service and the committee wish you the best of luck in your future here and give us a chance to touch on a number of questions one of my greatest concerns is how to integrate the missile defense agency into the normal defense planning process our armed services committee voice is concerned last summer when former vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff released a memo that proposed moving m d a back under the oversight of the joint requirements oversight council jay rock the senior d o d body responsible for validating military requirements this was a clear signal that real concerns exist among senior military leadership about current department practices with regard to missile defense to date however there has been no action on the vice she's recommendation secretary and i understand a department of dallas a new body last year the missile defense executive board or m dab to ensure that m d s plans are better integrated with the o d efforts as the chair of  i'm interested in hearing from you about the activities of the board and specifically how and dad is addressing the concerns raised by rock last year i continue to believe that we should focus greater attention i countering short medium range missile threat i was just her earlier this year when m d a revealed a fiscal year two thousand and budget request that it planned to delay deployment of the sad fire units three and four for supposedly budgetary reasons i and other members of the subcommittee including mr ray as well this was a bad decision and raise our concerns with senior d o t officials the department has since reversed course and put that far in its three and four back in the original schedule i welcome this decision but i continue to worry it resources within m d a are not properly focused on countering short and medium range threats to two thousand and seven joy capabilities mixed dudie two sponsored by the u s strategic command concluded that combatant commanders require a at a minimum twice as many standard m three and set interceptors as are currently planned over the next five years d o t plan to spend over forty six billion dollars on missile defense given this large investment i believe the department has ample resources to ensure that our combat ant commanders have sufficient interceptor him and tori to meet their minimum more fighting requirements in the area of missile defense testing n d a had some significant results last year including a successful intercept with the ground based midcourse defense system and several successful sad and aegis b m d intercept tests as an advocate of rigorous testing i congratulate the teams who entered engineer these successes i also understand the lack of affordable reliable targets of slowing down m d a the overall testing program secretary young and general obering i believe the department in m d a must place a higher priority on fixing m d a's targets program and today i would like to hear your plans for doing that we also need to improve testing of the ground based midcourse defense or d m v system for the second year in a row the director of operational testing and evaluation has said and i quote g m t flight testing to date is not sufficient to provide a high level of statistical confidence in its limited capabilities dr mcquary it is critical that this subcommittee hear your thoughts what needs to be done from a testing perspective to improve our confidence in the g m t system finally let me say a few brief words regarding the proposed missile defense sites in poland and the czech republic i welcome nato sic knowledge meant of the contribution that the long range interceptor si could make to alliance security last year or to the ministration to work to this and i was initially told by administration officials that it was too hard to get nato on board so i'm encouraged to see that the administration changed course in may cooperation with nato cornerstone of its missile defense proposal i believe nato and the united states must do more to address to existing short and medium range threats to europe southern flank i would like to hear the department's plans in this area with that i would like to thank the witnesses once more for your testimony here today and i look forward to hearing it we are bound to have votes in the next half an hour we would have two votes that would take approximately a half an hour what we'd like to do is go to my great friend and ranking member mr everett for any comments he may have and then try to move to your testimony and if you can limit it to best you can and then we could take a vote at the fifteen minute bell that means we go in fifteen minutes so we have probably at least general this may be your last appearance before this committee thank you for your strong leadership regulations on your retirement maybe you can join me down home in the sweet l missiles the bottom line is that short medium and long range various continue to grow in missile peripheral vision is a real concern to the intelligence community now and is not the time to slow down the development and feeling of missile defense elements we meeting combatant commanders requirements always striking the right balance between near term capabilities and partnering for the future can you also provide your views on how the department manages the transition and i thank the distinguished ranking member for his partnership and his hard work and flattered by is right mission and secretary young this is your first time parents before the subcommittee very happy to see you if you as now oversight and funding of missile defense programs was a concern of the congress i believe the distance for mechanics through this oversight of these programs is before i became an secretary of acquisition of defense for acquisition technology and logistics through the creation of a missile defense executive board or as you noted this board has met six times during my tenure i intend to use this board to provide all stakeholders with visibility into missile defense agency programs and a voice in the agenc plan also expect to review the execution of missile defense programs as required while also continuing to conduct quarterly i believe these processes will ensure that there is appropriate independent oversight of missile defen programs the board recently reviewed business management rules for the missile defense agency the rules to outline roles and procedures guiding program management testing and budgeting for missile defense program these business rules combined with existing congressional direction will guide the development of the department's fiscal year two thousand and ten budget these discussions should not obscure our shared goal of delivering missile defense