it all together to make sure that they're
coordinating and getting things done in a timely fashion?
Dr. Huybrechts. That is my role, yes, up at the OSD level.
We have put a single service, the Air Force, in charge of all
segments of the GPS program. This is unlike the way that we
handled many of our other space programs where multiple
services are involved. So from that perspective you do have a
single entity that's in charge of acquisition and operation of
the system. My office at the OSD level has been given by the
Deputy Secretary of Defense singular responsibility for this
program.
That said, we have to manage the program within the
Department's processes. It's one of many programs and has to
get traded off against all the other various departments'
needs.
I would like to address the issue of the user equipment
delay, if I could. I think that about 4 or 5 years ago the
Department and particularly the Air Force did recognize that
there was a risk of a gap if we did not act.
Mr. Tierney. They did or did not recognize?
Dr. Huybrechts. Did, did recognize that. And it's for that
reason that within the resources available to the program that
we prioritized the space segment followed by the ground segment
upgrades higher than the user equipment. That's one reason the
user equipment is lagging, is because we wanted to prioritize
any mitigation or mitigation of a gap in service.
Mr. Tierney. So you took from Peter to pay Paul. Basically
you took money out of the end user aspect to deal with the
satellite situation?
Dr. Huybrechts. Yes. I would argue that it's probably less
an issue of money than it is just an issue of people that
understand this technology that can do this kind of work.
There's only so many resources that we can apply to the various
things within space that we're trying to execute. And within
this program and the elements of our Nation that understand
this technology we prioritize continuity of service.
And now if you look where we are focused today it's largely
on the user equipment because we feel we have a pretty solid
plan going forward for the continuity of the service issue.
Mr. Tierney. We're going to get to that in a second. Ms.
Chaplain, does that give you any comfort?
Ms. Chaplain. I know you're familiar with GAO's concerns
about the larger acquisition process. And one of the things we
harp on is investment strategies and prioritizing across the
Department. In my view, if you're going to put a priority on
GPS you need to have a priority on the user equipment and look
beyond the space portfolio for those resources if it's so
important to the military.
Mr. Tierney. And I'm curious, how does the Air Force really
manage all of the other departments and tell them what needs to
be done when? General, do you have any difficulty with that?
What I hear from the GAO report is everybody is sort of getting
their aspect of it ready when it's ready and putting it on
whenever they might, and there seems to be no control over
getting them all coordinated and synchronized. What are you
doing with that?
General McCasland. Let me elaborate a little bit on that.
First off, the Air Force's role in user equipment is to develop
product lines that are available for the other services and any
user to integrate them. And just as something to show, I have
here engineering models of the Next Generation M-code
compatible user equipment that we're going to be fielding to
operate with GPS III satellites. Now, these are very early
engineering models, and it's from two different vendors, and
it's just an illustration that we're making technical progress
today.
To your broader question about management, it's the Air
Force's role to develop product ties and make available for
production gear like this. And these are chip sets and
subassemblies that have all the functions of GPS on them and to
make them available for the defense industry and the other
services as a whole. And this is because the Air Force really
shouldn't be in a position of building the end item that is
fielded into Army mechanized equipment or into ships or into
other people's airplanes.
Mr. Tierney. But I suspect that somebody, if not the Air
Force then Dr. Huybrechts' office, should be in the business of
making sure they get it done on time and to certain standards.
General McCasland. Yes, sir, you bet. And the standard
setting inside the Department, the Office of Secretary of
Defense sets policy oversight, the Office of the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs sets technical standards for functional
integration across this enterprise. And we've been through this
in many ways. If you may recall, the original fielding of GPS
into the military took these tools of synchronization. And so
there's been two generations of modernization of GPS user
equipment since the original fielding. All of them have
followed a pattern that we've learned from. And it's a balance
for a program manager, say the manager of an Army mechanized
equipment line. You know, that program manager has their own
set of schedule and cost constraints and services to integrate
into his weapon system. So our job in the Air Force is to
create an opportunity for that program manager to have good
choices, economical equipment, technical standards, so that we
can support them. The timing and the synchronization of this is
an issue that we look to and support OSD in their oversight
role. We in the Air Force are accountable for the integration
into Air Force weapon systems, but we also decentralize that so
that the program manager of those particular weapon systems are
the first line of accountability of the integration of a new
service like GPS or satellite communication or any other
service into their particular program. This is an effort of
some complexity in its synchronization, but it's a balance
between the specialized nature of a service like GPS and the
mission function of a particular weapon system that has to
integrate service like this.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. Thank you. I appreciate the testimony. Major
General McCasland, I never really heard what you thought of the
GAO report. Do you agree with the finding? Do you concede that
there's a problem and an issue here or is everything just
hunky-dory?
General McCasland. Well, as the Department's response,
Ranking Member Flake, indicated, we generally agree with that.
We offered some clarification and comments. If I may, and take
the lead from your question, let me step through a couple of
reactions to the report.
To start with, with this risk of a gap. As the GAO
indicated, they followed the methodology and the technical
assumptions that we use in the Air Force to monitor this. Those
assumptions were provided to them some time ago, about a year
ago. And in that time some things have changed. These lifetime
assumptions are a bit like actuarial tables with people, except
we don't have human history to base them on, we've got a much
shorter history and population. The specific population we base
it on is the flying population of GPS IIR satellites. And in
this year the IIR satellites have continued to live, so the
models that we base their future forecast have grown a little
bit. So just in the year we can look to this same gap, and if
we were to recalculate it, it would be only about half the
depth that it is today.
The second comment that I would make, and the GAO did
acknowledge this in the report, is that this model is based on
a predicted launch rate and it's based on the full use of all
the power on the satellite for all the payloads. So those are
two choices that the operators, and General James, who will be
on panel II, could speak to, the operator will have choices to
make. They'll have choices to make about how fast they actually
launch the satellites and they'll have choices to make about
the way they spend the power on the satellites.
So when we take all of this in the whole, we on the supply
end have choices to make every budget year with the degree to
which we program the rate, the build rate, and the
replenishment of the pipeline, the operator has choices to make
for how fast they consume the pipeline and how fast they
consume the on orbit resources, the degree to which they
consume the available electrical power.
With all of that, we are confident that we've got several
degrees of margin in preventing a gap like has been depicted in
the GAO's report. So the GAO's report is accurate insofar as
those technical assumptions are what happens. We think that
there are many choices that will allow us the way to not face
those circumstances over the next few years, sir.
Mr. Flake. Ms. Chaplain, one of the ways to extend the life
of these satellites is obviously to cut secondary payloads or
cut power to those, I guess, to extend the life. One of those
secondary assignments or purposes of these satellites is
nuclear detonation detection system. Is that one of the
secondary payloads that can be jettisoned, if you will, or put
aside? And if it is, yes, the life of the satellite is
extended, but do we have a gap then in some of the secondary
purposes, the nuclear detonation detection system?
Ms. Chaplain. Well, our point is you can turn off those
secondary sources and conserve a lot of power, but that needs
to be a discussion that needs to take place precisely for what
you're saying, that to look at what other gaps you might be
facing in other capabilities.
Also, with regard to predicted launch rates, it's important
to note that last year we had a lot of issues in launch
manifest, a lot of back-up. So even what you assume can be a
good launch rate may not turn out to be the case.
With regard to the assumptions of data being based over a
year ago, I would like to note that we held up our report a
little bit longer so that we could receive data from DOD that
came to us in March 2009, updated all our analyses, and that's
what you see reflected in our report.
Mr. Flake. So you stick to the percentages?
Ms. Chaplain. I'm very confident what we have is about as
recent as we could possibly get.
I would also comment that these same gap scenarios have
appeared in other documents, including described, but not in
the chart form, in the report that DOD delivered to Congress on
the GPS system in December 2008. So the concern about gaps is a
long-term one, because basically a lot of satellites that are
in orbit are aging. And there's only--you know, you do have
measures you can take to conserve power and stretch out the
constellation. There have been times before when people have
been worried about gaps and the Air Force has managed them
quite successfully.
But here we are again, and our point is this is a high risk
and we just need a lot of attention and resources on it.
Mr. Flake. Doctor, do you have anything to add to that,
particularly with regard to the nuclear detonation detection
system? Is that one of the choices to not have that function as
a way to extend the satellite?
Dr. Huybrechts. Sure. That is one of the choices. I would
point out that the NDS system, the new detection system, does
not require 24 packages on orbit. It's a much lower number. The
reason we launch one on every GPS is just to have a standard
satellite configuration so we're not worried about which orbit
we're going into. So there is a fair amount of leeway there to
turn off payload capability without impacting performance of
the system.
I also want to add that we're using the term ``gap,'' and
that sounds very black or white. Compared to pretty much all of
our space capabilities, the GPS constellation degrades whether
it's from 30 to 29 or 24 to 23 or 5 to 4 more gracefully just
because of the numbers of satellites. This is kind of like the
number of sweaters in my teenage daughter's closet, right? To
go from 24 to 23 sweaters is not like she doesn't have any more
sweaters. It may seem terrible to her.
