so for me to come to order today the subcommittee meets in open session to receive testimony from affairs with the united states navy on the current status of the electromagnetic launch system for a mosque the most system is an electromagnetic catapult designed use on the fourth class envelopes that is the ability to launch both heavier and lighter aircraft and steam catapults higher sortie rates reduced weight reduce mechanical complexity reduce maintenance reduce carry manning unfortunately what brings us together today is that the development of the program is so far behind schedule that it threatens the delivery date united states for the record i'd like to briefly summarize the history of the program and the current status of the malls was the core capability in the design of the next generation aircraft carrier which the navy called c v and twenty one for the twenty first century technology which eventually became the u s s for t v in seventy eight in one nine hundred ninety nine the navy entered into technological contracts with two different contractors general atomics northrop grumman marine systems to develop prototypes for the electromagnetic catapult by two thousand and four the navy down selected to a system proposed by general thomas and entered to assist design and development contractor s c d contract to build a full scale shipper of presented a prototype with navy testability lakehurst new jersey that prototype was contracted to be completed in time for testing to begin seven testing was to have concluded after two years and presumably the results learned from the test program would influence the final production system which would be shipped to the carrier construction yard for erection into the ship it's now in july of two thousand  and full scale testing has yet to begin at the lakers facility the navy is now faced with almost complete concurrency of testing and production of the first ship said if they were to meet the in your delivery dates to keep the u s s fort on schedule there are a number of subsystems to complete a mile system and each subsystem has different in your delivery dates but some of those days are as early as the summer of two thousand and eleven and to meet those days the production of the components and at least the ordering of the material for the components must begin now before full scale testing of the prototype systems has begun to be fair some testing has already occurred the high cycle test for energy storage systems is well underway as is the excess highly accelerated lifecycle testing of the large motor segments those tests have identified some minor redesign issues which can be incorporated into the production components but until a full scale catapult launch of the prototype occurs question systems overall performance i have been briefed as i believe other members of the subcommittee have been briefed that the issues in completing and delivering the s t d components were a result of the contractors and experience managing a major production effort i find that answer unsettling because the navy's responsibilities to oversee what their contractors are doing and to identify problems before they become problems i will note that over a little over a year and a half ago the contractor did put in place an management and engineering team powering away proving production engineers from both general dynamics in north of grumman this new team seems to have righted the ship but that ship is still very dangerous cities so we have a program that is so essential to the carrier that if it does not work the nation has paid billions of dollars for an unusable ship if the ship is delayed the carrier is automatically delayed i'm sorry and every day of the labor force  this is the first in what i intend to be a series of hearings on this program over the next few years this is too important not to have close congressional oversight i intend to continue close oversight of this program until it is delivered installed tested certified for launching a occasions representatives from the navy visited him and me and said to look toward combat ship system ship system was on time and on schedule and on cost only to have some time around november of two thousand and six one of those are shucks moments that have resulted in a ship that's well over twice the price it should be in eighteen months late on a charge we cannot afford that on this program but i do welcome you here today rear admiral selector anymore programs manager for you also captain brian antonio program manager for the forward class aircraft carrier vice admiral large as well as representing the assistant secretary as the senior acquisition executive who is ultimately responsible for all navy and marine corps acquisition programs admiral select more as the official who is only responsible philthy will be this program captain antonio's responsible for building the entire carrier he obviously has an interest in the year's national defense authorization act directs the secretary of the navy to keep admiral select more in his position after the completion of the system development testing and the successful production of the first ship said components that means that the admiral select who has been s for the record if i could and welcome our witnesses my background was in engineering and i used to work for i b m we did a lot of project management this is something that really has the attention not only of our subcommittee and committee but the as has the attendant stress applied to those aircraft some today's steam catapults system likewise with the higher lows required manus man hours to maintain our care catapult has increased the navy recognize these trends and sought to replace team  similarly e mail supports the c d n seventy eight key performance parameters such as saudi generation rate reduce shipboard manning and will support current and future air wing operation requirements which include edition of the joint strike fighter and navy unmanned aerial combat system or any in the future the knowledge is a critically important capability for our future carriers and embarked air wing during its development over the past year we have