capability for the nation i believe the general obering in the m d a team have made very good progress in this area recent successful testing has proven that m d a and our industry partners have met the daunting technical challenge of hitting missiles with missiles m d s coordination with military services critical delivering building capability and i can tell you i believe these processes are also works well indeed as a navy acquisition executive i worked with them to take the steps to transfer the u s s lake erie the m d a ship that made the satellite shot and to drive of missiles for c b s sea based missile defense capability the combatant commanders services and m d a must now we all work together on delivering deploying systems to achieve greater operational capability on hansing these systems to address the evolution of the threat report that i've already provided the committee which you touch upon when i mention five things provide my current assessment of the capability to be m d s second to discuss a factor that limited my ability to be able to provide a thorough assessment as required by the fiscal year two thousand six third i discussed the sufficiency inadequacy of the b m b s test evaluation program during the last year and fourth i provide a review of the implementation of the d o t any recommendations made to the missile defense agency and finally i described how the missile defense agency is a pathfinder in the implementation section two thirty one language of the in the fiscal year two thousand and seven report i will just touch upon the one that you specifically mentioned in your letter to me if i may and that recommendation of eight in two thousand and six and six of these recommendations still remain open with the others being closed and finally there are two new recommendations made in two thousand and seven these are all open at that time and from this i would conclude that we're family for their significant support of your hard work and sacrifice and to the men and women that work with you and for you committee wants to say just in their place of thanks to you for their hard work we know that you are very much at the  point of many very significant scientific and r n d endeavors and we want to congratulate all of those people for their hard work and force us thank you very much  for two thousand and nine we're requesting nine point three billion dollars i want to point out that approximately seventy five percent of that is for near term capabilities and with the remainder budgeted for future capabilities that we think are prudent to be able to address an range defenses coupled with shorter range nato defenses in our european theater but to give you a very very precinct short background for the request and let me just say that two thousand and seven was the best year we've ever had in missile defense and it caps a lot of hard effort by thousands of men and women around the country we have now employed more than about two dozen interceptors between alaska and california we've modified seventeen ships ships twelve of which are engaged capable of launching the sea based intercept and realistic test program with the ten of ten successful intercepts in two thousand and seven we are now up to a record of thirty four forty two successful hit kill intercepts since two thousand and one we have not had a major system failure in our flight test program now in over three years and of course to two things highlighted this one was the success of our allied participate and their flight test off the coast of the y in december of which we in the japanese are extremely proud and while it was not a test of our missile defense capability by any stretch we were able to modify our sea based element to do the satellite shoot down in february with just six weeks notice to be able to accomplish that now all of that i've outlined of course is the foundation that we need to continue these past several years while we were able to move this capability out so very quickly did nontraditional defense acquisition approach that we've employed is that the foundation and at the bottom of this capability some of the oversight board said you mentioned the miss face executive board for example that was our idea basically to come up with this to enhance the oversight by the department because we did believe that our maturity was getting to the point where we need to be able to rapidly integrate with the other systems in the department and i believe that that is the that was the reason why we proposed that in the detector except for that but in closing i just want to say thank you again for the great support and i was looking forward to your questions thank you very much sir i also see th your comprehensive testimony was very very good to read if you could summarize it thank you madam chairman congressman everett distinguished panel members thank you and thank you on behalf of the men and women who operate the system  uses advocate representative as that advocate i can report to you that the war fighters involvement in the development process is growing i outlined the wall fighter involvement program to you last year during testimony that continues to mature congressman ever to answer your question about seeking additional requirements from from commanders for the future development of the system we do that that's part of our mission day in and day out to work with all of the commanders across the globe to determine what's needed next in the far term as far as testing the operators remain fully engaged in testing we have operators that fit the console's we develop test objectives we're deeply involved with a when it comes to the testing program the flight test attract most of the attention but they're a ground test behind those flight tests that we're deeply involved with and we gain many insights into how to use that system i think we save a lot of money on the ground test before we get to flight test to correct problems that we find the operational commanders clearly recognize the threat that we face today when it comes to the short range and medium range missiles that we can't meet all of the combatant commanders needs today but we remain in close coordination with the missile defense agency to ensure that the investment portfolio addresses the needs for the near term as well as the mid term i think that we must maintain a balanced investment portfolio to stay ahead of the threat although we understand the inventories of the short and medium range missiles a significant we can't lose sight of the qualitative improvements nations are making in their ballistic missile ability our investments for both the near and mid term must be informed by those qualitative investment madam