[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 116-21]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
HEARING
ON
FISCAL YEAR 2020 BUDGET REQUEST FOR
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS:
MAINTAINING A ROBUST ECOSYSTEM
FOR OUR TECHNOLOGICAL EDGE
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 28, 2019
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
36-862 WASHINGTON : 2020
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island, Chairman
RICK LARSEN, Washington ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York
JIM COOPER, Tennessee SAM GRAVES, Missouri
TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
RO KHANNA, California AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
ANDY KIM, New Jersey MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
JASON CROW, Colorado, Vice Chair DON BACON, Nebraska
ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan JIM BANKS, Indiana
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
Bess Dopkeen, Professional Staff Member
Eric Snelgrove, Professional Staff Member
Caroline Kehrli, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Langevin, Hon. James R., a Representative from Rhode Island,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and
Capabilities................................................... 1
Stefanik, Hon. Elise M., a Representative from New York, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and
Capabilities................................................... 4
WITNESSES
Geurts, Hon. James F., Assistant Secretary of the Navy for
Research, Development and Acquisition, Department of the Navy.. 8
Griffin, Hon. Michael D., Under Secretary of Defense for Research
and Engineering, Office of the Secretary of Defense............ 5
Jette, Hon. Bruce D., Assistant Secretary of the Army for
Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Department of the Army.. 6
Roper, Hon. William B., Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Air Force
for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Department of the
Air Force...................................................... 9
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Geurts, Hon. James F......................................... 60
Griffin, Hon. Michael D...................................... 43
Jette, Hon. Bruce D.......................................... 53
Langevin, Hon. James R....................................... 39
Roper, Hon. William B., Jr................................... 71
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Banks.................................................... 96
Mr. Brown.................................................... 94
Ms. Houlahan................................................. 94
Mr. Langevin................................................. 93
Mr. Waltz.................................................... 96
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Conaway.................................................. 101
Mr. Scott.................................................... 102
FISCAL YEAR 2020 BUDGET REQUEST FOR
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS: MAINTAINING A ROBUST
ECOSYSTEM FOR OUR TECHNOLOGICAL EDGE
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and
Capabilities,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 28, 2019.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:06 a.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James R.
Langevin (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES R. LANGEVIN, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM RHODE ISLAND, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND
EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
Mr. Langevin. The subcommittee will come to order. I want
to welcome everyone to today's hearing on the fiscal year 2020
President's budget request for the Department of Defense
science and technology programs. I am pleased that for the
first time in many Congresses we have the highest S&T [science
and technology] leadership from the Department providing
testimony. By having the top leadership, this hearing aims to
elevate the discussion of S&T to the same level of importance
as to how many fighters, ships, and satellites the Department
is buying.
The Department's S&T ecosystem is complex and comprises
agencies; offices; laboratories; federally funded research and
development centers; university affiliated research centers;
academic partnerships; test and evaluation entities; and
partnerships with the private sector, including small
businesses. This S&T ecosystem is charged with delivering the
best capabilities to the warfighter in the near, mid and long
term.
For such an important portfolio, the fiscal year 2020
President's budget request totals $14.5 billion, which is only
2.7 percent of the Department's base budget and only 3.2
percent above the fiscal year 2019 requested funding level.
Adjusted for inflation, the fiscal year 2020 request is only 1
percent higher, despite the increasing cost escalation of
highly specialized technical labor, like scientists and
engineers with advanced degrees and Ph.D.s.
To say it another way, normalizing for inflation and labor
cost escalation, this S&T budget has effectively been shrinking
for years. And this is the budget that must lay the groundwork
for today, for our future technological edge in the next 10 to
20 years.
I also want to point out that, unlike the shrinking of the
S&T request, the Department's fiscal year 2020 investment in
advanced component development and prototypes funding grew by
5.8 percent from the fiscal year 2019 request, or by 27
percent. Although I strongly support efforts to get new
technologies across the ``valley of death'' into the hands of
our service members as soon as possible, we must be cognizant
of the fact that we must also invest in the long-term basic and
early-stage applied research that will allow for revolutionary
advancements down the line.
In the past three National Defense Authorization Acts
alone, Congress has granted almost two dozen authorities to
improve the Department's S&T workforce, facilities, and
infrastructure to champion inhouse innovation for the future of
force modernization, warfighting, operational concepts, and
acquisition. I remain disappointed that many of those
authorities have gone underutilized or unused by the
Department. This is also hard to reconcile with the National
Defense Strategy, which highlights long-term strategic
competition with China and Russia and the need for an
unparalleled national security innovation base. It is no secret
that China is stealing our intellectual property to further
their objective to be a research and engineering powerhouse and
compromise our warfighting edge. Make no mistake about it,
however, China is not the only nation conducting these types of
activities. China is, though, one of the few state actors that
has coupled such tactics with considerable investments and
resources behind a national strategy that involves a whole-of-
government effort and leverages society to promote indigenous
innovation. Yet the President's budget request decreases S&T
and R&D [research and development] funding across the executive
agencies, including the Department of Energy's Office of
Science, and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, and the National Science Foundation.
If the U.S. is to remain a global leader in technology, we
cannot simply play defense. We must also play offense.
Investments in science and research and other development
efforts across the whole of government are necessary and vital
to maintaining a technological edge.
So, beyond the R&D specific funding, we must also invest in
STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] education,
programs to develop junior talent into future tech leaders, and
implement policies that promote a sound economic, political,
and strategic environment on U.S. soil where global
collaboration, discovery, innovation in public institutions and
industry can thrive.
I recognize that the open dialogue and debate of academia
can be anathema to the secrecy we rely on in the Department of
Defense. But we must also recognize and embrace the competitive
advantage our free society gives us to out-innovate and develop
better products faster than anyone else in the world.
Setting ourselves apart from our strategic competitors also
means abiding by our American values and keeping our policy as,
or more, developed than the technology itself.
