good afternoon this hearing will now come to order well today's hearing entitled the science of security part two technical problems continue to hinder advanced radiation monitors soon after the september eleven attacks customs and border protection the began operating radiation portal monitors to screen kaga cargo entering united states for radiological and nuclear material they have purchased approximately technology and information to show emma what sort of materials is in or what material is in the container there are plenty of innocent sources of radiation kitty litter medical isotopes consuming but the p b t seem to be working well to meet customs dual mission to keep us safe while maintaining a steady flow of commerce the department of homeland security has been developing a new radiation portal monitor championed by the domestic nuclear detection off of city and the that advocate that advocates believe should replace the piccies the new monitor the advanced spectroscopic portal monitor or a f p would detect the presence of radiation in cargo but it would also identify the type of radiation that would allow more harmless cargo to pass unimpeded through the port and require are far fewer secondary referrals if i worked as advertised would be more likely to identify highly enriched uranium or other materials of concern and hansa flow of commerce while freeing up customs officers to tend to other duties decide secondary inspections despite test in february two thousand and nine at our june hearing we heard those issues had been fixed and at the july field tell us a little while the department to move forward toward a cost benefit analysis and sort of a cation numerous false positive hits for special nuclear materials in july each one of which have resulted in the implementation of mandated security responses by customs potentially shutting down por that they intend to fix this new problem by changing the sensitivity of the a f p used to detect uranium but it isn't clear why that should be reassuring changing the sensitivity setting detecting those materials and would we have to go back to the nevada test site to prove that you can still detect levels of special nuclear material more accurately than the pv days can a second if the materials detect special nuclear material when there is none they are how those changing the sensitivity make any difference at all detecting ghost isotopes is a problem with the operating system not with the sensitivity level it would appear anyway since the taxpayers have spent two hundred thousand dollars for each of the fifteen hundred p v t that are deployed nail the case of the s p s which will launch about eight hundred thousand per unit a total cost of two three billion needs to be clear both in terms of better detection informants and better support for customs operations after that greater acquisition calls an annual operating expense of a s p a s p s that is at least five times more expensive per unit  and the need for a convincing case is even greater asset stands it is hard to see why as peace should be more than a secondary inspection tool in fact that is the role they play in the department of energy's mega port program the dia we already runs a program t inspects cargo leaving twenty seven major foreign ports or destinations anywhere in the world deal we win which develop the poor radiation detection type technology uses p v t for primary inspection and then uses the well as it is very helpful for for the appropriations committee to be asking the right questions and you have helped help them and helped us ask the right questions i suspect that this will not be the last time that we gather on this subject we do seem to come back to the same subject again and again nor will it be the last time we hear from witnesses that we still face a long list of test invalidations before we can think  participating in the follow up hearing on the department of homeland security's advanced spectroscopic portal program it's hard so than to say quickly this afternoon you brought up to date apartments on going to vellum and of the next generation radiation portal monitors and get an update from the g a o on their continuing work as i said in our earlier hearing this past summer this program is certainly not out of the woods the latest fail validation test revealed additional problems that will have to be overcome before moving forward indio will be able to give us some insight today and what we can expect from this program in terms of the future path forward with considerable taxpayer money on the line question will improvements over current capabilities and outstanding cost benefit analysis and confusing acquisitions history that unfortunately has mor this program is rapidly approaching a point where the federal government has to decide whether it wants to fish or cut bait i'm concerned with the fact that considerable public funding has been expended on developing a technology that the private sector was developing in parallel on its own dime the n h s as a whole and the n d o c b p d h s s n t individually should be focusing on long term h risk how reward technology not providing seed money for commercial off the shelf equipment that being said i realize that the h s is mission is vastly different from and the department  offenses and that they have additional requirements that demand a more robust system g a o in the cademy made several recommendations over the past few years i trust that d n d owen c b p will be able to this committee on how they responded to those recommendations and where they plan to go from here the nation expects a lot from the department and i hope that we are developing tunnel vision by focusing too much on one method of conveyance and not seen the far east for the trees the department has an enormous task of securing our borders and not just at points of entry but all along our borders spending billions of dollars to secure the front door of our house doesn't seem very rational if we're just going to leave the back door open all the windows and have a gaping hole in the walls too that is not to say that we should do nothing at all but rather everything we do should be put in context of a well thought out global nuclear detection architecture as i said earlier this summer many of the issues we're dealing with today could have been prevented by engaging in users earlier in the process clearly defining the requirements developing clear