chairman fellow panel members thank you again for the opportunity i look forward to your questions thank you very much general campbell  secretary young i understand that there are a number of factors contributing to the august two thousand and seven memo by admiral giambastiani that i mentioned in my opening statement that these factors included a need to provide the j rock with a larger voice in validating missile defense requirements ensuring that n d s activities are fully integrated with overall d o d era missile defense efforts and provide the military services a proper voice in planning and programming for the transition transfer of capabilities from and to the services do you believe that the concerns raised by the director are legitimate first question second you talked a little bit in your your comments about the m dab and you've had six meetings and that you're moving forward on these business plans best practices i would assume part of it so you have a plan to address what these concerns were what are the metrics you're going to have in place to determine the the effectiveness of the m deb and what kind of transparency can we have on that i think the metrics will be but the degree of support for the m d members who are very senior represented services and in their sense that we go through the programs agree that the current state of execution of programs is good reach agreement with m d a on a proper recommendation for th budget so i think some of the issues you raise and some joint capability make study and can recommend that the department as a whole and complete and reason we prioritize package of recommendations the budget  you know those are not less measurable you know it's not cost and schedule performance although i would agree that those are metrics i intend to look at them for individual programs so i want to look at a detail level status of program execution at a higher level we need to build a quality budget that we can defend very well for you those are some obering mentioned that from his side of it he was pushing to have a body like and created jay rock was pulling from their side to have a body like end up created so now we have them dead do you think that it is is the final product of what we need to have all of these different pieces put together have have you nailed it on the first try i guess our concern is that we do we were pushing  to from our own side saying let's have something but we don't have transparency to and technically obviously we have you sitting in front of us right now and i'm concerned that we do have that kind of transparency that we do understand how things are going how do we measure in the six meetings that you've had so if you could just give us a little bit more kind of sense for where you think it's going i hope i can  your concerns to the or me there will not be transparency issues between the department and the congress on the things you know is to reduce the president's budget or can i won't be as easy able to talk about that budget into a budget that's right but for the other issues like program execution whatever is briefed to the embedded in terms of the status of programs and their cost performance be prepared for that we briefed to the congress also and we these business rules are being reviewed the department presented to the deputy secretary says those business rules are done we will provide congress so other than the things that the president has approved i believe you will have visibility just as when i we did not have long range coverage and we knew that they were developing longer and longer range weapons we've seen that just in the past year or so we looked at what were the alternatives we evaluated the g m b the g p s we evaluated the we evaluated the same three block one which is the missile that would be available in about the two thousand and ten timeframe and all of the shows there is not a capability against a longer range weapons greater than four thousand kilometers three to four thousand kilometers other than the g anywhere near the time frame but the closest thing that comes to that would be the s m three block two a which is a twenty one age sea based missile that will not be available to twenty fifteen or beyond and so we looked at all of those and that's how we decided on the g i the reason we decided upon the ten is is really related to the earlier alice we looked at what we thought the iranians would be capable of producing in the time frame twenty fifteen in that time frame twenty sixteen around their intent was a reasonable number to provide persistent twenty four hour seven day week of ridge for our european partners are deployed forces allies and friends and i get asked often what if you're wrong what if they develop twice that many or whatever our answer is that that would provide the initial protection  need to search that for the future that's we would bring the sea based twenty one inch missile because it would be available by then in the latter part of the decade and so that was our concept we look at the cost implications and i go back up that does not have a capability against the long range weapons to be able to be any substantive definitive footprint we look at the cost implications and also the g p s were the most cost effective solution to that if we were to go to strictly with a sea based twenty one inch as the the overall solution we would require at least for ship stations to provide the same definitive coverage with about two to three ships per station that was more costly and it also was something the navy's not very interested in doing and is tying up that level of ship done is a complete evaluation of all the data and so subsequent to have a look at where we are now our conclusions would not be any different than what they were in the report at the time in which we had limited but enough quick the context the activities have occurred first of all we felt that we were we had a requirement process that was too much too variable otherwise we were trying to get each target each class or type of target to do too much  based on the various programming put and that that requirement variability was driving up the cost of driving some of the delays in the target program and frankly we had to meet experienced in terms of management on the government side and we also had to make spirit in terms of management  contractor so what we have done to address this now is that first of all we have instituted a very disciplined requirements process that is controlled by third party the engineering chief dish and we change the management on the government side of the contractors change the management on the contractor side and we may need help from the committee and the