SUMMARY In summary, I want to emphasize the following: In about 90% of the Navy R&D programs the intellectual property rights have been allocated to the contractors through the contracting process. The Navy has a system that is just coming on-line to accomodate the remaining 10% and we are confident that our system will protect the Navy's interest while at the same time accomplishing both the spirit and letter of the 1986 Technology Transfer Act. Mr. WALGREN. Thank you for that testimony, Mr. Rumpf. General DOUGLASS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. This is my first opportunity to appear as a witness on the Hill. I've been a supporting witness many, many times, and so I just wanted to start my testimony by thanking you for inviting me and telling you that we in the Air Force have a great deal of respect for you and your committee, sir, and the high standards that you use for this subcommittee. Sir, the first point that the Air Force wants to make is we have a very high incentive to see a strong national technology base. We participate very heavily in that endeavor. As a matter of fact, in 1988, I was the Air Force representative on a Defense Science Board summer study on the defense technological and industrial base and I would commend that study to you, sir, if you haven't had a chance to see it yet. It draws some of the very strong linkages between our military-industrial base and our commercial industrial base and technology base in this country. We understand that in the Air Force and we're very supportive of the efforts and commend you for what you're doing, sir. As you know, the Air Force has a long history, and the Army Air Corps before it, of working with civil aviation, to move forward commercial technology in various ways. In the old days we were very much involved in things like moving air mail in the very beginning and all kinds of altitude and speed records and things of that nature. And certainly during World War I and World War II many of the military technologies found their way into commercial aviation. Some of my colleagues mentioned some of the more recent examples. The Air Force has been very active, of course, in the development of lasers, and just to add to what they said, their ring laser gyros in commercial aircraft today have made inertial navigation accuracies far beyond that what we thought was previously attainable, and of course, the global positioning system, which the Air Force is sponsoring, will make that Dr. Millburn mentioned-will make global navigation much, much more accurate for the commercial sector as well as the military sector. I might also add I was personally involved a few years ago in the development of the air-launched and sea-launched Cruise missiles with my friend, Mr. Rumpf here. You might be interested to know that the developer of the engine in that missile was a fellow by the name of Sam Williams, who developed that engine jointly with the Air Force and the Navy. And he won the Collier Trophy in I think about 1986 for that work. That work in small turbines is widely distributed to the commercial industry and it's making a fairly large impact there. So we're a solid supporter, sir, of the technology transfer initiatives. The Air Force has been, we think, reasonably successful in providing and disseminating information on federally-owned or originated products, and processes and services having potential application to state and local governments, and commercial industry. Specifically, we're fulfilling our responsibilities under the Act by the establishment of Offices of Research and Technology Applications, by the establishment of a Domestic Technology Transfer functional office, by the finalization of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements-we have 24 of the 172 that GAO mentioned. That's about 14 percent of the total, and we also see that increasing and growing and we're putting emphasis on it. We funded our share of the Federal Laboratory Consortium and we're developing handbooks for our people to use to try to expedite the intent of the Act. Now, your staff was concerned about the royalties. The Air Force has realized about $75,000 to date in royalties. We agree with some of the comments that have been made before, that if the royalties are small, they ought to be given out in one single payment. We have promulgated procedures to make that happen. In summary, the Air Force has made considerable progress in establishing the domestic technology transfer program. I am confident that as we become more familiar and comfortable with the legislation, our process will accelerate. We realize that to succeed in technology transfer and commercialization as defined in the Act, each laboratory must be allowed the flexibility to develop relationships with organizations that have a mutual interest in technology development and commercialization. We are well embarked on our program. It needs a little time to grow. I have looked at what the GAO said. We agree that the implementation is spotty, and I make a personal commitment to you, sir, to go back and work that-when we get that GAO report in its final form, I'll seriously address it and do what I can to fill any holes that exist. We've put our instructions out to the field, and so we think that our folks know how to do what's called for in the Act. We support it, sir. [The prepared statement of General Douglass follows:] Statement of Brigadier General John Douglass Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Before the Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Technology Committee on Science, Space, and Technology United States House of Representatives on Air Force Domestic Technology Transfer June 1, 1989 Good morning, Mr. Chairman. The Air Force and I thank you for this opportunity to appear before your committee in order to describe the Air Force domestic technology transfer program. As you know, Mr. Chairman, Air Force research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) is dedicated to national securityrelated research and development (R&D) efforts. We recognize in addition that a number of R&D programs we sponsor have the potential of being of value to the commercial sector of the United States economy. We are proud of our record of seeing the R&D efforts that we sponsor find their way successfully into the commercial marketplace. A very notable example is the use of laser technology in the fields of medicine and production processes. On the other side of the coin, however, since our research is related to national security, there some R&D efforts must be controlled to prevent their exploitation by potential adversaries. with increasing transfer of Air Force technology comes a corresponding increase in the risk that an adversary will be able to capitalize on the availability of such defense-related technol ogy. Adversaries may be able to "leapfrog" our R&D efforts and make gains in warfighting capability in a relatively fast, low cost, and low risk fashion. However, while this is a complicating factor, it is not a "show stopper." |