[Senate Hearing 115-604]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 115-604
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE LABORATORIES AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MILITARY
OPERATIONS AND READINESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 3, 2017
__________
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, Chairman JACK REED, Rhode Island
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi BILL NELSON, Florida
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
TOM COTTON, Arkansas JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
JONI ERNST, Iowa RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina JOE DONNELLY, Indiana
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia TIM KAINE, Virginia
TED CRUZ, Texas ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
BEN SASSE, Nebraska ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
LUTHER STRANGE, Alabama GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
Christian D. Brose, Staff Director
Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director
________________________________________________________________
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
JONI ERNST, Iowa, Chairman MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi BILL NELSON, Florida
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
TED CRUZ, Texas
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
_________________________________________________________________
May 3, 2017
Page
Department of Defense Laboratories and Their Contributions to 1
Military Operations and Readiness.
Flagg, Melissa L., Ph.D., Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of 3
Defense for Research, Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Holland, Jeffery P., Ph.D., Former Director, Engineer Research 4
and Development Center, United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Montgomery, John A., Ph.D., Former Director of Research, Naval 14
Research Laboratory, United States Navy.
Peters, Ricky L., Former Executive Director, Air Force Research 16
Laboratory, United States Air Force.
(iii)
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE LABORATORIES AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MILITARY
OPERATIONS AND READINESS
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Emerging
Threats and Capabilities,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m. in
Room SR-222, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Joni Ernst
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Ernst, Wicker, Fischer, Heinrich,
Shaheen, and Peters.
Also present: Senator Warren.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JONI ERNST
Senator Ernst. Good morning, everyone. It is just a smidge
after 10 a.m., so we will go ahead and call this meeting of the
Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee to order.
Today, we will receive testimony on the Department of
Defense laboratories and their contribution to military
operations and readiness. I am pleased we have Dr. Melissa
Flagg, Dr. Jeffrey Holland, Dr. John Montgomery, and Mr. Ricky
Peters with us here today. Thank you very much for being on our
panel.
I look forward to their testimony, and I hope they are not
only able to talk about the importance of laboratories but also
the unique role our universities and the private sector play in
advancing research and development for our Department of
Defense.
From personal protective equipment and lighter radio
batteries for our infantry to directed energy, the technology
researched and developed today will ensure we continue to
outmatch our adversaries tomorrow.
So we appreciate you being here today, and I would like to
open it up to my ranking member for his comments.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
Let me start by just thanking Senator Ernst for holding
this hearing on our Nation's defense laboratories and
technological innovation. I know we both understand the
significance of their impact on national security and the
economy.
Today's hearing will help us better understand the
Department of Defense laboratory enterprise and how this
committee can work together to help it flourish. The DOD lab
enterprise is a network of roughly 60 individual laboratories
across the country, including two in my home State of New
Mexico, which is proud to host the Air Force Research
Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, where I actually started
my career, and the Army Research Laboratory at White Sands
Missile Range.
The thousands of men and women at the laboratories, both
public servants and contractors, play several critical roles
for the DOD, including rapidly deploying new equipment to the
battlefield--for example, the labs did the engineering work
necessary to get the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles,
or MRAPs as we know them, to theater as a rapid response to an
operational need; supporting acquisition programs to make sure
that DOD is a smart and technically informed buyer of advanced
technologies, and helping control costs of major weapons
systems; and performing cutting-edge, next-generation science
and engineering research at a network of labs, as well as
managing research and development programs in industry and
universities, which have led to equipment and weapons systems
that our warfighters depend on, like advanced radar and
satellite systems and munitions.
A recent Defense Science Board study of the labs stated
that the labs are the core muscle the department has to create,
transition, and deploy technology to the warfighter, but we
need to do more to make sure that those muscles are strong and
healthy, and that is the focus of the hearing we are having
today.
I know that all organizations suffer from constraints on
their budget, and the labs are no different. I hope our
witnesses can highlight the biggest budgetary challenges facing
the labs, so that we can consider how we can address them as we
work on this year's defense authorization act.
I am also interested in understanding how reductions to
funding for civilian science agencies, agencies like NASA
[National Aeronautics and Space Administration] and NSF
[National Science Foundation], will affect science and
technology that is important to defense missions, and whether
the labs could, with more resources, help address shortfalls in
the Nation's scientific enterprise that may be coming due to
those budget cuts, for example, in areas like STEM [Science,
Technology, Engineering and Math] education or even university
research.
I also would like the witnesses to help the subcommittee
understand how we can support the labs by streamlining laws and
regulations and bureaucratic processes. On the Armed Services
Committee, we have done a lot in the past to make the hiring
process easier at the labs so that our labs can better compete
with private sector enterprises to get the best talent.
I also know there are major challenges in funding lab
facilities and equipment, and in untangling the labs from
government red tape. I would like to hear the witnesses' ideas
on what red tape they have encountered personally in many years
of service at the labs, and how we can best address some of
those challenges.
Finally, I know that DOD leadership and this committee want
to make sure that our warfighters benefit from the great spirit
of American innovation, including private-public partnerships
with Silicon Valley. I know that DOD has efforts like DARPA
[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and DIUx that try
to leverage commercial innovation for the benefit of DOD, and I
think the labs can and should play a bigger role in those
efforts. I would love to hear from our witnesses their views on
how we can best make that happen.
So I look forward to all of your testimony here today and
will turn it back over to the chair.
Senator Ernst. Thank you, Senator Heinrich.
We will start with our panelists this morning.
Dr. Flagg, we will start with your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MELISSA L. FLAGG, Ph.D., FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR RESEARCH, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE
Dr. Flagg. First, I just want to say thank you so much for
having me. It is actually an incredible opportunity to
participate in my democracy, in our democracy. I really enjoy
it.
My mother in Missouri, originally when I said I was going
to be a witness, thought I had seen a crime, so she is very
excited to know that I am actually here.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Flagg. I want to just start by saying I worked for the
Department of State and the Department of the Navy and DOD for
about 12 years, and then I left government, and I went out to
Chicago to work for a philanthropy there. I spent 2.5 years
looking at creative scientists all over the country with no
constraints, no bureaucracy, giving away free money, did not
ask anybody to write any reports, gave them the money and
walked away, because it was not taxpayer money, and
accountability and transparency was not sort of the primary
goal.
When I came back, I had a lot of negativity of people
saying, why are you going back to the bureaucracy? You are
going to lose all of your optimism.
I want to say that after 15 months of spending more time in
the DOD laboratories than probably anyone in OSD [Office of the
Secretary of Defense], I left the Department of Defense more
deeply optimistic about the future of this country than at any
point in my life and so deeply recommitted to spending the next
30 years focusing on how I can help have people understand the
capabilities that we have, while also respecting the humility
and the secrecy that is required in some of these efforts in
order to ensure that we have sustained advantage.
So I am an incredible advocate. I am extremely committed. I
do not believe they are perfect. I also do not believe I have
met an organization made up of humans that is. I also believe
that we need to find ways to celebrate the laboratories without
having it show up necessarily in the New York Times.
Thank you.
Senator Ernst. Dr. Holland?
STATEMENT OF JEFFERY P. HOLLAND, Ph.D., FORMER DIRECTOR,
ENGINEER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER, UNITED STATES ARMY
CORPS OF ENGINEERS
Dr. Holland. Chairman Ernst, Senator Heinrich, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, I really want to
thank you for the opportunity to discuss both the current roles
and the future of the science and technology laboratories
within the Department of Defense. I greatly appreciate the
support that this committee, in particular, has shown to S&T
[Science and Technology] over the last several years. I spent
37 years at the Engineering, Research and Development Center in
Vicksburg, Mississippi. I actually want to work there just
after Grant came through----
[Laughter.]
Dr. Holland.--and was there right after he left, in fact.
ERDC [Engineering Research and Development Center] is the
S&T arm of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and it conducts
research and development for the warfighter, for military
installations, and for the Corps' Civil Works' mission. I was
fortunate enough to be the director of that organization for
many years, as well as many other functions in the
organization.
In fiscal year 2016, ERDC executed a budget of $1 billion
of S&T for a variety of activities, and for many different
organizations within the Department of Defense, including $500
million of what could easily be thought of as other people's
money within the Department of Defense.
These activities were involved in solving people's
problems, which is a primary function of the Department of
Defense laboratories.
Today, I would like to address three elements of everything
that is critical to what ERDC and, in fact, what each of the
S&T laboratories do. That is people, programs, and facilities,
and I think we will hear those three concepts all along the way
as we move through.
Innovation requires a talented work force. I am proud to
have represented 2,300 scientists and engineers, technicians,
and administrative personnel as the director of ERDC for the
many years that I was the director. ERDC has as its 5-year goal
to hire 800 additional scientists and engineers, which would be
a net of 300 of growth for the organization over the next
several years.
The authorities that have been given to ERDC and to the S&T
laboratories under the S&T Reinvention Laboratory Demonstration
Projects are the very things that make it possible for
organizations like ERDC to be able to compete in the
marketplace for the types of talent that the Department of
Defense laboratories need.
In every case where these authorities have been fully
implemented to the laboratories, I have found that the
laboratories have done a tremendous job of implementing those
capabilities. Conversely, where those capabilities have not
been fully implemented in the labs, we have found that those
opportunities have gone wanting.
Differing NDAAs [National Defense Authorization Act] have
provided numerous enhancements to ERDC's hiring authorities and
those of the other labs, for example. NDAA 2015 provided direct
hiring authority for students. But, as an example, that
authority has not yet been fully delegated to the laboratories.
Because ERDC has great people and because the other
laboratories, for that matter, have great people, it can
execute impactful programs. DOD labs play a key role in
national security, and ERDC has a long history among the other
laboratories of providing innovative solutions to keep our
warfighters and civilians safe.
ERDC force protection technologies are installed in theater
to protect base camps from rocket and mortar attacks. The State
Department is using them for technology to protect certain
critical facilities and personnel, and many of the buildings in
the National Capital region, such as the one in which we sit,
as well as the Pentagon and others, are safe because of ERDC
protection technologies.
ERDC's airborne counter-IED [Improvised Explosive Device]
systems are currently providing CENTCOM [United States Central
Command] with unique capabilities, and there actually is a
whole story, and perhaps an undercurrent for another time to
discuss, of the enormous integration activities that the
laboratories performed in bringing basic science to bear during
the height of the IED fight, both in Iraq and Afghanistan,
where we were able to field solutions in a manner that went
from 18 months or less to just a very few months in bringing
solutions to the field.
ERDC tunnel technologies have been provided and applied in
Iraq and along the Egypt to Gaza border, U.S. and Mexico, in
support of DOD and DHS [Department of Homeland Security], for
that matter.
Finally, I would like to mention the idea of facilities and
the 219 program. ERDC, like all of the DOD S&T laboratories,
needs to modernize and recapitalize its facilities to ensure
continued world-class support for the warfighter and the
Nation.
Its 219 authority allows ERDC to fund facility
improvements, and it has had great success in using this
authority. This is particularly important, given that ERDC
finds great difficulties in obtaining major milcon funding.
It was rewarding to see that fiscal year 2017 NDAA, signed
into law in December 2016, extended the program to fiscal year
2025 and increased the threshold for this capability to $6
million. Thank you to the committee for supporting this type of
capability.
Unfortunately, ERDC has not yet been able to take advantage
of the authority provided in the 2014 NDAA that allows the lab
directors to approve funds over multiple years for larger
infrastructure needs. While ERDC is working to make this
possible, the labyrinth of implementation issues associated
with that provides difficulty after difficulty in making that
possible.
