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GPS: CAN WE AVOID A GAP IN SERVICE?

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

FIRST SESSION

MAY 7, 2009

Serial No. 111–44

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

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

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

GERRY 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

——— ———

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

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

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

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

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

WILLIAM MILES, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 7, 2009 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Chaplain, Cristina, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management,

GAO; Major General William N. McCasland, Director, Space Acquisition, Officer of the Under Secretary of the Air Force; and Dr. Steve

Huybrechts, Principal Director, Command, Control, Communications,

Space and Spectrum, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense Networks and Information Integration/Chief Information Officer ................. 21

Chaplain, Cristina ..................................................................................... 21

Huybrechts, Dr. Steve ............................................................................... 44

McCasland, Major General William N. ................................................... 37

James, Lieutenant General Larry D., Commander, 14th Air Force (Air

Force Strategic), Air Force Space Command, and Commander, Joint

Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic Command;

Karen L. Van Dyke, Director, Position Navigation and Timing, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Department of

Transportation; F. Michael Swiek, executive director, U.S. GPS Industry Council; and Chet Huber, president, OnStar Corp. ............................. 90

Huber, Chet ............................................................................................... 111

James, Lieutenant General Larry D. ....................................................... 90

Swiek, F. Michael ...................................................................................... 103

Van Dyke, Karen L. .................................................................................. 98

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

Chaplain, Cristina, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management,

GAO, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 23

Huber, Chet, president, OnStar Corp., prepared statement of ..................... 113

Huybrechts, Dr. Steve, Principal Director, Command, Control, Communications, Space and Spectrum, Office of the Assistant Secretary of

Defense Networks and Information Integration/Chief Information Officer:

Followup questions and responses ........................................................... 60, 81

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 45

James, Lieutenant General Larry D., Commander, 14th Air Force (Air

Force Strategic), Air Force Space Command, and Commander, Joint

Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic Command,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 92

McCasland, Major General William N., Director, Space Acquisition, Officer of the Under Secretary of the Air Force:

Acquisition Improvement Plan ................................................................. 62

Folowup question and response ............................................................... 86

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 38

Swiek, F. Michael, executive director, U.S. GPS Industry Council, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 105

Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Massachusetts:

Prepared statement of Mr. Pace .............................................................. 2

Prepared statement of Mr. Parkinson ..................................................... 8

Van Dyke, Karen L., Director, Position Navigation and Timing, Research

and Innovative Technology Administration, Department of Transportation, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 100

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GPS: CAN WE AVOID A GAP IN SERVICE?

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2009

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 10 a.m., in room

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

Present: Representatives Tierney, Foster, Cuellar, Kucinich,

Flake, and Duncan.

Staff present: Andy Wright, staff director; Elliot Gillerman, clerk;

Brendan Culley and Steven Gale, fellows; Margaret Costa, intern;

Jeremiah Rigsby and Aaron Wasserman, legislative assistants; Dan

Blankenburg, minority director of outreach and senior advisor;

Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk and Member liaison; Tom Alexander, minority senior counsel; Mitchell Kominsky, minority counsel; Dr. Christopher Bright, minority senior professional staff member; and Glenn Sanders, minority Defense fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. Good morning. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs’ hearing entitled, ‘‘GPS: Can We Avoid a Gap in Service?’’ will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and the ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements, and without objection so ordered. I ask unanimous consent

that formal written testimony from Dr. Scott Pace of the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University’s Elliott School of

International Affairs, as well as formal written testimony from Dr.

Bradford Parkinson, the chief architect of GPS and the original

GPS Program Manager, be accepted for the record. Without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pace follows:]

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[The prepared statement of Mr. Parkinson follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. I also ask unanimous consent that the hearing

record be kept open for 5 business days so that all members of the

subcommittee will be allowed to submit a written statement for the

record. And without objection, that’s so ordered as well.

Well, again, good morning. And today the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs will continue its oversight of

the defense procurement with a hearing that focuses on the technology that most Americans find very familiar, a GPS, or Global

Positioning System. The GPS was invented by the United States

for the purpose of assisting the military in combat operations, but

has now expanded to all manner of industries from personal transportation assistance to commercial aircraft navigation to emergency

medical response. GPS is made technologically possible by a group

of satellites known as constellation, positioned in such a manner

that when communicating with receivers on the ground we can pinpoint the location anywhere in the globe.

As an acquisition program, GPS service falls within the clear responsibility of the Department of Defense, most notably the Air

Force. However, it affects multitudes of users far beyond the military. Civilian government agencies rely on it, as do commercial industries, personal users, and the international community. Indeed,

it is as much a part of the world’s infrastructure as it is a critical

system for national defense. Unfortunately, that reliance is at risk

of being misplaced.

This morning’s hearing was called in light of the subcommittee’s

requested Government Accountability Office report entitled, ‘‘Global Positioning System: Significant Challenges in Sustaining and

Upgrading Widely Used Capabilities.’’ In this report GAO documents weaknesses in the procurement of upgrades for GPS satellites, as well as the negative effect that these failings have had

on current and future efforts. The current block upgrade of GPS,

GPS IIF, has overrun its original estimated costs of $729 million

by an additional $870 million. In addition, the block will be completed 3 years late.

This is not a new problem for Department of Defense procurement. We have another situation where the contractor given total

system responsibility for the development could not execute the job

either on time or on budget. According to the GAO, no major satellite program undertaken in the past decade has met its scheduled

goals. It would seem that GPS is no exception. What was built as

an effort to streamline the acquisition process instead resulted in

a lack of oversight and control by the Air Force and Department

of Defense.

This doesn’t bode well for the next GPS block upgrade, GPS IIIA,

which just began in May of last year under an extremely aggressive acquisition schedule. The Air Force has engaged a different

company and plans greater oversight for this block.

The GPS IIIA contract was intended to be reminiscent of the

days before acquisition reform when the government tracked contracts closely rather than letting the companies run free. There’s

a novel idea. That sounds good. However, like the predecessor GPS

block and so many other Department of Defense procurements, the

contract is a cost-plus type contract, meaning the government will

pick up the tab no matter how expensive it ends up becoming. This

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system not only hinders the accountability on behalf of the contract

to the government, but also hinders the accountability of the government to the taxpayer.

I look forward to hearing from our Air Force and Department of

Defense witnesses today about how the failings of the past will be

avoided.

Of greater concern even with cost overruns and delay is the real

possibility of a gap in GPS service. The Department of Defense has

a formal commitment to users to provide 95 percent availability of

service, which has been achieved through a minimum of 24 satellites in the GPS constellation. With the aging of satellites in the

GPS constellation there are serious questions about whether that

availability can be maintained.

I direct your attention to the monitors on either side of the room.

The graphics on the screen depict the probability of maintaining

this 24-satellite commitment. The first graphic shows the probability of a 24-satellite constellation falling to roughly 80 percent

in the 2011–2012 timeframe. The second graphic depicts a scenario

where if the GPS III block encounters even just a conservative 2-

year delay the probability of maintaining a full service constellation drops precipitously starting October 2013, possibly going as

low as 10 percent by 2018.

In light of recent history I am troubled if we are wholly relying

on the hope that the GPS acquisition schedule holds as it stands

today.

This brings us to a second and equally important set of issues.

How is the Department of Defense preparing for this potential occurrence and what impact may there be to users if a gap does

occur? The reality is from an acquisition perspective we are nearing

the eleventh hour. The President’s fiscal 2010 budget terminates

funding for the primary GPS back-up system, LORAN. That puts

a lot of pressure on DOD to ensure that GPS meets all user needs;

a precarious position to be in if a gap is looming.

What are the Department of Defense and the Air Force doing to

prepare users for what could be a shock to the system? Department

of Defense and users need a robust dialog in order to ensure that

user requirements are met and funded, users are prepared for any

possible reduction of service, and the GPS industry can be involved

in discussions about potential mitigation strategies.

GPS is a critical asset in our economy and to our security. It’s

unfortunate that we may find ourselves in a position of weakness

because we’ve not yet learned to get our procurement house in

order. My hope is that today’s hearing will provide the opportunity

for all parties to come to the table to air and address concerns and

to bring public attention to this important matter.

Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we all know, GPS is

an important asset to the military and for civilian purposes. The

chairman explained very well the problems that we’ve had; cost

overruns, significant delays with an ex-version of GPS in terms of

the satellite systems. Now, we know that the next generation will

come, and that is slated to be on time at this point. We want to

make sure that the problems we’ve had recently don’t plague the

new system coming up.

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There are obviously problems with the procurement system that

we have at DOD, and I look forward to the testimony and seeing

what we can do better in the future. Thanks.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Flake. The subcommittee will now

receive testimony from the first panel before us today.

Ms. Cristina Chaplain currently serves as a Director for Acquisition and Sourcing Management at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, where she has responsibility for GAO assessments of

military and civilian space acquisitions. Ms. Chaplain has also led

a variety of Department of Defense-wide contracting related and

best practice evaluations for the GAO. Ms. Chaplain holds a B.A.

from Boston University and a M.A. from Columbia University.

Major General William N. McCasland is a Director of Space Acquisition in the Office of the Under Secretary of the Air Force,

where he directs development and purchasing on space and missile

programs to Air Force major commands, product centers and laboratories dealing with acquisition programs. He has served in a

wide variety of space research acquisition and operation roles within the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. General

McCasland holds a B.S. from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a

Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And Dr. Steve Huybrechts currently serves as the Principal Director for C3, Space and Spectrum, in the Office of the Secretary

of Defense, where he has oversight responsibility for most of the

Nation’s military space, command and control communications,

navigation warfare, meteorology, oceanography and spectrum allocation activities.

Would you like to take on some more responsibilities?

Previously he was assigned to the Air Force Research Laboratory, where he was responsible for selecting and managing many

of the Nation’s highest priority space experiments, as well as directing the Air Force’s research portfolio of spacecraft power structures and control technologies. Dr. Huybrechts holds a Ph.D. from

Stanford University.

I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available today

and sharing your substantial expertise. It’s the policy of the subcommittee to swear in witnesses before they testify, so I ask you

to please stand and raise your right hands. If there are any persons

who will be submitting testimony along with you, please ask them

to rise and raise their right hands as well.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please reflect that all of the witnesses answered in the affirmative. All of your written testimonies

will be submitted on the record, so everything that you have written down and submitted to us will be there.

We allocate about 5 minutes for people to make an opening comment. You will see the amber light come on when there’s about a

minute left. When the red light comes on, the floor opens and you

drop through if you go to the 5 minutes. But generally we try to

hold off on that drastic thing and we’ll let you go a little bit over

because we value your testimony. We want to hear what you have

to say, but we do want to have a chance to have some questions

and answers and get to the second panel as well.

So, Ms. Chaplain, if you would be kind enough to start.

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STATEMENTS OF CRISTINA CHAPLAIN, DIRECTOR, ACQUISITION AND SOURCING MANAGEMENT, GAO; MAJOR GENERAL

WILLIAM N. McCASLAND, DIRECTOR, SPACE ACQUISITION,

OFFICER OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE;

AND DR. STEVE HUYBRECHTS, PRINCIPAL DIRECTOR, COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS, SPACE AND SPECTRUM, OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

NETWORKS AND INFORMATION INTEGRATION/CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER

STATEMENT OF CRISTINA CHAPLAIN

Ms. CHAPLAIN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,

thank you for inviting me today to discuss our work on the Global

Positioning System. We perform this review for your committee in

light of the criticality of GPS to the military, the economy, and

many, many individual users, as well as challenges that have been

facing the acquisition programs.