own request with respect or some funding us support in the targets program that that we can supply for the record but that's that's what we think will stabilize this process i often get asked oh why don't we have three or four or five targets that we could just pull off the shelf and go far well what would be useful is to have an extra target and we were processing through preparing for flight for that matter it's good to have an extra interceptor and we're planning to do that is a truth that that approach it doesn't do us much good though to have four four five targets on the shelf if we get a failure in flight just pull another one out and launch because we have to go understand what failed in that target  before you go launch another one and usually that is that is not the driving factor therefore in our test program so you're green with that yes sir i do i think i think it is very very important and highly complex systems such as to that that would be problematic of course we we like to see the test and ensure that they happen on schedule so that we can do the military utility assessment to alert the combatant commanders to the capability of the system they're about to receive so keeping  can you just give the media some consideration of what the impact targets failures have on your ability to evaluate the test program and what that might mean you know for for for that where you're testing programs that you know you're out or two years out will sort if you have a failure and there's a need to repeat the test as a result of that failure that occurred then that obviously slows things down in terms of gathering information a more important issue for us though is the development of the modeling and simulation and we may get to that in later discussion because we really feel strongly that if we have high quality high fidelity modeling simulation which is being now and which we have limited information and if i may just put it in the context if we're dealing with statistics and and this is a lot more complicated issue than just a simple mathematical equations associated with statistics but if you're looking at a purely from a statistical standpoint if you want to prove that you have a ninety percent probability of having a mission success with a conference level of eighty percent you never get to one hundred percent need to run twenty one identical tests in order and they need to be successful in order to prove that so very quickly you can conclude with a system is complicated is it m d a is it which is has a huge battle space in which to operate in many different scenarios with targets and so forth that it would be very difficult to ever afford to do testing to the level that one would need to do in order to gain a statistical level of confidence what's there however if we develop high quality models and simulation and use the testing it is done to prove that those models and simulation actually do represent the way the system performs then we can use the computer if you will to do many many many runs so you can explore battle space after battle space and very parameters such as missile performance and engagement scenarios and so forth in a given area and so that's why we keep saying it is so important to have modeling and simulation as an adjunct to the test program do we need certain do we need a certain number of live tests  the real situation will be have companies work that is not what i'm saying at all but certain numbers and certain kinds certain numbers in certain kinds and we would certainly expect as the models and simulation are proven to be affective in the way that they operate we would expect to continue as we've been doing validated what are the anchor points that we're going to demonstrate in this test as relates to the objectives and so he's exactly right and also to your point we we have models in sales that we use today we used to predict fly out that's how we did the satellite shoot down frankly it was a model that showed what our success rate would be and so we have confidence of that but we have to make sure we go through this very exhaustive occasion validation accreditation process so what we've done is we've laid out which test we're committee for your great service to the country and i can only say to you that we're all very grateful that you decided to come by our way generations will be i believe have a have better lives and  security because you did what you did with your general being i guess i wanted to explore two key statements that you and general campbell made in your opening remarks indicated that you're using a seventy five twenty five  approach to balance investments in near term elements versus far term elements general campbell stated it is ballistic missiles obviously are growing in quantity and they're also growing and that that is a consideration needs to inform any development efforts that we make are we are we too focused on providing terminal phase defense at the expense of are we risking getting behind the eight ball here a little bit  multiple warheads or countermeasures sir for me i believe that the twenty five and twenty five mix is appropriate for now because this is about what you would expect when you when you had a long term research develop program that was much the other way for so many years as we start producing capability that the war fighters want you're going to see this way in toward the near term capability so that's probably appropriate if you look out over the entire fi those numbers become more like sixty percent near term forty percent longer term as you also would expect that we want to make sure we maintain these long term capabilities but to reinforce what joe campbell said we cannot we cannot sit on our laurels so to speak now because we can handle for example we could handle what we would anticipate in terms of countermeasures for countries like iran or north korea today but we cannot handle much more complex ones and in order to do that we're going to have to have these more advanced capabilities things like birth and death tracking with a space tracking and surveillance system multiple kill capability for each interceptors as represented by our in katie program and as you say the ultimate in trying to defeat a count of measures to shoot it down in the boost phase before it has the ability to do any of that and we have the two programs k i may be able to do that so that is i do share the concern that we don't get so overly focused on the near term that we forget the long term in fact if we had done that in the mid ninety's we would not have had a system to turn on in two thousand and six when the north koreans were doing their thing because that was considered a long range program at that