The functional work for the current understanding of
artificial intelligence done in the 1950s and 1960s was funded
by DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and the
Office of Naval Research and aided by the convening power of
universities. Now, we have been working on this technology for
over half a century. Yet, in the John S. McCain 2019 NDAA
[National Defense Authorization Act], Congress had to create a
National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence to
expedite the policy, strategy, and implementation plan that
absolutely must be thought through for our Nation to
effectively and ethically use these capabilities. For AI
[artificial intelligence] and for each of the other seven rapid
technological advancements outlined in the NDS [National
Defense Strategy], I am looking to the Department to lean
forward on strategically developing policies on how we should
use and deploy those future technologies and how these emerging
capabilities will contribute to our new national strategies--
new security strategies. Such effort is especially important
with hypersonics and directed energy, which present a myriad of
policy and political considerations and challenges.
Finally, I must emphasize that we will not attain the
technological edge we need if we refuse to take risks in our
R&D portfolio and if we do not empower risk-takers who are
willing to push the boundaries on innovation. I realize that
this will not come easily for the Department of Defense because
the overriding culture is one of never failing. After all, in
many aspects of the Department's mission, failure means people
will die. However, in the S&T space, an attitude that
conservative means we will never conceive of the technological
leaps that will ensure our warfighters never go into a fair
fight. It is incumbent upon the leadership in the Department to
avoid perpetuating an overly conservative culture in the S&T
enterprise. And I hope to hear from our witnesses today what
they are doing to encourage reasonable risk-taking. In turn, so
long as the Department is transparent about such failures,
Congress and this subcommittee in particular must be willing to
provide top cover for those that fail fast, fail smart, fail
forward, and internalize the lessons learned from those
failures.
So, before us today we have the services' technology and
acquisition executives. These individuals must divide their
attention, creating--fielding the best technology to the
warfighters as quickly and as effectively and efficiently as
possible in the near and the mid term and protecting the
scientists and innovators working on the test--the next
generation of S&T that will enable the Department to keep its
technological edge over the long term.
In section 901 of the fiscal year 2017 NDAA, Congress split
the former Under Secretary of Acquisition, Technology, and
Logistics into two and created the Under Secretary of Defense
for Research and Engineering [R&E] to empower the Department
leadership to drive towards better innovation, advancing
science and technology, and reducing risk intolerance in the
pursuit of new technologies.
Dr. Griffin, the first USD [Under Secretary of Defense] R&E
since its charge, is the chief technology officer for the
Department and is responsible for the research, development,
and prototyping activity across the DOD [Department of Defense]
enterprise. He is mandated with ensuring technological
superiority for the Department of Defense.
Dr. Bruce Jette, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for
Acquisition, Logistics and Technology; Mr. James ``Hondo''
Geurts, the Assistant Secretary of Navy for Research,
Development, and Acquisition; and Dr. Will Roper, Assistant
Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and
Logistics are the three service acquisition executives
responsible for executing and overseeing the services'
research, development, and acquisition activities. So I welcome
you all here today.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on the fiscal
year 2020 S&T request and note that following this discussion,
we will continue in a closed, classified, follow-on discussion
with representation across the spectrum of the S&T ecosystem--
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department's
laboratories and academic partnerships, the Strategic
Capabilities Office, and the Defense Innovation Unit.
So, with that, I will now turn it over to Ranking Member
Stefanik for her remarks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Langevin can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ELISE M. STEFANIK, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW
YORK, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING
THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Chairman Langevin.
And thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
I want to stress how important our investment in science
and technology and the innovation ecosystem is to our national
security. The National Defense Strategy frames the current
security environment as one of, quote, rapid technological
advancements that is changing the character of war [end quote].
Now, more than any time in recent history, our military
superiority is determined by our technological superiority. We
are entering a new era of strategic competition where our
ability to harness the power of our innovation ecosystem is
being challenged by our adversaries.
I am concerned that our S&T investments represent an
alarmingly small percentage of our overall defense budget and a
shrinking percentage of our total RDT&E [research, development,
test, and evaluation] budget and at the same time that our
adversaries are significantly increasing their S&T spending.
While I am encouraged by the Department's investment in
near-term advanced component development and prototyping, this
cannot come at the expense of DOD's investment in our future. A
properly resourced S&T enterprise reduces risk and
technological surprise and, when properly executed, can
generate disruptive new technologies that transform the way the
Department does business, deters conflict, and wages war.
I also want to highlight the importance of basic research
to our future military capabilities. In fact, at a hearing I
chaired in December on artificial intelligence, Dr. Lisa Porter
cited DOD's 40 years of funding of AI basic research as the
single most important factor for why we still maintain a slight
lead over China's AI capabilities. As the pressure grows to
accelerate and apply new technologies to today's problems, we
must continue to balance this with the investment in future
R&D. Any degradation in our future R&D will put the U.S. at a
competitive disadvantage 10 to 20 years from now and weaken the
bench of domestic science and technology expertise, which is
already, as we know, in very short supply.
Now more than ever, our science and technology enterprise
plays a strategic role that is fundamental to our national and
economic security. We must invest in it, and we must also
protect it. Industrial espionage, cyber theft on a massive
scale, illicit technology transfer, and foreign influence on
our campuses are just a few of the malicious practices that our
adversaries, most notably China, are using to undermine our
national and economic security.
Our universities, service laboratories, research and
development centers, and pioneering small businesses are
particularly vulnerable in our democratic and open society. We
must do more to educate, inform, and protect our defense
innovation ecosystem from these threats or we run the risk of
arming our adversaries with technologies they will use against
us in future conflict.
Finally, we cannot allow our own bureaucracy to constrain
the services from acquiring new technologies or the talent
needed to implement these breakthroughs. Congress has made
strides over the last several years to provide flexibility to
the Department in hiring, funding, and sustaining our science
and technology enterprise. I am particularly interested in
understanding how these authorities are being utilized and what
more we can do to improve our defense innovation ecosystem.
Thank you again to our witnesses here today, and I yield
back to the Chair.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Ranking Member Stefanik. I want to
thank you for your remarks.
And we will now hear from our witnesses, and then move to
the question-and-answer session.
With that, I would like to now recognize Secretary Griffin
for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL D. GRIFFIN, UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
OF DEFENSE
Secretary Griffin. Thank you. Chairman Langevin, Ranking
Member Stefanik, and members of this subcommittee, I want to
thank you for the opportunity to discuss the ways in which we
are advancing defense modernization in response to the threats
posed by our adversaries. I have a few brief opening remarks. I
have submitted my written testimony. I would like my written
testimony to be entered into the record, if you so approve.