We’ve issued a comprehensive report which is available on the

GAO Web site. The report covers our findings on the acquisition of

the satellites, the ground control equipment, the military user

equipment, as well as the larger coordination of GPS. Today I just

want to highlight what we believe are the most important

takeaways of our work.

In short, all three acquisition programs have had major issues in

development which have had major consequences for GPS users.

The GPS IIF satellite acquisition program, for example, as you

mentioned, was delayed 3 years due to an array of issues, including

requirements changes, a loss of expertise in building the GPS satellites on the contractor side, lax program oversight, and technical

problems that the program is still dealing with. This, coupled with

the aging of satellites in orbit, the decrease in the number of satellites that were planned for the IIF program, and scheduled risks

going forward with the IIIA program, presents the risk of a capability gap.

Military user equipment acquisitions have also been delayed considerably due to funding shifts and diffuse attention. This has also

had severe consequences for users. DOD purposefully reopened already manufactured satellites 10 years ago to install capability

that would lessen the effect of jamming of GPS for military users.

But today because of delays in the production of military user

equipment we may not see that capability be taken advantage of

for another 10 years.

Last, because of developmental delays, ground control equipment

for GPS cannot presently support some capabilities of the newer

satellites in orbit. With regard to the potential gap in satellite capability our analysis, as you said, shows that if both the IIF and

IIIA programs are executed on schedule, there’s still just an 80 to

90 percent probability that the GPS constellation will stay above

24 satellites. With a 2-year delay the probability drops to as low

as 10 percent.

A couple notes about our analysis. One, we largely replicated the

methodology employed by the Aerospace Corp. and relied on their

reliability parameters. We matched the results of our analysis of

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what could happen without the delay with the results for Aerospace Corp.

Two, there are measures available for the Air Force to deal with

the gap, such as turning off a secondary payload for periods of

time. But this produces other tradeoffs that need to be considered.

Moreover, such measures may not be able to compensate if there

are long delays in schedule.

Three, our analysis is based on the commitment of the Air Force

to maintain a 24-satellite constellation, and many users, civilian

and military, have expressed a desire for 30 or more satellites, particularly to assure coverage in mountainous and urban areas.

Four, the Air Force insists that it’s on a good track to meet the

schedule for the IIIA program, and we agree that it is and commend the Air Force for taking a number of actions to make the program more executable. However, it’s important to remember the

program is still in its early phases. The Air Force anticipates shaving off 3 years of what was done for the IIF program, and it is still

not clear whether the IIF program has overcome its schedule problems. Also, the program is not merely replicating IIF, it is aiming

to build GPS on a much larger satellite bus, increase the power of

the military signal by a factor of 10, and add a new signal, all of

which could create technical and design difficulties for the contractor.

Last, as you said, no major space program in recent years has

been delivered on time. Some programs that have also tried to

adopt better practices for development have still run into schedule

delays. As we pointed out in other work, some space programs are

facing delays as long as 7 years. So in our view, there are reasons

to be concerned about the schedule for GPS IIIA. Moreover, as

mentioned before, even without a delay there’s still up to a 20 percent chance the constellation will fall below 24. Clearly that alone

warrants attention from senior leaders and everyone involved with

GPS, which our recommendations are focused on and which the

DOD concurred with.

Before I conclude I would like to point out that we also focus on

a larger coordination of GPS among civil agencies, the international community, and others. This is a very broad area which

was frankly impossible to audit comprehensively in the time that

we had. But it was clear through our discussions and analysis of

documents that there is confusion on how civilian agencies should

get their needs met by GPS, and frustration on DOD’s part, which

is focused on keeping the program executable.

I look forward to the discussion of today’s second panel because

it will also shed light on the degree that users are aware of risks

facing the program and whether they are in a position to manage

those risks. That concludes my statement, and I look forward to

talking more about the report.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Chaplain follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

General.

STATEMENT OF MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM N. McCASLAND

General MCCASLAND. Good morning, Chairman Tierney, Ranking

Member Flake, distinguished members of National Security and

Foreign Affairs Subcommittee——

Mr. TIERNEY. May I ask you to pull the mic closer to you and

make sure it’s on.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir. There we go. Yes, sir. I’m Major

Neal McCasland, the Air Force’s Director for Space Acquisition in

the Pentagon, and it’s a distinct privilege to address you on the Air

Force’s management and execution of the GPS program. I’ve provided a written statement for the record, so will limit my opening

remarks.

GPS provides accurate location and time information in all

weather, day and night, worldwide. It’s vital to military and civil

activities, including mapping, aerial refueling, weapons, search and

rescue operations, banking, Geodetic Survey, and agriculture. The

Air Force, as the developer, operator, and steward for GPS, is committed to maintaining GPS as the gold standard for positioning,

navigation, and timing information.

As your committee has noticed, and this hearing is evidence, a

sure GPS capability is critical to the success for many missions,

from humanitarian relief to military operations. The Air Force is

committed to continuity of this critical service. To that end,

sustainment of the constellation is our No. 1 priority.

In addition, we continue to make improvements to the constellation, including new civil signals, more jam resistant military codes,

new receivers, increasing accuracy, and integrity of the service.

The foundation for success, both technically and schedule wise,

lies in our mission assurance process. Mission assurance is a disciplined application of management system engineering and quality

principles over the entire life cycle to ensure mission needs are satisfied. It’s a culture we’ve worked hard to rebuild at the Space and

Missile Systems Product Center that permeates the GPS team as

ingrained throughout all its functional disciplines.

Simultaneously, senior leadership across the Air Force, Departments of Defense, and Transportation have committed to GPS program success. This shared goal enhances capability synchronization, budget advocacy, and stability and provides the support we

need to deliver and execute our plan.

The Air Force, sir, is committed to maintaining GPS as the premier provider of positioning navigation and timing services. We

have a high confidence plan to sustain and modernize this critical

national capability.

Thank you for inviting me here today. I’m ready to answer your

questions.

[The prepared statement of General McCasland follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Doctor.

STATEMENT OF DR. STEVE HUYBRECHTS

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. Good morning, Chairman Tierney, Mr. Flake,

distinguished Members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify

before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.

Mr. TIERNEY. Can I ask you as well to pull that closer to you.

That would be helpful.

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. I’m sorry. Is that better?

I have also provided a written statement for the record, and General McCasland has gone through much of DOD’s position so I’ll

limit my opening remarks.

My name is Steve Huybrechts. I’m here today representing Mr.

Grimes, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks

and Information Integration. As stated before, I’m the Principal Director for Communications, Command and Control, Space and

Spectrum.

GPS does play a major combat support role today in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The system plays an

ever increasing role in a wide range of DOD missions, including

counterinsurgency operations, force and infrastructure protection,

collection of intelligence, and strike of time critical targets.

I appreciate the chance to again highlight the importance of GPS

to a wider audience and the importance of keeping funding for GPS

across both defense and civil lines stable.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you

again for the opportunity to speak to you today. We greatly appreciate your support, and I look forward to continued collaboration.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Huybrechts follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Well, thank you for what I can only term as

minimalist testimony. It was both you and General McCasland. I

don’t want to be overly critical on that, General McCasland, but I

read your testimony and heard what you have to say and some

would term it as happy talk in the context of what we’re doing

here. And I understand the Air Force is excited about its mission

or whatever, but we have some serious difficulties here in issues

that I think have to be confronted on that.

Let me start. Dr. Huybrechts, at least your written testimony did

address the two questions that the Government Accountability Office posed. And so, Ms. Chaplain, let me ask you, has the Department of Defense as far as GAO is concerned responded as you

would anticipate and as you would have hoped with respect to the

two issues and recommendations that you presented?

Ms. CHAPLAIN. The Department of Defense concurred with both

recommendations.

Mr. TIERNEY. Have they done anything about it?

Ms. CHAPLAIN. The report just went out, so I don’t see what

they’ve done yet. In describing their concurrence they’ve pretty

much said the leadership structure that’s in place for GPS serves

them well. And what we’re concerned about is that there’s a lot of

people that have a hand in the GPS program, and it’s not always

clear who’s really in charge of the program.

That gets to be particularly troublesome when it comes to the

user equipment. Each military service develops its own user equipment that goes on every kind of weapon system you can think of.

And that’s where we see a huge delay, getting that user equipment

onto weapon systems. So the military services have their control

over that issue. Acquisition, technology and logistics have control

on oversight over the acquisition side of GPS. The NII office is designated as the lead office for GPS. And there’s also many, many

other players involved with GPS.

So again in our view what we were hoping to see was just

strength and kind of leadership focused on GPS because of the potential capability gaps, because of the risks in acquisition, and because of the criticality of GPS to everybody in the Nation.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Huybrechts, are you that person? Are you the

one that draws it all together to make sure that they’re coordinating and getting things done in a timely fashion?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. That is my role, yes, up at the OSD level. We

have put a single service, the Air Force, in charge of all segments

of the GPS program. This is unlike the way that we handled many

of our other space programs where multiple services are involved.

So from that perspective you do have a single entity that’s in

charge of acquisition and operation of the system. My office at the

OSD level has been given by the Deputy Secretary of Defense singular responsibility for this program.

That said, we have to manage the program within the Department’s processes. It’s one of many programs and has to get traded

off against all the other various departments’ needs.

I would like to address the issue of the user equipment delay, if

I could. I think that about 4 or 5 years ago the Department and

particularly the Air Force did recognize that there was a risk of a

gap if we did not act.

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Mr. TIERNEY. They did or did not recognize?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. Did, did recognize that. And it’s for that reason

that within the resources available to the program that we

prioritized the space segment followed by the ground segment upgrades higher than the user equipment. That’s one reason the user

equipment is lagging, is because we wanted to prioritize any mitigation or mitigation of a gap in service.

Mr. TIERNEY. So you took from Peter to pay Paul. Basically you

took money out of the end user aspect to deal with the satellite situation?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. Yes. I would argue that it’s probably less an

issue of money than it is just an issue of people that understand

this technology that can do this kind of work. There’s only so many

resources that we can apply to the various things within space that

we’re trying to execute. And within this program and the elements

of our Nation that understand this technology we prioritize continuity of service.

And now if you look where we are focused today it’s largely on

the user equipment because we feel we have a pretty solid plan

going forward for the continuity of the service issue.

Mr. TIERNEY. We’re going to get to that in a second. Ms. Chaplain, does that give you any comfort?

Ms. CHAPLAIN. I know you’re familiar with GAO’s concerns about

the larger acquisition process. And one of the things we harp on

is investment strategies and prioritizing across the Department. In

my view, if you’re going to put a priority on GPS you need to have

a priority on the user equipment and look beyond the space portfolio for those resources if it’s so important to the military.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I’m curious, how does the Air Force really

manage all of the other departments and tell them what needs to

be done when? General, do you have any difficulty with that? What

I hear from the GAO report is everybody is sort of getting their aspect of it ready when it’s ready and putting it on whenever they

might, and there seems to be no control over getting them all coordinated and synchronized. What are you doing with that?

General MCCASLAND. Let me elaborate a little bit on that. First

off, the Air Force’s role in user equipment is to develop product

lines that are available for the other services and any user to integrate them. And just as something to show, I have here engineering models of the Next Generation M-code compatible user equipment that we’re going to be fielding to operate with GPS III satellites. Now, these are very early engineering models, and it’s from

two different vendors, and it’s just an illustration that we’re making technical progress today.