In conclusion, I took great pride in being the director of
ERDC, as I am sure you will hear from each of the witnesses
today in their respective organizations, and I would like to
mention to you that, in no small part, the ability to provide
this world-class capability that we do very much have is the
result of the capabilities that you have helped us to achieve.
Thank you for this opportunity to give this statement.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Holland follows:]
Prepared Statement by Dr. Jeffery P. Holland
Chairman Ernst, Senator Heinrich, and distinguished members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the U.S. Army
Engineer Research and Development Center's (ERDC) role and mission as a
major Department of Defense (DOD) Science and Technology (S&T)
laboratory. I greatly appreciate the support this committee has shown
to S&T, and the opportunities this support has provided ERDC over the
years to enhance its ability to carry out its mission.
ERDC is the science and technology arm of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE), conducting research and development (R&D) in the
areas of Military Engineering, Geospatial Research and Engineering,
Environmental Quality and Installations, and Civil Works. Army's S&T
investments develop technology options to ensure the Army is ready
today and remains robust tomorrow. ERDC, and other Army laboratories,
create new understandings that translate research into militarily-
useful technologies through innovative solutions to satisfy capability
gaps across the entire force.
ERDC's seven laboratories are located in four states: the
Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Illinois;
the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New
Hampshire; the Geospatial Research Laboratory in Alexandria, Virginia;
and the Coastal and Hydraulics, Geotechnical and Structures,
Environmental, and Information Technology Laboratories in Vicksburg,
Mississippi. In addition to its laboratories, ERDC has field sites
conducting specialized research: a 1,800-foot coastal research pier in
Duck, North Carolina; an Aquatic Ecosystem Research Facility in
Lewisville, Texas; the Permafrost Research Tunnel in Fairbanks, Alaska;
and its International Research Office in London, which exists to
promote cooperation with the international research community as a
means to advance science and engineering knowledge and technical
capabilities in areas relevant to the U.S. Army, DOD and our
international military partners. ERDC has a workforce of more than
2,300 engineers, scientists and support personnel within its seven
laboratories and field sites.
In Fiscal Year 2016, ERDC executed $425 million in research,
development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E), highlighted by work in
support of the nine Army S&T Objectives (STO) programs, the Army's top
S&T efforts warranting Army senior leadership oversight. ERDC also
executed just over $70 million in Civil Works direct funding on R&D to
address navigation, flood control and risk management, and ecosystem
management and restoration. This body of R&D promotes safe and
resilient communities and infrastructure; helps facilitate commercial
navigation in an environmentally sustainable fashion; restores degraded
aquatic ecosystems and prevents future environmental losses; and
implements effective, reliable and adaptive life-cycle performance
management of infrastructure. In addition to these major programs, ERDC
executed more than $500 million in reimbursable programs for every
Service within DOD and other federal agencies, such as the State
Department, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Department of
Interior, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Homeland
Security, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the National
Science Foundation.
ERDC builds its program ($1 billion in fiscal year 2016) by its
stakeholder base (i.e., Military Engineering, Geospatial Research and
Engineering, Environmental Quality/Installations, and Civil Works).
This approach forces ERDC to view problems from stakeholder
perspectives, rather than from a technical interest perspective, and
necessitates that it solve problems that span technical areas by
employing multi-disciplinary teams. As part of its annual program
development process, ERDC meets with a wide variety of stakeholders to
better understand their problems. At any given time, ERDC has as many
as 50 employees embedded in stakeholder organizations to ensure
complete understanding of stakeholder requirements and to effectively
transfer technology to these stakeholders.
To meet stakeholder objectives, ERDC creates tailored scopes of
work and develops solutions to fit their business processes and
decision making. It transitions its technology to the Warfighter, to
Civil Works, to the acquisition community, and to other government
agencies, academia, and industry. It also provides the Warfighter and
deployed civilian personnel around the globe with 24/7 access to
subject matter experts through the USACE Reachback Operations Center.
ERDC responds to thousands of reachback requests each year from around
the world. In addition, ERDC provides subject matter experts through
deployment to both Contingency and Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster
Relief (HA/DR) operations. Since 2003, ERDC has deployed 335 team
members, some with multiple deployments, to support Contingency
Operations; and more than 435 team members to support HA/DR operations
both CONUS and OCONUS.
Today, I would like to discuss three components resident in
everything ERDC does as it carries out its diverse mission--People,
Programs and Facilities. These three components are essential, not only
to ERDC's success, but also to the success of each and every Defense
laboratory.
Cutting-edge solutions to challenges of national importance, a
satisfied stakeholder base that returns time and again for the services
ERDC provides, and world-class facilities in which to conduct that
research--none of these can be successful without our people. They are
ERDC's most critical resource and the resource I am most passionate
about.
Innovation requires a talented workforce, and I am proud to have
represented, as ERDC's past Director, the more than 2,300 engineers,
scientists and support personnel of the ERDC. These men and women are
committed to solving national security challenges and developing
technology solutions to ensure the readiness of our Warfighters and the
installations that support them, as well as their responsibility to
enhance and protect our nation's water resources and the economic
security they provide. These team members are agile, stakeholder-
focused, passionate about their work, leaders in their technical
fields, and committed to the delivery of exceptional products and
services.
ERDC partners with academia, industry and the other Services to
provide solutions to military and national security challenges, but it
is its in-house capability to assemble multi-disciplinary teams across
its seven laboratories, in concert with key external partners, of which
we are most proud. It brings the best minds to the challenge, and
provides its stakeholders with the technology, products and services
they need to fit their requirements and meet mission goals.
If we are to continue providing reliable and sustainable S&T
solutions to our Nation and Allies, it is vital that we hire and retain
the best and brightest engineers and scientists our country has to
offer.
ERDC has embarked on a human capital initiative to hire 800
engineers and scientists during fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2020 in
order to maintain and enhance in-house capacity to meet its mission. In
its first year, ERDC exceeded its annual goal by hiring more than 160
new researchers. ERDC was able to meet this important goal in large
part because of its Direct Hiring Authorities, which save time, effort
and costs, and allow the organization to more effectively hire the best
and brightest minds available.
These authorities are possible only because ERDC is one of 18
Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRLs) with Laboratory
Personnel Management Demonstration (Lab Demo) Projects authorized by
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 1995, PL
103-337, Section 342. Thank you for your support of Lab Demo.
ERDC's Lab Demo Program was implemented in 1998. Its program
includes Performance Management (Pay for Performance); Position
Classification (Pay Banding); Hiring flexibilities (Distinguished
Scholastic Appointments); Employee Development flexibilities (Degree
Training, Sabbaticals), and Reduction in Force flexibilities to assure
the best employees are retained.
Over the years, Congress has recognized and addressed the unique
human resources needs of the STRLs by including additional authorities
and provisions in several NDAAs. These include:
Exclusion of the STRLs from the National Security
Personnel System;
Direct Hire for Advanced and Bachelor's Degrees, STEM
Technicians, and Senior Science and Technical Managers (SSTM) (and
expansion of these authorities);
Direct Hire for Students (authorized in December 2014,
but not yet delegated);
Ability to adopt a flexibility available in another STRL;
Non-competitive conversion of students to permanent
employees;
Utilization of Retired Annuitants; and
Retirement incentives payment.
The foregoing provisions address the uniqueness of STRLs like ERDC,
first and foremost, by placing the responsibility for Human Resources
and the accompanying authorities at the Laboratory Director level.
ERDC's list of success stories is endless, but a few stand out. In
an age where we are competing with the salaries and benefits offered by
private industry, the Lab Demo Program has increased ERDC's ability to
compete for the best and brightest students. Pay for Performance has
allowed ERDC to achieve a higher retention rate for high performers,
with an increase in turnover for low performers. ERDC has achieved
increases in minority and female engineers and scientists, as well as
an increase in PhDs. It has successfully utilized Voluntary Emeritus
positions, whose experience and technical skills enhance ERDC's
reputation and expand knowledge of its programs at universities and
organizations around the country.
Implementation and increased authorization for SSTM positions
within ERDC (23 positions in fiscal year 2016) allows ERDC to recognize
positions responsible for directing many of its highly visible and
technical programs. These SSTM positions are especially valuable to
recognize the performance of higher-level duties when Senior Executive
Service (SES) and Senior Scientists (ST) spaces are less appropriate.
While these authorities have greatly enhanced ERDC's ability to
hire and retain world-class scientists and engineers, it still faces
challenges. When Congress includes new hiring authorities granted to
Laboratory Directors in the annual NDAAs, ERDC is currently required to
implement them by publication of a Federal Register Notice. For
example, in NDAA 2015, Congress delegated Laboratory Directors direct
hire authorities for students. The NDAA was signed in December 2014.
These authorities have not been delegated, nor has a Federal Register
Notice been published authorizing their use. As a result, the STRLs are
continuing the untimely process of advertising student positions
through USA Jobs and losing valuable students to the private sector.
Additionally, NDAA 2016 authorized the noncompetitive conversion of
students to permanent appointments, increased authorizations for
direct-hire appoints and authorities regarding the utilization of
reemployed annuitants and the payment of retirement incentives. These
authorities have not yet been delegated.
I want to thank Congress for its continued support to the STRLs by
including language in the 2017 NDAA that will greatly benefit the
STRLs.
DOD's challenges in recruiting and maintaining a high-quality
workforce also include competition for these individuals, a limited
supply of top-quality STEM students and careerists, and the ability to
make job offers in a timely manner. ERDC's ability to offer competitive
salaries and benefits, coupled with other provisions in the Direct
Hiring Authorities, allows ERDC to compete in this hiring pool.
Additionally, ERDC uses every student program available to increase its
pool of future recruits. During this past year alone, ERDC employed
more than 230 student interns from 65 colleges and universities. With
authority to directly hire students, that number would increase.
Because ERDC has great people, it is able to execute meaningful and
impactful programs. DOD Service Labs play a key role in National
Security, and ERDC has a long history of providing innovative solutions
to keep our Warfighters and Civilians safe at home and abroad. On
September 11, 2001, the plane that was flown into the Pentagon struck a
section that had just been retrofitted with ERDC-developed blast
protection technology. This protection kept the section from collapsing
long enough to get personnel to safety, significantly reducing the
death toll at the Pentagon.
ERDC has since developed and deployed several pioneering force- and
terrorist-threat protection technologies. More than $1 billion in
protection technology has been installed in theater to protect base
camp structures from rocket and mortar attacks. Research into weapons
effects on structures and affordable mitigation techniques informed the
composite and construction industry without revealing theater
vulnerabilities. ERDC, working with industry partners, identified
solutions that were technically feasible and readily available for
immediate fielding. ERDC's Overhead Cover Protection system development
was fast-tracked, in part, by $250 million in supplemental funding from
Congress. This multi-layer protection system was designed and
constructed over existing critical facilities at U.S. base camps in
Iraq--living quarters, dining halls and other high-occupancy
facilities--to protect the force from insurgent rocket and mortar
attacks by preventing them from penetrating overhead cover barriers and
hitting facilities. This technology reduced a high casualty rate pre-
emplacement down to zero. The State Department later invested in this
technology to protect its critical facilities and personnel around the
world. The very building we are sitting in today is safer because of
ERDC protection technologies in collaboration with the Architect of the
Capitol.
