U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

64–921 PDF 2011

RISE OF THE DRONES: UNMANNED SYSTEMS AND

THE FUTURE OF WAR

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 23, 2010

Serial No. 111–118

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

JUDY CHU, California

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

MIKE QUIGELY, Illinois

JUDY CHU, California

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANDREW WRIGHT, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 23, 2010 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Singer, Peter W., director, 21st Century Defense Initiative, the Brookings

Institution; Ed Barrett, director of research, Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, U.S. Naval Academy; Kenneth Anderson, professor,

Washington College of Law, American University; John Jackson, professor of Unmanned Systems, U.S. Naval War College; and Michael

Fagan, chair, Unmanned Aerial Systems Advocacy Committee, Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International .................................... 6

Anderson, Kenneth .................................................................................... 19

Barrett, Ed ................................................................................................. 13

Fagan, Michael .......................................................................................... 53

Jackson, John ............................................................................................ 34

Singer, Peter W. ........................................................................................ 6

Sullivan, Michael J., Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management,

U.S. Government Accountability Office; Dyke Weatherington, Deputy,

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Planning Taskforce, Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, U.S. Department of

Defense; and Kevin Wolf, Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce .. 77

Sullivan, Michael J. .................................................................................. 77

Weatherington, Dyke ................................................................................ 99

Wolf, Kevin ................................................................................................ 113

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Anderson, Kenneth, professor, Washington College of Law, American University, prepared statement of ..................................................................... 21

Barrett, Ed, director of research, Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership,

U.S. Naval Academy, prepared statement of .............................................. 16

Fagan, Michael, chair, Unmanned Aerial Systems Advocacy Committee,

Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 55

Jackson, John, professor of Unmanned Systems, U.S. Naval War College,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 37

Singer, Peter W., director, 21st Century Defense Initiative, the Brookings

Institution, prepared statement of .............................................................. 9

Sullivan, Michael J., Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management,

U.S. Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ............... 79

Weatherington, Dyke, Deputy, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Planning

Taskforce, Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology

and Logistics, U.S. Department of Defense, prepared statement of ......... 101

Wolf, Kevin, Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Bureau of

Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 115

(1)

RISE OF THE DRONES: UNMANNED SYSTEMS

AND THE FUTURE OF WAR

TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m. in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Flake, Foster, Luetkemeyer,

and Quigley.

Staff present: Andy Wright, staff director; Bronwen De Sena, intern; Talia Dubovi, counsel; Elliot Gillerman, clerk; Linda Good,

deputy clerk; Carla Hultberg, chief clerk; LaToya King, fellow;

Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk and Member liaison; Tom Alexander, minority senior counsel; Christopher Bright, minority senior

professional staff member; and Renee Hayes, minority Defense fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs’ hearing entitled, ‘‘Rise of the

Drones: Unmanned Systems and the Future of War,’’ will come to

order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements.

Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept open

for 5 business days so that all members of the subcommittee be allowed to submit a written statement for the record.

Without objection, so ordered.

Good afternoon. It is nice to see all of you here. I apologize that

I was a bit late, and Mr. Flake and I didn’t have much time to

spend with you before you came, but we think we will get fully acquainted through your testimony and your comments on that in the

question and answer period. We certainly hope that is the case.

Our hearing today introduces a new topic to the subcommittee,

the rise of unmanned systems and their implications for U.S. national security. Over the last decade, the number of unmanned systems and their applications has grown rapidly. So, too, has the

number of operational, political and legal questions associated with

the technology.

2

To illustrate the wide variety of unmanned systems and some of

their applications, we wanted to share some short video clips or unmanned systems ranging from the harmless to the lethal. The first

system is clearly on the harmless side of the spectrum.

[Video shown.]

Mr. TIERNEY. I know from first-hand experience that was made

in my district, the I-Robot, of course, not the cat, the robot is over

there. [Laughter.]

Video two shows that other systems provide support to our

warfighters. This particular slide is the Ripsaw MS–1, a remote

gun tank that can travel at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and

can carry a payload of up to 2,000 pounds. As you will see, it can

also be used to pull vehicles and other items that are potential security risks.

[Video shown.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Video three is known as the Big Dog, a four-legged

robot that can walk through sand, snow and ice while carrying up

to 340 pounds on its back and serving as a robotic pack mule. As

you will see, it can retain its balance on uneven surfaces and can

handle rough terrain.

[Video shown.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Looks like a dance class gone bad. [Laughter.]

And video four is the Raven UAV, used primarily for surveillance. And as you will see, it is hand-launched and remote-controlled from the field. The editor of a magazine recently built a

homemade version of the Raven for around $1,000.

[Video shown.]

Mr. TIERNEY. That is, of course, what you are seeing from the

Raven’s equipment. That isn’t the Raven making that buzzing

noise, either. [Laughter.]

It basically means that we are going to have votes in a short

while and what we will do is we will probably finish our opening

remarks and break, hopefully briefly, for a couple of votes and

come back. We apologize. We can probably expect that to happen

a little bit throughout the afternoon.

The last and final clip shows the most lethal side of unmanned

systems. Some of you may be familiar with footage similar to this.

This is unclassified footage from an Army unmanned aerial vehicle

engaging combatants in Iraq.

[Video shown.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Growing demand for and the reliance on unmanned

systems has serious implications both on and off the battlefield. As

the United States is engaged in two wars abroad, unmanned systems, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles, have become a centerpiece of that war effort.

In recent years, the Department of Defense’s UAV inventory has

rapidly grown in size, from 167 in 2002 to over 7,000 today. Last

year for the first time, the U.S. Air Force trained more unmanned

pilots than traditional fighter pilots.

Some express no doubt that unmanned systems have been a

boost to U.S. war efforts in the Middle East and South Asia. CIA

Director Leon Panetta said last May, ‘‘Drone strikes are the only

game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the Al

Qaeda leadership.’’ Media reports over the last year indicating that

3

the top two leaders of the Pakistani Taliban were killed by drone

strikes also are used to support that argument.

But some critics argue that drone strikes are unethical at best

and counterproductive at worst. They point to the reportedly high

rate of civilian casualties, which has been calculated by the New

America Foundation to be around 32 percent, and argue that the

strikes do more to stoke anti-Americanism than they do to weaken

our enemies. A quick skim of any Pakistani newspaper provides

some evidence to support this theory.

This is particularly relevant in the era of counterinsurgency doctrine, the central tenet of which is first do no harm. It also may

be the case that we are fighting wars with modern technology

under an antiquated set of laws. For example, if the United States

uses unmanned weapons systems, does that require an official declaration of war or an authorization for the use of force? Do the Geneva Conventions, written in 1949, govern the prosecution of an

unmanned war? Who is considered in lawful combat in unmanned

war, the Air Force pilot flying a Predator from thousands of miles

away in Nevada? Or the civilian contractor servicing it on the airstrip in Afghanistan?

If unmanned systems are changing the way that we train our

military personnel, so too should they change the way that we respond to the stress of combat. We already know that unmanned pilots are showing signs of equal or greater stress from combat compared to traditional pilots. The stress of fighting a war thousands

of miles away then minutes later joining your family at the dinner

table presents mental health challenges that must be addressed.

On the domestic front, manufacturers have already developed a

number of unmanned commercial products and are likely to find

more applications for this technology in the future. From vacuum

cleaners to crop dusters, traditional items that require manual operation are rapidly being rendered obsolete by unmanned technology. UAVs are now being used for environmental monitoring,

particularly in hard to reach places like the North Pole. Last fall,

the University of North Dakota chartered a 4-year degree program

in UAV piloting.

These trends are already forcing us to ask new questions about

domestic air and space regulation. Who is allowed to own unmanned systems? And where are they allowed to operate?

Additionally, as more law enforcement and border security services come to use unmanned systems, important questions continue

to emerge about the protection of privacy. As this technology develops and becomes more commercially available, we must implement

adequate measures to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

At least 40 other countries are currently developing unmanned systems technology, including Iran, Russia and China.

We already know that during the Israeli-Lebanon war in 2006,

Hezbollah deployed three surveillance UAVs that it acquired from

Iran. A recent Air Force study concluded that a UAV is an ideal

platform for a chemical or biological terrorist attack. As Peter Singer, one of our witnesses today, wrote recently in Newsweek, ‘‘For

less than $50,000, a few amateurs could shut down Manhattan.’’

We have to ensure that the appropriate government agencies are

coordinating their efforts to prevent this technology from proliferatVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64921.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
4

ing and falling into the wrong hands, and also to ensure that we

have adequate homeland security measures to respond to those

threats.

And finally, as the new technology continues to develop, we must

ensure that there are adequate measures to prevent waste, fraud

and abuse in the acquisition process. A 2009 study by the U.S.

Government Accountability Office, the author of which we will hear

from today, reported significant cost growth, schedule delays and

performance shortfalls in DOD’s UAV acquisition process. This

analysis raises serious concerns and I look forward to learning

more on this from both the Government Accountability Office and

the Department of Defense witnesses appearing before us.

These are some of the questions that we will begin to answer at

this hearing. Surely, we are not going to have a conclusion to all

of those questions during this afternoon’s single day of conversation. But I hope that this hearing serves as a thorough introduction

to the topic for the purpose of educating and informing our Members, as well as the American public.

With that, I would like to defer to Mr. Flake for his opening remarks.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the chairman. I wish we had a couple of

drones that could go and vote for us so we wouldn’t have to go and

then come back, but I am afraid we have to do it ourselves.

To many, the increased number of suspected terrorists killed between 2008 and 2009 indicates that the Obama administration has

used UAV technology with great success. At the same time, while

DOD is carrying out UAV missions, others in the administration

are disputing the legality of their own tactics and avoiding taking

personal responsibility for them.

Such discord within the administration could open the door to a

number of legal questions and perhaps put an entire arm of our

military strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan at risk. I am hopeful

that today’s hearing will shed some light on this, and we can see

a way forward.

And I thank the chairman for holding the hearing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

With that, we will recess for probably about a half hour, if the

witnesses want to get a cold drink or something while we are doing

that, and we should be back about quarter to or maybe just a little

bit after that.

Thank you.

[Recess.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, thank you for your patience and your forbearance. The subcommittee will now receive testimony from the first

panel before us today. I would like to introduce them across the

board before we get started, and then we will go to the 5-minutes

for each.

Dr. Peter W. Singer is a senior fellow and director of the 21st

Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. His work

there focuses on the future of war, current U.S. defense needs, and

the future of the U.S. defense system. Dr. Singer has published

several books and articles, including most recently, Wired for War:

The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

5

And I know it is not exactly getting a recommendation from

Oprah, but I have read it, in the process of reading it, and it is a

good read and well worth doing.

He was recently named by Foreign Policy Magazine as 1 of the

top 100 global thinkers of 2009. Dr. Singer received a B.A. from the

Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and a Ph.D. from

Harvard University.

Dr. Edward Barrett is the director of research at the U.S. Naval

Academy’s Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, and a professor in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law. He joined

the Naval Academy in 2006 after returning from active duty in

Iraq and Afghanistan. He currently serves in the U.S. Air Force

Reserve.

Dr. Barrett holds a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame and

a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Mr. Kenneth Anderson is a professor at the Washington College

of Law at American University and a research fellow at Stanford

University’s Hoover Institution. He is an authority on international

human rights, war, armed conflict and terrorism. Mr. Anderson has

previously served on the board of directors of America’s Watch, the

precursor to Human Rights Watch, and is the Founder and former

Director of the Human Rights Watch Arms Division.

He holds a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D. from Harvard University.

Mr. John Jackson is a professor of Unmanned Systems at the

U.S. Naval War College where he is currently teaching a self-designed course entitled, ‘‘Case Studies in Technology and Warfare:

Unmanned Systems.’’ Mr. Jackson served for 27 years in the U.S.

Navy as a supply and logistics specialists before retiring with the

rank of Captain. An award-winning author, he has extensively

studied history and operational uses of modern aircraft.

He holds degrees from Providence College and Salve Regina University, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate.

And Mr. Michael Fagan is the chair of the Unmanned Systems

Advocacy Committee for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle

Systems International. He served for 26 years in the U.S. Marine

Corps, including time as a Requirements Officer for Unmanned

Aircraft, before retiring as a Colonel and Chief of Staff of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office. He currently serves as the

chief operating officer of Logos Technologies.

