[Senate Hearing 114-653]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2017
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met at 10:31 a.m., in room SD-192, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Thad Cochran (chairman) of the
subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Cochran, Shelby, Blunt, Daines, Moran,
Durbin, Tester, and Schatz.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Defense Innovation and Research
STATEMENT OF FRANK KENDALL, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
FOR ACQUISITION, TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS
opening statement of senator thad cochran
Senator Cochran. The subcommittee will come to order.
We want to welcome our panel of witnesses today to our
hearing on the budget request for defense appropriations on the
fiscal year 2017 defense innovation and research budget
request. We appreciate very much the attendance of our panel,
others who are here today, and members of our committee.
We are specifically pleased to welcome Mr. Frank Kendall,
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and
Logistics; Mr. Stephen Welby, Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Development, Research and Engineering; and Dr. Arati
Prabhakar, Director of Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, or DARPA.
Today, we look forward to learning more about the science
and technology investments proposed in the fiscal year 2017
budget. This subcommittee has been a strong advocate of science
and technology investments and has ensured funding to make
certain our Nation can maintain its role as the world's leader
in technology and innovation.
We want to continue to receive input from experts at the
Department of Defense, so they can inform committee action as
we do our work.
We appreciate your joining us today to testify as our
committee continues to evaluate the budget request.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Thad Cochran
The hearing will come to order. We welcome our panel of witnesses
today to a hearing on the fiscal year 2017 budget request for Defense
Innovation and Research. We are specifically pleased to welcome: Mr.
Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology
and Logistics; Mr. Stephen Welby, Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Development, Research and Engineering; and Dr. Arati Prabhakar,
Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Today, we look forward to learning more about the science and
technology investments proposed in the fiscal year 2017 budget.
This subcommittee has been a strong advocate of science and
technology investments and has ensured funding to make certain our
Nation can maintain its role as the world's leader in technology and
innovation. We want to continue to receive input from experts at the
Department of Defense so they can inform Committee action as we do our
work.
We appreciate your jointing us today to testify as our committee
continues to evaluate the budget request.
Now I will turn to the Vice Chairman, Senator Durbin, for his
opening remarks.
Senator Cochran. I am pleased to yield to the distinguished
Vice Chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Durbin, for any
remarks.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD J. DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to join
you in welcoming our witnesses to discuss defense innovation
and research.
Thanks to Mr. Kendall, Mr. Welby, and Dr. Prabhakar for
their testimony. We are looking forward to hearing from our
witnesses on innovations the department is undertaking.
I am very concerned with the state of our Federal
investment in research and development. We have gone from a
high watermark of 17 percent of the discretionary budget for
research and development to 9 percent. From the 1960s through
the 1980s, Federal spending on research and development (R&D)
averaged 1.52 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Now,
0.08 percent. So we have seen a steady decline that has led to
a cumulative $1.5 trillion research investment deficit.
What are we thinking? While our investments are on the
decline in the United States, other nations are surging ahead.
China has increased funding, and R&D is on track to surpass the
United States in research and development in a little over 5
years.
I sponsored two bills to reverse the innovation deficit,
the American Cures Act, the American Innovation Act. The Cures
Act would increase medical research for National Institutes of
Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Department of
Defense, and Veterans Affairs (VA) at the rate of GDP inflation
plus 5 percent a year. Similarly, the American Innovation Act
would set science and technology funding at the rate of
inflation plus 5 percent for the Department of Energy, the
Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Let me go out on a limb and say, if we did this 5 percent
real growth in research and development for 10 straight years,
America would light up the scoreboard. We would repay over and
over again the cost of so many things that we are enduring
today, hopelessly enduring, because of the lack of research.
Last year, with the support of my colleagues, this
subcommittee increased medical research in the Defense
Department by 5 percent in real growth terms. I thank the
chairman. He has been a real leader on this.
We also added $220 million to defense basic research last
year, bringing the defense science and technology (S&T) funding
to a total of nearly $13 billion. That is an increase of $950
million and a real increase of just over 5 percent.
I am hoping to hear from our witnesses about any technology
deficits and the challenges we face.
Secretary Carter has introduced new ways to push innovation
into Defense R&D, such as a new partnership with In-Q-Tel.
These are promising initiatives, but our challenge is both to
see how they pay off and to keep making innovation a priority.
I have given a lot of speeches about research and
innovation. The last point I want to make is advice from a man
named Jack Valenti. Some of you remember Jack Valenti. He
worked for President Lyndon Johnson, headed up the motion
picture alliance. He said every good speech includes six words,
``Let me tell you a story.''
You need to tell us a story, a story we can share with
everyone, about how this investment of taxpayer dollars makes
us a better Nation, makes us safer, and continues to keep
America in the lead.
We look forward to your testimony.
Senator Cochran. Thank you, Senator.
Let me call our witnesses to the table.
We welcome you, Mr. Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of
Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics; Mr. Stephen
Welby, Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; Dr.
Arati Prabhakar, Director of Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency.
We appreciate very much you being here today and the work
you have assumed responsibility for in our government.
So let's proceed.
SUMMARY STATEMENT OF FRANK KENDALL
Mr. Kendall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Cochran,
Vice Chairman Durbin, distinguished members of the committee,
we appreciate the opportunity to testify today.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask that our written
testimony be admitted to the record.
Senator Cochran. Without objection, it's so ordered.
Mr. Kendall. Thank you, sir.
Scientists and engineers from across the department's
research and development organizations work hard every day to
advance our Nation's defense technologies.
The department's current focus on innovation is much
broader than just innovation and technology. However, our
emphasis on innovation reflects our belief that we must do
everything we can to maintain our military technological
superiority.
Technological superiority isn't just about technology.
Military superiority directly correlates with innovation in
operational concepts and organizational constructs. It
correlates with all the things we do to be efficient and
productive in every aspect of the defense enterprise, from
human resources management to the use of information
technology. We depend on innovation for a healthy and robust
industrial base, stable and adequate budgets, sound technology
investment decisions, and an effective defensive acquisition
system.
We look forward to the opportunity to discuss the
department's progress in each of these areas and our roles in
leading and managing the Department of Defense innovation
efforts.
In the areas of acquisition, technology, and logistics, for
which I am responsible, we have for the last several years
undertaken a program of continuous improvement anchored by
three successive iterations of better buying power initiatives,
the most recent of which is focused on innovation and technical
excellence.
The department as a whole has been pursuing innovation
across-the-board under the Defense Innovation Initiative
originally announced by Secretary Hagel and endorsed by
Secretary Carter.
Secretary Carter has introduced the Force of the Future
human resource initiatives, which are intended to provide
innovative approaches to more effective recruiting and
retention, particularly in high-demand specialties like cyber
and information technology.
Secretary Carter has emphasized the department's efforts to
accelerate the transition of technology from commercial
nontraditional sources into Department of Defense (DOD) through
the Defense Innovation Unit--Experimental, or DIUx, which was
established last year. DIUx also serves as a vehicle to
facilitate relationships and tap into sources of intellectual
capital from across the country.
In addition, the Secretary is establishing a defense
innovation board composed of leading experts in commercial
management and technology.
Under leadership of Deputy Secretary Work, the department
has been investigating opportunities for a third offset
strategy that would provide an enduring operational advantage
and strengthen conventional deterrence through the application
of emerging technologies and novel operational concepts.
All of these efforts are integral parts of a larger whole,
which is focused on bringing more innovation into the
Department of Defense.
Why is there such an increased focus on innovation? The
reason is the growing recognition that the United States'
longstanding military technological superiority is being
challenged by peer or near-peer competitors in a way that we
have not seen since the Cold War.
Controlling costs and increasing efficiency and
productivity are always important, and the department remains
focused on improvements in these areas.
Our first responsibility, however, remains to ensure the
United States has and will continue to have dominant military
capabilities relative to any potential adversary.
I am deeply concerned about the adverse trends in
maintaining U.S. military technological superiority. I have
testified about that before to this committee.
The department-wide focus on innovation, technical
excellence, and acquisition process improvement is intended to
help sustain our long-term competitive advantage and make the
most effective use of the resources provided by the Congress.
The Department's ability to maintain the Nation's
technological superiority for the 21st century depends on the
research and devolvement investments reflected in our budget
request. We were able to increase our research and development
request in the PB-17 budget by about $3 billion over the
previous year's appropriation level.
This budget increases the use of prototyping,
demonstrations, and experimentation to help the department more
rapidly mature technology and to assess the impact these
innovative technologies can have on our future force.
Our investments create options for future investments in
full-scale development and production. We will have to rely on
the Congress and the work of this committee and others to
remove the threat of sequestration and provide the next
administration with the resources that will be needed to place
these innovative technologies into the hands of our
warfighters.
The challenge to our Nation's technological superiority is
not a tomorrow problem. It is here today. The department
remains committed to ensure our military is prepared for any
future conflict, and we are committed to work closely with
Congress on innovative capabilities to preserve our technology
edge.
We are confident that the initiatives being pursued on the
department's various innovation efforts, including a research
and development strategy reflected in the President's budget
submission and DARPA's efforts to help shape our technological
future, will all position the department for an increasingly
competitive national security environment.
Let me close by thanking the committee for its strong
support of the department's efforts, as the people we lead work
to discover, design, and deliver the technological capabilities
our warfighters need in order to protect the Nation.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Kendall, Hon. Stephen Welby and
Dr. Arati Prabhakar
Chairman Cochran, Vice Chairman Durbin and distinguished members of
the subcommittee, we appreciate the opportunity to testify today. I am
joined here by Mr. Stephen Welby, Assistant Secretary for Research and
Engineering; and Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. Scientists and engineers from across the
department's Research and Development (R&D) organizations work very
hard every day to advance our Nation's defense technologies. The
Department's current focus on technical innovation reflects our belief
that maintaining our technological superiority is critical to the
future security of the United States and our allies. Our technological
superiority directly correlates with a healthy and robust industrial
base, stable and adequate budgets, sound technology investment
decisions, and an effective defense acquisition system. We look forward
to the opportunity to discuss the Department's progress in each of
these areas, and our roles in leading and managing the Department of
Defense (DOD) Technology Innovation efforts.
This written testimony includes a summary of the continuous
improvement being made across the Defense Acquisition enterprise under
the Better Buying Power 3.0 initiatives, which are focused on
innovation and technical excellence. We also provide an overview of the
Research, Development, Technology and Engineering (RDT&E) investments
promulgated by the Assistant Secretary for Research and Engineering
(ASD(R&E)), and a short summary of many of the programs being pursued
by the Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). All
of these efforts are integral parts of a larger whole and contribute to
the Defense Innovation Initiative, which was originally announced in
2014 by Secretary Hagel, and which has been expanded upon and
strengthened by Secretary Carter and Deputy Secretary Work through
initiatives such as ``Force of the Future'' and ``The Third Offset
Strategy.''
We would like to begin, however, by discussing the reason it is so
crucial for our acquisition system to be more effective in addressing
emerging asymmetric challenges: the risk that the United States faces
today of losing its advantage in military technological superiority
when measured against our Nation's potential adversaries. Our first
responsibility is to ensure the United States has, and will continue to
have, dominant military capabilities relative to any potential
adversary. We are deeply concerned about the adverse trends in
maintaining U.S. military technological superiority. The department-
wide focus on innovation, technical excellence, and acquisition process
improvement are intended to help sustain our long-term competitive
advantage and make most effective use of the resources provided by the
Congress.
challenges to preserving u.s. military technological superiority
The United States and our allies have long enjoyed a military
capability advantage over any potential adversary. The military's
capabilities in precision strike weapons, stealth, wide area
surveillance, and networked forces emerged from what Deputy Secretary
Work has described as the second ``technology offset strategy.'' This
mix of capabilities was originally designed to counter the overwhelming
quantitative advantage possessed by Warsaw Pact mechanized forces. It
proved decisive when first deployed in the First Gulf War in 1991. The
United States has had great success with this suite of capabilities;
but the contest is never one-sided, and any military advantages that
depend on specific technologies is inevitably temporary. The
globalization technology in general and the increasing ability of
potential adversaries to invest in military modernization have in part
leveled the playing field. Potential adversaries have taken advantage
of fast-moving broadly available commercial technology--as well as on
technology often acquired through cyber theft and espionage. Potential
adversaries have also carefully studied the American way of war to
identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities to exploit.
No nation paid more attention to the technologies and operational
concepts used by the United States in the First Gulf War than China.
Our intelligence estimates in the early 1990s suggested that, while
China might be a concern in the future because of its accelerating
economic growth, it would take 15 to 20 years for China to become a
peer competitor. It is now 20 years later and the intelligence
estimates were accurate. China has developed and fielded a number of
advanced weapons designed to defeat U.S. power projection forces. Many
more are in development. These systems include a range of capabilities,
but foremost among them are accurate and sophisticated cruise and
ballistic missiles designed to attack high value assets, specifically
the aircraft carriers and forward bases that the United States depends
on for power projection. These weapons fielded in large numbers and
coupled with advanced electronic warfare (EW) systems, modern air-to-
air missiles, extensive counter-space capabilities, improved undersea
warfare capabilities, fifth generation fighters, and offensive cyber
weapons, pose a growing and serious threat to U.S. and allied power
projection forces.