To your broader question about management, it’s the Air Force’s

role to develop product ties and make available for production gear

like this. And these are chip sets and subassemblies that have all

the functions of GPS on them and to make them available for the

defense industry and the other services as a whole. And this is because the Air Force really shouldn’t be in a position of building the

end item that is fielded into Army mechanized equipment or into

ships or into other people’s airplanes.

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Mr. TIERNEY. But I suspect that somebody, if not the Air Force

then Dr. Huybrechts’ office, should be in the business of making

sure they get it done on time and to certain standards.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir, you bet. And the standard setting

inside the Department, the Office of Secretary of Defense sets policy oversight, the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs sets

technical standards for functional integration across this enterprise. And we’ve been through this in many ways. If you may recall, the original fielding of GPS into the military took these tools

of synchronization. And so there’s been two generations of modernization of GPS user equipment since the original fielding. All of

them have followed a pattern that we’ve learned from. And it’s a

balance for a program manager, say the manager of an Army

mechanized equipment line. You know, that program manager has

their own set of schedule and cost constraints and services to integrate into his weapon system. So our job in the Air Force is to create an opportunity for that program manager to have good choices,

economical equipment, technical standards, so that we can support

them. The timing and the synchronization of this is an issue that

we look to and support OSD in their oversight role. We in the Air

Force are accountable for the integration into Air Force weapon

systems, but we also decentralize that so that the program manager of those particular weapon systems are the first line of accountability of the integration of a new service like GPS or satellite

communication or any other service into their particular program.

This is an effort of some complexity in its synchronization, but it’s

a balance between the specialized nature of a service like GPS and

the mission function of a particular weapon system that has to integrate service like this.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. I appreciate the testimony. Major General McCasland, I never really heard what you thought of the GAO

report. Do you agree with the finding? Do you concede that there’s

a problem and an issue here or is everything just hunky-dory?

General MCCASLAND. Well, as the Department’s response, Ranking Member Flake, indicated, we generally agree with that. We offered some clarification and comments. If I may, and take the lead

from your question, let me step through a couple of reactions to the

report.

To start with, with this risk of a gap. As the GAO indicated, they

followed the methodology and the technical assumptions that we

use in the Air Force to monitor this. Those assumptions were provided to them some time ago, about a year ago. And in that time

some things have changed. These lifetime assumptions are a bit

like actuarial tables with people, except we don’t have human history to base them on, we’ve got a much shorter history and population. The specific population we base it on is the flying population

of GPS IIR satellites. And in this year the IIR satellites have continued to live, so the models that we base their future forecast have

grown a little bit. So just in the year we can look to this same gap,

and if we were to recalculate it, it would be only about half the

depth that it is today.

The second comment that I would make, and the GAO did acknowledge this in the report, is that this model is based on a preVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:17 Apr 30, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\55293.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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dicted launch rate and it’s based on the full use of all the power

on the satellite for all the payloads. So those are two choices that

the operators, and General James, who will be on panel II, could

speak to, the operator will have choices to make. They’ll have

choices to make about how fast they actually launch the satellites

and they’ll have choices to make about the way they spend the

power on the satellites.

So when we take all of this in the whole, we on the supply end

have choices to make every budget year with the degree to which

we program the rate, the build rate, and the replenishment of the

pipeline, the operator has choices to make for how fast they consume the pipeline and how fast they consume the on orbit resources, the degree to which they consume the available electrical

power.

With all of that, we are confident that we’ve got several degrees

of margin in preventing a gap like has been depicted in the GAO’s

report. So the GAO’s report is accurate insofar as those technical

assumptions are what happens. We think that there are many

choices that will allow us the way to not face those circumstances

over the next few years, sir.

Mr. FLAKE. Ms. Chaplain, one of the ways to extend the life of

these satellites is obviously to cut secondary payloads or cut power

to those, I guess, to extend the life. One of those secondary assignments or purposes of these satellites is nuclear detonation detection system. Is that one of the secondary payloads that can be jettisoned, if you will, or put aside? And if it is, yes, the life of the satellite is extended, but do we have a gap then in some of the secondary purposes, the nuclear detonation detection system?

Ms. CHAPLAIN. Well, our point is you can turn off those secondary sources and conserve a lot of power, but that needs to be a discussion that needs to take place precisely for what you’re saying,

that to look at what other gaps you might be facing in other capabilities.

Also, with regard to predicted launch rates, it’s important to note

that last year we had a lot of issues in launch manifest, a lot of

back-up. So even what you assume can be a good launch rate may

not turn out to be the case.

With regard to the assumptions of data being based over a year

ago, I would like to note that we held up our report a little bit

longer so that we could receive data from DOD that came to us in

March 2009, updated all our analyses, and that’s what you see reflected in our report.

Mr. FLAKE. So you stick to the percentages?

Ms. CHAPLAIN. I’m very confident what we have is about as recent as we could possibly get.

I would also comment that these same gap scenarios have appeared in other documents, including described, but not in the

chart form, in the report that DOD delivered to Congress on the

GPS system in December 2008. So the concern about gaps is a

long-term one, because basically a lot of satellites that are in orbit

are aging. And there’s only—you know, you do have measures you

can take to conserve power and stretch out the constellation. There

have been times before when people have been worried about gaps

and the Air Force has managed them quite successfully.

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But here we are again, and our point is this is a high risk and

we just need a lot of attention and resources on it.

Mr. FLAKE. Doctor, do you have anything to add to that, particularly with regard to the nuclear detonation detection system? Is

that one of the choices to not have that function as a way to extend

the satellite?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. Sure. That is one of the choices. I would point

out that the NDS system, the new detection system, does not require 24 packages on orbit. It’s a much lower number. The reason

we launch one on every GPS is just to have a standard satellite

configuration so we’re not worried about which orbit we’re going

into. So there is a fair amount of leeway there to turn off payload

capability without impacting performance of the system.

I also want to add that we’re using the term ‘‘gap,’’ and that

sounds very black or white. Compared to pretty much all of our

space capabilities, the GPS constellation degrades whether it’s from

30 to 29 or 24 to 23 or 5 to 4 more gracefully just because of the

numbers of satellites. This is kind of like the number of sweaters

in my teenage daughter’s closet, right? To go from 24 to 23 sweaters is not like she doesn’t have any more sweaters. It may seem

terrible to her.

So what we’re really talking about is a slight chance, and our

analysis, which is independent of the Air Force’s, is more in line

with General McCasland’s analysis. We’re more in the 10 to 20 percent chance, so a small chance of going for a short period of time

from 24 to 23 satellites. It’s not as if GPS will turn off.

I point out the original GPS spec was only 21 satellites. The decision to move to 24 in the late 1990’s was somewhat arbitrary. I

don’t want to call it an arbitrary number, but it was sort of an estimate of what we could afford versus the cost-benefit of building

more satellites. We decided we were going to shoot for about 24

satellites.

So we shouldn’t be sitting here thinking that all the GPS receivers are going to stop working. What you’re going to get is a slight

degradation in performance over small portions of the world for

small periods of time, and relative to today, and in primarily impacting users in canyons and places like that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. We didn’t realize you were under such

stress having a teenage daughter, but we’ll try to be easy on you

now.

Mr. Foster.

Mr. FOSTER. If you could continue on that point. The degradation

that you see then has to do with the resolution you’ve got or the

acquisition time or what? How does it show up when you get fewer

and fewer satellites?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. You will see it—you would see it—I mean, you

would see it today if we—today we’re flying 30 or 31. If you lose

one today, which is well within our tolerance, you will see the same

impact; a slight degradation in accuracy, and possibly for certain

users that are in deep canyons, etc., you will have less opportunity

to get four satellites in view, you know, a slightly smaller opportunity to get four satellites in view and therefore be able to compute a resolution. So for certain very specialized users a slight increase in the acquisition time potentially to get the four satellites

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in view, and maybe a slight change in the accuracy, also over certain spots of the globe for shorter periods of time.

Mr. FOSTER. And I understand there’s also a European competitor system, Galileo, I think. And do you know what the time scale

for that is and what its capabilities are nominally from both a commercial and a military point of view.

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. There is a European satellite system. It is currently a paper system. But there is money allocated to go off and

build it. I believe that they are still targeting 2013 or 2014 timeframe to be launching satellites. Depending on which analysis you

believe, that may be very optimistic or it may be accurate.

Mr. FOSTER. And the intention is to make a system where you

just have reprogrammable digital receivers that you can listen to

either the European or the U.S. system. Will a typical commercial

system at least be able to work off of either system?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. We have a negotiated agreement with the European Union so that our signals will be compatible, so that when

their satellites launch it will be possible to build receivers that can

accept signals from both systems simultaneously. Potentially if

we’re flying 24 satellites and they’re flying 24 satellites, a user

would have access to 48 satellites at that point for the civil signal.

We don’t have any agreements at the moment for—relative to

their—they don’t have a military, so you don’t have a national security signal, but there’s potential for that there, too.

Mr. FOSTER. The next question is for General McCasland. Are

the two modules that you have here the only modules that will be

the standard solution for all Earth-born equipment.

General MCCASLAND. Those are prototypes of what the Air Force

intends to make available as standard engines for the GPS military

user equipment. There is a commercial industry that has shown us

that they will also develop GPS user equipment for commercial applications, and some have capitalized military applications as well.

So we will build this product line and make it available with the

documentation.

My own sense is that our American industry will also develop

their own product lines and make those available to suppliers as

well.

Mr. FOSTER. So from a military point of view you intend to have

one product line and everyone is just going to use it, or are you just

going to say here is a reference design and then all the different

services are going to go and come up with modified versions that?

General MCCASLAND. That’s the core of the GPS receiver that

you’ve got in your hands; the radio, the cryptography——

Mr. FOSTER. Well, I take it this ball grid array that’s sort of double sticky taped on here is a mechanical prototype here.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir. Those are engineering prototypes,

those are pretty early models. I just wanted to illustrate that it’s

moved beyond paper.

Mr. FOSTER. Now it’s in the plastic. Do you have working silicon

for all the pieces of the—you know, the actual chips that will be

here?

General MCCASLAND. I’m sorry, sir?

Mr. FOSTER. Do you have working silicon? Do you have integrated circuits that do the job?

56

General MCCASLAND. For the subassemblies we do there. For the

correlators, the security modules, we do. We haven’t gotten a working prototype. The working prototypes are due at the end of our—

in the end of the fiscal year 2010 program.

Mr. FOSTER. And is there anything in the space-borne equipment

that is being held up because of uncertainties in the Earth bound

equipment?

General MCCASLAND. No, sir, not at all.

Mr. FOSTER. Or do you have a well-defined technical interface

there, any independent design problems?

General MCCASLAND. Well, they are dependent, of course. But

we’ve published the signal structure specifications. And along the

lines of Dr. Huybrechts’ last comment, we work to define that because the signal structure, it’s definition——

Mr. FOSTER. So those have been frozen already?

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir.

Mr. FOSTER. So there’s no uncertainty that crosses over. OK. My

light is red.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Duncan, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and

thank you for calling this hearing. Our briefing paper and our

memorandum says the current modernization program was projected to cost $729 million with a completion date of 2006. The Air

Force has failed to meet cost and scheduling goals for this project.

