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33–589 2007

[H.A.S.C. No. 109–121]

AERIAL COMMON SENSOR PROGRAM

JOINT HEARING

BEFORE THE

TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

MEETING JOINTLY WITH

TECHNICAL AND TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE

SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON

INTELLIGENCE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

OCTOBER 20, 2005
(II)

TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania, Chairman

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada

KEN CALVERT, California

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio

MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JIM RYUN, Kansas

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia

JOE WILSON, South Carolina

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii

IKE SKELTON, Missouri

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas

LANE EVANS, Illinois

ADAM SMITH, Washington

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania

STEVE ISRAEL, New York

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida

TIM RYAN, Ohio

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma

JOHN WASON, Professional Staff Member

WILLIAM NATTER, Professional Staff Member

BENJAMIN KOHR, Staff Assistant

TECHNICAL AND TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE SUBCOMMITTEE

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico, Chairman

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama, Vice Chairman

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas

JOHN MCHUGH, NEW YORK

ANNA ESHOO, California, Ranking Member

ROBERT (BUD) CRAMER, JR., Alabama

RUSH D. HOLT, New Jersey

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

KATHLEEN REILLY, Professional Staff Member

PAMELA MOORE, Professional Staff Member

CURTIS FLOOD, Staff Assistant
(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2005

Page

HEARING:

Thursday, October 20, 2005, Aerial Common Sensor Program ........................... 1

APPENDIX:

Thursday, October 20, 2005 .................................................................................... 33

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2005

AERIAL COMMON SENSOR PROGRAM

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Abercrombie, Hon. Neil, a Representative from Hawaii, Ranking Member,

Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee ..................................................... 3

Weldon, Hon. Curt Weldon, a Representative from Pennsylvania, Chairman,

Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee ..................................................... 1

Wilson, Hon. Heather, a Representative from New Mexico, Chairwoman,

Technical and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee ........................................... 3

WITNESSES

Landon, John R., Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command,

Control, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and

IT Acquisition Programs, Department of Defense; Hon. Claude M. Bolton,

Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology; Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, Command Gen. and Commandant of the

U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, U.S. Army; Thomas Laux,

Program Executive Officer for Air Anti-Submarine Warfare Assault and

Special Mission Programs, Department of the Navy; Rear Adm. Bruce

Clingan, Deputy Director for Air Warfare, U.S. Navy ...................................... 5

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Bolton, Jr., Hon. Claude M. ............................................................................. 58

Landon, John R. ............................................................................................... 41

Laux, Thomas, joint with Rear Adm. Bruce Clingan .................................... 78

Weldon, Hon. Curt ............................................................................................ 37

Wilson, Hon. Heather ....................................................................................... 39

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Documents submitted.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Mr. McHugh ...................................................................................................... 95

Mr. Weldon ........................................................................................................ 93

(1)

AERIAL COMMON SENSOR PROGRAM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED

SERVICES, TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE, MEETING JOINTLY WITH TECHNICAL AND

TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, Washington, DC, Thursday, October 20, 2005.

The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 4:08 p.m., in room

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Curt Weldon (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, TACTICAL AIR

AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. WELDON. The subcommittee will come to order.

This afternoon the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee

has the pleasure of meeting in a joint session with the Technical

and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee of the Permanent Select

Committee on Intelligence to receive testimony on the Army and

Navy’s Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) Program.

This is a program the subcommittee has been following for some

time. I had asked the Government Accountability Office for a report on ACS, and they reported back to us in September of 2004.

We welcome our witnesses representing the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Departments of the Army and Navy, and

I want to thank and welcome our members.

At a previous 1-hour classified briefing, we had 11 Members of

Congress, in spite of votes being canceled, who stuck around from

both parties to receive an in-depth analysis of the capabilities of

the program we are going to be discussing today. And I want to

thank the members that are here and those members that made

that portion of our briefing.

The ACS program was initiated to upgrade and consolidate the

capabilities of three current intelligence collection aircraft types of

the Army and Navy: the Army’s Guardrail Common Sensor and

Airborne Reconnaissance Low programs and the Navy’s EP–3.

The program was approved for entry into Systems Development

and Demonstration (SDD) in July of 2004. In August of 2004, the

Lockheed Martin-Embraer team was awarded an $879 million, 5-

year contract to develop electronics and sensors to be carried on a

militarized version of the Embraer 145 regional jet aircraft.

Total acquisition costs for the 38 aircraft Army program was estimated to be $8 billion for 38 aircraft. Although the Navy was not

a signatory to the acquisition decision memorandum, the Navy
2

budgeted for the program in fiscal year 2006, with an intended

eventual procurement of 19 aircraft.

In the spring of this year it became apparent that weight growth

in the mission package would cause the ACS to fall short in meeting its requirements. In September, Lockheed Martin was issued a

stop work order, halting all work on ACS. Lockheed Martin was

given 60 days to develop an alternative plan for the ACS program.

The Army has recently stated that there is now a potential for a

2-year delay in fielding the ACS platform and that the development

cost could double to $1.8 billion.

Upon entry in the systems development and demonstration, ACS

could have been characterized as a low- to medium-risk program

based on declared technology readiness levels. Yet less than a year

into the SDD program we are at stop work, with all the attendant

costs and schedule ramifications. And with many engineers having

been reassigned to other programs, difficult to predict negative impacts to the program are highly probable due to discontinuity in

the design teams, if the program is restarted.

This has significant negative implications for this program and

potentially similar implications for other programs if this management failure is indicative of shortcomings in the acquisition system

as a whole.

Our understanding is that the ACS problem was largely a result

of something as simple as a significant underestimation of the

weight of connecting cables and racks for the mission equipment,

due to ‘‘bad parametrics.’’ We also understand that a $4 million cut

in risk reduction on integration tasks to ‘‘save money’’ potentially

contributed to this $800 million, 2-year slip in the program.

Further, it isn’t like the present ACS circumstance comes as a

total surprise. The January 2004 Director, Operational Test and

Evaluation report stated the following: ‘‘There are concerns about

the size, weight and power requirements of the aircraft required to

carry and operate the multi-intelligence sensor payload. Associated

with this issue, there are concerns about the growth potential of

the aircraft to add additional systems and capabilities in the future, consistent with the growth experienced with most other U.S.

aircraft platforms.’’

This is not a new story. The Joint Strike Fighter went through

a restructure, with the development cost increasing to over $40 billion and adding over a year to the program, largely due to weight

problems of fasteners, driven by ‘‘bad parametric estimates.’’ If the

ACS history is symptomatic of larger acquisition system shortcomings, this also has potentially far greater negative implications

for more complex programs like the Future Combat Systems program.

We all agree that we need to shorten the acquisition cycle, but

we should not be rushing into SDD for programs without mature

technologies and system integration being demonstrated in a relevant environment.

DOD has its 5000 series acquisition regulations. No one is saying

that OSD should not have flexibility in enforcement of those regulations, but OSD seems to too often default to waiving the regulations. As an example, the Future Combat Systems program was allowed to enter SDD long before technologies had matured. And vir-
3

tually no integrated capability for any of its components have been

demonstrated. And the requirements for an independent cost estimate has yet to be may et.

We have invited our witnesses here today to how we got to where

we are on ACS, what lessons have been learned and what is being

done to determine the proper path forward.

Before we begin, I would like to recognize my good friend from

Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, our ranking member, for his opening remarks.

Mr. Abercrombie.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Weldon can be found in the Appendix on page 37.]

STATEMENT OF HON. NEIL ABERCROMBIE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM HAWAII, RANKING MEMBER, TACTICAL AIR AND

LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I think your remarks essentially cover the circumstances we are to undertake during the hearing.

My difficulty, Mr. Chairman, is with reference to the classified

portion of our activities today. And my difficulty here is, although

I could not stay, as you know, for other reasons having to do with

one of our colleagues in honoring his spouse, Ike Skelton, our ranking member, nonetheless, the information that was given there

seems to me to be at odds with the circumstances that brings us

to this hearing today.

And I think that is where our difficulty comes. It is one thing to

say something; it is another thing to be able to actually bring to

fruition substantively what the remarks exchanged referred to.

And that is why we have to make a determination today on the

basis of the outline that you have presented to us in your opening

remarks.

Thank you.

Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentleman.

We are also very pleased to have the distinguished gentlelady as

the chair of the very important Technical and Tactical Intelligence

Subcommittee. We welcome her back because she has been a very

valuable member of this committee. She has an outstanding level

of credibility on defense issue and defense issues in general.

And so I am pleased to recognize for any comments she would

like to make, Ms. Wilson.

STATEMENT OF HON. HEATHER WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM NEW MEXICO, CHAIRWOMAN, TECHNICAL AND TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE SUBCOMMITTEE

Mrs. WILSON. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

And thank all of you for being here this afternoon.

On the Intelligence Committee, most of the programs that we

oversee are classified, and our questions take place behind closed

doors.

I wish that the problems being faced by the aerial common sensor were unique, but they are not. The program that we are here

to review today is just one example of continued problems with the

way in which we buy complicated defense and intelligence systems.
4

We all know that we need to upgrade the Army and Navy aircraft that watches and listens to potential enemies and real enemies. They are very old and they are not up to the demands of

the 21st-century warfare. But because we didn’t do a good enough

job in setting the requirements, getting different agencies on board

early and developing an acquisition strategy to reduce the risks, we

are not going to have those planes when we want them, and will

it cost us a whole lot more to get them.

While all of us are concerned about what the Army and the Navy

should do to meet its requirements for intelligence surveillance and

reconnaissance, our committee is even more concerned about a bigger issue of which ACS is only symptomatic.

First, what does this experience tell us about how we need to

change the way we buy and manage big systems? The outside review that was requested by the Army and done by the Navy after

the stop work concluded that the research development tests and

evaluation costs would be twice as high as projected, the schedule

was unexecutable, the program might not meet Army and Navy requirements, the government and contractor personnel lacked experience on projects of this size, and a flight test program was ill defined. Not a very encouraging report on the management of a major

system.

Second, what does this experience tell us about the need to coordinate and plan across the stovepipes as we decide what we will

need to build for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The Navy joined this project late. The Air Force is replacing

JSTARS a few years after we hoped to get this up in the air. Did

we have an architecture and a clear definition of roles and requirements? We got the architecture document, at least up here, in May

of this year. It doesn’t look like to me we did enough talking across

the stovepipes early on in the process.