So what we're really talking about is a slight chance, and
our analysis, which is independent of the Air Force's, is more
in line with General McCasland's analysis. We're more in the 10
to 20 percent chance, so a small chance of going for a short
period of time from 24 to 23 satellites. It's not as if GPS
will turn off.
I point out the original GPS spec was only 21 satellites.
The decision to move to 24 in the late 1990's was somewhat
arbitrary. I don't want to call it an arbitrary number, but it
was sort of an estimate of what we could afford versus the
cost-benefit of building more satellites. We decided we were
going to shoot for about 24 satellites.
So we shouldn't be sitting here thinking that all the GPS
receivers are going to stop working. What you're going to get
is a slight degradation in performance over small portions of
the world for small periods of time, and relative to today, and
in primarily impacting users in canyons and places like that.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. We didn't realize you were under
such stress having a teenage daughter, but we'll try to be easy
on you now.
Mr. Foster.
Mr. Foster. If you could continue on that point. The
degradation that you see then has to do with the resolution
you've got or the acquisition time or what? How does it show up
when you get fewer and fewer satellites?
Dr. Huybrechts. You will see it--you would see it--I mean,
you would see it today if we--today we're flying 30 or 31. If
you lose one today, which is well within our tolerance, you
will see the same impact; a slight degradation in accuracy, and
possibly for certain users that are in deep canyons, etc., you
will have less opportunity to get four satellites in view, you
know, a slightly smaller opportunity to get four satellites in
view and therefore be able to compute a resolution. So for
certain very specialized users a slight increase in the
acquisition time potentially to get the four satellites in
view, and maybe a slight change in the accuracy, also over
certain spots of the globe for shorter periods of time.
Mr. Foster. And I understand there's also a European
competitor system, Galileo, I think. And do you know what the
time scale for that is and what its capabilities are nominally
from both a commercial and a military point of view.
Dr. Huybrechts. There is a European satellite system. It is
currently a paper system. But there is money allocated to go
off and build it. I believe that they are still targeting 2013
or 2014 timeframe to be launching satellites. Depending on
which analysis you believe, that may be very optimistic or it
may be accurate.
Mr. Foster. And the intention is to make a system where you
just have reprogrammable digital receivers that you can listen
to either the European or the U.S. system. Will a typical
commercial system at least be able to work off of either
system?
Dr. Huybrechts. We have a negotiated agreement with the
European Union so that our signals will be compatible, so that
when their satellites launch it will be possible to build
receivers that can accept signals from both systems
simultaneously. Potentially if we're flying 24 satellites and
they're flying 24 satellites, a user would have access to 48
satellites at that point for the civil signal. We don't have
any agreements at the moment for--relative to their--they don't
have a military, so you don't have a national security signal,
but there's potential for that there, too.
Mr. Foster. The next question is for General McCasland. Are
the two modules that you have here the only modules that will
be the standard solution for all Earth-born equipment.
General McCasland. Those are prototypes of what the Air
Force intends to make available as standard engines for the GPS
military user equipment. There is a commercial industry that
has shown us that they will also develop GPS user equipment for
commercial applications, and some have capitalized military
applications as well. So we will build this product line and
make it available with the documentation.
My own sense is that our American industry will also
develop their own product lines and make those available to
suppliers as well.
Mr. Foster. So from a military point of view you intend to
have one product line and everyone is just going to use it, or
are you just going to say here is a reference design and then
all the different services are going to go and come up with
modified versions that?
General McCasland. That's the core of the GPS receiver that
you've got in your hands; the radio, the cryptography----
Mr. Foster. Well, I take it this ball grid array that's
sort of double sticky taped on here is a mechanical prototype
here.
General McCasland. Yes, sir. Those are engineering
prototypes, those are pretty early models. I just wanted to
illustrate that it's moved beyond paper.
Mr. Foster. Now it's in the plastic. Do you have working
silicon for all the pieces of the--you know, the actual chips
that will be here?
General McCasland. I'm sorry, sir?
Mr. Foster. Do you have working silicon? Do you have
integrated circuits that do the job?
General McCasland. For the subassemblies we do there. For
the correlators, the security modules, we do. We haven't gotten
a working prototype. The working prototypes are due at the end
of our--in the end of the fiscal year 2010 program.
Mr. Foster. And is there anything in the space-borne
equipment that is being held up because of uncertainties in the
Earth bound equipment?
General McCasland. No, sir, not at all.
Mr. Foster. Or do you have a well-defined technical
interface there, any independent design problems?
General McCasland. Well, they are dependent, of course. But
we've published the signal structure specifications. And along
the lines of Dr. Huybrechts' last comment, we work to define
that because the signal structure, it's definition----
Mr. Foster. So those have been frozen already?
General McCasland. Yes, sir.
Mr. Foster. So there's no uncertainty that crosses over.
OK. My light is red.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Duncan, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you for calling this hearing. Our briefing paper and our
memorandum says the current modernization program was projected
to cost $729 million with a completion date of 2006. The Air
Force has failed to meet cost and scheduling goals for this
project. GAO estimates that this project is $870 million over
budget and 3 years past due. And I remember reading last year
in the GAO report that said the Pentagon had a total of $295
billion in cost overruns on just its 72 largest weapon systems,
and nobody got upset about that. Apparently you're not supposed
to criticize the military in any way today. And I think in part
it's because the figures are so high that nobody can really
comprehend it. People did get upset about the $328,000 photo
mission to New York City. Maybe they can understand that a
little bit better. But now, according to our memorandum, $1
billion 6 hundred million has been spent on this program and
yet it's still not completed, and it's $870 million over
budget.
General McCasland, is anybody upset about that or are we
just going to gleefully go on so that if Chairman Tierney holds
a hearing on this a year or two from now people are just going
to come in and tell us it's even more over budget and further
behind schedule? I mean somebody ought to be upset about this.
General McCasland. Well, sir, I won't dispute being upset.
I am, too. Because as a supplier that's resources that I don't
have available to meet my operational customers' needs. So I'm
inclined to resonate with you.
As the GAO report pointed out, the particular portion of
the GPS program that those figures were associated with is the
GPS IIF satellite program, the current production program. And
the GAO noted that a number of circumstances conspired to
aggravate the business performance of that program, one of
which was the consolidation of the defense industry. The GPS
program was awarded to Rockwell Collins. As the industry
consolidated Rockwell was purchased, its factory operations
moved up to--it integrated with the former Hughes Space and
Comm factory in El Segundo under Boeing ownership.
The second dimension that the GAO also noticed, noted in
her report, was that the government also chose to evolve and
modify this program at the same time in response to user
demands. We had military and civil requirements that we were
trying to meet, additional services for civilian second civil
signal and the beginnings of the evolution of the M-code
modernization and the power growth for the military.
The third thing that the GAO also noticed in the IIF
program was that we awarded the IIF program under an experiment
of acquisition streamlining that we now look back and say was
not successful.
And so the combination of those have added up to cost and
schedule growth that the GAO has rightly reflected on. The GAO
also noted that for every one of those we've taken steps to
ensure that those circumstances aren't being repeated on the
GPS block III program. We believe that the industry
consolidation is stable, that the supplier base is healthy,
they have a business volume that tells us that we can count on
doing business with the same people that we've signed the
contract with. Now, admittedly, that is subject to
circumstances beyond defense's control, but it appears to be a
broadly accepted assumption that the industry is stable.
We've put into practice kind of a ``back to basics''
approach for government oversight, the use of military
standards, and we think that's already showing signs of
success.
Third, we delivered----
Mr. Duncan. Let me say this. I see my time is about to run
out. You know, it seems to me that Federal bureaucrats, and
particularly the Pentagon, can rationalize or justify or excuse
almost anything. It seems to me that it ought to be awfully
difficult to make excuses for an $870 million cost overrun. But
I suppose that since it is money that's not coming out of
anybody's pocket over there at the Pentagon people don't really
care that much. And I just think it's terrible. I mean, I can't
describe words adequate to express my feelings about this
because I have a feeling that if we come in and have this same
hearing a year or 2 years from now we're going to hear that
there's even more cost overruns. And if this was happening in
the private sector, either people would be fired or a company
would go out of business. I think it's shameful.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan and I are
going to start our own party on this issue, because I couldn't
agree more. And we are going to have a series of hearings about
procurement in the Department of Defense right on throughout
this session, because it's outrageous and he's absolutely
right. I don't think, General, that circumstances conspire.
That's not what happens. People mess up, all right, and I think
the Department of Defense in a big way has messed up, starting
with the idea of whatever they call reform being an absolute
joke. Their reform was essentially to take out oversight and
management, to take out scheduling and procurement people, to
fork over all their responsibilities to things that were
inherently government and turning it over to the private
industry as if they were going to be trusted to do everything
with no self-interest at all.
I don't know who is responsible for that decision. I would
like to know whether anybody's head rolled for it? Do you know
of anybody that lost their job for changing the system?
Apparently we have written testimony on the record from the
original program manager for the first GPS system that went on
time and within budget, and then some genius decided to change
that process and to put it with what they call reform and take
out all of the protections and safeguards for the taxpayers'
moneyand for the end users' ability. So who made that decision,
General or Doctor, and whose head rolled for it?