He holds a B.S. from Indiana University and an M.S. from the

University of Southern California.

Again, I want to thank all of the witnesses for making themselves available today and sharing with us their expertise.

It is the policy of this subcommittee to swear in the witnesses before they testify. I ask all of you to please stand and raise your

right hands.

Thank you.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please acknowledge that all of the

witnesses answered in the affirmative.

As I think you already know, all of your written testimony will

be entered in the record by unanimous consent. We like to allocate

5 minutes, if we can, for people to generalize their testimony so we

can get to the question and answer period. The green light will be

6

on. When there is 1 minute remaining, the amber light will go on.

And when the 5-minutes is up, the red light will go on, at which

point we would like you to try to wind down if you are not already

at that point so we can move to the other witnesses and then questions.

Dr. Singer, we will start with you, please.

STATEMENTS OF PETER W. SINGER, DIRECTOR, 21ST CENTURY DEFENSE INITIATIVE, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION;

ED BARRETT, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, STOCKDALE CENTER FOR ETHICAL LEADERSHIP, U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY; KENNETH ANDERSON, PROFESSOR, WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF

LAW, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY; JOHN JACKSON, PROFESSOR

OF UNMANNED SYSTEMS, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE; AND

MICHAEL FAGAN, CHAIR, UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS ADVOCACY COMMITTEE, ASSOCIATION FOR UNMANNED VEHICLE SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL

STATEMENT OF PETER W. SINGER

Dr. SINGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members

of the committee, for the opportunity to testify today. It is an honor

to be part of this important discussion on an issue that is not only

crucial to national security, but often crucially misunderstood.

As background, I work at the Brookings Institution where I lead

our research and analysis on 21st century defense issues. Several

years ago, I began to be quite interested in the issues of the greater

use of robotics in our human wars. And so I set out on a journey

to interview the variety of actors in this world, everything from the

scientists who were building these machines to the science fiction

authors who advised the military, to those in the military, everything from the 19 year old operators who were controlling machines 7,000 miles away, all the way up to the four star Generals

that command them.

I was also interested in the politics of this, so interviews with,

for example, White House advisers and civilian service secretaries.

Finally, the opposite side of the coin, what do insurgents think

about this? What do news editors around the Middle East think

about all of this? And then finally the right and wrong and the

legal and ethical questions of this, so interviews with military lawyers, but also people at groups like Human Rights Watch.

And the book, Wired for War, gathers these stories together, but

I think it also illustrates some of the dilemmas and questions that

are emerging from this field.

And so what I would like to do today is briefly walk through

what I see some of the key issues here.

The first is to pull back in this important domain. When U.S.

forces invaded Iraq in 2003, we had a handful of unmanned systems in the air. We now have over 7,000. On the ground, the invasion force had zero. We now have over 12,000 in the U.S. military

inventory.

But we need to remember that while these technologies often

look like science fiction, they are only the first generation. They are

the equivalent of the Model T Ford or the Wright Brothers Flyer.

And the historic parallels that people make to where we are right

7

now I think are quite instructive. Some scientists parallel where

we are with unmanned systems to where we were with horseless

carriages back in 1909 or 1910. Many in the military, particularly

the Air Force, make the comparison to the airplane back in 1918.

Others in commerce, for example, Bill Gates of Microsoft, has said

we are around where we were with computers back in 1980. Still

others make the comparison to the atomic bomb in the late 1940’s.

The point here is that these are issues. These are all technologies

that had ripple effects on our world, in everything from our politics

to our laws to our commerce to our ethics. And these were all technologies that created deep questions for us in the area of the creation of law and oversight. And that is why I think it is very important for this committee, that they are dealing with it.

So what do I see as some of the key questions moving forward?

The first is the question of where the unmanned military is headed. We have gone from barely using robotics to using thousands of

them in a bureaucratic blink of an eye. But as one U.S. Air Force

Captain put it to me out in CENTCOM, the problem is, ‘‘It is not

‘let’s think this better.’ It is ‘only give me more’.’’

So the sort of issues that we are wrestling with within this bucket are questions like: What are the proper doctrines that we should

choose? What are the structures and organizations that we should

build around these systems? How do we maintain competition and

experimentation in an emerging sector in the defense industrial

base?

How do we ensure digital systems security so that insurgents in Iraq can’t access our information using $30 software that they

bought off the Internet? How do we better support the men and

women who are operating them, who may not be in the physical

war zone, but are experiencing an entirely new type of combat

stress? And finally, what is the division of warrior and civilian in

this space? That is, if this area is the future of the force, what does

it mean that, for example, 75 percent of the maintenance of our

Predator fleet has been outsourced to private companies, while

Army systems operating in Iraq have been described as, government-owned, contractor-operated?

The second issue area that we have to wrestle with is, are we

engaged in three wars? Our unmanned systems have carried out

119 known air strikes into Pakistan, which is about triple the number we did with manned bombers in the opening round of the

Kosovo War. But Congress has not had a debate about whether to

authorize or disapprove of it.

And so the question is, why do we not view it as a war? Is it because the strikes are being carried out by the CIA and not by the

military, and thus not following the same lines of authority and authorization? Or is it because the impact on the public is viewed as

costless?

And then related to this is the issue of what is the impact on the

broader war of ideas, not just how it is being interpreted here in

the United States, but how is it being interpreted abroad.

The next issue bucket is the question of law. Can our 20th century laws of war keep up with our 21st century technologies? Robotics don’t remove the human from decisionmaking, but they do

move that human role geographically and chronologically. That is,

8

decisions that determine a machine’s action in the here and now

may be made by an operator several thousand miles away or by a

designer years ago, but the prevailing laws of war are from the

1940’s.

This also extends to the domestic side. It is not just an issue of

accountability, but the question of regulation. It is not just the

military that is using these systems, but for example, the Department of Homeland Security. In turn, we have seen civilian border

patrols or vigilante groups operating their own unmanned systems

in the air. Criminals have started to use them to scout out targets.

So as the FAA debates the opening up of the air space, we also

have broad issues of who can utilize these systems, which is a legal

issue. But it also raises long-term questions that I remember discussing with a Federal District Court Judge. They believed it will

reach the Supreme Court in terms of issues of probable cause and

privacy.

And the final question area that I would raise is: How can we

keep America from going the way of Commodore Computers? If this

is a growing industry along the lines of computers or automobiles,

why does the United States not have a national robotics strategy?

What does it mean for us moving forward that 43 other nations are

also building, buying and utilizing military robotics? How do we

stay ahead in this game?

And then we may even need to think more broadly about this.

And what direction does the state of the American manufacturing

economy, as well as the state of science and mathematics education

in our schools have us headed? Or another way of putting this is:

What does it mean to deploy more and more soldiers, so to speak,

whose hardware increasingly says ‘‘made in China’’ on the back of

it, and whose software is increasingly written by someone sitting

in a place like India.

And I would end on this. These questions move us into lots of

different directions, but I think within them we find the policy answers. That is, we may debate the specifics of the answers, but almost all of them extend from a gap of some sort in our policy as

the technology races ahead of our institutions.

And so, for that I thank you for the opportunity to be part of this

discussion today.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Singer follows:]

9

10

11

12

13

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. That gives us a lot to think about.

Dr. Barrett.

STATEMENT OF ED BARRETT

Dr. BARRETT. Mr. Chairman and subcommittee members, thank

you for inviting me to speak today.

Speaking as a civilian academic, I will first offer some reflections

on these systems’ ethical advantages and challenges, and then

briefly discuss related educational initiatives at the Naval Academy.

The goals animating the development and use of unmanned platforms are ethically commendable. While sometimes excoriated as

merely prudential, effectiveness and efficiency are fundamentally

moral imperatives. Constituted and supported by its citizen taxpayers, the liberal democratic state is morally obligated to effectively defend their human rights with their limited resources.

Additionally, I would argue that unmanned systems are consistent with a society’s duty to avoid unnecessary risks to its combatants, a duty that sparked a recent controversy over up-armored vehicles.

But these rights and corresponding duties must be weighed

against other ethical considerations. The venerable just war criteria that now undergird international law specify both pre-war

and in-war imperatives. To be permissible, war must be the last resort available to a state intending to pursue a just cause, and circumstances must indicate a reasonable chance of succeeding in a

proportionate manner.

Once in war, harms must be necessary and proportionate vis-avis uninvolved civilians who maintain their right not to be harmed.

Soldiers incur additional risks to avoid foreseeable harm to innocents and assign greater weight to this harm.

In this normative context, I will highlight four challenges generated by unmanned systems. First, they could encourage unjust

wars. War cost reductions, of course, allow states to more readily

pursue just causes. But favorable alterations to pre-war proportionality calculations could also reduce the rigor with which nonviolent

alternatives are pursued and thus encourage unnecessary and

therefore unjust-wars.

Additionally, an echoing concern about private security firms and

cyber-attack capabilities, these less visible weapons could facilitate

the circumvention of legitimate authority and pursuit of unjust

causes.

While these moral hazards do not require us to maximize war

costs and minimize unmanned systems, they do require efforts to

better inform and monitor national security decisionmakers.

Second, once in war, remote controlled systems are said to induce

unnecessary and disproportionate harm, especially to civilians. The

argument assumes that soldiers engaged in such virtual warfare

are less situationally aware and also less restrained because of

emotional detachment. However, accumulating data points in the

opposite direction, sensor improvements, lack of fear-induced haste,

reduced anger levels and force protection anxieties, and crystal

clarity about strike damage all combine to actually enhance awareness and restraint.

14

If true, this data suggests that it would be unethical not to use

remote-controlled systems unless mitigating factors pertained.

This qualification brings us to a third ethical consideration. Reasonable chance of success in counterinsurgency and stability operations mentioned earlier, where indigenous perceptions are crucial,

requires the judicious use of unmanned systems. Perceptions that

these weapons are less discriminate or are indicative of flawed

characters or tepid commitments can undermine our efforts unless

accompanied by adjustments to footprints and perceptions themselves.

Also, ground robots are incapable of developing necessary personal relationships with local citizens. Again, these arguments suggest the need for prudent, not unreflective, limitations.

But the use of autonomous strike systems, my fourth and final

ethical consideration, requires more caution. Again, effectiveness

and efficiency would be important benefits. Truly robotic air, sea

and ground capabilities would sense, decide and act more quickly

than human beings. In an anti-access environment, a long range

system capable of independently navigating to identifying and

striking mobile targets would bolster conventional extended deterrence. And the need to merely monitor, not control, these systems

would reduce personnel costs.

But exactly what would these autonomous systems sense, decide

and do? Would they adequately distinguish combatants from illegitimate targets such as bystanding civilians and surrendering or injured soldiers, a task complicated by countermeasure requirements? Would they adequately, at least as well as humans, comply

with necessity and proportionality imperatives?

Discouraging these possible in bello errors would require the elusive ability to credibly attribute bad results to a culprit, designers,

producers, acquisition personnel, commanders, users, and perhaps

even robots themselves. And if the notion of robots’ responsibility

ever becomes meaningful, would a self-conscious and wilful machine choose its own ends and even be considered a person with

rights?

While robotic personhood is a titillating idea, near-term possibilities suggest a focus on the first few concerns. Computer scientist

Ron Arkin is working assiduously to develop adequately discriminating and ethical robots with responsibility attribution capabilities, and I would not bet against him.

But even then, I would advise an incremental approach similar

to that used with remote controlled systems: intelligence missions

first, strike missions later. Given the complexity involved, I would

also restrict initial strike missions to non-lethal weapons and combatant-only areas. Permission-seeking and override features should

also be included.

One possible exception to this non-lethal recommendation would

involve autonomous systems that target submarines, systems

which only would have to identify friendly combatants, enemy combatants, and perhaps whales.

In closing, I want to assure the subcommittee that military educators are preparing military operators and staffers to think ethically about these and other emerging technologies. At the Naval

Academy, the core ethics course taken by every second year midVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64921.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
15

shipman covers these issues and their theoretical foundations. Last

year, Dr. Singer delivered an endowed lecture to the entire second

year class.

The Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law offers an elective

dedicated to emerging military technologies, including robotics.

History and engineering courses that address these issues include

history of technology, advanced topics in robotics, emerging technologies, and systems engineering.