China is not the only nation of concern. Russia is fielding or
developing advanced systems including highly effective air defense
systems, fifth generation fighters, land and surface ship attack cruise
missiles, state-of-the art submarines, electronic warfare and cyber
weapons. Russian doctrine, organization, and equipment are also turning
toward a greater reliance on tactical nuclear weapons--a disturbing
trend. Recent operations in Syria have demonstrated the effectiveness
of Russian modernization efforts, enabling Russia to conduct U.S.-style
power projection operations with precision weapons and sophisticated
airborne capabilities. All of these modernization investments are
targeted at challenging our ability to project power to deter
aggression, enforce international norms and defend U.S. and allied
interests. Proliferation of these capabilities to states such as Iran
and North Korea also poses a national security risk for the United
States and our friends and allies.
To be clear, we do not anticipate or foresee a military conflict
with China or Russia. That would not be in anyone's interest. However,
we also never want the United States to be in a situation of
inferiority or even parity with respect to conventional military power.
Regional rivalries and security dilemmas would compound, and the
possibility of a conflict due to a miscalculation would increase. In
addition, weapons developed by more capable powers will inevitably
proliferate to more likely opponents. Iran, for example, is known to be
acquiring precision missile capabilities that threaten our forces in
the Persian Gulf as well as our allies and friends in the region.
defense strategy requires focus on future technologies
Future capabilities will be joint in nature and leverage the
ability to rapidly synchronize simultaneous operations conducted in the
space, air, sea, undersea, ground, and cyber domains using manned and
unmanned systems. Emerging tools based on breakthroughs in artificial
intelligence, autonomy, computer science, advanced electronics,
communications systems, sensors, and other fields will enable new
operational concepts. These concepts will support faster and more
effective decisionmaking, enable improved coordination of operations
across warfighting domains, support the use of collaborative teams of
manned and unmanned systems, and integrate electronic warfare and cyber
operations. When fielded, these capabilities are intended to provide a
``Third Offset Strategy'' that will enable our forces to operate from
longer ranges, with less risk to our servicemen and women, and with
much higher relative effectiveness against emerging threats than
current systems.
critical investments in our future
To address these challenges, and to support the technology needs of
the current force, the President's fiscal year 2017 budget submission
continues to demonstrate strong support for sustaining a robust DOD
Science and Technology (S&T) investment. The chart below depicts DOD
funding over the last decade and as proposed in the current budget
submission over the Future Year Defense Program.
[The chart follows:]
As evidence of this commitment to a strong DOD S&T capability and
capacity, the fiscal year 2017 budget request for S&T is $12.5 billion,
1.9 percent above the fiscal year 2016 budget request and 2.4 percent
of the Defense topline ($524 billion). In real terms, the fiscal year
2017 S&T budget request is 25 percent higher than the fiscal year 2000
budget request of $9.8 billion. The table below details the proposed
DOD S&T budget by year and breaks out investment by budget category and
by S&T account.
[The table follows:]
The Department's fiscal year 2017 S&T budget request is aligned
with DOD priorities and supports increased focused investments on the
technology development and demonstration required to prepare the
Department for an increasingly competitive global security environment.
The fiscal year 2017 S&T budget request includes:
--$2.102 billion in Basic Research investment, which is an increase
of $12.9 million from the Fiscal Year 2016 budget request. Much
of this investment supports the Department's engagement with
academic institutions in the foundational research efforts that
drive future innovation.
--$4.815 billion in Applied Research investment, which is an increase
of $102.2 million from the fiscal year 2016 budget request.
--$5.584 billion in Advanced Technology Development investment, which
is an increase of $119.3 million from the fiscal year 2016
budget request. This additional investment provides for
increased emphasis on prototyping and experimentation to reduce
program risk.
driving value to the warfighter through science and technology
Over the last year we have continued to make progress strengthening
both our internal capabilities and our connections to external
innovation centers. Key activities of note from 2015 include:
--In 2015, the Department continued to focus efforts on developing
advanced capabilities to address emerging electronic warfare
(EW) challenges, to evaluate these capabilities, and to mature
them for future operational adoption. One example of these
efforts is the successful Vigilant Hammer experimentation
campaign. Vigilant Hammer provided a cost effective, joint
opportunity to explore and assess U.S. emerging capabilities to
fight in a complex, congested, and agile electromagnetic
spectrum. Vigilant Hammer provided the S&T community with
unprecedented access to the representative dense signal
environment in which U.S. systems will operate in the future.
--Navy-funded research delivered a Solid State Laser to the USS Ponce
last year, successfully demonstrating destruction of surface
and air targets by a directed energy weapon operating in the
maritime environment. Leveraging the lessons learned from this
operational demonstration, we are moving forward to mature the
technology required to deploy a 150 kilowatt laser on future
Navy platforms. Additionally, we will continue our ground
combat laser research work with the Marine Corps Ground-Based
Air Defense On-the-Move (GBAD) system, which is a vehicle-
based, high-energy laser for the 21st century Marine. Directed
energy will enable our naval forces to fight at the speed of
light.
--Naval Tactical Cloud research is providing the framework and large-
data analytics support for Navy platform cyber defense
solutions such as the Resilient Hull, Mechanical, and
Electrical Security system (RHIMES). RHIMES is a cyber-
protection system designed to make shipboard mechanical and
electrical control systems resilient to cyber-attacks. This
technology is a critical warfighting enabler, ensuring assured
access to critical information by keeping our Navy and Marine
Corps ``cyber doors locked.''
--R&D is driving the state of the art in autonomy continues to extend
Naval capability in new ways. Later this year, the Navy plans
to demonstrate an at-sea capability of our Low-Cost Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Swarming Technology (LOCUST) to launch,
form, control and task 30 small UAVs in an offensive swarm. The
Navy will also take the next step in undersea autonomy,
conducting a long endurance submerged transit test of our
hybrid fuel cell powered Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater
Vehicle (LDUUV).
--Using its Rapid Innovation Process, the Air Force Research
Laboratory recently developed and deployed the Long Endurance
Aerial Platform (LEAP). LEAP provides a revolutionary, low-
cost, low acoustic signature, persistent aerial ISR capability
to address Combatant Command and U.S. Special Forces ISR gaps
by converting a proven, fuel-efficient Light Sport Aircraft
into an Unmanned Aerial System. The Air Force Research
Laboratory completed the development and flight testing of the
Spiral II design, which has a takeoff weight of 1,650 pounds
with endurance of more than 30 hours, and carries a beyond-
line-of-sight satellite communications, command and control
data relay along with day/night imaging full motion video and
radio direction finding payloads. Based on its successful
testing, U.S. Special Operations Command requested, and the
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
funded, an operational evaluation of the system in the U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM) theater of operations. In a very
short period of time, the Laboratory procured the hardware for
a complete system of four air vehicles and has deployed them to
the field.
--The Air Force S&T Program is also working to harness new technology
to demonstrate that new, advanced capabilities can be rapidly
delivered in a cost effective manner. For example, the Low Cost
Attritable Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) program is leveraging
recent developments in advanced manufacturing, such as 3D
printing, to rapidly design, build, and field near-term
expendable or limited-life unmanned air platforms as single
assets or in autonomous or manned/unmanned teams to detect,
deny, and/or disrupt the enemy. This approach bends the cost
curve in our favor by enabling the United States to deploy
weapons systems to destroy or degrade the systems of our
adversaries and protect those of our armed forces and of our
allies at a small fraction of the cost of current manned and
re-usable systems. The low-cost attritable aircraft will
provide an A2/AD operations capable system, and offer near-term
ISR/strike capability in remote regions where forward basing is
difficult or prohibited.
--With an increasingly adaptive enemy, one who has watched how the
U.S. fights for the past 15 years, it is imperative for us to
understand our own technology and system vulnerabilities--those
aspects that could be exploited and used against us. The Army
S&T Enterprise has embraced this challenge. A key aspect of the
Army's initiative is the use of S&T red teaming--challenging
our systems with an emulated enemy, one who can employ
innovative and adaptive methods to disrupt our planned
capability. These efforts have the potential for significant
cost savings, as they permit potential future vulnerabilities
to be identified, evaluated and mitigated long before system
designs are finalized or systems are fielded.
--The Army S&T community continues to pursue technologies that are
clustered under the category materials-by-design. This research
changes the paradigm of material science by providing the
capability to select and create material properties and
responses, essentially building new materials from the atom up.
The ability to manipulate matter at any scale and create
desired properties across a wide range of material classes
(structural, electronic, energetic) can reduce the time of
materials-based discovery to capability delivery by half and at
a fraction of the cost of what it is today. The result is a
materials-by-design capability for ballistic protection,
energetic materials and electronic materials, built using a
multiscale approach heavily leveraging computational materials
science. The ability to design material properties can lead to
specialized capabilities such as high energy disruptive
explosives with three to 10 times more energy than a current
explosive (RDX) at a lower cost.
--The Army S&T Degraded Visual Environment Mitigation (DVE-M) effort
addresses the risk of loss of vertical lift aircraft and risk
of occupant injury and death due to loss of situational
awareness under degraded visual environments. These
environments include aircraft induced effects such as
``brownout'' and ``whiteout'' (the blowing of sand/snow due to
the rotor wash as the pilots come in for a landing), and
environmental effects that impair visibility such as snow,
rain, fog, and darkness. The Army is pursuing a multi-
disciplined approach to identifying and integrating
technologies to support operations into DVE-developing and
evaluating novel sensors, flight controls, cueing (visual,
aural, and tactile) and real-time computing environments. The
Army's DVE-M strategy will demonstrate these technologies in
increasingly complex environments, culminating in a
demonstration of 360-degree situational awareness throughout
the flight envelope of vertical lift systems. The application
of this technology will provide a game-changing capability that
may rival the impact of the introduction of night vision
capability into the operational forces.
In order to ensure we remain at the forefront of S&T, we must also
be connected to the global community by continuing to forge
relationships with our international partners. The DOD S&T community
continues to engage globally with allies and partners, and with key
academic and technology institutions worldwide. Among our global
engagements, we continue to support multilateral S&T cooperation
through the NATO alliance and through The Technical Cooperation Program
(TTCP) with the United Kingdom (U.K.), Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. The Department continues productive bilateral S&T cooperation,
and in the last few weeks has concluded annual reviews of ongoing
collaborative S&T efforts with a number of partner nations. As an
example of the benefits of the cooperation, the U.S./U.K. Multi-
disciplinary University Initiative (MURI) effort supports projects that
are competitively selected with DOD supporting U.S. Academic
institutions and the U.K. Ministry of Defense (MoD) supporting U.K.
researchers who then collaborate in areas of mutual U.S. DOD and U.K.
MoD interest. We have also continued to focus on strengthening U.S.-
India defense cooperation. Over the past year, the Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) has sponsored five
workshops with India covering a wide range mutual interest areas:
cognitive sciences, autonomy, directed energy, materials, and munitions
(including counter-improvised explosive devices). Over 30 potential S&T
projects from these workshops are currently under consideration for co-
development.
As we execute our plans for the rest of this fiscal year and into
fiscal year 2017, ASD(R&E) continues to provide oversight of the
Department's comprehensive S&T investment portfolio through the
Reliance 21 framework. Reliance 21 provides a forum to synchronize,
coordinate, and deconflict Service and Agency S&T activities. In the
last year, we improved joint planning and coordination of S&T
activities among the Department's senior S&T leadership to achieve
efficiencies and improve the effectiveness of our support to the
Operating Force. This collaborative process captures the interests and
activities of the entire R&E enterprise in a collection of 17
Communities of Interest (COIs). The COIs maintain awareness of their
respective portfolio areas by reviewing and assessing the alignment of
current and planned R&E programs, identifying gaps, and helping to
prioritize R&E funding efforts to meet the technical challenges of the
DOD in their respective portfolio areas. Each Reliance 21 COI
represents specific cross-domain technology areas with a rotating
steering group lead and draws upon subject-matter experts from across
the Department working in the relevant technology area. The Reliance 21
framework, its S&T Executive Committee, and technology area COIs are
key mechanisms that support ASD(R&E) integrated oversight of the
Department's S&T investments.
darpa's role in driving disruptive innovation and preventing
technological surprise
For nearly six decades, DARPA has played a particular role in this
community of government innovators, and in the larger U.S. technology
ecosystem: to pursue extremely challenging but potentially paradigm-
shifting technologies in support of national security. Today DARPA
continues to create the technologies needed to offset the advanced
threats that our military and our Nation will face in the years ahead,
and to develop the next generation of advanced military capabilities to
deter and if necessary defeat highly sophisticated adversaries.
The agency's current strategic framework and descriptions of our
major areas of investment are outlined in ``Breakthrough Technologies
for National Security,'' which also describes DARPA's approaches to
ensuring that advances are successfully transitioned to the military
Services, commercial enterprises or other research entities for further
development in ways that best serve U.S. national interests. DARPA's
portfolio of more than 200 active programs can be aligned around three
major investment areas: Rethinking Complex Military Systems, Mastering
the Information Explosion, and Nurturing the Seeds of Technological
Surprise. These programs can be further grouped by technological
maturity: those capabilities that are already being piloted or used
(``Adoption and Impact''), those that are currently in development
(``Technical Progress''), and those that represent fresh investment
directions (``New Opportunities'').
The small subset of these programs discussed below provides a sense
of the nature and mix of these investments.
darpa's efforts focused on rethinking complex military systems
The unparalleled technological capability that has enabled U.S.
military and security superiority comes with a price: spiraling
increases in complexity. Today, many high-end military platforms are so
complex they take decades to produce and years to upgrade. In a world
in which pace is inexorably increasing, and in which other economic and
manufacturing sectors have recognized the benefits of systems
modularity, rapid-fire iterative improvements and faster hardware- and
software-system upgrades, the military's current approach to managing
complexity is inadequate. It risks leaving the United States vulnerable
to adversaries developing more nimble means of adopting technology.