Dr. Huybrechts. Are you asking who made the decision to
reopen the IIF satellite?
Mr. Tierney. Who decided between the first GPS and the next
iteration that they were going to fix something that wasn't
broken and drive us to the point where we're now behind
schedule and over 100 percent overrun of cost? Who went from
the system where you had people in oversight, you had
government people at the industry's places watching over this,
where you had schedulers who knew what they were doing and how
to account for variations, where you had program managers
watching it every day to a system where you just gave it to the
contractor and have a nice day? I mean, who is responsible for
that?
General McCasland. Well, Mr. Chairman, the timeframe of
these decisions were in the late 1990's, and I didn't prepare
for a historical accounting.
Mr. Tierney. Well, I'm sorry that you didn't, but clearly
this hearing was about what went wrong and what's going right,
so maybe you should have. But the idea is who would it be?
Would it be your level, the person that was in your seat that
would make that decision? Or, Doctor, would it be the person
that was in your seat at that time that would be responsible?
Dr. Huybrechts. The decision to open up the IIF satellite
and add the new civil and military capabilities was made in the
late 1990's at the White House level.
Mr. Tierney. OK. It was made at the White House level to
actually change the whole system of how it was done instead of
following the program aspects of the previous one to go to
another thing, they made that at the White House as opposed to
the Department of Defense?
Dr. Huybrechts. The decision to modernize the GPS system--
--
Mr. Tierney. I'm not talking about that, Doctor. You know
what I'm talking about. I know the idea to modernize it. Who
made the decision of how they were going to manage it? That's
what I want to know. And I doubt very much that was made at the
White House. That was made somewhere in the Department of
Defense. And my question to you is, who in the Department of
Defense, at what level and what particular seat, decided to go
for a program that was operating perfectly well to a system
that gave it all over to the contractor without any government
oversight or any essential government oversight, who made that
decision?
Dr. Huybrechts. If you're asking who made the decision to
change how we did space acquisition writ large, because we did
change space acquisition and how we did it, not just in this
program but across all the space programs at that time, I would
have to take that question for the record.
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Mr. Tierney. Would you do that, please, and let us know,
because essentially we have run into this problem. The
Government Accountability Office tells us over and over again
these are the issues; the relaxed oversight, relaxed quality
inspections. We are finding it--we found it with the Coast
Guard program, you know, Deepwater. They gave all the contracts
to the same contractor; the one to design, the one to build,
the one to oversee. And when all that went wrong, they gave the
same contract to the same company to fix it.
We're running into this every time we turn around. I think
part of what's incumbent upon us is to make sure it doesn't
continue on. Now, General, you tell us that you have
essentially gone back to basics here, and I hope that's so. The
Government Accountability Office reports that's what you tell
them. There's going to be more oversight of this; you're going
to have more quality inspectors onsite.
General McCasland. Yes, sir. The engagement of support
offices like the Defense Contract Management Agency, field
offices, the way we engage with the contractors, all of that
is, frankly--it isn't so much that we forgot the recipe, it's
that we consciously chose to try to in an unsuccessful manner,
and we're going back to the methods that Dr. Parkinson used
when he was a colonel. They've served us well.
Mr. Tierney. I hope you haven't forgotten the recipe.
Again, I think if somebody had something that wasn't broken and
they decided to fix it, I would like to find out who it was and
what was motivating it. I doubt that it was sheer stupidity,
but that might be the case. But if something else was
motivating, we better find out what happened, investigate it
and see where it leads us on that.
The other problem I think we're going to have that is
replete throughout all these different procurement programs is
people qualified to do the scheduling, is people qualified to
do the program managing. Are you having difficulty finding
enough people to qualify to take care of your systems,
including this particular system?
General McCasland. Mr. Chairman, that is an issue that does
concern the Air Force. In fact, the Secretary of the Air Force
released a plan called the acquisition improvement plan tied to
his strategic goal of capturing acquisition excellence. He
released that plan just this week. One of those elements is
precisely aimed at growing and qualifying and training the
acquisition work force.
So I share your concern. The human capital is the heart and
soul of good oversight, and we're committed to the health of
that work force. That's the career force that I grew up in. I
have a personal sense of commitment to growing the next
generation of leaders in that role, and I'm really pleased to
see my service Secretary support that agenda.
Mr. Tierney. Are you able to share a copy of that
department document?
General McCasland. We would love to.
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Mr. Tierney. If you would, we would appreciate it.
Doctor, do you want to add anything to that just before I
close out. What is the Department doing with respect to what
we're told is a shortage of qualified people in the pipeline to
do program management and to do scheduling on projects of this
nature?
Dr. Huybrechts. Finding good people is always difficult.
Colonel Dave Madden, who I have the highest respect for, who
runs the GPS program office out in Los Angeles, is one of the
better program managers I believe that I've met. But he has one
of the most difficult jobs in the U.S. Government. You manage a
very large enterprise, it's a very complex system, and it's
difficult to find good people. We have been trying--I'm not an
expert on the personnel systems in the Department of Defense. I
would be happy to find you an expert to bring here.
Mr. Tierney. I think we may do that. I think we may have a
hearing with people in here. If this is a problem, as it
appears to be, and we've had people come to us of late, I
should tell you, and explain to us that no matter what we're
talking about in a contract, and the Government Accountability
Office I think in almost all the programs on the general report
of overruns and schedule problems indicated that was a real
serious issue on that. So I think we will want to have a
separate hearing on that.
Thank you. Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. I don't have any particular questions at this
point. I just want to echo what's been said here. It seems that
we're hearing some, as the chairman put it, happy talk. And
there are ways to explain why these overruns have occurred,
both in cost and time. But we want to make sure that the
lessons are learned and in the future we're not here, as Mr.
Duncan said, a year from now hearing the same thing, just more
expensive and more timely at that time.
So thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Flake. Yes.
Mr. Tierney. One of the questions on that, too, is
continuity of program managers. I remember that was mentioned
in the GAO report as well. So what are we doing about the fact
that people just continually--there was a particular number of
people that went through that program, seven different program
managers, each of whom--five of whom served for only 1 year
each. That can't be healthy for a program this sophisticated
and complex. So what are we doing about that?
General McCasland. Well, sir, I believe that particular
reference was looking at the program management inside
industry. So it's an expectation that we hold to our suppliers
that they also field a stable leadership team.
Mr. Tierney. This is the IIF program, had seven different
program managers, the first five of whom served 1 year each.
That's not your colleagues, that's you.
General McCasland. Well, again, the early days of the IIF
program were in the 1990's. Today it's our policy to keep the
wing commanders in place, the program managers, Colonel Madden,
in place a minimum of 3 years. And we recognize through the
whole acquisition leadership chain that the continuity of
acquisition leadership is one of the keys.
Mr. Tierney. Are you having success holding it for 3 years?
General McCasland. Yes.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Foster.
Mr. Foster. You have--do you have an integrated project
schedule in place.
General McCasland. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Mr. Foster. And could you provide us with a list of the
high-level milestones that we can anticipate in the next 1 or 2
years?
General McCasland. Yes, sir.
Mr. Foster. When you come back a year from now, we can
track you against those.
General McCasland. Yes, sir.
Mr. Foster. OK. And in terms of the system degradation, do
you actually have a good--either a modeling or a lot of field
experience to really understand this, what's going to happen as
the satellites stop?
General McCasland. Right. I feel that the Air Force has
really the gold standard in--that's been developed by our
federally funded research and development center of the
Aerospace Corp. This has been their--their corporate focus
since they were founded in the early 1960's. So they have
pioneered and keep the technical research on satellite failure
modes and effects, actuarial forecasts, device physics
phenomena in the space environment, the science basis for
making these kinds of runs. So, yes, sir, I think it is the
best in the world.
Mr. Foster. You think it is a well understood degradation
process.
General McCasland. Oh, yes, sir, very much so.
Mr. Foster. I yield back.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. Dr. Huybrechts, as far as streamlining the
procurement process, are--we know that's been a problem in the
past, but is that being taken care of?
And one other question. I just want to make sure that
Congress isn't part of the problem here. Are there
congressionally directed projects or contracts that you have to
deal with that slow the process or complicate the process,
given the mandate to make sure these contracts are open to
competitive processes?
Dr. Huybrechts. I'm not from the procurement process side
of the Department. That would be our acquisition technology and
logistics. We have a new Under Secretary there. He has some
strong ideas, I believe, on how we are going to change the
procurement process to make it more effective. I wouldn't
presume to speak for him and the kinds of changes he wants to
make, but, again, I could take that for the record or bring in
somebody from his office to discuss it.
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Mr. Flake. Let me ask General McCasland that second
question. Is Congress playing the proper role here; are we
giving you the flexibility and--with which you need to carry
this out, or are we complicating the process by directing you,
perhaps, with congressionally directed earmarks or projects
that make it more difficult to do your job?