architectural priorities and simply following a clear acquisition process this committee is no stranger pro programs that have set aside these best practices expediency sake i look forward to working with a partner in the majority to make sure any decision that is made is in the best interest of our nation security the taxpayer director of natural resources and environment at the government accountability office g a he is an expert in international nuclear proliferation and safety issues and holds the graves in political science economics and public administration timothy parsons geos chief scientist before entering g a o before joining g a o dr parsons was a technical director of the intelligence advanced research projects activity i proud and previously served as a technical director at the national security agency mr parsons if people ask you look at a park airport what you did for a living to just say you work for the government ok heels agrees in nuclear physics computer science in biomedical engineering and has been involved in evaluations of many high tech u s government programs and projects including g os work on the advanced spectroscopic portals a s p monitors we look forward to hearing his testimony today as well mr todd c owen is the acting deputy assistant commissioner of the office of field for the u s customs and border protection department of homeland security also a mouthful he also served as executive director of the cargo and conveyance security office office of field operations since may of two thousand and six mr owens program and then finally dr william hague and is the acting deputy director of the domestic nuclear detection office at the department of homeland security dr hagen holds degrees in physics and nuclear engineering as well as three patents he spent thirty years with the science applications international corporation before coming to do in serving as c assistant director transformational research and development directorate i think all our witnesses would need to use small print for their business cards as our witnesses should know you will each have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be include in the record for the hearing when you all have completed your spoken testimony we will begin with questions each member will have five minutes to question the panel it is the practice of th subcommittee to receive testimony under oath this is investigations and oversight subcommittee do any of you have any objection to taking the lead right to reflect that none of the witnesses had any objection you also have the right to be represented by counsel do any of you have counsel here and the right to reflect that all the witnesses said no we ask you these questions to put you at ease here now all please stand there raise your right hand the nation's borders to prevent nuclear materials from being smuggled into the united states my testimony today focuses on the results of the indios testing of the a s p s including the july two thousand and nine feet all testing according to d h s the current system of radiation detection equipment the p v t is effective and does not impede the flow of commerce however d h s wants to improve the capabilities of the existing equipment with a s p's one of the major drawbacks of the  you know is a substantially higher cost compared to the existing equipment we estimated that the life cycle cost of each standard cargo version of the s p to be about eight hundred twenty two thousand dollars compared to about three hundred thousand for the  approximation of how a terrorist might shield nuclear material to successfully smuggle it undetected across our borders the latest round of field testing conducted in july revealed two critical performance problems with the  mentioned first the a s p s had an unacceptable high number of false positives where the detection of high risk nuclear material in other words e s p was seeing nuclear material that wasn't there and alarming c b p official that any alarm for this type of nuclear material is very disruptive to a port or border crossing and could effectively shut down operations until the source of the alarm is found furthermore repeated false alarms for nuclear material undesired effect of causing c b p officers to doubt the reliability of the a s p s and be skeptical about the credibility of future along the second critical failure of the s p s no didn't in july testing stem from a problem with a key component of the equipment which led to an s p to in essence shut down of great concern was the fact that the s p did not alert the c b p official that it had shut down and was not scanning cargo if this were not a controlled test the c officer would have allowed the cargo to enter the united states thinking it had been scanned when it had not the n d s proposed solutions to these critical failures raise questions about whether the a s p s will provide any meaningful increase in the ability to detect certain nuclear materials specifically to address the problem false positives d m d s modifying the s p to make it less sensitive to certain nuclear materials while this may fix the problem of false alarms it diminishes risk material through energy when doing c v p has repeatedly urged completion of this research because an improved p v t could be the more cost effect the way to improve detecting certain nuclear materials and have a similar performance  working is paid in closing the concerns raised by the results of the july two thousand and one field testing provide even greater reason for d m d o to implement our recommendations from our may two thousand and nine report in particular our recommendation that  assess whether the a s p s meet the criteria for significant operational effectiveness based on a valid comparison with the p v t school performance this is especially relevant given that a s b seemingly will no longer be as effective in attacking certain afternoon to provide an update on the role that u s customs and border protection plays in protecting our nation from the illicit introduction of radiological or nuclear materials in cargo containers and on the future role that of an spectroscopic portal technology would have on c operations i'd like to begin by expressing my gratitude to congress for its continued support towards c b p initiatives among the numerous priorities that were recognized in the american recovery and reinvestment act of two thousand and nine congress