Today DARPA is turning the tables on complexity, creating
engineering architectures and approaches that deliver significantly
greater combat power, but with a technical elegance that also allows
for flexibility in the field and fast upgrades.
Representative programs in this area include:
--Cognitive Electronic Warfare (EW) (Maturity: Adoption and
Impact).--DARPA's Advanced RF Countermeasures (ARC) and
Behavioral Learning for Adaptive Electronic Warfare (BLADE)
programs are investing in the technologies needed to rapidly
react to dynamic electromagnetic spectrum signals from
adversary radar and communications systems. These programs are
applying machine learning--computer algorithms that can learn
from and make predictions from data--to react in real time and
jam signals, including new signals that have not yet been
cataloged. DARPA is working with the Services to transition
technologies derived from the field of cognitive electronic
warfare into the F-18, F- 35, Army Multi-Function EW program,
and Next Generation Jammer.
--Unmanned Surface Vessel for Long-Duration Missions (Maturity:
Technical Progress).--The Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW)
Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program has designed,
developed and constructed an entirely new class of ocean-going
vessel--one able to traverse the open seas for months and over
thousands of kilometers without a single crew member aboard.
The 130-foot ship, now known as Sea Hunter, is designed to
robustly track quiet diesel electric submarines. But of broader
technical significance, it embodies breakthroughs in autonomous
navigational capabilities with the potential to change the
nature of U.S. maritime operations. Specifically, ACTUV is
endowed with advanced software and hardware that enables full
compliance with maritime laws and conventions for safe
navigation--including international regulations for preventing
collisions at sea, or COLREGS--while operating at a fraction of
the cost of manned vessels that are today deployed for similar
missions. ACTUV was recently transferred to water at its
construction site in Portland, Oregon. It was christened on
April 7, 2016, with open-water testing scheduled to begin this
summer off the California coast.
--Space Robotics and Modular Systems at Geosynchronous Orbit
(Maturity: Technical Progress).--DARPA's Phoenix program is
developing innovative technologies and systems that will make
it possible to reimagine operations in geosynchronous Earth
orbit (GEO), 35,000 kilometers above the Earth. This is the
orbit where the highest priority military satellites operate,
and commercial satellites there generate more than $100 billion
annually in revenue. DARPA is developing a variety of space
robotics technologies, including assembly, repair, asset life
extension and refueling in the harsh GEO environment; low-cost
modular satellite architectures that can scale almost
infinitely; and a standardized payload orbital delivery (POD)
mechanism designed to safely carry a wide variety of separable
mass elements to orbit-- including payloads, satlets and
electronics--aboard commercial communications satellites.
Phoenix has now ground tested the world's first modular
satellite, called eXCITe, and prepared it for launch in 2016.
In addition, a prototype of a POD mechanism to deliver low-cost
rideshare to GEO has also been constructed and is being readied
for launch in mid-2017.
darpa's efforts focused on mastering the information explosion
The accelerating growth of digital data, and the Nation's
increasing reliance on information systems in every sector of society,
present a challenge and an opportunity. The opportunity is to derive
from this massive trove the myriad associations and causalities that,
once unveiled, can provide insights into everything from the predicted
arrival of a new strain of influenza to the plans for a terror attack
halfway around the globe. The challenge is how to separate these
valuable signals from noise, and how to be able to trust the
information and information systems upon which we now rely for
virtually every function.
DARPA is developing novel approaches to deriving insights from a
wide variety of datasets, and is developing technologies to ensure that
the data and systems with which critical decisions are made are
trustworthy.
Representative programs in this area include:
--Research on Fresh Approaches for Computer Security (Maturity:
Adoption and Impact).--DARPA's Clean-slate design of Resilient,
Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) program was a basic research
effort that designed new computer systems that are highly
resistant to cyberattack. The technology development has
recently concluded, and CRASH-developed software is now being
incorporated in the commercial and military arenas. One
university performer started a company based on CRASH research;
this led to an announcement from HP in September 2015 that its
new line of printers would feature this software to enhance
their security. DARPA is coordinating transitions to the Navy
and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). For example,
the aforementioned software is now being transitioned to the
Naval Surface Warfare Center to protect shipboard control
systems from cyberattack, and other CRASH software is being
transitioned to offer similar protection for DOD command and
control servers. Additionally, the Department of Homeland
Security and the Air Force Research Laboratory have been
working together to test and evaluate CRASH technology in
multiple devices. Because the cyberattack surface is vast and
diverse, each of these transitions makes a contribution to the
Nation's cybersecurity by taking a class of threats off the
table.
--Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) (Maturity: Technical Progress).--It
typically takes months or years for a software bug to be
identified and patched--a period of time increasingly being
taken advantage of by digital miscreants, and a vulnerability
window not likely to shrink as long as the process for
identifying and repairing such flaws remains mostly manual and
artisanal as it is today. CGC is a DARPA-sponsored competition
that aims to accelerate the development of automatic defensive
systems capable of reasoning about flaws, formulating patches,
and deploying them on a network in real time. By acting at
machine speed and scale, these technologies may someday
overturn today's attacker-dominated status quo. Seven teams
from across the United States qualified last year to compete in
the CGC final event, which will take place live on stage, co-
located with the DEF CON 24 conference in Las Vegas on August
4, 2016.
--Communicating with Computers (Maturity: New Opportunities).--A new
and powerful wave of artificial intelligence (AI) is sweeping
commercial and military applications today. Based on recent
major advances in machine learning-- research that was
sponsored in part by DARPA--this generation of AI is fueling
fields as disparate as search, self-driving cars and financial
trading in the commercial world and battle management,
electronic warfare, cybersecurity and information operations in
the national security realm. Despite this significant technical
progress, however, the ways in which humans interact with
machine systems are still quite limited compared to human-to-
human interactions. DARPA's Communicating with Computers (CwC)
program is a basic research effort to explore how to facilitate
faster, more seamless and intuitive communication between
people and computers--including how computers endowed with
visual or other sensory systems might learn to take better
advantage of the myriad ways in which humans use contextual
knowledge (gestures and facial expressions or other syntactical
clues, for example) to enrich communication. Ultimately,
advances from this program could allow warfighters, analysts,
logistics personnel and others in the national security
community to take fuller advantage of the enormous
opportunities for human-machine collaboration that are emerging
today.
darpa's efforts focused on nurturing the seeds of technological
surprise
From its earliest days, DARPA has scoured the research community
for new science and engineering insights and invested in programs to
reveal radically advanced technological capabilities from those fertile
research areas. That tradition holds true today.
--Accurate, Specific Disease Diagnostics on the Spot (Maturity:
Adoption and Impact).--The challenge of tracking the spread of
infectious disease is exacerbated by the fact that the only way
to know precisely which pathogen ails a patient is to draw
blood, send it to a lab, and often wait days to hear the
result. The Mobile Analysis Platform (MAP) point-of-care
diagnostic device is a simple, rugged, handheld, battery-
operated instrument that rapidly identifies a range of
infectious diseases. Developed under DARPA's Prophecy program,
it enables low-cost and robust molecular diagnostics within 30-
45 minutes in areas where neither a laboratory nor a secure
cold chain is available. And because the device provides
instant wireless transmission of test results and location
data, it can provide invaluable real-time epidemiological data
during outbreaks of fast-moving diseases such as Ebola. DARPA
is already engaged in clinical testing of the device with the
Naval Health Research Center and the U.S. Military HIV Research
Program, and will conduct testing with the Marine Corps
Warfighting Laboratory this year during military exercises in
the United States and West Africa. In addition, DARPA recently
initiated development of a MAP assay for the Zika virus.
--Revolutionizing Prosthetics (Maturity: Technical Progress).--Over
the past year, DARPA has built on previous work in its
Revolutionizing Prosthetics program to achieve several new and
groundbreaking advances that promise to make a difference for
wounded warriors and for countless other people with
disabilities. Earlier work developed a sophisticated, modular
prosthetic arm that could be easily controlled by the user--a
prosthetic that earned FDA approval--and demonstrated the first
direct, real-time decoding of neural motor control signals from
patients to operate such an arm with near-natural control. A
newer focus has been on providing users of prosthetics limbs
with a sense of touch by sending tactile information from
mechanical fingertips to the brain. In September, DARPA
reported its first success in this domain, when a 28-year-old
man who had been paralyzed for more than a decade as a result
of a spinal cord injury became the first person to ``feel''
physical sensations through a prosthetic hand directly
connected to his brain. The advance points to a future in which
people living with paralysis or missing limbs will not only be
able to manipulate objects by sending signals from their brain
to robotic devices, but will also be able to sense precisely
what those devices are touching.
--New Tools to Fight Ebola (Maturity: Technical Progress).--The
fiscal year 2015 Consolidated and Further Continuing
Appropriations Act provided funds for DARPA to pursue
technologies relevant to the Ebola outbreak, leveraging
platform capabilities in the ADEPT program that aims to outpace
infectious diseases. As a result of that additional support,
DARPA was able to achieve a number of milestones in quick
order, including completion of a study showing that a novel
DNA-based vaccine could protect non-human primates against a
lethal Ebola challenge, completion of a Phase I human safety
trial for a DNA-based vaccine, identification of highly
protective antibodies retrieved from U.S. Ebola survivors,
commencement of manufacture of a protective Ebola antibody, and
successful demonstration of potentially therapeutic levels of
DNA-encoded Ebola antibodies in small animals.
--Neural Engineering Systems Design (Maturity: New Opportunities).--
The science fiction dream of linking the brain directly to the
outside world has in recent years started becoming a reality--
initially through the development of implantable medical
devices such as deep brain stimulators used today to treat
Parkinson's disease and other conditions and, more recently,
through work by DARPA and others to develop brain-machine
interfaces that allow amputees and people living with paralysis
to operate robotic prosthetic arms and hands with their
thoughts. Even state-of-the-art brain-machine interfaces,
however, have relatively small capacities compared to the
enormous computing power of today's digital systems and of the
brain itself--a situation that has been likened to two
supercomputers trying to talk to each other through an old 300-
baud modem. DARPA's Neural Engineering System Design (NESD)
program stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in
neurotechnology and provide a foundation for new therapies and
other capabilities by developing small, implantable systems
that can communicate clearly and individually with any of up to
one million neurons in a given region of the brain. In addition
to that hardware challenge, NESD aims to develop the advanced
mathematical and neuro-computation techniques to transcode
high-definition sensory information between two contrasting
languages--the brain's cortical neuronal representations and
the ones and zeros of electronic systems--and then compress and
represent those data with minimal loss of fidelity and
functionality.
To build upon the previous initiatives, last year I introduced BBP
3.0, which emphasized technical excellence and innovation. As mentioned
in the preceding sections, we must ensure that the U.S. maintains its
technological edge and superiority. With that in mind, BBP 3.0 is
focused on anticipating and planning for emerging threats through
stronger partnerships between the acquisition, requirements, and
intelligence communities; strengthening cybersecurity throughout the
product lifecycle; removing barriers to commercial technology
utilization; improving the return on investments in DOD laboratories;
and increasing the productivity of corporate Independent Research and
Development (IR&D), among others. Within the area of workforce
professionalization, we are working to strengthen organic engineering
capabilities, ensure our development program leadership is technically
qualified to manage research and development activities, improve our
ability to understand and mitigate technical risk, and increase our
support for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
education.
To address emerging threats and challenges, we are increasing the
emphasis on being more responsiveness through closer integration of
requirements, intelligence, and acquisition. We must recognize that
threats are dynamic and constantly evolving, and we must stay ahead of
the threat curve. We will increase the use of modular designs, open
architectures, and competition to spur innovation and ensure that our
designs can accommodate upgrades that keep us ahead of potential
adversaries at affordable cost.
In the area of cybersecurity, we are working to address all
elements of security throughout the program's lifecycle to include
design, manufacturing/production, and logistics and sustainment. We are
also working with industry to address cybersecurity concerns in the
vast supply chain. While we have made progress in these areas, more
action is needed.
Another area where we are making progress is increasing
productivity in research and development investments that lead to
product development. This includes bolstering our focus on science and
technology, advanced components, and early prototypes. The productivity
of our in-house laboratories, external research efforts funded through
contracts and grants, and the IR&D conducted as a reimbursable expense
by private industry, are being assessed and evaluated with a goal of
maximizing returns while driving down costs.
We are also working to encourage greater innovation and investments
in innovation in industry. One area where we are making inroads is
providing industry with draft requirements earlier, thereby allowing
industry the opportunity to ask questions, provide feedback, and to
make well-informed investment decisions. The Department will also
contract with industry for early concept definition work to better
inform requirements decisions and analyses of alternatives. We have
released guidance for defining ``best value'' in monetary terms so that
industry will have a better understanding of what the government is
willing to pay for enhanced performance. This knowledge should spur
innovation by giving industry a solid understanding of the competitive
advantage available to firms offering innovative ways of achieving
higher performance at acceptable costs.
Finally, as aforementioned, we are working to increase
professionalism in the acquisition workforce, recognizing that a strong
engineering and scientific acquisition workforce is essential to
achieving effective innovation and management of development programs.