So how can the services work better together to divide up roles

and missions or to make sure that we plan together so that we get

the capability that you all need at a price that we can afford.

I look forward to the testimony as we look toward answers to

these questions. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Wilson can be found in the Appendix on page 39.]

Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentlelady for her comment and thank

again all the members that have taken the time to be here. When

votes ended some time ago they stuck around, which shows you the

importance that is placed on this issue and this program by these

members who otherwise would be on their way back to their districts.

Our witnesses for today are distinguished.

Representing the Office of Secretary of Defense, Mr. John R.

Landon, Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and IT acquisition programs.

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and

Technology, the Honorable Claude Bolton. Mr. Secretary, welcome

back to this subcommittee. We appreciate your being here.
5

Major General Barbara Fast, Commanding General and Commandant of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca.

Thank you for being here.

From the Navy, Mr. Tom Laux, Program Executive Officer for air

anti-submarine warfare assault and special mission programs.

And Rear Admiral Bruce Clingan, Deputy Director for Air Warfare.

Without objection, all witnesses’ prepared statements will be accepted for the record.

I understand you have all agreed that three are going to testify

but others will be available, as needed, for questions and answers,

so members will have a chance to ask whatever questions they

would like.

We would like to begin with Mr. Landon. Thank you for being

with us. Please proceed with your opening remarks.

Please pull the microphone close to you so we can make sure that

you are heard. Thank you very much.

STATEMENT OF JOHN R. LANDON, DEPUTY TO THE ASSISTANT

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS, INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, RECONNAISSANCE, AND IT ACQUISITION PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT

OF DEFENSE; HON. CLAUDE M. BOLTON, JR., ASSISTANT

SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS,

AND TECHNOLOGY; MAJ. GEN. BARBARA FAST, COMMANDING GEN. AND COMMANDANT OF THE U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE CENTER AT FORT HUACHUCA, U.S. ARMY; THOMAS

LAUX, PROGRAM EXECUTIVE OFFICER FOR AIR ANTI-SUBMARINE WARFARE ASSAULT AND SPECIAL MISSION PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY; REAR ADM. BRUCE

CLINGAN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR AIR WARFARE, U.S. NAVY

Mr. LANDON. Yes, sir. Chairman Weldon, Chairwoman Wilson,

distinguished members of the two subcommittees, thank you for

this opportunity to speak to you about the Aerial Common Sensor

Program.

As indicated, I am John Landon. I am the deputy to the assistant

secretary of defense, networks and information integration. I have

responsibility for reviewing acquisitions in the command and control, communications, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance,

space and information technology areas.

I am here today representing Mr. Ken Krieg, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics

(USDAT&L) and the Milestone Decision Authority for the Aerial

Common Sensor Program. He is traveling overseas on official business and unable to attend this very important hearing.

The Aerial Common Sensor program is designated a Major Defense Acquisition Program in accordance with Title 10, and my office oversees the acquisition activities of the program in accordance

with the Department’s acquisition regulations and in support of

Mr. Krieg.

In the case of ACS, I also work closely with the Office of the

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence to ensure the system

is delivering the desired capabilities. The Department’s acquisition

regulations are designed to provide a structured process through
6

which validated capabilities are acquired, starting with early concept exploration activities, continuing through development and

demonstration and leading to a decision to produce and fully deploy

the capability.

My involvement in these programs is to ensure the mandates of

statute and regulation are adhered to and the programs are on a

success-oriented track as they enter the system development and

design phase. My office also measures the progress that programs

are making as they advance through the phases of the acquisition

cycle, with special attention to the program’s achievement of its

performance, cost and schedule.

I also serve as the leader of the Overarching Integrated Product

Team (OIPT), a group responsible for ensuring programs in the acquisition process have satisfied the necessary criteria for entering

the next phase of acquisition. For a number of years, the Department has used the Integrated Product Team approach as a process

for reviewing its acquisition programs.

The group I lead, as well as the supporting groups, consist of

subject matter experts from across the Office of the Secretary of

Defense and the services. These experts bring their considerable

knowledge and experience to the table as we review the multiple

facets of today’s critical acquisition programs.

Our OIPT members include representatives from all parts of the

Department. For example, the Joint Staff provides advice on capabilities; the Defense Procurement Office assists the program office

in development of their acquisition strategy; and the Program

Analysis and Evaluation Office is key to the development of alternatives analysis and accurate program cost estimates.

Our key representatives are the Office of the Director for Operational Test and Evaluation; the Defense Research and Engineering Office; the comptroller; the chief information officer; Logistics

and Materiel Readiness Office; the general counsel, as well as several others.

Once a program completes the review process, we present the

findings to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics and his advisors and offer a recommendation

as to whether the program is ready to proceed.

With regard to ACS, we followed the process I have described

above and collectively concluded that the program was ready to

enter the system development and demonstration phase. The results were presented to the under secretary and his advisors, and

on July 29, 2004, he approved entry into this phase of development.

The decision was forwarded to the secretary of the Army, and

source selection and contract award was completed by the Department of the Army.

With that as background, I am here to answer any questions you

may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Landon can be found in the Appendix on page 41.]

Mr. WELDON. Thank you for being with us.

Secretary Bolton, again, welcome back, and it is good to have you

here.

Secretary BOLTON. It is good being back, sir.
7

Good afternoon, and thank you, Chairman Weldon, Chairwoman

Wilson and distinguished members of the Tactical Air and Land

Forces Subcommittee and the House Permanent Select Committee

on Intelligence for this opportunity to discuss the Army’s Intelligence Collection Program, specifically the Aerial Common Sensor

Program. We are most grateful always for your wisdom, advice and

steadfast support.

The United States Army, with nearly 300,000 soldiers in 120

countries, is meeting the demands of the Global War on Terror, fulfilling our other worldwide commitments and transforming to meet

the challenges of an uncertain future. It is our job to ensure that

our men and women in uniform have what they need to fulfill their

mission today as well as tomorrow.

The Aerial Common Sensor Program, or ACS, is critically important to our future Army. The enhanced battle space awareness that

this system will bring to the fight will significantly increase both

the lethality and survivability of tomorrow’s Army.

Currently, our Special Electronic Mission Aircraft, or SEMA, SE-M-A, is comprised of the Guardrail Common Sensor and the Airborne Reconnaissance Flow Systems. These aging fleet aircraft, dispersed in five battalions throughout the world, are doing a superb

job. However, there are limitations that come with age and in

terms of the range of timeliness of information.

ACS will replace these 2 workhorses, bringing intelligence transformation to the 21st-century battle space. We are hard at work to

ensure that the ACS becomes the agile, multi-intelligence, multifunctional system that our future tactical commanders require. Simultaneously, with your help, we are making certain that our current systems in the SEMA fleet keep pace with the advancing technology to meet the changing threat until they are replaced by the

ACS.

We have spent countless hours developing our requirements documentation, specifically the operation requirements document and

the key performance parameters, and have exercised programmatic

control and management oversight at each step of the process. I believe the Army has been proactively raising and addressing some

very difficult issues concerning the ACS Program.

Our goal remains unchanged: To recognize and mitigate the risks

at the earliest possible stage and to ultimately fill to our war fighters this critically important and needed system that will continue

to allow our commanders the ability to gain and hold the advantage and to conduct decisive operations on their terms and not that

of the enemy’s.

And that concludes my opening remarks. Again, I thank you for

this opportunity and your continued wisdom, guidance and support,

and I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Secretary Bolton can be found in the

Appendix on page 58.]

Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Our final witness is Mr. Laux.

Welcome back to the subcommittee. We appreciate you being

here, and you can proceed with your opening statement. Thank

you.
8

Mr. LAUX. Chairman Weldon, Chairwoman Wilson, distinguished

members of the subcommittees, thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before you to discuss the Department of the

Navy’s EP–3E and Aerial Common Sensor airborne intelligence collection programs.

The written statement I provided for the record describes the

Navy’s objective to recapitalize the EP–3E by leveraging the ongoing Army-led ACS Program.

The Army’s operational requirements document and the Navy’s

annex to that document fulfill Navy requirements for maritime and

national missions in support of FORCEnet and Sea Strike Sea

Power 21 Pillars. ACS will provide the combatant commander with

72-hour response capability for worldwide intelligence, surveillance

and reconnaissance prior to entry of forces.

Since the chief of naval operations saw an opportunity for the

Navy to leverage the Army’s ACS Program, the Navy provided support within the Army’s process for source selection, contributed to

Army-assigned Integrated Product Team responsibilities and developed unique Navy documentation with the ultimate goal to be fully

integrated into the Army ACS Program.

In January 2005, the Navy requested deferring co-signing the

ACS acquisition program baseline agreement until Navy concerns

about schedule and cost risks could be mitigated. Our joining the

program is indefinitely delayed pending resolution of the schedule

breach and potential cost growth addressed in the Army program

deviation report of May 2005.

To help assess the overall program’s help, the Army service acquisition executive, Secretary Bolton, accepted my offer to use the

services of the Naval Air Systems Command’s non-advocate review.

NAVAIR’s chief engineer led this review with a team comprised of

a broad array of acquisition experience. The review team assessed

that the ACS Program is currently unexecutable. Specifics are detailed in my prepared statement.

Considering this finding, the Navy is requesting fiscal year 2006

funds to conduct an analysis of alternatives, revalidate operational

requirements and update documentation. Recently, we updated our

2004 analysis of options and determined that the new ACS costs

leveled the affordability field with other manned options. Therefore, an analysis of alternatives is recommended to define discriminators among the potential solutions.

The Navy’s current challenge is keeping the EP–3E viable and

relevant until an ACS initial operational capability is established.

We requested funds to begin work on mission systems sustainment

and relevance of legacy EP–3E aircraft. If required funding is made

available for the above, we will be able to position ourselves for the

results of the ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review.

Mr. Chairman, Ms. Chairwoman, thank you again for this opportunity to discuss with the subcommittee the Navy’s EP–3E and

ACS airborne intelligence collection programs. We stand ready for

your questions.

[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Laux and Admiral Clingan

can be found in the Appendix on page 78.]

Mr. WELDON. Thank you.
9

Thank you all for your testimony, for your statements. They will

all be accepted. If you want to add additional follow-on to any of

the questions that are asked today, you will be free to do that as

well.

Let me start off with Secretary Bolton. In my opening remarks,

I quoted from the fiscal year 2003 Director of Operational Tests

and Evaluation Report about the concerns that he had regarding

size, weight and power requirements of the aircraft required to

carry and operate the mission intelligence payload.