General McCasland. Well, sir, focusing on the GPS program,
my sense in interaction with the Congress over the past decade
has been one of a very healthy interaction with the defense
oversight committees and a supportive role, both in terms of
critically examining our plans and in providing the funding
that we need to execute the program.
But with that entree, I point out that the GPS III program
is going to enter into a little more complicated nuance. There
is a Presidential directive that assigns the responsibility for
budgeting new civil capabilities to the Department of
Transportation, and so the synchronization of their budget
requests in the Congress with the defense budget request, the
preponderance of the money will be defense. But we have chosen
as a matter of national strategy to program budget and request
appropriations from the civil funding line to add to the
military funding line for this national capability. That's
going to be new territory for us, and I respectfully suggest
that would be worthy of careful attention.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Ms. Chaplain, this is apparently a cost-plus
contract. Is there a better way to do it?
Ms. Chaplain. I believe the better way to do it is to focus
on not making the mistakes in the past. Fixed price for this
type of program would be difficult because you're trying to
advance technologies, and there is a lot of unknowns. When
we've tried fixed-price arrangements before for space programs,
it was done at the time that we were also trying to implement
these other kinds of acquisition reforms, and it was very
poorly implemented, and it resulted in almost disastrous
consequences.
So under the contract scenario we are in, I would just say
they need to exert good oversight over the contractors. They
need to make sure the program stays stable. They need to make
sure requirements don't change. They need to really look at
contractor performance and base the award fees on how the
contractors performed.
I think a lot of things have been done on the IIIA program
to position the program for success, and I'm hopeful that will
be more successful than other space programs in the past.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Gentlemen, do you write into your contracts some protection
against industry mergers interrupting the course of things?
General McCasland. Sir, we don't explicitly require them to
make commitments like that about what they'll do within their
companies. We make a business agreement with them to deliver
goods, services and supplies for a period of time.
Mr. Tierney. But then when they don't do it because they
are merging or whatever, you just pay them more money. It is a
contract; it would seem you put things in to protect
yourselves.
General McCasland. Yes, we do.
Mr. Tierney. You don't necessarily say that you are going
to restrict them from merging and consolidating, but you can
say that you have some say over whether or not it is going to
happen if it is going to impact adversely the progress on your
program.
General McCasland. Yes, yes, sir. And the tools to protect
the taxpayers' interest there range from our incentive fee
program, which has an opportunity to earn money if they
deliver, and penalties if they don't. We ultimately, even on a
cost-reimbursement contract, reserve the prerogative to decide
whether charges are allowable.
And last, with respect to the contract type, I'd point out
that the GPS IIIA program at this stage is in its development
cycle, which is appropriate to use a cost-reimbursement
contract. But we reserve the prerogative to negotiate a
different contract class for production articles. For example,
the GPS IIF program today is--has a mix of a cost-reimbursement
effort for the first satellites to get that production
unstable, and then fixed price buys for the last eight, I
believe.
Mr. Tierney. OK. Will you have your office prepare for us
an accounting, then, of the delays that were caused by--and one
of the reasons you cite for this overrun of costs and the delay
was the mergers and the consolidations. So provide for us an
accounting of how many bonuses or fees were not paid when that
caused a slowdown in an overrun, and what other exercises were
taken under the contract to protect the taxpayers' rights,
because I think we have a right to know that they weren't
getting bonuses and fees and other things for taking self-
interested consolidations and mergers and slowing down the
project and running us over costs, and at the same time getting
rewarded for it. And so if you would do that, I would
appreciate it.
General McCasland. Yes, sir. I certainly recall even
recently very low to zero award fees being paid to the IIF
contractor as we were struggling to turn that program around.
Mr. Tierney. I would just appreciate you putting that in so
we can formally see that, if you would.
General McCasland. You bet, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Now we have a whole host of problems here
generally with procurement, not just with the GPS program on
that, so I want your assurance that you're either dealing with
them or going to deal with them. One is starting programs too
early before the design is where it ought to be, or whatever.
Are you dealing with that?
General McCasland. Yes, sir. And I think that, you know,
the GAO noted in this report that we had put in extensive
precompetition risk-reduction activities into the program. I
think it's evidence of success that we had a functioning
engineering brassboard of the entire GPS IIIA payload available
before we made contract award. It was part of the
precompetitive risk-reduction activities.
We passed a serious and thorough scrub by the OSD Director
of Research and Engineering, who attested to the technological
readiness, part of OSD's due diligence. So I am confident that
we started this program on a good foot.
Mr. Tierney. Now, do you cite any contracting program
managing weakness? Do you think you have any that exist right
now, or have you filled all those gaps?
General McCasland. Sir, I think at this stage of the
program, the program management strategy is as well tuned as we
know how to do it.
Mr. Tierney. All right. So you have no problems with
technical expertise; you have all you need at your fingertips?
General McCasland. We--we are adequately resourced for
executing the program today, sir.
Mr. Tierney. All right. You see no capability gaps in the
industrial base?
General McCasland. Well, the space industrial base is, of
course, the people who actually build us. I believe the prime
industry base is healthy and strong. We all have some concern
about the secondary suppliers, the vendors, the people who
field independent subassemblies like gyroscopes, and star
sensors, and space-qualified components. That's an industry
that is under some stress, and we monitor it very carefully.
In fact, we have an interagency working group spanning all
of national security space focused on the health of the space
industrial base. We exchange information. We provide a forum
for those vendors to bring correlated problems they are seeing
across the industry to our attention. And the DDR&E in OSD has
a certain amount of funding available for support of the
industry base. In my mind, when I look at industry, that's the
level that has the risk that concerns me the most, sir.
Mr. Tierney. OK. But you are doing all you can do about it
right now.
General McCasland. Yes, sir, I believe--I believe so.
Mr. Tierney. What are we doing about protecting against new
requirements being added as a project is going on and not
having an impact on that? Are we shutting it off, just deciding
we're going to have a particular product, that's going to be up
in this program, new things go in the next end, or what are you
doing?
General McCasland. Yes, sir, that's a very important point,
because as the GAO noted, a part of what made--what contributed
to the cost growth on the IIF program was the folding in of new
requirements.
We have chosen to structure the GPS III program in a way to
pre-plan those insertions. And what I mean by that is that we
have a capability list for the final product version of GPS III
that includes a number of low-risk features and includes some
high-risk features. We chose to take on the most important and
lower-risk features first in IIIA and to size the spacecraft,
its power, its chassis size, the launch size to provide the
room to grow for the higher-risk features.
We will make separate decisions as the requirements for
those higher-risk functions, further power growth, additional
signals, additional security features, and we'll conduct a
detailed assessment of alternatives and risk assessment and
decide what package of those are ready for including in a
distinct second bloc or potentially a third bloc.
Now, this isn't a win all around. Our military users had to
reconcile that they would be patient enough to wait longer than
they might have. The assurance we gave them is that we had a
higher confidence of delivering what we had committed to in
exchange for that. And that appears to be a bargain that is
holding water. And we welcome your support of that, too, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Well, it would seem to me at some point
somebody, either the doctor or you or someone else, would have
the authority to say, you know what, enough. We planned this
particular program to do those things, we thought it was what
we wanted. If something is going to be added on that is going
to bring this way over cost, and we are behind schedule, you'll
have to wait for the next bus.
Who has that authority? Is it you, Doctor?
Dr. Huybrechts. That authority rests with the joint staff
requirements process. I would say what I mentioned earlier,
that 4 or 5 years ago when we recognized that we potentially
had a constellation sustainment issue, the Air Force came
forward with a plan. Originally there was no IIIA, B, C; there
was just a III, and we were going to build the whole thing
right up front. They came up with a plan where the IIIA is
really just a low-risk satellite to make sure that we have
something to keep the constellation going. And then we have
plans to insert the various capabilities into the later locks.
Mr. Tierney. And then last I look at the General--the
Government Accountability Office, and I see they have
identified nine practices associated with effective scheduling
estimating. Of those nine, one was met in this IIIF--IIIA
schedule, one was not met, and seven were partially met.
Are you focused on that, and are you going to bring that up
to all best practices?
General McCasland. Sir, I'd like to take that for the
record, because as little time as I have had to review this
report, I wasn't able to actually itemize what those practices
were. But I would be pleased to go answer that for the record,
if you would allow me, sir.
Mr. Tierney. We appreciate it. Thank you.
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Mr. Tierney. Mr. Flake, anything else?
Mr. Flake. No.
Mr. Tierney. I want to thank all of you for your testimony.
This is helpful to us and, I think, helpful to our next panel.
It will give them an idea of what is going on, and we will be
anxious to hear their remarks as well. I would appreciate it if
you have an opportunity to submit those things that you promise
for the record at your earliest convenience. So thank you all
very much.
And now we'll take a little pause as we set the second
panel up and maybe come back in 5 minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. Tierney. In the interest of time, we were told that
we're going to have a vote in a few minutes, and I would like
to give you the opportunity to hopefully get your testimony in
before that. But it is only one vote, so if it does ring, it
will be just a very brief interruption, and we will be back. So
I apologize for that.