provided c b p with one hundred million dollars the stimulus funding towards upgrading and adding not intrusive inspection equipment this funding will allow c b p to upgrade and expand its successful and i program and more effectively inspect containers and vehicles crossing our border allowing them to enter our country and its commerce in a safe and prompt manner every day over fifty seven thousand maritime containers truck trailers and rail cars cross our border c b p use a multilayered approach to ensure the integrity of supply chains from point stuffing through arrival at u s ports of entry this multi layer defense is built upon interrelated initiatives which include the twenty four hour rule in the trade act of two thousand to the automated targeting system non intrusive inspection equipment a radiation portal monitors the container security initiative in the customs trade partnership against terrorism c t pat program these complementary layers enhanced security and protect our nation prior to nine eleven not a single radiation portal monitor and only sixty four large scale and i systems were deployed to our nation's borders back tobar of two thousand two c b p had deployed the first r p m to the ambassador bridge in detroit and today c b p s just under four hundred r p m s and two hundred thirty two large scale and i systems deployed nationwide and that's an increase of almost two hundred more are p m s and five additional large scale and i system since i last testif before the subcommittee in june and i technology allows the officers to detect possible anomalies anomalies which may indicate the presence of weapons of mass effect or some other contraband in f y two thousand nine c v be conducted over five point two million monitors to our nation's ports of entry since last testifying before the subcommittee c b p and d m and d m d oh have now completed deployments of our p m s along the northern border and now scanned one hundred percent of trucks and passenger vehicles arriving from canada one hundred percent arriving from mexico and ninety eight percent of arriving c containers for the presence of nuclear radiological materials since the first r p m was deployed in two thousand two c b p officers have scanned over four hundred four million conveyances for the presence of radiation and two point two million radiological alarms have been successfully adjudicated with minimal or no impact on the flow of legitimate trade and travel c p continues to closely coordinate with key stakeholders to ensure the impact of this activity causes minimal disruption on port operations the first generation r p m systems although very sensitive do have limitations while they alert the c b p officers to the presence of radiation a secondary exam is necessary to positively identify the specific isotope causing the alerts in the event that a c b p officer is unable to positively resolve the alarm scientific research reach back is available twenty four hours a day seven days a week the s p is expected to enhance our detection capability while significantly reducing the number of secondary examinations this is due to its ability to distinguish between actual threats and natural or medical radiation sources that are not security threats c b p has worked closely with the d m v on the development not racial testing the vast has provided d n deal with functional requirements as and has been actively engaged in every step of systems evaluation c b p will continue to work with d n d l and with the d h s science and technology directorate s n t toward secretarial certification and is also working with the h s to ensure that any future as acquisition and deployment decisions are consistent with d h us priorities the decision to purchase and deploy a s p s in the operational arena will be based on c p s mission needs and operational requirements a comprehensive cost benefit analysis to include a full understanding of the maintenance and operational costs and analysis of alternatives and other considerations mr chairman members of the subcommittee today i have addressed c b p s commitment to invest in a new and emerging detection technology aimed at hanson cargo security voice good afternoon chairman miller ranking member brown and the distinguished members of the subcommittee as acting deputy director of the domestic nuclear detection office d m d s at the department of homeland security i'm honored to be here with the u s customs and border protection validation conducted by c b p the purpose of field validation is to produce information about the operational characteristics of the system and correcting the issues that must be resolved before moving on to the next test the last test event for the system the operational test and evaluation the july field validation identified several issues we worked with c b p to classify the severity of these operational technical issues and d n deal has since addressed all the issues initially identified because of the systems or configuration controlled adjustments were checked invalidated through use of the replay tool and regression testing to ensure that sensitivity to threats were not was not decreased below guidance although a few issues remain to be resolved we are optimistic that deal validation can be restarted in the near future after c b p completes field validation o t and it will be conducted by the d h s science d h s science and technology director its operational testing authority the current path of certification includes field validation and o t any as well as preparation of all the departmental acquisition program requirements including presentation of the program before the d h l acquisition review board or a or b for a production decision we are committed to following the department's management directive one zero today show one as such we cannot speculate about the outcome of the r b a decision the secretary's decision regarding certification will follow the a or b beyond testing of the s p systems deployment of our current low rate initial production as two units is now being considered the f y two thousand and ten appropriations bill signed three weeks ago contains specific language encouraging incremental deployments of the s p as did the report from the national academy  science it is and we are planning discussions of c b p regarding the best way to deploy these units once so teenie is completed however one new obstacle has emerged that will greatly impact