recognize that that is one of the things we will have to come to grips with. The challenge we have and I have given to my people is to work with the Army, work with the Navy, work with the Joint Staff; lay out what the criteria is for evaluating those systems in the year 2000 and 2001, so we can understand and make a fair recommendation to Dr. Gansler, and, him, in turn, to the Secretary as to which programs should be the lead program.

We, in all honestly, don't have the criteria completely flushed out yet, but I have a responsibility and actual action to get that done by April; get it up to Dr. Gansler, and get approval for that, and I would certainly be very happy to consult or at least discuss with the Congress what we are recommending in that regard. We don't have the final answer yet.

Mr. SPRATT. We will have full flight test, I believe, for the THAAD this calendar year, and I believe the first one starts late next month, you said?

General LYLES. End of March or beginning of April would be the next intercept attempt for the THAAD Program.

Mr. SPRATT. Now, let us be optimistic and assume that all of these intercepts are successful. What do you do then about your decision to try to designate one as the lead system, the other as the follow-on system?

General LYLES. One of the key things that we would look atand it is going to be a major part of our decision criteria-is not just performance of the flight test. The two other things that we are concerned about are schedule performance and cost performance in the program. We need to look at all of those factors before we make a decision as to how we are going to proceed. If that is going to be successful in all of its tests, I would be extremely happy. We then have the option of recommending to the Secretary that we proceed on with the THAAD Program; still continue, because it is funded, the Navy Program, but still have the opportunity in a couple of years to evaluate the two to see how well they are both doing. We have sort of given ourselves a wide variety of options, and I think that is a good position to be in.

Mr. SPRATT. Having followed this from more distance than you, but, nevertheless, followed it for a long time, I am disappointed, too, in THAAD and in the contractors' performance to date, but I have always viewed these two programs as complimentary rather than competitive, and I would like to think that we can still bring them along in that fashion and not have some mutually exclusive trade-off between one or the other.

If I am not mistaken, THAAD performs missions that Navy Theater Wide probably can't perform. It haз more mass; it can destroy an ongoing warhead with submunitions in it, in particular, with chemical submunitions. On the other hand, the Navy Theater Wide is a hot missile, and it can move out in a hurry and intercept targets that THAAD couldn't reach. So, the two serve a purpose, and it is not true that THAAD also has longer legs, can reach out further, so that it is a better system for deployment?

General LYLES. Actually, Congressman, given the power of the rocket motor on the Navy Upper-tier and the fact that it goes after threats in the ascent phase, it actually has the longer legs if you are comparing it like a race, which can actually go further? But the

two are very much complimentary. The one thing that came out loud and clear in all the analysis we have done over the last year to look at the scenarios and how you might use the two systems, we have sort of reinforced the need for the multi-tier, multi-platform capability, the complimentary nature of having both sea-based and land-based Upper-tier Systems.

Mr. SPRATT. So, you are not taking a tilt towards a system where we would have to select one because the other-?

Secretary GANSLER. It was more of an insurance policy than it was a winner take all. The idea is to-right now, we had no choice. If we go ahead with the proposed program where we are accelerating the Navy Program, we are still viewing it as a compliment, and we are still viewing both systems eventually if they are successful being deployed. What we are trying to do is to get something early in which we had confidence, so we are putting in the extra dollars to try to get both of them going at full speed.

Mr. SPRATT. With respect to SBIRS High, and SBIRS Low, in particular, it has been my understanding for a long time that you are using a different chemical in the medium for the focal plane away and that to test its ability to cool repeatedly as you cut on the cryo-cooler and cut it off, cut it on, and cut it off when the system gets cubed, there is no substitute for testing it in its actual deployed mode or at least some comparable demonstration. You are now foregoing two demos, but you are putting them on the end of EMD. Is this what do you do about proving the cryo-cooler and the focal plane medium?

General MARTIN. Mr. Congressman, you are correct that that is a very difficult issue that we are working through the program that General Lyles sponsored, the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) Program, gave us some insights, however, and the difficulty that you are referring to is to make sure that we can transition from a system that has a background of the Earth to a system that has a background of space and differentiate between the two and then track it with fidelity through its trajectory.