time this is a general bring the president's budget prudent that as we look to the future we have some modicum of a space based layer to the far future because we're we're a space faring nation and being able to to have that we think would be very useful now the specific instant ten million dollars that i am asking for this year is precisely to basically inform the debate about whether we do that or not we have big questions about this case for example going to space is very expensive with respect to weight so can we get lightweight components and where are we in the state of the art to be able to do that to come in a controlled about a management the communications architecture what would that look like for something like this and what i mean modest i'm talking about just  would be able to cover potential emerging threats that we cannot cover today and it would give us the flexibility to do that in the future without continuing to populate the world with silos or with fixed radars or lambaste or even seafaring radars for that matter  it's the more cost effective way in the long term but we need to inform the debate so to me it is extremely modest amount to try to explore the experimentation of that but it is not a space based interceptor program of itself we're not advocating for that at this point  a challenge technologically and i think it's a it's a critical element right now consists of the most skilled vehicle consists of a dual path approach to contractors pursuing really very different technical designs what is the benefit and affordability of dual path approach and one of the technical and operational risks associated with m t v and i guess that's my last question here ok sir first of all having the ability to destroy more than one credible object when you go into the future and twenty fifteen and beyond timeframe is going to be in very very important because of the countermeasures decoys what i just talked about this capability is going to be not only important for our land based interceptors for also our sea based interceptors because we know that these capabilities are not exclusive to just a long range missiles they are they can be deployed even on short range missiles so we need that capability i thought it would be prudent to pursue an acquisition strategy in which we had an ongoing type of competition to call it that between two suppliers and if you look at the population in the force structure that we may be looking at for missile defense in the future it would support that type of an approach when we program immediately so there's there's this benefit in being able to have an alternative as we move through the government so we takes a very prudent thing to do we did this before on our on our missile on the g b i we had two versions if you remember of our plea as a matter of policy i've asked across the department that we do competitive prototyping at these early stages where we have substantial risk challenging requirements because we have frequently found it's been noted by other people that we go into the later stages of development with a mature technology and we find ourselves with problems in terms of cost and schedule so i believe it is critical for all the reasons general obering cited and really hope the congress to work with us to support that it's going to give us a better chance ironically to finish delivering the product with more confidence in short amounts of time and i think actually for less cost because we did the right work up front in a competitive environment at a point where we were spending at lower rates but learning the technical lessons we can't afford to learn in the final design stages thank you frank out of south carolina below bring you've been a pleasure to work with and you have every right to feel proud of what prove its operational capability well sir i would say that probably the s m s m three one b is probably the i mean one is probably the most mature but the g b i is certainly right there are on it's two thousand and seven we also had not intercept flights earlier than that as well and it has performed very well in the latest test that we did in september we flew a threat representative target i did not have countermeasures but i'll address that in a second  across a operational radar in california and we intercepted it with an operation configured interceptor it was launched by soldiers from colorado springs so using operational far control software hardware and we we use this f radar combination for that so we think that that goes a long way to giving us more more more capa so we do have even even more capability as i said i'm comfortable and i'm confident that we have the operational system we believe as i mentioned earlier statement that that's extremely important as we move in the future because what that allows us to do there are things other than countermeasures that an enemy can do in that mid course region and typically that's the region that can be uncovered by ground based radar is for a long period of time if we had a space based space tracking into valence system that provides the same procedure to track that we get from a grab a sensor we could close those gaps so we could provide what we call berth with that tracking and that would help us address that type of gap in our in our system today complimentary or competitive in the boost phase they would be competitive and that's why we want to have alternatives in fact we created a k i program as an alternative to the a d l in the boost phase and defense science board recommendation from capability but clearly for the boost phase we have the for example the a p l if it is successful and if it is operationally affordable which we will go through a period to determine that that would be to the boost phase defense of choice because it has country that i will not name here but we do have at least one country that is fairly well down that path in terms of requesting the authority to to buy that ticket already and i personally believe that for many countries as we we are very serious about this or we go through a very exhaustive process on number one what technologies we feel comfortable being able to make available to our allies and also what other steps we can take to make sure that any technology that we do not feel comfortable are not being able to be exploited by fire the country so we we have a very exhaustive process that we go through for the in fact this is true beyond missile defense and we actually would like to engage in a discussion with the congress on ways we can have the customers help support engineering in those features where we think they don't need as much capabilities we have and we need to protect our technology so they don't