Mr. Langevin. Without objection.
Secretary Griffin. Thank you.
I don't have to explain to this committee the threats that
we face from Russia and China. Our adversaries have self-
declared, and our only choice is to respond appropriately or to
cede the primacy of the rules-based order that the United
States established in the aftermath of World War II and has
nurtured for now three full generations.
Congress has paid very careful attention to these
existential threats by our adversaries and has taken action to
meet them. Through authorization, law, and funding, you have
done your part to address these challenges, and we thank you
for that support.
For our part, we must work to change the processes,
culture, and investment decisions of the DOD to regain and
maintain the technical dominance that deters our adversaries.
It is the role of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research
and Engineering, working with the service acquisition
executives who are here today, to align the Department's
investment portfolio to that end.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy outlines a clear path to
the technical advantage we seek. It prioritizes hypersonics,
directed energy, space, autonomy, cybersecurity, quantum
science, microelectronics, artificial intelligence,
biotechnology, machine learning, network command and control
and communication. This is a smorgasbord of items; all are
important. To pursue these priorities, the President's fiscal
year 2020 budget includes $14.1 billion for cross-department
science and technology.
Our request for--as one example of what we are doing with
this funding, our request for $2.6 billion for hypersonics in
fiscal year 2019 and our request for $11.2 billion over the
next 5 years will allow us to increase flight testing and field
operational capability years earlier than we had previously
planned. DARPA continues to build on work begun almost 60 years
ago with its $2 billion multiyear AI Next campaign.
To respond to the adversarial activity we observe today by
China and Russia in space, the Department has created the Space
Development Agency to design and field critical space
technologies more rapidly than has been the case recently.
These are just a few of the ways in which we are pursuing
defense modernization.
We will not succeed by fighting tomorrow's conflicts with
yesterday's weapons. It is not our goal merely to match those
who reject the values we espouse and the freedoms we protect.
Instead, we are working to build and sustain a level of
dominance so overwhelming that no adversary will start a fight
because they know they will lose. That is our goal.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Griffin can be found
in the Appendix on page 43.]
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Secretary Griffin.
Now Secretary Jette is recognized.
STATEMENT OF HON. BRUCE D. JETTE, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE
ARMY FOR ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS AND TECHNOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF
THE ARMY
Secretary Jette. Thank you. Chairman Langevin, Ranking
Member Stefanik, and distinguished members of the subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss
the U.S. Army's program for science and technology for fiscal
year 2020.
The subcommittee's vital role in supporting Army S&T
ensures the U.S. Army shall continue to modernize to meet
future readiness requirements to encounter emerging and future
threats. As Secretary Esper discussed in testimony Tuesday of
this week, Army's Futures Command was formed to define the
operational vision for multidomain operations; identify the
technology requirements near, mid, and far; and to provide
management of the technology enterprise. Your demonstrated
commitment to our program was clear in your support of our
fiscal year 2019 budget submission for $2.3 billion in S&T,
which represented a stable inflation-adjusted growth and laid
the foundation for closing critical technology gaps. Congress
added $1.3 billion, allowing us to advance even further and
faster as we focused on those technologies outlined in the NDS,
some of which Dr. Griffin just mentioned, which will provide a
decisive overmatch.
Thank you for your support and thank you for passing the
budget in time for the fiscal year. The Army's fiscal year 2020
budget request for $2.4 billion S&T again remains inflation-
growth protected. Approximately 83 percent is aligned with the
Army's six modernization priorities focused on maturing
technology, reducing program risk, developing prototypes to
better define affordable and achievable requirements, and
conduct experimentation with soldiers to refine new operational
concepts.
The Army's 12,000 civilians and scientists are critical
assets in identifying, developing, and demonstrating
technologies, and leveraging more commercially based research,
and executing military-unique research. Through NDAA
authorities, we have implemented a number of efforts to build,
enhance, and retain our workforce, for which I would also like
to thank you.
The Army relies on its laboratories to foster innovation to
help transition basic research. The laboratories directly
support military operations through various services and
limited product development and production. State-of-the-art
facilities are imperative to the success of Army basic,
applied, and advanced technology development and research.
Chief among the reforms is the new intellectual property
[IP] policy, which fosters greater communication with industry,
researchers, and entrepreneurs early in the process, clarifying
our data requirements and, I would say, addressing some of the
concerns of protecting the IP.
Having patents in IP myself as a small entrepreneurial
business owner only a year and a half ago, I know the important
role IP plays in the ability to leverage the broader spectrum
of cutting-edge technologies out there. With great support from
the Secretary, we also are focusing on talent management in
both our military and civilian workforces. Our laboratory
system has been leveraging those authorities you provided to
recruit and retain top talent to keep the Army on the cutting
edge. Grants, when combined with such efforts as open campus
and industry outreach programs, have expanded the pool of
exceptional talent, to include 18 Nobel Prize winners and most
recently the 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Dr. Frances Arnold.
The Army continues to benefit from the many additional
programs and has extended its outreach to nontraditional
partners.
Thank you again for strong support for the Army's programs,
the authorities you provided, and the opportunity to discuss
Army S&T. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Jette can be found in
the Appendix on page 53.]
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Secretary Jette.
Secretary Geurts, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES F. GEURTS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE
NAVY FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ACQUISITION, DEPARTMENT OF
THE NAVY
Secretary Geurts. Chairman Langevin, Ranking Member
Stefanik, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thanks
for the opportunity to appear before you today to address the
Department of the Navy's science and technology efforts and how
they support both the National Defense Strategy and, more
importantly, our sailors and Marines.
It is a real exciting time for science and technology
ecosystem, and it's truly my honor to be here to represent all
of them with you today.
I have a few brief opening comments, and then I request my
full statement be entered into the record.
Mr. Langevin. Without objection.
Secretary Geurts. The Navy's fiscal year 2020 budget
request includes $2.3 billion in basic and applied research,
which represents a key enabler to ensure the Department of the
Navy maintains and expands its comparative overmatch against
our competitors. It maintains our strong commitment to science
and technology to further our advantage for our sailors and
Marines.