Can you specify any interaction with DOT&E and/or changes to

the ACS Program that took place based on the comments in that

report?

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir. In fact, we agreed with the report,

and as a consequence, that and our own review of the program

asked the program manager and the Program Executive Officer

(PEO) that they negotiated the contract, whichever company that

would be or team, that there be a proviso in that contract to report

on a monthly basis progress and tracking the size, weight and

power. We had a baseline that we wanted to stay within, and so

it was a contract requirement which was fulfilled by the contractor

and it was as a result of that report and our own investigations.

Mr. WELDON. I will just ask one other question at this time and

give all of our members a chance.

Mr. Laux, per your written statement, in January of 2005, via a

memorandum for USDAT&L, ‘‘The Navy requested deferring cosigning the ACS Acquisition Program Baseline Agreement until

completion of a program integrated baseline review and preliminary design review, at which time concerns about schedule and cost

risk could be addressed.’’

Was the Navy just clairvoyant? What schedule and cost risk concerns were you referring to? What did the Navy know that the

Army didn’t know, Mr. Laux?

Mr. LAUX. Mr. Chairman, we had ongoing concerns, which were

then communicated with the Army, and they were certainly aware

of them as well.

I would offer that it was perhaps a matter of degree of the

amount of risk that was out there, and we were simply not happy

at that point that we had enough knowledge and insight into the

program at that point to join up, if you will. And so we requested

more program execution and the fact-finding and the information

that would come out during the design review and the cost elements during the baseline review, as we annotated.

Mr. WELDON. The gentleman from Hawaii is recognized.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Bolton, you have to help me here. I don’t remember, I am

sorry, are you an aeronautical engineer?

Secretary BOLTON. Electrical engineering, sir.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. I am not.

Secretary BOLTON. Well, me either.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am not either. I went to a small school

whose reputation was built on the idea of a liberal arts education

with engineering—Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.
10

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And for those of us who did not have a talent

for what was then known as the hard sciences—I don’t know if that

is still a phrase that is in vogue or not—but those of us who were

involved in the other sciences, social sciences, the object was to try

and understand the implication of technology in the social structure of our society, attempt to become somewhat at least familiar

with the advancing of technology, i.e. the scientific method as it

evolved as a philosophy.

I always thought that the scientific method was intelligent design, but I now understand that that is probably passe for some

people. But it affected me and it affects me now.

I give that to you by way of background, because my question to

you comes from my own background and my understanding of how

science moves forward as potentially a layperson trying to deal

with it.

Now, one thing I understood from all of that in this context is

how much an airplane weighs, and I am referring back to the

chairman’s remarks, and if I heard him correctly, it refers to the

2003 report that came from the director, the operational test and

evaluation report.

‘‘There are concerns about the size, weight and power requirements of the aircraft required to carry and operate in the multiINT sensor payload. Associated with this issue there are concerns

about the growth potential of the aircraft to add additional systems

and capability in the future consistent with the growth experienced

by most other U.S. aircraft platforms.’’

I hope that is contextual enough. I am not trying to pull a fast

one on pulling something out of the context.

Now, here is my question: How much an airplane weighs, considering the context I just outlined, is a basic engineering aspect that

has to be taken into account. Having gone to Kill Devil Hills in the

past myself, I understand explicitly in three dimensions now what

the Wright Brothers had to deal with in terms of weight, and probably weight was the principal consideration that they had, at least

my understanding of it is. The aerodynamics and so on they had

down pretty well. It was a weight problem, how were they going

to transpose and translate their knowledge and understanding of

the physics of that into a practical application for the construction

of that airship.

That is in 1903. So I cannot understand how it was possible that

so many engineers and so many managers, right up until essentially 2005, could get this wrong. And we still don’t have an answer.

Now, I made reference in my opening remarks to the classified

briefing that we had just previous, and obviously I can’t go into

that and you can’t go into what the substance of that was, but

what concerns me and disturbs me is the tenor of the remarks and

respective answers to questions that were raised were such that

one would be led to believe that these issues had been addressed

and that things were on track to accomplish the tasks set out

therein, which we don’t have to go into in any detail, doesn’t matter for purposes of our conversation.

How is it possible that we are where we are if someone like myself understands that the weight question in conjunction with the
11

mission requirements is at least fundamental before you move forward into the kind of contracting that we are now having to confront in terms of apparently the incapacity to move forward on

those contract specifications?

How did this happen?

Secretary BOLTON. Mr. Abercrombie, first, it is good seeing you

again.

Second, you ask some of the most interesting questions that a

technical person like me has to answer succinctly and clearly.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Not too much praise, the chairman says.

Mr. WELDON. You praise him too much and we will be here till

9 o’clock tonight.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But you understand what I am doing. Every

person here sitting in these chairs doesn’t have a clue. You could

get up there and literally say, ‘‘The moon is made of green cheese,’’

and there is not a whole hell of a lot we can do to refute it if it

is based on a technology-based, science-based answer.

So someone like myself who has to vote on this, has to try to take

a responsible position, has to understand how in the hell did this

happen and what are we going to do about it at this stage?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, I will tell you, I asked the same question when I received the status of the program a few months ago.

And I will tell you, though I have a technical background and

though I have been a pilot, test pilot and so I understand weight,

balance, power on air frames, I will tell you, I also have a brother

who is not technical. He has four masters and a Ph.D. and they are

all in the soft sciences. So he has counseled me over the years to

be able to translate this, at least for him.

When the program manager and the executive officer came to

me, I asked the same question, ‘‘How in the heck did we get here?’’

I realized in regards to the chairman’s opening comments on the

risk of the program, when we entered SDD it was moderate to

high, and it was high because of the risk and the weight area. That

is why we asked the contractor to come to us each month and tell

us how they were doing as we did the designs.

To your point, what we did not do in the previous phase was

really to take the operation requirements and break those down

into the design technical requirements.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But that is just fundamental. If you can’t do

that, then you have to come and tell us, ‘‘We can’t do this. We have

got to go in another direction.’’

Secretary BOLTON. It was our belief at the time that we had done

enough in that phase in terms of computer simulations, in terms

of some preliminary design work, paper design work, using tools

that we normally use in all the other programs that would allow

the risk to be where it was and then go ahead and track that risk.

We had plans to do that and that is what we were doing.

In addition, there was pressure on the services. I mentioned upfront, and it has been mentioned before, that we do have a very old

fleet. That fleet is maxed out today in the area of responsibility

(AOR) and we really do need a capability to help our tactical commanders over there.
12

So from the Army’s standpoint, it was worth taking a higher risk

program in, given all the things that we had done and then just

monitor it.

The other thing I will say, and then I will give you my reason

why I think we are here, which is not technical, it is more a people

thing than it is a technical thing, but in the programs that I have

seen over the years, what we are doing here today we typically

wouldn’t do for 2 or 3 years. We would have spent a lot of time and

effort for me to sit here to eventually tell you we got something

wrong.

Unlike that, in this program, within the very first years, at my

urging to my folks, I said, ‘‘If you have a problem,’’ in fact, we established on this program what I call a termination criteria and

there were two of them. If you cannot meet the key performance

parameters and/or you cannot meet critical milestones like the preliminary design review, which was supposed to have taken place

earlier this year, or the critical design review, that is grounds for

you to come back to me and tell me that and I will look seriously

at whether or not we are going to continue this program.

Now, for most program managers, they don’t like establishing

things like that, because they are viewed as failures if they come

in to do this. But as a result of that, in the last 3.5 years that I

have been here, I have terminated or stopped 70 different programs, because I want to know right away. I do not have the time,

and we certainly don’t have the resources, to do things in the

wrong direction.

So I am pleased with what those two gentlemen did in coming

and saying, ‘‘We have got a problem. We have got to stop. We have

got to figure out what we are doing,’’ and do it now rather than

coming into you 2 or 3 years later.

Now, why is this happening, my view, and the reason I asked the

Navy to go do the review. I asked the Navy to take a look at two

things. First of all, take a look at the technical side, technically

why didn’t we understand this. And I want you to take a look at

it from the government’s viewpoint and the contractor’s.

And what I got out of that is what I surmised: Yes, hindsight

being what it is, we could have done some things certainly in the

other phase which would have required more money and actually

prototyping. That is the only way you could really understand size,

weight and power. There have been cost and schedule implications

to that.

The other is looking at the various processes we have today that

are people-oriented, good people in these processes: The requirements community, resourcing community, the acquisition community, Very good people. And I will foot stomp that. We have the

world’s best people in there.

What we have trained those people to do over the years is to

work in stovepipes. Successful programs are very good at the people level of breaking across at the top and making that work. But

from an institutional standpoint, we in the Army—I won’t speak

for the Department of Defense—haven’t done that in nearly 50

years in breaking those stovepipes down. We are doing that now

in other programs. It was not done well enough on this program.
13

And when I say break the stovepipes down, it is not only a matter of let’s organizationally do something, but within those stovepipes it would be really neat if you would really educate, train and

provide the right tools for those people. If we had done that, I think

this program and a host of other programs would have less problems.

And, in fact, in the Army, that is what we are trying to do right

now, is to break those stovepipes down to make sure the requirements community, sitting with the resourcing community, sitting

with the acquisition community from day one are looking at those

operational requirements to try to understand what really are the

technical and financial implications of trying to do that.

Which, by the way, we are doing right now in the stop work. All

those communities are getting together to do that work right now.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Appreciate it. I am past my time, and I will

follow-up.

Mr. WELDON. The gentlelady is recognized.

Mrs. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary Bolton, I was struck by something that you just said.

You said the only way to really understand the tradeoffs for cost,

weight and power is to build a prototype, but as I understand the

timeline here, you awarded the contract to Lockheed Martin in August of 2004 and knew by December of 2004 that you were running

into weight problems.

How far were they into building the first aircraft?

Secretary BOLTON. Oh, not at all. We are just doing the detailed

design work, so we are not building.

Mrs. WILSON. Then you didn’t need to build a prototype to figure

out you had——

Secretary BOLTON. Oh, I disagree. The platform is a platform.

We are trying to do a commercial platform, as you know. The

boxes, those are being built. And let me give you an example or two

of what we mean by this.