come at the expense of the u taxpayer u s capability and there ought to be ways to do that and it's it's become more important to have some of those funds as it costs more to engineer those features or customize them for an ally who wants to buy equipment were i'm not sure i understand your question sir but we tend to keep that production line ongoing i mean we just because we're going to deliver the first forfar unit and i want to go back again to my opening statement i'm responsible for development additional fielding the the joint staff and working through the process that we've talked about the force structure determination to be made by the department and then we will respond to those for structure determination so right now the jo capabilities mix study that was accomplished by a strike called of the joint staff that was recently approved by the way by the j rock asked for us to double the production of fat and the double the production of the s in three and we intend to do that in our studies such as the joint capabilities make study to it's not clear that the department has done a comprehensive analysis or has a process in place to determine future missile defense force structure requirements and stead things are being done in an ad hoc manner and finally how will d o d balance near term and midterm combat in requirements to get more assets into the field against development plans for longer term needs and who is making these decisions and the services  as the primary force advocate for missile defense it's your right to ask and i think we are we will have to tell you these are going to happen process but i believe these are the processes that will help addicts define the war funding requirements and let the m dad work to see how m d a addresses those war funding requirements and makes trades within its budget because we'll always be resource constrained but prioritize the use of m d s budget to get what the operational forces demand financially and that's level today as you probably understand m d a has used r and d funds to buy and feel the initial evidence to make the urgent capability and we're on a path i believe to continue that process until we can  get agreed transition points for the services to take over but even at some of those transition points because it needs to maintain can get figuration control of complex systems we are considering an option that would budget of systems with defense wide money by the systems and sustain the systems with defense wide money that money being transferred to the services of execution to maintain those systems the alternative model that has the services budget is missile defense in the competition with lots of other assets and people the leadership of the farm and i have not been prepared to make that choice until we get much more mature with missile defense fighter involvement program which again is maturing but it is it is a way to shape what does on behalf of the war fighter and then we adjust our force structure accordingly we've had the joint capabilities next study we do the military utility assessment that shapes the activities within the missile defense agency we are doing a study on the deployment of the forward based xpand radars little little shape force structure and how we employ those assets  we have a transition and transfer a process that's maturing within the department on how we hand those systems over so we better understand what does it take to run that system in terms of manpower as well as money resources for operational and support cost and we play in the global force management process within the department figuring out how many assets need to go into which combatant command and if there are factual it falls s i think that we've kind of hit on the head of the problem that i perceived i think many many members perceive for a long time as to why we can't integrate missile defense into the team to the force structure across the platform specific leave the army and the navy and others and it's partly because they don't see the money and it's very difficult and i think everybody saying i'd like one of them i'd like one of them but if you have to go find the money to acquire one of them they don't and they haven't and that's on a sustainable situation for us  i think what we would like is to try to peel the onion on that a little bit further with you over the next couple of weeks because we we don't see that this is getting resolved quickly enough and that not enough is being done to drive these systems down into the services and to create enough demand inside the services for the capability and a sense that they can buy them without finding in my yeah  i think you're right and i think i can make a lot of different i hate it when i'm right but there are also some other angles to that discussion services will ask for significant amounts of equipment when they think defense wide funds will pay for or we even when they take over and this is not unique to missile defense in some cases they will have demands for aircraft or ships or other things and bring budgets for don't always do that underfund what might be needed to see if there is always the money or additional money or that's how the last almost twenty five c seventeen have been procured by the way so you understand the issue very well i think to get in you know i these rules have not been voiced by secretary money yet but i do believe they're consistent with his thinking is we need to deliver a set of missile defense capability and to make sure it isn't constantly part of period this is going to get the minimum base set of capabilities and give the whole of the department i hope will realize some of your hopes the m d m every service can see and the vice chairman is part of it we will make sure that we are driven to by the most urgent sense of operational capability to get him in the field and i had one comment general greenwood want to add this comment do better than i would but in that process they do have a plan to bring the services on to the almost transition like teams but the teams as they move to the more mature stages of production and fielding and have service people on those teams and have those service people begin to take the leadership ro management model that surgery i just reflected on but what's what the thing if you if you will our critical portion of this is that as we mature and deliver these capabilities and as the services begin operations and maintenance then what wiring to support is that we're going to take a be held in a transition period to determine whether or not we take all the data lessons learned from our very robust testing and determine what the second terror aircraft or the second tail number would look