I would like to thank the subcommittee and Congress for
passing the fiscal year 2019 budget on time. On-time receipt of
the full budget allowed us to expedite the delivery of
technology, lethality, and readiness to our sailors and Marines
while achieving cost savings through efficient contracting. It
also helped us accelerate our contracts through a broad network
of science and technology partners in the ecosystem, including
academia and small businesses, all of whom suffer
disproportionately when we go into a continuing resolution
period.
I would also like to thank Congress for the wide range of
science and technologies authorities it has provided the
Department of the Navy. Authorities such as section 233 have
allowed us to reduce our contracting timeline by over 27
percent in the first year alone and saved us over 154,000
processing days.
Section 219 authorities have allowed us to invest an
additional $250 million annually in science and technology
workforce development programs, basic and applied research,
technology transition, and facility revitalization. These
authorities are remarkable and are really making a difference
to ensure we can both recapitalize our capital assets as well
as focus on our priority, which are our people.
For the 18th year in a row, the Navy has led all government
agencies in the number of patents, thanks largely to these
authorities.
As we continue to leverage these authorities and increase
our iteration speed, we are also executing innovative and
sustainable business and architectural strategies so that the
discoveries made in S&T have a quick, fast lane to get deployed
to the field. Ensuring this clear fast lane from discovery to
deployment allows us to harness the amazing science and
technology discoveries into rapidly fielded capabilities so we
can maintain and grow our advantage.
Winning in a great competition requires us to maximize all
the assets we have and derive the most value we can from the
taxpayers' dollars. I would like to recognize the strong
collaboration and teamwork we have achieved across the services
and with Dr. Griffin. We are working very closely together,
learning from each other, removing redundancies, and allowing
us to accelerate capabilities to the field for all of our
services.
Thanks for the strong support this subcommittee has always
provided our sailors and Marines. And thanks for the
opportunity to appear before you today. I look forward to
answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Geurts can be found in
the Appendix on page 60.]
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Secretary Geurts.
Dr. Roper, you are now recognized.
STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM B. ROPER, JR., ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
THE AIR FORCE FOR ACQUISITION, TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS,
DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
Secretary Roper. Chairman Langevin, Ranking Member
Stefanik, and members of the committee, thank you very much for
holding a hearing on this very important topic.
Mr. Chairman, you hit it on the head: Science and
technology needs to be more important to us if we are going to
keep the military edge that we have enjoyed from the last
century into this one.
I have prepared a written statement. I ask that it be
entered into the record, but I am just going to give some brief
oral remarks, if that is okay.
Mr. Langevin. Without objection.
Secretary Roper. Mr. Chairman, preparing for an S&T hearing
is really good for the soul. It gives you a chance to drill
down to what people are doing in our laboratories and in small
business work. It is amazing to see the broad array of ideas
that are being cultivated by our scientists and engineers. And
it makes you excited about what the future is going to be for
the Air Force.
A lot of the technology areas you know, hypersonics and
directed energy and space, we talk about these a lot, and they
are critically important to us. But it is fun to discover some
things you didn't know, like the Air Force is looking at bio-
inspired materials that will let us make sensors inspired by
geckos' ears, making them smaller and more compact or that we
are using centuries-old ideas about origami to make antennas
that can fold up and deploy in space, cool ideas that are being
developed across the country. And these are just a few of the
things that I enjoyed seeing in my prep.
Our science and technology budget is at $2.8 billion for
this year, up 6 percent from last. We certainly hope to do
better in the future, but this shows the commitment that the
Air Force has to maintaining investment in science and
technology so that the future Air Force remains dominant.
Our Secretary is conducting a full review of science and
technology in her 2030 study. We expect the results will be
announced in the next couple of weeks. But expect sweeping
reforms in how we address this critical part of the Air Force.
Everyone has hit in this opening part of the hearing the
most important thing we have to bring to this portfolio, and
that is a competitive mind-set. This is not broadcasting seeds
that we can't carefully tend. This must be the place where we
grow technologies that our future airmen and the services who
rely upon them will depend upon. We must treat it more
strategically and make each day count. We have to compete for
talent. And this subcommittee and Congress have given us the
authorities to do that, but we need to use them more
aggressively. Whether it is direct hire authority or direct
hire for STEM, enhanced pay authority, the Air Force has gotten
out of the starting blocks using them, but we need to fully use
the authority to make sure that our laboratories are staffed by
people that are world leading.
But we can't just compete inside our laboratory walls. We
need to get outside of them. We are part of a much broader
technology ecosystem. We are expanding our work with
universities, having fully embedded laboratory personnel
onsite, using the university as a place that conducts research
just as if it was part of a government facility. Universities
like Purdue have helped us on hypersonics, creating higher Mach
wind tunnels where we can do cutting-edge research.
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is working
with us on electronic warfare, and we are in discussions with
MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] on an AI center so
that we leverage the best that universities bring.
We have to acknowledge that the world is changing.
Technology is not being developed just inside of government
facilities. We have to understand that universities, as well as
commercial startups, play an increasingly larger role in this
ecosystem. We have focused very hard this year on making it
easy for tech innovators to work with us, lowering the
contracting time from months down to being able to have a
company pitch to us, approve their idea, put them on contract,
and pay them in less than 15 minutes. We have to have
competitive speed, given the competition for ideas in the
technology world.
But it is not just the kinds of technologies you may think
about--AI, bio--that [we are] are seeing. Small business can
now play an increasing role in high-end technology development.
One of our small businesses has been awarded the first X-plane
designation ever given to a small business. The X-60 Alpha,
which is a reusable hypersonic test bed, will allow us to
collect better data to infuse back into fundamental research.
Pretty awesome a small business is doing that for us.
We also have to compete ideas. There are so many
technologies that could change the future of military: AI,
autonomy, quantum, directed energy. So we need to make sure
ideas are not just peanut-buttered across everything but are
strategically placed on capability areas that will be war-
winning. We have created new programs, like SkyBorg, to make
artificial intelligence real, not just a laboratory
demonstration, fieldable, usable AI.
We are working on collaborative weapons so that we get the
benefit of networking that so many of us experience in our
everyday lives, and there are many more examples that I am sure
we will discuss today.
