FISCAL YEAR 2000 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT-BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE PROGRAMS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE, The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:44 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Curt Weldon (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE Mr. WELDON. The subcommittee will come to order. We ask our witnesses to take their seats, and we appreciate you all being here today. I apologize for the delay in starting; we had a markup, and then the Full House was swearing in our newest Member who was just elected this week to replace the Speaker, so we apologize for delaying you. And from a time constraint standpoint, I have to announce up front that this hearing room is scheduled to be used at one o'clock for another hearing. We are trying to make adjustments to that now which would allow for us to stay longer, but if we are not successful, Members need to understand we may have to expedite the process. That should be enough time, but knowing the way I tend to go on forever, who knows; we may be longer than that. Mr. Pickett is always quiet and doesn't take time. This morning, the Military Research and Development Subcommittee meets in open session to receive testimony on ballistic missile defense programs of the Department of Defense. I want to welcome my colleague and good friend, Owen Pickett, the ranking member of the R&D Subcommittee, and, eventually, I will welcome Duncan Hunter and Norm Sisisky. We have invited the whole Procurement Subcommittee to meet with us, and I think also that Floyd Spence and Ike Skelton may also join us. We also welcome today's witnesses, Dr. Jacques Gansler, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, General Lyles, U.S. Air Force, Director of Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and General Greg "Speedy" Martin, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. I might note at the outset that it is somewhat of a somber day today, as I pointed out earlier. Eight years ago today, 28 young Americans came back in body bags; almost half of them from my state; women and men who were sent to Desert Storm. They came back in body bags because a low complexity Scud missile was fired into that barracks in Tehran, and we did not have the technical capability to defeat it. The weapon of choice wasn't a truck that Saddam would send into Tehran; it wasn't a truck that he would send into Israel; the weapon of choice was a missile. And that was, as you both know, all three of you, the largest loss of our military personnel in this decade. It is embarrassing to me, and I know it is embarrassing to all of us, that eight years later we still do not have a highly effective system to defend against these threats, and I acknowledge we are making progress, and I acknowledge the challenges are difficult, but it is extremely frustrating for all of us, and certainly for this Congress, that we are where we are eight years later. Now, I know the Administration has made much of its proposal to add $12 billion to the Fiscal Year 2000 budget, but many on this committee on both sides know that much of that increase is based on calculated savings from low inflation and fuel costs that may or may not materialize. In fact, most estimates that I have seen make the case that the real new money is somewhere between $1.8 billion and $4 billion. It is not the amount of money that the administration has claimed it is. This committee and the Full Committee in the Congress are committed to fully funding with real money at a minimum the President's requested increase for next year. We think that is a good starting place. Others would note that much of the increase goes towards a military pay raise, which, as important as it is, does nothing to address the military's growing modernization challenges. We will support the pay raise, make no mistake about that; we will take care of the pension problem, but neither of those discuss the issue of the challenges we have in R&D and acquisition. The administration has also made much of the fact that Fiscal Year 2000 budget includes a $4 billion increase for military procurement during its modernization. Well, let me point out a couple of facts: the Administration has decreased R&D funding by $3 billion, a more than eight percent decrease compared to last year's budget. Procurement is an important part of modernization but so is research and development, and R&D is continually being starved for funds apparently to meet other needs. We have seen at the eleventh hour the appropriators have to apply servicewide taxes to pay for big ticket programs that you and I both know are going to get funded, and so the R&D account lines constantly get hit in that regard, and we have got to change that. Mr. Secretary and General, you know, as I have had discussions with you this year, we are taking a proactive approach in the Congress to begin to get Members to understand that, one of which is to build a virtual reality hearing room here to make R&D more real for Members, and the second is to have a national conference on research in this country each year where we focus on all of our R&D investments, both of which you have agreed to assist us with. But one of my major concerns-I know Owen shares this-is that we not allow significant cuts in our R&D budget, and we will be there to fight with you and for you in that regard. The situation in the Department's ballistic missile defense programs reflects this larger budget reality. I am pleased with some of the recent Administration announcements that this year's budget proposal reveals that fiscal constraints have driven key programmatic decisions which undermine their ability to meet the already existing ballistic missile threat, and that threat continues to surprise the military intelligence communities with the speed at which it is increasing. I am encouraged by the Administration's announcement that an additional $6.6 billion has been identified for a National Missile Defense (NMD) that might be deployed—and you are both aware of the vote that just occurred