the path forward united states is facing a severe helium three shortage hitting three is a gas that is used for neutron detection within both current and next generation r p m because this decreased supply affects multiple agencies within the federal government and beyond the white house has convened an interagency policy committee including v h s to discuss the issue and possible solutions this group decided in september that no more helium three will be allocated to our p m s for the time being we are currently leading inner agency efforts to identify alternative neutron detectors and we are working to assess the impact this will have on our deployment strategy and path forward for now we can test we plan to continue field validation and operational test and evaluation and are exploring our options for the path forward beyond that could provide enhanced capabilities for p v t systems we are currently funding work at the civic northwest national laboratory in the johns hopkins university applied physics laboratory to improve energy windowing and conduct related research to determine what  improvements may be possible this research is still ongoing that being said it is important to note that any improvements to p v t detectors will only improve primary inspection capabilities or detection current performance limitations and secondary inspection or c b p officers require the ability to identify radiological sources are not addressed by improvements to p v t technology better energy when doing algorithms will not change this fact as a final note i would like to emphasize that the s p pro ogram is only one piece of the multilayered solution we have termed the global nuclear detection architecture the strategy calls for the use of multiple preventive actions at our ports as well as security measures along all potential pathways beyond at and within the nation's borders we will continue to work with our partners within d h s s other federal departments state and local agencies and the members of the subcommittee in the congress to keep the nation safe from radiological and nuclear terrorism this concludes my statement i gerdy bomb that your procedures would require that you act like your hair was on fire that you act with great urgency without getting into anything that's classified in this setting could you what it is in the secondary use the handheld radiation that isotope identification device if that determination is that we have special nuclear materials we then implement what we are called we call sin procedures secure isolate notify we secur we isolate the conveyance and then we begin our notifications back to our laboratory and scientific services folks at our national targeting center for cargo here in northern virginia the c b p officers would transmit the radiation spectra to the that laboratory scientific services people to make a determination as to what exactly what we have there so as this is going on again we are in secondary it is a more controlled arena depending on the footprint of the port depending on the layout the time of day the traffic will impact how much of a disruption it will be to some port operations but clearly whenever we have a higher level threat such as the special nuclear materials we do act accordingly there is some disruption to the port operations until we resolve that alarm you said secure and secured in a secure the area how big an area do you secure mostly it's just in the secondary area with what we have at present will create a perimeter a secure area if you will it will not require an automatic shutdown of  neighboring activities or anything like that as we do the initial readings send it back to our laboratory and scientific services folks clearly if the if the issues escalated if it is of grave concern to us here exclusion zone would expand the the level of activity would increase do you have any idea how many hours of ports like new york new jersey los angeles long beach would be closer how they would be affected by false positives for a nuclear materials i don't have any data as to how many times this has happened or is shut down but those are the procedures and and really again based on the layout of the port if it is a large seaport you could have just one terminal affected by an alert of special nuclear materials through one of our detection devices if it's a smaller land border crossing you could theoretically have a much greater impact on that type of operation so there is an impact depending on the different variables as to how much of an impact but clearly there is an impact whenever we have an alert of a special nuclear was obviously one of the the most immediate problem with false positives is the disruption of commerce obstruction of ports and borders but i remember from college that the first time the fire alarm went off in the dorm everyone rolled right out of bed and went outside but by the time it happened three or four times because of all anyone did was just put a pillow over their head to make  noise so they could sleep through the noise i don't ever want to become routine if we have an alert that there's a special nuclear material obviously in there that are real far and the fire alarm would have done no good at all across all machines or was that just one or two machines that seemed not to be quite right i believe it was across all machines yes because a problem technology generally not with a problem with is a specific with only one machine ok response from c b p officers what is d n a doing to address this issue and you might also i'm concerned about not only false positives false to hear from about forty nine to seven now no system is flawless or perfect and so it's not likely that we will ever build a system that will negatives in the flow of real commerce in the field validation activity there's really no way to know if you've dismissed something that you shouldn't have  so now we have we have testing in the at another place the in the nevada test site where we tested that and i don't recall what the false negative rate was but it was quite low as a physician i'm concerned about and in science is you know talk about specificity and right and sensitivity you know several independent sources of already indicated that the asp only marginally increase our ability to take lightly shielded special nuclear materials if we manipulate those thresholds won't this disk well this just decrease that margin even more and if this the