Another technology breakthrough is ERDC's Deployable Force
Protection (DFP) program. Products include the advanced, lightweight
Modular Protection System (MPS), based on an innovative, patented
material of high-strength, flexible concrete with ballistic
performance--comparable to ceramic armor--at a fraction of the cost and
weight. Four trained Soldiers can assemble an 8-by 12-foot MPS module
in 15 minutes without equipment or special tools. The Army's Rapid
Equipping Force (REF) quickly introduced the MPS into Iraq and
Afghanistan, and in 2010, a modified version was developed for the
Navy. DFP now includes MPS Mortar Pits, Guard Towers and other quickly-
deployable protection systems that are easily constructed and reusable,
keeping our Warfighters safe. Prototype protective structures developed
in the DFP program were recently needed to protect critical assets in
numerous deployed locations. The lab's inventory of prototype
structures was rapidly made available to satisfy urgent theater needs,
while the Army REF procured additional quantities from vendors holding
licenses for the government-patented technology. Anticipating future
orders, researchers are working with the Defense Logistics Agency
Warstopper Program and Rock Island Arsenal's Joint Manufacturing and
Technology Center to prepare both government and industry manufacturing
groups to meet future surge requirements.
ERDC-developed technologies to deny, deter and defeat IEDs are
being used in Afghanistan, where insurgents employ IEDs powerful enough
to throw 14-ton MRAP vehicles into the air. In a five-month period at
the beginning of this emerging threat, more than 100 Soldiers had
suffered crushed or damaged spinal columns from being thrown around in
MRAPs. One ERDC advance, called HARD IMPACT, defends U.S. and Coalition
forces against IEDs placed in thousands of road culverts throughout the
country by retrofitting existing culverts with protection designs and
incorporating those designs into new roadway systems. ERDC was
approached by the U.S. Intelligence community to develop forensics
capabilities after blast events. Two programs, CALDERA and FERRET,
developed procedures, tools and training to effectively collect,
measure and document post-blast forensic signatures of underbelly IED
attacks. These technologies and products have been transitioned to
Intel analysts and Warfighters.
In the interval between 2006 and 2014, in support of numerous U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM) Joint Urgent Operation Needs Statements, ERDC
engineers and research teams led whole-of-government and industry teams
in developing more than six major quick reaction capability (QRC)
programs that were formerly recognized by the Joint Improvised
Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) and CENTCOM as effective
counter-IED (C-IED) systems. The total ERDC QRC resource execution in
this period exceeded $2 billion. Airborne systems included Saturn Arch,
Desert Owl, Copperhead and Radiant Falcon, all of which were
transitioned to Army Aviation by the close of 2014. At present, Saturn
Arch and Copperhead continue to provide CENTCOM with unique C-IED
operational capabilities. On the ground, ERDC led the successful
development and deployment of the Sand Dog C-IED system, which was
deployed on Talon robots for both Explosive Ordnance Disposal and
Engineer Route Clearance teams.
Tunnel Detection technologies developed by ERDC have been applied
along the Mexico border, in Iraq, and along the Egypt/Gaza border. ERDC
is the technology lead for the U.S. Government's Interagency Tunnel
Deterrence Committee--11 law enforcement and intelligence agencies--
which has been involved in hundreds of tunnel detection efforts along
the border of Mexico since 9/11. ERDC developed and has remotely
operated detection systems in Iraqi prisons; at the request of the
State Department and DOD, ERDC installed a tunnel detection system
along the Egypt/Gaza border and trained Egyptian military engineers to
operate the system. ERDC has worked with additional Allies to provide
tunnel detection technologies and training to help ensure regional
stability.
ERDC is collaborating with the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps
and others to identify significant challenges for planners, analysts
and operators that impede the ability to accomplish operations in an
Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) environment and the capabilities needed
to address the challenges. ERDC's role in force projection in A2/AD
environments is focused on developing and demonstrating technologies
for planning and conducting entry operations with non-existent, damaged
or destroyed infrastructure. ERDC technologies include rapid airfield
repair kits for early-entry airborne engineer units; terrain surfacing
kits for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) landing strips, helicopter
landing zones, and logistics over-the-shore operations; remote
monitoring of critical infrastructure using infrasound; battlefield
sensors for operational engineer reconnaissance, assessment and
planning; and decision support tools to capture Subject Matter Expert
(SME) processes for remote infrastructure assessment. Coastal modeling
technology developed in ERDC's Civil Works mission area is also being
applied to the A2/AD environment, a great example of dual-use
technology that crosses mission area lines. Also, as part of the Long
Range Research and Development Planning Program-Ground Combat (LRRDPP-
GC), ERDC and its fellow S&T laboratories are currently working to help
shape policy for the Third Offset Strategy. This strategy's goal is to
identify high-payoff, enabling technology investments to provide U.S.
forces with a decisive advantage in land-associated operations in the
2030 timeframe.
ERDC's Map Based Planning Services (MBPS) program provides DOD with
a unique, web-based capability for military planners to collaboratively
develop strategic plans. MBPS employs the concept of a digital plan
with automated tools to reduce the burden of manual work, the risk of
human errors, and the resources expended on updates and corrections.
With military planners deployed across the U.S. and all over the world,
substantial time and cost savings also result from reduced travel to
various planning team meetings. By increasing efficiency in the
planning process, MBPS allows planners to provide senior decision
makers with more options within months rather than years, and thereby
meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving world.
National- and theater-level assets provide a synoptic view of the
operational environment; there is a growing need and a growing number
of requests for ERDC's Tactical Mapping (T-UAS) program on demand--
high-resolution tactical mapping capabilities at the lowest levels to
support mission planning and enhanced situational awareness. The T-UAS
program uses a variety of UAS full-motion video and electro-optical
image data to rapidly produce 2D and 3D geospatial products and provide
enhanced local situational awareness to users at the lower echelons of
the Armed Forces. This technology builds on previous ERDC R&D to fill
in gaps for mast-mounted Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) efforts
and has gone from a concept and capabilities demonstration in late 2015
to funding by REF to field mapping platforms and FMV kits for
Warfighters in Iraq in June 2016 with the first map products created in
July.
Future readiness includes not only providing our Soldiers with the
equipment and technology advances they need to win the fight, but also
delivering environmentally sustainable solutions for energy, water, and
waste (EW2) on installations at home and abroad. ERDC R&D also supports
installation training needs while protecting the environment.
ERDC has developed a holistic approach for EW2 environmental
sustainability at military installations around the world and in
contingency environments. The ERDC-developed Net Zero Planner (NZP) is
a web-based tool for installation-wide EW2 planning. The tool is
designed to perform complex engineering calculations with relative
simplicity and provide an engineering-based solution for planning EW2
investments at installations. NZP has been demonstrated at multiple DOD
installations and is currently being used by the USACE Fort Worth
District to develop sustainability component plans as part of the
master planning process. ERDC is working closely with Headquarters,
USACE to develop a transition plan for NZP and incorporate it into the
planning process across the Corps.
ERDC is the Army leader in Operational Energy R&D and is developing
scalable solutions for small, semi-permanent contingency bases (300 to
1,999 personnel). Operational energy R&D focuses on the primary areas
of planning and analysis; resilient distribution; metering and
monitoring; demand reduction; and supply efficiency. These focus areas
are inter-related and are designed to address all stages of the base
camp lifecycle. Planning tools such as the Virtual Forward Operating
Base assist in base camp planning and operation to reduce supply and
logistics burdens on camp operators. ERDC's Deployable Metering and
Monitoring System gives operators knowledge of where their resources
are being used.
ERDC, together with the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) Marshal Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space
Center, and Caterpillar, Inc., is developing an additive 3D printing
technology capable of printing custom-designed expeditionary structures
on demand, in the field, using concrete sourced from locally available
materials. The three-year Automated Construction of Expeditionary
Structures (ACES) program brings together expertise from within ERDC,
NASA, Caterpillar, and Contour Crafting Corporation to conduct highly-
focused research designed to prototype an automated construction system
that can fabricate a 500 ft2 structure in less than 24 hours. In late
2016, when the Secretary of the Army asked for examples of Army
innovation, the Honorable Katherine Hammack, then-Assistant Secretary
of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, briefed him on
the ACES program. Presented with more than 35 examples of Army
innovation, the Secretary chose ACES as one of three to present to the
Secretary of Defense to show the most promising innovation activities
going on in the Army.
ERDC R&D is also providing integrated maneuver land sustainment
technologies to support installation training land management through
the use of vehicle-based impact models; application of training
exercise impact assessment and monitoring technologies; range design
guidance; impact mitigation and resolution technologies; and
installation encroachment assessment software. One success story is
ERDC's work to assess training lands at Fort Hood, Texas, the largest
active duty armored post in the U.S. Every acre counts, to both the
Army and to two endangered species of birds that call the installation
home. In 1993, 36 percent of Fort Hood training land was under seasonal
training restrictions for habitat protection. ERDC worked with Fort
Hood biologists for years to assess habitats, sources of negative
impacts, and potential stress from military training on both species.
This collaboration has proven that military impacts on the species are
nominal and that current management strategies have positive impacts on
both endangered birds. By 2000, the percentage of restricted training
lands had dropped to 24 percent; by 2010, it was 4.6 percent; and by
2015, it was 0 percent. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rendered a
Biological Opinion in 2015 that allows the Army to manage all training
lands at Fort Hood without seasonal restriction, but within agreed-upon
impacts to the bird species.
In the area of information technology, ERDC manages and executes
the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), a
comprehensive, highly-integrated, high-performance computing ecosystem
that includes supercomputers and related expertise, a nationwide DOD
research network, and system and application software to the Services
and Defense agencies. The HPCMP is characterized by three core
elements: DOD Supercomputing Resource Centers, information-assured
networking (the Defense Research and Engineering Network and associated
cybersecurity posture), and software applications expertise that
addresses the unique computational requirements of the DOD. These three
elements form a complete ecosystem that supports the DOD research,
development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) and acquisition engineering
communities.
The HPCMP supports approximately 2,000 active users from Army,
Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and other DOD agencies within the
Science and Technology (S&T), acquisition engineering and Test and
Evaluation (T&E) communities. HPCMP users address challenges such as
the discovery of new materials to address unique DOD requirements,
numerical modeling of hypersonic flight, modeling and prediction of
weather to support DOD, analysis of space systems, and evaluation of
options for future DOD systems, including the design of next generation
aircraft carriers, submarines, air vehicles and ground vehicles.
DOD Supercomputing Resource Centers (DSRCs) provide advanced
computational resources and specialized expertise to enable DOD to take
advantage of supercomputing. DSRCs are located in:
AFRL DSRC at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,
Ohio;
Air Force Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC)
DSRC at the Air Force Optical & Supercomputing Observatory site in
Kihei, Hawaii;
Army Research Laboratory (ARL) DSRC in Aberdeen,
Maryland;
Army ERDC DSRC in Vicksburg, Mississippi; and
Navy DSRC at the Naval Meteorology & Oceanography
Command, Stennis Space Center, Mississippi.
The Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) provides a
robust cybersecurity posture for the HPCMP. DREN provides a very high
bandwidth, low latency, low jitter network specially designed to serve
the needs of the science/engineering and test/evaluation communities.