Technical risk management is at the core of cutting edge weapon system
development programs, and the Department cannot simply transfer this
responsibility to industry. Well-trained and technically qualified
personnel, with relevant backgrounds in science, engineering, or other
technical fields, should be managing our development programs. The
Department cannot be an intelligent customer who insists on high levels
of performance without developing and maintaining a cadre of
technically qualified managers, and would like to work with the
Congress to create greater incentives to recruit, grow, and retain
professionals with specialized technical qualifications.
conclusion
All of our efforts to increase innovation and improve acquisition
outcomes are efforts to swim against the current of inefficiencies
exacerbated by constant sequestration induced budget uncertainty and
the consequential turmoil it creates. We must restore balance to the
Department, but we cannot do so until our plans and future budgets are
better aligned. Until that occurs, modernization investments,
particularly research and development, will suffer. This means that
development programs will be stretched out inefficiently and that
production rates will be well below optimal for many programs.
Uncertainty about future budget levels makes it impossible to determine
where the optimal balance between force structure, readiness and
modernization lies. In this environment the tendency is to hang on to
assets that the Department may not ultimately be able to afford, and
where the assets may also be technologically ineffective against our
adversaries.
Near-term efforts to shift the Department's focus to address
emerging near-peer competitors have focused on maturing technologies,
developing new systems concepts, and preparing to experiment with
prototype systems that rely on automation and artificial intelligence
as central elements of a third offset strategy. These efforts establish
a hedge position for the Department--they allow us to evaluate new
materiel concepts, develop operational concepts for their deployment,
increase the maturity of the underlying technology, and provide
knowledge to reduce the risk of follow-on efforts. Delivering new
materiel capabilities to the force to maintain our technical edge will
require investment beyond technology prototyping and near term gap-
fillers. The Nation will face critical investment decisions over the
next decade. We must increase our investment in conventional
modernization to deliver, equip and train a relevant force with these
new capabilities; or, we will be forced to make hard choices about what
portion of the current force capability and capacity we trade to create
headroom to afford the new technically advanced capabilities required
to ensure our competitive military advantage. The resources for this
new wave of modernization are not reflected in current budget planning.
The challenge to our Nation's technological superiority is not a
tomorrow problem--it is here today. The Department remains committed to
ensure our Military is prepared for any future conflict and we are
committed to work closely with Congress to stimulate innovative
capabilities that preserve our technological edge. We are confident
that the initiatives being pursued under the Department's innovation
efforts, including the Better Buying Power Initiatives, the strong
support for the Department's Research and Development Strategy
reflected in the President's Budget Submission, and DARPA's Strategic
efforts to help shape our technological future, will position the
Department for an increasingly competitive national security
environment.
The fiscal year 2017 President's Budget request will enable us to
move toward driving a culture of technical innovation across the
Department, will help us prepare for an increasingly competitive global
National Security environment, and will foster a whole-of-department
coordinated effort across Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, and other DOD
research and engineering organizations.
Let me close by thanking the committee for its strong interest in
and support of the Department's efforts as we work to discover, design,
and deliver the technological capabilities our warfighters will need to
shape the future.
Senator Cochran. Thank you very much.
Mr. Stephen Welby, Secretary of Defense for Research and
Engineering.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN WELBY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING
Mr. Welby. Chairman Cochran, Vice Chairman Durbin, and
distinguished members of this committee, I am pleased to have
the opportunity to provide testimony on the Department of
Defense fiscal year 2017 science and technology program and our
efforts to increase innovative solutions to support the
warfighter.
As Mr. Kendall noted, we are at a pivotal moment in history
where the advanced technical capability and capacity that the
Nation has relied upon to provide us with unmatched advantage
on any battlefield is now being challenged, challenged by the
military technology investments being made by increasingly
capable and increasingly assertive powers.
Our department-wide focus on technology innovation seeks to
identify and invest in unique capabilities to sustain and
advance the department's military superiority for the 21st
century.
As Secretary Carter said in his remarks on the budget at
the Economic Club of Washington on the 2nd of February, we must
take the long view and seize the opportunities for the future
in order to sustain our lead in full spectrum warfighting.
Today, the department employs over 39,000 scientists and
engineers in 63 defense laboratories, warfare centers, and
engineering centers across 22 States, all working every day to
sustain our ability to support and field critical military
technology that often has no commercial equivalent.
Our laboratories have produced important innovations in
vital defense areas, such as electronic warfare, propulsion,
and weapons design. And maintaining this unique technical
expertise is critical for ensuring the department's ability to
prepare for future threats.
However, we cannot innovate and bolster our future
technological superiority from within the department alone. Our
defense laboratory enterprise touches the broadest range of
emerging concepts through our deep engagement with academia,
industry, and our international partners to keep the DOD smart,
knowledgeable, agile, and responsive in the face of new and
emerging threats.
This includes outreach to the vibrant and growing
commercial innovation community, a community that often does
not consider applying their emerging technologies to the
national security sphere.
This year's 2017 presidential budget request contains $12.5
billion for science and technology, which includes $2.1 billion
for basic research and confirms the department's commitment for
a stable and robust DOD science and technology program that is
aligned with DOD priorities and supports increased investments
in those technology development demonstrations required to
prepare the department for an increasingly competitive global
security environment.
The budget submission also continues to ensure that the
department is developing the innovative technical capabilities
that are going to inform our future options and sustain our
U.S. technological superiority.
Our department's strength is in our people, and we must
continue to recruit and retain the best and brightest military
and civilian scientists and engineers, and harness their
innovative spirits to give our military forces the warfighting
edge.
Ultimately, our goal must always be to ensure that our
soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines always have the
scientific knowledge, the decisive technology, the advanced
systems and tools, the best care and the materiel edge to
succeed whenever they are called upon. Our research and
engineering enterprise measures its success in the security of
our Nation and in the success of our warfighters.
I would like to thank the committee for your continued
support of the department's science and technology efforts as
we work help to help shape that future.
Thank you.
Senator Cochran. Thank you very much.
We now recognize Dr. Arati Prabhakar, director of Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency. You may proceed.
STATEMENT OF DR. ARATI PRABHAKAR, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE
ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY
Dr. Prabhakar. Thank you both very much. And thanks to the
members of the subcommittee. It is great to be here today with
Mr. Kendall and Mr. Welby.
DARPA is just one part of the department's science and
technology efforts, so what that means is we work very closely
with our colleagues across DOD (Department of Defense). We also
work directly with defense companies and commercial companies,
with universities and labs of all sorts.
So we are very much a part of this wide research and
technology ecosystem. Within that ecosystem, DARPA has one
particular role, and that is to make the pivotal early
investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.
Today, as Mr. Kendall and Mr. Welby have just described, we
do that work in a shifting global security landscape that is
filled with technologies moving at a furious pace. I wanted to
give you one concrete example to bring that to life, and it is
a very specific example about aircraft self-protection.
When our aircraft go out today on a mission, they have a
set of jamming profiles. These are very specific frequencies
and waveforms that they can transmit to jam the adversary and
protect themselves. But today when they go out, sometimes they
will encounter a radar that is transmitting a signal that
doesn't match anything in their library. And if that happens in
a time of conflict, it leaves them dangerously unprotected.
Now today, to upgrade that system takes weeks to months to
years before we can generate that upgrade and get it out to all
the aircraft to give them that protection against that one
specific new threat. That really just reflects the simple fact
that when those systems were built, we were in a world in which
the adversary didn't change that often.
But, of course, that is the problem. Today, that slow-
moving world is gone. And in fact, it is just not that hard
anymore to modify a radar. In fact, it is the same wireless
technologies that have brought communications and the Internet
to billions of people around the world that are now being
repurposed to modify radars.
So a program at DARPA is taking a completely new approach
to this problem.
Onboard the aircraft, our system looks across the radio
spectrum. It uses artificial intelligence to learn what the
adversary radar is doing. And then right there on the spot, it
generates a specific jamming profile to counter that specific
threat.
What all of that means is that our aircraft will be able to
protect themselves immediately in the battlespace, even when
the environment around them is changing.
To me, that is just one small example among many about how
powerful it can be when you invent new technologies and then
apply them to solve these kinds of problems.
There are many, many more examples across the DARPA
portfolio. We have work that ranges from radical new military
systems.
For example, we just christened a ship a couple weeks ago
that will navigate across the oceans without a single sailor on
board, and it also includes research that is harnessing
everything from photons to algorithms to even living cells, to
create new possibilities that no one could have even imagined
before today.
So I would be happy to talk about any of that, but I just
wanted to conclude my opening remarks this morning by thanking
you all for the support that you give us, the trust that you
place in us, along with the support that we get from senior
leadership in the department. This is why DARPA is able to
create breakthrough technologies for national security.
I very much look forward to your questions. Thank you.
Senator Cochran. Thank you very much.
Let me start the questioning by asking you, Dr. Prabhakar,
what processes have you observed that enable technology
transition? And what are recent examples of successfully
transitioned technology?
Dr. Prabhakar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the question.
Tech transition is always something that requires two
parties, and those of us who are creating new technologies are
always working. From the moment we know the technologies might
work, we are always looking for our partners across the Defense
Department who can team up with us and start pulling those
technologies forward.
The important shift that I would tell you is going on today
in the department is, in recent years, in times of war, most of
our transition pull came for applications of our technology
direct to theater. And we're very proud of some of things that
we were able to do, tracking insurgent pickup trucks from the
air, or helping commanders understand stability operations.
The shift that is happening today in the department, I
think it is a very healthy one. We're finding today a much
greater appetite from the services to work with us on the kinds
of technologies that can counter very sophisticated nation-
state peer adversaries. And I am very much a part of the third
offset strategy and other strategic directions that are
starting to move the focus in the department.
Just to give you one example of that, I mentioned our self-
driving ship in my opening remarks. This is a vessel that has
the capability to navigate away from the pier by itself. It is
not joystick controlled. It will have the autonomous capability
to navigate and to follow the rules of the oceans to avoid
collision. It is able to have a very long range. It can go many
tens of thousands of nautical miles.
That means that we're now going to have a vessel that
allows the Navy to start thinking about, number one, doing some
of today's manned missions for a tiny fraction of the operating
cost. But even more exciting, I think, is when you start
thinking about the new kinds of missions that you might be able
to do with teams of these unmanned ships, perhaps working in
collaboration with manned ships.
That kind of exploration is the focus of a joint effort
that we now have with the Office of Naval Research. For the
next 2 years off the coast of San Diego, we'll be doing a lot
of the experimentation to see what this amazing new technology
really can deliver for the Navy.
Senator Cochran. Senator Durbin.
Senator Durbin. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to ask the panel, but I think it's primarily Mr.
Kendall, with the decline of the Soviet Union, we entered into
some agreements for a lot of reasons to engage the Russians in
providing us with technology of value to us. We were trying to
divert their talent from creating that technology for one of
our enemies and trying to find some basis for a positive
relationship between the Russians and the United States.
One of those dealt with the RD-180, the rocket engine that
we have used to launch countless numbers of satellites
successfully into space. Several years ago, it was the opinion
of both the authorizing and appropriating committee that it was
time to build an American engine that could compete or replace
the RD-180. For 2 successive years, we have been appropriating
the money for the planning and building of that engine.
There is a war or debate, let's say a war of words, and a
debate in Congress on the Senate side between the authorizing
committee and the appropriating committee as to the fate of the
RD-180 Russian rocket engine. There is at least a belief in the
authorizing committee that we should stop cold, not buy any
more of these Russian engines.
What I have heard from the Department of Defense is that
would leave the United States vulnerable, vulnerable to two
possibilities, that we might then be at the mercy of a sole
source, perhaps SpaceX, or that we would be forced to use
engines not appropriate for a launch, like the Delta engine,
and that may be more expensive if we go down that route rather
than use RD-180 Russian engines while we're in transition. The
transition, we think, will last 5 years to build a new American
engine.
I would like your comments on this state of play, in terms
of the use of RD-180s in transition, whether 5 years is
reasonable, and if we fail to use RD-180 engines, what it would
mean to our security and cost.
Mr. Kendall. Thanks, Senator Durbin.
We've had conversations about this in the past. As you
know, this is a very complicated subject. But the department's
goals have never changed. We want assured access to space,
which means we should have two ways to get our satellites into
orbit, so that if one of them has a major failure and we have a
big gap in capability, we still have another way to get to
space.
So number one is having assured access to space, meaning
two sources.
We want competition to keep cost down. We're discovering
that with the advent of SpaceX into the launch business for the
department, that it's driving prices down substantially. So
competition is very important to controlling cost.
We also want to get off of the RD-180 as quickly as we can.
We don't want to have that dependency on a Russian source for
our space launch vehicles.
The way we would like to move forward, and we think it is
the best way from a business perspective, is through public and
private partnerships for launch services.
The department doesn't buy either rockets or engines. It
buys transportation services to get our satellites into space.
What we'd like to do is nontraditional. It's a commercial
model, basically, which says that we will provide funds to
close the business case for companies that will then guarantee
us future launches at a reasonable price.
That's the nature of the business agreement that we want to
reach. And the funding that we asked for in 2017 would allow us
to do that, if it's appropriated.
The other way we could go is to just buy another engine. We
could buy an engine for the Atlas rocket, and engines come
together with rockets. You can't just take an engine and put it
onto some rocket. It's designed for a specific rocket. We could
buy a replacement engine for the RD-180 to use on the Atlas
rocket.
That would be effectively subsidizing one company and
providing them with a major investment for that specific
rocket. We don't think that is the right way to go. We'd like
to have a more competitive approach.