case how would that affect any future cost benefit analysis that the the change in the threshold settings were changed again using the replay tool we were able to calculate what the difference or see what the difference was in the sensitivity it is a reduced sensitivity as with any detector when you when you make your system when you reduce make changes to reduce the false alarm rate the sensitivity is usually a factor and so this is true of this detector as well when the when we compare the sensitivity of the system before the threshold settings were made to that after a while it was reduced the reduction was rather slight and the performance of the system is still within the specification and the guidance in order verified validate threshold changes made to the ass as a reply to it was what was the results of that ok well maybe the best way to convey that is is to comment or to give you some results from some replay tool validation exercise so when we say a replay tool we mean we want to tool that when given the same input data as the real system it produces the same results as the real system and so the replay tool was given the real data for eleven thousand occupanc and the results were compared to what actually came out of the system the results were identical for all of a thousand except for eight those eight were found at the difference the reason that the differences were suppressed lightly different results were slightly different is that the the two codes were run on two different computers and there was a slight round off error difference between the two computers and because of that there were eight i can seize it yielded slightly different results june june when we testified we said there was a marginal improvement over the in the nevada testing over what the p v t were and that marginal improvement because of this said reducing the threshold has now gotten smaller so when we when they do the cost benefit analysis all this has to be factored into that cost benefit analysis because now it doesn't seemingly does not i have the performance that it initially did when we testified here and earlier this year so that's one point the other point is we have not looked at the replay tool we have not talked to john hopkins so we can't really testifying today i want to go to one of the most basic problems and i guess one the most alarming is with the mission critical failure when two dozen cargo trucks are permitted to go through the s p and are to be screened and  actually were not operating at that time and supposing this is been rectified by the contractor with that indicator light is that is that correct nothing's been rectified it's been wrecked it's been rectified but not within kater like there's a message that gets shown to the operator on screen that says that the system is in mission critical failure and can't should not be operated as a prior to this there was nothing there was no way to detect if it was there or there was a message but it was confusing and not clear and so that's what led to the incident by the way i should comment that this only happened one time in one system in all the testing invalidation runs that have been going on for approximately a year we  message will be properly displayed we are struggling a bit with this one error or issue that's come up because it's only happened once so we don't think it'll happen again but that's the point of feel validation is to shake out some of the issues and problems before you move on to the actual operational test how many of these are in opera are in operation in the steel testing how many six six and also recommended that d n d l invest in ways to increase performance of the existing radiation monitors known as p t s by software improvement process called energy windowing and do you believe that more effort should be made to investigate the benefits  energy windowing yes our position remains that we need to fully maximize what the detection capabilities of the existing technology the p v t so we believe there are going to have already been made with energy when do we know we would rely on our scientific partners to tell us if we have reached the edge of that envelope as to how much they can do either with the existing algorithms or the advanced algorithms that may be there so as the operator of the end user of the equipment yes we'd like to to as much detection capabilities as we how much it's spent on developing as well i don't have that information but i do know that we've been told this for the research is sort of been slow ball and we would have liked to seen them a lot further by the numbers right now we have for energy when don't we have we have funded a total of about one point nine million dollars again to pacific northwest national laboratory and the johns hopkins university applied to six laboratory point nine million over the last how many years the which last two years when it we when we start i'm new to congress so when do we start working on the as pays zero s p s two thousand and four or five i actually don't know i wasn't here then i know we've sent two hundred thirty million in that time period on that right and energy windowing we started working on that was in fiscal year zero nine i think the actual work started in july of zero nine answered you can remind me of my tardiness was an appropriate the mr on the issue inspection no we we have a formal multi tiered inspection system and when we talk about the inspection is there any pre entrance inspection before they get to the port facilities we do not  present spec cargo what we do have as part of our layered cargo security strategy we receive advanced information on all cargo and all modes before arrives in the u s different timelines whether it's coming by air by truck by rail or maritime with that advanced information we make an initial assessment if the cargo poses a risk in our maritime environment through our container security initiative we have officers deployed in thirty two countries at fifty eight seaports back and then conduct an inspection on the highest risk maritime cargo before it's put on a vessel coming to the united states we do not have a similar program in air or inland so even though we have that advanced information before the truck or the train or the airplane arrives in the u s we can identify the highest risk but then it would be looked at at the port of arrival so we do not have presents faction overseas for cargo ok so we do