The DREN supports Unclassified, Secret, and above Secret communications
and delivers service to 53 of the DOD's 62 laboratories and 20 of the
DOD's 22 major range and test centers. In the S&T environment, the DREN
is a critical enabling technology for the collaborative science and
engineering workflow; in the T&E environment, the DREN is a unique
resource enabling a diverse range of critical activities that cannot be
provided by traditional networks. For example, the DREN supported 26
T&E events in fiscal year 2016, including:
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Record and Playback Event
3
Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) II Live Fly Testing (On Going)
TRITON Flight Testing (On Going)
Aegis Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Base Line
(B/L) 9C1D BLD 18.1.2
Joint Distributed Infrared Countermeasures (IRCM) Ground-
test System (JDIGS)
The HPCMP is also charged with the creation, improvement and
optimization of software applications that use the network and
supercomputers efficiently to develop effective solutions to the DOD's
challenges. This includes training for engineers and scientists on
effective use of HPCMP resources; R&D to pull emerging technologies
from industry and academic centers into routine use by HPC users; and
efforts to increase effectiveness of existing applications to new DOD
challenges or develop new DOD-unique applications.
The largest strategic software investment for DOD resides in the
Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and
Environments (CREATE) initiative, which provides government-owned high-
fidelity, multi-physics software for ships, air vehicles, radio
frequency, and ground vehicles essential to supporting the acquisition
engineering community. While HPCMP-developed software applications are
service/mission specific, they are designed to provide cross-service/
OSD agency capabilities. As such, these investments provide the
Department with significant synergies in terms of software
sustainability and applicability within the services. One example of
leveraging HPC resources to address high-impact DOD challenges is the
ERDC-led Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) program. DOD is leveraging
years of S&T investment to transform acquisition processes through ERS.
By enabling more detailed engineering analyses, ERS significantly
increases the number of materiel alternatives examined early in the
acquisition process, in equal or less time than traditional methods.
The program and its associated DOD Community of Interest are developing
concepts, techniques and tools that significantly sharpen requirements
prior to major acquisition milestones and support prototyping and
experimentation.
In addition to its world-class research to support the Warfighter,
ERDC is also the world leader in Water Resources Infrastructure and
Management, Navigation, Operations and Maintenance, and Environmental
Resources R&D in support of the USACE Civil Works mission. This R&D is
critical to national security by enabling a vital lifeblood link to our
nation's commerce and economy, and supports the movement of supplies
and materiel vital to our national defense. The Civil Works
capabilities ERDC develops and provides not only support national
security interests within our borders, but also enable this Nation to
support water resources maintenance, repair and rehabilitation
operations in war zones, like Mosul Dam in Iraq, and Kajaki and Dahla
Dams in Afghanistan. ERDC Civil Works expertise, combined with its
military technology and environmental security R&D, is truly unique.
ERDC's ability to leverage these otherwise disparate capabilities
within the bounds of one organization creates powerful dual-use
opportunities. ERDC's Critical Infrastructure Protection Program is a
perfect example of how it leverages its military expertise to protect
Civil Works infrastructure. Technologies developed to protect personnel
and facilities in contingency environments have been transitioned to
protect critical infrastructure in the U.S., from buildings in our
capitol and major cities, to locks and dams and other navigation
infrastructure; and from bridges like the Golden Gate, to other
transportation infrastructure such as subway and railway systems.
Finally, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the importance of
facilities, infrastructure and the 219 Program to the overall DOD S&T
posture.
The ERDC employs a world-class team and conducts world-class
research, but it has a need to modernize and recapitalize its
experimental facilities to ensure it can continue to support the
Warfighter and the Nation in a world-class manner. While ERDC has some
new and state-of-the-art facilities, the average age of ERDC facilities
is 41 years, and its recapitalization rate extends into the next
century. Technology advances are moving at a rapid pace and U.S.
adversaries are taking full advantage of these advancements. Research
facilities must be built to be adaptable and resilient or they will
become outdated and obsolete. Just as importantly, the Nation must
ensure our research facilities have sufficient sustainment dollars in
order to minimize the amount of research dollars we must divert to
support operations and maintenance. Finally, our research facilities
must be of a quality to aid in recruitment and retention of the best
and brightest research staff in the world.
In fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2015, ERDC was successful in
obtaining funding for two Unspecified Minor Military Construction
(UMMC) projects using the Laboratory Revitalization Program authority
provided by this Committee. With that funding, ERDC constructed a new
$2.5 million Fragmentation Research Facility and will soon begin
construction of a $3.8 million facility to construct large concrete
targets to support blast, penetration and fragmentation research. For
fiscal year 2017, ERDC submitted a list of requirements for
consideration in the UMMC program, its number one priority being a
Transformer Yard ($1.9 million) at its Cold Regions Research and
Engineering Laboratory in New Hampshire that will improve efficiency,
safety and operations. ERDC also included a project to expand its
capacity to improve Projectile Penetration Research ($3.8 million) at
its Vicksburg, Mississippi, campus to meet current and future
requirements. Both projects were selected for funding in fiscal year
2017. The expanded authority for labs provided in the Laboratory
Revitalization Program, particularly the $4 million UMMC threshold, has
been extremely valuable to the ERDC. It was rewarding to see that the
fiscal year 2017 NDAA signed into law in December 2016 extended the
program to fiscal year 2025 and increased the threshold to $6 million.
ERDC hopes to take advantage of the new threshold right away, and is
optimistic that, over the next few years, Congress will see fit to make
this program permanent, allowing Laboratory Directors to plan and
execute infrastructure improvements well into the future.
While ERDC has had some success with minor construction, it has yet
to break into the Major Military Construction future years' defense
plan. ERDC has not had a project funded with MILCON in recent memory,
nor does it have one in the current POM. In light of significant
reduction in funds available for military construction and the
requirement for Army leadership to support Soldier readiness
initiatives, ERDC has deferred asking for support in MILCON for the
past few years. ERDC leadership has begun identifying requirements
where MILCON would be an appropriate funding source in order to try
again in future. With limited funds available and considering Army
needs, it is understood that there will be many more projects deferred
than will be programmed for funding. This reality is likely to remain
the situation for years to come, making the Laboratory Revitalization
and 219 authorities even more critical to ensuring laboratory directors
can respond quickly and adapt to emerging threats.
ERDC's 219 Authority gives it a mechanism to provide funds for
innovative research, technology transfer, workforce development, and to
improve facilities and infrastructure. ERDC has had great success in
using this authority over the years and greatly appreciates the
Committee's willingness to extend the authority each time it was close
to expiration, to expand the authority, and to provide clarification of
the Congress' intent in order to improve the program's effectiveness. I
always appreciated that your staff took the time to meet with me here
in Washington, DC and travel to ERDC facilities and see firsthand how
we were implementing this program. The cooperation across the Committee
staff and with their colleagues in the House has resulted in a great
program, and I am pleased to see that the fiscal year 2017 National
Defense Authorization Act made this authority permanent and increased
the amount that can be collected from 3 to 4 percent.
The 219 Program has allowed Directors to allocate funds toward
research efforts to address needs and requirements that arise faster
than the normal budget planning cycle. This was recently highlighted by
an ERDC investment to develop an Advanced Blast Load Simulator
prototype. This research led to a working 4-ft by 4-ft prototype and a
comprehensive and affordable plan to build the capacity to conduct
controlled blast experiments on target surface areas of 12-ft by 12-ft.
Previous attempts to build this scale were technically challenging and
cost-prohibitive. Conducting blast experiments of this size in a
controlled laboratory environment will allow ERDC to perform multiple
experiments in a shorter period of time at significantly reduced cost
and with improved accuracy. Full-scale field tests are expensive, time-
consuming, and require valuable range time. While field tests will
always be necessary, the simulator will ensure those tests are optimal
and shorten the time required to provide solutions to save Soldiers'
lives. This would not be possible without Section 219 authority.
In fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2016, the 219 Program allowed
me, as then-Director of ERDC, to spend approximately $5 million a year
to upgrade facilities infrastructure at the four main ERDC sites and at
our research facilities in Alaska. Improvements include airfield and
pavement testing areas; backup generators and chemistry labs for
projects that ensure ERDC was able to properly maintain housing of
animals and live organisms for experimentation; and to upgrade and
maintain dominance in extreme cold environments. Each of these projects
is relatively small compared to some of the multi-million dollar
military construction projects you may see, but they have a huge impact
on the quality of research and capability of ERDC engineers and
scientists. I appreciate the flexibility this mechanism provides.
Unfortunately, the labs have not yet been able to take advantage of the
authority you provided in the fiscal year 2014 NDAA that allows
directors to accrue funds over multiple fiscal years to support larger
infrastructure needs. Laboratories continue to work toward a way to
implement processes that will allow them to do this in an accountable,
auditable and sustainable fashion. Your staff are aware of this and are
committed to working with the laboratories to address these challenges.
In conclusion, Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley has stated
that ``we will do what it takes to build an agile, adaptive Army of the
future. We will listen and learn . . . from the Army itself, from other
Services, from our interagency partners, but also from the private
sector . . . we will change and adapt.'' I always took pride in the
relationships ERDC built within the Army, with its Service partners and
other federal agencies, and with academia and industry. These were
``my'' stakeholders, as were Congress and the American public. It is
for you I worked, and I did not take lightly the trust that was placed
in me to solve problems critical to our Nation's security and the well-
being of our Armed Forces and citizens.
The engineers and scientists, support personnel, and leadership of
the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center take extreme
pride in what they do. On behalf of its new leadership, I invite you
all to visit at any time to see this firsthand as you talk to the ERDC
team. ERDC team members come to work every day, knowing that what they
do makes a difference--they are saving lives; helping safeguard our
citizens at home and around the world; and protecting and enhancing the
environment around us.
Thank you for your time.
Madam Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be happy to
answer any questions you or other Members may have.
Senator Ernst. Thank you very much, Dr. Holland.
Dr. Montgomery?
STATEMENT OF JOHN A. MONTGOMERY, Ph.D., FORMER DIRECTOR OF
RESEARCH, NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY, UNITED STATES NAVY
Dr. Montgomery. Thank you very much. I have to tell you how
I ended up at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Like many things in life, and often in science, it was an
accident. It turns out that I was in graduate school, that it
was time for me to come out. I had a pregnant wife. I had no
way to pay for the baby. I heard through the grapevine that NRL
was hiring, and I signed up sight unknown what I was going to
end up with.
I ended up in the Electronic Warfare Division of the Naval
Research Laboratory in the fall of 1968. I served in that
division for 34 years, and 17 years as its director. Then in
2002, I ended up as the director of research of the Naval
Research Laboratory.
You know, I thought my first 34 years were fun. The second
14 that I served as director was not only great fun, it was
very rewarding. But it was very challenging, and, in many ways,
we had a lot of help from the folks on the Hill at managing
some of our challenging problems.
I retired from Federal service on the 3rd of August 2016.
So I am really grateful to have an opportunity to talk to
you about my experiences there at the lab. I am currently, as
far as DOD is concerned, a private citizen. I will express a
point of view which is mine, but that is founded in almost 50
years both as a practicer and a participant in the larger DOD
lab community. I have witnessed firsthand the great value that
it has had to the Department of Defense and in many ways
unrecognized, unseen, and unappreciated.
One of the greatest EW [electronic warfare] solutions is an
active electronic decoy, which is towed by aircraft. Its
success rate is really high. I am proud of having been involved
in that. But it does not say NRL [Naval Research Laboratory]
inside. It does not recognize the fact that the magnet
technology that made the power source a traveling wave tube
small was invented by NRL, or that the cathode and the beam
control and the aerodynamics and the control systems all came
out of the DOD laboratories, and we worked at the Navy and Air
Force until it was completed and fielded. At the time, it was a
revolutionary solution, which serves us well today.