that timeframe if they're both successful i wouldn't suspect we'll go through this transition period on a b l k i would probably end up becoming our mid course mobile capability for the future and that's why i think that we will continue that program as well  carried interceptor to be able to accomplish it to stage mission it would be not the optimum in terms of range or in terms of coverage but it would give us a capability that could be considered as an alternative and that frankly other than  models and simulations as i understand in general you said september zero nine will have model simulations ready to be validated or are you expect that they would need validation they would be validated developmental in nature demonstrated some degree many of the functions required for system effectiveness and a question for you on the system effectiveness i have more of a question for you in the fact that you call it developmental in nature and and we're hearing as well as well i mean how should we look at that we developmental in nature it has the functions required for system effectiveness but we're already now looking at maybe if a b l at the down selected a b l already looking at a follow on to something that we really haven't used physically although it's it has a functions or system effectiveness give it how should i look at that as an authorizer trying to make decisions on those moves we discovered this by the way and as we were going through our european site discussions with several nations early on several of those nations indicated to us that if it were not fixed if it were mobile they would be very interested in being able to host it and that's what sparked the discussion about having this option for the war fighters and for the nation and for allies to be able to to to use so it is something that we believe is viable is something that we think is an option that we'd like to keep in the program for them as opposed to just discarding yes from from my perspective and we've had a little bit discussion about the from my perspective it still seems more conceptual than than viable and maybe viable more conceptual and i guess and that gets back korean how do we how do we test that migration of from a boost phase two to a mid course to an effective tool as a as a mid course intercept able to play steady in poland because the battle space limitations in european theater ok otherwise we need to get the kill vehicle out there and quickly deploy more more quickly than we would be allowed to with three stages so we have to remove that third stage to be able to do that if we had a type of capability that had very except a faster separation in those first stages that would that would fit the course mission very well and there's other applications for that so it's not that we throwing away those boosters setbacks and many delays prior to that but since november two thousand and four the program has made tremendous progress that's where the first flight in the in the megawatt bias laser and also in december of that years when she first flight  of the heavily modified some forty seven now what they have done to date last year they completed their low power systems integration test and what we did there is first of all we we took the aircraft we flew the three we there's the lasers on the aircraft there's a tracking laser there's an atmospheric compensation laser and then there's the megawatt class laser that actually destroys a missile last year we flew the tracking laser and the atmospheric compensation laser times in a seven forty seven fuselage egbert on the ground and we achieve an operational power in full duration of that laser in those tests so we have shown all of the major building blocks that we need to put this together the out of those two missiles so where publicly yes or we in january of this year there is a nato active layer theater missile defense program that the nato nations are participating in it is to form the architecture so to speak that nat management communication system springs colorado that forms the backbone of our integrated missile defense system the united states what we did in january is we took those two systems we took data from the nato system today we ran it on the us system and we took the us system data and rated on the nato system it was very successful to date i'm talking about are things like radar track data mission planning data in terms of where you would place assets for defensive purposes in june of this year we're going to connect those in real time and be able to steps we're taking to be able to bolt on whatever nato comes up with with our u s long range proposal sir we've also run a series of oil games called nipple titan it'll be run in may with the allies the talks of the concepts in the com thank you madam chair and thank the ranking member dr mcquary just one technical question up front here what is your system of the technical risk of developing a two stage variant from the existing three  three states g b i assessment exam that in some detail is low risk this approach has been used before not for this particular rocket but it's been used before and as we look at the changes being made the changes being low risk are we do feel strongly that the testing needs to be done in order verify that the risk is indeed low grade in general bring you indicated some time back that you and mr young were exploring what was pretty exciting modernized we are on track to launch those that will show us whether or not we can actually do this function and that's critical that's a knowledge point because the space the harsh environment can we actually do the procedure can we do the precision tracking in those environments and then related information to tommy that fashion to the ground to be able to show that it's useful once we've done that though we did not envision building any more of these legacy types of satellites we have looked at what is going on in the industry  t large what are some of the advances in the industry that we can take advantage of and then use data in a novel approach to be able to reduce the size of a constellation that we need think about the layers of terrestrial based sensors that we missile defense what the micro chip was to the computer industry i think in terms of maybe decades away that the perhaps none of us in this room will ever see the full combination of that that could have a profound this kind of defensive wanted to improve the efficiency of the laser modules themselves and some of the novel design of the injector of the i dine in the light laser modules and so we have now done that we've released all those modules  best of luck on that i must be hard to do somebody else might end up going to oversee