have it we do have it for the maritime we do not do we have any structure at all that if there was the ability to  basically to modify the arrival system in other words hold them off shore until we could we could board the craft and and be able inspect it yes sir absolutely we work very closely with the coast guard if there's any threats on a vessel we will keep the vessel lot of sea to address those threats or concerns with the crew or whatever the case may be likewise with with with the air cargo we receive the information for hours before the plane lands so in most cases if we have a concern that aircraft can be diverted to have address that a threat yes  and i'm glad to hear that because let's face it the port facilities tend to be much more centrally located in high population areas than either the port of entries with for vehicles or with the aircraft and so that preempt e the issue of helium three as we're fighting to try to make what we have stretch any discussion of the crisis and what we would need g the problem is rather severe the demand will probably outstrip the supply by a factor of ten there's just not very much and there are other uses for this for this material for healing three there that involve medical uses and so forth that frankly will probably end up having higher priority although i can't say that for sure so the fact is this is a strategic supply problem that we need to address as a nation yes yes i believe that's the case now there are in so for some applications like low temperature physics research helium three is pretty much the only it's almost researching the material itself so it can be a place for our applications a neutron detection there are other potential alternatives which we are d m d s taking the lead for the inner agency group to explore we've been funding research in this area for several years already so we are looking at alternative means of detecting neutrons but because we don't know what those means are today there are several of the same potential turn it is but it's still takes a year or two probably to sort of test those evaluate them and make sure the designs work so it's a it's a real problem for us that's why it's run a real glitch into our planning process is there any other jurisdictions or agencies around the world that are specifically looking at developing this capability to make helium three well there are places we don't have any others domestically is there anybody domestically looking at well there are some there are some thought to perhaps going into natural gas wells and separating some of the helium from that and then and then distilling that pulling out the helium three from that there's a possibility of source in other several sources another countries i probably shouldn't say much more than that ok this chairman i i know my time's expired but and all fairness is a whole lot of issues that the federal government gets involved with that states counties cities international bodies could work on a way over here is one where this really is in our laps i can i just can't perceive a state or a county or a coalition of states being able to address this issue and here is one that i'd sure like to see the federal government make some priority of stations and say this is one that only the federal government can do so they federal government has to be more aggressive on this and i will remind all of us as we talk about other issues that could be handled by other  agencies that we keep forgetting about the ones that only we can handle and maybe we need to focus on these these items that other people can't handle so  to be concerned about what are the or is this worth it all it's a p v t seem to be working there is some disruption of having a truck pull over to the side and going over it with hand by hand it's well our position has consistently been that nothing should be acquired in a large scale until all the testing is complete all the results are in and we know whether the information whether the system works or not a cost benefit analysis has been done and we can see whether it is worth it given all the other demands we have in our architecture architecture all the gaps in that architecture we have to that cost benefit analysis done we need to get the testing done all of it done we need to do the cost benefit analysis and until then we really don't have enough decision to go far enough information to make this decision with the original idea was to replace p b t's with the s given what we know even assuming that we are testing improves that we we figure out what all the problems are so that it doesn't sort of go off without it doesn't become nonfunctional without us noticing it for until after a lot of trucks have gone through or doesn't produce a amount of false positives it's going to shut down major ports for a significant period time that we've worked out his kinks does it still make sense for it does assuming it meets all of the technical and scientific endeavors and the machines work then we have a serious concern about the operation and maintenance cost the tail that will come with each one of these devices as you mentioned in your opening statements here we're looking at perhaps as much as five times or more what it cost to currently operate it so we also are waiting to see the cost benefit analysis as well as the cycle life cycle costs to see if we can even as an agency afford these devices should they continue to develop and mature and be proven scientifically call an acquisition review board it's really not prudent to try to presuppose the result of that we absolutely adhered to the notion that we are doing the testing and doing the validation doing the cost benefit analysis lifecycle cost estimates all that has to be done instead into this process and we have a very rigorous process within the department to do that and i wouldn't want to speculate about the cost benefit analysis of course depends on what the cost of the system is if we have what we will we will have to most likely replace the helium three neutron detectors with some alternative at this point we don't know what that alternative is as i said before we have several potential candidates for that but until we know what that is it's going to be difficult to generate a cost benefit analysis because we won't know what the cost of the systems is it may be possible to work around that but frankly we don't know that yet we're still looking at all the various