in this committee; I think it was 50 to 3? Fifty to three, and the other ones who were not here, most of them—all of them were co-sponsors of the bill, so the vote would have been much higher had the other few members been here. But I am concerned that the Administration is not yet deployed to a system. We all know that even if we made that decision today, we are not going to have a system ready for probably four, five, three years depending upon who you talk to, and we will probably talk about that today. But our concern is that we need to set the policy of this country to move aggressively in that direction, because everyone acknowledges the threat is here today. In fact, I had CIA charts for the members to show that they have now put into a very specific form scenarios where the Taepo-Dong I of North Korea Stage III, the Taepo-Dong II with limited payload capacity could hit the heartland of the U.S., not just Alaska and Hawaii, but with smaller payloads which include a chemical, biological or small nuclear device could hit the continental U.S. That has never been said before. The failure to commit to deploying a system for which funding has been programmed seems inconsistent at best. It gives rise to natural suspicion that the Administration is not really behind the program, and the funds identified for NMD could turn into a bank account to be ready to pay for other needs; we have seen that time and again in the past. Indeed, a suggestion that NMD funds identified by the administration may be used to implement the Wye River Middle East Peace Accords to be restored to NMD only by the next administration, whoever that it is, just reinforces this impression. Now, I may be for the Wye River Agreement, but, for the life of me, I can't understand why the Administration doesn't come in and say to Congress, "Let us vote on the Wye River Agreement and the funding to pay for it." Why are we backdooring the Missile Defense accounts to pay for something which I would argue has nothing to do with missile defense? And then hope the next administration will replenish those funds, whoever that might be. I am also pleased the Navy Theater Wide Upper Tier Missile Defense System is being better defined and is more adequately funded through the Future Years Defense Program, but, at the same time, I am concerned that the Upper Tier Strategy being proposed by Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) is more responsive to fiscal constraints than theater missile defense needs. I understand the competing Theater High Altitude Air Defenses (THAAD) and Navy Theater Wide with the winner to get the bulk of the upper-tier firms will certainly motivate the contractors, but the upper-tier strategy is motivated by the desire to sequence the two programs because of lack of funds. It will also delay and may kill the system that experiences greater technical challenges. I can't recall any system that got better when its funds were cut. The litany of BMDO programs that are strapped for funding is long, and, let me add, this is nothing new to us. We have consistently made this case for four years that your program was not realistic with the budgets that we are being given. Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS)-I remember very well, four years ago? Three years ago, we zeroed out funding for MEADS. At that point in time, Deputy Secretary White raised cain with me. He said, "Congressman, you can't do this. We need this program. We have a way to approach the missile defense, and MEADS is a very specific requirement to meet a very specific threat that can't be met by PAC-3; it can't be met by other systems, and, even more important, perhaps, is the fact that our European allies have been convinced that we are serious about working with them." I said, "Mr. Secretary, I am not convinced you can fund MEADS. We have got these other programs that are going to require increasing growths in funding, therefore, I think we should cancel the program now; be honest with our European friends and not prolong this debate." Well, we backed down to the Administration, and we put the funding back in, and now you are proposing to cancel MEADS. The Italians and the Germans told me they weren't even forewarned of this cancellation. In fact, I have five members of the German Bundestag in my office two weeks ago, and that was their main topic, that MEADS should not be canceled. And what I found a little bit disingenuous was at a time when we were canceling MEADS, Secretary Cohen was talking to the Japanese and the South Koreans about working in cooperation on theater missile defense in the Asian theater. How can you cancel one program while you are talking about starting a new program with Japan and South Korea? It is not consistent with me. What I would like to ask you to do in the hearing today is I would like you to explain, based on the charts that we were given over the past three years that clearly define the layered approach, differentiating MEADS from PAC-3, what has changed? Has the threat changed? Has the technology changed? Why all of sudden are we putting MEADS aside and saying we will modify PAC-3? My own feeling is it is budget-driven decision, and, if so, let us just say that and get on and have that debate, but if there is a significant change in terms of the layered approach that you outlined to us, I think we need to hear that. Technology funding is down 50 percent. The second issue is Russian-American Observation Satellite (RAMOS) which I discussed in an earlier session, the Russian-American-to my knowledge the only major Russian-American BMD cooperative program, terminated at a time when Russian-American cooperation in this area is more important then ever. We have heard nothing from the Administration on our Missile Defense bill except that you are going to drive the Russians into a corner. You are going to create havoc at a time when we are negotiating with them on the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Well, I can tell you last fall when the word got out that the Administration was canceling the RAMOS Program, my phone rang off the hook from Russians who said to me, |