This panel will probably not take as long as the last panel
for the fact that we want to hear from you. We may not have
that much of a question grilling back and forth on that, but we
want to hear from you about what you know about potential
issues arising with that and how it will impact your particular
area on that.
So now we're going to receive testimony from the second
panel. Let me introduce each of you.
Lieutenant General Larry D. James is the Commander of the
14th Air Force, Air Force Space Command, and Commander of the
Joint Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic
Command, in Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. He leads
more than 20,500 personnel responsible for providing missile
warning, space superiority, space situational awareness,
satellite operations, space launch and range operations.
General James holds a B.S. from the U.S. Air Force Academy and
an M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ms. Karen Van Dyke is the Director, Position Navigation and
Timing, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, at
the Department of Transportation. Ms. Van Dyke was a member of
a team that conducted a study for the Office of the Secretary
of Transportation to identify and analyze GPS vulnerabilities
and interference mitigation techniques for all modes of
transportation. Ms. Van Dyke holds both a B.S. and an M.S. from
the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Nice to see
Massachusetts so well represented here today.
Mr. F. Michael Swiek currently serves as executive director
of the U.S. GPS Industry Council, which he helped to found with
the leading U.S. GPS manufacturers in 1991. Mr. Swiek IS also
currently president of Mike International LLC, a consulting
practice concentrating on policy and regulatory issues
affecting various issues in high-technology trade. He served
for 10 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, working on
export control and technology security issues. He holds a B.A.
from Bowdoin College and an M.A. from Georgetown University.
Mr. Chet Huber is president of OnStar Corp., a wholly owned
subsidiary of General Motors Corp. He joined General Motors
Electric Motor Division as a co-op engineering student in 1972,
and held a variety of engineering, operations and marketing
roles before joining OnStar. I guess you'd call that job
security, huh?
His positions included director of the aftermarket
business; general director of aftermarket parts and service;
and general director, sales, marketing and product support. Mr.
Huber holds a B.S. from General Motors Institute, now Kettering
University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available
here today and helping us out with your testimony. Again, it is
the policy of the committee to swear in witnesses before they
testify, so if you would please stand and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Tierney. The record will please reflect that all of the
witnesses have answered in the affirmative.
As with the first panel, your full written statements will
be entered on the record. There's 5-minute opening statements--
the lights are the same for the second panel as they were for
the first--and then we'll go to questions if the panel members
up here have any.
General, would you please start?
STATEMENTS OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL LARRY D. JAMES, COMMANDER,
14TH AIR FORCE (AIR FORCE STRATEGIC), AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND,
AND COMMANDER, JOINT FUNCTIONAL COMPONENT COMMAND FOR SPACE,
U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND; KAREN L. VAN DYKE, DIRECTOR, POSITION
NAVIGATION AND TIMING, RESEARCH AND INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY
ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; F. MICHAEL SWIEK,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S. GPS INDUSTRY COUNCIL; AND CHET HUBER,
PRESIDENT, ONSTAR CORP.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL LARRY D. JAMES
General James. Chairman Tierney and Ranking Member Flake,
thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I'm honored to
be here as the Commander of the Joint Functional Component
Command for Space.
It's a privilege to address you on our role in operating
the Global Positioning System, as well as represent the
combatant commander users around the globe. My testimony today
focuses on the importance of GPS to the warfighter, the health
of our current constellation, and U.S. Strategic Command's
strategies to ensure the most robust space-based positioning,
navigation and timing capabilities provided by the GPS
constellation.
Certainly, as we have heard earlier, as we look to the
importance of GPS, we understand that GPS provides that key
PNT, position navigation and timing, data to users worldwide
and has truly become essential to U.S. national security and
economic well-being. GPS is the centerpiece of global PNT
services, and the GPS constellation enables an ever-increasing
arsenal of military and civil applications.
GPS provides critical services to our forces around the
globe. From infantrymen walking the streets of Fallujah, to
ships combating piracy off the straits of Somalia, and to
aircraft patrolling our country's borders, it is evident that
GPS is critical to successful military operations. Strong
communications links, operational relationships and reachback
ensure that U.S. Strategic Command provides the combatant fix
that the U.S. combatant commanders need around the globe.
As we look at our constellation health and status, we have
today exceeded requirements by maintaining a constellation of
30 operational satellites, and we've achieved sub-3-meter
accuracy with that constellation. As you heard earlier, by
employing residual operations and power management, we have
options to maintain full GPS capabilities and ensure continued
support to global users.
We must continue to focus on future requirements for GPS
capabilities. Matching future user requirements with
technological advances will allow U.S. Strategic Command to
provide the most advanced and reliable space effects in
response to the growing demands of the Nation's GPS users.
In conclusion, the U.S.' dependence on GPS across our
military, civil and commercial users requires PNT capabilities
to ensure our ability to safely and effectively operate in
diverse environments. The DOD must continue to build the
relationships, processes and capabilities within the global
space community that allow us to operate effectively together
to meet our national security objectives.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, General.
[The prepared statement of General James follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Ms. Van Dyke.
STATEMENT OF KAREN VAN DYKE
Ms. Van Dyke. Chairman Tierney, Ranking Member Flake and
members of the subcommittee, I am Karen Van Dyke, Acting
Director for Positioning Navigation and Timing in the U.S.
Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative
Technology Administration [RITA]. I appreciate the opportunity
to appear before you today to discuss the criticality of the
Global Positioning System to civil user community.
GPS technology is increasingly woven into the fabric of
American society, from cars and planes to cell phones and
wristwatches. It improves productivity and efficiency in many
areas of commerce. For example, today's construction, farming,
mining, shipping, surveying and traffic management systems have
become dependent on GPS. It allows agriculture operations to
continue through low-visibility conditions, such as rain, dust,
fog and darkness, and to apply chemicals precisely, reducing
environmental impact while also reducing production costs.
GPS also furthers the scientific aims, such as weather
forecasting, earthquake prediction and environmental
protection. Furthermore, the precise GPS time signal derived
from atomic clocks is embedded in critical economic activities,
such as synchronizing communication networks, managing power
grids and authenticating electronic transactions.
Of particular interest to the Department of Transportation
is the Federal Aviation Administration's next generation air
transportation, NextGen, program. NextGen is a wide-ranging
transformation of the national air transportation system to
meet future demand and support economic viability of the
system.
NextGen will reduce fuel burn and greenhouse gas emissions,
allow more direct time-based routing, enable safer operations,
and reduce runway incursions. United Airlines already has
pioneered the use of tailored arrivals based on GPS from
Honolulu to San Francisco, with a fuel savings at 1,600 pounds
per flight.
GPS is the foundation for NextGen navigation and
surveillance. The continuity of funding and integrity of the
planned launch schedule of the GPS constellation is vital to
the Nation moving ahead with NextGen.
I would like to thank the Air Force for dedicated service
in providing extremely reliable operation of GPS since it
achieved initial operating capability in 1993. The United
States clearly is the leader in space-based positioning,
navigation and timing, and we must continue to maintain and
improve GPS to maintain this U.S. technology leadership
position.
Sustainability of the GPS constellation is critical to
users worldwide. The Department of Transportation is committed
to modernization of GPS, and fully funding the DOT portion of
GPS modernization for new civil capabilities is critical to
ensuring that the GPS III program remains on schedule to ensure
future constellation sustainment.
The Department of Transportation is confident that the
Department of Defense will continue to operate at or above the
minimum GPS performance standard commitment of 21 healthy
satellites 98 percent of the time, equivalent to 24 healthy
satellites 95 percent of the time, and will find innovative
methods to extend the life of the GPS satellites to prevent any
gaps in availability. We recognize that the GPS system has
exceeded performance commitments with 30 satellites currently
operational, and that some users may have come to expect this
level of service.
The Department of Transportation is a provider as well as a
user of GPS services, augmenting the GPS signal to improve
accuracy and integrity. FAA provides the Wide Area Augmentation
System [WAAS], and RITA coordinates resources and plans for the
inland component of the Nationwide Differential GPS System
[NDGPS], operated and maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard. The
U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Aviation
Administration have agreements to coordinate notification of
GPS performance and any disruption of GPS service to the user
community.
When the constellation is at its minimum GPS performance
commitment, outages for aviation and other users will be
experienced on a routine basis, which could result in
complaints and economic impact. For users who equip with GPS
augmented by WAAS, these impacts are reduced, supporting
minimum availability requirements of 99 percent or more.
However, like any radio and navigation system, GPS is
vulnerable to interference that can be reduced, but not
eliminated.
In 2001, RITA's Volpe National Transportation System Center
issued a vulnerability assessment of the transportation
infrastructure relying on the Global Positioning System. The
findings of this assessment indicated that there was awareness
within the transportation community of risks associated with
use of GPS as a primary means for position determination and
precision timing.
Due to the reliance of transportation on GPS signals, it is
essential that threats be mitigated, and alternative backups be
available, and the system be hardened for critical
applications. DOT has determined that sufficient alternative
navigation aids currently exist in the event of a loss of GPS
based service.