had we have made good progress but as you are aware and pointed out we have also had to overcome technical issues the program manager challenges and cost growth i want to leave this committee with two important takeaways first we are here today to provide you with the most up to date straightforward answers possible if we don't have answers to your questions we will get them second that the team and that is the collective team on the government's side and industry side is committed to delivering this kind of capability with our principal industry partners agreement shipbuilding we are working hard with our industry partners in this critical program and while we are making progress concerns remain and we will no doubt have additional challenges during the remaining test program we are collectively committed to meeting those challenges head on the navy understands the concerns you and your subcommittee have expressed and we are aggressively working to improve performance german taylor we are implementing the earth recommendations to break the malls cost and perform out from cd and seventy eight for a separate review by congress finally i feel that we have two of the finest program managers to lead both the most program in the c v and seventy program with us today and we are taking steps to ensure stability in the programs key technical and management teams the department is committed to delivering c d n seventy eight with e mails on time and on budget mr chairman with your permission i would now like to provide the committee with a brief presentation on what constitutes a cat requested and with the goal of touching on some of the major components of the mall system and following that i would like to hand over the presentation to captain moore will provide greater detail on the program as well as the components involved the testing underway finally captain and tony will explain how the males in graded into the fourth class aircraft carrier and how he is tracking progress to ensure the proper and timely integration of the mail system into c v s seventy eight at the conclusion of our airplane accelerate the airplane to about a three hundred sixty foot power stroke to reach the end speed required for that airplane based on its type model series required in speed wind over deck and conditions that exist on that day energy is a drop in that water break from the from the launch the piston that piston is then retracted mechanically set for another launch so in essence that is the steam system today what's different miles would be the sense that it is well different in several similarities but the biggest one would start with the concept of stored energy now is the electromagnetic energy that's stored in the system so power is drawn from the ship's electrical distribution system and stored in electrical storage units of which there will be twelve on the board class and that energy is available for the launch the aircraft position on the catapult is the same as on steam catapult but once you get ready to launch and operator touches the deck to launch that stored energy electrical energy is translated through a power conditioning system to the linear motors that run the length of the catapult that three hundred sixty foot power stroke a moving magnetic wave is in its path through the stages which is the linear motors in between those when your motors is a block of aluminum represented by what i have in my hand and on top of that which is now the armature is the shuttle i talked about which attaches to the airplane and as that moving magnetic wave which is represented by this magnet passes this is non ferrous so it's aluminum and a magnet that magnetic field goes along it creates induces a current into the principles behind what is the electromagnetic launch system when the airplane reaches the end of the stroke and that energy is provided again to around significant power to more power than the steam catapults can provide the shuttle without having to have a retraction engine and the mechanics a go with that so there are several advantages to the system that go in with the miles and you end up with more uniform acceleration harder to speak control throughout the length of the ca projects one of the things you can service particularly was changing project managers all the way down the line you change your course not once in the model but but four or five times and that doesn't work very well and  partly at the insistence of this committee but perhaps for other people too you are the unfortunate person that was singled out because you've made a good reputation for yourself to be changes to this project for a certain period of time and i think  the first in the most important principle and i'm curious about is do you feel you have the authority to basically manage just project and be in control of that obviously a lot of that time schedule is not in your control vendors and different people but our concern is that there's one person that we're looking at that we're we're counting on particularly to bring emails in but i gather your responsibility is for the entire ship first of all is it your responsibility to ship it there we're double over budget in two years later whatever it is that's kind of thing that we can afford on this project you know the polls itself i think is what the subject of our hearing is is particularly  because you're saying it is critical path to bring the project on time first of all you've got something that you called storage units which are motor generators how do you consider a motor generator to be a storage  but where is the electric energy stored it's in the it's in the generator itself so the generator is holding energy it's me twenty four thousand r p m want to command is charge the energy is commanded out of the motor generator or drawn out of that generator i've just been told it's a high mass road or in other words it is like a flywheel and when you when you pull the trigger to launch the motor generator loses its velocity it draws down some of that energy immediately starts trying to command it back up to speed either side of the aluminum block is going to run down these things as they are now in