that but a lot because it'll always be your baby the program called left hook it's related to the aegis capability intercept missiles in their boost phase what can you tell us about that and in this environment there was a proposal that was floated a couple of years ago about looking to see whether or not we had the ability to shoot down a long range ballistic missile  this it could be technically feasible with very restrictive parameters but those restrictive parameters make it not operational not very operational that's the problem we saw an example of this in the satellite shootdown we had a very precisely position that ship then we had to bring all for information into the ship to be able to even achieve this and that information had to be so precise that even have a chance of doing this so could it happen yes but is it y actually the report from that we have from you from a number says that simply testing the new two stage booster in a flight test even intercept flight test is inadequate to assess the operational effectiveness of the european deployment of d assets you also recommended m d a conduct three flight test instead of two currently planned and that one of the intercept tests include an attempt to track and intercept multiple long range targets simultaneously for example  savage test why does dio t n a believe the sense that simply testing the two stage booster isn't adequate to assess operational effectiveness of the european g m t assets why do you believe that two tests are in the three tests that we recommended for the two stage booster of the first test that was going to be conducted was a booster of a station test the second test was going to be and there was no live target and that second test was a live target test and the third test we're recommending is one in which you simulate the actual scenario of engagement that one would have in the european theater because we think that is important issues to be addressed as a part of the verification that the system will work in that kind of environment and we had discussions as early is early this week with general obering and he just for me a little earlier today that he has put the third test india's test lead so we have no  we have been reviewed with the plan but it's one of those things where i think we have an open and candid discussion about what the issues are and sound mind i hope are some minds anyway to come to a conclusion that is the right one that's a good that's good news obviously that discussion is being led by you guys state forces you can take on they're the ones that are the lead on that we we helped inform those technically terms of what's possible what we can do but we certainly have the ability and we tend to be able to share and so in addition we we laid out a series of exercises to kind of think through what that would be when i say we i mean the united states and japan are doing so we're very optimistic there in terms of that it's been a very healthy secretary young in two thousand and six the department of defense office a program analysis and evaluation conducted a review examining the potential effectiveness of a b l and to reform the boost phase defense mission  we'd like the department to provide us a briefing on that study is that something that you can do i don't see why not it would be my inclination to do it actually before the hearing i had sent an e mail and asked mr brooks and to make sure that be available i don't know the study needs to be updated but i knew as we would provide that i have a great thank you the subcommittee is joined by mr lamb born from colorado is not a member of a subcommittee but is a member of the full committee and we'd like to offer him five minutes for questions demonstration satellites this november i also understand restructuring its plans for as follow on with that what are the two or what are the key lessons that you hope to learn from the two demonstration satellites and how will those lessons be incorporated into the proposed follow on constellation and well first of all the mission of those satellite is to be able to u ccurate enough track that we could actually play state information into a weapon task plan and inject that into a ground based course interceptor or put it into an aegis weapon system to be able to launch one of the  future twenty one inch long range interceptors from on the ship and to understand if we can actually do that in the space environment because there's a there are many hazards that we have to worry about radiation belt that type of thing how is it going to perform in those environments and that's what we're looking for the less learned from that we also are going to have a costly data link between the two satellites to see because in a custom lation you're going to have to have a cross link to be able to do this handover between and we want them in orbit but we don't envision that this is the configuration of the satellite that we need it's big it's bigger than we want it weighs more than we want we'd like to be able to drive down some of the weight requirements drive down some of the  inject some of the more modern technology has the bird to go back a long way many of you know this for many years so we will be able to inject some of the more modern technology into a fall on cost elation we believe that we can significantly by changing the and by changing our injecting the technology i talked about we believe that we can significantly reduce the number of these satellites a consequently the cost in the way that we have to place on orbit for those secretary we've had a number i guess i'd offer a bigger picture perspective and that is we've had a number of space programs that have varying challenges i think brings exactly right on the details it's been discrimination you can do a lot of things including potentially fire on the space base q that's an incredible capability it can augment our warning and help us in many other ways throughout the nation it's probably bigger than missile so to speak for the future but we still can keeping with our discipline we don't want to go out and hire hundreds of engineers and program office i mean contractor folks for the program when they haven't demonstrated that knowledge point otherwise we start going back against what sector young i want to do for their part of the larger what we've been trying to do with the portfolio to make sure that we demonstrate the technical capabilities that we need from these programs before we build these very large standing  for very good testimony we appreciate your time for all the questions members if you have questions to submit for the record please feel free to do so we also want to thank you staff i'd like to behalf of the sub