GAO estimates that this project is $870 million over budget and 3

years past due. And I remember reading last year in the GAO report that said the Pentagon had a total of $295 billion in cost overruns on just its 72 largest weapon systems, and nobody got upset

about that. Apparently you’re not supposed to criticize the military

in any way today. And I think in part it’s because the figures are

so high that nobody can really comprehend it. People did get upset

about the $328,000 photo mission to New York City. Maybe they

can understand that a little bit better. But now, according to our

memorandum, $1 billion 6 hundred million has been spent on this

program and yet it’s still not completed, and it’s $870 million over

budget.

General McCasland, is anybody upset about that or are we just

going to gleefully go on so that if Chairman Tierney holds a hearing on this a year or two from now people are just going to come

in and tell us it’s even more over budget and further behind schedule? I mean somebody ought to be upset about this.

General MCCASLAND. Well, sir, I won’t dispute being upset. I am,

too. Because as a supplier that’s resources that I don’t have available to meet my operational customers’ needs. So I’m inclined to

resonate with you.

As the GAO report pointed out, the particular portion of the GPS

program that those figures were associated with is the GPS IIF

satellite program, the current production program. And the GAO

noted that a number of circumstances conspired to aggravate the

business performance of that program, one of which was the consolidation of the defense industry. The GPS program was awarded

to Rockwell Collins. As the industry consolidated Rockwell was

purchased, its factory operations moved up to—it integrated with

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the former Hughes Space and Comm factory in El Segundo under

Boeing ownership.

The second dimension that the GAO also noticed, noted in her

report, was that the government also chose to evolve and modify

this program at the same time in response to user demands. We

had military and civil requirements that we were trying to meet,

additional services for civilian second civil signal and the beginnings of the evolution of the M-code modernization and the power

growth for the military.

The third thing that the GAO also noticed in the IIF program

was that we awarded the IIF program under an experiment of acquisition streamlining that we now look back and say was not successful.

And so the combination of those have added up to cost and

schedule growth that the GAO has rightly reflected on. The GAO

also noted that for every one of those we’ve taken steps to ensure

that those circumstances aren’t being repeated on the GPS block

III program. We believe that the industry consolidation is stable,

that the supplier base is healthy, they have a business volume that

tells us that we can count on doing business with the same people

that we’ve signed the contract with. Now, admittedly, that is subject to circumstances beyond defense’s control, but it appears to be

a broadly accepted assumption that the industry is stable.

We’ve put into practice kind of a ‘‘back to basics’’ approach for

government oversight, the use of military standards, and we think

that’s already showing signs of success.

Third, we delivered——

Mr. DUNCAN. Let me say this. I see my time is about to run out.

You know, it seems to me that Federal bureaucrats, and particularly the Pentagon, can rationalize or justify or excuse almost anything. It seems to me that it ought to be awfully difficult to make

excuses for an $870 million cost overrun. But I suppose that since

it is money that’s not coming out of anybody’s pocket over there at

the Pentagon people don’t really care that much. And I just think

it’s terrible. I mean, I can’t describe words adequate to express my

feelings about this because I have a feeling that if we come in and

have this same hearing a year or 2 years from now we’re going to

hear that there’s even more cost overruns. And if this was happening in the private sector, either people would be fired or a company

would go out of business. I think it’s shameful.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan and I are

going to start our own party on this issue, because I couldn’t agree

more. And we are going to have a series of hearings about procurement in the Department of Defense right on throughout this session, because it’s outrageous and he’s absolutely right. I don’t

think, General, that circumstances conspire. That’s not what happens. People mess up, all right, and I think the Department of Defense in a big way has messed up, starting with the idea of whatever they call reform being an absolute joke. Their reform was essentially to take out oversight and management, to take out scheduling and procurement people, to fork over all their responsibilities

to things that were inherently government and turning it over to

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the private industry as if they were going to be trusted to do everything with no self-interest at all.

I don’t know who is responsible for that decision. I would like to

know whether anybody’s head rolled for it? Do you know of anybody that lost their job for changing the system? Apparently we

have written testimony on the record from the original program

manager for the first GPS system that went on time and within

budget, and then some genius decided to change that process and

to put it with what they call reform and take out all of the protections and safeguards for the taxpayers’ moneyand for the end

users’ ability. So who made that decision, General or Doctor, and

whose head rolled for it?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. Are you asking who made the decision to reopen the IIF satellite?

Mr. TIERNEY. Who decided between the first GPS and the next

iteration that they were going to fix something that wasn’t broken

and drive us to the point where we’re now behind schedule and

over 100 percent overrun of cost? Who went from the system where

you had people in oversight, you had government people at the industry’s places watching over this, where you had schedulers who

knew what they were doing and how to account for variations,

where you had program managers watching it every day to a system where you just gave it to the contractor and have a nice day?

I mean, who is responsible for that?

General MCCASLAND. Well, Mr. Chairman, the timeframe of

these decisions were in the late 1990’s, and I didn’t prepare for a

historical accounting.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I’m sorry that you didn’t, but clearly this

hearing was about what went wrong and what’s going right, so

maybe you should have. But the idea is who would it be? Would

it be your level, the person that was in your seat that would make

that decision? Or, Doctor, would it be the person that was in your

seat at that time that would be responsible?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. The decision to open up the IIF satellite and

add the new civil and military capabilities was made in the late

1990’s at the White House level.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. It was made at the White House level to actually change the whole system of how it was done instead of following the program aspects of the previous one to go to another thing,

they made that at the White House as opposed to the Department

of Defense?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. The decision to modernize the GPS system——

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m not talking about that, Doctor. You know what

I’m talking about. I know the idea to modernize it. Who made the

decision of how they were going to manage it? That’s what I want

to know. And I doubt very much that was made at the White

House. That was made somewhere in the Department of Defense.

And my question to you is, who in the Department of Defense, at

what level and what particular seat, decided to go for a program

that was operating perfectly well to a system that gave it all over

to the contractor without any government oversight or any essential government oversight, who made that decision?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. If you’re asking who made the decision to

change how we did space acquisition writ large, because we did

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change space acquisition and how we did it, not just in this program but across all the space programs at that time, I would have

to take that question for the record.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Would you do that, please, and let us know, because essentially we have run into this problem. The Government

Accountability Office tells us over and over again these are the

issues; the relaxed oversight, relaxed quality inspections. We are

finding it—we found it with the Coast Guard program, you know,

Deepwater. They gave all the contracts to the same contractor; the

one to design, the one to build, the one to oversee. And when all

that went wrong, they gave the same contract to the same company

to fix it.

We’re running into this every time we turn around. I think part

of what’s incumbent upon us is to make sure it doesn’t continue on.

Now, General, you tell us that you have essentially gone back to

basics here, and I hope that’s so. The Government Accountability

Office reports that’s what you tell them. There’s going to be more

oversight of this; you’re going to have more quality inspectors onsite.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir. The engagement of support offices

like the Defense Contract Management Agency, field offices, the

way we engage with the contractors, all of that is, frankly—it isn’t

so much that we forgot the recipe, it’s that we consciously chose to

try to in an unsuccessful manner, and we’re going back to the

methods that Dr. Parkinson used when he was a colonel. They’ve

served us well.

Mr. TIERNEY. I hope you haven’t forgotten the recipe. Again, I

think if somebody had something that wasn’t broken and they decided to fix it, I would like to find out who it was and what was

motivating it. I doubt that it was sheer stupidity, but that might

be the case. But if something else was motivating, we better find

out what happened, investigate it and see where it leads us on

that.

The other problem I think we’re going to have that is replete

throughout all these different procurement programs is people

qualified to do the scheduling, is people qualified to do the program

managing. Are you having difficulty finding enough people to qualify to take care of your systems, including this particular system?

General MCCASLAND. Mr. Chairman, that is an issue that does

concern the Air Force. In fact, the Secretary of the Air Force released a plan called the acquisition improvement plan tied to his

strategic goal of capturing acquisition excellence. He released that

plan just this week. One of those elements is precisely aimed at

growing and qualifying and training the acquisition work force.

So I share your concern. The human capital is the heart and soul

of good oversight, and we’re committed to the health of that work

force. That’s the career force that I grew up in. I have a personal

sense of commitment to growing the next generation of leaders in

that role, and I’m really pleased to see my service Secretary support that agenda.

Mr. TIERNEY. Are you able to share a copy of that department

document?

General MCCASLAND. We would love to.

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Mr. TIERNEY. If you would, we would appreciate it.

Doctor, do you want to add anything to that just before I close

out. What is the Department doing with respect to what we’re told

is a shortage of qualified people in the pipeline to do program management and to do scheduling on projects of this nature?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. Finding good people is always difficult. Colonel

Dave Madden, who I have the highest respect for, who runs the

GPS program office out in Los Angeles, is one of the better program managers I believe that I’ve met. But he has one of the most

difficult jobs in the U.S. Government. You manage a very large enterprise, it’s a very complex system, and it’s difficult to find good

people. We have been trying—I’m not an expert on the personnel

systems in the Department of Defense. I would be happy to find

you an expert to bring here.

Mr. TIERNEY. I think we may do that. I think we may have a

hearing with people in here. If this is a problem, as it appears to

be, and we’ve had people come to us of late, I should tell you, and

explain to us that no matter what we’re talking about in a contract,

and the Government Accountability Office I think in almost all the

programs on the general report of overruns and schedule problems

indicated that was a real serious issue on that. So I think we will

want to have a separate hearing on that.

Thank you. Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. I don’t have any particular questions at this point.

I just want to echo what’s been said here. It seems that we’re hearing some, as the chairman put it, happy talk. And there are ways

to explain why these overruns have occurred, both in cost and time.

But we want to make sure that the lessons are learned and in the

future we’re not here, as Mr. Duncan said, a year from now hearing the same thing, just more expensive and more timely at that

time.

So thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FLAKE. Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. One of the questions on that, too, is continuity of

program managers. I remember that was mentioned in the GAO

report as well. So what are we doing about the fact that people just

continually—there was a particular number of people that went

through that program, seven different program managers, each of

whom—five of whom served for only 1 year each. That can’t be

healthy for a program this sophisticated and complex. So what are

we doing about that?

General MCCASLAND. Well, sir, I believe that particular reference

was looking at the program management inside industry. So it’s an

expectation that we hold to our suppliers that they also field a stable leadership team.

Mr. TIERNEY. This is the IIF program, had seven different program managers, the first five of whom served 1 year each. That’s

not your colleagues, that’s you.

General MCCASLAND. Well, again, the early days of the IIF program were in the 1990’s. Today it’s our policy to keep the wing

commanders in place, the program managers, Colonel Madden, in

place a minimum of 3 years. And we recognize through the whole

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acquisition leadership chain that the continuity of acquisition leadership is one of the keys.

Mr. TIERNEY. Are you having success holding it for 3 years?

General MCCASLAND. Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Foster.

Mr. FOSTER. You have—do you have an integrated project schedule in place.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Mr. FOSTER. And could you provide us with a list of the highlevel milestones that we can anticipate in the next 1 or 2 years?

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir.

Mr. FOSTER. When you come back a year from now, we can track

you against those.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir.

Mr. FOSTER. OK. And in terms of the system degradation, do you

actually have a good—either a modeling or a lot of field experience

to really understand this, what’s going to happen as the satellites

stop?

General MCCASLAND. Right. I feel that the Air Force has really

the gold standard in—that’s been developed by our federally funded

research and development center of the Aerospace Corp. This has

been their—their corporate focus since they were founded in the

early 1960’s. So they have pioneered and keep the technical research on satellite failure modes and effects, actuarial forecasts, device physics phenomena in the space environment, the science basis

for making these kinds of runs. So, yes, sir, I think it is the best

in the world.

Mr. FOSTER. You think it is a well understood degradation process.