the process of putting this project together certain obviously there's new technology whole thing is new and so you would never do something new you're worried about bugs so how much of you actually tested of this entire system if you actually put these motor generators full scale together and take an aluminum block and done this or is this all being done just modeled for we do we actually have one that we buil but something on wheels up to its people hundred fifty and so that's going through were there any surprises and things we learned in that are not particularly from the physics point of view no sir from the engineering point of view we did learn some things we took what we learn there and put it into the system we're now developing so from two thousand and fourteen now it has been maturing that system ship ready system and we've got there been some problems on does that right if there were words exactly were the problems this is much more expensive now general as a favor and charge so a lot more right because some things happened that made it more expensive well where to do we get off the track to start with from of engineering perspective we have found a lot of things we've tested we've completed one main phase of test base that was done in two thousand and four in the in the under the current contract for development we took we built a full motor generator that we intended the production representative what we put on the ship to put that into plough mississippi in general tom explained we ran that over a simulated two thousand year l put life but what we call ten thousand launch cycles we completed that last ember prove that the motor generator itself is capable of putting out the appropriate amount of power over ten thousand over ten thousand that say motor generator put a d mr on and we found out that there were some oil leaks that we had to deal with but they were from a performance perspective the only significant thing we found was that the motor generator shaft vibrated was the design point that we thought we would or the operating are currently retrofitted to last one will be retrofitted fort lee and that will be the configuration it will take is that would cost us the extra money was it a different bearing design and different cooling in the bearing that did increase the cost of the unit a little bit  wasn't the cost of the cause of the overrun that got us to where we are today because of the overall where we got to today service if you want to go down that just quickly ok real quickly that we plan to test schedule that was aggressive and optimistic we were unable to execute that test schedule the cost of materials went up to build some of the equipment so that was it on the motor generator is that it was part of it was on a motor generator but we use a fair amount of raw materials throughout the unit so the spread that across everything and then and then the labor we identified in general atomics and there is there specifically in their industry partners need about another work years of engineering staffing so we had a plus that up as well as we found something on the t v needed have a second officer in charge from testing to delivery is what to make sure because we've we've been hearing this before and some of these theoretically responsible but it seemed like they weren't really what make sure that you really feel like you've got you're on top of this and that you're going to be keeping an eye i feel absolutely responsible for delivery and develop and you know where your critical pounds and pieces are it's always down the line  mississippi and in denver and then we have to outfit it with the linear motors and ship it up let me try and get a mental picture then what i'm really seeing is you've got basically got these motor generators which are great big hummer and you've got to make sure those are working you're pretty comfortable now the design that's working ok you've got some solid state controls that are basically controlling the electricity that's the d c power that's going to go from those to the motor in the launch system the control system you're pretty comfortable with that straightforward if there were were operating control system right now of the like of ok then you've got the motors which basically i assume big oil's that run the entire length of the track is that correct  and more of an iron bar magnet with coils wire around it but yes yeah that's what me coils with it with it are and that's creating a magnetic field on both sides of the aluminum plate and then the lumina plate is going to slide down this track of some kind right now what's the tricky part motors and then i have twenty nine to twelve foot section in each and you still after the carrier is pretty much built those come straight down from the deck to catapult he says we're going from the day ok so that's pretty straightforward that's a long as you got that working that's top down going to thing where is the motor generators that's built way down and that's what you've got to make sure that's a lot of years of earliest component at the dealership and then the aluminum plate pieces that also a top down kind of insulation so that so you're not as worried about that from a critical path but if you other than the fact it has to be ready when you want the ship ready ok now how about getting the d c power from your motor generators to those motors is that a particular problem from a craft point of view or the kind of insulation you need or the cables or motor one of them is in the motor only one existing production the other two are where the cables connect into each of the individual staters and then we believe there may be some coming in for some locations on the what voltage are you running d c when you hit that thing with full planet somewhat of a loss and i know a couple of you for many many years ago but i remind all that i had my soul just a country guy from upstate new york you obviously know a great deal about the nuts and bolts of the system in the navy has focused incredible resources on by seven are still a very blunt question if i may what if this does not work  technology now is critical to the ship so let me