In April, 300 students in this last class will witness a debate between Ron Arkin and his less sanguine critic, Peter Asaro. And

also in April, the Stockdale Center, for whom I work, the Academy’s ethics and military policy think tank, will host a 2-day conference on the ethical ramifications of emerging military technologies attended by instructors from all U.S. service academies,

staff colleges and war colleges, and perhaps by a few congressional

staffers who were invited.

Mr. Chairman and subcommittee members, thank you for the opportunity to address these issues and I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrett follows:]

16

17

18

19

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. At first, I thought you were going to

have a great debate between yourself on the one hand and on the

other hand, but you rounded it out pretty well at the end, and I

appreciate that.

Now, we have two professors that can audition for talking to the

entire sophomore class at the Academy someday.

Professor Anderson.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH ANDERSON

Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and subcommittee

members, thank you very much for having me here with these

other very, very distinguished panelists.

I want to actually speak perhaps more politically and more practically than would be appropriate. And let me say that my background in this is legal and ethical. And here is my problem. We

currently have a situation in which the President, the Vice President, the Director of the CIA, many, many senior officials from the

President on down have stood up and said quite correctly, in my

view, this is a really great thing we have with drones here. We are

managing to take the fight to the enemy. This is how we attack Al

Qaeda. This is how we actually engage in counter-terrorism directly against the leaders of Al Qaeda. And we think this is great.

I think that the Vice President is a little bit like a sort of father

looking over his block of Predator chicks. I think that we are in a

situation in which our political leaders and our policymakers have

embraced a strategy, but if you were to line up their lawyers alongside them and ask their lawyers about this, I think the answer you

would get is, ‘‘Well, we think it is legal, but we have actually not

come to a clear conclusion, at least not one that we were able to

share with the public.’’

Now, if I were the Vice President or the President under those

circumstances, I do not think I would find myself to have been well

served by my lawyers. Lawyers can’t be yes men. Lawyers cannot

be in the position of simply saying what their client wants to hear.

And these are incredibly difficult issues. We are over a year into

the new administration, which has embraced this policy, and we

have yet to find any clear statement by their lawyers that this program is legal or at least to tell us on what basis they think that

it is legal.

Now, I believe that it is, but there is an increasing chorus of people in the international legal community and in other places that

believe that it is not. And I think at some point there is going to

be a collision that arises here, and that question has to be addressed.

So if there is one point on which I would join with the ACLU,

which is now suing the U.S. Government for information on the

legal basis for these programs, it is that I believe at this point the

U.S. Government has to step up and say the basis on which it

thinks it is lawful to do these things.

And that brings me into my second point, which is that most of

the discussion here on this panel and on the subsequent panel is

really directed to the military, and to a large extent the battlefield

use of these weapons systems. That is not actually what the President and the Vice President are most thoroughly embracing. When

20

Director Panetta stands up and says, ‘‘This is how we take the

fight to the enemy; this is terrific,’’ they are actually not really

most of the time talking about the tactical use of these things in

an Afghanistan battlefield.

They are talking about the ability to target someone in Pakistan

who is well away from any kind of hot battlefield at that moment.

Or we are talking about the ability to take the fight to people in

Yemen or Somalia or potentially other places.

At that point, 1 millimeter below the surface of this discussion

about technology and drones is actually a discussion about the

proper lawful and ethical role of the CIA and the covert, or at least

clandestine, use of force. I believe that the Congress needs to be involved in that question. I believe the answer is that it is lawful

under domestic law, certainly, and I believe it is lawful under

international law. But I believe that question is certainly coming

to the fore.

This leads me then to my third point, which is that I believe that

Congress has a role here to play in getting the administration to

do what is in the President’s best interest and getting their lawyers

to stand up and articulate the full extent of the legal defense and

the legal rationale that accounts for the actual use that the President, the Vice President, the CIA Director and the senior members

of government have embraced.

They have embraced a strategy of using drones that goes well beyond the battlefield in any sort of active hostile tactical sense. And

if that is the case, then the legal rationales that the lawyers state

had better be adequate to that task, or else they had better say

that it can’t be done and we had better rethink strategy.

I believe that we have not been willing to confront that. I think

the administration, for very understandable political reasons of

many kinds, would prefer not to have that discussion directly. I

also believe that it is one which is going to happen, whether one

likes it or not, and that it would be better if Congress helped to

move that ball forward and move it in directions that I think would

be favorable.

So let me sum up by saying that I think that at the end of the

day, this is actually as much as anything in the area in which it

is truly controversial, and not simply a question about do we have

a better remote standoff platform that isn’t that much different

from the jet that has a pilot in it 25 miles away.

When we are talking about this as a genuinely innovative use at

the strategic level, we are no longer so much at this moment talking about the U.S. military. We are, as much as anything or more,

talking about the CIA and covert action, and I think that is where

the discussion should be.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Professor Jackson.

STATEMENT OF JOHN JACKSON

Mr. JACKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to

speak on two subjects about which I am passionate: the education

of our dedicated warriors; and the role that unmanned systems can

and should play in future military operations.

I am privileged to currently serve as a professor at the U.S.

Naval War College in Newport, RI. In the fall of 1884, just over

125 years ago, the College was formed as a place of original research on all questions relating to war or the prevention of war.

At the time of the College’s founding, the flagship of the U.S.

Navy’s North Atlantic squadron was USS Tennessee, a woodenhulled steamship that also carried 22,000 square feet of sail as

backup propulsion system.

The young military officers who comprised the College’s first

class spent many long hours considering the ways in which evolving technologies like wireless communications, electrical equipment

and long range naval guns would change the nature of warfare at

the close of the 19th century.

Now, a century and a quarter later, our students are still engaged in serious contemplation of the ways in which technology

will alter the battlefield, this time in the form of a robotics revolution.

To be clear, the Naval War College is not a technical school and

issues of systems design and software architecture are better suited

to the more junior officers attending the Naval Postgraduate School

in Monterey, CA, where innovative research is being conducted at

their Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research. Rather, the mission

of the Naval War College is to improve the ability of its students

to make sound decisions in highly complex and stressful maritime

and joint environments.

If trends in computer science and robotics engineering continue,

it is conceivable that autonomous systems could soon be developed

that are capable of making life and death decisions without direct

human intervention.

The purpose of the new elective course, Unmanned Systems and

Conflict in the 21st Century, is to provide a forum for the consideration of the scientific, ethical and operational issues inherent in the

employment of these systems. The course provides the opportunity

for students to study contemporary cases, trends and issues in the

development and use of unmanned systems. The students study

and evaluate these systems from the tactical, operational and strategic dimensions of war.

In order to provide a more detailed overview of the course, a copy

of the current syllabus has been provided with my written statement. But in brief, the course looks at the hardware issues and the

land, air and maritime environments, and provides hands on exposure to state-of-the-art systems. It then considers the issues of command and control, personnel management and the legal and ethical

issues of employing these systems in national security situations.

Students ultimately demonstrate their mastery of the subject

through research requiring both written and verbal presentations.

35

I would like to note that significant support for the course has

been provided by Dr. Peter Singer, the Association for Unmanned

Vehicle Systems International, a number of manufacturers of unmanned systems, educational institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S. Army War College, the Department of Defense, and Navy leaders and engineers from various program management offices, and the Navy Undersea Warfare Center.

I have made a number of observations based on my direct contact

with the students who have taken this course and with other military officers and practitioners I have met at meetings, symposia

and conferences.

These observations: I have found that military officers are generally well informed about the exponential growth in the use of unmanned systems throughout the Department of Defense. And they

are highly motivated to probe beyond the headlines and promotional hype to ascertain the true capabilities and limitations of

current technology.

They have a keen interest in understanding the full range of research and development activities now underway, particularly with

regard to those systems that could be fielded in the near term that

could impact on their critical warfighting abilities.

They have an intense desire for knowledge about unmanned systems, and this is evident across all branches of the Armed Service,

with many government agencies, and it extends to our international partners and allies.

Students are acutely aware of the ethical and legal issues associated with the employment of robotic systems in combat. Of particular concern is the possibility that unmanned robotic systems could

be programmed to make lethal decisions in combat situations without active human participation in the kill chain. And they are

keenly aware that unmanned and robotic systems could represent

a true revolution in military affairs that has the potential to alter

career fields, training pipelines and combat tactics. They don’t fear

the future, but they are mindful of the need to skillfully manage

the impact of this disruptive technology.

My final observations pertain to the professionalism and vision

of the many people I have encountered while developing and teaching this course. At Navy headquarters, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, has been a strong and vocal advocate for unmanned systems, about which he has said, ‘‘This is the

right way. This is the way we have to go, and it will make us

much, much more effective.’’

I believe the message is getting through at all levels of the Navy,

and whenever I have sought information or requested senior leaders to travel to the College to speak with students or when I have

participated at conferences and symposia, I received immediate and

unqualified support.

Additionally, I have been particularly impressed with the people

I have met from academia, the scientific engineering communities,

and industry, all of whom are working tirelessly to bring the potential of unmanned systems to fruition.

Finally, I salute our elected officials as represented by members

of this subcommittee who seek to ensure that neither organizational inertia, nor the tendency to protect the status quo will keep

36

America from using the drive and genius of her people to devise

and utilize technology as necessary to protect our citizens, our

economy and our Nation.

I am prepared to entertain any questions, and since there are so

many educators on the panel, I will pass out the quiz. [Laughter.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jackson follows:]

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Before we go to Mr. Fagan, just let me tell the folks that are in

the audience here, they are here as the guests of Congress to participate and listen as citizens to this hearing. We don’t really countenance any disruption, whether that is speaking out loud in the

middle of the hearing or raising signs or any other kinds of disturbances. So we ask your cooperation in that regard. If we do that, we

will be able to get through the hearing and hopefully we will all

learn something and it will help us set policy.

Mr. Fagan, your 5 minutes, please.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL FAGAN

Mr. FAGAN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,

thank you for this opportunity to address the subcommittee. My

name is Michael Fagan. I chair the Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Advocacy Committee for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle

Systems International. It is an honor to represent the world’s largest nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems community.

While national defense still is the primary use of unmanned aerial systems, there is much more that these systems can do and are

doing to protect our Nation and its citizens. There are many technological reasons for the rise in applications of unmanned systems.

I will briefly mention two.

One reason is that detection, surveillance, measurement, and

targeting are more effective when done as close to the observable

as possible. This axiom applies to military systems as much as it

does to everyday life. Small and medium size UAS put military

payloads close to hostile forces for very long periods of time, while

significantly reducing risk to friendly forces.

Another reason is that size, weight and power [SWAP], requirements for equivalent data processing and storage capabilities are

decreasing. Last month, for example, the Office of Naval Research

completed the first test flights of key elements of a 50-pound persistent surveillance imagery payload for Shadow class UAS. The

Shadow’s model is the one closest to me on the table.

A similar operational payload is 1,000 pounds and needs a commuter size aircraft with a crew to put it in its necessarily predictable orbit overhead a hostile target. As reduced SWAP allows more

data processing to move on board the UAS, available datalink

bandwidth can transmit to the ground more products that are more

relevant to more analysts over larger areas compared with the raw

data that we send to the ground today.

Additionally, processing on board the unmanned aircraft

automates intelligence analysis tasks and increasingly permits the

same number of analysts to be effective over a greater area.

UAS technology will continue to increase in the current U.S. regulatory environment, but it will more efficiently and effectively provide benefits to warfighters if UAS manufacturers can more easily

and frequently get access to the air space that permits the research, development, tests and evaluation flights. AUVSI is in

favor of FAA rulemaking that will enable increased air space access for UAS manufacturers.

54

UAS manufacturers also depend significantly on engineers and

scientists with relevant educations. It is therefore equally important to national security that science and engineering educational

institutions have routine access to national air space. AUVSI is in

favor of FAA rulemaking that permits educational institutions the

air space access that they need to effectively educate the next generation in autonomous system technologies.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have certainly driven demand

for these systems, but many Americans are unaware that a

ScanEagle UAS, which is represented by the second model in on

the table, also aided in the successful recovery of Captain Phillips

of the Maersk Alabama off the coast of Somalia last year. There

are many other useful applications of UAS technology, some of

which we saw on the screen earlier, air, ground and maritime systems that can protect our Nation. Border patrol, emergency response, wildfire monitoring, civil unrest, search and rescue, law enforcement, port security, submarine detection and underwater mine

clearance, bulldozers for clearing land mines and IEDs, and ground

robots used for explosive ordnance disposal are some examples of

actual and potential robotic system missions for air, ground and

maritime systems.