We are trying to put onto one platform a number of different sensors. We have Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Imagery Intelligence

(IMINT), Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) and

so forth, and rarely have we done that before. We did a lot of study

up-front to say ‘‘Yes, that looks good.’’ We had three contractor

teams who told us, ‘‘We can do this. And, by the way, we can do

it reliably, so you don’t have to buy a lot of aircraft, and we can

do it on one platform.’’ So it wasn’t just this contractor. There were

at least two others who were saying the same thing.

So we went through the demonstration phase, the concept phase,

now we are ready to go into SDD. When we take the operational

requirement, like the notion, okay, on this multi-INT aircraft, on

each mission, are you required to have every black box on at the

same time? The answer came back, ‘‘yes’’. ‘‘Oh, we didn’t understand that.’’ If that is what you want, now we are going to have

more air conditioning, and we are going to have to have more

power, which will add to the weight of the aircraft.

Mrs. WILSON. I guess my question is, and this is a fairly short

time when you realized there was a problem——

Secretary BOLTON. Yes.
14

Mrs. WILSON [continuing]. Looking back at it now, and the great

thing about being able to look back is you get a magic wand to decide what it is you might have done differently in your acquisition

strategy, would you have changed anything or do you think it is

inevitable that we are at this point?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, as I said earlier, and I will foot stomp

this again, I think you really need the communities together better.

They are doing it now. We are not cutting metal right now. We are

not writing any software. But we really are understanding the impacts of the operational requirement.

And what I am saying is, why don’t you get that group earlier?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you got that group together, say, down at

Fort Belvoir, at the school down there, had a case study like this

and we would sit around in the afternoon thinking about how you

actually do this. How did those folks get into that position? How

should we correct this on the next program? What tools should we

be using? What policies should we have in place? What oversight

should we have in place, rather than doing it right now when there

is a lot at stake here.

We do not train our folks to do this. We don’t. The requirements

community doesn’t train that way. By law, I have to train the acquisition community. They have to be certified and experienced before I can put them in there, so they do go down to Belvoir and

do that.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would you yield for one moment?

Mrs. WILSON. Sure.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Are you telling Representative Wilson that

this was contractor driven and you folks went along? Is that what

you are telling her?

Secretary BOLTON. No, that is not what I am saying.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, it sure sounds like it.

Secretary BOLTON. No. I am not understanding, sir, how we are

getting the contract, because this is all on the government’s side

right now. It is not driven by the contractor. What I am talking

about is us before we ever write a contract for SDD. And it is a

matter of getting the requirements right, really understanding

that. And I can say that because I used to write requirements. I

didn’t have class one on it.

Mrs. WILSON. Thank you. I appreciate that, and I appreciate the

directness of your answer.

Mr. Laux, would you also comment on that as well, on this issue

of joint requirements, and particularly whether there was any

signoff by senior intelligence folks in the services to say, ‘‘These are

our requirements?’’ Because what I read through this is the Navy

all the way through saying, ‘‘I will have what he is having,’’ but

coming at it from a very different point of view. And are you there

as well saying, ‘‘All right, let’s sit down and figure out what we

really want.’’

Mr. LAUX. If I could defer to Admiral Clingan to take that one.

Admiral CLINGAN. Chairwoman Wilson, the requirements process

is derived from the operators on the ground, as they look forward

to meeting the threat of the future. And as we develop those requirements, we codify them in key performance parameters.
15

In the case of the ACS Program, as we look to the challenges of

recapitalizing the aging EP–3 fleet, we had an opportunity to partner with the Army. Maybe if we could rationalize the requirements

across the services which were extraordinarily common. In fact, we

departed initially in only one way and that was our requirement

to have six workstations as opposed to four. And those requirements have been stable throughout the process up until this point

as we have gone through the acquisition elements which follow

from the requirements.

Mrs. WILSON. Why does the Army think this is an Army program

and the Navy think this is a joint program in your budget documents? I am struck by the way that language is—or maybe I have

got that reversed. This has never really been described as an, ‘‘we

are all body and joint program.’’ This is an Army program that the

Navy is partnering with. I think that is the word you just used.

Why are we doing it that way?

Admiral CLINGAN. It took that tenor because we came into the

process subsequent to some progress being made by the Army. We

liked the requirements, as I mentioned earlier. They harmonize

with what we were looking for, and so we looked for an opportunity

to join the program at the time when we viewed the challenges to

have been overcome.

Mrs. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentlelady.

The gentleman, Mr. Tiahrt, is recognized.

Mr. TIAHRT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In full disclosure, I am from Wichita, Kansas, the air capital of

the world, where we have Boeing, Bombardier Learjet, Textron

Cessna, Raytheon-Beech, Spirit Aerostructures, the largest standalone aerostructure facility in the world, an Airbus design shop and

150 machine shops, electrical shops and test equipment shops that

support the industry. So if you have flown, some part of that airplane originated in Wichita, Kansas. I just want to make sure you

are aware of that.

We are limited in here to talk about really two things: The

schedule and the platform. And the platform, it is clear that it is

inadequate with the current platform that was proposed. The

weight capabilities, the power capabilities, the cooling capabilities,

it is just not enough for this mission-critical requirements. And we

can’t afford to dumb down the package.

I think what we are looking for here is so critical that we can’t

afford to have anything less. In fact I think we need to expand our

thoughts about what other growth is out there.

And, schedule, we are on a stop order now, so schedule is kind

of TBD, to be determined. Now, we don’t know what we don’t

know. We don’t know about the growth of technology, we don’t

know about the growth of threats that will come out of that new

technology, and we don’t know the number of users per the requirements that this mission has. So I think we need to look beyond just

what our current little problem is, because we are looking at costs

now, and I think we are being penny wise and dollar foolish, because there is a long-term growth that has not been, I think, addressed or acknowledged.
16

Now, there has been, I think, a bias toward a heavy jet for this

role of this mission, and I know during Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) there was some concern about mission duplication and

there was an article in Defense News and Army Times, published

October 3, and it quoted the light transport that the Army is going

after in the ACS Program. General John Jumper said that there

is no reason to build a new Air Force because we already have one.

Now, I think that is an excellent statement for the chief of the

Air Force, but as I look out there, I know we have got somebody

from the Secretary of Defense but I don’t see any blue suiters out

there or any people from the Air Force. So I think we need to address that issue, whether there is a bias against a heavy jet. Is

there a question or a concern of encroaching into another services

that would bias the size of the airframe, is one of the questions I

have.

The other question I have is on schedule. How much longer

would it take to try to put these requirements into a commercial

business jet or a regional jet? Because there is a big difference between a militarized aircraft and a commercial aircraft. And when

it comes time to build an airplane, if it comes off a militarized production line, it has a shorter schedule than it does if you take a

regional jet line or a business jet line and try to put all these military specs and other requirements into it during that process.

So I would like you to answer, is there a bias? Are we addressing

the growth? And how much longer is it going to take if we try to

put this in too small a package?

I would like, of course, Secretary Bolton, also Mr. Landon to address that.

Secretary BOLTON. Mr. Tiahrt, it is good seeing you again. And

as you may recall, one of my assignments was at McConnell Air

Force Base there in Wichita, so I had a chance to understand the

aviation part of that community, which as you mentioned, is key

and very important.

In terms of why, I don’t have a bias. What I do have a bias for

is I have a prime contractor and the onus is on that contractor to

do as I have asked him to do, and that is put a program together.

I do know they are looking at all sorts of alternatives in terms of

a platform that will accommodate the requirements, the operational requirements. And I am anxious for them to come in in

about a month’s time and tell me what we have in terms of a program, in terms of a platform accommodating the requirements, not

dumbing it down, as you indicated, and also what is affordable, because we are not looking at just the up-front costs here.

This system will be around at least 20 years. And can we afford

to do this? I will ask if there are any other alternatives outside of

that and what the contractor comes up with. But I do not have a

bias one way or the other.

And in fact, in terms of the Air Force, depending on how things

go over the next month, we would love to sit down and chat with

the Air Force to see if we can bring some things together on that

side and make sure it is affordable for everybody.

Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Landon, you want to address that?

Mr. LANDON. Yes, sir, I would be happy to. I think with regard

to the bias, let me comment particularly on the way the capability
17

or the requirement was developed. It was taken from a mission

perspective, and the platform was not an entering argument for the

first of the program. And so we really looked at it in the requirements process, looked at what is the capability required, how do we

get that, and then what platforms will accommodate it.

So in terms of bias, I would say it just didn’t enter and still has

not entered an argument.

Mr. TIAHRT. In terms of schedule, you know, the Navy has a militarized line going on for a heavy jet through the Multi-mission

Maritime Aircraft (MMA) Program, and that is something that I

think would expedite, help you buy some time on the schedule. Has

that been measured between going down a line that is militarized

versus taking a regional jet that is in a commercial facility, in another country?

Secretary BOLTON. What I have asked as part of the stop work

order is that when the team comes back in, what the alternatives

are. I am concerned about meeting the operation requirements. I

am also concerned about, can I afford it, up-front and the outyears? And to your point, would it be cheaper to do it, as you have

suggested? Is there another way of doing it? I don’t know the answer to that until the team really comes in. I am not biased one

way or the other.

Mr. LAUX. Mr. Congressman, if I could comment. The initial

operational capability for the MMA is currently the year 2013.

When we evaluated the ACS candidates last year, that was

factored into the available options, if you will, of what could be considered, how much bang we would get for the buck, as Secretary

Bolton points out.

Given where we are now, we certainly expect to work with the

Army in reevaluating all the options, and we expect the MMA will

be revisited as a potential candidate.

Mr. TIAHRT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, I am not a rocket scientist either. Now, we have Rush Holt

is a rocket scientist, Todd Tiahrt is an engineer and Heather Wilson was in the Air Force, so I guess you have some expertise.

I want to break this down into common sense and from what I

understand, like the way Mr. Abercrombie wanted to do. What I

see is the issue here that you had two different contractors. One

contractor, I believe it was Northrop Grumman, their platform was

Gulfstream, which their statements are basically that, ‘‘We would

have been able to handle all of the expansion and whatever you

needed if you would have gone with our platform.’’ However, theirs

was more expensive. Then the Lockheed Martin was a cheaper

platform.

Now, one of the things that I heard through the whole process,

and I am not taking either side here, we just want end game, is

that during the process and past history that the Army has a reputation for going on the cheap. That is good sometimes, that is bad

sometimes. It is bad when it doesn’t work.

Now, based on the fact that if you were a betting man, you would

have bet who would have gotten that contract, it was going to be
18

Lockheed Martin because their program was cheaper. And now

looking back, the fact that we are where we are now, that when

Lockheed got the contract and now you have to stop it, that means

that we are way far behind, and we are probably going to have to

spend more in the long run.