answer that question by saying the navy recognizes that first and foremost in the past year we've done a number of steps of the past several years number steps as outlined in my written testimony but i wan for questions with requirements met what were alternatives what would those alternatives if we have the right program management in place to proceed with this both in the government and in the industry and what was our i don't want to appear insistent indulge me and allow me please to ask the question more time what happens if this does not work  with the law and if that system were not to work that system that we are confident will we're going to make every if we have to make sure it does i'm rusty on engineering and you guys are very much active experts on this and help me a little bit for just a few moments you know linear induction motors by my calculations yours has a three hundred forty eight foot long throw length as the stater which is stationary imparts a large electromagnetic field and we're talking in something here of ten of ten thousand and and provide through a pipe of  a thousand volts so you're measuring gas and somewhere in the mega ranges as that electromagnetic pulse pre season the shuttle during those three hundred forty feet one would during the d v r phase that we conduct at the lakers we had on the front of the dead loads during the launch we had a and my measuring circuit is that information in two or three dimensional graphic format exceptionally sensitive weaponized systems that e m i n e m p is going to be grounded and mitigated even if it's so much as to proceed the airplane by nine feet which by my calculations is where that pulse will spike in front of the nose of the aircraft the n s a p one eighteen on the f eighteen is very sensitive as you know any red has to the point where we during weapons handling on any conventional carrier today shut down all electromagnetic interference is forward of the island now we are inducing a tremendously new variable is it a true statement or ask me this has this ever been done outside of your halfling full power tests in any navy an all systems been used as or so this is the first time and we are at the cutting edge of the technology and if it works were it we've saved thirty percent of the interior volume of the whole twenty percent reduction in crew and associated lifetime costs these are all figures that are very very attractive i will state for the record gentlemen first i was against the navy shifting to the construction of the ford class and taking such a large leap of technology simultaneously new propulsion systems weapons systems electrical distribution systems  think it is a bridge too far with exceptionally high risk and very little mitigating capabilities secondly and for the record i am exceptionally concerned about the inability to extract an answer to the simple question of what happens it does not work the reality is gentlemen we will have just bought the world's largest helicopter carrier and that will in fact so totally impact the future of the navy as to the reality that my limited imagination can't express the overall results this committee and myself will do anything to help but i am very very worried about this leap in technology and i'd like to have that reflected in the record chairman thank you have massive for an excellent line of questioning for the record captain admiral i would like to know which of the weapon systems that the captain brought to your attention have already been tested within the magnetic poles of these this so what the navy the design of the weapons accounted for all says of this frequency we are in the process  kind of pushing the envelope during a span of time going to go from eleven to ten years as we phase in the four and phase out the enterprise kind of puts us in a position where you know if the challenges out there we're going to be be pushed to the max i am confident navy's assurances strategically we will not let our guard down during that period of time but it's even more incumbent to make sure that systems such as evolve new systems for class carrier are functional and we stay on schedule obviously scheduling issues there create larger problems for us down the road i wanted to learn a little bit about the decision making process and where we are understand about eighteen months ago the general excuse put in place a a new management an oversight i wanted to learn a little bit about why that was necessary and if we believe that  focused on both the government and the industry side and the industry side we found that you know atomics did not have the systems engineering in place personnel in place to really bring th through the development cycle so that those lessons learned can be then poured over into the ship an example of that is as the initial pieces of it when you're motor structural being put in the trough in lakehurst we had northrop grumman ship builder production folks on study watching how they installed was going making recommendations for how things ought to happen on the ship so all of this was a part of the par finding that we feel like we should correct one thing at least i said when we talked about this this technology our concerns this is high energy let's go systems and we do have a technology that is far advanced as it was in  aspect that when you end up with them in your motor you end up through the power conversion systems at the linear motors you're sending three phase a c through those black windings which is what gives you that travelling magnetic way down that linear motor itself second point was not to launch it but just sit there and let that power go across and see what happened reason i asked that years ago i was in charge made it's a steel mill and we put some transformers him to power the electric arc furnace as they had  carbon rods about the size of telephone poles that you drop into three of them that you drop into scrap and it makes lightning and it uses a fair amount of electricity will we had at a time with those transformers eddy currents that would just  two or three inch bolt you know that you know where they were going to go so there's when you start dealing