Unmanned systems have been and will continue to be proven in

war, and it is time to prove their heretofore under-recognized capabilities for increasing the effectiveness of civil law enforcement and

public safety.

Technologies originally developed for warfare also will be

transitioned to commercial operations. There is a growing demand

from the civil sector for use of UAS for precision farming, tracking

shoals of fish, aerial photography and more. This demand has the

potential to drive a rapid advance of the technology. The United

States has an opportunity to be at the forefront of the research and

development of these advanced systems if it can address regulatory

obstacles.

Our industry growth is adversely affected by International Traffic in Arms regulations for export of certain UAS technologies, and

by a lengthy license approval process by Political Military Defense

Trade Controls. AUVSI is an advocate for simplified export control

regulations and expedited license approvals for unmanned system

technologies.

Our hope is that today’s hearing illuminates some of the ways

that unmanned system technologies are changing and could change

modern warfare, increase the safety of our men and women in the

military, law enforcement and public safety, and strengthen national security at all levels.

AUVSI’s over 6,000 members from industry, government and

academia are committed to fostering and promoting unmanned systems and related technologies.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am happy to answer

any question from you or other members of the subcommittee.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fagan follows:]

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Fagan.

I thank all of you. I am glad we decided this wasn’t going to be

our one and only hearing because there is certainly a lot of food

for thought here. It runs the whole range on that.

And I want to thank Dr. Singer before we start. He spent some

time with us actually a while back, helping us think through some

of the questions that we wanted to present and have the witnesses

discuss with us.

Let me start with Professor Anderson if I could. What is your

legal rationale that you say leads you to the conclusion that the use

of the UAVs is legal in context of sending them over a country like

Sudan or Yemen or Pakistan, as opposed to a combat area like Afghanistan?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, I think that the legal rationale for their use

in regular combat where it is clear that it is part of traditional hostilities is exactly that as any other weapon. And so the question

really becomes what happens when you move outside of that zone.

And I believe that the answer that has been given by the Obama

administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, going really back through the 1990’s, has been that if you

were in some kind of conflict with the terrorists that are

transnational, you can chase them anywhere, and anywhere the

combatant is located, you can attack them.

I am sympathetic to that, but don’t think it is actually literally

right under the laws of war. That is, there are treaty thresholds

that are actually established for when you have an armed conflict.

And my own view is that is not unlimited in geographic scope.

That said, the basis for the use of force is not limited strictly to

armed conflicts in the narrow legal sense. We have always traditionally used force in ways that we describe as self defense on a

broader basis. And self defense is, I believe, what we meant in the

1980’s when Abe Sofer, the then-legal adviser to State, delivered an

address stating that the policy of the United States was not to

allow safe havens; that if a country was unwilling or unable to

keep transnational terrorists out of its territories, we would feel

free to attack them if we thought that was the prudent thing to do,

attack the terrorists.

That is an exercise of self defense, rather than war in the full

scale overt sense, and I think that it is an important capability

that we have always had because I think that under many circumstances, it turns out that a smaller and sometimes covert action is a way of not escalating into a full overt war that could be

very, very costly in every respect.

So I think the answer to that is that it is a broader doctrine of

self defense.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

If we accept that, Dr. Singer, for argument’s sake on that basis,

then you get to the issue that you raise in your testimony: who is

responsible for making decisions about whether or not we go there?

And second, should we go there, who is responsible for making the

decisions actually controlling the UAVs or other robotic instruments that are there? And if we are contracting them out, how appropriate or inappropriate is it? And at what stage is it a governVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64921.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
65

mental function that ought not to be contracted out? And how does

all that play in? Could you talk to us a little bit about that?

Dr. SINGER. I think there are three important issues that are

raised by that. The first is this technology is one that has certainly

military applications, but it has also allowed a wider range of actors to utilize it. And there is a question of appropriateness there.

So for example, my concern with the CIA strikes may be a little

bit shared with Professor Anderson, but a little bit different in

that, first, you have, for example, CIA lawyers deciding issues of

air strikes. The scale of this effort is an air war. It is on the scale

of the Kosovo air war, the opening rounds of it, but it is not military lawyers who have spent their years training on those situations. It doesn’t mean they are making bad decisions, but that it

is not the background a JAG office would have, and that is on the

authorization side.

Same in terms of the planning side. You have political appointees

and people with an intelligence specialty deciding aspects of an air

war campaign. So that is a question of appropriateness. And there

is a quote in my book that connects to the seductive effect of it, and

they describe how what we have playing out is like taking LBJ

down to the foxhole. That is, civilians can make tactical level decisions now, utilizing this technology. It doesn’t mean that they

should.

The second aspect of this is that Congress has not weighed in

whether to support it or to go against it. And I think that is a question of legislative-executive branch issues that we need to look at.

And again, it is not a partisan issue. It is played out before this

administration and now during it.

And the third is to the issue of effectiveness. There is a concern

that while we may be taking out terrorist leaders, we may be sucking ourselves into a game of whack-a-mole, where we have been

very successful at killing terrorist leaders, but are we also inadvertently aiding their recruiting? And I think the connection to the

contractor issue here goes back to that question of appropriateness,

the ‘‘should’’ of who should be involved.

And it is not just an issue of legality. I think it is a long-term

question of the future of the force. I remember meeting with an Air

Force officer who pointed out an NCO who worked on maintenance.

And they said, they have served 12 years. How do we get to having

a future NCO that has worked 12 years on these systems that

brings that experience to bear? Or we have to turn that over to

them right now and wait 12 years. And that is not going to happen

if we continue to outsource it.

So if this is the future, we are setting ourselves up for a hollow

capability.

Mr. TIERNEY. That would match some of our other capabilities

that we have referenced that would outsource that work, and that

would be problematical, I think.

Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Dr. Barrett, you mentioned, I think, that the evidence shows enhanced awareness and restraint. Is that view shared among the

community? I would like to see from others. Dr. Singer, do you

66

share that view that unmanned pilots have enhanced awareness

and restraint?

Dr. BARRETT. Well, it is contested, I will just put it that way. But

there is this debate going on, and there is empirical data coming

in from various sources. I can get you those sources, that says exactly this, that especially because of these sensor improvements

and all the other variables I mentioned, that there actually is more

awareness and restraint.

So I think in Dr. Singer’s book, you were a little bit more pessimistic about this issue. It is a debate. I will just leave it at that.

Mr. FLAKE. OK. I am glad to hear that. I was just wondering if

that view was shared.

Dr. Singer.

Dr. SINGER. I think we need to divide it into two parts. We do

know about the military use of these systems, and I think they

have shown exceptional respect for the laws of war. When you discuss this with people who are engaged in these operations, there

are a series of checks and balances and consultation with military

lawyers that they have to go through for authorizing and conducting a strike.

The challenge is the use on the intelligence side. Again, we don’t

even acknowledge that we have carried out these strikes, so I can’t

answer about the mechanisms that they follow for that.

I will say one of the other issues is the wide array of perceptions

about, for example, the civilian casualty concern. You have estimates that range from 2,000 civilian casualties on the high end, to

I believe the smallest I have seen reported is 20. When you backtrack the sources, it is interesting the high end ones often track

back to regional media. One, for example, was a Pakistani newspaper that was quoting someone from the ISI. The low end are

quoting our own intelligence officials. My guess is the truth lies

somewhere in between.

But there is a broader concern here in terms of a war of ideas.

It is not just the reality that matters. These perceptions have a

power unto themselves. And so a challenge for us is, how do we

deal with that perception and show the painstaking way that we

are going through, and deal with the fact that it is coming out

being viewed on the other side through a lens of anger?

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Professor Anderson, how is this being played out, this rise in

these numbers are stark. We have 12,000 in inventory right now.

I think Dr. Singer had mentioned that. How is this being viewed

in terms of the drones, pilotless planes being flown between the

agencies and the military? I would like the same question answered by Dr. Jackson.

Mr. ANDERSON. I think that the question at this point is partly

the question of the perception in the region, as Dr. Singer has suggested. It is also a question of how it is seen in what we amorphously call the international community, international actors such

as academics and U.N. officials and tribunals and all sorts of folks

out there.

And I think that there is a sense sometimes within the U.S. Government across many administrations that none of this stuff really

matters because it is just these soft law folks like me, who can’t

67

really impact policy. But I think that if you look at the track of

many different issues, starting with the land mines campaign, for

which I was primarily responsible in the early 1990’s, on through

various parts of the War on Terror debates, perceptions in the

international community powerfully shape U.S. Government responses in ways the U.S. Government finds very hard to get in

front of.

And I think that here, the divide comes probably initially between the military use of these things on overt battlefields where

they look pretty much like any other standoff weapon with particular technological characteristics attached, and then the questions

that are raised by the CIA use, where it is not acknowledged.

There is less data.

And those will actually be sort of the fault lines that we will initially see in terms of the perception.

Mr. FLAKE. Let me just followup on that. I am sorry, Dr. Jackson, I will get back to you later.

But in your Weekly Standard piece, you talk about unqualified

success that we have had in terms of the President’s and the Vice

President’s policy here. Is that view shared by each branch of government? Does the intel community see it differently than the military, for example?

Mr. ANDERSON. I am not an insider to government, but I guess

I would say that my perception from the outside is that there is

concern within the Department of State. There is concern within

some of the departments of government among the lawyers that

they have not settled on what their rationales are. And I believe

that at some point, that ill serves an administration that is embracing this.

Now, maybe the answer is this is all really terrible and illegal,

and anybody that does it should go off to The Hague. But if that

is the case, then we should not be having the President say this

is the greatest since whatever. That seems like a bad idea.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Foster, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FOSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this hearing

on a very important subject.

First to whoever wants and feels competent to field it, what is

the approximate ratio of how much we spend on manned versus

unmanned aircraft across our country, roughly? Does anyone want

to respond? All right.

Mr. TIERNEY. Our next panel will be able to do that, I am sure.

Mr. FOSTER. OK. And are there understood and generally agreed

upon advantages of having a man aboard a combat aircraft at this

point for either the ground support or air superiority purposes? I

mean, is there any consensus on any list of advantages?

Dr. BARRETT. Well, a couple that come to mind. First, there are

no bandwidth limitations or vulnerabilities. So with the unmanned

remote controlled systems, you are working with a satellite and

there is potential limitations on the amount of bandwidth available

and then also the vulnerability issue.

So, a mix of, say, air systems that are manned and unmanned,

for that reason would be called for.

68

Also, there is some data that says that doing combat aerial support CAS missions. If you are getting on station, the manned platform can get oriented more quickly. So for those types of missions,

you might want a manned platform in the area if you need a very

quick response and orientation.

Mr. FOSTER. And then for just general air superiority, is there

any reason why drones won’t essentially take over the business?

Dr. BARRETT. I would say that would just be a technical question.

I don’t think we are there yet, but it could happen at some point.

Mr. FOSTER. OK. We are about to spend apparently a lot of

money on a tanker system. Is that relevant for a future where

drones are really the dominant force in air superiority?

Mr. JACKSON. I think among the designs for the Navy UCAS,

which is the delta wing airplane there, is a tanker version of it. If

you are talking about carrier operations in particular, you have to

provide for the refueling capability. There is no reason why that refueler could not also be an unmanned vehicle. So in the design

work that is being done now, we are looking at that aircraft for

combat and strike missions, but also as an air tanker version to refuel those unmanned systems.

Mr. FOSTER. OK. So the conclusion is, it is not clear that the

tanker we are talking about building really will fit in very nicely

into a predominantly drone system. Is that a reasonable conclusion

or not?

Dr. SINGER. The designs of it, it is really not so much the tanker

as opposed to the systems on the other side, the users of it. You

want to make sure that they are interoperable with it. I think the

overall strategic question that you are getting to is that we want

to ensure that we are not making decisions right now that will

paint us into a corner in the future.

So for example, the acquisitions part that you asked at the start,

it is not so much the amount of money that we are spending on

unmanned systems right now, but that we are purchasing more of

them physically than we are manned platforms.