General MCCASLAND. Oh, yes, sir, very much so.

Mr. FOSTER. I yield back.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. Dr. Huybrechts, as far as streamlining the procurement process, are—we know that’s been a problem in the past, but

is that being taken care of?

And one other question. I just want to make sure that Congress

isn’t part of the problem here. Are there congressionally directed

projects or contracts that you have to deal with that slow the process or complicate the process, given the mandate to make sure

these contracts are open to competitive processes?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. I’m not from the procurement process side of

the Department. That would be our acquisition technology and logistics. We have a new Under Secretary there. He has some strong

ideas, I believe, on how we are going to change the procurement

process to make it more effective. I wouldn’t presume to speak for

him and the kinds of changes he wants to make, but, again, I could

take that for the record or bring in somebody from his office to discuss it.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. FLAKE. Let me ask General McCasland that second question.

Is Congress playing the proper role here; are we giving you the

flexibility and—with which you need to carry this out, or are we

complicating the process by directing you, perhaps, with congressionally directed earmarks or projects that make it more difficult

to do your job?

General MCCASLAND. Well, sir, focusing on the GPS program, my

sense in interaction with the Congress over the past decade has

been one of a very healthy interaction with the defense oversight

committees and a supportive role, both in terms of critically examining our plans and in providing the funding that we need to execute the program.

But with that entree, I point out that the GPS III program is

going to enter into a little more complicated nuance. There is a

Presidential directive that assigns the responsibility for budgeting

new civil capabilities to the Department of Transportation, and so

the synchronization of their budget requests in the Congress with

the defense budget request, the preponderance of the money will be

defense. But we have chosen as a matter of national strategy to

program budget and request appropriations from the civil funding

line to add to the military funding line for this national capability.

That’s going to be new territory for us, and I respectfully suggest

that would be worthy of careful attention.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Ms. Chaplain, this is apparently a cost-plus contract. Is there a better way to do it?

Ms. CHAPLAIN. I believe the better way to do it is to focus on not

making the mistakes in the past. Fixed price for this type of program would be difficult because you’re trying to advance technologies, and there is a lot of unknowns. When we’ve tried fixedprice arrangements before for space programs, it was done at the

time that we were also trying to implement these other kinds of

acquisition reforms, and it was very poorly implemented, and it resulted in almost disastrous consequences.

So under the contract scenario we are in, I would just say they

need to exert good oversight over the contractors. They need to

make sure the program stays stable. They need to make sure requirements don’t change. They need to really look at contractor

performance and base the award fees on how the contractors performed.

I think a lot of things have been done on the IIIA program to

position the program for success, and I’m hopeful that will be more

successful than other space programs in the past.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Gentlemen, do you write into your contracts some protection

against industry mergers interrupting the course of things?

General MCCASLAND. Sir, we don’t explicitly require them to

make commitments like that about what they’ll do within their

companies. We make a business agreement with them to deliver

goods, services and supplies for a period of time.

Mr. TIERNEY. But then when they don’t do it because they are

merging or whatever, you just pay them more money. It is a contract; it would seem you put things in to protect yourselves.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, we do.

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Mr. TIERNEY. You don’t necessarily say that you are going to restrict them from merging and consolidating, but you can say that

you have some say over whether or not it is going to happen if it

is going to impact adversely the progress on your program.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, yes, sir. And the tools to protect the

taxpayers’ interest there range from our incentive fee program,

which has an opportunity to earn money if they deliver, and penalties if they don’t. We ultimately, even on a cost-reimbursement

contract, reserve the prerogative to decide whether charges are allowable.

And last, with respect to the contract type, I’d point out that the

GPS IIIA program at this stage is in its development cycle, which

is appropriate to use a cost-reimbursement contract. But we reserve the prerogative to negotiate a different contract class for production articles. For example, the GPS IIF program today is—has

a mix of a cost-reimbursement effort for the first satellites to get

that production unstable, and then fixed price buys for the last

eight, I believe.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. Will you have your office prepare for us an accounting, then, of the delays that were caused by—and one of the

reasons you cite for this overrun of costs and the delay was the

mergers and the consolidations. So provide for us an accounting of

how many bonuses or fees were not paid when that caused a slowdown in an overrun, and what other exercises were taken under

the contract to protect the taxpayers’ rights, because I think we

have a right to know that they weren’t getting bonuses and fees

and other things for taking self-interested consolidations and mergers and slowing down the project and running us over costs, and

at the same time getting rewarded for it. And so if you would do

that, I would appreciate it.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir. I certainly recall even recently

very low to zero award fees being paid to the IIF contractor as we

were struggling to turn that program around.

Mr. TIERNEY. I would just appreciate you putting that in so we

can formally see that, if you would.

General MCCASLAND. You bet, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Now we have a whole host of problems here generally with procurement, not just with the GPS program on that,

so I want your assurance that you’re either dealing with them or

going to deal with them. One is starting programs too early before

the design is where it ought to be, or whatever. Are you dealing

with that?

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir. And I think that, you know, the

GAO noted in this report that we had put in extensive

precompetition risk-reduction activities into the program. I think

it’s evidence of success that we had a functioning engineering

brassboard of the entire GPS IIIA payload available before we

made contract award. It was part of the precompetitive risk-reduction activities.

We passed a serious and thorough scrub by the OSD Director of

Research and Engineering, who attested to the technological readiness, part of OSD’s due diligence. So I am confident that we started

this program on a good foot.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Now, do you cite any contracting program managing weakness? Do you think you have any that exist right now, or

have you filled all those gaps?

General MCCASLAND. Sir, I think at this stage of the program,

the program management strategy is as well tuned as we know

how to do it.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. So you have no problems with technical

expertise; you have all you need at your fingertips?

General MCCASLAND. We—we are adequately resourced for executing the program today, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. You see no capability gaps in the industrial base?

General MCCASLAND. Well, the space industrial base is, of

course, the people who actually build us. I believe the prime industry base is healthy and strong. We all have some concern about the

secondary suppliers, the vendors, the people who field independent

subassemblies like gyroscopes, and star sensors, and space-qualified components. That’s an industry that is under some stress, and

we monitor it very carefully.

In fact, we have an interagency working group spanning all of

national security space focused on the health of the space industrial base. We exchange information. We provide a forum for those

vendors to bring correlated problems they are seeing across the industry to our attention. And the DDR&E in OSD has a certain

amount of funding available for support of the industry base. In my

mind, when I look at industry, that’s the level that has the risk

that concerns me the most, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. But you are doing all you can do about it right

now.

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir, I believe—I believe so.

Mr. TIERNEY. What are we doing about protecting against new

requirements being added as a project is going on and not having

an impact on that? Are we shutting it off, just deciding we’re going

to have a particular product, that’s going to be up in this program,

new things go in the next end, or what are you doing?

General MCCASLAND. Yes, sir, that’s a very important point, because as the GAO noted, a part of what made—what contributed

to the cost growth on the IIF program was the folding in of new

requirements.

We have chosen to structure the GPS III program in a way to

pre-plan those insertions. And what I mean by that is that we have

a capability list for the final product version of GPS III that includes a number of low-risk features and includes some high-risk

features. We chose to take on the most important and lower-risk

features first in IIIA and to size the spacecraft, its power, its chassis size, the launch size to provide the room to grow for the higherrisk features.

We will make separate decisions as the requirements for those

higher-risk functions, further power growth, additional signals, additional security features, and we’ll conduct a detailed assessment

of alternatives and risk assessment and decide what package of

those are ready for including in a distinct second bloc or potentially

a third bloc.

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Now, this isn’t a win all around. Our military users had to reconcile that they would be patient enough to wait longer than they

might have. The assurance we gave them is that we had a higher

confidence of delivering what we had committed to in exchange for

that. And that appears to be a bargain that is holding water. And

we welcome your support of that, too, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, it would seem to me at some point somebody,

either the doctor or you or someone else, would have the authority

to say, you know what, enough. We planned this particular program to do those things, we thought it was what we wanted. If

something is going to be added on that is going to bring this way

over cost, and we are behind schedule, you’ll have to wait for the

next bus.

Who has that authority? Is it you, Doctor?

Dr. HUYBRECHTS. That authority rests with the joint staff requirements process. I would say what I mentioned earlier, that 4

or 5 years ago when we recognized that we potentially had a constellation sustainment issue, the Air Force came forward with a

plan. Originally there was no IIIA, B, C; there was just a III, and

we were going to build the whole thing right up front. They came

up with a plan where the IIIA is really just a low-risk satellite to

make sure that we have something to keep the constellation going.

And then we have plans to insert the various capabilities into the

later locks.

Mr. TIERNEY. And then last I look at the General—the Government Accountability Office, and I see they have identified nine

practices associated with effective scheduling estimating. Of those

nine, one was met in this IIIF—IIIA schedule, one was not met,

and seven were partially met.

Are you focused on that, and are you going to bring that up to

all best practices?

General MCCASLAND. Sir, I’d like to take that for the record, because as little time as I have had to review this report, I wasn’t

able to actually itemize what those practices were. But I would be

pleased to go answer that for the record, if you would allow me, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. We appreciate it. Thank you.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Flake, anything else?

Mr. FLAKE. No.

Mr. TIERNEY. I want to thank all of you for your testimony. This

is helpful to us and, I think, helpful to our next panel. It will give

them an idea of what is going on, and we will be anxious to hear

their remarks as well. I would appreciate it if you have an opportunity to submit those things that you promise for the record at

your earliest convenience. So thank you all very much.

And now we’ll take a little pause as we set the second panel up

and maybe come back in 5 minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. TIERNEY. In the interest of time, we were told that we’re

going to have a vote in a few minutes, and I would like to give you

the opportunity to hopefully get your testimony in before that. But

it is only one vote, so if it does ring, it will be just a very brief

interruption, and we will be back. So I apologize for that.

This panel will probably not take as long as the last panel for

the fact that we want to hear from you. We may not have that

much of a question grilling back and forth on that, but we want

to hear from you about what you know about potential issues arising with that and how it will impact your particular area on that.

So now we’re going to receive testimony from the second panel.

Let me introduce each of you.

Lieutenant General Larry D. James is the Commander of the

14th Air Force, Air Force Space Command, and Commander of the

Joint Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic

Command, in Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. He leads

more than 20,500 personnel responsible for providing missile warning, space superiority, space situational awareness, satellite operations, space launch and range operations. General James holds a

B.S. from the U.S. Air Force Academy and an M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ms. Karen Van Dyke is the Director, Position Navigation and

Timing, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, at

the Department of Transportation. Ms. Van Dyke was a member

of a team that conducted a study for the Office of the Secretary of

Transportation to identify and analyze GPS vulnerabilities and interference mitigation techniques for all modes of transportation.

Ms. Van Dyke holds both a B.S. and an M.S. from the University

of Massachusetts at Lowell. Nice to see Massachusetts so well represented here today.

Mr. F. Michael Swiek currently serves as executive director of

the U.S. GPS Industry Council, which he helped to found with the

leading U.S. GPS manufacturers in 1991. Mr. Swiek IS also currently president of Mike International LLC, a consulting practice

concentrating on policy and regulatory issues affecting various

issues in high-technology trade. He served for 10 years with the

Central Intelligence Agency, working on export control and technology security issues. He holds a B.A. from Bowdoin College and

an M.A. from Georgetown University.

Mr. Chet Huber is president of OnStar Corp., a wholly owned

subsidiary of General Motors Corp. He joined General Motors Electric Motor Division as a co-op engineering student in 1972, and

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held a variety of engineering, operations and marketing roles before joining OnStar. I guess you’d call that job security, huh?