with tremendously high power kinds of things i can have some input you got a magnetic field a place you've got a wire it's a do sing so i guess my question production development risk reduction phase which is the p d our it was an acronym use so i want to put that one that was initially in that phase we had antennas actually on the sled to a pull down to measure these fields and the fields were measured to both the magnetic fields around  electromagnetic pulse mr bartlett thank you very much we got a really excellent discussion of the technical problems that resulted in the cost overruns and the delays but i'd like to spend just a couple of moments of reflecting on how we got here lessons learned from that in a previous life i was privileged to work for the navy and for a captive navy contractor the johns hopkins university applied physics lab where we wrote r f c s and then i moved  optimistic program of hostin assumptions is going to win the contract they wouldn't let us do that i b m we couldn't lie and so we operated at a disadvantage in getting and getting contracts and this is all not intentional obviously the people working on this are very optimistic about it very confident of their abilities and so forth but the navy had in one sector of their development a real advantage and that was the applied physics lab and they have shepherded through many many years now the fleet busted missile system development do all of the fleet ballistic missiles and they were looking over the shoulder of people like you and the navy who are running the program advising them as to whether or not this proposal from industry was likely to work and if i did is that a unique organization i think is the only one in the country that will not compete with industry and since it will not compete with industry industry will share with it it darkest proprietary secrets so that the applied physics lab can be in a position to advise the navy in what is likely to work and what will not work because the the contractor is always going to be overly optimistic about what he can do and about how quickly can do it and how low the cost will be as we don't have in other parts of the navy that kind of a there are thirty eight hundred people there about half of them really professional people we don't have that anywhere else in the navy what can we do so that you know if you came into this program after the contract was let you were handed a dog that couldn't time and you know what do we do to avoid that in the future if we don't have other a p else to help us and other parts of the mentioning to go back and tell us did we have this right as well representative of what i just think i agree with you that we need those we need that both within our laboratories as well as within our capabilities because that's where the expertise resides and so i don't argue for a minute that we need that kind of ability to call on as we needed to know the experts in the field if you will but neither you nor we have the depth of experience and knowledge that  perhaps not as great as that because we have new technology and we have to reach out to them to train as well and i believe we do i've been here nearly seventeen years now and the story has never changed every program is late and over cost and you know what can we do to avoid repeating this in the future and it all comes from the from the honest assumption on the part of the industry and those who are looking at the proposal that gee we really can't do that this is really need to have that we really can do that and you know how do we avoid the problems that are created by this overly optimistic assumptions of cost and development which apparently is the fundamental root cause of the of the  and the cost overruns in all of our programs how can we avoid a p l help the navy to avoid that by saying you know he gee that's just the overall overly optimistic they're not going to be able to do that i believe what comes with this is proper systems engineering and i don't use that as a catchphrase i i believe it we have to and we have come to that over the past year and a half as we've taken around turn on our process to come forward with program development and to take what it means to take a requirement and then give it to industry and say go build us an industry get that they don't understand enough of what it takes to build that to give a realistic estimate of time so what we have to do is translate that requirement down into a lot more detail which gets into the system design specifications that allow the industry to know exactly what it is we want to build and they can then properly price give us properly pricing to one would be to your point sometimes this is not deliberate or intentional some and so we have to really understand that industry can get in and we don't need just to say you can do this but what does it really take to get there and that is the work we have to do we owe it to this committee we owe it to the navy and we're working diligently to make that happen across the board unfortunately a lot of our programs are well past this stage and we're we're living with what we didn't do in the first but i will tell you in future programs and for that is exactly our intent to not read this in the future but i know that doesn't answer your question today because you'd like to see it on all the programs that happened in the past and we needed to do that we need to do that as we go forward that's a straight forward answer i think you have exactly what we need to do and we intend to do that tha i will use the analogy we have a new generation of of carbon you can look at the previous generation look at the new and have some idea whether you're repeating a past mistake or making improvements diesel engines with so many of these technologies being new i'm curious what you use as your benchmark to know if you're going in the right direction so i want to ask a couple questions along that line with the motor generators is there anything similar to that commercially available anywhere that size or capacity right now are commercially available motor generator they don't have the same power launch out there but is that technology