SUMMARY OF DEFENSE RDT&E PROGRAMS - FY 82

Dr. COOPER. This was the Carter request, and the bottom line is that there are some 731 programs, R. & D. programs, and in total they sum to about $19.8 billion, roughly 10 percent of the overall defense budget. Just as a rough figure, remember R. & D. is approximately 10 percent of the budget.

The Reagan amendment will add about $2 billion to that $19.8 billion, to bring it up to roughly $21.7 billion, I believe it is. I think it's about $1.9 billion precisely.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Where are they putting the emphasis for that $2 billion increase?

Dr. COOPER. I'm glad you asked that. A lot of it's cats and dogs, Mr. Mollohan, to try to just accelerate ongoing programs. But there are some thrusts that they're going to pursue. One is a bomber. There's an add-on in fiscal year 1982 of $302 million. There was nothing in the Carter budget for that. So there's a very big ticket item in the Air Force.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Can that be interpreted as a reluctance to go forward with the B-1?

Dr. COOPER. No. As Secretary Weinberger said yesterday, they are required to report back to the Congress on March 15 on what their plan is for a bomber. He said with the new administration coming in they're going to give us a preliminary report, which I'm sure won't say too much, but that he will be back to us on June 1 with what their recommended approach is. It could be B-1; it could be high technology; or some combination.

But there is $302 million added to Carter's budget and I believe it's around $2.1 billion in procurement. So they definitely are going to do something.

They are also going to accelerate our efforts in BMD, ballistic missile defense. There's an add-on there of some $90 million.

They're going to up our efforts in defensive measures for chemical warfare and biological warfare.

They plan to accelerate the infantry fighting vehicle system. That's about $50 million.

They're going forward with a new destroyer, guided missile destroyer, the DDG-X, which was not in the Carter budget.

Mr. Davis, I think there is money in there-some $34 millionfor the extremely low frequency communications program, and I think what they are going to propose-they haven't done it yet-is the two-site system, about 130 miles of antenna in Michigan and some 28 miles or so in Wisconsin. As you all know, that's been a very controversial issue. It's been on the back burners for the last couple of years. Last year Congress told them to get on with it and make a decision, and I think they will. I think that's what they're going to do. But we won't know that for another month or so. Mr. DAVIS. Tom, could you run through real briefly as to the importance of that?

Dr. COOPER. Of ELF?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes.

Dr. COOPER. I think the fundamental problem we have with the sea-based leg of our strategic triad is command, control and communications. The techniques that we use today to communicate with our submarine all in some way require that that submarine either he himself come up near the surface or, in fact, stick an antenna of some sort up out through the surface, or tow a long wire within a few feet of the surface.

Basically, what happens in using conventional techniques of communication is the seawater scatters and absorbs it. If you get down below a couple of feet there is no penetration, so it's very difficult to communicate with the submarine.

The Navy feels, and I think that Tony and I both agree, that there is a potential vulnerability there at some time in the future. where the Soviets might capitalize on that, and it very much constrains the submarine's ability to run deep and operate free of surface constraints.

What ELF would do-and ELF stands for extremely low frequency communications, and that's exactly what it is-it's like beating a drum very slowly, the old Morse code sort of thing, rap, rap, rap. You're getting on the order of a bit of information per minute, and it takes five bits of information-that's computer jargon, a bit-to make a letter. So you're talking about 5 minutes to tap out one letter. You're not going to be communicating at high data rates.

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But because of the physics of extremely low frequency propagation it will penetrate to several hundred feet into the ocean, and I think you can see that will allow you to take that antenna that's now within a couple of feet of the surface and put it down, [deleted] and the submarine, of course, could operate even deeper.

Mr. WHITE. Is that a directed pulse?

Dr. COOPER. Continuous. It's literally just like hitting a drum. Mr. WHITE. I mean is it directed toward an area?

Dr. COOPER. It's diffused. It goes out in all directions. One site would cover a good portion of both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Mr. DAVIS. Tom, I don't want to take the time today because we'll probably have an opportunity to get to it later on, and, as you know, it will be in my congressional district.

Dr. COOPER. Absolutely.

Mr. DAVIS. It's extremely controversial. Our people are not in favor of it at all, for a number of reasons.

But if the system is so important how come this committee has never gone along and said OK on this system? It's been years. The ELF facility was proposed in December, what, 2 years ago?

Dr. COOPER. Yes; it's been a political football, Mr. Davis.

The thing that this committee took objection to several years ago was not the small system. In fact, the committee has been trying to push the Navy toward starting out with a small system.

I can go back to a report that Mr. Mollohan was involved in as chairman of the C3 panel back in 1977, where that panel recommended that rather than go forward with the Seafarer system, which involved some 2,000 miles of antenna, the Navy should start with a very small system. Mr. Daniel was also on that panel. The panel said, "Why don't you start out with a small system and use it as a bell ringer? You won't have all the data rate that you would like to have." The data rate is a function of how big the system is. The bigger the system is the faster the data rate. "So wouldn't it be handy just to be able to put a continuous signal in the water and allow the submarine to simply listen. If for any reason that signal is broken he could come up and take his communications by more conventional means." That was the panel's recommendation, and that is the thrust that this committee has taken for about the last 4 years. Quite frankly, every time we got to conference with the Senate, if we had money in they would have it out, and if we had the money out they would have it in, and we really couldn't come to grips with the problem. So what the conferees finally did is they put the monkey on the President's back and said, "Mr. President, if you think this system is really needed, you tell us that it's in the national interest, and you tell the Congress where it should be located."