His positions included director of the aftermarket business; general director of aftermarket parts and service; and general director,

sales, marketing and product support. Mr. Huber holds a B.S. from

General Motors Institute, now Kettering University, and an M.B.A.

from Harvard University.

I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available here

today and helping us out with your testimony. Again, it is the policy of the committee to swear in witnesses before they testify, so

if you would please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please reflect that all of the witnesses have answered in the affirmative.

As with the first panel, your full written statements will be entered on the record. There’s 5-minute opening statements—the

lights are the same for the second panel as they were for the first—

and then we’ll go to questions if the panel members up here have

any.

General, would you please start?

STATEMENTS OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL LARRY D. JAMES,

COMMANDER, 14TH AIR FORCE (AIR FORCE STRATEGIC), AIR

FORCE SPACE COMMAND, AND COMMANDER, JOINT FUNCTIONAL COMPONENT COMMAND FOR SPACE, U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND; KAREN L. VAN DYKE, DIRECTOR, POSITION

NAVIGATION AND TIMING, RESEARCH AND INNOVATIVE

TECHNOLOGY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; F. MICHAEL SWIEK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S.

GPS INDUSTRY COUNCIL; AND CHET HUBER, PRESIDENT,

ONSTAR CORP.

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL LARRY D. JAMES

General JAMES. Chairman Tierney and Ranking Member Flake,

thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I’m honored to be

here as the Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space.

It’s a privilege to address you on our role in operating the Global

Positioning System, as well as represent the combatant commander

users around the globe. My testimony today focuses on the importance of GPS to the warfighter, the health of our current constellation, and U.S. Strategic Command’s strategies to ensure the most

robust space-based positioning, navigation and timing capabilities

provided by the GPS constellation.

Certainly, as we have heard earlier, as we look to the importance

of GPS, we understand that GPS provides that key PNT, position

navigation and timing, data to users worldwide and has truly become essential to U.S. national security and economic well-being.

GPS is the centerpiece of global PNT services, and the GPS constellation enables an ever-increasing arsenal of military and civil

applications.

GPS provides critical services to our forces around the globe.

From infantrymen walking the streets of Fallujah, to ships combating piracy off the straits of Somalia, and to aircraft patrolling our

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country’s borders, it is evident that GPS is critical to successful

military operations. Strong communications links, operational relationships and reachback ensure that U.S. Strategic Command provides the combatant fix that the U.S. combatant commanders need

around the globe.

As we look at our constellation health and status, we have today

exceeded requirements by maintaining a constellation of 30 operational satellites, and we’ve achieved sub–3-meter accuracy with

that constellation. As you heard earlier, by employing residual operations and power management, we have options to maintain full

GPS capabilities and ensure continued support to global users.

We must continue to focus on future requirements for GPS capabilities. Matching future user requirements with technological advances will allow U.S. Strategic Command to provide the most advanced and reliable space effects in response to the growing demands of the Nation’s GPS users.

In conclusion, the U.S.’ dependence on GPS across our military,

civil and commercial users requires PNT capabilities to ensure our

ability to safely and effectively operate in diverse environments.

The DOD must continue to build the relationships, processes and

capabilities within the global space community that allow us to operate effectively together to meet our national security objectives.

Thank you very much.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, General.

[The prepared statement of General James follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Ms. Van Dyke.

STATEMENT OF KAREN VAN DYKE

Ms. VAN DYKE. Chairman Tierney, Ranking Member Flake and

members of the subcommittee, I am Karen Van Dyke, Acting Director for Positioning Navigation and Timing in the U.S. Department

of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration [RITA]. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you

today to discuss the criticality of the Global Positioning System to

civil user community.

GPS technology is increasingly woven into the fabric of American

society, from cars and planes to cell phones and wristwatches. It

improves productivity and efficiency in many areas of commerce.

For example, today’s construction, farming, mining, shipping, surveying and traffic management systems have become dependent on

GPS. It allows agriculture operations to continue through low-visibility conditions, such as rain, dust, fog and darkness, and to apply

chemicals precisely, reducing environmental impact while also reducing production costs.

GPS also furthers the scientific aims, such as weather forecasting, earthquake prediction and environmental protection. Furthermore, the precise GPS time signal derived from atomic clocks is

embedded in critical economic activities, such as synchronizing

communication networks, managing power grids and authenticating electronic transactions.

Of particular interest to the Department of Transportation is the

Federal Aviation Administration’s next generation air transportation, NextGen, program. NextGen is a wide-ranging transformation of the national air transportation system to meet future

demand and support economic viability of the system.

NextGen will reduce fuel burn and greenhouse gas emissions,

allow more direct time-based routing, enable safer operations, and

reduce runway incursions. United Airlines already has pioneered

the use of tailored arrivals based on GPS from Honolulu to San

Francisco, with a fuel savings at 1,600 pounds per flight.

GPS is the foundation for NextGen navigation and surveillance.

The continuity of funding and integrity of the planned launch

schedule of the GPS constellation is vital to the Nation moving

ahead with NextGen.

I would like to thank the Air Force for dedicated service in providing extremely reliable operation of GPS since it achieved initial

operating capability in 1993. The United States clearly is the leader in space-based positioning, navigation and timing, and we must

continue to maintain and improve GPS to maintain this U.S. technology leadership position.

Sustainability of the GPS constellation is critical to users worldwide. The Department of Transportation is committed to modernization of GPS, and fully funding the DOT portion of GPS modernization for new civil capabilities is critical to ensuring that the

GPS III program remains on schedule to ensure future constellation sustainment.

The Department of Transportation is confident that the Department of Defense will continue to operate at or above the minimum

GPS performance standard commitment of 21 healthy satellites 98

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percent of the time, equivalent to 24 healthy satellites 95 percent

of the time, and will find innovative methods to extend the life of

the GPS satellites to prevent any gaps in availability. We recognize

that the GPS system has exceeded performance commitments with

30 satellites currently operational, and that some users may have

come to expect this level of service.

The Department of Transportation is a provider as well as a user

of GPS services, augmenting the GPS signal to improve accuracy

and integrity. FAA provides the Wide Area Augmentation System

[WAAS], and RITA coordinates resources and plans for the inland

component of the Nationwide Differential GPS System [NDGPS],

operated and maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard. The U.S. Air

Force and U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration

have agreements to coordinate notification of GPS performance and

any disruption of GPS service to the user community.

When the constellation is at its minimum GPS performance commitment, outages for aviation and other users will be experienced

on a routine basis, which could result in complaints and economic

impact. For users who equip with GPS augmented by WAAS, these

impacts are reduced, supporting minimum availability requirements of 99 percent or more. However, like any radio and navigation system, GPS is vulnerable to interference that can be reduced,

but not eliminated.

In 2001, RITA’s Volpe National Transportation System Center

issued a vulnerability assessment of the transportation infrastructure relying on the Global Positioning System. The findings of this

assessment indicated that there was awareness within the transportation community of risks associated with use of GPS as a primary means for position determination and precision timing.

Due to the reliance of transportation on GPS signals, it is essential that threats be mitigated, and alternative backups be available, and the system be hardened for critical applications. DOT has

determined that sufficient alternative navigation aids currently

exist in the event of a loss of GPS based service.

Potential backup capabilities to GPS are being explored as part

of a National Positioning Navigation and Timing Architecture

study initiated in 2006 by the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation. The overarching goal of this architecture, with GPS as its cornerstone, is intended to overcome identified capability gaps and achieve an evolutionary path to providing

integrated, space-based, terrestrial and autonomous solutions in

the 2025 time period that will ensure the continuity of governmentprovided PNT services.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the committee for allowing

me to discuss the civil user perspective of GPS. The Department

of Transportation is committed to our—continuing our strong working relationship with the Department of Defense to maintain our

global leadership in space-based PNT.

I’d be glad to answer any questions you have.

Mr. KUCINICH [presiding]. Thank you for your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Van Dyke follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Swiek, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF F. MICHAEL SWIEK

Mr. SWIEK. I would like to thank Chairman Tierney, Ranking

Member Flake, and Mr. Kucinich, and distinguished members of

the subcommittee for providing an opportunity today to discuss this

important topic.

Global Positioning System [GPS], is one of the great U.S. success

stories involving shared national assets. GPS is a national model

of successfully balancing military advantage and civilian equities to

serve a broad and diverse range of national interests from national

security and public safety to enabling critical infrastructure, advancing scientific research, facilitating local government productivity and enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of diverse

industries that are important to our economy and serving millions

of individual Americans every day.

GPS is a model of government-industry cooperation contributing

to the national economy through the entrepreneurial creation of

companies, industries and jobs deriving value for users from integrating GPS positioning navigation and timing information into applications and solutions.

The initial military investment in GPS has not only met military

requirements and demonstrated invaluable military utility for the

warfighter, it also provided a signal for civilian use at little to no

additional cost. The dedicated men and women of the U.S. Air

Force Space Command have achieved superb operational management of the GPS constellation for all users under G—under Air

Force stewardship of GPS. This operational excellence, together

with predictable U.S. policy over two decades, has given the global

community a stable signal that has provided a solid foundation for

tremendous private-sector investments in receiver and applications

innovation. The result of this enlightened U.S. approach has been

the worldwide adoption of GPS as a global information utility, providing major productivity benefits to the Nation.

It is difficult to say with precision just how big the GPS industry

is because it touches and contributes to so many different applications and areas in so many ways. Some recent estimates have impressive numbers, such as 15 to 50 billion per year or more, depending on how one counts the direct and indirect effects of GPS.

GPS is a core information technology from many industries that

are key to the U.S. economy. Examples include agriculture, aviation, construction, vehicle navigation, fleet management, public

safety, geographical information systems, land use, environmental

monitoring, earthquake monitoring, wildlife monitoring, disaster

management, telecommunications, E911 cell phones, mapping, mining, marine transportation, surveying, infotainment. I could go on

probably for hours, but there is—trust me, there is at least a couple of hundred more.

More impressive than the aggregate value of United States—or

worldwide GPS industries—is the effect that GPS can have on the

productivity and competitiveness of key industries. GPS enhances

productivity at times as much as 30 percent through exploitation

of precise positioning, navigation and timing information.

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It is not an exaggeration to say that GPS is everywhere, not only

where we commonly and almost ubiquitously see it, such as in consumer car-navigation devices such as OnStar and the Garmin on

the dashboard; it is there, essential and critical even where you

don’t realize it. Whenever you make a call on your cell phone, withdraw money from your ATM, send an e-mail, you are using GPS.

GPS precise time signals are essential tools for synchronizing the

networks through which the services operate. Turn on a light, and

you are probably using GPS as well, as electric power grids similarly use GPS precise time signals for synchronization. The road

you drive on may have been built by construction equipment guided by GPS. Not only has the term ‘‘GPS’’ become a common term

in the public lexicon, it has become an essential and critical utility

on which public and private infrastructures depend.

U.S. industry has been a major factor and leader in the development of today’s GPS industry through entrepreneurial vision, technological innovation and private-sector investment, but we have

not done this alone. The U.S. Government has promoted and encouraged this development by establishing, maintaining and reinforcing a stable policy framework that has consistently received farsighted and bipartisan support. It has been a true partnership of

shared visions, discussions and debates, cooperation and coordination. This has been possible through the open dialog that has taken

place since the early days of GPS, some 25-plus years ago, between

civilian and military, industry and government on technical and

policy issues as the technology system and applications have

evolved.