So there are many things that I mentioned that we had
received as new authorities--section 342 that gave us the STRLs
[Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratory]; section 219,
the direct hire authority--all of those have been very
important to us, and we have been able to use them effectively.
The direct hire authority, there are several hundred people
at the laboratory that we hired using direct hire authority.
The creation of the Karles fellowship program named after
Jerome and Isabella Karle, he a Nobel Laureate in physics, she
equally honored. He was a chemist, and she was also a chemist.
We named it after her. We have almost 200 of those, the best
and the brightest this Nation has to offer from all over.
There are authorities that await implementation, such as
1107(h), the NDAA of 2014, which would further strengthen the
laboratory.
So I am going to tell you a little bit about the lab. It
was created in 1923 by an act of Congress. Its role is to do
basic science, fundamental technology, and see that it
influences and gets embedded in naval systems. That is both the
air part of the Navy, surface submarines, the space part of the
Navy, as well as in the Marine Corps, and to take that science
and technology understanding and harness it to the solution of
problems emerging operationally in the Navy and the Marine
Corps, and bringing that knowledge to bear to solve those
problems.
An example of that, of course, is the work that has been
done over the last number of years in dealing with improvised
explosive devices, and others which may yet arise in the
radiological and biological and nuclear area.
So NRL has had a long history of putting things out there
that changed the military forces and changed the world, in
fact. Many of them with civilian impact--sonar, radar, nuclear
submarines, global positioning system, spy satellites. NRL
built and fielded 100 satellites with Federal employees out of
NRL. Electronic warfare, which was founded out of the lab,
which has come to be of greater importance recently. All of
these are continuing today.
Some of the things that we are working on are just now
revealing what their potential may be--the electromagnetic
railgun that allows you to fire projectiles at Mach 7 or Mach
8, reaching out 100 miles or more. Or in short-range
engagements, they have the potential of engaging hypersonic
cruise missiles that otherwise we might not have the ability to
engage at all due to the deficiency and relative velocities
that we would otherwise have.
Spintronics, a new form of electronics which will
fundamentally revolutionize how we do electronics--higher
speed, lower power, greater bandwidth. It uses rather than the
motion of electrons through media--sort of like running through
a crowd at the mall at Christmastime. You waste all your energy
bouncing off all those other people. Spintronics do not do that
at all. They just flip the electron spin. You can actually make
electron currents.
A crude analogy of that, and we have all seen this, these
domino constructs where you push and flop the first domino, and
you see this wave of dominoes falling over, the dominoes do not
actually move longitudinally. They just change from vertical to
flat. That is exactly what happens with these electrons as they
flip.
That can carry information for ultrafast processing, high-
bandwidth communication. The laboratory is working with the
semiconductor industry to transfer that in. It will be a
fundamental revolution.
Other things, quantum systems, a big effort on that for
encryption, for processing, for sensing.
Bio-printing, very interesting, because what is emerging
now among these technologies is the ability to take a skin cell
from your hand, induce it to be fluripotent, specialize it to a
heart muscle cell, and using 3D printing to build you a brand-
new heart from your own cells and then replace it.
Given my age, I doubt it will be in widespread use in time
to help me, but I will take great satisfaction in seeing its
development along the way.
Synthetic biology for fuels, for creation of drugs that we
cannot create today, and the larger field of genetic
engineering as we start to understand what all we can do in
synthetic biology with the revolutions in CRISPR/Cas9, where we
can develop things which are organisms that live and produce
products we can use that never existed before in nature.
Other things are still amongst the yet unrecognized
products of the basic sciences that we are doing at the lab and
across the larger enterprise. They may become every bit as
important as the things that I mentioned earlier in terms of
shaping the world. It may take decades to do that, but they
may, in fact, change the world.
So this is done by Federal scientists with deep
understanding of the Department of the Navy in a Navy-owned
facility, and its results are owned by the Navy. The laboratory
and its mission has been of vital import in the past, but it
may be even more critical in the future as the technological
and scientific centroid of worldwide activity inexorably moves
eastward, and we are no longer the sole dominant player in the
world of science and technology. I hope we will have an
opportunity to amplify that further on.
So what are the three things that are the most important to
me from my experience at the laboratory?
Allowing the director control over the tools of the
laboratory. That includes the scientists, the equipment, the
funding, the pay scales and compensation, and recognition and
rewarding. Section 1107(h) of the NDAA of 2014 would be of
great assistance in that area.
Regenerating our facilities, the average age of the
facilities at NRL this decade--our decadal replacement rate is
636 years. When that dropped from 1,101 to 636, I was really
excited because at least there was a biblical precedent of
somebody lasting long enough to see one of those cycles
through, facilities.
An acquisition system, a means to buy things that is
tailored to the requirements of buying something in partnership
with industry and universities that never existed before in the
history of humanity, and where the outcomes are truly unknown
because you are probing the boundaries of knowledge and
understanding, and it was never explored before and it is hard
to put down on paper the outcome of that science. That is not
how our current acquisition system is designed.
So thank you for your patience. Thank you for listening to
me.
Senator Ernst. Wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Montgomery.
Mr. Peters?
STATEMENT OF RICKY L. PETERS, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AIR
FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
Mr. Peters. Thank you very much, Chairman Ernst and Ranking
Member Heinrich. It is a real privilege to be here today, and I
appreciate the opportunity. I am also honored to be here with
my colleagues to share the Air Force Research Laboratory
successes, in particular supporting military operations and
readiness.
I was privileged to spend 35 years as a civil servant in
the Air Force. What an awesome, awesome time that was. Ten of
those years, sort of toward the end, were in the test world,
which included an assignment at the Pentagon as the director
for Air Force Test and Evaluation. I did spend 25 of those
years in the Air Force Research Laboratory.
I retired in September 2015, and so perhaps some of the
things I will say today are dated, but it is nice to not have
anybody script anything for you, to come in and get an
opportunity to answer your questions, and I am truly looking
forward to that.
I can tell you, though, in every assignment I had, I was
amazed by the talented scientists and engineers and everybody
else who supported them. That was the one thing that I learned
in the laboratory and across the Air Force. The contracting
specialists, the financial experts, the personnelists were just
world-class. As a result of that teaming that we had, that is
what enabled our Air Force to be second to none, just an
amazing group of people.
So today, I went from an organization of 10,000 people to
one of 10, so I am now a small-business person on the outside.
A lot of what we did in the Air Force Research Lab is
extended into that piece now. I am working for a small company
that actually is formed by the Greater Dayton Hospital
Association. The reason I mention that it is 29 regional
hospitals that grouped together. It includes the VA Center and
the Wright-Patt Med Center, so there are the military aspects
of that as well, a group that comes together to help solve
medical challenges in the region and also looks at things they
can do together, to work closer together.
It was an awesome opportunity. Three of those organizations
in the GDHA [Georgia Dental Hygenists Association] actually
came together and invested in us, Kettering Health Network,
Premier Health Partners, and Dayton Children's Hospital. They
teamed with a small innovation and design firm out of
Cincinnati called Kaleidoscope.
So with that group, we actually take unmet needs out of the
hospitals, and that includes things that perhaps would come out
of the military side, and look at commercializing those. So
unmet needs are ideas that we want to take on. This small team
does that from idea all the way through development, and
commercializing out the backend and spinning out small
companies. So it is a great small microcosm of what you would
find in the AFRL, from very basic research all the way through
development. But now we add the commercial side into that.
So a great extension of what I did there. I absolutely
loved the time that I was there. I will not spend any more time
talking about that now. I am anxious to hear your questions and
respond to those. But thank you again for the opportunity
today.
Senator Ernst. We appreciate it.
Thank you all very much. I wish we had a lot of our younger
generation here. They would be so excited to hear about how you
utilize science and technology at your various laboratories,
and the level of enthusiasm is just incredible. So thank you
very much for that.
We will start with 7-minute rounds of questions. As we
happen to be joined by other members, as they come in, we will
include them in the round of questioning as well.
My first question to you all today is about soldiers'
protective equipment. I am concerned that the Department of
Defense is not devoting enough attention to advancing
individual soldier's protective equipment, like body armor and
helmets.
I am even more concerned that body armor currently produced
by a private company in Iowa and not being used by the DOD
appears to be better than what our servicemembers are actually
wearing when they are out on the battlefield. As we devote
billions of dollars to advanced aircraft and space
capabilities, there simply is no excuse for sending an
infantryman into a fight without the best possible protective
gear.
So my question to the panelists, if the best body armor is
being made in the private sector, how do we go about getting it
to our servicemembers? We have talked about different
acquisition issues, but then also, how can the laboratories
work even further on that personal protective gear?
Any of you, if you would like to answer? Thank you.
Dr. Montgomery. There is a bit of a challenge in that the
services have very large quantities of these equipments to buy.
One of the fundamental challenges is understanding, when a new
idea comes about, how to validate and come to understand the
advantages it represents as compared to that which we have. So
testing processes are important.
For example, in working with the Army and new materials as
developed by industry, NRL is looking at improved ways to
provide body armor out of new material such as ultrahigh-
density polyethylene fibers to replace Kevlar, working with the
Army and with industry on fabrication of these vests.
That does not really address your issue of how you get them
through the acquisition process, which hopefully we will touch
on a little further, but it does point out the fact that having
clear, demonstrable, greater military value than that which is
already there, which is provable, is really important.
There are other aspects of the protection as well that you
can see the very large, cumbersome chem-bio suits that our
soldiers wear in the field. It is pretty topical these days,
given what has gone on in Syria. But work in the laboratory and
in partnership with industry is the coding of every individual
fiber within the uniform with enzymes that, on contact with
chemical or biological agents, break them down to harmless
compounds.
Those could provide a much more comfortable environment in
which soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors can operate in
those environments, and yet still provide them protection that
they need.
So channels that allow those new ideas, better approaches
to, as an institutional method, move into the mainstream and
produce and distribute it is something that we need. Rapid
prototyping and experimentation are going to be critical to
that, and perhaps we will touch more on that later.
Senator Ernst. Absolutely.
Anyone else?
Yes, Dr. Flagg.
Dr. Flagg. I think one of the things that I found as I
traveled around the country and I talked with folks is that it
is very hard for people who believe they have a great solution
to understand the context within which that solution would be
employed, and then to really draw the apples-to-apples
comparison.
I think that some of the examples of ways that we can go
about making this a more effective process are things like
examples where I know the Army has done these sort of roundups,
where they allow people to bring their solutions in and have
them tested out against common goals.
We sometimes resist using research dollars, that are
precious and are small and that we fight to protect, to apply
them to clearly testing and sort of acquisition-related
processes. But I am a big believer in bringing people at the
local, state, regional levels into the process.
I think if you begin to understand that it is not just it
stops a bullet better, it is that it is light enough, it
integrates with all of the other equipment, it gives them the
mobility to run, to move, to shoot, to launch UAVs, to do
whatever else they need to do, it is a very dynamic
environment, and it is very different than someone who is in a
vehicle, getting out, making one shot, which tends to be a more
domestic context that many of these things locally are
developed against, sort of those goals.
So I think if we can develop places, times, moments, where
folks in the region can bring their ideas together and show
them, test them out, that actually we would all learn something
from that. The laboratories could see that there might be parts
of that they could integrate or that they have tech transfer or
goals that they could provide to small business to make it more
likely that those ideas could be developed into robust,
applicable solutions.
I also think that it would make regular people feel more
engaged in their government.
Senator Ernst. Absolutely.