Ranking Member Stefanik, you used a really good word in
your opening remarks. You used the word ``ecosystem.'' And it
is a nice-sounding word, but if you think about it, an
ecosystem is not a very hospitable place. It is people
competing for scarce resources that can be used by all. We need
to think of ourselves as part of an ecosystem where we can play
a valuable role to universities and businesses and government
facilities in this country but where those same technologies
can be enjoyed by our adversaries and used against it. And it
has to be our sacred duty to plant seeds in today's budget that
will be reaped by those that come after us. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Roper can be found in
the Appendix on page 71.]
Mr. Langevin. I thank all of our witnesses.
We are going to questions now and then followed by the
closed session.
My first question is for all of our witnesses, the
Department has advertised that this is the largest R&D--RDT&E
budget in some time. And yet the S&T request that we are here
to talk about today, which includes activities in 6.1, 6.2, and
6.3, has effectively decreased in buying power. And S&T is seen
as the source of future innovations essential to the United
States ability to compete with near-peer adversaries. If
adjusted to account for inflation and highly skilled labor cost
escalation for scientists and engineers, then if you look at
it, the Department has been on an overall downward trend in its
S&T budget.
Conversely, the Department's fiscal year 2020 request for
advanced component development and prototype, 6.4, funding,
grew by $5.8 billion from the fiscal year 2019 request or 27
percent. So I am certainly a supporter of prototyping and risk-
taking, but we also need to invest in our future science and
technology. So, given the new challenges on the horizon and the
promise of powerful emerging technologies, why should we be
effectively decreasing investments in DOD S&T?
Dr. Griffin, let's start with you. I would like to hear a
comment from all of our witnesses.
Secretary Griffin. Yes, sir, thank you.
Well, I cannot argue with your figures. You are, of course,
correct. I will note that many of the scientists and engineers
to whom you refer can work across the boundaries of 6.1, 6.2,
6.3, 6.4. So I don't think our individual talent pool is at
risk because of the prioritization that we are doing. And if
you look at RDT&E as a global enterprise from 6.1 through 6.7,
we are actually up--across base and OCO [overseas contingency
operations], we are up 9 percent. And across base alone, we are
up over 8 percent. So I prefer--I do very much understand your
point about the difference between S&T and prototyping. I do
tend to look at the RDT&E enterprise as a continuous stream.
And in that sense, we are up. So I will stop there and let my
colleagues comment as well.
Mr. Langevin. Okay. Dr. Jette.
Secretary Jette. Mr. Chairman, our objective in the Army
has been to make sure that we have taken the money for 6.1,
6.2, and 6.3 and adjusted it for inflation and inflationary
factors and salaries and those types of things and then try to
make sure we keep that at a level playing field.
We sacrificed in our 6.4 for some time, and we have now
increased, and that is one of reasons our 6.4 budget has
significantly increased.
One of the things we are doing to try to get at the issue
of salary disparities between some of the greater talent that
we might want to reach out to, is to leverage some of the
authorities that you have given us, pay banding, renewable
term, educational partnerships for individuals that may not
want to leave full time their university institutions. So,
rather than trying to purely obtain the talent on a full-time
basis, we can leverage other methodologies. So we think at this
point that we have been able to structure our overall budget to
keep ahead of the loss of talent. In fact, we think we have a
good talent pool going and particularly with some of our
outreach programs over 240 universities that we work with, we
think that we are also bringing in a number of interns to and
direct hires. It appears at this point, though, I would say,
our talent pool is pretty stable and sound.
Mr. Langevin. Secretary Geurts.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir, absolutely a critical point. I
guess we are attacking the overall issue from a couple of
different directions, which I will kind of cover in top level
and can certainly follow up in more detail, either in questions
or in followup. The first thing is, how do we maximize the
investment that we have made? So $2.3 billion, while not a huge
amount of growth from previous years, is still a lot of money.
And so my first goal is to maximize the return in value we get
for that funding. That is through getting rid of inefficiencies
in our processing, making sure we have those funds focused on
the most critical needs for the Navy and the Marine Corps and
for the Department of Defense.
The second piece is, are we really maximizing the tools we
have? Partnership intermediary agreements, cooperative
agreements, other tools to bring in folks to the ecosystem. So,
if I look at our numbers just in terms of CRADAs [cooperative
research and development agreements], last year we had 478; we
already have 266 new ones. So we are continuing to see that
raise increase. Use of OTAs have gone from 8 to 42 in one year.
The third element is creating a clear path from discovery
all the way through to deployment. And so we have reorganized
the back end of our R&D portfolio to really focus on two
things: future naval prototypes, which is a path in terms of
getting that S&T pipeline into the programs of record so we can
get it into our acquisition programs; and then also innovative
naval prototypes, things where we don't have requirements yet,
ideas, things we want to challenge, take high risk, and move
that into the system. Creating those pipelines then really
leverages that 6.1, 6.2 and these other agreements with
industry to give them a clear path to the sailors or Marines
that we have.
And, finally, it is boldly experimenting, boldly and
relentlessly experimenting, and allowing that basic research,
that applied research to get in the hands of a sailor or Marine
as quickly as possible. Because many times we find what they
designed the technology for may not be ultimately where it has
the most value into our ecosystem and vice versa. We may not
have asked for something until we see it. That is how we are
really trying to get at maximizing that investment. As we
maximize that investment, we will continue to look at adding
more as the years come.
Mr. Langevin. Mr. Roper.
Secretary Roper. Mr. Chairman, I think the Air Force has
really tried to approach the valley of death issue with this
budget. We have had great technology work going on for--since
our inception, going on for decades. But in the collapse of the
Soviet Union, we lost a peer adversary that forced, as a
mandate, to keep competitive edge, that forced high-tech
technology into new systems. And with prototyping funding going
down year after year, we got accustomed to there being
significant funding in S&T and then significant funding in
program of record. So you are seeing the Air Force put a lot of
its investments this year into the 6.4 prototyping fund, it's
$1.64 billion to try to get things like hypersonics, directed
energy, AI out of the laboratories into the field, into
operators' hands where they can be used. We hope that once
there are programs of record in place, that creates a natural
draw and demand from the S&T enterprise to keep modernizing,
keep pushing the envelope of technologies because there is a
place to transition it in field for warfighter.