As we move forward to new generations of GPS satellites and

signals, the challenge is to maintain this impressive level of reliability and stability. Successful adoption of modernized civilian

GPS signals will occur if the installed user base can continue to

trust the consistent and stable policy framework that the U.S. Government has provided GPS for two decades. The new signals will

need to sustain a legacy of accuracy, availability and reliability established over the past 20 years.

The adoption of GPS is a testament to the trust of users in Air

Force stewardship. Users rely on the ability of the Air Force to operate and maintain the satellite constellation and stable signal

structures that serve the warfighter and diverse civilian users in

a way that both enhances our national and economic security. We

strongly encourage the continuation of the open and balanced dialog between all stakeholders, users and providers, civilian and military, industry and government. Our industry association strives to

be an objective information resource to support this dialog.

Thank you for the opportunity, and I’d be happy to answer any

questions you may have.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank the gentleman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Swiek follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Huber, before we go to you, there is a vote

on right now. The chairman, Mr. Tierney, went to vote. He’s coming back momentarily. So what we’re going to do, I’m going to declare a 5-minute recess. I believe that Mr. Tierney will probably be

back in a minute, but I’m going to go to make sure that I don’t

miss my vote. And so we will be in recess, let’s call it until the call

of the Chair, and my guess is it will be within 5 minutes. Thank

you.

[Recess.]

Mr. TIERNEY [presiding]. My apologies. The vote was closer than

it was to ending.

I’ve read all your testimony, so I don’t want you to think we’re

ignoring you on that. We read them last evening.

So, Mr. Huber, I understand that you were about ready to put

yours on the record, and I ask you to do so.

STATEMENT OF CHET HUBER

Mr. HUBER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Chet Huber, the

president of OnStar, a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Motors

Corp. I also serve as a member of the NASA PNT Advisory Board,

and I’ve also served on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Injury

Prevention and Control.

With nearly 6 million active subscribers, OnStar is the leading

telematics service provider, employing over 2,200 individuals in the

United States and Canada. OnStar is now standard on virtually all

General Motors’s vehicles and has developed a prominent national

brand position.

Our core safety, security and peace-of-mind services include automatic crash response and emergency services, which we deliver

from three call centers in Pontiac, MI; Charlotte, NC; and Oshawa,

Ontario, Canada. Other services include turn-by-turn navigation,

stolen vehicle location assistance, and monthly OnStar vehicle diagnostic e-mails. We also offer one-button, hands-free, prepaid

wireless calling.

In a typical month, after call screening, we provide unique and

critical support for public safety agencies in responding to over

2,000 automatic crash notifications and over 10,000 occupant-initiated button presses. These include heart attacks, strokes and

crashes not triggering an automatic call. Last November, OnStar

marked its 100,000th automatic crash response.

Monthly, we also pass on to public safety over 6,000 Good Samaritan calls for everything from crashes involving other vehicles,

to roadway hazards, to possible AMBER Alert sightings; and we assist with over 500 stolen vehicle location requests, including on

many new vehicles the ability to actually slow down a vehicle to

avoid a high-speed pursuit.

Other monthly service statistics include the delivery of 3.4 million monthly diagnostic e-mails, nearly 1 million turn-by-turn

routes, and over 53,000 remote door unlocks.

Delivering these services and growing to our current scale has

required deep and fundamental technological innovation as we’ve

uniquely integrated cellular, GPS and voice recognition with extensive on-board and off-board software. This has required hundreds

of millions of dollars of investment and resulted in the filing of over

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500 patent applications, with new filings still occurring at the rate

of once every 6 days.

A critical element in our delivery of services is location. OnStar

use the civilian L1C/A signal to deliver our location-based services

like automatic crash response, stolen vehicle location assistance,

and turn-by-turn navigation. We also used, directly or indirectly,

the GPS timing signal to enable other valuable services like remote

door unlock and diagnostic e-mails. An accurate, available and reliable GPS constellation is at the heart of our capability to deliver

these services.

We offer three recommendations for your consideration. First, we

must address the health of the current constellation. We are concerned that a recent report shows that eight of the current satellites are one component away from total failure. Loss of signal

will immediately affect GPS accuracy and availability.

Second is the GPS system is modernized. It’s imperative that the

U.S. Government formally commit to preserving the L1C/A signal

to ensuring backward compatibility for legacy applications with no

loss of performance from current levels. Automotive applications of

GPS, like OnStar, are embedded into the vehicle’s electrical system

and subjected to extensive validation testing. Because of this, it is

impractical to retrofit GPS-related hardware and ensure the reliable delivery of services to subscribers. Therefore, the benefit—to

the benefit of our millions of customers as well as others facing

similar legacy issues, we are asking Congress and the executive

branch to work together to develop a policy that supports backward

compatibility at current performance levels.

Regarding performance, it is important to understand that the

current GPS system is performing at a level well above the specified minimum, and operators have come to use that performance

to improve and enhance services. Any modernization initiative that

degrades backward-compatible performance, such as reducing the

number of satellites making up the constellation, would likely adversely impact the provision of services by OnStar, including the

quality of location information we provide to public safety, thereby

potentially increasing the response time of public safety personnel

to crash victims and others in need of emergency assistance.

Our third recommendation, and this is also important in legacy

applications, is that we commit to maintaining the current PRN

code for the primary orbital slots as satellites in those slots are replaced. Legacy hardware is not capable of being expanded to accommodate more than 32 slots, so renumbering above 32 will likely

affect performance of legacy applications.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Huber follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank all of you for your testimony.

Mr. Huber, those concerns that you raised, the final three on

that, are you having any dialog at all with the Department of Defense now or with the combined committee about making sure that

those are addressed?

Mr. HUBER. We actually have had an opportunity to participate

as a member of the PNT Advisory Committee, and that, I think,

is one of the reasons that committee was formed by NASA to draw

in comments by private industry and other constituencies. And

we’ve also had extensive dialog with the U.S. Department of Transportation and others. So we are making those points——

Mr. TIERNEY. And your sense is that you are being heard?

Mr. HUBER. Yeah. Our sense is that they understand the issues,

and we are hopeful that they will be comprehended in the future

strategy.

Mr. TIERNEY. I have sort of a painless approach to this, I hope,

for all of you. There’s really three things I think we want to know

and put on the record from you. I’m going to lay all of them out

and then just go left to right and give you a chance to respond.

We are interested in the awareness throughout either your particular entity or industry that you—or area that you represent, the

awareness of concerns raised by the Government Accountability Office’s report. We would like to know if you’ve identified potential

mitigation strategies to lessen the effect on your company or entity

or association in the event there is a diminished availability to the

worst-case scenarios laid out in that report. And last, what’s your

status of preparation to implement any such strategies? General.

General JAMES. Yes, sir. In terms of the awareness, certainly at

the JFCC Space, my position in Strategic Command, Air Force

Space Command, all of those entities, because we are so closely

intertwined with the acquisition community, we certainly are very

aware of the GAO report, of the constellation management issues

and those sorts of things.

In speaking for the broader combatant commanders out there,

the CENTCOMs and the PACOMs of the world, I can’t say that

they are necessarily aware that there is a potential of degradation

in the future. Their concern obviously is more near-term focused,

am I getting my GPS signal today and so on.

Certainly as a representative of those combatant commanders,

we go out and educate the theaters on what they can and can’t do

with all of our space systems, and we will continue to do that over

time as this unfolds. So that’s kind of from an awareness perspective.

Mr. TIERNEY. Except one of the things I thought I heard in the

first panel is one of the strategies from the military to maybe deal

with this issue is to use some and power down some of the backup

in certain cases or whatever. I would assume you’re exempting out

the battlefield people from that type of distinction, or do they also

have to make that kind of consideration when they use the system?

General JAMES. No, sir. The intent is obviously not to infect—not

to affect any users. In terms of the potential mitigation strategies,

which is where I would address that question, we, as the operators

of GPS, out of Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado, have a variety

of things that we look at. Certainly, first of all, we have residual

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satellites. We generally operate a certain number of what we call

PRN codes for the constellation. So right now we have three satellites that are not a part of that constellation, but that can still

provide an effective navigation signal. That’s due to the limitations

of the ground system in terms of how many satellites we can actually operate in the constellation.

So we have three residual spacecraft right now. We bring those

out of residual mode every 6 months to test them and make sure

that they have a valid navigation system. So that’s one of the mitigation strategies we currently have.

As satellites, older satellites, no longer fit in the constellation, we

still retain them as a viable system that we can bring in should

we have an unexpected failure.

The second piece of that, as you heard earlier, is power management, that is one way to, again, extend the life of a particular

spacecraft. And again, there is a lot of analysis that will go into

that in terms of how does that affect the other user, the new data

detection system user. Again, as you heard, as we continue to

launch new satellites, we continue to populate that new data detection system capability, and they do not require a full 24 satellite

capability. So we have options there with the older satellites to

power manage and extend the life of those particular spacecraft.

And third, as you also heard earlier, the GPS constellation isn’t

kind of an on or off thing, it’s a dynamic, integrated assessment of

if you get down to a certain level of satellites, where do you have

less accuracy, where do you have less coverage time and so on. And

we manage that by where we actually place the particular spacecraft in the constellation. So in terms of how we mitigate this, we

do have options to make sure that if we do create an issue with

a less accurate area, we can put that perhaps over in an area

where there are very few people or very few operations.

And then finally, in term of your status in preparing for this, we

do think about this, we have thought about this, and we do have

plans to address this as we move to the future and we see how the

constellation evolves and how those satellites are delivered to us

for launch.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Ms. Van Dyke.

Ms. VAN DYKE. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In terms of the awareness concerns, I think the GAO has done

a really good job within the government reaching out to the government agencies to circulate their draft report. But, of course, it

hasn’t been released to the public yet, so as it is released, certainly

our job in representing the civil community is to ensure that there

is awareness.

But having said that, the Department of Transportation, and

particularly our organization, RITA, leads the Civil GPS Service

Interface Committee, which is the public outreach of the GPS, and

at all of our meetings we have the GPS and Air Force Space Command give us updates on the constellation. And so certainly the

awareness of some of the status problems, the availability of satellites, some of the potential problems have been briefed at the

meetings.

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And also, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Volpe National Transportation System Center had done a vulnerability assessment. And so while it’s a separate problem, being concerned

about interference to the signal, a lot of the mitigation would be

the same.

So we have certainly tried to make the user community aware

of potential interference, the need to integrate GPS with other

navigation aids or have operational procedures to mitigate the

problem, which would also apply to any degradation due to availability of GPS satellites.

In terms of the status of the preparation, again, it is very similar

to the need for backup systems to mitigate against interference. So

we have been aware and certainly working with the user communities, particularly for federally provided systems, to ensure for

transportation safety of life that we do not have any degradation

of service, and that continues to be an ongoing challenge as GPS

just becomes integrated into every single application. And often,

particularly for timing applications, it is a silent enabler that many

do not even have awareness of how well and how widely it is used

in our communication systems.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Swiek.

Mr. SWIEK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As far as awareness goes of potential gaps in GPS or degradation

of services, answer that from our community, which is primarily

the receiver manufacturers and to some degree the user and customer community, the answer is yes and no. Among the technical

people in the companies manufacturing the receivers, yes, they are

aware of constellation status. Yes, they receive briefings from the

Air Force at different conferences, they see the status of the constellation over a period of years, they monitor that. So are they

aware there is a potential degradation? Yes.