Dr. Flagg. To understand what the real need is is very hard
when you are far away.
Senator Ernst. Very good.
Anyone else?
With that, I will yield back my remaining time. We will
have time for additional questions in a moment.
But, Ranking Member Heinrich?
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to start by asking you all, and I know, Dr. Holland,
you addressed this a fair bit in your testimony, about some of
the hiring flexibility that has been provided. It seems like
that has not been universally applied across the lab
enterprises.
How can we do a better job of making sure that that is
actually utilized? Where are the challenges to making that
happen? Really, from any of your perspectives, how can we make
sure that those hiring authorities are actually making it
through to where we are able to hire more effectively, more
quickly, and get the talent that we need for these enterprises?
Dr. Flagg?
Dr. Flagg. I am going to start, because they are all going
to say it is our fault, or it was. I am not constrained by the
OSC lawyers anymore, so I can say what I want.
Senator Heinrich. That is exactly why we invited you.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Flagg. Everybody is nervous behind me now.
The first thing I would do is call the lawyers from every
service in here and ask them how they are going to find a way
to yes, not how they are going to do the easy thing and say,
``No, I have never done it before.'' Because the lawyers are
running that organization right now, not the mission
specialists, first.
The second thing I would do is call the personnel and
readiness people in, and the military folks in each of the
services who oversee the civilian hiring and personnel
authorities at each of these laboratories, and ask them why
they are so obsessed with everything being the same rather than
every part of the system being optimized to fulfill the
mission.
The mission is: Send those men and women out into the field
to do a dangerous, ugly job, and give them the highest
likelihood to succeed at the mission and come home alive. That
is the mission.
The mission is not: How do I make everybody feel like they
are getting a fair sort of environment where nobody is getting
special treatment in personnel hiring authorities or how we do
our budgets?
Right now, there is more of a focus on controlling your
little pooka and making sure that nobody gets special treatment
and everyone is equal and that the lawyers never tell you you
are going to go to jail than there is on getting the mission
done. It is a problem.
I will say that, at the end of 15 months, I had spent 15
months banging my head against a wall and being a part of the
problem. When I walked out, it was with a realization that, if
I ever go back, I would rather risk going to jail than
tolerating that kind of ignoring of the mission that I see
happening right now--not because any one individual is trying
to do the wrong thing, but because everybody is trying to do
the safe thing.
Senator Heinrich. Mr. Peters?
Mr. Peters. Just a couple things that I would add. I would
say that everything that happened with the laboratory
demonstration projects and section 340 2 years ago was amazing.
What I think built just a powerful system there was that we
took scientists and engineers and said, what would you like the
system to be?
We had just a phenomenal mentor in Dr. George Abrahamson
from SRI. He helped us build that system, and it was a system
that we wanted and we knew it would help us promote people, to
retain people, to hire people. It was the right system for us.
We had one personnelist, incidentally, that was on that
team. There was a core team of five and about 50 total. The
personnelist was brilliant because she would say, here is what
we need to do to get a waiver, and here is who has that
authority all the way through OPM [Office of Personnel
Management].
So you gave us that, and we went forward with it, and we
built the right kind of system. Everything that has come since
then, I believe, has taken forever to implement.
So all the new flexibilities that you have given us----
Senator Heinrich. Why is that, Mr. Peters?
Mr. Peters. You know, 2015, the authorities that the Air
Force was given, and the services, in 2015 in the personnel
area, the policies still are not in place. We do not know. We
just do not have them implemented yet.
Even something like manage-to-budget, we are still being
monitored in AFRL by the number of slots we have and the
limitation on over-hiring. Instead of saying manage-to-budget--
we had a goal in the lab of no more than 25 percent of our
total income that we got would be spent toward salary, so we
had something. What are we willing to bet, and what are we
willing to put it risk, knowing that we still had facilities to
take care of and we still had contracting on the outside to
support us?
So truly give us that manage-to-budget authority and stop
measuring in terms of the number of people, and I believe that
would really help out in the Air Force.
In terms of the time, though, that it takes to hire people,
I cannot answer that. There has been a lot of centralization
that happened.
I know, sir, in Albuquerque, we have had some trouble
hiring in Directed Energy and Space Vehicles. I cannot give you
an answer for it.
But we keep trying to look at the process. We keep trying
to fix it. I think Dr. Flagg had it correct, that we just need
to get the people out of the way and have something specific
for science and technology. It was working when we first stood
up the lab demo projects, I can tell you that.
Senator Heinrich. Dr. Holland?
Dr. Holland. Once we get OSD [Office of the Secretary of
Defense] lawyers all in a room and bind them, however you would
like to infer that, then the services then put their own spins
on the implementation. So the guidance that comes out of OSD,
out of DOD, will have to be clear and relatively unassailable,
to the services.
The reason that the original things that happened with the
laboratory demonstration projects worked so well is because
there was a clear champion at the beginning. I would suggest to
you that the new Under for research and engineering----
Senator Heinrich. Who was leadership-based.
Dr. Holland.--would have to be viewed as your champion at a
very high level, someone who owns all of the purview that is
necessary to make these things happen, and someone who you can
hold accountable for that matter, because, at the present time,
you lack that scenario.
Otherwise, you will get the OSD spin, the service spins,
legal and the human resources spins. Then by the time you get
done with those, you have a 2- to 4-year implementation
planning process going on.
Some of us have actually gone out and implemented, quite
candidly, on our own at times, the ones of us who are crankier,
who did not pay attention to whether we were retired or not.
That was only way to go ahead and get things going, because we
felt that you had given us the responsibility and law to do
that to begin with. That was fraught with difficulties all on
its own.
Dr. Montgomery. Let me comment, if I may?
The direct hire authorities for advanced degrees, bachelor
degrees, veterans, technicians have been of tremendous value to
us. We can get a person a firm, formal offer in about 2 weeks.
Within the Navy, the Navy has allowed this authority for doing
this to vest in the laboratories within the Navy. That was a
challenge that OCHR [Office of Civilian Human Resources]
undertook years ago.
But we have a fundamental problem. Our pipeline is founded
largely on students. It may be a faculty member collaborating
with one of my scientists to say this is the best graduate
student I ever had. You ought to hire them.
What we would like to be able to do is go out and use the
direct hire authority that you have authorized and be able to
say, yes, I am going to bring that person aboard and make him
an offer. We used to be able to do that. We can no longer do
that.
My summer student program has gone from about 500 a year
down to a low of 45 a year, creeping back up to about half what
it used to be. We cannot penetrate the system to get the use of
the direct hire authority for students.
If you can help get that through the system, that would be
of tremendous--I have some hope. Some of the authorities for
personnel within the demos on 4 April moved to OSD, and we hope
that maybe there will be a new view in hand after you get the
lawyers together.
Senator Heinrich. [Presiding.] I want to thank you all for
your candor.
Senator Wicker?
Senator Wicker. Thank you very much.
We have a vote, so it may be that members will be coming
and going.
But let me direct my first question to Dr. Holland. I want
to thank you for your work at ERDC. I understand we have some
scientists from the lab at Mississippi with us today. Would you
like to introduce the scientists?
Dr. Holland. They are from all over the ERDC.
Senator Wicker. Thank you very much. Mr. Ranking Member,
thanks for indulging me on that.
Let's connect the dots between the lab to the warfighter,
if you will, Dr. Holland. How does our supercomputing
capability eventually help us win the fight?
Dr. Holland. Senator, the department as a whole has become,
I would say, close to 50 percent computational in its
scientific experimentation, if you will. So the supercomputing
work that we do is fundamental to all of the services and to
the work that the OSD organizations do.
A good example would be the work that we did on the MRAP,
on the underbelly blast. There were multiple Army organizations
that were involved in that. ERDC was one of those. The Army
Research Laboratory, the Tank and Automotive Command folks were
involved in that.
Endless numbers of calculations were done, literally tens
of millions of computing hours were used to do blast
calculations. Those were then compared against very specific
field studies at multiple scales to make sure that the
calculations were validated. Then those were extended far
beyond the range of what we would have ever been able to afford
in terms of doing real field studies of full-scale
calculations.
From that, we made decisions on what the underbelly needed
to look like for the MRAP. That went to full production, and
those solutions went to theater.
From that point forward, we have had, as a military, very
few, if any, difficulties with IED [Improvised Explosive
Device] issues with the MRAP from that point forward.
For the calculations that we believe in, that we validated,
we have the capability to make those types of decisions now
through the use of supercomputing.
Senator Wicker. So that is just one example of a real
success story there.
Dr. Holland. Yes, sir.
Senator Wicker. Let me then transition to some of your
partnerships with academia. Particularly, I would like for the
members of this subcommittee to understand your cooperation
with historically black institutions like Jackson State
University. How has this worked with Jackson State on cyber
defense and big data analytics? Can you comment on the larger
partnership with the historically black colleges and
universities?
Dr. Holland. Yes, Senator.
ERDC, in particular, has educational partnership agreements
with 13 historically black colleges and universities and
minority-serving institutions across the Nation. One of those,
and one of the longest standing ones, is with Jackson State
University in Jackson, Mississippi.
JSU has been, at various times, either first or second
among the research universities in HBCU/MIs in the country.
ERDC's relationship with them touches cyber, touches
computational chemistry areas. Those things touch several of
the military applications that ERDC is involved in. Those
relationships go back probably 25 years, to my memory.
Senator Wicker. What would those applications be, an
example of that?
Dr. Holland. Those range from environmental quality issues
related to cleanup of military ranges to keep those ranges
open, all the way up to specific applications on the classified
side, to cybersecurity issues, Senator. Those are very strong
partnerships. There are even extensions of those that go into
homeland security that involve Jackson State University.
So we have been able to meld those relationships. For
example, ERDC, actually, openly provides the library to the
Jackson State Engineering School that allowed it to be
accredited under ABET accreditation, so there is a strong
integration that exists with Jackson State and has been for
many years.
Senator Wicker. Well, thank you very much. Let me see if I
can squeeze in another question in a minute.
Dr. Montgomery, the Naval Research Lab at Stennis Space
Center has worked closely with Naval Oceanography to develop
cutting-edge unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, systems.
Talk about that, and do you believe the Navy and NRL will
increasingly emphasize UUV research and development?
Dr. Montgomery. Absolutely. The depths of the ocean are
profound. Their reach is a vast. In order to be able to access
areas which are otherwise denied, we need to be able to have
vehicles that can span large spaces, that can operate
underwater for very long periods of time, that have the
intelligence to be able to deal with the unforeseen, the
mountain, like the San Francisco that did not appear on the
charts that they were using to detect it.
So the NRL is working with the Office of Naval Research on
large-diameter UUVs, which are using hydrogen power, and a GE
fuel cell based engine of 95 kilowatts, which uniquely we have
been provided by General Motors to do this, which can provide
payload-carrying capabilities large distances and large
payloads.
Other approaches in the research area are taken where air
vehicles are designed to penetrate with GPS precision into
denied areas at bird-like speeds so they do not show up on
radar, and then insert themselves into the ocean and become a
UUV already where you want to do your sensing with the ability
to bring things back out, the information that you gain.
This is critically important. It is going to proliferate
widely worldwide, not just what we will do in the U.S., but
potential adversaries will be doing that as well for undersea
mapping, for sensors and detection of hostile forces
underwater, and to penetrate into denied areas.
It is a real cool area.
Senator Ernst. [Presiding.] Thank you very much.
Senator Shaheen?