We couldn't find a site for it. When somebody would suggest that it go in Wisconsin the people in Wisconsin would get upset; when they would say that it should go in Michigan the people in Michigan would get upset.

Mr. WHITE. We wanted it down in our area, but they said it wouldn't work there.

Mr. BATTISTA. You need the geological structure to support it. It can only go in a select number of places.

Mr. DAVIS. As you know, my opposition isn't environmental, it's not cost, it's not health. I just am not convinced that it's the best system. You still have the situation where the submarine, under its normal course of doing business, cannot receive the ELF communications. It has to slow down. It does have to come up toward the surface, and that was the GAO's objection.

Mr. BATTISTA. Mr. Davis, there's one other point you might consider, and that is if you're going to develop the system as a bell ringer it is useful. It does enhance the survivability of the submarine. But it doesn't have to go on two sites. In fact, you can have a bell ringing capability at the Clam Lake facility by adding additional antenna within the confines of the existing reservation there.

Mr. DAVIS. That's an interesting point.

How much would you have to add to the antennas at Clam Lake? Mr. BATTISTA. We had those numbers from GTE-Sylvania, who was the contractor about 3 or 4 years ago.

Tom, do you remember?

Mr. DAVIS. Would you get those for me? I don't have to have them right now.

Dr. COOPER. There is one problem in doing that. You could do that, by the way, but if you did that you would have to increase the amperage, the amount of current, that you're sending through the antenna there, and it would require an entirely new environmental impact statement, and that's the prime reason that the Navy is opting for the two-site system right now as the EIS is done for that system.

Mr. BATTISTA. But there is one thing to add to that too. That is that the Navy can operate that system at [deleted] amps as an R. & D. facility. So in other words, if they want to continue on as a test facility and then if some day the war started I'm sure the people in Wisconsin wouldn't object to our using it as an operational system.

So there are avenues that could be explored, and that's the kind of information you should get.

Mr. McDONALD. On that point on the ELF system, I was, like Mr. Davis, recently led to believe that there were a lot of technical problems and what you're going to get out is not going to equal what you're going to put in, and possibly we'd better go to a bluegreen laser and all other type things instead. I was led to believe, even though I was a big initial supporter of it, that really perhaps it was not going to fit the bill that we needed after all.

Mr. BATTISTA. You're right, Mr. McDonald. Nothing really fits the bill in its entirety. In the area of command, control and communications we are weak today, weaker than the Soviets, and it's very difficult to make C3, command, control and communications, hard, hard enough to sustain a first attack.

What you have to count on is redundancy. So if your VHF systems, for example, are jammed and you have the ELF bell ringer that's an option that is very desirable. Blue-green comes into play. Blue-green has its drawbacks, weather limitations. But if you deploy all of these systems, in hopes of getting redundancy, overlap, they you are far ahead of the power curve. Now, you have to

establish whether or not you have the right number of dollars to do all these things. ELF is, I would guess, a billion dollars, Tom? Dr. COOPER. Right now they're estimating around $400 million. I think the drawback, Mr. McDonald, is that when we first were talking about the Seafarer system, back about 5 years ago, they were talking then roughly [deleted] of information. And again, five bits make a letter. Right now with the present system they're talking about a [deleted] way down, and the only way you will be able to use this system is with a codebook. You will tap out A, B, C, and the commander will go to the codebook and look up A, B, C. You won't be able to say "Good morning. How's everything going?" There's just not enough information flow right there.

Mr. BATTISTA. It would be a week later if you did.

Mr. McDONALD. This is a sidelight on the problem of command and control in the Navy. I believe over in the Seapower Subcommittee, just recently there was a briefing on this point, and Mr. Mollohan and I brought up a point with regard to our deficiency as compared to the Soviet's, and the Navy commanmders that we had briefing us then didn't seem to be too upset about that. They said, "Oh, no, that's different. They rely upon a heavy centralized command. We teach our people to operate independently, and that centralized command is not that important, so we don't really need it."

Mr. BATTISTA. Mr. McDonald, just before you came to the subcommittee-I guess you came with the advent of Dr. Perry, I believe.

Mr. McDONALD. I came in 1975.

Mr. BATTISTA. 1975. OK. Dr. Currie was here. Perhaps you remember the presentation where I asked how we stacked up against the Soviets in terms of C3 relative to the exercise they had just conducted that year. It was called the Okeon-Ocean exercise in 1975, and Dr. Currie at that time responded that we were at least a decade behind the Soviets.

Now, you can find all kinds of fault with Soviet C3, that fact that it is centralized, although they do have provisions to do what they call [deleted] to get around different bottlenecks. I'm not trying to allege that the Soviet are 10 feet tall. I'm saying that they're prety darn good. And we are spending $6 billion a year, and we're unable to do what they're doing, and I think that relates to poor management, the fact that in the C3 area the money is all over the lot, the responsiblity is all over the lot, and as a consequence we're spending money and not getting the right kind of command, control and communications. That's an issue that I believe you have to develop this year.

Mr. WHITE. Tony, are the subs able to get signals, information, from satellites?

Mr. BATTISTA. Yes.

Dr. COOPER. Yes. In order to do that though, that's a very high frequency form of communication, they have to stick their antenna up above the surface of the water. Quite literally, as soon as they do that if there's a Soviet ship anywhere in the vicinity, or an aircraft, they can pick that up. So that's the problem. But yes, they get very high data rate. They don't have to leave it up very long, a