But much of that information was given to us by both the MSX experiment and the Miniature Sensor Technology Integration (MSTI) experiment. But that is not to say that we got everything that we needed, and, as I mentioned earlier, we are still crunching the data; it is not all in to tell us what pieces of that problem we have and what we don't have and what we need to do between now and the EMD phase to minimize any risk we would have in production.

Mr. SPRATT. But the question is can you reach that level of satisfaction without an actual demonstration?

General MARTIN. We don't know. In fact, as we go out with our Request for Proposal (RFPs), one of the areas that the contractors may come back in with is the need to do some sort of a flight demonstration as a part of the SBIRS Low program, not as a separate demonstration effort which Flight Demonstration System (FDS) and Low Altitude Demonstration System (LADS) were. And, in addition, we are in the process of amending that to make sure that they come forward with that kind of assessment and what the costs and benefits would be.

Last, we are in the process now of chartering an independent assessment team that will, in addition to what we were doing with SBIRS High, that joint estimating team, we are also taking a look at the technology required for the 2006 operational system capability or launch and where we are today and what it will take to give us the assurance to solve, among many problems, that particular case and whether we need to do a flight demonstration or not that is integral and a part of the overall SBIRS Low Program.

So, a long answer, we don't know for sure. We have gotten a significant amount of information, but we are going to ask some serious experts that question and have them come back with their assessment over the next 90 days.

Mr. SPRATT. The SBIRS Low slip is for technical developmentGeneral MARTIN. Yes.

Mr. SPRATT.-maturation of the system. The SBIRS High system is more for budgetary reasons, but you feel comfortable in making that decision.

Secretary GANSLER. Budgetary plus the fact that we had the extra DSP satellites available, the five satellites. In fact, we wanted to use those, because they were available, and the overall result would not significantly impact the performance of the weapons systems.

Mr. SPRATT. Thank you very much.

Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Spratt. Mr. Hostettler.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony.

I was intrigued and encouraged by one of the slides that I saw, actually all of them, but especially slide number 7 dealing with the development of the Upper-tier strategy, and I assume this is somewhat in response to the request by General Tulleli from what is going on North Korea. Is that-?

Secretary GANSLER. Partly, in fact, when the President called in the CINCS last fall and asked them what their priorities were, one of the priorities, clearly, that came out from a number of the CINCS, not just General Tulleli, was for capability against the increasing threats from ballistic missiles. It was also the fact that we saw it. I mean, the press had it, and the charts that I showed. Over the last year, there has just been this evolution, including the North Korean launch, which when combined with the fact that we didn't have an answer to it, caused us to say we need to do something more about it, and that was the point that we were just making that we felt we needed to develop an alternative not just to continue to count on that one solution that we had which was the THAAD, but to try to also increase the funding on the Navy systems so we would have an early option if we needed it.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Right, and as that has taken place with regard to theater missile defense, you also stated in response, I think, to Mr. Pickett's questions with regard to the priorities, what are the new priorities? And you said, we really can't afford to necessarily, as a result of the growth in the existing and emerging threats that the the acceleration, I should say, in the existing and emerging threats, we don't necessarily have the luxury to say, "Well, it is definitely TMD all over." Rather now, it is much more a hodgepodge, you could say.

But what encourages me is that there has been a change in the philosophy of the TMD development, and that is that in the lower part, competition will be used to get early deployment and reward success. I guess my question is because we now know that the threats are accelerated and we know the threat, according to Secretary Cohen, is here today with regard to even national missile defense and the threats are there, why can't this same philosophy be used with regard to development of a national missile defense? We have always talked about the rush to failure, and I am sure you don't want to do that even with this new approach to TMD. Why can't we assert that same philosophy with regard to NMD as well?