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you all for being here today. I apologize because I
had another event. I missed the testimony, so if you have
already been asked this question, I will just ask you to repeat
it.
But are the labs currently covered by the hiring freeze?
Mr. Peters. Yes, they are. I know AFRL is, ma'am. So that
has been a real challenge. This is the prime time for hiring
right now. Typically, we do not have trouble recruiting and
retaining really top-notch people, but there is a blanket
waiver for some of the PALACE Acquires and some of the things
like that, but it is impacting AFRL, I can tell you that. There
are vacancies right now that need to be filled.
Senator Shaheen. To what extent has the budget uncertainty
over the last, as long as I have been here almost, affected
recruitment and hiring? Has that also been an issue?
Mr. Peters. Historically, that has not been an issue.
Senator Shaheen. Good.
Mr. Peters. It is more about not being able to manage-to-
budget, and actually having to keep within the slots that we
have, the over-hires and the ratio that we have there.
I believe the flexibility has been given. Personally, I do
not believe we need more authorities in the personnel area. We
just need to be able to use the ones that we have.
Senator Shaheen. Great. So that is really dependent upon
the leadership within the department?
Is that the challenge, Dr. Flagg?
Dr. Flagg. I think the biggest challenge here is that every
single lawyer between you and a lab director gets to say no.
Senator Shaheen. I understand that, but let's be clear. The
reason the lawyers can say that is because the leadership has
not said to the lawyers get out of the debate.
Dr. Flagg. I agree. I am not going to argue that. I did
kind of have a soapbox earlier that you missed on this issue.
Senator Shaheen. No, I heard it.
Dr. Flagg. Okay. But I do believe that, as Dr. Holland
mentioned, there needs to be a strong, unyielding demand signal
sent to the new Under Secretary for Research and Engineering
that they are not there just to do cool, sexy things that get
into the New York Times. They are there to make sure that the
future of defense, which is in our laboratories, is secure.
That means doing some of the unsexy stuff like telling the
lawyer get to yes.
Senator Shaheen. I doubt that you would get any objection
from the members of the committee, but ending the hiring freeze
will also be important.
Dr. Flagg. Absolutely. I would actually say that the budget
uncertainty, in my opinion, does, in fact, affect our
partnerships externally, and it does, in fact, affect
retention.
The moral issue that I see when I would visit the labs is
that not the budget uncertainty hurts in hiring, but it makes
people feel very uncertain about whether their projects will
continue or whether they will get to take on new and
challenging questions. Frankly, they have other opportunities.
So for me, the budget uncertainty is, in fact, a deep
challenge, but it is not necessarily the hiring.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
The Defense Science Board Task Force on Defense Research
Enterprise--that is a mouthful--indicated that our Nation's
laboratory infrastructure is becoming outdated and that it
lacks the benefits of modern efficiencies and technology. In
New Hampshire, we have the Cold Regions Research Lab, which has
been very important to us.
So when I see that kind of conclusion, understandably, I
question what we ought to be doing to make the changes to make
sure that our labs can continue to operate efficiently.
So do you all agree with that conclusion? What should we be
doing to change that infrastructure so that it works better?
Dr. Montgomery. May I comment on that?
Senator Shaheen. Dr. Montgomery?
Dr. Montgomery. There are a number of areas of concern.
One is how the milcon process functions. We can make it
better. I will mention that a little more. We can make it
better or we can find an alternative mechanism.
The sustainment models that are used within the Department
of Defense are inadequate. They have been scored badly by GAO
[Government Accountability Office]. They have a sustainment,
renovation, and modernization model which determines how much
one should spend per square foot to maintain a facility on the
average over the first 50 years of its life. That model
provides 40 percent less for a research and development
establishment in DOD than it does to maintain a public
restroom.
The office building called the Pentagon gets about $8 a
square foot per year. The Naval Research Laboratory, the
corporate laboratory of the Department of the Navy, received in
this model at most $2.60 a square foot. Now due to the
pressures on the budget, the challenge is for it to actually be
given the amount of money that the model actually calls for.
Usually, fiscal constraints result in substantially less
modernization.
So what do you end up with? What you end up with at NRL,
you end up with state-of-the-art scientific equipment and some
of the best and brightest people in physical structures that
were antiquated.
Here is my story. We had a building that had $15 million
worth of scientific equipment in an area that needed a roof. So
we got the guys to come put a roof on it after years and years.
The guy putting the roof on set the roof on fire, so we were
losing the roof. But the good news is the sprinklers actually
came on. The bad news is they rained down on $50 million worth
of equipment. The good news is, because the roof had been
leaking for so many years, all the vital equipment was under
plastic tents.
So what happened is we really did not lose that. The good
news is that the contractor was insured. The bad news is, we
never saw a penny of it. We had to pay for it out of hide in
funds that would have been used for something else.
So the modernization of the facilities is of critical
importance.
How can you do it? You can have a set-aside for laboratory
milcon and fight the battle of the milcon. You can do what I
suggested that in some quarters was thought outrageous, is you
change a few words in the law for section 219, where it says
minor military construction, change it to construction. When it
says $4 million, you take out the $4 million, and let us take
the 3 percent from section 219, put that aside for several
years, and every 3 years, I could have $40 million to $60
million a year, which would build me a building which was about
60,000 square feet, which is big enough to be efficient. If I
have $5 million, $4 million, I am going to get about 8,000
square feet and stacking those up, as a fundamental solution,
it is not. It is just a Band-Aid.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you very much. I have to go vote,
but I appreciate the conversation.
Dr. Montgomery. Well, good. Maybe you can vote for what I
just suggested.
[Laughter.]
Senator Shaheen. Well, we will take a look that, won't we,
Madam Chair?
Senator Ernst. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct.
We will start our second round of questioning. Again, as
people arrive, we will take those questions.
So as you all know, when the military wants to research and
then field a new product, they have to actually build the
product many times for testing. In Iowa, one of our
universities has been working with DOD to conduct that testing
on human-based avatars. It is cutting down the number of times
we have to make products for testing, and it is saving taxpayer
dollars, time, and human resources.
So, Dr. Flagg, can you describe some of the benefits of
computer-based avatar testing and any thoughts on that program
and how we might be able to expand that through our
laboratories?
Dr. Flagg. Sure. I think that it is an incredibly
interesting area. I know a little bit about it mostly because
we are often asked about why we do animal testing. So we have
to think a lot about when you can use virtual testing and new
ways of thinking about how we do testing and when you actually
have to put it onto a living organism to really understand it.
I think the combination is incredibly powerful. We do not
actually have a model of the full human system. We are actually
very complex. While we kind of know how things work, we are not
actually able to model the things that are going on inside of
our bodies effectively yet. Most people think we must have
that, but in science, we just do not have that yet.
But what we do have is sort of the macro understanding of
how we interact with the environment. This is where I think
these virtual training systems that allow you to put the person
into an environment that was not necessarily created
specifically with the user in mind--because most engineers, God
bless them, think more about the machine than they do the
person until we have to shove one of them in there.
I think it is an incredible opportunity to be much more
thoughtful about that very early on in the engineering. I think
these types of technologies in Iowa and many other places, and
I think were some of our laboratories are sort of playing
around with some of this as well, allows you to work on
something in Iowa where a lab in Massachusetts, at Natick or
something is working on something similar, to be able to
compare, where you were doing that similar test in your own
environments on your own activities, but to be able to share
those results.
So I think it increases our ability to integrate across the
private sector, academia, and our laboratories. It allows us to
much more affordably test very early in the system, where we
would not necessarily stick an actual human in. It also allows
us to test in environments that are incredibly dangerous and
incredibly hostile. So I do not want to put necessarily a
person into every explosion. So there are great ways of using
the virtual testing before you actually get to something like
WIAMan or some of the other activities that we have in the Army
that are very expensive.
So I think it has an incredibly relevant place in the
system as long as we remember that it is one part of a series
of things that need to be done to keep the human in mind very
early on and to make sure that we minimize cost, but also that,
at some point, we really know what is going to happen when we
put an actual person in.
Senator Ernst. Very good. I appreciate it.
Any other input from our panelists? Dr. Holland?
Dr. Holland. Yes. It is really important that the
environment that we are describing be one that can be validated
in some sense. I think that is what Dr. Flagg was speaking to.
From that perspective then, as best these environments can
be built from an understood physics perspective, the more we
can believe in them. The more that they are constructed from
pure empiricism, for example, the more we are extrapolating on
things that we get to the point of guesswork. Then when we add
very sophisticated graphics on top of those, then we are
drawing beautiful pictures of things that can be pure baloney.
Senator Ernst. That is a good point.
Dr. Holland. In the case of what we are doing for a living,
that becomes extraordinarily dangerous, because we are
involving someone's life in the process.
So we have been trying within the department to begin the
process of just putting together the key environments that we
own within the department to be able to put the best physics-
based models together, for example, to see what parts of the
flight of an airplane, the design of a ground vehicle, the
design of the ship, et cetera, can be done computationally and
how many of those trade spaces can we look at long beforehand,
again, from the idea of being able to play a lot of these what-
if games to gain insight long before we bend metal.
Those are where we find our best use of the computational
work, because it generates insight for us. It still leaves the
human in the loop. But you must be able to validate them in
order to believe them.
Senator Ernst. Absolutely, a multilayered approach.
Absolutely.
Dr. Montgomery?
Dr. Montgomery. Models are great. They embody knowledge.
They capture what you learn and allow you to be able to apply
it. Developing them to be validatable and accurate, of course,
is a challenge.
So sort of extending from the avatar approach, for example,
you can make physical models of human structures. The skull is
a mechanical structure. The brain is elastic material with
certain mechanical properties. So by testing those surrogates,
you can get to understand what are the kind of effects that are
going to have consequences for the person.
So if you have a person who suffers a blast, then there is
the initial blast, but there is also the shock that
reverberates internal to the brain on several iterations as the
shockwave penetrates under the helmet and around the head.
Certain frequencies of that appear to be more damaging to the
brain structures, producing traumatic brain injury, than
others.
So by being able to get a physical sense of that, then one
can then feed that into the model that an avatar carries in a
larger simulation model, which will then allow you to predict,
if I do this to protect them, here is what the efficacy is
going to be.
It is critically important. It takes powerful computers.
Senator Ernst. Very good. I appreciate that.
Thank you very much. We will move on. If we can get Senator
Warren, and we can come back to you, Senator Heinrich.
Senator Warren, go ahead.
Senator Warren. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I will
get my notes out here. Thank you so much for being with us.
I appreciate you allowing me to attend this hearing. I am
not a member of this subcommittee, and I really do appreciate
it.
I asked to be here not only because we have world-class
defense laboratories in my home State of Massachusetts, like
the Natick Soldier Research Center, and also the MIT Lincoln
Lab, but also because I believe that the labs and the research
that they do make up the backbone of our future military
strength. I just think this is the heart of it.
Last year, DOD reported that China is investing heavily in
R&D [Research and Development], including in, and I will read,
``applied physics, material science, high-performance
computing, innovative electronics and software development,
electro-optics, aerospace technology, automation, robotics,
high-energy physics, and nanoscience, just to name a few.'' So
that kind of covers it.
So I would like to start by asking Dr. Flagg, would we
improve our chances of maintaining future superiority over
China if we increase our R&D investments in similar advanced
technologies?
Dr. Flagg. Thank you, Senator. This is a question that has
come near and dear to my heart.