being used in commercially in a different form but similar for when you would that be it's a linear induction motors are various applications that an industry where in a larger refueling complex planned for the forget about mid life in mid life is expected to be about twenty five your point is just life is being designed for fifty years as a matter of curiosity how much of that twenty five y be a new job on the power plant that was not there in previous platforms going to mr bartlett's excellent line of questioning you are can do people who do not have come before congress and say we can't do it that's a double secretary is aware of the electromagnetic pulse that goes back to what i would hope is not the case is that in the navy's effort to get what i consider to be a great technology on this vessel that we are intentionally downplaying the effects on some of these systems and intentionally low balling the cost of whatever changes would have to come as a result of that not so much i just wanted to ask another additional question i understand little more about the administrative aspects of the things that have gone on if you could if you could explain the difference between what's in place now and the definite ties contract action that's there with general thomas on the miles for the u s s forward in the final contract action that you are pursuing can you tell me are both of those to be fixed price contracts and where do those two frameworks lead us if there are risks that come up down the road in other words if there are things that schedule if there are production issues if they are performance issues there who assumes the risk there both from a function standpoint and also from from a time standpoint as we know if we get pressed on this you see that we're seeing the windows here fairly small as far as making sure all these pieces work who assumes the risk there because we always as mr bartlett said we all get concerned about the timing on this and i brought that up as far as the production schedule for the ford in relation to the enterprise going on that three year window where we go from eleven to ten and then also get a better perspective of what you're doing first of all in terms of your energy storage you decided to go basically with the motor generators approach did you consider using capacitors or something like that or is this way beyond what we can and if that's an old tried and true kind of thing in a way but in terms of energy density i suppose that's what you're thinking about is how much space is it taking in the obits but it it does seem like it's a little in a way that even though it's older it seems like a bank of capacitors or something in a and the second thing i guess is a question is if you have this capacity to store up a lot of electrical energy and discharge it with this ever be used in other kinds of weapons systems if you look at that at all or not particularly for is that classified well it is being looked at other systems as an example that would be relevant to say good rail gun technology which is the same time knowledge that's typical in development that kind of technology as an example and you mentioned what would that be would that be sort of a an anti missile type of system or something or what the technology is just to say at this point would be to accelerate projectile which can get to stores energy chemically to get a lot of energy all stored up this is a different way of storing some energy is that just a couple of popular science questions thank you admiral i know that again going back  to you are an adult because you can do person you accept a challenge when you give in to you don't question orders but going back to get the masses quo is it fair to say that you had this program for several reasons its effect on other weapon systems its effect on other ships nearby for whatever reason failed to materialise with the delayed be more than two years with the additional cost to the taxpayers to finish this carrier be more than two billion dollars chairman that question directly if we had to yes the answer would be most definitely more in two years and would be a significant cost emails or our discussion to stay with you most of revert back to steam at that time we looked at anywhere from twelve to eighteen months later if we had made a decision a six months ago so to make that decision a teacher would clearly be one one when the  see you know we looked at all of us in the eye and particularly the commanders and myself and this is tackling and said now we need to deliver on the system it's clearly is a decision made and without having that would be significant there's some weight difference on location terms center of gravity which will require a difference of the placement of some ballast in the ship but it's not to the point where the ship design would not be able to accept it if it were possible to do it for decision were made to speak strongly costly and time consuming and in just for the benefit of the community because it is critical to the gentleman from the tidewater area is very keenly aware of the delivery of carriers as he should be for the benefit of the community what is the domino effect to our now ten carrier fleet should this ship not be delivered on decision worst case scenario the vessel is delayed three years how many carriers do we have that the enterprise is scheduled to  so you have all this to that is the name itself and so she will run up towards fifty years and i think it's exactly when that is but she comes in around the time we would be on the current schedule somewhere close to  down to ten carriers and so the failure for this you have to deliver on time not just a three year mission good extended out six seven years and that's why again for all the reasons that you are concerns today that this has to work i would like to tell the committee that i had a like the conversation with the secretary of the navy on this last friday that he is very much on with our language to have a clear line of authority as to who was responsible for this program a clear transition from one officer to another and again i very much appreciate you gentlemen being here today if