So I am interested—and I am just making a statement, I am not

going to ask you to answer this question—to make sure that when

the Army evaluates in their acquisition they look at all the relevant factors and the analysis to make sure that we do it right.

Now, let me get this in specifics. One logical question is that

when the problems with the RJ145, the Lockheed chosen platform—when should they have been identified? Are you familiar

with Edward Bair, he is the PEO? Now, he made a statement, it

is my understanding, that he saw the problem with the RJ145 that

the modeling tools used by the Army and Lockheed underestimated

the weight of cables, harness and the cooling required onboard the

aircraft by nearly 50 percent. Do you agree with that or not?

Secretary BOLTON. Mr. Bair works for me, so I know him very

well.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Do you agree with that comment?

Secretary BOLTON. What he is referring to are, as the chairman

mentioned in the opening, the parametrics. Industry standards, not

Army standards, not DOD standards, were used. When we got into

this, we found that industry standards no longer apply. We are

changing industry standards, and so that model does not work for

this type of work, and it wouldn’t work for the industry.

With regard to the other competitor, the other competitor failed

out not because they are more expensive, because their aircraft

couldn’t carry the weight during the source selection. Couldn’t

carry the weight. And that is how they were debriefed.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Okay. I am not taking sides here.

Secretary BOLTON. I understand. I just want to make sure——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I do want to point out, though, as it relates

to that, that it is my understanding that Israel has gone with the

Gulfstream and that they are going through the process and it is

going pretty well right now. Are you familiar with their——

Secretary BOLTON. Not familiar with their program. I am familiar with mine. I am familiar with the weight that we have. That

Gulfstream cannot carry it, period.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Okay. Now, if that is the case, whatever.

Now, the issue of—or the implication that Lockheed’s chosen jet

didn’t have a lot of extra capacity and at the Army’s request to add

two more stations and lengthen endurance, didn’t this make the

choice of that platform questionable?

Secretary BOLTON. No. What we debriefed to that team and what

was debriefed to me was that on the day of the award we had

about 3,000 pounds, according to the contractor, margin. Our estimate was that it was less than that but still doable to fly the mission, fly with the weight and so forth. So on the day of the contract

award, we had margin. But realizing that was a watch area, we requested that the contractor respond on a monthly basis on that

margin.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. After they responded, it is my understanding that they only proposed minor modifications, leaving them al-
19

most no wiggle room for eventualities like Bair’s statement. Why

might that be?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, I am not sure I understand that part of

the question.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Let me get to the question again. Lockheed,

even after these issues were there, only proposed minor modifications. Now, that didn’t give them the ability to expand, which is

where you wanted them to, which is why the program is stop now.

Do you see that as the case?

Secretary BOLTON. I still don’t understand but let me see if I can

put this in perspective. On the day of the contract award, we were

looking at an aircraft that met all of the operational requirements—all of them. There were no requirements that caused us to

add anything to the aircraft.

As you got into the detail design review and the technical requirements and realizing that the model that we were using, the

industry standard no longer applied, the cabling is going up by 50

percent, or the fact that the aircraft now has to be stressed to 16

Gs, which is not normal for any aircraft, Gulfstream or anybody

else. They are normally 9 Gs, that is the FAA standard. That drove

the weight up. Those are all things that we discovered as we took

those operational requirements and broke them into——

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Let me ask you this: Where do we go now?

I mean, we need this.

Secretary BOLTON. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. In general, would you admit we do need

this capability?

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Where do we go now? Do we go with a new

platform? I mean, where is the next move?

Secretary BOLTON. The move is ongoing right now, as we speak.

As you know, I have a stop work for 90 days. At the 60-day point,

the contractor, the prime, comes back to me and tells me what the

alternatives are—platforms, meeting the requirements, cost schedule performance. And I am waiting for that.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But based on your expertise or anybody

else on the panel, do you feel that in order to do what we need to

do, we need to go to another platform that can handle this?

My time is up, Mr. Chairman? Oh, okay.

Secretary BOLTON. There is a high likelihood of that, but as to

which platform, I do not know.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But then if we do go to another platform,

how far behind does that put us, and how much more money is

that going to cost? A lot more?

Secretary BOLTON. I don’t know the answer to that. It will be

more time, and it will be more money, but I don’t know.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, what I am asking, and, again, I am

not on Armed Services, I am on the Intelligence Committee——

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER [continuing]. I am asking that there be an

evaluation of this whole process to find out why we are where we

are now, why we didn’t anticipate that, do we have the proper expertise who is there to put together the program that was necessary? When the contract was there, we had to stop at 90 days.
20

So we can’t continue to make these mistakes. I mean, we need

intelligence, and we need these capabilities. So I really hope that

there would be an evaluation of this, where we go. In the meantime, we need to focus.

I have one question that is entirely different from this, I have to

get this out. This is a staff question.

Mr. WELDON. Will the gentleman yield before he asks his final

question?

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Yes.

Mr. WELDON. Would you at some point in time explain why the

change was made from the requirement of 9 Gs to 16 Gs?

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir. The original interpretation by all the

design teams was that when the 16 Gs was put in there, it was

for the seat, for the survivability of the crew members, and that is

understandable. When we got into the design and asking the question again, it was, ‘‘No, 16 Gs for the entire aircraft because we

have racks in there and we have other things hanging in the aircraft. And if we can beef those up so that if we do have a crash,

we won’t have projectiles flying around and injuring the crew.’’

Okay. Well, that is no longer standard for any commercial aircraft, and that drove the weight up.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you. One of my concerns when I

looked at this in the very beginning stage was that the other alternative, the Gulfstream, has a longer ability to stay in the air,

which I thought from an efficiency point of view. Was that ever

considered, the duration of the ability to stay up?

Secretary BOLTON. Quite frankly, we have a requirements to loiter for X number of hours. However, in this case, when we loaded

the Gulfstream that was proposed, we essentially couldn’t’ fly the

aircraft; we were beyond the structural limits. So you couldn’t fly

at all.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Well, I understand that. I hope that we

learned so we can move forward, and whatever we do, we do it

quickly and we do it the right way. And, again, the reputation that

I talked about, I haven’t observed you enough to find out whether

you do do it on the cheap. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is

bad, but you want to do it right.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And you get what you pay for when we are

dealing with this.

Secretary BOLTON. The emphasis is on doing it right.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. All right. Just one question, Mr. Chairman;

I have to get this on record. It is no secret that Congress has concerns over transformation satellite communications to provide the

bandwidth for future military communications. Does ACS depend

on TSAT for its bandwidth to disseminate data collected on the

platform? And if so, is DOD’s plan to mitigate risk if TSAT fielding

is delayed?

The House cut $40 million from TSAT in fiscal year 2006, and the Senate cut $250 million.

Secretary BOLTON. You want to take it? Go ahead.

General FAST. Thank you, sir. We are not dependent upon TSAT.

We do have mitigation strategies in place. ACS was not designed

initially to depend on that capability. There are other options that
21

are available to us, a combination of military as well as commercial

options. We have a program that is in play right now, a multi-role

tactical common data linkage, as you are aware, that should also

help us mitigate any slippage or cessation in the other program. So

we are not viewing that as being a showstopper for us for ACS in

terms of communication.

Mr. LANDON. If I might add a little bit more to that comment.

I agree with the general that ACS is not dependent on TSAT, but

we are looking at the ability for these big collection programs, the

sensor programs, to be able to bring that information and data

back to the CONUS so we can process it. Gives us a smaller footprint in theater, allows us to do our processing back here and then

forward the process data. And so the idea of being able to reach

back is an extremely important part of our future programs.

Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentleman for his questions.

The gentleman from New York, Mr. McHugh, is recognized.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a 13-year member

of the Armed Services Committee, it is a new experience for me to

be in this room with a number of the Intelligence Committee where

I have standing today. So if I seem confused, it is not just the complexity of this issue, it is the dual hat situation which I am in.

Most of the questions that I had have been asked. I am not sure

they have been answered or certainly answered in the way in

which I have come to grips with this, but let me just pull a point

or two from various places.

Mr. Secretary, did I understand you to say that the 16 Gs standard was something of a surprise and that added to the cost?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, surprise from the standpoint of it is for

the entire aircraft, not just the seats in the aircraft.

Mr. MCHUGH. But don’t we have platforms up there right now,

the RC–135, the EP–3 and others, that are at 16 Gs crash standard? I mean, it is a military standard, is it not? I am surprised why

apparently you all were surprised.

Secretary BOLTON. Well, remember that the going in position

was use a Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) aircraft, which meant

a commercial aircraft. That is not standard for commercial aircraft.

Mr. MCHUGH. But I am confused, who should have known that?

Who should have understood that going into the contract phase

that you obviously had a commercial platform picked by the contractor that couldn’t meet a standard that the military was going

to impose upon it?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, if you are the contractor and I will tell

you I am going to use a COTS aircraft, FAA-approved aircraft, and

I want 16 Gs in, what would you assume? FAA doesn’t do 16 Gs.

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, but then you weren’t clear enough. Can we

agree on that?

Secretary BOLTON. Absolutely. I agree with that.

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, in that regard, let me read something, a

quote here, from the Army program executive officer responsible for

the ACS. He stated, ‘‘In hindsight, the Army should have done

more detailed design work before awarding the SDD contract to understand the implications of the airframe medications essential to

accommodate power cooling and cabling for these size payloads.’’

Would you agree with that?
22

Secretary BOLTON. He and I discussed that, and the reference on

there is absolutely right: hindsight, 20/20 hindsight. Perfectly agree

with it. But given——

Mr. MCHUGH. You and I just agreed upon the fact that the Army

perhaps wasn’t as clear as they should have been on 16 Gs. What

parts of this challenge that we are facing right now were

inexplicably brought upon you?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, I would go back in terms of a solution,

because there are a number of area, whether you talk 16 Gs,

whether you talk about the cabling and a number of others. I think

if you sit down at a phase before this with at least three of the five

or six communities talking and really going from the operational

requirements—and please don’t get me wrong, I am not challenging

the operation requirements. They are what they are, and the operators need that.

What I am saying is we need to do a little bit more work in understanding what those mean from a technical requirement standpoint. And the only way you do that is to do more detailed work

up-front with people who understand how to do that. And in order

for those people to understand it, they all need to be trained with

the right tools and have experience. We haven’t done that for at

least two of those communities.