I expect that over time, as we get a lot of the mature
technologies out of our research lab--I would also like to
recognize a lot of our important innovation partners, DARPA,
SCO [Strategic Capabilities Office], and DIU [Defense
Innovation Unit], are here today. We take the best ideas where
we find them. And we want to make sure that we have the funding
in place for prototyping to make sure that we can apply them to
mission. But I expect that, over time, we will start
rightsizing across the whole RDT&E portfolio to make sure that
we have optimized for that transition. We can't transition 20
programs a year. We have to determine the number that makes
sense for us to keep our dominant edge and then rightsize the
rest of the S&T underneath it. But the focus for me this year
is going to be transition rate. It is time to create some new,
new programs in the Air Force. I am hoping we will do that in
our 2021 budget request.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you all. I just hope we will not lose
sight of striking the balance of optimization. I don't want to
do one at the expense of the other, especially when we are
talking about developing those leap-ahead, next-generation
technologies. We can't eat our seed corn. We have got to make
sure that we are planning for the future and properly investing
in the R&D part, along with the prototype and getting things
out of the lab and into the warfighters' hands as soon as
possible.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, concurrency in
policy and tech development is critical to successful
employment capabilities and being a global leader and
establishing norms for use of technologies, yet too often
policy lags behind tech development. So, to the witnesses, in
your view, what actions does the Department need to take to
promote currency in policy employment concepts, training,
doctrine, and other matters as technology matures?
Secretary Griffin. I guess I can start. One of the things
we are trying to do on the research and engineering side of the
house is to work more closely with the Joint Staff as they plan
execution concepts. They need to know what technologies could
be available if they want them. And we need to know how they
would like to fight, if we could give it to them. We have made
I would say very significant efforts in improving regularizing,
increasing the frequency of those interactions so that, as we
plan the future force, we know what the people who have to
fight want and they know what we have a chance to give them.
Working very aggressively on that.
To that end in fact, just to pick one arena, in that of
directed energy, we recently started a program to put a high-
energy laser on a littoral combat ship. Initially, this will be
a demonstration. If it works out well, we can take it to the
next step, but it is time to get these systems out of
laboratory and into the field, and that is where we are going.
Mr. Langevin. Anybody else care to comment.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir, I think the way we are
approaching it, to Dr. Griffin's point, and my experience at
SOCOM [Special Operations Command], the faster you can get
something in the hands of the warfighter, the faster you can
understand where you have the real practical policy
implications and start working our way through that. So efforts
like our Sea Hunter, where we autonomously transited from San
Diego to Pearl Harbor and back with a DARPA-developed product
that the Navy is now working on, is a great example. As Dr.
Griffin said, getting lasers, we are putting 150 kilowatt laser
on the Portland this summer. Get it out in the hands of the
fleet. Let them experiment. The two other tools we use are
innovative naval prototypes. Those are things that we do not
yet have a requirement for but looked like they may be
disruptive technologies. And we found the faster we can put
them out in the field, the faster we understand where those
policy pieces we need to work on or where the technology
disruption opportunities are, and that is kind of our focus.
Secretary Jette. Mr. Chairman, we have done a number of
things to try and address the issues that you have raised. One
of them is a policy that we put in place, it is commonly known
amongst us as the 60/40, 80/20 policy. It gives us the freedom
where you take 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 money, in the past, often you
tried to find a way to link all your funding to something that
you are going to do later. The later in the 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, you
ended up needing a transition agreement; very formal process,
so formal that what it did was it constrained our innovation,
particularly at the lower levels and our ability to look at
things that might not be so clearly tied to a current
operational need. In our current approach, things like 6.1
money is 100 percent optional. Just give me a good reason why
we are doing it that might have military utility. You don't
have to tie it to an existing program or a defined need. The
same type of approach for 6.2 is somewhere in the ballpark of
50/50; 6.3 starts to get it closer to 80/20; and 6.4 tends to
be something that we are trying to get focused against a
particular outcome. This way, it gives us a little bit of
structure but assures freedom on the part of developers to be
able to think outside the box and outside of the current
requirements.
We have done a couple of other things that I think are
important. One of them is we have the Army's established Army
Futures Command. The objective of the Army's Futures Command is
to do a from stem-to-stern integration of the concepts. I have
got operational concepts. I am looking for technologies, and I
want the technology development community to then influence the
operational concepts. So it is a spiral type of approach to
coming up with new directions that we need to focus. And then
when we do develop the new technology, how best we apply that?
How do we develop the doc on the TTPs [tactics, techniques, and
procedures], and who exactly does that? So that it is not that
we just give them a new item--I have fielded many things.
Sometimes you give it to somebody, they do not have a real good
idea of how to use it; it is no better than what they had and
maybe even worse.
We have instituted the Rapid Capabilities and Critical
Technology Office to try and accelerate, particularly in the
area of AI, hypersonics, space, directed energy, our SAP
[Special Access Program] programs to get them more under
control, make sure that we know that they are focused and make
sure that they are properly resourced. And we put--you
mentioned in your discussion, how do we increase the
willingness to take risk? Organizationally, people are not
particularly fond of taking risk, not in the government. It is
just not one of those things that is core characteristics. So
we establish a policy where we require people to put stage
gates in. This comes out of something that I used in the
commercial sector in a lot of work that I did. You move your
highest risk to the front; fail early if you need to. Highest
risk to the front, and then you have off-ramps at various stage
gates. And if you run into a place where you found that
something is not going the way you want, you can all jointly
make a decision: Was it a true failure, or do we have to adjust
our target? So we are putting a number of these different
pieces in place to try and see if we can get at this overall
methodology by which we attack these technology problems.
Mr. Langevin. Well, I think the doctrine policy is just as
important in many ways as developing capabilities as well,
making sure they are responsibly used.
So, unless you have anything to add, Dr. Roper.
Secretary Roper. I think most of my colleagues covered it,
Mr. Chairman. I will just say briefly, in addition to trying to
tackle the Valley of Death issue and create a gradient from the
lab to the field, we are working hard to turn ourselves inside
out. We have to determine the right way to have an S&T
enterprise in a global ecosystem. So we have made great strides
over the last year, increasing our work with universities and
with small businesses. But we are really focused just inside of
this Nation, and we should. We have got cutting-edge companies,
the best in the world here, but it is going to be increasingly
important to think about, how do we play a role in the global
ecosystem as technology is developed everywhere? It can be
developed by a company in country X; it can be used by anyone.