There may be a new engine in this, but we'd also like to
get to launch vehicles that are more cost-effective and
affordable to us.
Going forward with something that replaces Atlas with a
more cost-competitive solution is, we think, the right approach
in that regard.
The other alternative that is being talked about is the use
of Delta, which is a much more expensive rocket, which has some
capability to launch payloads that are comparable to the
capabilities of the Atlas system, but at a much higher price,
$30 million, $40 million, $50 million per launch.
It is a judgment I would leave to the Congress as to
whether it is worth the total cost of going to Delta, which
would be over $1 billion, depending on what estimates you make,
and there are some estimates that are much higher than that. It
would be over $1 billion that we would be paying out of our
budget to avoid essentially buying RD-180s.
I don't think that is a good tradeoff. I'd rather buy a few
more RD-180s to get us through the necessary transition period
until we can have more modern and affordable launch services
without it.
Senator Durbin. So I'll just close, because my time is up,
but I wanted to illustrate here, if I can, by this chart.
If we don't use Russian engines in transition while we're
building this American engine, we're forced to use Delta
engines through the United Launch Alliance. And that, we
estimate, will cost, as Mr. Kendall said, between $1 billion
and $2 billion more while we're building this new American
engine, rather than using the cheaper Russian engine in
transition.
What does $2 billion mean? We can replace every Humvee in
the Marine Corps, increase pay raises for our troops by 2.1
percent for the next 5 years with the difference that we would
pay for Delta, keep the A-10 flying for 5 more years, double
the funding for National Guard equipment by 10 to 20 space
launches under full and open competition.
I don't want to continue to subscribe to this Russian
engine any longer than we have to, but I think it is
shortsighted for us to just say, as some in the authorizing
committee have said, ``We're cutting them off cold turkey.
We're finished with them.''
If we can use them in transition to an American-made
engine, we will have real competition between SpaceX and ULA or
whatever company emerges from that, and then we can have the
competition in dual-sourcing, which you say is important for
our security.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cochran. Thank you, Senator.
We'll now recognize the distinguished Senator from Montana,
Mr. Daines.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for coming today to testify about defense
innovation and research. Throughout history, our country has
depended on being one step ahead of our adversaries, and that
relies heavily on the ability of our equipment and technology
to be the very best possible. So thank you for the work you're
doing here.
Coming from a State like Montana--and by the way, our
technology industry is rapidly growing--I understand the
importance of the work you do and encourage you to come out and
take a look at the work we're doing out in Big Sky Country
sometime.
I was told in this very seat 2 months ago by Secretary
James that the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program was on
track and that it would hit its first milestone by April.
Well, it's April, and I'm told now there is an issue.
I have a bicameral group of congressional members ready to
send a letter expressing their concern. Have the Department of
Defense and the Air Force dropped the ball on this? When I am
told something is going to be on track, I expect it to be so.
And as you know, we've been trying to get this worked out
over the past week, but I'd like to see the committee get some
resolution even here today.
Secretary Kendall, would you have an update on the new
timeline for the GBSD Milestone A?
Mr. Kendall. Certainly, Senator.
I think there's some confusion about the difference between
what we call a milestone and what we actually do. So let me
explain what we're actually doing.
The GBSD program is on track. It's very important that we
proceed with that, and we do it in a timely way. So we're not
slowing the program down at all.
The next thing we will actually do is to release an RFP to
industry for the first phase, which is risk reduction. That
will happen very shortly. We're very close to doing that.
I can call that the Milestone A. My initial idea was to
wait until I got the bids in. I want to see what the companies
are going to offer us, in terms of the activities they would do
in that phase. I had considered shifting Milestone A until just
before the award of the contracts, as opposed to at this time.
I am happy to do the Milestone A now, associated with the
RFP release. The only problem I have with that is a firm legal
requirement that before I do a Milestone A, I have to have an
independent cost estimate. So I have to satisfy that legal
requirement in order to have the Milestone A as a dot on the
wall of something you did.
Senator Daines. Right.
Mr. Kendall. That does not slow down releasing the RFP to
industry, which is the substance of what we're doing.
So I'm going to hit Milestone A as soon as I can.
Senator Daines. Okay. So what's your best forecast today on
when you would hit Milestone A?
Mr. Kendall. I think the actual decision of releasing the
RFP is a couple weeks away. The decision to call it a Milestone
A and sign a document that says I've hit a Milestone A is
dependent upon the cost analysis office giving me an
independent cost estimate. That is a little bit further away.
Senator Daines. Okay, and what is further away? Just,
again, are we talking days, weeks, a month?
Mr. Kendall. I would guess a month or 2.
Senator Daines. A month or 2, so April, May, by June, we
would have Milestone A, worst-case scenario?
Mr. Kendall. I would say, as an estimate, probably by June.
Again, I don't control that timeline, because of the legal
requirement that I have to satisfy.
Senator Daines. Okay. All right. I'll move on.
I want to talk about radio batteries here for a moment.
I've spoken on this committee before about the importance of
lowering the weight that our servicemembers carry. From
creating more injuries in the long run to decreasing their
combat effectiveness, I think the weight our soldiers carry is
a serious threat to the future of warfare, especially when
soldiers witness Al Qaeda fighters in sneakers with no armor.
The average infantry marine carries 20 pounds of batteries
on a 72-hour mission. This is because they carry a battery that
looks like it can run my pickup. In fact, I have one of these
batteries here. This weighs nearly 5 pounds. Additionally,
there's a nonrechargeable version of this battery that costs
more to dispose of it than even purchase it.
My question for Dr. Prabhakar and Secretary Welby, what
programs are you funding in your budget this year to get
lighter and more cost-effective batteries to soldiers in the
field? The marines are asking the question.
Dr. Prabhakar. I will start and then turn over to Mr.
Welby.
Senator Daines, I understand the problem, and I completely
share your frustration. This is an area where DARPA has had
prior investments many years ago. We don't have current
activity in the area for a couple of reasons.
One is because of Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy
(ARPA-E) in the Energy Department who is investing in battery
technology, among other areas. And they have been great about
trying to get some of their advances into DOD.
The other reason is just a very deep science reason. To
everyone's mutual frustration, it has been one of the most
intractable problems of really increasing energy and power
density in these systems. And in contrast to the electronics
that seems to get better and better all the time very quickly,
battery technology has just been on a much more gradual
improvement curve, so it continues to be a very challenging
problem.
Senator Daines. How high of a priority is this?
Dr. Prabhakar. I think if we saw great ideas in this area
that we thought could have a revolutionary impact, we would be
all over it. But we are not really seeing a lot of those.
Senator Daines. I have to wrap up here. I'm out of time.
This gets back to looking at what the private sector is
doing here to solve some of these problems. They are moving
quickly and more nimbly. Let's make sure we are in sync with
what is going on with the best technologies.
For example, I know that there are new barrels that have
been developed now that are 3 pounds lighter. They are carbon-
wrapped. They dissipate heat fire. They shoot tighter
groupings, so that they are more accurate and lighter. And
there is another example.
In fact, one of those barrel manufacturers is right in
Montana. We have a bunch of special operations guys that are
designing these things. They are building them in Montana.
That is an example where the private sector is moving a
whole lot faster than our procurement process. So I just
encourage you to continue to stay engaged here with the
nimbleness and the speed which innovation is occurring here in
the country, because lives are at stake here for the U.S.
military.
Thank you.
Senator Cochran. The time of the Senator has expired.
The distinguished Senator from Montana, Mr. Tester.
Senator Tester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You get us back to
back.
I appreciate you guys being here. I appreciate your
testimony. I do have a follow-up question on the GBSD.
We are looking at the comprehensive weapon system, flight
system, ground launch systems, weapons system command-and-
control, the whole ball of wax.
What Senator Daines did point out is correct. Milestone A,
which may be no big deal, but it may be a big deal, the
question is, are we on track to complete this in the way that
you had in mind to begin with?
Mr. Kendall. Senator, we are on track. We are approaching
the program with some sense of urgency. It is early stages, and
the first substantive work will be some risk reduction work and
some preliminary design work.
So we want to get out an RFP, request for proposal, get
bids in, and have multiple teams do that first phase. So we are
moving aggressively to make that happen.
Senator Tester. I appreciate that.
Are there any deadlines that we should be aware of that you
are going to be facing in the future?
Mr. Kendall. I think what we have to do on the GBSD is look
carefully at some cost tradeoffs. We have, as you know, the big
affordability issue with recapitalizing the entire triad coming
up.
Senator Tester. Right.
Mr. Kendall. So as we go through this process, particularly
the preliminary stages over the next year or 2, we are going to
be looking at ways where we can control cost on the system. It
is going to be an expensive system by any metric. So that is
going to be one of the things we look at very carefully.
It is a system of systems. It is not just the missile. It
is also the infrastructure, including the command and control.
So we have to look at all of that.
Senator Tester. I appreciate that, and I applaud it and
support what you are doing.
I want to talk a little bit more parochial than that. I
want to talk about some helicopters.
In Malmstrom Air Force Base, we are using Vietnam-era
helicopters. There are some problems with that. I am sure you
are fully aware of that.
It is my understanding that the Air Force is looking into a
sole-source provider contract to get those helicopters there
quicker, the Black Hawks. We have been told they will be there
no later than 2019. In reality, when do you expect them to be
there?
Mr. Kendall. I can tell you that the Air Force is looking
at accelerating that procurement. Our initial plan, and what we
funded in the budget, was to do this allocation of force as an
interim step and then to bring in new helicopters a little bit
later. We have a lot of existing helicopters, obviously, that
could be applied to that and some existing units.
We are trying to accelerate that. So we are looking at
alternative acquisition strategies that would allow us to
accelerate that and get those replacement helicopters much more
quickly.
I haven't made a final decision on that, but I expect it
very, very soon.
Senator Tester. You expect a final decision on the definite
time certain for the arrival?
Mr. Kendall. A final decision on whether to revise the plan
we put in the budget and go with something that accelerates
that plan.
Senator Tester. Just tell me, and if you don't know, you
don't know, but if you were to accelerate that plan, what kind
of acceleration are you talking? Are you talking months? Are
you talking potentially a year?
Mr. Kendall. More than a year.
Senator Tester. More than a year?
Mr. Kendall. More than a year. We could accelerate from
currently what is in the budget more than a year.
If we did a reprogramming and we bought helicopters off of
an existing multiyear, we could go quite quickly. It takes
about 2 years to get delivery once you put the orders in, so
there is that factor. But that would accelerate substantially
from what we put in the budget.
Senator Tester. We have a couple guys in this committee
that will help you accelerate, if you are willing to do that.
Mr. Kendall. I understand, sir. Thank you.
Senator Tester. All right, very good.
I want to talk a little about the ranking member's question
on the rockets. You said you need two ways to get into space. I
assume that is the RD-80 and the Delta, those are the two ways?
Mr. Kendall. The two ways we have in mind right now for
Atlas class launches is SpaceX with Falcon 9 and Atlas using
the RD-180. That is the interim solution until we can replace
the RD-180.
Then presumably SpaceX would still be in the business and
then possibly ULA with a follow-on system or somebody else.
Senator Tester. I got you, and I don't know what kind of
agreement you have with Russia, but Russia is Russia.
And you said that if you were to quit cold, it would be a
problem. If you were to quit that motor cold, it would be a
problem. The ranking member made that point, too.
What if it is not our choice? What if it is theirs? Then
what do we do? What if it is their choice? What if they say no
more?
Mr. Kendall. That is a concern. At this point, that has not
been something that they have threatened us with, as far as I
know.
The company involved has a number of engines on order for
military or commercial purposes, so assuming that that contract
is fulfilled, I think there would be, in fact, enough engines
available to get us through this interim period.
We do have some risks, and one of the reasons we want to
get off the RD-180 is to remove the risk that they would
withhold them for us. We need a few years to make that happen.
Senator Tester. I just hope that we learn from this going
forward, because I just don't think this is really--the optics
are horrible. And from a security standpoint, I don't think
they are much better than horrible. And so I hope we learn from
this going forward.
Thank you for your work. I appreciate it. Maybe I will come
back and ask the other two questions.
Mr. Kendall. Yes, sir.
Senator Cochran. The distinguished Senator from Kansas, Mr.
Moran.
Senator Moran. Chairman, thank you very much.
Mr. Secretary, Mr. Welby, my understanding is that Navy
staff as well as your R&D staff believe that a University
Affiliated Research Center (UARC) for Wichita State University
will help leverage their unique capabilities and their talented
people, and that there is no other entity, and this is me
speaking now, there is no other entity in the world that has
the self-qualification authority for materials in DOD
procurement.
WSU is, undoubtedly, uniquely qualified to do more work
that is timely and less costly for the department.
And I want to make certain that staff recommendations are
making their way to your desks, that is that the bureaucracy is
not slowing down a designation process that is supposedly
designed to expedite the acquisition process.
Mr. Welby, Wichita State University has the ability to
develop composite patchwork to fix the urgent structural
problems with the F-18. If you had the ability to directly
access those solutions to fix the F-18 and support the
warfighter in the cockpit, would you use it?
Mr. Welby. Senator, I am well-aware of the capabilities of
Wichita State, that include kind of remarkable work on
nondisruptive tests for composites, the large-scale structural
test capabilities they have out there.
To date, I have not received a request from the Navy for
sponsorship for that work, but should we receive requests, we
would expeditiously move on it, if we received it.