And so one of the mistakes that first movers have made in history, why they have fallen behind, is that they commit too early to

one type, one model, and then 20 years out, when we learn what

is the best one, we are in a bad way. The British with the aircraft

carrier would be an example here.

So the issue I think for us is to ensure that we are continuing

to experiment a great deal, and then also making sure that we are

not locking ourselves into a one designer future, which to me

means we need to focus on our acquisitions system and make sure

that we don’t have oligopolies emerge, or monopolies.

Mr. FOSTER. Is there just a working number for the cost ratio between a manned and an unmanned aircraft with comparable capabilities? Is it order of a factor of 10 or a factor of 100?

Dr. BARRETT. Close to 10, I think.

Mr. FOSTER. What I am worried about is we are going to at some

point be asked to defend Taiwan with a set of aircraft carriers, and

we are going to, and then all of a sudden Chinese-manufactured

mass-produced drones will be coming at us and it will be game

over.

69

Do those sort of things routinely get gamed out, sort of equal dollar value drone versus manned aircraft fleets? So that tradeoff is

routinely looked at at this point?

Dr. SINGER. There are starting to be, at least within the media

reports of war gaming to that effect. The real issue is one of quantity versus quality moving forward, and I think this is an issue for

our overall acquisitions system. That is, do we want the capability

for a large number? Or will the high cost of systems lock us into

only being able to buy a very few gold-plated versions?

And a concern I have when I look at the models moving forward

is that we are starting to make decisions right now that will lead

to some of the similar things we have seen play out with the Joint

Strike Fighter or DD(X) or FCS, where we don’t exactly know the

future, but we know that the system that is too big to fail and is

so costly that we can only buy a couple of them, paints ourselves

into a corner in a scenario with, for example, a China or the like,

where the amount that we can buy should not decide the tactics

and the strategy that we take in war. But that is the future that

we are headed with, including in unmanned systems.

Mr. FOSTER. Thank you.

Dr. BARRETT. Could I add one comment? Another reason why you

would want manned is because it keeps the homeland less involved. If you are fighting a war with only unmanned systems,

there is no one for the enemy to shoot at. There is no option for

even guerilla war. Therefore, you are inviting, I think, terrorism in

the homeland.

So I think for that third reason, you would want a mix. You don’t

want to go to just unmanned. Otherwise, they are coming here.

Mr. JACKSON. And Mr. Foster, I might add that the Naval War

College has done a lot of work in terms of the potential future for

integrating unmanned systems into the maritime environment. The

Chief Naval Operations task in 2008, its Strategic Studies Group,

took a look at how you would use these systems. So there was a

year spent in study of how you would integrate these systems,

where you would used manned, where you would use unmanned

systems, and some very fine work was done and brought out some

notions that there has to be a balance between the two, but the unmanned provides you some unique capabilities in terms of endurance, in terms of ability to deploy from the continental United

States, and use these systems and what not. So there has been a

fair amount of work done in that. Not a lot of games per se, but

a lot of discussion and thinking about how they would be employed.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Fagan——

Ma’am, please, please be quiet and please sit down. I told you before at the beginning of this hearing, we are having——

[Interruption from audience.]

Mr. TIERNEY. You are going to have an opportunity to sit down

now or be asked to leave. It is your choice, ma’am. Would you care

to sit down and listen like the rest of us trying to learn something

here? Or would you like to be asked to leave? Asked to leave.

Thank you.

We are going give our guest—officer, we will give our guest one

more chance, but if she speaks out again, we will have to ask for

her to be removed.

70

Mr. Fagan, what I was going to ask you, obviously there are so

many other uses that are non-military of this kind of technology.

I can think of some in my own district, which is heavily reliant on

the fishing industry, and some of the underwater technology that

could really identify for purposes of determining catch shares or

what fish are over-fished, which ones aren’t, to other land uses,

things of that nature.

And when you start talking about that, the real question becomes: How do we keep the innovation going, internationally, not

just in our country? At the same time, obviously the ideal is to deprive other countries that might wish us harm from getting the

technology that could do so. Can you possibly do that?

Mr. FAGAN. Mr. Chairman, I believe it is possible that the commercial market is going to drive requirements for technology. If

there is a commercial demand for fishing and surveillance related

to fishing, I think that sensor systems and technologies will be developed to support that.

Currently, there need to be some regulations that would support

the operation of aircraft in support of that industry, and I am pretty confident that technology, I am not well versed in exactly how

shoals of fish are spotted, but let’s assume that it is done optically

with optical sensors. There exist quite high quality optical sensors

that I would imagine could be adopted for that, but we will need,

as I said, two things, a requirement and permission to actually fly

the systems in support of those.

So the technology is cross-cutting. As the market increases, the

demand for these higher quality sensors will increase and costs will

go down and the technology will improve. I hope that answered

your question.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, it does a little bit. I may not have asked it

as clearly as I could have, but there comes a point in time when

some people are going to say, look, we can’t allow some of this technology to be exported. We can’t allow even some of this equipment

to be exported because we are afraid others will put it to a devious

use.

Is it even possible to draw that kind of a line? Or it is going to

happen anyway?

Mr. FAGAN. That is a difficult line, and I am not an expert on

export control regulations. I know that our manufacturers have

voiced their concern that sometimes they are too complicated and

difficult to comply with. But yes, I think it is possible that if export

controls aren’t administered properly, it could end up providing bad

people with highly technical systems that could be used against the

United States.

So we are not, AUVSI and me personally, I am not opposed to

export regulations. It is just that we would like to see them easy

to use and administered in an expedited way.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me just ask, to survey the rest of the panel,

just quickly. Does anybody think that there is a possibility of controlling the export of this technology in such a way that it would

not be something that we would have to be concerned about other

countries using against our interest? Or is that just something that

can’t be done?

Dr. Singer.

71

Dr. SINGER. No, it would be like trying to control computers or

trying to control automobiles. We already see 43 other countries

building, buying and using these systems and a range of non-state

actors for both positive and nefarious purposes.

I think the bigger question is: How do we maintain our competitiveness in this? How do we ensure that businesses can continue

to thrive so that we can innovate? And I think a long-term issue

here is ensuring that they have a pipeline of young scientists,

young engineers who can succeed. And that speaks to the challenges of having a national robotics strategy that connects to

broader science and technology, engineering and mathematics

issues.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Professor Jackson, do you agree?

Mr. JACKSON. Just as a point of interest, sir, the ScanEagle,

which was used to support the rescue of Captain Phillips in the

Maersk Alabama situation was originally developed for the tuna industry. And it was launched from tuna ships to go out to find

where the fish were located and then they would recover it from

the air. And so that was civilian technology that has been adapted.

We now have over 200,000 hours of time used in military applications for surveillance purposes. So it is certainly a two way street.

Mr. TIERNEY. I see the others nodding, so I won’t bother to question on that, in agreement. But so what the prospects does anybody

want to offer here for an international treaty that addresses the

use of these, to restrict the military or other uses of that in any

particular circumstances? Is anybody aware of any negotiations or

discussions that have been started anywhere about this topic?

Professor Anderson.

Mr. ANDERSON. Probably the closest to this would be the development by different bodies such as the International Committee of

the Red Cross or several of the scholarly bodies that put up model

codes for the laws of war. There has been recently released a model

air war manual that would address part of these things, and it specifically has measures talking about unmanned vehicles, both in a

surveillance capacity as well as a weapons-firing capacity.

The United States has participated through the Department of

Defense in numbers of those discussions. And I would say that in

the case of the air war manual, I would describe without attributing it, without speaking for the Department of Defense, I would

describe it that the U.S. DOD has participated very actively in the

formulation of the specific black letter rules that have been developed, but I think was actually quite stunned by the commentary

manual that was developed by several of the experts that would go

along with that and would attempt to provide sort of authoritative

guidance. The United States, I do not think, will wind up regarding

that as authoritative.

Second is also a technical issue in some sense. It is the International Committee of the Red Cross development of what it calls

interpretive guidance on direct participation in hostilities, which

goes to the question of civilians who may be taking part in ways

that Dr. Singer referenced, or CIA personnel or terrorists themselves that may not be regarded, strictly speaking, as combatants,

but nonetheless lawful targets.

72

Again, the United States had a number of experts who participated in that process and the ICRC has put that out as guidance.

However, that has been extremely controversial in parts of its formulations, essentially in saying you can have part-time participants in hostilities who may not be targeted between activities that

they are carrying out. And the United States I do not think will

come close to signing onto those.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Dr. Singer, you mentioned that there are some criminal uses, and it has been mentioned for nefarious purposes, as you

put it. Can you give some examples of non-state actors or others

that are using it in this way?

Dr. SINGER. The examples range from one that was mentioned of

Hezbollah during its war with Israel operating these systems, to

some of the border militia groups utilizing them too. There were a

group of thieves in Taiwan a couple of weeks ago who used robotic

helicopters to scout out targets and ensure that they were ready to

steal from.

What we are seeing here, again, this technology is what you

could describe as the parallel to open source software. It is not like

an aircraft carrier. It is not like an atomic bomb where you need

a huge industrial structure not only to build it, but to utilize it.

And so that means that we have a flattening effect playing out in

terms of who can utilize this technology.

And the positive side is, again, the range of uses that can be

made, everything from fishery to environmental monitoring. We

used the Global Hawks for response to the humanitarian disaster

in Haiti.

But the opposite is that it lowers the bar for nefarious actors.

The best illustration I can give of that, of the potential, is during

World War II, Hitler’s Luftwaffe, Hitler’s air force could not strike

the United States. It didn’t have that reach. A couple years ago,

a 77 year old blind man designed his own unmanned system that

flew across the Atlantic. And so what we have to in a sense do is,

in my mind, the 9/11 Commission described as part of the cause

of the tragedy on that day was a failure of our own imagination.

We need to apply this to this emerging technology here as well, use

imagination in how we can utilize it for positive ends, but also

being aware that the threat scenarios are widening as well.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson, a U.N. official raised the prospect that drone attacks are a form of extrajudicial execution, I think is the way it

was put. Have any organs of the United Nations, and you spoke

of it a little in your last colloquy, but are we likely to see these

challenges from international organizations or states themselves?

Where do you think the challenges are likely to come from, whether it is the Red Cross just looking for guidelines or is it likely the

U.N. through its agencies that are going to demand some kind of

guidelines here?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, I think that this is gradually a developing

campaign in which there are various international actors who are

very unhappy with the development of this, both the technology

and, at this moment, by its use in particular by civilian agencies.

73

And I think that their difficulties with the technology range all the

way back to military use on the active battlefield.

But the easy place to sort of move in a campaign to peel that off

is with the CIA. And in that regard, then the charge has been leveled that this is a violation of international human rights standards. It constitutes extra-judicial execution without having any

charges, without having attempted to arrest the person.

We respond by saying the person is a terrorist combatant and

can be targeted at any point. We are not obligated to try and detain them or to capture them. But there are many, many authorities out there who disagree vehemently with that. And one of the

questions that will arise is, the United States has never, across

many, many decades, agreed to sign onto the extraterritorial application of the treaties that would make it possible to characterize

these acts as being extra-judicial execution. It has never agreed to

that.

And one of the questions will be whether the administration,

without really sort of thinking about its impacts on these kinds of

areas that are close to its heart, winds up weakening those restraints or winds up weakening the U.S. opposition to that, without

really taking into account the effect that it would have on precisely

these kinds of things.

The long-term effect of that, given that there are not necessarily

statutes of limitations on these kinds of acts, could be the problem

of CIA officers, or for that matter military officers or their lawyers

being called up in front of international tribunals or courts of Spain

or someplace and said, you’ve engaged in extrajudicial execution or

simple murder and we are going to investigate and indict.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Foster.

Mr. FOSTER. Yes. Dr. Singer, you have mentioned a couple times

a national robotics strategy wherein education is crucial to keeping

our lead in this area, if such a lead exists. And there are a number

of things like the U.S.’s FIRST Robotics Competition. There is the

Fab Lab where they have rapid prototype equipment that are distributed.

Do you have any favorites here or ideas of what the best strategy

is going to be going forward, besides just dumping a bunch of

money into it?