And so we really need to focus on time to market, not
technology exclusivity anymore. And that is going to mean
thinking differently about how we work with universities and
companies and individuals that are not in the U.S. And we are
hoping to earn our way to those problems by being able to work
very well with the innovators that we have in the U.S.
Mr. Langevin. Okay. Thank you.
I have additional questions that I will ask before we go to
closed session on the condition of the labs. Also, I want to
talk about authorities that may be going underutilized.
With that, I hold those and turn to the ranking member for
questions--her questions.
Ms. Stefanik. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am going keep my questions to 5 minutes so we can get to
other members.
My first question is for Dr. Griffin. Last year, when you
testified before this committee, you highlighted that there
were over 500 separate artificial intelligence projects within
the DOD. Fast forward about a year, the Department has
undergone a significant realignment of its AI portfolio with
the establishment of the JAIC, the Joint AI Center, which
reports to the CIO [Chief Information Officer]. How has your
outlook on AI changed over this time period? Do you have a
better understanding on what AI projects are underway? And what
more can we do to accelerate the implementation and deployment
of AI capability to the warfighter?
Secretary Griffin. The count I offered in that hearing was
based on an inventory we took at the time. I have no reason to
disagree with it. I think the point of that comment is that it
shows how broadly distributed the possible applications of AI
and intriguing research areas exist. And we are trying to take
full advantage of those.
Ms. Stefanik. Let me just clarify my question. It wasn't to
say, is that the number still today? It was more to say that we
shifted from having a lot of different programs to a more
comprehensive approach and a joint approach in terms of, how do
we learn the lessons across DOD and centralize it in a hub-and-
spoke model through the JAIC?
Secretary Griffin. Okay. Thank you. That helps. The Joint
AI Center under the CIO has as its task the taking of research
efforts which have proven to be successful or look like they
could be successful in the near term and apply them to urgent
or existing--I won't say just warfighter, but urgent or
existing challenges of the operational community, everything
from reforming business practices to pulling targets out of ISR
[intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] data to
signals out of clutter, et cetera.
The other focus--and I believe that Lieutenant General
Shanahan, who heads that activity, working for Mr. Deasy, our
CIO, I think he is all in. I think the people in the center are
all in on doing this.
On the research and engineering side, we have the task of
bringing those tools into being. The tools that the JAIC is
using are things which have emerged from quite literally 60
years of AI work, mostly at DARPA. Now, as it happens, when you
move into the closed session, you have those experts with you,
and I am not one of those. I would urge you to quiz them.
At the R&E level, we are trying to make sure we are
covering the whole field, from research to today's
applications. So that is one of the modernization priorities in
the National Defense Strategy. As you may know, my deputy, Dr.
Porter, and I have organized the research and engineering
establishment around those priorities. The core of our
organization is an assistant director for each of the NDS
modernization priorities. We regard AI as so critical that the
Assistant Director for AI will report directly to the two of us
as opposed to going through other channels in the organization.
Again, the goal is so that we have right in our front office a
holistic knowledge of what is going on in AI across the
Department but more importantly, across the entire field
because the U.S. Government expenditures in research on AI,
while extraordinarily significant, are by no means the total
sweep of such expenditures. Let me stop there.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you for that. I have 1 minute left.
Mr. Geurts, shifting gears here, additive manufacturing is
increasingly becoming an important transformative capability
across the services. And the DOD recently announced the
investment of $60 million of RDT&E in the Digital Manufacturing
and Design Innovation Institute to continue to transform
digital manufacturing. I believe strongly that additional
investment in additive and digital manufacturing will
strengthen our domestic industrial base and therefore bolster
our supply chain resiliency and accountability. I have a great
example of the leader in my district, Norsk Titanium. Can you
talk about how additive manufacturing is transforming logistics
across the Department and how we can leverage those business
leaders across the country who are investing in additive
manufacturing?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. I will give you a couple of
top level remarks and then happy to discuss it in more detail.
It is transforming us both--you know, we have an expeditionary
force. We are distributed all around the world. We have ships
far away from logistics bases. We have Marines in expeditionary
bases. So we have fully leveraged that to get after this
logistic--we have 3D printers on ships. We have 3D printers
with our Marines. We are 3D printing cement bridges. We are
employing this across our entire ecosystem. And we have really,
I would say, spent a lot of time on how to get certified parts
and describe what parts and what families of parts can be
printed locally with 3D printers and working through that whole
piece very aggressively.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you. I want to abide by my time. I will
follow up that in the second round. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Langevin. Mr. Larsen is now recognized.
Mr. Larsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Griffin, I took your advice and entered the key words
``ITAR [international traffic in arms regulations] free
satellite'' in my favorite internet search engine, and I found
the synonym ``knowledge-free policy.'' And that gets to your
point in your testimony about the U.S. removing itself from the
marketplace. By withdrawing much of our own industrial base in
the global market, we restrict the competitive environment for
our own domestic firms, which over time has the effect of
eroding technological advantage we want to protect. That does--
those are your words from your testimony. It seems that might
apply to the people side as well. And I want to get your views
on how we should approach contracting with universities or with
companies, as we heard contracting with companies, even if they
are in the United States that either have researchers or owners
or entrepreneurs who are either from competitor countries or
maybe are even second generation in the U.S. What is the
approach we ought to be taking based on your idea that limiting
doesn't necessarily get you the policy result you want?
Secretary Griffin. Sir, that is a subject very dear to my
heart, as you saw in my testimony. And I--we have only a few
minutes to cover it. I will do my best.
Mr. Larsen. You have less than that because I have another
question.
Secretary Griffin. Yes, sir. We have to strike a balance
between short-term security needs and long-term security needs.
The United States got where it got, which is the world's global
power still, by unfettering our innovators by being a place
where other innovators wanted to come and stay, by allowing the
free movement of capital and ideas to the maximum extent
possible. There are absolutely things we need to protect. I am
not naive about that. I am in fact paid to know what our
adversaries are doing. With that said, we need to define the
smallest possible areas around which we erect high walls in our
industrial base, and for the rest of it, we need to let the
competitors compete in the belief that our Nation will prevail.