Senator Moran. Mr. Secretary, and maybe, Mr. Welby, one of
the things I want to make certain is that we are not so
parochial that we have somebody unable or unwilling to make
that request.
The Navy visited Wichita State recently and came away with
a significant positive impression of what the capabilities are.
Mr. Secretary, it is my understanding that either of your
offices can formally designate a DOD primary sponsor for each
UARC to assist in policy and contractual oversight. So I think
you have the ability to do this. And what I would say is that
WSU is, in fact, number one among U.S. universities in
privately funded aeronautical research and development, and
that as a second source to our bigger contractors and your
efforts to improve the purchasing capabilities, the efficiency,
this better buying strategy seems to me to be very compatible
with getting rid of the middleman out of this process. And the
goal here is to get you all to make that designation and to
allow the Department of Defense to acquire the technologies
that Wichita State has to offer.
So I am going to submit a question for you, Mr. Secretary,
for the record, asking a number of details. I would appreciate
your formal response. I am going to ask you to address cost
savings within the university R&D labs, what labs are currently
addressing F-18 readiness, and university partnerships that you
can designate to be in the best interest of the department
overall.
I believe you have the power to move this forward, and I
would request that you do so. It is in the best interests of
the department, and most importantly, it is in the best
interests of our warfighters to do so.
And finally, Mr. Secretary, I would ask that you and I meet
personally to have a conversation about this.
Mr. Kendall. I am happy to do so, Senator.
[The information follows:]
I believe the Senator's questions on University Affiliated Research
Centers and Laboratory Partnerships were answered in the Questions for
the Record. As I stated during the hearing, I would be happy to meet
with the Senator to discuss this further. His staff may coordinate with
the appropriate Department of Defense Legislative Affairs liaison to
schedule such a conversation.
Senator Moran. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Senator Cochran. The distinguished Senator from Hawaii, Mr.
Schatz.
Senator Schatz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Kendall, and to both of you, thank you for your
testimony.
The Defense Department has made a lot of progress in
protecting itself from hackers and cyberattacks, but we also
know that vendors can be vulnerable. They have access to highly
sensitive information, and we need to take precautions to
protect that information.
Secretary Kendall, do you know, among your vendors and
within our supply chain, prime and subprime contractors, how
vulnerable they are to cyber breaches?
Mr. Kendall. We are very concerned about that, and we have
taken steps to try to provide mandatory standards. We have
provided mandatory standards to industry to implement to
provide greater protection.
Classified information is pretty well-controlled, and the
standards there exist and are verified. Unclassified
information, which can still have a great deal of damaging
effect if it is stolen through computer hacking, is a big
problem. So is the problem of inserting things into the supply
chain.
So we are trying to take steps. We are taking steps to
increase our security there. We are moving away from a
voluntary reporting of attack system to a mandatory reporting
of attack system. And we are moving to much more stringent
standards for protection of sensitive information.
Senator Schatz. A couple of questions on that.
In the procurement process, you now have these minimum
standards. Is there any thought to scoring according to
somebody's ability to protect against cyberattacks? In other
words, to say it is insufficient to meet the minimum standard
but rather we are going to actually give you a better score in
the procurement process depending on how good you are at this.
Mr. Kendall. Generally, we have taken comply with a certain
acceptable level as our approach. That is something we enforce
through contracting.
Senator Schatz. What happens if there is a cyber breach?
Are they then in violation of the contract, if they don't meet
the minimum standards, if there is a breach? Or what is the
process?
Mr. Kendall. It depends upon the nature of what happened,
how serious a response is. We have a wide range of responses.
It would be a breach of contract if they had not put adequate
defenses in place.
If they had failed to follow the terms of their contract,
there are a number of things we can do, all way up to
terminating the contract, all the way to barring or suspending
them.
Senator Schatz. How often does that happen?
Mr. Kendall. Generally speaking, what we would do in the
case of a cyber violation that was not dramatic would be just
to insist that they comply with the contract. And we could
withhold payments for that, for example, until they did so.
Senator Schatz. I guess my concern more generally is that
as the vulnerability increases, because the world is changing,
that your procurement systems, not because it is anybody's
fault, you have legacy contracts, you have legacy processes and
procedures. And my question is, are you done with updating your
processes, procedures, sort of statutory rule requirements, all
of that?
It seems to me that the wheels of government turn a little
more slowly than we would prefer, in terms of getting up to
speed. So whether it is about disclosing a cyber breach, or
whether it is what recourse you have in the case of a breach, I
am just wondering whether you are all the way to where you want
to go and whether you need any assistance on the authorizing or
appropriating side to kind of accelerate.
The curve in terms of the threat is going like this, and I
can't imagine that the government is necessarily catching up
with it.
Mr. Kendall. It is a work in progress. I think we will
always be modifying our standards as the threats change and
emerge.
I don't think we need legislative help at this point in
time. I think we can, through our contracting provisions with
the regulatory authority that we have, put adequate measures in
place.
It is going to take some time, because we are doing it as
we issue new contracts. We are using the contracting vehicles
to do it.
But the provisions that we put out recently, the industry
gave a very, very strong reaction about how difficult it was,
how difficult it was to flow it down to all their suppliers,
not just to do it for themselves, and they asked for some more
time to comply. So we did relax the time constraints a little
bit, just in the face of the reality of that.
But this is something we care about a lot, and we are going
to continue to be aggressive about putting these in place and
enforcing them.
Senator Schatz. So I would just like you to keep in touch
with us about any legislative help that you may need and just
to be straight with us. This challenge is not your fault, but
it is impossible for me to imagine that you have all the way
caught up.
I understand it is a work in progress. I would like to know
where we are in that process.
It also seems to me that the kind of minimum requirements--
``you are cyber secure; therefore, you may apply for a DOD
contract''--may not suffice in the long run. We may want to
incentivize private sector companies for being even better than
the minimum requirements, because that seems to be checking a
box, and obviously, that is not what we are intending to
accomplish here.
Mr. Kendall. We would consider that approach. We look at
past performance of contractors, seeing how well they have done
over time as a source selection consideration.
But I would be happy to have a separate conversation with
you and brief you in more detail on what we are doing in this
area.
Senator Schatz. Thank you.
Senator Cochran. The time of the Senator has expired.
The distinguished Senator from Alabama, Mr. Shelby.
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I
ask that my opening statement be made part of the record.
Senator Cochran. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Richard C. Shelby
Thank you Mr. Chairman, and I join you in welcoming our esteemed
panel this morning. Secretary Carter has recently testified concerning
today's diverse and complex security environment.
With threats around the world ranging from ISIL and rogue nations
on one end, to increasingly assertive near-peer competitors on the
other, it is an important time to focus on innovation and investments
in our advanced capabilities.
Innovation of course is nothing new to Alabama, which hosted the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) going back to 1958, managing
development of Saturn V moon rocket. And the American people understand
the importance of investing in advanced technologies both to protect
our men and women in uniform, but also because of the value of
deterrence.
Whether our Nation is making investments in high-energy laser
capabilities, advancing our abilities in hypersonics, or pressing
improvements to our homeland and deployed missile defense systems, when
we field superior capabilities, we give our potential adversaries more
reasons to pursue peace, and our military more options to win any
fight.
I look forward to hearing more about the important work from our
panel today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Shelby. Secretary Kendall, I want to be associated
with the remarks and questions that Senator Durbin propounded
just a few minutes ago.
We have had before this Appropriations Subcommittee on
Defense testimony by the Secretary of Defense, right here, the
Secretary of the Air Force, and in a closed session, the
Director of National Intelligence, all on the same wavelength
to say that there would be a gap, they believe, if we just stop
cold and look the other way and not buy the Russian engines.
We all want to get rid of the dependence to some extent on
the Russian engine. I think that is a given. But we are dealing
with more than optics here. We are dealing perhaps with some
real implications of national security, are we not, sir?
Mr. Kendall. Yes, we are. I don't know of anyone who is
specifically advocating immediately stopping. We do have
authorization for some number of engines. And this committee
has helped us in that regard also.
But there are two things at stake here. One is the risk we
would be running if we stopped immediately. That would be
substantial. If we stop using, we don't have enough Deltas on
order right now to meet all our needs. So we would become
entirely dependent upon the only other certified provider. If
there was a malfunction, an anomaly, an accident, whatever,
where we lost that source for a while, we would not have a way
to get these payloads into space.
The other thing is the cost. Delta is a much more expensive
system. The estimates do vary widely. It depends upon how soon
you start using Deltas instead of Atlases or Falcon 9s, and how
long you use them and how many you use. So given the
uncertainty about that, there is a wide range of numbers.
I have not seen any numbers below $1 billion, in terms of
total cost. On a per launch basis, it is multiple tens of
millions. So there is that impact.
We would have to find the funding. Senator Durbin talked
about the opportunity costs. But there is a real cost
associated with changing, which are the things we are currently
asking for in our budget we would have to stop doing. So it
would actually be a net loss.
Senator Shelby. It could be a national security cost plus a
physical cost, could it not?
Mr. Kendall. Yes, exactly.
Senator Shelby. How much, roughly, do we buy from Russia? I
know we buy more from Russia than just these engines. We buy a
lot of things from Russia, do we not? Small arms and so forth?
Mr. Kendall. We are buying Russian equipment. We have often
through other countries, not directly from Russia, for the
Afghan military, for example, or the Iraqi military, or for
some of the groups that we are arming to help with us in Syria.
So there are some purchases for that, generally not
directly from Russia but through other countries.
We did by Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan military. We
have committed to stop doing that. We are not buying any more.
We are looking at the long-term health of that fleet and what
we want to do about that and considering our options there.
I am not aware of any major, direct purchases that
specifically influence the U.S. military. Again, we don't buy
the engines. We buy the launch services. A private supplier
buys the engines.
Senator Shelby. We understand. Indirectly.
Mr. Kendall. But I am not aware of any other dependency on
Russia that is similar to the RD-180 dependency.
Senator Shelby. Let's talk about the replacement engine,
which this committee has funded the research and development.
And we are going to continue to do it, even more than was asked
for, if I recall, Senator Durbin, on this.
Realistically, where are we today on the development of the
replacement engine? And in your judgment, which you have had a
lot of experience and you have two distinguished people here
with you, what are we talking about in time?
Mr. Kendall. We're talking about a few more years. The best
estimate is 2021, possibly 2022. But we have to start.
And one of problems we have right now is that because this
has become--I will be blunt about this--fairly politicized, it
is very difficult to get the Congress to agree across the
various committees that have jurisdiction.
Senator Shelby. Yes.
Mr. Kendall. We have started some contracts on propulsion
systems, most of which is going toward first stage propulsion.
But at the end the day, we don't want to buy an engine. We want
to buy launch services.
Senator Shelby. That is right.
Mr. Kendall. So we are trying to, in this budget request in
2017, get authorization and appropriations that will allow us
to get on with some public-private partnerships for the launch
services we need, which will certainly incorporate an engine
that is not the RD-180. But that is what we are trying to buy,
and that is I think the most efficient way for us to proceed.
Senator Shelby. Thank you for your testimony and your
service.
Dr. Prabhakar, is that right?
Dr. Prabhakar. I grew up in Texas, sir, so there is nothing
you can do to my name that has not been done.
Senator Shelby. Thank you for your service.
In your prepared statement, you highlight Chinese and
Russian investments in sophisticated ballistic and cruise
missiles, weapons of the future.
Could you please share with the committee how important it
is for the United States to also advance our own supersonic
weapons to deter or compete with potential adversaries? In
other words, we can't fall behind, can we not?
Dr. Prabhakar. Absolutely.
Senator Shelby. Speak to that issue.
Dr. Prabhakar. I will certainly start and turn it over to
my colleagues who have a broader perspective.
Absolutely, and I think what you are highlighting is just
one dimension of the shifting global environment that we are
all focused on and is behind a lot of the department's thinking
in the third offset strategy, for example, a recognition that
while we had our heads down focused on two ground wars,
counterinsurgency, counterterrorism for an extended period of
time, that the rest of the world didn't stand still. In fact,
they have learned how we fight and have advanced their own
technologies, have used globally available technologies, have
become far more formidable future potential adversaries.
And it is not just missiles. I think that is one important
part of it, but really the entire collection of capabilities
that people have today really demand some fresh thinking on our
side, if we are going to counter that and deter and defeat, if
necessary, those kinds of advanced capabilities.
Senator Shelby. The failure of us as a Nation--and a lot of
it starts here, in this committee, funding--fail to fund the
advanced technology, which goes to the national security
system, that could put our Nation at risk down the road, could
it not?
We can't defend this Nation with yesterday's weapons when
you have potential competitors or adversaries moving to the
next level.
Dr. Prabhakar. Absolutely.
Senator Shelby. Secretary Kendall, do you have a comment?
Mr. Kendall. That is essentially correct. The idea of the
third offset strategy is to pose a new problem to potential
adversaries that they haven't solved and will take them some
time to solve.
The problem that we posed to potential adversaries in the
first Gulf War was how to deal with precision munitions, how to
deal with stealth network systems, wide-area surveillance
centers.
People have had a long time to try to figure out how to
deal with that set of capabilities that we demonstrated so
dramatically. What they have figured out is that our ability to
deliver those things depends upon a relatively small number of
targetable assets: aircraft carriers, forward airbases,
logistic nodes, et cetera, and satellites.
So they have built the systems to target those
capabilities, so we need to respond with the next round, if you
will, in this two-sided game that we are playing. It is not a
game; it is very serious.