Potential backup capabilities to GPS are being explored as
part of a National Positioning Navigation and Timing
Architecture study initiated in 2006 by the Department of
Defense and the Department of Transportation. The overarching
goal of this architecture, with GPS as its cornerstone, is
intended to overcome identified capability gaps and achieve an
evolutionary path to providing integrated, space-based,
terrestrial and autonomous solutions in the 2025 time period
that will ensure the continuity of government-provided PNT
services.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the committee for
allowing me to discuss the civil user perspective of GPS. The
Department of Transportation is committed to our--continuing
our strong working relationship with the Department of Defense
to maintain our global leadership in space-based PNT.
I'd be glad to answer any questions you have.
Mr. Kucinich [presiding]. Thank you for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Van Dyke follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Swiek, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF F. MICHAEL SWIEK
Mr. Swiek. I would like to thank Chairman Tierney, Ranking
Member Flake, and Mr. Kucinich, and distinguished members of
the subcommittee for providing an opportunity today to discuss
this important topic.
Global Positioning System [GPS], is one of the great U.S.
success stories involving shared national assets. GPS is a
national model of successfully balancing military advantage and
civilian equities to serve a broad and diverse range of
national interests from national security and public safety to
enabling critical infrastructure, advancing scientific
research, facilitating local government productivity and
enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of diverse
industries that are important to our economy and serving
millions of individual Americans every day.
GPS is a model of government-industry cooperation
contributing to the national economy through the
entrepreneurial creation of companies, industries and jobs
deriving value for users from integrating GPS positioning
navigation and timing information into applications and
solutions.
The initial military investment in GPS has not only met
military requirements and demonstrated invaluable military
utility for the warfighter, it also provided a signal for
civilian use at little to no additional cost. The dedicated men
and women of the U.S. Air Force Space Command have achieved
superb operational management of the GPS constellation for all
users under G--under Air Force stewardship of GPS. This
operational excellence, together with predictable U.S. policy
over two decades, has given the global community a stable
signal that has provided a solid foundation for tremendous
private-sector investments in receiver and applications
innovation. The result of this enlightened U.S. approach has
been the worldwide adoption of GPS as a global information
utility, providing major productivity benefits to the Nation.
It is difficult to say with precision just how big the GPS
industry is because it touches and contributes to so many
different applications and areas in so many ways. Some recent
estimates have impressive numbers, such as 15 to 50 billion per
year or more, depending on how one counts the direct and
indirect effects of GPS.
GPS is a core information technology from many industries
that are key to the U.S. economy. Examples include agriculture,
aviation, construction, vehicle navigation, fleet management,
public safety, geographical information systems, land use,
environmental monitoring, earthquake monitoring, wildlife
monitoring, disaster management, telecommunications, E911 cell
phones, mapping, mining, marine transportation, surveying,
infotainment. I could go on probably for hours, but there is--
trust me, there is at least a couple of hundred more.
More impressive than the aggregate value of United States--
or worldwide GPS industries--is the effect that GPS can have on
the productivity and competitiveness of key industries. GPS
enhances productivity at times as much as 30 percent through
exploitation of precise positioning, navigation and timing
information.
It is not an exaggeration to say that GPS is everywhere,
not only where we commonly and almost ubiquitously see it, such
as in consumer car-navigation devices such as OnStar and the
Garmin on the dashboard; it is there, essential and critical
even where you don't realize it. Whenever you make a call on
your cell phone, withdraw money from your ATM, send an e-mail,
you are using GPS. GPS precise time signals are essential tools
for synchronizing the networks through which the services
operate. Turn on a light, and you are probably using GPS as
well, as electric power grids similarly use GPS precise time
signals for synchronization. The road you drive on may have
been built by construction equipment guided by GPS. Not only
has the term ``GPS'' become a common term in the public
lexicon, it has become an essential and critical utility on
which public and private infrastructures depend.
U.S. industry has been a major factor and leader in the
development of today's GPS industry through entrepreneurial
vision, technological innovation and private-sector investment,
but we have not done this alone. The U.S. Government has
promoted and encouraged this development by establishing,
maintaining and reinforcing a stable policy framework that has
consistently received farsighted and bipartisan support. It has
been a true partnership of shared visions, discussions and
debates, cooperation and coordination. This has been possible
through the open dialog that has taken place since the early
days of GPS, some 25-plus years ago, between civilian and
military, industry and government on technical and policy
issues as the technology system and applications have evolved.
As we move forward to new generations of GPS satellites and
signals, the challenge is to maintain this impressive level of
reliability and stability. Successful adoption of modernized
civilian GPS signals will occur if the installed user base can
continue to trust the consistent and stable policy framework
that the U.S. Government has provided GPS for two decades. The
new signals will need to sustain a legacy of accuracy,
availability and reliability established over the past 20
years.
The adoption of GPS is a testament to the trust of users in
Air Force stewardship. Users rely on the ability of the Air
Force to operate and maintain the satellite constellation and
stable signal structures that serve the warfighter and diverse
civilian users in a way that both enhances our national and
economic security. We strongly encourage the continuation of
the open and balanced dialog between all stakeholders, users
and providers, civilian and military, industry and government.
Our industry association strives to be an objective information
resource to support this dialog.
Thank you for the opportunity, and I'd be happy to answer
any questions you may have.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank the gentleman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Swiek follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Huber, before we go to you, there is a
vote on right now. The chairman, Mr. Tierney, went to vote.
He's coming back momentarily. So what we're going to do, I'm
going to declare a 5-minute recess. I believe that Mr. Tierney
will probably be back in a minute, but I'm going to go to make
sure that I don't miss my vote. And so we will be in recess,
let's call it until the call of the Chair, and my guess is it
will be within 5 minutes. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Tierney [presiding]. My apologies. The vote was closer
than it was to ending.
I've read all your testimony, so I don't want you to think
we're ignoring you on that. We read them last evening.
So, Mr. Huber, I understand that you were about ready to
put yours on the record, and I ask you to do so.
STATEMENT OF CHET HUBER
Mr. Huber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Chet Huber, the
president of OnStar, a wholly-owned subsidiary of General
Motors Corp. I also serve as a member of the NASA PNT Advisory
Board, and I've also served on the CDC's Advisory Committee on
Injury Prevention and Control.
With nearly 6 million active subscribers, OnStar is the
leading telematics service provider, employing over 2,200
individuals in the United States and Canada. OnStar is now
standard on virtually all General Motors's vehicles and has
developed a prominent national brand position.
Our core safety, security and peace-of-mind services
include automatic crash response and emergency services, which
we deliver from three call centers in Pontiac, MI; Charlotte,
NC; and Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. Other services include turn-
by-turn navigation, stolen vehicle location assistance, and
monthly OnStar vehicle diagnostic e-mails. We also offer one-
button, hands-free, prepaid wireless calling.
In a typical month, after call screening, we provide unique
and critical support for public safety agencies in responding
to over 2,000 automatic crash notifications and over 10,000
occupant-initiated button presses. These include heart attacks,
strokes and crashes not triggering an automatic call. Last
November, OnStar marked its 100,000th automatic crash response.
Monthly, we also pass on to public safety over 6,000 Good
Samaritan calls for everything from crashes involving other
vehicles, to roadway hazards, to possible AMBER Alert
sightings; and we assist with over 500 stolen vehicle location
requests, including on many new vehicles the ability to
actually slow down a vehicle to avoid a high-speed pursuit.
Other monthly service statistics include the delivery of
3.4 million monthly diagnostic e-mails, nearly 1 million turn-
by-turn routes, and over 53,000 remote door unlocks.
Delivering these services and growing to our current scale
has required deep and fundamental technological innovation as
we've uniquely integrated cellular, GPS and voice recognition
with extensive on-board and off-board software. This has
required hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and
resulted in the filing of over 500 patent applications, with
new filings still occurring at the rate of once every 6 days.
A critical element in our delivery of services is location.
OnStar use the civilian L1C/A signal to deliver our location-
based services like automatic crash response, stolen vehicle
location assistance, and turn-by-turn navigation. We also used,
directly or indirectly, the GPS timing signal to enable other
valuable services like remote door unlock and diagnostic e-
mails. An accurate, available and reliable GPS constellation is
at the heart of our capability to deliver these services.
We offer three recommendations for your consideration.
First, we must address the health of the current constellation.
We are concerned that a recent report shows that eight of the
current satellites are one component away from total failure.
Loss of signal will immediately affect GPS accuracy and
availability.
Second is the GPS system is modernized. It's imperative
that the U.S. Government formally commit to preserving the L1C/
A signal to ensuring backward compatibility for legacy
applications with no loss of performance from current levels.
Automotive applications of GPS, like OnStar, are embedded into
the vehicle's electrical system and subjected to extensive
validation testing. Because of this, it is impractical to
retrofit GPS-related hardware and ensure the reliable delivery
of services to subscribers. Therefore, the benefit--to the
benefit of our millions of customers as well as others facing
similar legacy issues, we are asking Congress and the executive
branch to work together to develop a policy that supports
backward compatibility at current performance levels.