So it doesn’t surprise me on programs like this that are very

complex that you have misunderstandings. And my push, at least

for the Army, is to stop that by making sure that our requirements

community—and you can begin to see that down in Fort Monroe

in our Futures Center—have acquisition types in there with the requirement types, that they get some education and training as to

how to talk to one another so we don’t have these misunderstandings.

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, I sure agree with that. I think you would

agree, based on your comments a few moments earlier, I believe it

was to Mr. Ruppersberger, that you probably—and I don’t want to

prejudice this—but you are probably going to have to change platforms. That is a big misunderstanding on a design award like this.

So we have got to start being very, very clear whether you are talking about 16 Gs or cabling size or whatever. It is a terrible situation.

And let me say for the record, I am not attacking you in any way

on your action on the stop work. I don’t see what else you could

have possibly done, and I commend you for that. And as you noted

earlier, perhaps under previous systems it would have taken many

more months, maybe years, but it is still a huge problem.

Let me ask you: What is the project termination cost? Have you

had a chance to look at that?

Secretary BOLTON. Yes. I would hesitate to give you a cost, not

that I don’t have one. And here is why: If I have to terminate this

contract—I am not terminating the requirement, that stands, but

this contracted effort—the letter that I sent out asks for a proposal

from the contractor. And if I give you what I think it is, I think

that contractor would put me in an interesting position when I

start negotiating what the costs ought to be. But I do have a handle on what it should be.

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, maybe we can talk offline.
23

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir, we can do that.

Mr. MCHUGH. You got me on that one. I don’t disagree with that.

Probably flashes back on my second question as to what the contractor liability is here, if at all, in terms of——

Secretary BOLTON. We go along the same lines; yes, sir.

Mr. MCHUGH. See above? Okay.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. WELDON. Thank the gentleman for his questions.

The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Holt.

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Although it is an honor to

sit up here on the upper tier in the Armed Services Committee, I

must say, I don’t envy you if you have to put up with this sort of

acquisition stuff frequently.

I am astonished that it is written here how the electronics package would be fitted into the airframe was deferred until after the

contract was awarded, that the design was not frozen, continued to

add requirements, evidently: Flight duration, number of black

boxes, number of workstations, number of crew, acceleration standard. Those are some pretty basic things that should be in place before the contract is awarded, it seems to me.

And then when the test and evaluation (T&E) folks raise these

serious questions, it takes, by my calculation, 21 months before a

stop work order is issued.

Have you seen this sort of thing before, Mr. Chairman? Well,

maybe we ought to—maybe this is a job to call in Donald Trump

or Martha Stewart.

Well, let me get to my question.

Mr. Laux, you called for a couple of tens of millions of dollars for

Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) funds to

conduct an analysis of alternatives, and I want to find out where

we are going from here. This would be for EP–3 aircraft or successors. And in fact you go so far as to mention potential joint programs.

Now, I am a little surprised that given your experience here you

would be talking about joint programs. As an outsider, as a layman, in theory, I find the idea of these joint programs attractive,

but I wonder whether the jointness has provided any advantage

here and whether in the future, for what we are going to do next,

if we are concerned about creeping requirements and changing

numbers of workstations and acceleration standards and so forth,

whether that is improved, whether control over that sort of thing

is improved with a joint program or not.

Mr. LAUX. Yes, sir. The reference to the joint program recognizes

the fact that the ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review may in fact

report out in this area with a recommendation along those lines.

The suggestion that the service needs to pursue an analysis of alternatives is to address all the potential candidates, sort of relook

at the playing field of what the ongoing programs and potential future programs could bring to bear in light of the hindsight that we

have now with where the ACS is in terms of capability and affordability.

I would like to be clear that from our perspective, at least, the

requirement has not been a moving target. How the contractor has
24

chosen to address the requirement has been, but the requirement

has been set, certainly from the Navy’s perspective, since we first

started working with the Army in this area.

Mr. HOLT. If it had been more joint—I mean, I gather this is sort

of, not truly a joint program. If it had been more joint, would you

have been more on top of the contractor to prevent his creep, this

mission creep, I mean, the design creep?

Mr. LAUX. The program is not yet joint in that the Navy has not

formally signed up to the acquisition documentation and the review

process, to that end. This was an Army program, it is an Army program. The Navy intends to join this program, and we have turned

in the President’s budget request to reflect that.

Mr. HOLT. All right. Thank you.

Well, let’s see, turning back to Mr. Landon, as I understand it,

the stop work really applies to everything here, even though the

sensor work, the various packages on board, that work was going

along all right. Doesn’t it make sense to continue that work? Do I

misunderstand? Has that been stopped also? If so, shouldn’t that

be allowed to continue so that you will be closer to your understanding of what to do if and when you have to change aircraft?

Mr. LANDON. Yes, sir. The stop work was issued by the Army,

and so the conditions of the stop work—I think it would be better

if Mr. Bolton commented on that particular aspect.

Mr. HOLT. Fine. Let’s ask Mr. Bolton then.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir. With regards to the black boxes and

the avionics of it, no, I stopped everything. And the reason was if

we don’t understand the requirements well enough to go into the

detailed work for the boxes, why I am doing stuff on the boxes?

Until we really understand what is driving the design of those

boxes——

Mr. HOLT. I think because you know what the requirements are

for interceptions for video, for whatever sensors——

Secretary BOLTON. No, sir. No, sir. No.

Mr. HOLT [continuing]. And surveillance you will be doing.

Secretary BOLTON. No.

Mr. HOLT. I thought those requirements were pretty well set.

Secretary BOLTON. The operational requirements are set.

Mr. HOLT. The intelligence folks and others had set those requirements.

Secretary BOLTON. No, sir. No, sir. The operation requirements

are set. The detailed electronic technical requirements are not. I

understand what the operator wants, written that down, that

hasn’t changed. I am not into the detailed work of drawings, putting circuits together, running cables, and what we have found as

we got into that is that we did not understand the requirement.

Well, if I allow the boxes to continue today, I could wind up in several months with something that doesn’t fit the requirements as I

understand this better.

So my position was, everybody stop. You leave enough folks in

there to figure out how we got here and what are good alternatives

for the future, which will include all of the work, platform as well

as the payloads.

General FAST. I just want to add something, sir, if that is all

right.
25

Mr. HOLT. Please.

General FAST. As the secretary said, all options really are on the

table, and everything is going to be examined. But that said, we

know, at a minimum, we are going to have a slippage. In the meantime, as you have heard from our Navy colleagues and from us, we

are asking for some ability to modernize the existing fleets that we

have with our Guardrail Common Sensor and our Airborne Reconnaissance Low and the EP–3.

In that regard, many of the technologies that we will ask to have

modernized are the same technologies that we have in the ACS

Program. And so if we were to receive funding for this modernization, some of the benefits of the modernization could spill over,

could spiral over into the ACS Program, so you wouldn’t have, from

a technology development standpoint, a total cessation of work.

Mr. HOLT. But the same people would be doing that work under

a new contract or a modified contract; is that——

General FAST. Sir, I can’t say that it will be the same people, but

the technology would be developed.

Mr. HOLT. Right. That would be an option in terms of the contracting of it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time with my sympathy. [Laughter.]

Mr. WELDON. We thank the gentleman.

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, sir.

Mr. WELDON. Welcome to reality, and we invite him back anytime to help us in the oversight of many programs where we have

similar problems.

The distinguished gentleman from Texas, our financial wizard, is

recognized for whatever time he might consume.

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, appreciate that.

Gentlemen and lady, thank you all for coming this afternoon.

Your previous answer may have answered my question.

Looking at the overall ACS Program, you expect to have certain,

what I refer to as, choke points. One of those would be whether or

not you get the airplane off the ground. We kind of beat that one

to death today, and that would be a pretty significant choke point.

Looking at the rest of the system, do we have other equivalent,

‘‘Oh, good grief, how did we miss that kind of choke point in this

system,’’ and if that is the case, are we going to—and I hope the

answer is yes—are you going to relook at the entire process to

make sure that you have addressed those and that we are aware

of. A year ago, whenever this was all going on, everybody said,

‘‘Look, the airplane we have picked only has 3,000 pounds of excess

capacity.’’ What is the total capacity or weight load of the aircraft?

Is 3,000 pounds 10 percent, 20 percent extra?

Secretary BOLTON. It is probably less than 10 percent, closer to

5 percent.

Mr. CONAWAY. Okay. So we have got 5 percent tolerance on the

weight, and we are all sort of, ‘‘Okay, do we go forward?’’ So the

idea is that if you did come across other things that you don’t really want to sit—by the way, thank you for your straightforward answers. Appreciate the straightforwardness of your answers, but are

there other things in this overall ACS Program——

Secretary BOLTON. I have had the same thoughts.
26

Mr. CONAWAY [continuing]. That we will drag you back in and

harass you again for?

Secretary BOLTON. Well, that is quite all right. I should be wire

brushed. No, I ask the same question so that as the teams are

working over the last month and this month, that question will be

asked by me when the team comes back in. I look at this as one

thing but are there other things that we need to be looking at that

could cause a problem. Let’s mitigate those things now rather than

later. And I don’t know what they are.

And I am also challenging some of the interpretation of the operational requirements, so we really understand if the operator really

needs it, because it makes a difference on the battlefield. Fine. The

operator is saying, ‘‘Well, that is what technology tells us we can

get. Do we really want to pay for that?’’ So we will be looking at

everything—everything.

Mr. CONAWAY. And one last final question: You have got a stop

order on the entire project. Do you anticipate a full release of the

entire stop or a staged——

Secretary BOLTON. It really depends on what the contractor

comes in and gives me the middle of next month. It is a 90-day stop

work. At the 60-day point, they come see me, and so in the middle

of December we will make a decision, maybe earlier depending on

what we get from the contractor. We had 360 people working it. We

are down to 75 to do this work for me, and obviously I am concerned about that team, the folks who have been farmed out to

other areas right now.

Mr. CONAWAY. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back.

Mr. WELDON. I thank the gentleman. We are going to do another

round if members have questions. I just have one additional one,

and we will put some in for the record, which we would ask you

to answer.

Secretary Bolton, you have hit around this but I don’t know

whether you have actually directly answered it. I know the Navy

has suggested it. Is it the Army’s intent to accomplish another

analysis of alternatives for the ACS mission or not?

Secretary BOLTON. It is not planned now, but I will raise that

when I get back.