Dr. SINGER. I am not going to pick favorites in terms of competitions, but it is interesting that a number of the other states that

are succeeding and thriving in this realm, like for example South

Korea, do have these sorts of strategies and it would be interesting

for us to learn from them.

I think you mentioned some of the aspects of what a strategy

might look like. Some of the elements of it include, for example, not

just the sort of isolated islands of excellence in terms of robotics

labs or robotics competitions. How could we expand upon those so

that you are engaging youth in a greater way, but also that you

are allowing the best design to win?

Can we support greater graduate scholarships in this realm? Is

there the possibility of creating public-private partnerships along

the lines of special geographic zones the way that we have seen

74

with Research Triangle in North Carolina or Silicon Valley. Is

there the potential for something like that in robotics?

But again, part of this should also be having it go hand in hand

with discussions about the impact of what they are doing in the lab

on the world beyond, the kind of ethics discussions that the professors here are leading. And I think that element has been missing,

as well, to a prior question that was asked of debates about regulation.

We have to start within the robotics field of robotocists, what

kind of research should they engage in and what should they not;

should there be arms control, sort of the early nodes of the land

mines treaty when it comes to the issue of autonomy moving forward. But for example, if you were a young robotocist, you don’t

have a code of ethics right now to turn to the way if you were a

young medical scientist.

And I think that part of this strategy has to be not only what

do we do to maintain national competitiveness, but also how do we

wrestle with the issue beyond.

Mr. FOSTER. OK.

Professor Anderson, or anyone who wants to field it, is there a

moral, legal or political distinction between a decapitation strike

and just a strike against the normal military hierarchy that you

see, and when you are deliberately going after the political leadership of an organization compared to just the chain of command?

Mr. ANDERSON. If one is talking about a non-state actor group

which has been characterized with legal reasons as being a terrorist group, then there is not really going to be a distinction—I mean,

they are targets in that sense. There are other kinds of legal issues

that arise if one goes after a purely decapitation strategy with regards to a regime. Again, it is lawful, in my view, but the legal rationales are different because it is a state versus a non-state.

And so the legal questions that arise here about going after leadership targets in terrorist organizations, in part there the kinds of

strategic and prudential arguments that Dr. Singer has raised

about sort of whack-a-mole questions and those things. But I don’t

think that there is legal questions about the question of the lawfulness of targeting the people that are involved.

Mr. FOSTER. Another thing that I am sure occurs to everyone is

whether we are in danger of gradually lowering the threshold for

a declared war. During the cold war, there were all these games

of chicken played over the Arctic continuously. And if we had

drones, we just perhaps would have escalated that into actually destroying hardware. And when the hardware becomes nuclear-capable hardware, you are talking about a really scary line that is in

danger of being crossed.

And I was just wondering what the thinking is in terms of, is it

possible to implement a hard line that says, this is an act of war

and this is not an act of war, when there are unmanned vehicles

only in the battle.

Dr. SINGER. The way I visualize this is that the barriers to war

are dropping both socially, and politically, but also now technologically. But at the same time, our definition of war is changing.

And we can see this in terms set-aside from robotics. This body

75

hasn’t declared war since 1941. We don’t have a draft or conscription anymore. We don’t pay war bonds or higher taxes for war.

And now we have a technology that allows us to carry out what

we would have previously termed act of war, without having to

have a political debate about it. I mean, literally it is not a

theoretic issue. We have carried out at least 119 air strikes, and

this body hasn’t had a debate about it, either to support or to go

against.

And so the way I see it, again, was that the barriers to war were

already lowering. The technology perhaps allows these barriers to

hit the ground. And what was interesting is that when I went

around interviewing people, that was the concern that was shared.

For example, I remember an interview with someone at Human

Rights Watch who raised that, but also an interview with a special

operations officer within the U.S. military as one of their big concerns here.

Mr. ANDERSON. If I could just add to that. If the administration’s

lawyers were here in front of you today, they would say that this

is all covered by the AUMF in so far as we are targeting people

who are in some way connected either with Al Qaeda or with the

authors of 9/11 and that is true whether or not one is talking about

the strikes in Pakistan or even the strikes in Yemen or any other

place.

I believe that where this question that you raise becomes most

important is that not all the enemies that the United States will

face in the decades into the future are going to turn out to be Al

Qaeda, nor will they be connected to 9/11. And the question that

this body, the Congress, has to address is, as the thresholds that

Dr. Singer described get lowered, then the question of the controls

on the use of force will depend on, first of all, whether you assign

those functions directly to the military and to no other force, or

allow the CIA and covert operations to partake of that, which I believe is hugely important for avoiding overt wars.

There is a reason why the CIA has been tasked in Pakistan to

do what it does, rather than having the undeniable presence of the

U.S. military there. I think that is the right decision. But as this

moves into the future, the lines drawn with respect to the CIA

have to be drawn and I believe that, as the threshold for what constitutes the use of force is lowered, the responsibility of this body

will not lie in issuing things like more AUMFs unless there is another 9/11 or something similar, but will lie in the way in which

this body exercises its oversight functions and strengthens its oversight functions to require much greater reporting, much more detailed reporting.

But at the same time, the concomitant part of that is this body

is going to have to learn to be a whole lot more effective at keeping

the secrets that are involved.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I just want to let you know that you

have our gratitude for that and we may at some time want to call

you back either for a formal hearing or just for a discussion to educate us more on the issue. We are going to go for about a half hour

and then we will come back, probably less than a half hour, for 20

minutes or so, and come back with our second panel.

I again thank all of you on this panel.

76

We will take a recess now.

[Recess.]

Mr. TIERNEY. We appreciate your staying with us and testifying.

If we were more thoughtful on this, we probably would have scheduled this for another day instead of running you here this late. But

I get the feeling that you may be back again at some point convenient to everybody. This looks like an area we will want to explore

in some more depth at some point.

Let me just introduce the panel first for the record, if I could. Mr.

Michael J. Sullivan serves as the Director of Acquisition and

Sourcing Management at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. His team is responsible for examining the effectiveness of

agency acquisition and procurement practices, and meeting the

mission performance objectives and requirements. He also manages

a body of work designed to help the Department of Defense apply

best commercial practices to better develop advanced weapons systems. Mr. Sullivan holds both a B.A. and an MPA from Indiana

University.

Mr. Dyke Weatherington is the Deputy Director for Unmanned

Warfare and Portfolio Systems Acquisition in the Office of the

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, Logistics

in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions.

You must have quite the business card.

A retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, he is responsible for acquisition oversight for unmanned aircraft systems and

associated subsystems. He is also the functional lead for the Deputy Secretary of Defense-directed UAS Task Force.

He holds a B.S. from the U.S. Air Force Academy and an M.A.

from California State University.

And the Honorable Kevin Wolf serves as the Assistant Secretary

for Export Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Prior to his, he was a partner at Bryan Cave, LLP, where he

worked on export administration regulations, international traffic

in arms regulations and sanctions administered by the Office of

Foreign Assets Control.

He holds a B.A. from the University of Missouri and an M.A. and

J.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Thank you again, all of you, for being here and sharing your substantial expertise with us. It is our policy to swear in the witnesses, so if you would please rise and raise your hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

The record will please reflect that all of the witnesses have answered in the affirmative.

I remind you of what I think you already know, that all of your

written testimony will be placed on the record in its entirety. We

would just ask you if you could summarize that in about 5 minutes

each, and we will do some question and answer after that. And

thank you.

We will start with you, Mr. Sullivan.

77

STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL J. SULLIVAN, DIRECTOR, ACQUISITION AND SOURCING MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; DYKE WEATHERINGTON, DEPUTY,

UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE PLANNING TASKFORCE, OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR ACQUISITION, TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE;

AND KEVIN WOLF, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR EXPORT ADMINISTRATION, BUREAU OF INDUSTRY AND SECURITY, U.S.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. SULLIVAN

Mr. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman

Flake. Thanks for this opportunity to discuss GAO’s report on the

Department’s unmanned aircraft systems acquisition efforts from

July of last year.

My statement today focuses on acquisition outcomes, the extent

of collaboration among the services on those acquisitions, and recent investment decisions related to unmanned aircraft acquisitions.

As has been stated earlier in the hearing, from 2002 to 2008, the

number of unmanned aircraft in DOD’s inventory has grown from

about 167 to more than 7,000 as a result of growing demand from

the field. Once fielded, these aircraft have proven to be quite valuable to our warfighters.

However, there have been growing pains along the way. We assessed the 10 largest unmanned aircraft programs, eight air systems and two payload systems, for the report that we did last July,

and found that their development costs had grown by $3 billion or

37 percent on average. Procurement funding has increased for most

of those programs, but this was mostly due to increases in the

number of aircraft being procured, which is a good thing. Nonetheless, procurement unit costs have grown by 12 percent on average.

Our assessment found varying degrees of collaboration among

the services. For example, the Marine Corps was able to avoid the

cost of initial system development and a lot of duplication of capabilities and was also able to deliver needed capability to its Marines very quickly by simply choosing to procure existing Shadow

aircraft from the existing Army program.

In another case, the Navy is expecting to save time and money

on its broad area maritime surveillance system by using the existing Air Force Global Hawk air frame. However, it is developing a

lot of its own unique subsystems, rather than joining the Air Force

in some of those procurements.

In contrast to those examples, the Army and the Air Force did

not effectively collaborate on their Predator and Sky Warrior Programs despite strong direction from the Department to do so. We

don’t really have any estimates of the costs that might have occurred because of the duplicative efforts there, but we do know that

the Army had to stand up a program office and had a development

effort of over a half billion dollars. So that probably is some costs

that they didn’t need.

Much greater commonality could have been achieved as each of

those weapons systems are being developed by the same contractor.

One is a variant of the other.

78

Service-centric requirements and an unwillingness to collaborate

were key factors in limiting commonality across these programs.

Despite the Department’s efforts to emphasize jointness and encourage commonality, the services continued to establish unique requirements, some of which have raised concerns about unnecessary

duplication, such as the Sky Warrior and the Predator.

Since our report was issued, the Department has made an investment decision to increase development of unmanned aircraft and

procure larger numbers, which we think is a good thing. It also recognizes that this important investment must be leveraged effectively.

One of the major goals of the UAS road map is to foster the development and practice of policies, standards and procedures for

operating unmanned aircraft and to promote the enforcement of

government, international and commercial standards for the design, manufacture, testing and operation of unmanned systems.

The road map has recognized the potential for unprecedented levels

of collaboration to gain capabilities at reduced acquisition costs.

And we have reported in the past that one key to increased collaboration and commonality is the use of open systems across product

lines, across air frames, subsystems and even down to the component level.

Unmanned systems are critical to the Department’s mission and

will continue to grow in numbers and in effectiveness. In order to

acquire them most efficiently in today’s environment of constrained

resources, the Department should follow through on its stated goals

and continue to force joint standardized weapons systems wherever

it makes sense.

Mr. Chairman, that completes my statement.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sullivan follows:]

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. We appreciate your statement.

Mr. Weatherington.

STATEMENT OF DYKE WEATHERINGTON

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Flake, thank

you for the opportunity to appear today before you to discuss the

Department of Defense’s unmanned aircraft systems acquisition

programs, specifically Department initiatives to achieve greater

commonality and efficiencies.

My testimony will address the full spectrum of DOD UAS systems. This distinction is important because we have pursued opportunities for commonality and efficiency successfully across the full

range of DOD unmanned aircraft systems, including small unmanned aircraft systems.

Table one in the provided testimony is included to identify the

broad diversity of unmanned aircraft systems supporting a broad

range of warfighter needs, and you have examples of each of the

groups of those systems on the table in front of you.

The GAO report, Defense Acquisitions: Opportunities Exist to

Achieve Greater Commonality and Efficiency Among Aircraft Systems, was released last July and reviewed the DOD UAS program

groups three through five. GAO had five recommendations. The Department partially concurred with the recommendation to conduct

rigorous, comprehensive analysis of requirements for current UAS

and to develop a strategy for making systems and subsystems

among these programs more common.

At the time of the review, the UAS Task Force, with support

from the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, had already completed a comprehensive analysis of the potential for commonality

between the current Air Force Predator Program and the Army’s

Extended Range Multi-Purpose Program.