options we can try to to to get to a cost benefit analysis but without that information and of course without the results from the operational test we can't do that  dr persons actually most of my questions are directed initially to mr allison he used the first person plural and then you and you nodded so i didn't direct additional question at you but your you have worked with many new technologies or their best practices or there are lessons to be learned for how to develop new practices how to develop and deploy the new technologies and have those lessons have those best practices been applied for the respect of this technology yes i work with coming out of that environment where with high volume and so on and so i think some of the lessons learned from this what you put your finger on just a moment ago was what i would call the mistake of scheduling invention or setting artificial deadlines we want to get these out and then we'll worry about sort of the technology development later on best practices for many years on this topic has shown that that's a mistake to do that you want to risk mitigate the way you develop discussion on that and again the key thing is there is the independence of that how that is done and so we have been pleased to see talking about interacting with the office and so on didn't work that you did you determine there's not a matter of just working out kinks but this was not as good not as it seemed or there measures for when you should look for an off ramp part i think that's that's manifested itself in the recent conclusion of the field validation tests and so on so you have these metrics for for doing that and i think organizationally as i believe likely has some idea about what's  whether or not it needs to move forward  dovetail back into what the chairman was asking i'd like to know the metrics it seems to me that we keep fooling around here and have excuses or not implementing a technology  only valid technology does not only useful but may be preferable over our current technology but there are other things that c b p is already doing and going back to the chairman you're talking about an off ramp seems to me we get the point of fishing made or one of the two i mean we've got to do something and if you always give us some metrics about when we can expect the decision making process if you can help us to understand at what point do we need to pull the plug on on the last program or implement something else or what have you with all of you i would like to because i don't have a good feeling about this frankly i don't know about other members but i would appreciate if you all would give us some metrics or if you have a please tell me right now  well you know d h has came up with their significant increase in operational effectiveness as their metric for going forward with this new new acquit me and we from the beginning thought it was a pretty low bar i mean i go back to what i said you know even this equipment even if this a quick d s p work has a marginal increase and now with the adjustments in the thresholds that margin has gotten more narrow so  is role here is to evaluate what the h s is doing and provide this information to the congress of course and we've made recommended recommendations all along to make improvements in the testing and the reporting but the bottom line i have to go back to what i said once the testing is done we need to do that cost benefit analysis and decide whether or not it's worth to go ahead with this now it's taken longer you know you mentioned in two thousand seven they were ready to deploy but the congress towards oversight in getting g a o involved has got us to where we are today now where do we go from here we go through as soon as third round the field validation testing the first round they made adjustments the second round we may be seeing the results of those adjustments and we don't know what's going to happen in the third round the question is is this equipment worse worth it and that's a decision that d h has has to make and i mean we've got a lot of information right now and somebody can make a decision or they can they can put this back into what we belong should where it should have been for you know a development they've called it and it's got us to where we are today where the equipment has a lot of problems we don't it doesn't work very well right now and to to take a risk and replace the equipment we've got now on the borders that we know works with equipment we don't know works you're always going to have g a o saying step back we need to look at this again so i don't know it's kind of a long winded answer to your question but we need more information before we could come to a conclusion and that has to be to cost benefit analysis another question with a cost benefit analysis how can you do one without first knowing whether the ass fool used as a as a primary screening tool or as a secondary screening tool i think that needs to be determined to us in just doing that cost benefit analysis because otherwise you do shoot in the dark frankly see the private sector developing screening methods without the taxpayer being on the hook for him and we have this we spent a bunch of money in a lot of sitting in a handle the level of alarms that we've got there hopefully with that with any advances through the energy when doing they give us a little bit greater technology detection capabilities that we have right now whether we can say we should pull the plug or not i think again from the c b p standpoint the jury's still out we need the cost benefit analysis we need to see how much better these in fact perform over the technology that we have before we could even make a decision as to should they just be in secondary or should they be primary and secondary but i just would like to disclose by saying again through all of our testing we've kept the p v t is up and running so we've always had that safety net that effective equipment that we know was worked so that those twenty seven trucks did not get through when the machine went down  the s p what we've been talking about here primarily is about as pm p d t in primary and you know the debate will rage on i as i said before i agree that the c v a is the way to determine that you know whether that's effective or not and worth the money but operating and secondary is is another matter the limitations of the current system c b p officers are using the current equipment as well