Mr. WELDON. Thank you.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. WELDON. I will go to Mr. Abercrombie.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am still having some difficulty with this.

When I said to you before this seems to be contractor driven, do

you recall?

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But everything that has been said since then

leads me to that same conclusion. Now, what I mean by that is,

that if the platform, if the vehicle, if the frame, whatever the correct terminology is, is incapable of dealing with the requirements

that are being sought, whether it is by the Navy, by addition or inclusion, another set of conditions that you think need to be met, if

military standards, by definition, are different than commercial

standards, one would think going back to what we have been trying

to do here for a number of years here in the committee is where
27

you can find commercial products, or I think the phrase is, ‘‘off the

shelf’’——

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE [continuing]. That can be successfully integrated with military requirements, so much the better. That is

grand.

If you can take like with the—and we have seen stuff that increased in cost before—it slipped my mind now—the submarines,

Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS), that when you went

from batteries and you had to change the actual mode of propulsion, well, the cost increased enormously. But we came up with the

money for that because the people came back and said, ‘‘We are

changing everything, and here is why we are changing it, and we

would like you to back us up on this.’’ And we did.

And they changed numbers of people as a result. You know, I am

sure, from the Navy side. I am just drawing a parallel here. I am

not trying to draw a comparison or an analogy, but I am drawing

a parallel.

I think the committee is perfectly capable of dealing with significant design changes and significant vehicle modifications if it is required for something like a propulsion system that was thought to

be adequate and turns out to be not only inadequate but actually

irrelevant to what the mission now becomes and so on. So that is

not a difficulty.

Here, though, particularly when you go over the transition from

the early models to what we want to get to, I still cannot comprehend how the contractor is not in charge if you can see or I can

see or Mr. Holt could see, Dutch could see that, ‘‘Wait a minute,

you are not able to—how the hell are you going to take this commercial? How are you going to take this Dodge viper and turn it

into a Bonneville salt flat sound barrier breaker?’’ They are both

fast, they both look pretty slick and all that, but one’s clearly not

built to do that for the kind of speed required.

So, all right, I will have to accept the fact that you are going

through all this now and you are saying, ‘‘Well, if we only knew

now what we knew then.’’ Well, I still don’t understand why you

didn’t know then what you know now.

But accepting that for the moment for our discussion’s sake, the

contractor can’t do this with the frame or the vehicle, at least this

is my understanding. Now, there are liability implications, I presume; maybe, maybe not. What we need to find out here, do you

get to say to the contractor right now then, ‘‘You guys said you

could do something. You can’t do it. We are getting shut of this.’’

Secretary BOLTON. I haven’t said that yet.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is not what I asked. Can you?

Secretary BOLTON. I could, yes.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. And that is tough to the contractor.

Secretary BOLTON. It is tough, but I have done it on some of the

other programs.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Then I remember that too. So there is

a time sensitivity here.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.
28

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. And if that needs to be done, then do it, is

my view. If it needs to be done, then do it. Let’s not draw this out

and prolong the agony.

Secretary BOLTON. Right. Right.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Now, there will be a dollar consequence to

that, I understand that. The sooner we know that, the better off

we are going to be.

Now, if you make the change, and my guess is you are going to

have to make this change, I am still not clear and I still think the

chairman needs to get answer, both chairmen need to get answers

here on, if there needed to be a change, why it wasn’t brought to

our attention.

I know both of these folks. I know Chairman Weldon better than

Chairman Wilson, but I know both of them from my experience on

the committee. You are not going to shock them by coming to say

to them, ‘‘You know, I think we have got to go in another direction.

We can’t make what we wanted to do, and here is what we think

needs to be done.’’ I think what upset them as well as other members is when we have to drag it out of the DOD or constituent

parts because, as you put it, some people look at this as a failure.

Now, my understanding of the scientific method is, is that you

do experimentation and replication and duplication to find out

whether you can do it. And when you find out you can’t, that is

not a failure, that is a trial, because you are not wasting time, you

are not going off on a direction, you are not alchemists, right?

Secretary BOLTON. True.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. You are not trying to get gold out of—whatever the classic alchemy is, I guess, gold out of whatever the hell

you get it out of.

Secretary BOLTON. Lead.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Lead, yes. So that is not going to be seen—

certainly by this member it is not going to be seen as a failure.

Failure to me is when you don’t acknowledge the reality and don’t

bring it to our attention, because we are dependent on your professionalism, we are dependent on your evaluations of things. And if

we have to find out about it by default, then that is failure, in my

judgment.

Secretary BOLTON. Right.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So my point here and my question now then

is, is it possible for—will there be a significant cost increase, and

do we have to go to another platform entirely? I expect the answer

is, yes.

Secretary BOLTON. The answer is, yes. I don’t know how much

nor how significant.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. So the schedule is bound to slip, right?

Secretary BOLTON. It has already slipped.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is right. Bound to slip further, I should

have said.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, then don’t you think that you have to

come to a determination as quickly as possible and get that to us?

Secretary BOLTON. Absolutely.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
29

Secretary BOLTON. But in order to do that, Mr. Abercrombie, I

really do need this team to come back to me. They are the ones

who are going off and answering in detail all the questions and the

other members, and particularly the chairman, on what are the alternatives. And this contractor is not stuck with that platform. He

has already gone out to other contractors and other platforms. I

have asked him to do that. He is looking at all platforms.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. I have got to quit now, because I still

don’t understand why the hell that wasn’t done in the first place.

Secretary BOLTON. When you say, ‘‘first place,’’ sir, I am not sure

what that means.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Well, we can go at that another time.

Secretary BOLTON. Okay.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I have used up my time. Thank you.

Mr. WELDON. The gentleman has as much time as he would like,

as he knows.

The gentlelady is recognized, the chairwoman.

Mrs. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield my time to the

gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. TIAHRT. I thank the gentlewoman.

A requirement is a snapshot in time, and we are looking at something that is going to be around for a long time—20 years you said.

If you look at the KC–135, it has been around since Eisenhower.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes.

Mr. TIAHRT. And so it has been a long time. This is a Blackberry,

and if you look 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have realized that a

threat could be a data stream coming through our phone lines. We

have got future threats out there that are going to drive additional

requirements. And I think that is something that I heard earlier,

that the requirements weren’t established. Well, it is always nice

to have requirements firm when you buy a program, but when you

are looking at the mission that this aircraft, this airframe has, this

is not a stable requirements baseline because of things like this.

And we don’t know what we don’t know on requirements.

So my point is, we are going to have to have some room in this

airframe because there are other threats out there. And that is on

the front end of it. But on the back end, you have got more and

more people that you are going to be feeding this stuff to, and this

room wouldn’t hold them all. And they will need it, and they are

going to send it to other people that really need it.

So I just think that to think that we don’t have an established

baseline, I think we need to have some room in here, be smart

about this, so that we can have growth in the future.

Now, the schedule I have here says that the plan was to have

an First Unit Equipped (FUE) or an Initial Operational Capability

(IOC) in about the middle of 2010.

And, Mr. Laux, I think you may—or maybe it was the admiral,

talked about the MMA would be available in 2013?

Mr. LAUX. Yes.

Mr. TIAHRT. You know, they have got a move rate for the 737

about every day. They move from one jig to the next jig every day.

That means they pump out about 21 to 25 of these airplanes every

month. There is a firing order and to get slotted in there for a firing order or put it in on this production line, it is already milita-
30

rized, great advantage, I think you can save schedule. And we keep

talking about moving the schedule to the right. If the tent pole is

the Lowest Replaceable Units (LRUs), the black boxes, then that

is one thing, but if it is an airframe, you can gain time by getting

into an existing line that already is militarized.

Now, Mr. Laux, you mentioned a couple of times in your testimony that was submitted for the record that this program should

be evaluated from a joint con-ops and a potential joint platform alternatives. So I am convinced that you believe that, but would you

tell me why you had that in your testimony?

Mr. LAUX. Yes, sir. We are aware that the Quadrennial Defense

Review that is going on right now is likely to address this entire

intelligence collection area. We are trying to position ourselves to

open up new dialogue with the Air Force and with the Army, with

the benefit of the hindsight and the knowledge of where we are in

this program and other needs that can be addressed that we expect

to be the topic in the QDR.

Mr. TIAHRT. Well, does the Navy have a backup plan? Is the

MMA a backup plan or is lengthening out the EP–3’s service time,

do you have a backup plan for this or is this—we are going to go

forward with this set of requirements for this mission? Is there a

backup plan?

Mr. LAUX. Admiral Clingan.

Admiral CLINGAN. Congressman, we do in fact have a backup

plan. We have a bridge plan to take the EP–3 and sustain it. The

circumstances we find ourselves in now causes us to look at sustaining it through 2017 now, or so.

In regard to the way forward, we are looking with interest, of

course, as to how the contractor comes back and provides solutions

or options in regard to making our way through the briar patch

that currently faces the ACS. And as Mr. Laux has indicated, because those challenges have had cost and schedule implications, it

opens the door, thoughtfully, for us to do an analysis of alternatives, which would embrace other platforms, as you have suggested.

So we are looking to sustain the EP–3 and to go forward with

open eyes in regards to what acquisition program will in fact meet

our operational requirements.

Mr. TIAHRT. Well, I hope there is some expediency here, because

these airframes as they age, there is more risk to the crews. And,

you know, going back to the tanker, I mean, the average age there

is about 45. I don’t know any of us that come to work in a 1960

automobile, but if you did and it broke down, you could pull over

to the side of the road. When you have got an EP–3 that breaks

down, it has only got one place to go and the forces of nature take

over.

So I am very concerned about this, and I think that the idea of

having existing production lines that can help compress the schedule can save costs, because every year, inflation every year adds to

costs, and if you back this far enough to the right, 2013, 2017, that

all adds to the cost as well. So I want to be careful that we are

not penny wise and pound foolish.

And this fence of time that we look through, we are looking

through one knothole now. But we need to step back and see what
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other knotholes are there that we should be looking through. And

I want to plead with you to be—let’s be dollar-wise here as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WELDON. Thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Maryland is recognized. Do you have a question?

The gentleman from Texas?

Does the gentlelady have any questions?

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I have two questions to submit for

the record.

Mr. WELDON. Without objection.

I want to thank all of our—does the gentleman, Mr. Abercrombie,

have any questions?

I want to thank you all for your appearance today, and, again,

I hope you take our questions in the spirit in which they are intended.

Secretary BOLTON. Yes.