Secretary GANSLER. Well, we think we have, and that was the point that I was trying to make with the chart comparing the older approach we had to NMD to the one we now have, and it was last year's budget, literally, and in this year's budget, we have significantly increased the R&D on NMD, and we have significantlywell, we made it from zero to a commitment now to putting dollars into the deployment side. So, there is a very significant difference between our NMD approach before and our NMD approach now. There is a very significant difference, as you point out, between our TMD approach before and our TMD approach now. So, we do feel that this submittal to the Congress for the 2000 budget represented a very significant step in both the NMD and the TMD areas.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. So, we are not talking about budgetary constraints when we talk about NMD development and deployment. We are meeting what we need to do as a result of the emerging threats, and there is no questions asked with regard to other priorities within the Defense budget much less the rest of the budget, discretionary budget, to say we are meeting the threats. We are actually accelerating the development and deployment of the system. Now, how does that-how do we resolve that? I know we are using the five extra-the Defense Support Program satellites, but how do we resolve that with the SBIRS slips? How do we say we are doing everything we can, and the thing is that we know that we are going to spend more money in SBIRS in the outyears, and we have made that decision to do that. How are we resolving the fact that we are accelerating National Missile Defense, but we are letting SBIRS slip? I know as a result of the response earlier, SBIRS Low may be as a result of technological problems, but why is that? How do we resolve those two things?

Secretary GANSLER. The SBIRS Low, as you said, was because of technological problems. The SBIRS High-in both cases, the slips, we feel, do not affect the performance. They are not the critical element in the path associated with developing either the national or the theater missile defense system, and it is because they are not the critical element in the path that we can afford to let them slip and still satisfy their requirements.

As was pointed out earlier, for example, on National Missile Defense I guess the chairman pointed out-the two critical areas are the integration of all of these, the Battle Management Control System and the software associated with that and the hit-to-kill missile. So, those are the things that are going to drive the schedule and the technical feasibility of the system. It is not whether we get

the extra two percent from SBIRS High versus a DSP, and so that is the reason we can make those statements. We still have to keep pushing on the critical elements that are driving the schedule, and that is the approach that we are taking.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. So, the ultimate deployment date is going to be the earlier the possible deployment date is going to be earlier as a result of what we are doing in the new budget for NMD as, perhaps, for the TMD.

Secretary GANSLER. We have much higher confidence in being able to make the schedules that we have shown as a result—and, frankly, the committee has helped us a great deal there, and, Mr. Chairman, I certainly didn't mean to imply earlier in my comments that the extra supplemental that you provided and the additional dollars you provided have made a very big difference to this program; they clearly have.

Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair

man.

Mr. WELDON. Thank you. We appreciate the questions, Mr. Hostettler. Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, I heard with great interest some very positive remarks to the questions from Chairman Weldon as to the different tests that have been run and the success rate. Just for my own curiosity, are there any tests like that where decoys or CHAFF or other things that we would probably encounter in a real attack included in that scenario or is it a straight just one missile versus one missile type?

General LYLES. Well, Congressman Taylor, we use what we call threat representative targets that have the threat representation actually blessed by the intelligence community, our best assessment of what is out there. That is the kind of thing that we actually fire against. It is classified, we can't talk about it now, but to show you as an example, in the NMD Program, the two fly-by tests that took place last year, actually about a year and a half ago and about a year ago, which were very, very successful, the CHAFF'd decoys, the other things that were represented in those two tests were very, very sophisticated sort of threat scenarios, and I would be very happy to come show you or any of the other Members exactly the results of those tests and what they actually represented. I think you will be very surprised and pleased to see what we were trying to counter. So, we use realistic threat representative targets. Mr. TAYLOR. Again, I realize where Chairman Weldon is coming from based on what happened to his soldiers in his State, and we need more crusaders in Congress. I think it is great that he is doing that. I just don't want any of us to misspend the public's money or spend it in one place where it would be best spent in another.

Congressman Bartlett has made, I think, an excellent point, at least to me and I think to this committee of the potential for an electromagnetic pulse against Americans somewhere. Given the possibility that several of these rogue states could acquire not just one but several nuclear missiles-I will outline the scenario: the first missile going 50 miles up, exploding over the target to an electromagnetic pulse; other missiles are kept shielded and fired an hour, half hour, whatever adequate time necessary so that their