Since the report was released, the UAS Task Force, in coordination with Joint Staff, has conducted a rigorous review of the Navy’s

BAMS Program and the Air Force Global Hawk Program to evaluate opportunities for achieving greater commonality and joint efficiencies. We have completed that analysis, along with one addressing signals intelligence or SIGINT payload commonality.

The Department concurred with the remaining four GAO recommendations in that report. Since the GAO has released its report, the Department has completed its 2010 Quadrennial Defense

Review and the President has submitted his fiscal year 2011 budget. The QDR highlights the continuing warfighter need for increased intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and force

protection capabilities provided by unmanned aircraft systems and

the budget reflects the Department’s increased investment needs in

these areas.

This investment is consistent with the acquisition reform goal

and DOD’s high priority performance goals presented in the analytical perspective volumes of the President’s fiscal year 2011 budget.

The Department’s investment and operation in UAS continues to

increase as demand for a wide range of UAS capabilities expands,

as was discussed in the first panel. DOD’s annual budget for development and procurement of UAS has increased from about $1.7 bilVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64921.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
100

lion in fiscal year 2006 to over $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2010. During that same period, DOD UAS operations have grown from about

165,000 hours to over 550,000 hours annually, and there is a

graphic in the testimony. Unmanned aircraft system inventory has

increased from less than 3,000 to over 6,500 aircraft, as has been

mentioned previously.

The Department is making significant investments in unmanned

aircraft systems and that is projected to grow significantly over the

next 5 years. Achieving commonality, interoperability and joint efficiencies in development, production, and operation and support is

critical to controlling costs and delivering interoperable, reliable

systems to the warfighter with capabilities they need to win.

We will continue to improve the defense acquisition system and

have formed the UAS Task Force jointly to address critical UAS

technology and acquisition issues to enhance operation, enable

interdependencies, commonalities and other efficiencies.

Just a quick update on our current DOD UAS programs. This

year, the Department made the commitment to grow Air Force

Predator and Reaper combat air patrols [CAPs], to 50 by 2011, and

the Air Force is on track to achieve this goal and will continue to

expand the force structure to support up to 65 CAPs by fiscal year

2013.

The Army is also expanding many classes of UAS, including accelerated production of the Predator Class ER/MP and also upgrading Shadow. In addition to the quick reaction capability of eight

ER/MP aircraft already fielded in Iraq, the Army will field a second

quick reaction capability to Afghanistan this year.

The Army also plans to field 13 ER/MP systems of 12 aircraft

each to each of the combat aviation brigades starting in fiscal year

2011. Navy is in engineering and manufacturing development

phase for its BAMS UAS Program and is introducing sea-based unmanned aircraft systems with its vertical takeoff, unmanned aerial

vehicle, and its small tactical unmanned aircraft system. Navy

plans to award the STUAS contract later this year.

Finally, all the military departments and Special Operations

Command are operating the hand-launched Raven with over 4,700

aircraft delivered to the warfighter.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, the Department’s investment in UAS

is projected to continue to grow. We recognize achieving commonality, interoperability and joint efficiencies in development, production, operations and support is critical to controlling costs and delivering interoperable, reliable systems to the warfighters.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Weatherington follows:]

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you for your testimony.

Mr. Wolf, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF KEVIN WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Thank you, Chairman Tierney, Congressman Flake,

members of the committee, professional staff. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before your committee on the Department of

Commerce’s role in export controls of unmanned aerial vehicles, related components and technology.

The Bureau of Industry and Security [BIS], within the Department of Commerce administers the controls on the export, re-export, and in-country transit of a range of dual use items, commodities, software, technology, that have both civilian and military

uses.

In doing so, BIS works closely with a number of departments and

agencies, including the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy,

the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security, and its Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and

the Department of Justice.

The dual use export control system is an important tool to protect the national security of the United States against diverse

threats that our Nation faces. State and non-state actors seek to

acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver

them, as well as conventional arms and other items that could be

used for terrorist purposes. BIS implements the dual use control

system through the export administration regulations.

Under the EAR, BIS regulates the export of certain UAVs and

related items based on multilateral control lists and other items

that could be used in or for UAVs through unilateral controls on

end uses and end users. What I mean by that is that the dual use

regulations administered by the Bureau of Industry and Security

are one part of a greater scheme.

You have multilateral controls, principally the missile technology

control regime, sometimes called the MTCR, and the Wassenaar

Arrangement, which are arrangements between, depending upon

the regime, 34 to 40-plus member countries which have agreed to

establish lists of items and technologies that should be controlled

for export and re-export outside of the member countries. And

these lists that are agreed to and worked on and revised regularly

by various committees in which the Commerce Department and

other U.S. departments participate, are updated to take into account current threats and current issues.

These lists that the MTCR creates and the other multilateral regimes’ work are the basis for the list of items that the U.S. Government controls for export and re-export or in-country transit. The

Commerce Department regulations, the dual use regulations, again

even within the domestic regime, are only one part of that.

The other part is what are called the International Traffic in

Arms regulations which are the regulations administered and implemented by the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade

Controls. And principally, what those regulations govern in terms

of the export and re-export are defense articles such as UAVs that

are specifically designed or modified for military application or

parts or components for those UAVs that are specifically designed

114

or modified for military UAVs, rather, and all technical data and

services that are directly related to the UAVs and to those parts

and components. And for those items and for services related to

those items, it is a worldwide licensing requirement except for Canada in some limited circumstances.

A subset of that are the dual use controls. So anything that is

military is not controlled by us. It is those UAVs and related parts,

components, accessories and technology or software for their production or development that are controlled for worldwide export.

That is, if you were in the United States and you had one of these

items or an accessory that was specially designed for a dual use

UAV, a license would be required from the U.S. Government before

it is exported.

Similarly, if it is an item that is of U.S. origin or otherwise subject to these regulations, a license would be required to re-export

it from one destination to another destination.

And then behind these rules is a vigorous set of enforcement authorities, both civil and criminal penalties that are available to the

U.S. Government for those individuals and companies that violate

these regulations, export something from the United States or reexport it if it is otherwise controlled without a license.

There is a series, as our testimony, my written testimony has, of

enforcement actions against companies, both civil and criminal, for

people trying to export and re-export things directly or indirectly

related to UAV manufacture, production or use outside the United

States in violation of these rules.

So with that general summary of U.S. export control law and

UAVs, I would be happy to answer any specific questions you

might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wolf follows:]

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

Mr. TIERNEY. So Mr. Wolf, not the first time you have given that

rap, right?

Mr. WOLF. Excuse me?

Mr. TIERNEY. Not the first time you have given that rap.

Mr. WOLF. No, indeed. [Laughter.]

Mr. TIERNEY. We understand that.

But look, we just finished a panel. I think you were here for at

least part of it, if not all of it, where the witnesses on that panel

told us there is no way you can get this back in the box. We have

Hezbollah out there with UAVs. We have Russia, China, other people on that.

So how successful is our export regime?

Mr. WOLF. Well, it is very successful. There is an active, robust

enforcement action. And with respect to the comment that he was

making, one thing that I failed to mention but should have, is even

with respect to parts and components that aren’t specifically listed

in either set of regulations or that are not specially designed for

use in a UAV, both the MTCR countries and certainly the United

States have controls on exports of just about anything to certain

end users.

So for example, if a coffee cup or something that is going to be

used in developing a UAV were destined for, or from the United

States, rather, or a U.S.-origin item re-exported from a third country, if it were destined to a prohibited end user, things that are

called either denied entities, which are the list of companies that

have participated, many of them, in UAV or other proliferation-related activities that we don’t like, or what the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains are called specially designated nationals.

If somebody were exporting something to one of those entities or

individuals, that would be prohibited without U.S. Government authorization, which of course would be denied.

Similarly, even if not to an entity or an end-user that has been

listed by the U.S. Government, our regulations, the Commerce regulations have what are called general prohibitions on exporting just

about anything that is subject to the EAR, to anyone and a certain

group of countries if it is with respect to certain types of UAVs, or

to just about anyone in most countries if there is knowledge or reason to believe, it is a fairly broad standard, that it is destined for

a UAV production-related or for a weapons of mass destruction-related end use.

So what he was referring to is that there are some things that

are so common that they just simply can’t be controlled. I understand the point, but what it failed to take into account are the very

broad controls, the catch-all controls over prohibited end uses and

prohibited end users.

Mr. TIERNEY. So I guess that leaves us then with a question of

who are the member participants in the missile technology control

regime and other similar protocols and who is not?

Mr. WOLF. Well, it is funny you should ask, because I can leave

this for you, if you like. It is, I think, about 34 members.

Mr. TIERNEY. I would like it, if you have it there. We would certainly like to put that on the record.

122

Mr. WOLF. I will enter it into the record, of who the members

are.

Mr. TIERNEY. Now you can tell us, is Iran in the group?

Mr. WOLF. Well, no, no. With respect to Iran and four other

countries——

Mr. TIERNEY. Russia, China.

Mr. WOLF. No, China is not a member of the MTCR.

Mr. TIERNEY. Pakistan?

Mr. WOLF. Pakistan is not a member of the MTCR. But a couple

of things. With respect to Iran and Sudan and Syria and Cuba and

North Korea, there is an absolute embargo on all items that are

of U.S. origin or which would capture and control anything, whether it is for a UAV or not.

Mr. TIERNEY. But no cap on China selling them similar technology or Pakistan selling similar technology or whatever. So we

have it coming out of this country back and forth, but no international agreement to which they are a member that might stop

them from doing that.

Mr. WOLF. I don’t know the scope of China’s efforts or not in an

open session to sell UAV-related technology to Iran, Pakistan or

any of the other countries. But I can, with respect to China in particular, to the extent that U.S.-origin items would be used in an activity, there is something called the China rule, informally, or a

China catch-all, depending on who you speak to, but really it is a

requirement that for even items that aren’t specific to UAVs, like

general purpose avionics, if the exporter or re-exporter knows or

has reason to believe, again, a very open standard, that the item

is destined to China and destined for a military end use, again

even if something that otherwise wouldn’t require a license for export to China, a license is required from the U.S. Government before exporting it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

And very quickly, Mr. Weatherington, you say the problems that

Mr. Sullivan pointed out in terms of compatibility are solved. He

got the message. It is already done.

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Sir, we are working on those challenges.

As Mr. Sullivan pointed out, there has been very rapid growth in

this technology area. And to provide the warfighter the capabilities

he needed in many cases, and some that were talked about in the

first panel, DOD procured capabilities we currently had. Those, in

some cases, did not achieve the full interoperability and commonality that the Department would like to have so we are working on

those.

My written testimony has many examples of areas where OSD,

working with Joint Staff and the services, are working hard to improve our interoperability and commonality. But today, we do have

systems that aren’t fully integrated into the manner that we would

like them to be.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. I will get back to Mr. Sullivan and ask him

his opinion on that in a second.

Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. I just wanted to followup on that.

Mr. Weatherington, it is just a little baffling that, if we are talking about old systems that have been around a long time, and after

123

9/11 obviously the effort we spent a lot of money at Department of

Homeland Security for interoperability, whether it is firemen being

able to communicate with whomever or whatever.

But you would think with relatively new technology like this that

ought to be the least of the problems; that if we are acquiring and

procuring these, that ought to be assumed, I guess, that there

would be interoperability. So it just surprises me that is still a

problem. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Sure, sir. For example, the Air Force

began procuring Predator manned aircraft systems in 1994. At the

time we were procuring those systems, the Department did not

have a fully interoperable data link for that class of system. So

what was procured was a commercial C-band datalink that met the

specific requirements of Predator but was not fully integrated into

the DOD force structure.

Congress has weighed in on that and provided direction to the

Department that all the services should migrate to a common

standard, which we call a common datalink [CDL]. We are in the

process of doing that. That datalink has many advantages. One of

the advantages is it is a fully digitized link. It also provides full

encryption for the data being pushed over that datalink.

The limitation was at the time we were buying Predator, a

datalink with that capability did not exist in a form factor that we

could get on Predator. And so the decision was made the Department would take some risk in some areas, datalinks being one of

them, to provide the warfighter with the immediate requirement

we had.