That is what the third offset strategy is all about.
It is a much more difficult thing to do today because of
the leveling of technology in the world, largely because
investments in the commercial sector are much more prominent,
and a lot of that has military applicability, but also because
of the economic capabilities of some of our potential
adversaries.
China is not the China of 20 years ago, in terms of its
financial capability. It is much more robust, and they are
investing very strongly in strategic capabilities this way.
Russia fueled largely by energy income has also been making
some significant investments.
So longer term, I would be more concerned about the one
that is a greater economic power. But setting that aside, both
are investing in capabilities that are very clearly designed to
defeat our way of fighting, in particular in our way of
projecting power. And we need to counter that.
The third offset strategy is based on the idea that we need
to be as creative and innovative as we can to find some new
ideas and new technologies that we can apply and new
operational concepts that will pose a very difficult problem
for the people who have been investing in ways to defeat us.
Senator Shelby. We found out in 1945 that the Germans were,
overall, much farther advanced than we were, dealing with
missiles and so forth. We got a treasure trove when we brought
those scientists here to this country, did we not?
Mr. Kendall. Sir, that is a very good point, because I
think we have gotten very comfortable with the idea that we are
militarily dominant technologically. The idea that we can be
challenged--Senator Durbin and I have had conversations about
this in the past--that we can be challenged in terms of
technological superiority is something that people don't take
very seriously initially until you show them what is actually
going on.
Senator Shelby. That could be a failing, couldn't it?
Mr. Kendall. Yes.
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cochran. Thank you.
The distinguished Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin.
Senator Durbin. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I want follow up on this RD-180 conversation, because there
are some other elements here that we ought to bring out on the
table.
SpaceX is largely developing whatever they are developing
with private sector investment. Now we have ULA, which was a
combination of Boeing and Lockheed, which received substantial
subsidies from our government to create the company and to
develop the engines which we use to launch satellites.
Now we are talking about the next generation of rocket
propulsion and engines. And it appears there are two players,
Blue Origin with Jeff Bezos and Aerojet. My understanding is
that Blue Origin is either in league with ULA or talking to ULA
about developing this next engine, next rocket opportunity,
with private funds.
But Aerojet, I think you have referred to it, at least
obliquely, in your comments here, Aerojet is talking about
developing this new engine with more Federal subsidy, with the
Air Force being a player. You called it a public-private
partnership.
So stepping back from this for a moment and talking about
reliability of source, which is important, and competition,
don't we put a finger on the scale if we say that one of the
competitors is going to be subsidized by the Federal
Government?
Mr. Kendall. I wouldn't refer to the contracts we have had
as subsidies. We paid for something, and we got something
delivered for that.
In the case of ULA, what we paid for was their capacity to
provide launches, and then separately for individual launches
that they provided us with. So I wouldn't refer to either of
those as subsidies, per se. We get value for our money.
What we would do with the public-private partnership----
Senator Durbin. You can get value for a subsidy, there is
no question about it.
Mr. Kendall. Fair enough, Senator. I cede the point.
Senator Durbin. The point I am making is that we put money
on the table to keep ULA in business, let them merge and grow.
Mr. Kendall. Yes.
What would we do with public-private partnerships is
contract not with the engine companies but with the launch
service providers. They would then choose the engines to go
into whatever they would offer to us as the way they would do
launches in the future.
So in the case of ULA, they are not an engine company. They
would have to select someone. I know they are working with Blue
Origin. I think they are also working with other companies.
They have looked at the other engine that you alluded to.
We would look at their proposal as we would at other
proposals. If SpaceX wants us to help them fund their
development to provide more of this capability, we could do
that. But what we want in return for our money is--and this
would be done competitively, so we are not just going to hand
out money. We are going to do this on a competitive basis.
What we want in return for that investment, if you will,
are guaranteed launches at a reasonable price in the future,
because that is ultimately what the government wants.
Senator Durbin. I follow you, but there are two different
models, are there not, between Blue Origin and Aerojet?
Mr. Kendall. There are two different technologies for
engines. One is a methane-based technology, and the other is
not.
Senator Durbin. I am talking about funding. It is my
understanding that Blue Origin through Mr. Bezos has said we
are paying whatever it costs to develop this alternative
delivery. And Aerojet has said we are counting on the Air Force
stepping in and helping us pay for developing this new
alternative.
Mr. Kendall. Those are private investment decisions. And I
think in the case of Mr. Bezos, I can't speak for him, but I
believe he is anticipating a very large market for space
launch, which will recover his investment. I don't think it is
intended as a gift. He expects to recoup it.
Senator Durbin. It is not a private market decision if one
of the competitors says we can only compete with, to use the
word again, the Air Force subsidy that helps us.
Mr. Kendall. Again, it is competitive. So cost is a factor
to us. If we are getting very large private investments on the
one hand that are reducing the cost of one option, and we are
not getting them on the other hand, we are going to go with a
lower cost option in all likelihood.
Senator Durbin. We are talking about 5 years, 2021, 2022.
Are you thinking of both Blue Origin and Aerojet when you make
that calculation?
Mr. Kendall. They are both possibilities, and one thing I
think we need to take into account is how much risk we are
running if we are only funding one option.
Both of these are relatively early stage development
programs. There are some events coming up in the next few
months with Blue Origin which will give us a much better sense
of how mature that technology is. So that will help us make a
decision about the best way to go with both public-private
partnerships.
Senator Durbin. In the meantime, Senator Shelby and I at
least share the view, I hope others do as well, keeping the RD-
180 in the mix allows us to have at least the reliability of
source during this conversation.
Mr. Kendall. That is right. Until we get to a point where
we are confident where we are going to go, the most economic
thing by far for us is to buy a few more RD-180s.
The cap on that number, we are authorized nine today. We
have said up to 18. I am hoping that the number would be less
than that, but we would like to have the authority to buy up to
18 or use up to 18.
Senator Durbin. Thank you.
Senator Cochran. Thank you, Senator.
The distinguished Senator from Kansas, Mr. Moran.
Senator Moran. Mr. Chairman, thank you again.
Mr. Welby, your response to my earlier question was, ``If
the Navy made the request, you would welcome that.'' That is my
paraphrase of what you said.
And, Secretary Kendall, while I was asking my questions,
you were nodding, which I took as to be in agreement with what
I was saying. You are nodding again, so that makes me feel more
comfortable.
My question is, Mr. Secretary, is this something that you
can do more than simply wait for the Navy to make this request?
Do you have the desire to proceed in a more rapid way than what
has transpired so far?
Mr. Kendall. Senator, you are catching me flat on this one,
because I was not aware of this. I can certainly look into it
and see what the situation is and where it is and talk to the
Navy about their plans and see what their intentions are. I can
be more proactive than just wait.
Senator Moran. I would like you to be more proactive and
persuasive, assuming that you would confirm that your nodding
of your head is in agreement with the concept that I am
promoting.
Mr. Kendall. I don't know the details of what Wichita State
has to offer. I am not that familiar with it. Mr. Welby seems
to be more so.
But we get a lot of value out of our UARCs. Some of them
have endured for a long time. Others have not stuck around for
one reason or the other. But generally speaking, we get a lot
of value out of them.
So I would be happy to consider whatever Wichita State is
considering offering.
Senator Moran. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
In my view, we are in this bureaucratic stage in which
nothing is happening. Mr. Welby indicates he would welcome a
request. We need to get the request made. And I also believe
that you have the ability to proceed without the request.
So I would like to follow up, as I said with you earlier,
on this topic.
Mr. Kendall. We do need a service sponsor who is willing to
take on working with UARC, getting it set up, and handling some
of the administrative things and so on. So I do need that sort
of assistance from a service for this.
But I have to talk to the Navy about where they are.
Senator Moran. Thank you very much.
Let me turn to a different topic. Mr. Secretary, you are
familiar with the light attack intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance jet aircraft called the Scorpion. We have had
conversations about this.
It is, to me, a prime example again of your efforts at
better buying power in which industry partners are willing to
step up to the plate, invest resources in a need for the
department.
The good news is that the Scorpion is in their
accreditation process, which is a critical step.
My interest now is hearing your perspective on the next
steps necessary to on-ramp this acquisition process. How do we
move the Scorpion from accreditation into the ideal acquisition
process?
Mr. Kendall. The central ingredient there is a requirement
from a service for the capability. I know that the Air Force is
taking a look at it. Right now, it is not in their budget to
buy Scorpion.
I have seen the aircraft. I have been in the aircraft. And
I applaud what Textron did to go fund it and build it on their
own initiative.
We did lean forward to help with the accreditation process,
so that they get a military airworthiness certification, I
believe.
So I think that is under way. We have found a way to do
that.
The Air Force, I think, is interested, but I don't know
that they are ready to take the budget, given the budget
constraints we have, and apply it to that.
We generally have been taking force structure out as
opposed to putting it in, and Scorpion, while it has some
really interesting capabilities for light attack, I don't know
if that fits into our future plans or not right now.
I can't do the acquisition without a requirement from the
service for the capability.
Senator Moran. Mr. Secretary, thank you. And thank you for
your help on the accreditation process.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cochran. Thank you, Senator.
The distinguished Senator from Alabama, Mr. Shelby.
Senator Shelby. Secretary Kendall, we were talking about
the engines. Could you just describe or at least--all of you
are engineers or physicists. But the two engines that Senator
Durbin, that are in development, that we are talking about,
what are the properties of those at this point? Is it a
different methodology to develop? Or what is it? They have to
be different.
Mr. Kendall. The basic difference is they use different
fuels. The Blue Origin uses methane, and I think liquid-oxygen,
liquid-hydrogen for the competitor.
Senator Shelby. Give us an example.
Mr. Kendall. An example of?
Senator Shelby. The fuel.
Mr. Kendall. Methane, in the case of Blue Origin, and
liquid oxygen, I think, hydrogen for the other.
Senator Shelby. Mr. Welby, you are in this area. What are
the variants of this?
Mr. Welby. Senator, they are both comparable engines,
within the same gross thrust class. They are at comparable
levels of maturity, at this point. Both teams are pursuing
development, is my understanding.
Senator Shelby. From an engineering standpoint, both of
them would work? Is that correct? Or do you think they would?
Mr. Welby. Both of them require further maturation, would
require testing and evaluation. But both of them are reasonable
approaches to pursue.
Mr. Kendall. There are design tradeoffs between the two
choices of fuel. It is not entirely a preference. There is some
advantage to methane, but it considered a higher risk in some
areas, I think.
Steve, is that correct?
Mr. Welby. I think they are both viable options.
Mr. Kendall. Yes, they are both viable options, as far as
we are concerned. But neither one has a proven capability yet.
Senator Shelby. Secretary Kendall, will you and your staff
continue to work with this subcommittee on ensuring that the
department, Secretary of Defense, intelligence, everything, can
acquire the engines that you say you need for national
security?
Mr. Kendall. We are very happy to work with the Congress on
that. We would really like to get through the current
disagreements that are happening about the way ahead, so we
could settle on a path and have some stability and move out on
it.
Senator Shelby. We want to get through it, but we don't
want to jeopardize anything for American security to do that.
Mr. Kendall. I completely agree with that, Senator.
Senator Shelby. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cochran. Thank you very much.
ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS
This concludes the hearing today for this panel of
witnesses. We appreciate your contributions to our
understanding of the work that is being done in the Department
of Defense, by you and the talents and hard work you bring to
the challenges.
We thank you for your service.
[The following questions were not asked at the hearing, but
were submitted to the Department for response subsequent to the
hearing:]
Questions Submitted to Mr. Frank Kendall III
Questions Submitted by Senator Jerry Moran
university lab partners
Question. Please explain the actual and potential cost-savings that
result from partnerships and the work conducted by university research
& development (R&D) labs. Provide the names of such university labs and
particularly those, if any, currently addressing F-18 fleet readiness.
Answer. DOD is engaged in broad range, mission-oriented research
that requires expertise in multiple scientific and technical
disciplines that can be accessed best at universities. DOD
collaborations with universities on research and development (R&D)
provide a breadth and depth of research that DOD cannot accomplish or
reasonably afford on its own. Several examples of university
laboratories that conduct R&D for the Department include University
Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), such as Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Pennsylvania State University Applied
Research Laboratory (ARL), and Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).
APL and ARL are sponsored by the Navy to conduct systems engineering
and integration-related research and development. GTRI is sponsored by
the Army to conduct R&D on information technology as well as testing
and evaluation of new systems. UARCs are organizations affiliated with
universities or colleges that are established by DOD to accomplish the
following objectives: maintain essential research, development, and
engineering of ``core'' capabilities (as defined by their sponsor);
maintain long-term strategic relationships with their DOD sponsors; and
operate in the public interest, free from real or perceived conflicts
of interest. We do not currently have data on any university
laboratories addressing F/A-18 fleet readiness on behalf of DOD.
Additionally, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
works with a variety of universities to explore and understand the
potential of fundamental technologies to advance the state-of-the-art
for national security. Cost-savings is not the primary emphasis of
DARPA-sponsored research at universities. DARPA is not addressing F-18
fleet readiness.
university affiliated research center
Question. Of the university labs that partner with the Department
of Defense on R&D, which are designated as a University Affiliated
Research Center (UARC).[?] What are the benefits to a UARC designation?
Answer. There are 13 DOD-sponsored University Affiliated Research
Centers (UARCs).