When you start getting to more the public at large, the users of

GPS particularly in the consumer area, I would say there the

awareness is probably nowhere near as great, mainly because GPS

works and has worked reliably for many, many years. When you

go to the faucet and turn on the water in your house, it works; you

don’t think about it. You only think about it if you have a warning

that something imminent is going to happen or has happened and

you need to take adjustments to compensate for that.

So the awareness issue, yes and no. Engineers, technical people,

people in the manufacturing community, yes.

What would be the impact of gaps in coverage, degradation of

services? Again, difficult to say because of the broad scope and

reach of GPS into different types of applications. Mitigation plans

and strategies, yes. Again difficult to say. Depends on if it happens,

when it happens, where it happens, to whom it happens.

Degree of disruption, again difficult to pinpoint exactly. There is

a wide variety of areas, public safety areas, like air transportation,

like marine transportation, E911, some of the critical timing applications. If there was a serious degradation that would cause a disruption or outage of GPS, yes, it would be felt and noticed.

However, the people who put these systems together are very

prudent and very cautious, so there are usually back-up systems

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already in place, because not only from a degradation of constellation status, but there are other factors that could cause

vulnerabilities to the system. And these have largely been accommodated to a certain degree.

As far as the consumer end. If there is a degradation of service,

well, you tend to get that anyway when you are using GPS in a

casual recreational environment now. The GPS unit in your car frequently is blocked by tall buildings, heavy tree coverage, etc., as

you’re driving along. This, in effect, reduces the number of effective

satellites you can see or the optimal navigation solution that you

are using.

Does this mean the whole system goes down, and it becomes useless? No. Again, it may compromise some degree of accuracy or

availability, but in general it doesn’t cause a major problem. If this

becomes systemic and endemic over a long period of time, then I

think the biggest problem you see is a loss of confidence of—in GPS

as a market force, and that can have some consequences. But in

general the Air Force has done a marvelous job of giving a signal

that nobody has to think about, they only use and take benefit

from. So I hope this clarifies some things for you.

Mr. TIERNEY. No, it is helpful. And I think your part of this is

that the GAO report is, in fact, a warning shot. It is not imminent,

it is not something that is going to slap people in the face, but it

is at least a notice to people that we better start paying attention,

we better start working through this.

You want to add?

Mr. SWIEK. Add one more thing. In this regard we haven’t seen

the full GAO report yet. Is it released to the public?

Mr. TIERNEY. Today. That’s why the hearing.

Mr. SWIEK. I will make sure our member companies receive that.

But this type of awareness building along with the outreach at the

Air Force and Department of Transportation, Department of Defense due to the civilian community I think shows a responsible

stewardship of GPS. They don’t hide things and sweep them under

the rug. It is there so everybody knows. And this, I think, is another hallmark and good sign of prudent U.S. stewardship of GPS.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Huber, we know you’re aware, because of the

content of your testimony, of course, or whatever. But in your particularized use for it, what strategies would put in place?

Mr. HUBER. Yeah. We are very aware, not of the GAO report, but

we are absolutely looking forward to seeing that. We thought about

this, as you might expect, because we’re selling a commercial product today with millions of customers in it.

The heart of what we do is an emergency response to things like

the crash of a vehicle. And so we have been developing methods,

even in those situations where we are strained today, like in urban

canyons, to actually we’ve created unique software in the vehicle.

We use the wheel speed sensors from antilock brake systems to

provide dead reckoning that gives us an ability to keep an accurate

location on the vehicle within bounds as we’re shaded from GPS.

We are starting now actually with the launch of the new

Camaro, we are actually building gyros in the vehicles to give us

the next level of precision. And that will help us in any degradation

sense, so it helps us be better at our normal services. It will also

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help us in any scenario where we’re otherwise shaded, in places

like the Big Dig in Boston. I mean, it gives us a great opportunity

to get people through that the way they want to come through it.

The thing that is of most concern to us longer term is in cases

where there are literally gaps, geographic gaps, in coverage across

the United States that move depending on what the constellation

configuration looks like and how many satellites are up. I mean,

if you saw a map from our last November announcement of our

100,000th crash response, you can see we populate the United

States. There are crashes everywhere in this country, not just in

very populated areas. And so we are actually working with Verizon

Wireless as a key technology partner for us in our most extreme

case of crash response to see what we might be able to use in the

case of a missing GPS component to be able to use their network

drive solutions to at least be able to help us respond in an emergency case. It won’t help us in a navigation scenario, but our main

commitment it the emergency community.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Kucinich is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To General James—and, Mr. Chairman, you may have asked

some of these questions. I just returned, so I’m not—if I duplicate

it, I apologize ahead of time. Who updates the GPS data, and how

often is it updated?

General JAMES. Sir, if you’re referring to the data that goes into

the satellites, that is done by the Operation Squadron at Schriever

Air Force Base. They are solely dedicated to managing that constellation and providing uploads when required. They can determine when a signal is starting to degrade below a certain level,

and they actually put an upload into the spacecraft to update its

position so that we then maintain that high level of accuracy. So

that’s the responsibility of the Air Force out of Schriever Air Force

Base.

Mr. KUCINICH. Where do you get the data from though?

General JAMES. Sir, the data is from our ground network of systems around the world that monitors GPS at different locations, at

Ascension Island, Hawaii, Guam. So we are constantly looking at

the constellation and the satellites and measuring their accuracy,

because over time that accuracy does degrade, and so we monitor

that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and provide those uploads into

the spacecraft as required.

Mr. KUCINICH. So the accuracy of the information at any given

time, would you ascribe a percentage to it?

General JAMES. Well, sir, again, our intent is to maintain a

worldwide accuracy below 3 meters. And so——

Mr. KUCINICH. Of what, please?

General JAMES. Below 3 meters. Now, again, that’s better than

the specification that we have, because we have a good number of

satellites with very accurate atomic clocks on board. But again,

worldwide we have the ability to monitor those accuracies around

the globe. We have the software that tells us exactly what the accuracies are at any time and given location.

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Mr. KUCINICH. Does the Department of Defense lease the information that it has to private contractors, or sell it, or in any way

distribute it to other contractors?

General JAMES. No, sir, we do not. If you’re talking about that

knowledge of what accuracy a GPS satellite has, that’s actually inherent in the signal of the GPS, so it’s not leased or sold, it’s available.

Mr. KUCINICH. It’s—we know, for example, there are companies

who—who sell GPS services.

General JAMES. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. They don’t have their own network the way the

Department of Defense has. What—how are they able to do that?

General JAMES. Sir, I believe a couple of things. When you say

selling GPS services, one is a GPS receiver.

Mr. KUCINICH. Selling receivers that they then get the same information through that receiver that anybody else would get? Is

that what you are saying?

General JAMES. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Or they may create a service

where they use GPS—for example, mechanized farming—that they

sell that overall service, which involves a GPS receiver and other

processes, to execute that.

Mr. KUCINICH. But anybody’s free to do that; is that right?

General JAMES. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. But the underlying technology is—and the mapping and the updating of it is accomplished through the resources

of the U.S. Government; is that right?

General JAMES. That’s correct.

Mr. KUCINICH. Are there any other nations that are involved in

a cooperative effort with us on that?

General JAMES. Sir, to my knowledge there are no other nations

providing funding for the GPS. We operate the system, and we provide that to our allies without charge.

Mr. KUCINICH. And do other nations help provide the data; where

we don’t necessarily have people present to provide the information, do we have gaps that are being filled in?

General JAMES. No, sir, it is the worldwide sites. For example,

the Ascension Island site, certainly that is a British island, so we

have agreements with the British to operate this. But we provide

for all the operational costs around the world.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, General.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

I would like to give each of you an opportunity to share with us

anything that you think we ought to know and didn’t have the foresight to ask before I wrap up. That doesn’t mean there necessarily

is something, but I give you the opportunity anyway.

General.

General JAMES. Sir, just briefly I think, again, I would state as

we look at GPS accuracies and GPS capabilities, it is a very layered problem. As we said earlier, it is not a black-and-white thing.

We can manage this, we can look through in terms of power, in

terms of clocks, in terms of updates and who will replace the satellites in the constellation to make sure we provide the capability

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that we need to provide where we need to provide it. I would leave

that thought for the committee.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Ms. Van Dyke.

Ms. VAN DYKE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to reiterate

the Department of Transportation’s commitment to the modernization of GPS for new civil capabilities. As Major General McCasland

said, the Department of Transportation is now providing funding

for those capabilities, and it is important for the sustainment for

the GPS III constellation that we have the adequate funding to

provide to the Air Force. And I would just like to reiterate our

strong working relationship with the Department of Defense. I

think that we have had really good information sharing and a very

cooperative process, and I certainly anticipate that will continue.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Swiek.

Mr. SWIEK. I’d just like to emphasize that GPS is really an example of government done right. You don’t hear that too often these

days.

Mr. TIERNEY. Unless you account for the 100 and something percent overrun in cost and 3 years in delays. It is interesting, it goes

to Mr. Duncan’s point. There’s not a bit of upset or anger of anybody in here on that, and it is sort of startling when you think

about it. It was a $700-something million project that cost $870

million more on that, and 3 years late, and we don’t get a blink.

It is just interesting, you know. If that were an education program

or something like that, people would be going ballistic.

Mr. SWIEK. Both my parents were accountants, and they would

see an awful lot of fault with that as well. But as far as the delivered performance of GPS, before——

Mr. TIERNEY. Once it gets going, it does well is what you’re saying.

Mr. SWIEK. Yeah. It is really a great success story. The main

thing is maintain the integrity of the signal, maintain the delivery

performance, maintain the dialog between industry/government,

between military/civilian users, and the forums we’ve had, because

it really has been a wonderful, cooperative approach.

Delays, outages, overruns, etc., yes, these are all of concern. As

the system matured and expanded, these maybe were inevitable,

but they need to be addressed, and for that regard we are glad that

the subcommittee and others in government are able to look at

this. So continue on.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Huber.

Mr. HUBER. I can only say the GPS system has evolved into an

amazing public utility. And I would say that things like OnStar

were probably not conceived of when those satellites were

launched.

I would suggest that if you project any vision of a future, this

system will spawn incredible further innovation that will bring a

range of benefits to society and spawn technology and job creation.

And so thinking of this today, it is almost unfair to not understand what hasn’t been invented yet, but this is ripe territory for

commercial applications in particular and those that overlap with

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public-sector agencies to create a better future for a lot of people.

And so I would say that’s the vector that this thing is headed on.

Mr. TIERNEY. I thank you for all your comments. Look, this has

become an incredible system, and I agree with you the technology

is astounding. It has done a lot of good things.

One of the reasons why the subcommittee is so intent on having

the oversight is we need this to continue working. Our reliance on

national security issues, obviously, are very serious and very critical, but, as I said, in lightening effects on the industries and the

civil market as well. So we want to make sure that it functions and

it comes up in a timely manner and doesn’t get degraded, but we

do also have that responsibility in seeing that it happens on time

and within budget, within reason, because we don’t have an unlimited budget.

We have a lot pressures on this country, and so we want to try

to make sure that we have a continuation of these hearings. This

will not be the last one. We might not have to hear from you folks

again for a while, but the first panel will be revisited again along

with others to address some of those questions on why we would

take a system that was working in terms of oversight and kick it

out the door and try something that was obviously not very successful.

So thank you for giving up your time and making the effort to

be here with us today, sharing your expertise. We really do appreciate it. Thanks.

Meeting adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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