Mr. WELDON. This committee has been as supportive as any committee in the Congress for our military. We have gone to the wall,

sometimes at odds with our own President and with the leadership

over at the Pentagon to give you more than what is requested,

whether it is up-armoring Humvees or whether it is additional personal protection for the troops or additional manpower and end

strength.

We will continue to do that, but we also have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer, and that requires us to play the oversight

role and ask the tough questions. And this is not a good news story

right now.

You have heard the Intelligence Committee basically say that we

need this capability yesterday. We are not going to have it yesterday. We are not even going to have it tomorrow. It is now going

to be pushed out. That is a bad news story that we have to understand what our options are now to move forward.

And, Secretary, and all of you, we don’t question your own abilities but we do seriously question where we are going so that this

program can be put back on track and in the end give our troops

the capabilities that we need in the 21st century.

So we will provide additional questions for the record. Thank you

for your appearance and thank you for the service to the country.

The hearing stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:45 p.m., the subcommittees were adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

OCTOBER 20, 2005

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

OCTOBER 20, 2005

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

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OCTOBER 20, 2005

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WELDON

Mr. WELDON. Technology levels on the ACS program were much more mature at

milestone B than the technology levels for FCS were at milestone B. In other words,

the ACS program had much more ‘‘knowledge’’ as GAO would say, going into milestone B than FCS did at milestone B. If this can happen to ACS, can it not happen

to FCS?

Secretary BOLTON. Technology maturity was not the issue with ACS. Rather, the

issue was requirement maturity below the Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) requirements. Fully developing Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) and mission threads

by the requirement community in close collaboration with the acquisition,

resourcing, testing, and sustainment communities before System Development and

Demonstration (SDD) start would have yielded better SDD results.

Mr. WELDON. You mention in your statement that ‘‘while discovery of the weight

issue at an even earlier point in the program’s life would have been the preferred

approach, it was simply not practical.’’ Yet you later state that the ACS program

‘‘experienced a decrement in funding during the CAD phase, forcing [the Army] to

reduce the scope of the integration effort . . .’’ Please clarify.

Secretary BOLTON. ACS experienced a decrement of $11.2 million during the CAD

phase following termination of the Joint SIGINT Avionics Family/Low-Band SubSystem program, of which $4 million was passed down to the contractors ($2 million

to each contractor). This caused the Army to reduce the scope of the CAD phase,

specifically work related to airframe integration and antenna placement. Had we

proceeded with this work as originally planned, it is possible—not definite—that we

may have learned about the Space, Weight, Power and Cooling (SWaP–C) problems

earlier than we did.

Mr. WELDON. a. The issue isn’t that the problem was discovered early in the SDD

process. The issue is what changes need to take place in the ‘‘process’’ so that the

‘‘preferred’’ approach, as you say, becomes the ‘‘mandatory’’ approach. How do we

prevent a $4 million dollar decision from having an $800 million consequence? How

can we change the process?

Secretary BOLTON. The Department of Defense (DOD) 5000 series guidance has

undergone several revisions during the earlier phases of the ACS program. ACS followed the processes as intended. On a program of this complexity, it may be worth

the expense to go all the way to a Critical Design Review (CDR) as part of the earlier phase, rather than the SDD phase. However, I still believe a better understanding of the requirement, fully developed CONOPS and fully developed mission

threads done by an educated/trained requirements community and thoroughly vetted with a trained resource, acquisition, test, and sustainment community will solve

most ‘‘ACS-like’’ SDD problems.

Mr. WELDON. b. Is it a matter of fixing existing policy or is the existing policy

just not being followed?

Secretary BOLTON. See answer to ‘‘a’’ above.

Mr. WELDON. After all this time, money and reviews, why did the fundamental

design flaw that had such serious ramifications to the program go undetected? In

other words, if you could do it all over again, what would you have done differently

that could have prevented this situation?

Secretary BOLTON. The previous question’s response of going to a full Critical Design Review may be the most logical way to prevent a recurrence.

Mr. WELDON. What are the lessons learned in terms of robustness and quality of

the requirements, design and milestone reviews?

Secretary BOLTON. See answers to questions 1, 2, and 13.

Mr. WELDON. The committee understands that the weight issue first surfaced in

December last year. Why is it going to take almost a year to get from problem identification to problem solution? Why wasn’t a stop work order issued sooner?

Secretary BOLTON. The problem first surfaced in December 2004 when Lockheed

found a potential weight bogey of 100 pounds above the structural limit of the airframe, several hundred pounds above what the Army had estimated was a ‘‘worst

case’’ scenario for weight growth. The contractor explained to the product manager

(PM) that this estimate was based on weight projections as Lockheed developed de-
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tailed Interface Control Documents (ICDs) with the airframe manufacturer

(Embraer). The PM directed Lockheed to determine the extent of the problem, which

meant that Lockheed had to develop elements of the design beyond what had been

scheduled for that time period. In other words, Lockheed had to accelerate design

work in order to fully and quickly understand the problem. Once enough was known

about these design elements, Lockheed then had to accomplish engineering work to

determine the actual weights of these design elements. Much of this work was completed by early April 2005. Lockheed then briefed the extent of the problem to the

Program Executive Officer (PEO) and suggested several requirements trades that

might allow continued use of the proposed airframe. The PEO asked Lockheed to

study excursions using larger airframes in order to provide the Government sufficient insight to make a determination of the path ahead. In May, it became obvious

that a schedule breach would likely occur, and possibly a cost breach as well. We

reported this to the Department of Defense, and by mid-June I accepted the Navy’s

offer to conduct a full independent assessment of the program while the Program

Manager (PM) studied larger aircraft options. Both the Navy’s independent assessment and the Army’s study of larger aircraft concluded by late August, by which

time I determined that the PM should present several courses of action and a recommendation to a formal Army Systems Acquisition Review Council for decision.

This we accomplished in early September. Shortly thereafter, I directed a Stop-Work

Order on the contract and directed Lockheed to return in 60 days with several options for a path forward.

Mr. WELDON. Assuming that the contractor can still use the current platform by

reducing payload weight and delaying some ACS requirements, how much room

would there be in terms of size, weight, and power before the payload would once

again outgrow the platform?

Secretary BOLTON. The proposed platform is limited in SWaP–C margins. If we

were to proceed down the path of using this airplane, it would likely require costly

weight reduction upgrades to the sensors, leveraging the benefits of Moore’s law (the

theory that computing power generally doubles every 18 months) wherever possible,

and probably straying from the intended COTS-based sensor solutions to specially

built hardware instead.

Mr. WELDON. Who will be the final decision authority to determine what happens

with the ACS program?

Secretary BOLTON. The decision to terminate or continue with the current contract

rests with the Army, specifically with the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (aka the Army Acquisition Executive). Any decision

regarding the disposition of the program itself (i.e., whether to terminate the program altogether) rests with the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (aka the Defense Acquisition Executive).

Mr. WELDON. In reference to the RDT&E program costs, will there be a NunnMcCurdy breach of the ACS program?

Secretary BOLTON. A Nunn-McCurdy breach seems certain. The extent of the

breach won’t be known until we make a final decision on a path forward.

Mr. WELDON. The ACS is listed as a complimentary program to the Future Combat System program. Does the delay to the ACS program have an impact on the

FCS program? If so, what?

Secretary BOLTON. The current Guardrail Common Sensor and Airborne Reconnaissance Low systems will be kept viable until ACS is fielded, minimizing any impacts to FCS.

Mr. WELDON. Does ACS receive any funding from the FCS program? If so, what?

Secretary BOLTON. No, ACS receives no funding from the FCS program.

Mr. WELDON. If one of the potential options is to change the requirements, how

would reduced capability to store data on board impact the ability to meet other requirements, such as timeliness?

Secretary BOLTON. A complete engineering analysis would have to be done to determine those types of impacts. In your example (reducing on-board storage capability), the impact would likely be felt more in terms of the volume of targets stored

in the database than in the timeliness of the response. In other words, in the number of signals or images that could be handled in a given time.

Mr. WELDON. What is the current requirement for on-board crew stations and is

this one of the requirements that is being looked at for possible change.

Secretary BOLTON. The requirement for on-board crew stations, as stated in the

Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC)-approved Operational Requirements

Document of October 2003, is six (6). This takes into account the Navy’s two additional work stations above the Army’s original baseline of four. This is a prime area

for weight reduction in terms of both equipment and personnel, and like all other

requirements it is being reviewed.
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Mr. WELDON. In your testimony, you talked about breaking the ‘‘stovepipes.’’ Specifically, ‘‘. . . it is not only a matter of let’s organizationally do something, but

within those stovepipes it would be really neat if you would really educate, train

and provide the right tools for those people. . . . in fact, in the Army, that is what

we are trying to do right now, is to break those stovepipes down to make sure the

requirements community, sitting with the resourcing community, sitting with the

acquisition community from day one are looking at those operational requirements

to try to understand what really are the technical and financial implications of trying to do that.’’ Are you saying that these other communities (requirements and

resourcing types) need to have a certification process similar to what the acquisition

community currently has? Why is this so important? What specifically would you

change if you could?

Secretary BOLTON. I am not sure a certification process is where I would drive

this, although it merits consideration. However, I do strongly believe that some

training and education is needed for our requirements, resourcing, and sustainment

communities. These communities play key roles in the ‘‘Big A’’ process, which delivers capability to the field. Not ensuring these communities are trained/educated and

provided the appropriate tools, I believe is unwise and will continue causing problems like those currently experienced by the ACS. The need to address this training

shortfall will increase as future systems become more integrated and information

centric.

Mr. WELDON. The ACS program had its milestone B review in July 2004. The Future Combat System had its milestone B review in May 2003. If these ‘‘stovepipes’’

as you say, existed for the ACS program in 2004, certainly they existed for the FCS

program in 2003. How do you know that a similar issue like with what happened

with ACS, not truly understanding the impacts of requirements, won’t happen with

FCS?

Secretary BOLTON. Unlike ACS, the FCS has enjoyed unprecedented communication, coordination, and integration among the requirements, resourcing, acquisition,

testing, sustainment, and contractor communities. The result is an FCS program,

which is maintaining the cost, schedule, performance baseline established by DOD.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. MCHUGH

Mr. MCHUGH. What is the project termination cost?

Secretary BOLTON. [The information referred to is classified and retained in the

committee files.]

Mr. MCHUGH. What is the contractor liability here?

Secretary BOLTON. [The information referred to is classified and retained in the

committee files.]

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