Navy-sponsored UARCs
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory
University of Texas Applied Research Laboratory
University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory
University of Hawaii Applied Research Laboratory
Army-sponsored UARCs
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute for Soldier
Nanotechnologies
University of California Santa Barbara Institute for Collaborative
Biotechnologies
University of Southern California Institute for Creative
Technologies
MDA-sponsored UARC
Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory
NSA-sponsored UARC
University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language
DASD(Systems Engineering)-sponsored UARC
Stevens Institute of Technology Systems Engineering Research Center
STRATCOM-sponsored UARC
University of Nebraska National Strategic Research Institute
Each DOD component makes its own determination of the strategic
need for technical research capacity and capability as balanced across
the Defense Industrial Base, Government laboratories, and academia. The
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering has the
authority to approve a request for the establishment of a new UARC if a
DOD component has submitted a request and provided sufficient
justification to support the request. DOD may establish a long-term
strategic relationship with a university for a UARC that will provide
and maintain engineering, research, and/or development capabilities
that are essential to the Department's mission and operations. The
designation of a UARC only approves its establishment. The benefits to
the DOD component do not occur until after the UARC has been
established and accrue over time once it begins supporting DOD
requirements. As the long-term strategic relationship between the DOD
sponsor and the UARC is built, the UARC gains comprehensive knowledge
of its DOD sponsors' requirements and increases its ability to be
responsive to evolving requirements and to provide a quick-response
capability. This capability and the requirements to operate with
independence and objectivity, free from real or perceived conflicts of
interest, are the ultimate benefits for the Department.
The establishment of a UARC requires a long-term commitment from a
DOD component of at least $6 million per year for 5 years. The DOD
component that considers establishing a UARC will have to weigh the
costs to develop and maintain the long-term strategic relationship
against the potential benefit. The component may determine that it is
more advantageous to satisfy its requirements through a contract with
the university.
university affiliated research center
Question. Is there a university or universities that currently
partner with the Department of Defense on R&D that yield cost-savings
and efficiencies that the Office of the Secretary of Defense for R&D
would recommend a UARC designation?
Answer. There are numerous universities that perform research for
DOD. Currently, there is not a request from a DOD component to
establish a new long-term strategic relationship with a university for
a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). A DOD component may be
able to satisfy its technical requirements through a contract, avoiding
the cost of establishing and maintaining the long-term strategic
relationship. The establishment of a UARC requires a long-term
commitment from a DOD component of at least $6 million per year for 5
years.
office of the secretary of defense authority
Question. If [a] Service or Component does not take the necessary
steps to seek a partnership with a university lab through a University
Affiliated Research Center (UARC) designation that yields cost-savings
and efficiencies for the Department of Defense, does the Office of the
Secretary of Defense for R&D believe it has the authority to `` . . .
formally designate a DOD Primary Sponsor for each UARC to assist in
policy and contractual oversight.'' This excerpt from OSD UARC guidance
offers leverage to OSD to designate a DOD Primary Sponsor, i.e. a
Service or Component.
Answer. While the DOD UARC Management Plan states the Director of
Defense Research and Engineering, now the Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)), has the authority to
designate an appropriate organization as a UARC and a primary sponsor
for each UARC. This only happens after a DOD component has demonstrated
a significant need for the creation of a UARC strategic relationship.
The Department has never approved the establishment of a new UARC
without a DOD component identifying a significant need for the long-
term strategic relationship and the funding for proposed engineering,
research, or development requirements. The establishment of a UARC
requires a long-term commitment from a DOD component of at least $6
million per year for 5 years. The ASD(R&E) would not want to
unilaterally approve the establishment of a new UARC without a DOD
component identifying and justifying a significant need for the long-
term strategic relationship and committing to provide the minimum
required resources within the 5-year period.
Question. If the Office of the Secretary of Defense for R&D
believes it does [have] the authority to designate a Primary Sponsor
for a university lab that yields cost-savings and efficiencies for the
Department of Defense and that OSD supports as a UARC, would OSD
execute that authority? Under what conditions would OSD not execute
that authority if cost-savings and efficiencies for the Department were
a result of the UARC designation for such university.
Answer. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and
Engineering (ASD(R&E)) has the authority to approve a request for the
establishment of a new UARC if a DOD component has submitted a request
and provided sufficient justification to support the request. The
establishment of a UARC requires a long-term commitment from a DOD
component of at least $6 million per year for 5 years. The ASD(R&E)
would only approve a new UARC that has been requested by a DOD
component with sufficient justification.
______
Questions Submitted by Senator Shelley Moore Capito
national security technology accelerator
Question. In 2015, the Department of Defense created the National
Security Technology Accelerator (NSTA) at the National Defense
University to provide Technology Domain Awareness to the military and
support the development of innovators and creative problem solvers who
are capable of meeting the technology challenges of the future. Just
recently, the Director of DOD's Strategic Capabilities Office
reinforced the immediate and pressing need to advance such capability
when he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the
eventual winner in any future conflict will be the side whose people
adapt best to chaos. Put another way--people trump technology. Fully
supporting this effort to ensure that the U.S. maintains and extends is
historical military technology-edge, Congress included directive
language in the fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act and
allocated funding in the fiscal year 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill
to help the DOD initiate the NSTA.
What is your vision for NSTA in the next 5 years, and 10 years?
Answer. DOD leadership is committed to the proposition that
aggressive action should be taken to guarantee the military-technology
superiority of the U.S. military in any future conflict. To underwrite
this objective, the Department has taken steps to expand accesses to
leading sources of technology in the commercial marketplace by lowering
barriers to entry and developing new opportunities for civil-military
industry collaboration. The NSTA is an important part of the
Department's strategy to engage the commercial marketplace and promote
civil-military industry integration through the development of a
national security innovation corps--a network of people who collaborate
across Government and industry in the execution of projects that
establish viable, high-tech industry capabilities for defense and
commercial markets. Over the next 5 years, NSTA will develop and deploy
education, collaboration, and technology acceleration resources in
collaboration with a network of national research universities. The
outcome of this initial phase will be a diverse ecosystem of
collaborators inside and outside of DOD who successfully execute dozens
of projects that grow high-tech industry capacity in areas relevant to
the Nation's defense and overall economic health. By 2026, NSTA will
scale its activities through additional university and industry
collaborations in order to develop the national security innovation
workforce and position DOD at the center of an integrated, high-tech,
civil-military market.
Question. Is the DOD on track in developing an fiscal year 2018
Program Objective Memorandum to support the sustainment of the National
Security Technology Accelerator (NSTA) effort across the Future Year
Defense Program (fiscal year 2018-2022)?
Answer. The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy and the Joint Staff are
actively exploring the development of a fiscal year 2018-2022 Program
Objective Memorandum for the NSTA as part of the overall NSTA
implementation strategy.
______
Questions Submitted to Mr. Stephen Welby
Questions Submitted by Senator Thad Cochran
high performance computing
Question. I understand the Department is requesting additional
funding in the fiscal year 2017 President's Budget for prototyping and
demonstrations. This emphasis on prototyping weapons before starting
large acquisition programs is a way to decrease the risk of technology
not being ready in time and on budget. Often, new supercomputing
technologies can save development costs by optimizing prototypes or
simulating real world tests. Should the Department continue to invest
in virtual prototyping using its high performance computing assets?
Answer. Yes, virtual prototyping with high-performance computing,
or HPC, continues to provide a valuable advantage for the Department.
For example, the Department is realizing significant savings and more
effective use of wind tunnel tests by using virtual prototypes and HPC.
Prototyping reduces technical risk and accelerates the adoption of
transformative capabilities. Virtual prototypes and HPC compound these
benefits; for example, lowering the cost to build and test prototypes,
reducing traditional acquisition timelines, and optimizing trade space
analyses to produce more effective and resilient systems.
Continued virtual prototyping and HPC investments will allow the
Department to implement physics-based and discrete event simulation
based prototyping in the Service engineering and test organizations.
This capability would help the Department create highly realistic,
physics-based and network models of defense systems in mission-relevant
environments. This enables analysis and evaluation of critical
performance metrics using computational methods, improving current
prototyping methods and overall acquisition outcomes.
In addition, these environments help virtual prototyping become
commonly used in direct support of weapon systems engineering, provide
invaluable hands-on training, and improve the technical abilities of
the defense test and engineering workforce. Continued virtual
prototyping and HPC investment aligns with the Department's long-term
goals for reducing technical risk and delivering affordable,
technologically superior warfighting capabilities.
engineered resilient systems
Question. The Department of Defense has prioritized using advanced
modeling and data analytics, which lead to higher fidelity acquisition
programs. What are the benefits of using those types of processes?
Answer. The Department is emphasizing development of Engineered
Resilient Systems, or ERS, which uses advanced modeling and data
analytics to allow weapon system acquirers and developers to refine
system designs in a virtual environment. ERS approaches allow programs
to refine system designs more responsively and therefore create designs
that are less sensitive to changes in an adversary's tactics and
capabilities.
Use of ERS capabilities allows programs to generate and assess many
potential designs across a wide range of options. The open tool-
integration architecture allows engineers to examine trades in design
parameters, system performance and affordability across an extended
mission space, using visualization tools to identify promising designs
and key parameters. These new computational and model-based frameworks
adapt and integrate advanced design and modeling approaches from
government, industry, and academia.
Within the DOD acquisition process, these tools and techniques
foster increased collaboration between government and industry teams in
research, development, and acquisition, where technical accuracy and
consistency are provided by the depth of the digital artifact, not by
the written word. A tool-independent integration framework allows those
teams to use their own toolsets to create digital artifacts to improve
the quality of the design and facilitate transition to the next stage
of the acquisition life cycle. These activities reduce risks resulting
from different interpretations of the design and allow multiple
viewpoints to be demonstrated and examined well in advance of
traditional hardware prototypes. The technical collaboration space,
whether applied solely within DOD or with industry partners, can help
understand potential impacts to the warfighter's mission space, to
include adaptive and reactive threats, changing environmental
conditions, and emerging military operations.
______
Question Submitted to Dr. Arati Prabhakar
Question Submitted by Senator Thad Cochran
darpa vertical take-off and landing aircraft
Question. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency created a
program in early 2013, called X-Plane, to determine if a new type of
vertical take-off and landing aircraft could be produced that could
substantially increase speed, useful load, and efficiency. Could you
talk about ongoing efforts of this particular program and the impact
this demonstration aircraft will have on advancing breakthroughs in
aviation technology?
Answer. The Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Experimental
Aircraft (X-Plane) program continues to pursue multiple configurations
and subsystem technologies with potential to greatly impact the future
of vertical flight. Phase I efforts began in November 2013 with Aurora
Flight Sciences (Manassas, VA), The Boeing Company (Ridley Park, PA),
Karem Aircraft (Lake Forest, CA), and Sikorsky Aircraft (Stratford, CT)
and concluded in November 2015 with successful preliminary design
reviews, which included results from analysis and testing efforts to
verify the designs for a distributed electric propulsion tilt wing/
canard; tilt duct with embedded body fans; tilt rotor; and tail sitter
configurations, respectively. Various degrees of testing were performed
in Phase I to include wind tunnel tests, hardware fabrication and bench
testing, and a subscale flight test demonstrator to inform design
decisions and validate computational design tools and simulations.
Multiple Phase I performers had viable concepts for further
development, but funding availability led to the selection of a single
performer to continue on to Phases II/III for the detailed design,
fabrication, and testing of their 12,000-pound demonstrator aircraft.
Aurora Flight Sciences was selected for Phases II/III and was
awarded the 30-month, $89 million contract in March 2016. Aurora is
continuing to conduct flight tests of its subscale vehicle
demonstrator, built in Phase I, to verify the flight control laws and
simulations for their unique distributed electric propulsion
configuration at Webster Outlying Field in Patuxent River, MD. For
Phases II/III, the generation and distribution of 3 MW of power to 24
electric fans on the main wing and canard is one of the core
technologies of Aurora's configuration. Rolls-Royce LibertyWorks
(Indianapolis, IN) and Honeywell (Tucson, AZ) are major subcontractors
for this program to assist in the integration of an AE1107C engine, new
gearbox, and 3 newly designed MW generators. ThinGap (Ventura, CA) is
also an active subcontractor for the development and manufacturing of
the light-weight electric main wing and canard fan motors. Significant
subsystem tests are planned during the execution of Phase II to
validate the design of the power generation and distribution system
while also validating the electric motors prior to flight testing.
Aurora is working to meet the program's performance metrics while also
providing a platform to greatly advance the state of the art of
aviation. Flight testing and verification of the program's objectives
is planned for 2018. Due to the large number of fans and control
effectors, the vehicle can be further used to test advanced and
adaptive flight control laws to optimize performance and efficiencies
for use on future over-actuated concepts and configurations. The in-
flight validation of electric propulsion at a relevant scale opens up
the aircraft design space to remove the geometrical constraints of
mechanical drive systems while also creating a pathway to all-electric
aircraft.
The flight test demonstrator will prove numerous technologies that
have never been flown before. In particular, the aircraft will be the
first to fly with electric distributed propulsion at the 12,000-pound
size class and be the first to fly with lightweight 1 MW generators.
SUBCOMMITTEE RECESS
Senator Cochran. The Defense Subcommittee will reconvene on
Wednesday, April 27, 2016, at 10:30 a.m., to receive testimony
from the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
Until then, the subcommittee stands in recess.
[Whereupon, at 11:42 a.m., Wednesday, April 20, the
subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene at 10:30 a.m.,
Wednesday, April 27.]