Regarding performance, it is important to understand that
the current GPS system is performing at a level well above the
specified minimum, and operators have come to use that
performance to improve and enhance services. Any modernization
initiative that degrades backward-compatible performance, such
as reducing the number of satellites making up the
constellation, would likely adversely impact the provision of
services by OnStar, including the quality of location
information we provide to public safety, thereby potentially
increasing the response time of public safety personnel to
crash victims and others in need of emergency assistance.
Our third recommendation, and this is also important in
legacy applications, is that we commit to maintaining the
current PRN code for the primary orbital slots as satellites in
those slots are replaced. Legacy hardware is not capable of
being expanded to accommodate more than 32 slots, so
renumbering above 32 will likely affect performance of legacy
applications.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Huber follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank all of you for your testimony.
Mr. Huber, those concerns that you raised, the final three
on that, are you having any dialog at all with the Department
of Defense now or with the combined committee about making sure
that those are addressed?
Mr. Huber. We actually have had an opportunity to
participate as a member of the PNT Advisory Committee, and
that, I think, is one of the reasons that committee was formed
by NASA to draw in comments by private industry and other
constituencies. And we've also had extensive dialog with the
U.S. Department of Transportation and others. So we are making
those points----
Mr. Tierney. And your sense is that you are being heard?
Mr. Huber. Yeah. Our sense is that they understand the
issues, and we are hopeful that they will be comprehended in
the future strategy.
Mr. Tierney. I have sort of a painless approach to this, I
hope, for all of you. There's really three things I think we
want to know and put on the record from you. I'm going to lay
all of them out and then just go left to right and give you a
chance to respond.
We are interested in the awareness throughout either your
particular entity or industry that you--or area that you
represent, the awareness of concerns raised by the Government
Accountability Office's report. We would like to know if you've
identified potential mitigation strategies to lessen the effect
on your company or entity or association in the event there is
a diminished availability to the worst-case scenarios laid out
in that report. And last, what's your status of preparation to
implement any such strategies? General.
General James. Yes, sir. In terms of the awareness,
certainly at the JFCC Space, my position in Strategic Command,
Air Force Space Command, all of those entities, because we are
so closely intertwined with the acquisition community, we
certainly are very aware of the GAO report, of the
constellation management issues and those sorts of things.
In speaking for the broader combatant commanders out there,
the CENTCOMs and the PACOMs of the world, I can't say that they
are necessarily aware that there is a potential of degradation
in the future. Their concern obviously is more near-term
focused, am I getting my GPS signal today and so on.
Certainly as a representative of those combatant
commanders, we go out and educate the theaters on what they can
and can't do with all of our space systems, and we will
continue to do that over time as this unfolds. So that's kind
of from an awareness perspective.
Mr. Tierney. Except one of the things I thought I heard in
the first panel is one of the strategies from the military to
maybe deal with this issue is to use some and power down some
of the backup in certain cases or whatever. I would assume
you're exempting out the battlefield people from that type of
distinction, or do they also have to make that kind of
consideration when they use the system?
General James. No, sir. The intent is obviously not to
infect--not to affect any users. In terms of the potential
mitigation strategies, which is where I would address that
question, we, as the operators of GPS, out of Schriever Air
Force Base in Colorado, have a variety of things that we look
at. Certainly, first of all, we have residual satellites. We
generally operate a certain number of what we call PRN codes
for the constellation. So right now we have three satellites
that are not a part of that constellation, but that can still
provide an effective navigation signal. That's due to the
limitations of the ground system in terms of how many
satellites we can actually operate in the constellation.
So we have three residual spacecraft right now. We bring
those out of residual mode every 6 months to test them and make
sure that they have a valid navigation system. So that's one of
the mitigation strategies we currently have.
As satellites, older satellites, no longer fit in the
constellation, we still retain them as a viable system that we
can bring in should we have an unexpected failure.
The second piece of that, as you heard earlier, is power
management, that is one way to, again, extend the life of a
particular spacecraft. And again, there is a lot of analysis
that will go into that in terms of how does that affect the
other user, the new data detection system user. Again, as you
heard, as we continue to launch new satellites, we continue to
populate that new data detection system capability, and they do
not require a full 24 satellite capability. So we have options
there with the older satellites to power manage and extend the
life of those particular spacecraft.
And third, as you also heard earlier, the GPS constellation
isn't kind of an on or off thing, it's a dynamic, integrated
assessment of if you get down to a certain level of satellites,
where do you have less accuracy, where do you have less
coverage time and so on. And we manage that by where we
actually place the particular spacecraft in the constellation.
So in terms of how we mitigate this, we do have options to make
sure that if we do create an issue with a less accurate area,
we can put that perhaps over in an area where there are very
few people or very few operations.
And then finally, in term of your status in preparing for
this, we do think about this, we have thought about this, and
we do have plans to address this as we move to the future and
we see how the constellation evolves and how those satellites
are delivered to us for launch.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
Ms. Van Dyke.
Ms. Van Dyke. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In terms of the awareness concerns, I think the GAO has
done a really good job within the government reaching out to
the government agencies to circulate their draft report. But,
of course, it hasn't been released to the public yet, so as it
is released, certainly our job in representing the civil
community is to ensure that there is awareness.
But having said that, the Department of Transportation, and
particularly our organization, RITA, leads the Civil GPS
Service Interface Committee, which is the public outreach of
the GPS, and at all of our meetings we have the GPS and Air
Force Space Command give us updates on the constellation. And
so certainly the awareness of some of the status problems, the
availability of satellites, some of the potential problems have
been briefed at the meetings.
And also, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Volpe
National Transportation System Center had done a vulnerability
assessment. And so while it's a separate problem, being
concerned about interference to the signal, a lot of the
mitigation would be the same.
So we have certainly tried to make the user community aware
of potential interference, the need to integrate GPS with other
navigation aids or have operational procedures to mitigate the
problem, which would also apply to any degradation due to
availability of GPS satellites.
In terms of the status of the preparation, again, it is
very similar to the need for backup systems to mitigate against
interference. So we have been aware and certainly working with
the user communities, particularly for federally provided
systems, to ensure for transportation safety of life that we do
not have any degradation of service, and that continues to be
an ongoing challenge as GPS just becomes integrated into every
single application. And often, particularly for timing
applications, it is a silent enabler that many do not even have
awareness of how well and how widely it is used in our
communication systems.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Swiek.
Mr. Swiek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As far as awareness goes of potential gaps in GPS or
degradation of services, answer that from our community, which
is primarily the receiver manufacturers and to some degree the
user and customer community, the answer is yes and no. Among
the technical people in the companies manufacturing the
receivers, yes, they are aware of constellation status. Yes,
they receive briefings from the Air Force at different
conferences, they see the status of the constellation over a
period of years, they monitor that. So are they aware there is
a potential degradation? Yes.
When you start getting to more the public at large, the
users of GPS particularly in the consumer area, I would say
there the awareness is probably nowhere near as great, mainly
because GPS works and has worked reliably for many, many years.
When you go to the faucet and turn on the water in your house,
it works; you don't think about it. You only think about it if
you have a warning that something imminent is going to happen
or has happened and you need to take adjustments to compensate
for that.
So the awareness issue, yes and no. Engineers, technical
people, people in the manufacturing community, yes.
What would be the impact of gaps in coverage, degradation
of services? Again, difficult to say because of the broad scope
and reach of GPS into different types of applications.
Mitigation plans and strategies, yes. Again difficult to say.
Depends on if it happens, when it happens, where it happens, to
whom it happens.
Degree of disruption, again difficult to pinpoint exactly.
There is a wide variety of areas, public safety areas, like air
transportation, like marine transportation, E911, some of the
critical timing applications. If there was a serious
degradation that would cause a disruption or outage of GPS,
yes, it would be felt and noticed.
However, the people who put these systems together are very
prudent and very cautious, so there are usually back-up systems
already in place, because not only from a degradation of
constellation status, but there are other factors that could
cause vulnerabilities to the system. And these have largely
been accommodated to a certain degree.
As far as the consumer end. If there is a degradation of
service, well, you tend to get that anyway when you are using
GPS in a casual recreational environment now. The GPS unit in
your car frequently is blocked by tall buildings, heavy tree
coverage, etc., as you're driving along. This, in effect,
reduces the number of effective satellites you can see or the
optimal navigation solution that you are using.
Does this mean the whole system goes down, and it becomes
useless? No. Again, it may compromise some degree of accuracy
or availability, but in general it doesn't cause a major
problem. If this becomes systemic and endemic over a long
period of time, then I think the biggest problem you see is a
loss of confidence of--in GPS as a market force, and that can
have some consequences. But in general the Air Force has done a
marvelous job of giving a signal that nobody has to think
about, they only use and take benefit from. So I hope this
clarifies some things for you.
Mr. Tierney. No, it is helpful. And I think your part of
this is that the GAO report is, in fact, a warning shot. It is
not imminent, it is not something that is going to slap people
in the face, but it is at least a notice to people that we
better start paying attention, we better start working through
this.
You want to add?
Mr. Swiek. Add one more thing. In this regard we haven't
seen the full GAO report yet. Is it released to the public?