At the same time, the Department is working very hard to go

back and upgrade those systems, define interoperability interfaces

where they don’t exist, require those interfaces where they do exist

across the services.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Sullivan, do you have anything to add to that?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes. I would bring up between the Army’s Sky

Warrior and the Air Force’s Predator Program is probably the most

blatant experience that we had with the ability to look at requirements for the warfighter in two different services and come to some

common agreement, and it just didn’t happen.

And that was, if you refer to my written statement there, we

tracked the history of the ability of the Office of the Secretary of

Defense and the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and

Logistics, to try to force that. As I stated in my oral statement, at

least a half billion dollars were spent to start an Army program office and a separate development program when the Army was looking for basically the same characteristics and the same capabilities

that the Air Force had with the Predator. So that is one example.

There is another example with the Fire Scout, where the Navy

and the Army basically could have bought the same system, but

the Army decided that they wanted a datalink that would be compatible with the future combat systems, which as we know now has

been terminated. And in fact, the Army’s version of Fire Scout has

been terminated, too. That established two separate programs because they couldn’t get together on the datalink.

It is things like that. There is a high-performance kind of a parochial culture across the services that I think a lot of people underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:22 May 09, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00127 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\KATIES\DOCS\64921.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
124

stand, but in today’s environment where every dollar counts, and

in addition to that we have an opportunity with this new technology to be more standard and common, it is just our belief that

the services should try harder to find these commonalities, especially when the Department itself is pointing it out to them and requesting that they work harder to do that.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. That is helpful.

Mr. Wolf, it would seem that in terms of export controls, as the

chairman said, this is pretty much off the shelf stuff when it comes

to the units themselves, whatever we are talking about. It is the

communications side of it, the software, I guess it is. Is that where

most of your focus really is? Or if not, why not? Because it would

seem that the ability of others to get a hold of the software and

I guess, some hardware to interfere with communications here

would be the problem that we ought to worry about.

Mr. WOLF. Going to the question of what the focus is, it depends

on what you are talking about with respect to particular export-related transaction. If it is an off the shelf item, for example, that

wasn’t specially designed or modified for a UAV and isn’t otherwise

captured or listed on what is called the Commerce Control List,

and wasn’t somehow specifically designed or modified for a military

application, then you are right, it wouldn’t be a listed item. It

would be an otherwise commercial off the shelf item with multiple

applications.

Mr. FLAKE. I guess, in some way, the datalink stuff, that is all

proprietary within the military anyway. Is that correct?

Mr. WOLF. I don’t know the technology well enough to be able

to comment, but if for some reason it was directly related to a military application or otherwise specifically modified for a military

end item, then it would be controlled under the other set of regulations.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thanks.

So Mr. Weatherington, let me get this right. I read your title as

Deputy Director, Unmanned Warfare Portfolio Systems Acquisition

in the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition.

You are responsible for the acquisition oversight for Department

of Defense unmanned aerial systems and associated subsystems,

including sensors and communication links within all of that alphabet soup I just read on that.

So you are the guy. So how is it, were you not there yet or was

it under your watch that the Army and the Air Force ignored the

directive to work cooperatively and have some commonality?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Sir, I was there. And we had oversight

over that acquisition that grew out of the requirements process.

The Army ER/MP Program came through the JCIDS process. And

that process first——

Mr. TIERNEY. Could you spell that out for the record, JCIDS?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. J-C-I-D-S.

Mr. TIERNEY. You are not going to get off that easy.

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. And it is Joint Service——

125

Mr. TIERNEY. The temptation is there, though, isn’t it? [Laughter.]

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. It is joint capability requirements process.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. When the Army requirement for ER/MP

came in, the Department’s position is that we always look to current solutions to meet those warfighter requirements. So the

Army’s requirement was looked at against the Air Force Predator

Program and the JCIDS process, including up to the vice chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determined that Air Force solution did

not meet the Army requirements.

Now, the Army fully competed that program, which was core to

the AT&L goals of maximum competition where we can get it. The

competitor who won that program was the same competitor who

built the Air Force Predator Program. And I would characterize

that the Army took a good Air Force design and made it better.

Mr. Sullivan has identified that there were unique requirements

between the two systems that did not afford identical subsystem

capabilities and the datalink happens to be one of those. The Army

has a relay requirement that the Air Force does not have, and OSD

and Joint staff spent a lot of time at the subsystem level doing

analysis to determine what subsystems could be common.

There is direction, both out of AT&L and out of Joint staff for

the two services to buy a common video system, video ball, for

those two programs, which is in my written testimony. We are undergoing a review to look at SIGINT capability on those two platforms that will come over in a congressional report very soon.

But as to the Army simply buying the Air Force Predator system

to meet their requirement, the Department’s process looked at that

and determined that was not sufficient to meet the Army requirement.

Mr. TIERNEY. Was the Army requirement sufficient to meet the

Air Force requirement?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Well, sir, that is somewhat overcome by

events because the Air Force has decided to terminate procurement

of Predator in lieu of the larger Reaper system that they are procuring today.

Mr. TIERNEY. So here is what I think, or what I see as a potential problem here or whatever, too many cooks in the kitchen. If we

are talking about unmanned aerial vehicles and we have a number

of different services, obviously, but we have one Department of Defense, and we continue to let each department, each service go off

and do its own thing, as if they were all in the different military

in their own right and working for some other government.

I don’t know, but my understanding of having the Department of

Defense and having a Joint Chiefs of Staff’s operation here was to

get some uniformity across the way and have somebody make some

decisions with some discipline at the top that would say, ‘‘all right,

you tell me what you want; you tell me what you want, but we are

going to get one for the two or three or four of you or whatever that

works best for everybody, and then maybe we could do little subsets off of it. We are not going to do eight or nine because yours

isn’t exactly like yours is.’’

126

That gets tremendously expensive. We don’t have unlimited

amounts of money. We just don’t have it. You know that from your

own work. So why don’t we see a better structure with more discipline and somebody stand up to the different services and say,

this can’t go on?

That is what I think your role at DOD is. I am not putting this

on you. I understand you are the Deputy Director and deputies

only get to do so much, whatever, but isn’t somebody there thinking along those lines and saying, ‘‘look, this just doesn’t make

sense. We haven’t got an unlimited pocketbook here?’’

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Mr. Chairman, that is a very fair question

and I would articulate that the Department is doing a very good

job of that. Again, in my written testimony, there are several examples of where, through OSD and Joint Staff encouragement, we

have gotten all the services to procure identical or virtually identical systems.

Mr. Sullivan commented on the Marine Corps decision to buy the

Army Shadow system. They are buying that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, it sounds like it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.

Mr. Sullivan, what do you say to my question?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Well, I would agree with that. As we understand

the position of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions,

Technology and Logistics, that is the position that should be making these decisions, and we don’t see that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Instead, each of the services is making the decision.

Mr. SULLIVAN. We don’t see that happening. The services, and

there is enough that you are getting into here that could be a

whole different hearing on acquisitions.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I suspect we might. I mean, somebody is

going to set priorities here, and sometimes you have to say no. And

so maybe this service’s request isn’t as important as somebody

else’s and one has to be delayed a little and the other has to be

expedited.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is, I would think, the referee’s job here at the

Department of Defense and that acquisition group on that.

Mr. SULLIVAN. And certainly——

Mr. TIERNEY. Maybe that is important, I think, for another hearing some day.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Certainly, Mr. Weatherington, like you stated, I

mean, this isn’t the only place that this happens. This is all over.

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes, this is not a blame game thing. You guys are

all working as hard as you can and we appreciate that, but I guess

it is our job, sitting where we are sitting, to start helping people

focus a little bit here and thinking of different ways to do it.

Prioritization would be one thing on that. Putting some central

management and discipline into it would be another way to go

about it.

And the other part that we haven’t got into today but will probably be part of any future hearing that we do on this, we continue

right across all acquisitions to see too few really qualified managers, too few qualified schedulers. So that even when we try to

127

have oversight, we have just been hollowed out a little bit. We

don’t find that we have the resources.

We have talked about this with the people in various aspects of

that agency on that. And we are going to have to find out what the

Department of Defense’s plan is to get people in. I know it is competitive financially. Some people get a better job going off to the

private sector and it is hard to entice people. So what is our plan

to turn that around? What is our plan so that when we go to production with something we have good schedulers who keep us on

line, good product managers to keep us on line, and somebody to

say, no, we are not going to change this 15 times along the path

here, which helps escalate the costs all the way up. So we probably

will get into that at a little bit more.

Mr. Flake, do you have any additional questions you want to ask

on that?

I do think that this is going to probably require us to talk a little

bit about the subsystems and the commonality between those

uniqueness needs and things of that nature. We want to talk with

the idea of how do we not stifle innovation while we are doing that

and all of those things at another point.

Let me give each of you the opportunity to tell me what we

should have asked you or should have explored here that we should

bring up at the next meeting if we can.

Mr. Sullivan.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Well, I think I just would say that it is an exciting

area to be in. And we were just kind of going through all the problems with the acquisition process, and certainly this isn’t immune

to it, but what I see with unmanned systems is an opportunity to

really capitalize on standardization and plug and play kind of

thing.

And I would also say that the road map that Mr.

Weatherington’s office has published has goals in it that I think

are goals and priorities that are pretty sound, but somebody has

to listen to them. And a lot of them drive toward commonality

standardization as a way to reduce duplication and save money in

the acquisition process.

Mr. TIERNEY. When would be an appropriate time, Mr. Sullivan,

for us to ask GAO to take a look at the performance of the Department in meeting those goals, giving them time to get them up and

running before we start trying to critique them?

Mr. SULLIVAN. That might be something that—well, the latest

road map was, when was that issued?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Late last year.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Weatherington, what do you think is a fair

time for us to ask Mr. Sullivan’s group to take a look and see how

close you are adhering to that?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Sir, that is really on your timeline.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, it is, but I am asking for a recommendation

from you. I could ask for it tomorrow and it would seem unfair to

you because you just passed the darn things.

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SULLIVAN. We can probably discuss that with your staff and

figure out a way where——

128

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, let’s keep Mr. Weatherington in the loop here

so that he doesn’t feel like he has an unfair assessment on that.

I want it to be constructive. This isn’t about, as I said earlier, playing tag with people or anything like that. We want to be able to

look at it a little bit out and say it is working or it is not working,

how are we doing on these things.

Mr. Weatherington, anything else that we should add?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. No, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Mr. Wolf.

Mr. WOLF. Just one followup on your China question about exports from China, for example. I forgot to mention that there are

various statutes that give the U.S. Government the ability to impose sanctions against foreign companies that are engaged in proliferation-related activities, which would include the export of

UAVs and other MTCR-controlled items to Iran and other sanctioned countries.

Those statutes are largely administered by the State Department, but that is another avenue that the U.S. Government has in

terms of trying to effect and prevent the flow of non-U.S. origin exports from third countries.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you.

Let me just leave you with this. Why don’t combatant commands’

sense of warfighting requirements drive the procurement requirements since we do fight jointly, rather than as individual services?

Mr. SULLIVAN. The combatant commands should have more say

in what the requirements are for the weapons systems, I agree.

Goldwater-Nichols was a major piece of legislation passed a long

time ago that was trying to matrix all that. And if you look at it,

I think we did it very well on the operations side, but on the acquisition side it didn’t take too well.

Mr. TIERNEY. Do your goals, Mr. Weatherington, sort of get us

back in that direction at all, do you feel?

Mr. WEATHERINGTON. Sir, actually one of the goals specifically

talked to meeting specific urgent warfighter requirements. And I

would articulate that it is difficult to find any other technology in

the Department of Defense that in a single decade has made such

a tremendous impact on the warfighting capability of the Department.

That is not to say that we have done everything perfectly, because in many cases we had to react very, very quickly. But I believe the process we have today, with the formal acquisition process

and the opportunity for warfighters to send in urgent warfighter

requirements get equal weight in our acquisition process.

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes, and as I say, these oversight hearings are

about getting things perfect in the future more so than beating people up over the past. So the idea is how can we help you. How can

our oversight process help you meet the goals, if they are reasonable goals, of getting there so that we do do it in that way. And

what is what we will strive for.

We are all set. Thank you all very, very much. Sorry that it went

so late because of the votes and things of that nature, but you have

been extremely helpful, and I suspect we may be getting you back

to take advantage of your expertise sometime in the future as well.

129

The meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

130

Æ