Long ago, I ran the Technical Intelligence office, so I
spent a lot of time focusing on international S&T, and I was
overseas with the Navy as well.
One of the things that I think is really interesting about
this question is that it is not just a dollar question. It is
also increasing and modernizing our structures and processes
and approaches to how we do research. We came out of a period
post-World War II where the leaders had been decimated. We rose
in a vacuum, and we came to preeminence in S&T.
We have been really challenged over the last 20 years in a
rising era of parity. That same list is being supported here,
and we need to stay in the race. It is like a marathon of two
very well-matched competitors.
But what you want to make sure is that you do not have to
run so long in that evenly matched race that you get tired
first. I believe that you have to stay in the race. We have to
stay competitive and continue investments across those areas or
we will erode and tunnel under the foundation of our national
security, period.
That is not just DOD funding. My Ph.D. was funded by the
National Institutes of Health Fogarty Center. Many people here
can tell you that their Ph.D.'s were not funded by the
Department of Defense. They were funded by a broader S&T
investment in the U.S. Government.
But I think the second piece of this is to really think
about new strategies for winning in an era of parity, what
success looks like in era of parity.
I think what this means is that we have to send some of our
investment back to the first principles. We have to get people
to come back from purpose-driven vision but not telling them
the specific question they will answer but having the theorists
and experimentalists work together to go back to the beginning
and say, if I am not trying to be more or better or faster or
more trustworthy or more resilient in cyber, if I go back to
the first exit and I use all the information we have learned
over the last 20 years and I created a fundamentally new
network that would be secure, what would that look like?
So while we are running the marathon, somebody needs to
invent the train that takes me to the goal so that I do not
have to keep running.
So I think it is both the investment in that list, but it
is also a new investment in processes that let us think bigger.
Senator Warren. I totally agree, and I think the point is
well-argued. Thank you very much. This is sort of the 6.1, 6.2
investments that we have let fall behind and that are
absolutely critical, if we are going to have real security in
the future.
Let me get to a couple other questions, because I think
this is really important. I want to ask about a recent Defense
Science Board report, which highlighted the age and condition
of our laboratory infrastructure. I saw you grimace on this.
According to the report, the average Army lab is 50 years
old. The Air Force and Navy labs average 45 and 46 years,
respectively. The science board says that, ``Most lab directors
feel they are unable to maintain their facilities and
infrastructure to a reasonable standard. They report witnessing
leaky roofs, imperiling millions of dollars' worth of
specialized and sensitive equipment,'' as you noted, Dr.
Montgomery, earlier.
So I just want to ask the lab directors, just kind of a yes
and no. Let me start, does that basically fit with your
experience?
Dr. Holland. Yes.
[Laughter.]
Senator Warren. Yes.
Mr. Peters?
Mr. Peters. It does, yes. I would say, though, that the Air
Force has done a pretty good job in terms of supporting the lab
in the locations that we are in. We do have probably some newer
facilities. There are some that are very old.
Senator Warren. But there are some that are very old.
Mr. Peters. Correct.
Senator Warren. So let me turn on this, because I have to
say, this is what I have seen firsthand when I have been to
Natick, when I have been to Lincoln Labs. We have these world-
class scientists doing cutting-edge research in buildings that
were constructed in the 1940s and 1950s.
Can I ask each of you just to say a word about the
implications of these old buildings, what it means that you are
trying to do lab work in buildings with infrastructure that is
so far rooted in the past?
Whoever would like to start. Dr. Montgomery? Dr. Holland?
Dr. Montgomery. It is an interesting experience that I had
when Reggie Brothers was in OSD. He was visiting my
microelectronics laboratory where we developed spintronics and
nanoscience devices, the world's highest powered 220 GHz
amplifiers that are made by our scientists in our lab, world
leading.
We were walking down the hallway, and there is a
thunderstorm that occurs. All of a sudden, groundwater comes
gushing out of the water fountain as we are going by because
the drainage system of this ancient building had ruptured.
So what do the scientists do? They patch it up, and they
get back to work. But when they bring somebody in they want to
recruit, and they have maybe been to Google or they have been
to some other facility----
Senator Warren. Do you mean Google has better facilities
than that? That problem does not happen at Google?
Dr. Montgomery. I am sure they do.
Senator Warren. Yes.
Dr. Montgomery. So this can be both demoralizing for the
scientists in the laboratory and discouraging to the individual
who is coming to interview for a job, that the science may be
very attractive, the equipment to do the science is
outstanding, the peers with whom they work will be
extraordinary, but they keep looking at these dingy, dreadful
surroundings that they are in.
Yes, it is counterproductive. You can still do world-class
science in that, but sooner or later--NRL's average is 60
years. I had 1.8 million square feet of space that was almost
70.
So, yes, those are challenges, both from that point of
view--you can still do the science, but it is challenging to
moral and people's desire to stay.
Senator Warren. The ability to recruit. It is a really
powerful point.
I am out of time, so I am going to yield to my colleagues
on this. But I take it this is a widely shared view by those
who are trying to do the work.
Dr. Holland. Senator, just quickly, if you just get beyond
the idea of the embarrassment factor in recruitment and
retention, just think about the inefficiency.
You are handing over a facility to people who are world-
class people who invariably are going to be fixing something
that should be helping them do what they are supposed to be
doing.
Senator Warren. It is a powerful point, Dr. Holland. I want
to say, I appreciate all that you do under very challenging
circumstances, but we need to be better partners on this, and
we need to invest so that you have the kind of world-class
facilities that match the world-class talent that you have.
So thank you all very much.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to come in like
this.
Senator Ernst. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate it.
Senator Heinrich?
Senator Heinrich. I want to thank Senator Warren for
bringing up this issue, because it is endemic across the
enterprise.
I also want to thank our guests for their candid remarks on
hiring authority, and we are going to try to capture some of
that in a letter to Secretary Mattis that I will be sharing
with a number of my colleagues.
I wanted to bring up another issue that involves timeliness
or sometimes the lack thereof that I hear a lot about from
small businesses in New Mexico that deal with our labs.
I have regularly heard about contract delays that sometimes
are on the order of not months but years. What are some of the
fundamental issues there that we need to address that cause it
to take so long to issue a contract from the time that the lab
decides that they want to enter into that contract to actually
getting ink on paper?
Mr. Peters. So just a little bit ago, sir, I talked about
the success of the personnel demonstration project. I just
recently looked at section 233 and the language that is in
that, and if I could be so bold to say that I do not think that
is bold enough.
So the personnel system that was built was world-class and
built by scientists and engineers for scientists and engineers.
I think you need to have the same kind of contracting
demonstration project that is put in place. Don't just beat
around the bush about trying to make everybody feel good and
look for efficiencies and we need to try to find ways. I think
you need to direct that there is a contracting demonstration
project built by scientists and engineers and program managers
in the laboratory and in the laboratories across the services,
and bring forward the waivers that need to be brought forward
to get relief from the FAR.
You are absolutely right that it is the impact to small
businesses. I heard it when I was in there. I am experiencing
it on the outside with other companies today who are doing the
small business piece of this. It is absolutely critical.
But let the folks that have to live with this day-to-day
bring forward their recommendations and have a contracting
person involved with that can say here are the changes and who
has the authority to make those changes, rather than just say
let's take a look at trying to make business processes better.
Senator Heinrich. Dr. Flagg?
Dr. Flagg. I just wanted to say that, I mean, I think this
is so dead on, and I also think empowering those contracting
officers to be embedded in that team, to have their performance
appraisal written by the mission, the folks who are leading the
mission, not by someone back in the Pentagon where I was
sitting who is in a contracting shop who wants you to do it the
same way everyone else is doing it, and also giving them a
little top cover.
I was horrified when I sat down with Claire Grady at DPAP
and learned about the personal criminalization of taking risk
in contracting, how they are publicly shamed for taking risk. I
think you are never going to encourage someone to take risk if
you tell them: But if you do and somebody sues you, you may
wind up on a Web site by name, or you might wind up going to
jail.
We have to be very thoughtful about the incentives that we
bake into the system and have the incentives tied to the
outcome of the mission, not tied to some statistic PowerPoint
chart back at the Pentagon.
Not that I don't like the Pentagon. I love the Pentagon.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Peters. Just to give you an example. In the Air Force
Research Lab, when I was there, there are 11,000 contracting
actions a year. So they are doing everything that they are
supposed to do, and they are living by the intent of the law.
We have OTAs, but we cannot live just by other transactional
authorities. We need a whole new contracting system and
authorities in the research lab.
Senator Heinrich. Any additions, Dr. Montgomery?
Dr. Montgomery. Let me comment on that as well.
When you are buying a piece of equipment that is made by a
small business outfit, and there are two such suppliers in the
whole world, and one of them has never provided a functioning
piece of equipment yet, then it should not take 2 years to buy
the one. The scientists who realize that should not be accused
of inappropriateness for going to that particular activity.
So if you are going to do something the like of which was
never done before in the history of humanity, if you do not
know what the outcome is going to be when you start, it is hard
to specify deliverables. If you want to do prototyping, where
you reach out to small business, you reach out to somebody,
some activity that has an idea that may or may not pan out, and
you want to give them an opportunity to display what they can
do and integrate it in some larger system, which may or may not
succeed, and do it timely and efficiently, you cannot do it
under the existing acquisition system, which applies basically
ACAT [Acquisition Category] I rules to 6.1 type of research.
You are not going to get across the Valley of Death until
you can take and bring these things together and demonstrate
their military value in prototypes in an operational-like
environment so the payoff of this particular new approach--it
maybe revolutionary and never existed before--can be
demonstrably clear and unassailable. That takes rapid
prototyping.
It takes a new acquisition system tailored for this, and it
takes the ability to have the fiscal resources to take the risk
on prototyping to succeed.
Absent that, we are at a glacial process where things that
we need to get done today take decades to achieve.
Senator Heinrich. [Presiding.] Exactly. We end up losing
capacity in the meantime, because these contractors are taking
real monetary risk in entering into these arrangements as well.
I want to thank all of you for coming today. I want to
thank you for your candor. I think it is very helpful for all
of us. I am going to gavel us out here, but I hope that this is
just the start of the conversation, because I think we have a
lot to chew on here that we can get to work on, and we very
much appreciate the input from all of you.
Dr. Montgomery?
Dr. Montgomery. Is it possible I could offer one more
comment?
Senator Heinrich. You bet.
Dr. Montgomery. The rest of the world is advancing. China
is already virtually up here in the scientific world with
basically 1 percent less of the publications that we have. So
not only do we have to do our own science, but we have to
harness the rest of the world's science.
If we are going to do that, we need to have peer-to-peer
collaboration across the world to do that. Nobody will
collaborate with me. I have been off the bench for 30 years.
But on the other hand, somebody who is a new scientist with new
ideas collaborating through conferences, through international
travel--NRL does about 1,200 such collaborations during the
course of a year, and a couple hundred of them overseas.
Then we ought to also consider, can we take foreign
national scientists who came out of one of our great research
institutions that is of an allied power that was friendly to
the U.S., have them renounce their former citizenship, become a
U.S. citizen and be granted clearance to work in our labs?
Because they are culturally attuned to their originating
country, that would be a powerful tool for building world-to-
world collaborations.
Since 2003 to 2013, the percentage of collaborations
internationally amongst scientists has gone from 19 percent to
about 30 percent worldwide. It is critically important for our
future. Thank you for your patience.
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Dr. Montgomery.
Thanks to all of you for joining us today.
[Whereupon, at 11:27 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]