as they possibly can there's no question about that but there are limitations to that to those systems in both primary and secondary let me focus primarily on the focus on secondary and in secondary there are limitations which improvements to p v t cannot address only s p can do that i can't talk about the limitations or the changes or improvements of a f p compared to handheld in an open session but these these differences are dramatic and so i think this talk of an off ramp would be very premature and perhaps as a closed session would be the way to deal with that but i would urge you to consider the fact that a s p has considerable application and benefit in secondary it's not really my term but i do hold the gavel mr ali stock to persons do you all have security clearances do you have that top secret security for the top or are you familiar with all the analysis of the comparative benefits  entailed are you familiar with all of that as part of the work you've done we were familiar with everything we've been shown yes ok have you asked for everything yes we're ok so them anything they've asked for absolutely ok assuming that you've seen everything is there anything if we know all the top secret all the tippy top secret stuff is it really different is the analysis a lot different in the way th  secondary just in discussions among ourselves you know the a s p s bigger in radiation detection size matters so it's a bigger instrument than the handheld so just for that you have longer dwell times in secondary so there might be uses where there might be a possibility where it makes sense to put it in secondary but we still don't have all that information and what is the  staying on this line of questioning if it was used in the secondary manner how many units that we  need i mean i'm not we don't i don't have the data available as to how many secondary locations we have and in all of the ports of entry but it's far fewer than what we have in primary obviously but even with that is a volume through secondaries is relatively low i mean we have about a one percent alarm rate on the land borders and about two and a half two point six percent part in seaports so we have to get a look at the lifecycle cost the cost benefits as to how much better does it offset what it's costing us to buy this equipment versus the of me but i believe the number of secondary sites is on the order of four to five hundred not clear that that one would put in hast but every one of those by any means and as mr own says it's far fewer than the number of primary locations so the i'm certain to be certain points that would be much more crucial than some of the borders i mean i live near the canadian border some of those ports of entry are much more crucial than  s the white house i can't remember the name of the of the you know the organization i can give you the name of the person that's about all i could do who is that her name is julie have even more sensitivity for neutrons than the p v t systems did but so we put more healing three tubes in in the in the s p design but if we wanted to maintain the same level of sensitivity as the p v t for neutrons it would require the same amount of helium three there's nothing that links the neutron detection technology to whether it's an s p or a p v t so as it's currently designed currently that it was designed to have more sensitivity to neutrons than the in the p v t system because more sensitivity is better so how much more helium three is being utilized in a p t t v t about it about three three times what i'm saying is though that that's if we want to go back to the same level of sensitivity as we currently have with the t v t then the need amount of helium three that would be required for an s p unit would be the same as for a p v t unit well then why would we have to change a unit if the sensitivity was an increased because this is for neutron detection only ok there's another part of the system that detects gamma rays and that's the part that's different so maybe i should  chunks of sodium iodide but in both cases the neutron detection part is done with tubes of helium three gas and that part is essentially the same with both systems so you couldn't redesign it so would use the same back thank you i thought we had a there was a steve often siding but that was perhaps a false positive i think we've now had sufficient questions for now at least we may have an walls and numbers go in and have to drop off their blackberries and their cell phones before they go in and they bring down a kind of silence and we we hear all the top secret stuff and if we need to do that we will but if we if we go through that exercise and don't hear anything it's going to be pretty irritating so let's not do that right away but before we close the hearing out dr hagen can you tell us exactly where you think we'll be on april on will we have completed successful field tests will there be a cost benefit analysis where will we be on april on three years ago the head of the then head of your  unit said let's get the stuff deployed right now where will we be and i will i can because of the helium three issue i just cannot give you an answer about the cost benefit analysis we know how important it is but and we may be able to do something but without knowing how much the helium three or the neutron detection part of the system will cost it makes that difficult but we're looking at ways to try to get around that  going back to feel validation well maybe i should let mr owen respond about the schedule but by april will be i suspect in some phase of field validation or operational test that's going on in terms of the field validation we have those two critical areas that we've been discussing we feel those have been addressed there's a few other minor issues that we're working through where our objective is to restart field validation in the first quarter of calendar year two thousand and ten so within the next few months we should restart field validation for third round and go forward from there  all right before we bring this hearing to a close i want to thank our witnesses for testifying and i guess it's a little early to say i look forward to seeing you the next day under the rules of the committee their record will remain open for two weeks for additional statements from the members and for any answers to any follow questions the committee may have for the witnesses the witnesses or excuse in the hearing