Mr. Tierney. Today. That's why the hearing.
Mr. Swiek. I will make sure our member companies receive
that. But this type of awareness building along with the
outreach at the Air Force and Department of Transportation,
Department of Defense due to the civilian community I think
shows a responsible stewardship of GPS. They don't hide things
and sweep them under the rug. It is there so everybody knows.
And this, I think, is another hallmark and good sign of prudent
U.S. stewardship of GPS.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Huber, we know you're aware, because of
the content of your testimony, of course, or whatever. But in
your particularized use for it, what strategies would put in
place?
Mr. Huber. Yeah. We are very aware, not of the GAO report,
but we are absolutely looking forward to seeing that. We
thought about this, as you might expect, because we're selling
a commercial product today with millions of customers in it.
The heart of what we do is an emergency response to things
like the crash of a vehicle. And so we have been developing
methods, even in those situations where we are strained today,
like in urban canyons, to actually we've created unique
software in the vehicle. We use the wheel speed sensors from
antilock brake systems to provide dead reckoning that gives us
an ability to keep an accurate location on the vehicle within
bounds as we're shaded from GPS.
We are starting now actually with the launch of the new
Camaro, we are actually building gyros in the vehicles to give
us the next level of precision. And that will help us in any
degradation sense, so it helps us be better at our normal
services. It will also help us in any scenario where we're
otherwise shaded, in places like the Big Dig in Boston. I mean,
it gives us a great opportunity to get people through that the
way they want to come through it.
The thing that is of most concern to us longer term is in
cases where there are literally gaps, geographic gaps, in
coverage across the United States that move depending on what
the constellation configuration looks like and how many
satellites are up. I mean, if you saw a map from our last
November announcement of our 100,000th crash response, you can
see we populate the United States. There are crashes everywhere
in this country, not just in very populated areas. And so we
are actually working with Verizon Wireless as a key technology
partner for us in our most extreme case of crash response to
see what we might be able to use in the case of a missing GPS
component to be able to use their network drive solutions to at
least be able to help us respond in an emergency case. It won't
help us in a navigation scenario, but our main commitment it
the emergency community.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Kucinich is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To General James--and, Mr. Chairman, you may have asked
some of these questions. I just returned, so I'm not--if I
duplicate it, I apologize ahead of time. Who updates the GPS
data, and how often is it updated?
General James. Sir, if you're referring to the data that
goes into the satellites, that is done by the Operation
Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base. They are solely dedicated
to managing that constellation and providing uploads when
required. They can determine when a signal is starting to
degrade below a certain level, and they actually put an upload
into the spacecraft to update its position so that we then
maintain that high level of accuracy. So that's the
responsibility of the Air Force out of Schriever Air Force
Base.
Mr. Kucinich. Where do you get the data from though?
General James. Sir, the data is from our ground network of
systems around the world that monitors GPS at different
locations, at Ascension Island, Hawaii, Guam. So we are
constantly looking at the constellation and the satellites and
measuring their accuracy, because over time that accuracy does
degrade, and so we monitor that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
and provide those uploads into the spacecraft as required.
Mr. Kucinich. So the accuracy of the information at any
given time, would you ascribe a percentage to it?
General James. Well, sir, again, our intent is to maintain
a worldwide accuracy below 3 meters. And so----
Mr. Kucinich. Of what, please?
General James. Below 3 meters. Now, again, that's better
than the specification that we have, because we have a good
number of satellites with very accurate atomic clocks on board.
But again, worldwide we have the ability to monitor those
accuracies around the globe. We have the software that tells us
exactly what the accuracies are at any time and given location.
Mr. Kucinich. Does the Department of Defense lease the
information that it has to private contractors, or sell it, or
in any way distribute it to other contractors?
General James. No, sir, we do not. If you're talking about
that knowledge of what accuracy a GPS satellite has, that's
actually inherent in the signal of the GPS, so it's not leased
or sold, it's available.
Mr. Kucinich. It's--we know, for example, there are
companies who--who sell GPS services.
General James. Yes, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. They don't have their own network the way the
Department of Defense has. What--how are they able to do that?
General James. Sir, I believe a couple of things. When you
say selling GPS services, one is a GPS receiver.
Mr. Kucinich. Selling receivers that they then get the same
information through that receiver that anybody else would get?
Is that what you are saying?
General James. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Or they may create a
service where they use GPS--for example, mechanized farming--
that they sell that overall service, which involves a GPS
receiver and other processes, to execute that.
Mr. Kucinich. But anybody's free to do that; is that right?
General James. Yes, sir.
Mr. Kucinich. But the underlying technology is--and the
mapping and the updating of it is accomplished through the
resources of the U.S. Government; is that right?
General James. That's correct.
Mr. Kucinich. Are there any other nations that are involved
in a cooperative effort with us on that?
General James. Sir, to my knowledge there are no other
nations providing funding for the GPS. We operate the system,
and we provide that to our allies without charge.
Mr. Kucinich. And do other nations help provide the data;
where we don't necessarily have people present to provide the
information, do we have gaps that are being filled in?
General James. No, sir, it is the worldwide sites. For
example, the Ascension Island site, certainly that is a British
island, so we have agreements with the British to operate this.
But we provide for all the operational costs around the world.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, General.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
I would like to give each of you an opportunity to share
with us anything that you think we ought to know and didn't
have the foresight to ask before I wrap up. That doesn't mean
there necessarily is something, but I give you the opportunity
anyway.
General.
General James. Sir, just briefly I think, again, I would
state as we look at GPS accuracies and GPS capabilities, it is
a very layered problem. As we said earlier, it is not a black-
and-white thing. We can manage this, we can look through in
terms of power, in terms of clocks, in terms of updates and who
will replace the satellites in the constellation to make sure
we provide the capability that we need to provide where we need
to provide it. I would leave that thought for the committee.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Ms. Van Dyke.
Ms. Van Dyke. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to
reiterate the Department of Transportation's commitment to the
modernization of GPS for new civil capabilities. As Major
General McCasland said, the Department of Transportation is now
providing funding for those capabilities, and it is important
for the sustainment for the GPS III constellation that we have
the adequate funding to provide to the Air Force. And I would
just like to reiterate our strong working relationship with the
Department of Defense. I think that we have had really good
information sharing and a very cooperative process, and I
certainly anticipate that will continue.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Swiek.
Mr. Swiek. I'd just like to emphasize that GPS is really an
example of government done right. You don't hear that too often
these days.
Mr. Tierney. Unless you account for the 100 and something
percent overrun in cost and 3 years in delays. It is
interesting, it goes to Mr. Duncan's point. There's not a bit
of upset or anger of anybody in here on that, and it is sort of
startling when you think about it. It was a $700-something
million project that cost $870 million more on that, and 3
years late, and we don't get a blink. It is just interesting,
you know. If that were an education program or something like
that, people would be going ballistic.
Mr. Swiek. Both my parents were accountants, and they would
see an awful lot of fault with that as well. But as far as the
delivered performance of GPS, before----
Mr. Tierney. Once it gets going, it does well is what
you're saying.
Mr. Swiek. Yeah. It is really a great success story. The
main thing is maintain the integrity of the signal, maintain
the delivery performance, maintain the dialog between industry/
government, between military/civilian users, and the forums
we've had, because it really has been a wonderful, cooperative
approach.
Delays, outages, overruns, etc., yes, these are all of
concern. As the system matured and expanded, these maybe were
inevitable, but they need to be addressed, and for that regard
we are glad that the subcommittee and others in government are
able to look at this. So continue on.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Huber.
Mr. Huber. I can only say the GPS system has evolved into
an amazing public utility. And I would say that things like
OnStar were probably not conceived of when those satellites
were launched.
I would suggest that if you project any vision of a future,
this system will spawn incredible further innovation that will
bring a range of benefits to society and spawn technology and
job creation.
And so thinking of this today, it is almost unfair to not
understand what hasn't been invented yet, but this is ripe
territory for commercial applications in particular and those
that overlap with public-sector agencies to create a better
future for a lot of people. And so I would say that's the
vector that this thing is headed on.
Mr. Tierney. I thank you for all your comments. Look, this
has become an incredible system, and I agree with you the
technology is astounding. It has done a lot of good things.
One of the reasons why the subcommittee is so intent on
having the oversight is we need this to continue working. Our
reliance on national security issues, obviously, are very
serious and very critical, but, as I said, in lightening
effects on the industries and the civil market as well. So we
want to make sure that it functions and it comes up in a timely
manner and doesn't get degraded, but we do also have that
responsibility in seeing that it happens on time and within
budget, within reason, because we don't have an unlimited
budget.
We have a lot pressures on this country, and so we want to
try to make sure that we have a continuation of these hearings.
This will not be the last one. We might not have to hear from
you folks again for a while, but the first panel will be
revisited again along with others to address some of those
questions on why we would take a system that was working in
terms of oversight and kick it out the door and try something
that was obviously not very successful.
So thank you for giving up your time and making the effort
to be here with us today, sharing your expertise. We really do
appreciate it. Thanks.
Meeting adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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