Mr. Larsen. So, if I can stop you there, we tend to apply
that principle to things.
Secretary Griffin. It applies equally to people, sir. It
applies to people. I just the other day signed out a clarifying
memo on how we are going to handle grants from the DOD, what we
are going to know about the people who are working on those
grants. That is a not insignificant topic, but our goal has got
to be to attract the best and the brightest to our country and
to keep them here.
Mr. Larsen. You have laid out in one of your paragraphs in
your testimony to address a leakage of leading-edge IP from our
academic institutions, we need more counterintelligence
resources; we need to educate our universities of threats of
industrial espionage and assure they employ their best
practices to protect sensitive research. Does the DOD have a
specific program to educate universities and other elements of
academia on best practices on counterintelligence? Are we
active in that regard?
Secretary Griffin. We are working that as I sit here, sir.
We have a DOD-wide protection--protecting critical technology
task force led by Air Force Major General Murphy. My piece of
the organization is the executive secretariat for that. We have
been and will continue to have conversations with university
administration about what to do and what to protect and how to
go about it.
While I am in favor of the maximum--of fostering the
maximum amount of competition we can arrange because of the
benefits I believe it brings, I equally believe that we should
be very aggressive in searching out and punishing IP theft and
espionage. In fact, if we stop trying to protect every single
thing we might want to protect, that will allow us the
resources to go after those individuals and those efforts which
are targeting our IP.
Mr. Larsen. So you are currently not taking a one-size-
fits-all or an approach where you are cutting off universities
and research 100 percent?
Secretary Griffin. We are not doing that, nor do we want to
cut off foreign student enrollments 100 percent. We want to
look for the bad actors and deal with them as bad actors. But
withdrawing ourselves from the globally competitive marketplace
will in the long run damage rather than aid U.S. national
security, in my opinion, sir.
Mr. Larsen. Well, it happens to be my opinion as well. It
may not be the majority opinion, but it is----
Secretary Griffin. I have never been accused of worrying
over much about that, sir.
Mr. Larsen. Neither have I. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Larsen.
Mr. Banks is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Banks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman, for holding this important hearing as well.
Look, with more and more of our R&D being led by the
commercial sector, the challenge is integrating commercial
state-of-the-art capabilities into national security systems,
as all of you have already said.
The Department's efforts in microelectronics is a perfect
example. The Department's microelectronics initiative for
national security and economic competitiveness and the Trusted
and Assured Microelectronics programs are focused on developing
a trusted supply chain of state of the art for our critical
national security programs.
As you know, the Indiana ecosystem is a significant
contributor to that. Our Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane and
universities like Purdue, who Dr. Roper mentioned a little bit
ago, Notre Dame, and Indiana University all support these
efforts.
So, with that, Dr. Griffin, going forward, what do you see
as the role of DOD in supporting development of technology
areas with national, commercial, and economic impact like
microelectronics and 5G?
Secretary Griffin. DOD has played, has a continuingly
critical role to play in those developments. I have been out to
Crane within the last 10 or 11 months. I forget exactly what
date. I was blown away by the progress they are making on
things that we can't talk about in this hearing. If you pursue
that same line of questioning in the closed hearing of DARPA, I
think they might offer you some exciting information.
But, broadly speaking, the DOD has a critical role to play.
I--however, I do have to put on the table that the issue is
broader than just trusted pieces of hardware. I am going to be
careful to restrict my comments to unclassified, those of an
unclassified nature, and so those who have heard me offer these
examples before will be rolling their eyes and saying, ``There
he goes again,'' but these are unclassified examples and they
are relevant.
So I think 2 years ago everybody saw--most people saw an
extensive treatment in Wired Magazine of a collateral damage
caused by a Russian cyber attack on the Ukraine which spilled
over into the Maersk shipping line, and that globally important
company came within one computer of losing all of their
records. That one computer happened to be located in Africa and
had been offline because of a multiday power failure.
So Maersk was able to reboot its system because there was
one computer in their whole network that had not been
contaminated. Last summer, I think everybody saw the front page
news from the FBI: Please turn off your router because it is
necessary in order to reboot the software to get the Russians
off your network.
We have talked to our--I mentioned Dr. Porter earlier. She
recently had occasion to talk to some of our Eastern European
allies, relatively newly freed from Russian domination. They
have Russians all over their network. What is my point here?
The Russians aren't making and selling any hardware. Nobody is
buying any Russian microelectronics, and they are still a
network threat everywhere we look. So it is about the hardware.
Mr. Banks. Let me move on there. We can unpack that more in
a different setting.
Secretary Griffin. Yes, sir.
Mr. Banks. According to an Axios article published today,
Chinese telecom giant Huawei is poised to claim close to half
of the 5G market. AT&T CEO [chief executive officer] Randall
Stephenson also stated about Huawei, quote, ``You can't
separate national security from competitiveness and
innovation,'' end quote.
What portion of the 5G market do U.S. companies currently
have?
Secretary Griffin. I don't know, sir. I can take that for
the record. 5G is in its infancy. It is not--it is deployed, I
think, in South Korea and on the Facebook campus, but it is not
a finished product.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 96.]
Mr. Banks. Okay. Your office is managing the DOD 5G effort,
correct?
Secretary Griffin. We are developing the DOD 5G strategy,
yes, sir.
Mr. Banks. So how do you synchronize all of our DOD efforts
in a space that is primarily commercial?
Secretary Griffin. That, of course, is the key question.
And so we see as our function the enabling of commercial
enterprises to help them compete in what is a worldwide
competition. But our companies view themselves as competing
with other companies irrespective of where they are located.
They don't view themselves as being in a country-to-country
competition.
Huawei is an established competitor at this point. AT&T and
Verizon and Sprint and T-Mobile and other companies do and will
want to compete successfully with them, and I think by
collaborating with them in specific areas, we can help them do
that.
Mr. Banks. Thank you very much. My time is expired.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Banks.
Mr. Kim is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Kim. Hi. Thank you so much for taking the time to come
out and talk with us. This is very enlightening to me to hear
your different perspectives.
And it is kind of similar, going off of the last line of
questioning here, for me, as I am approaching this, and we are
understanding that even the title of this hearing, we are
talking about the technological edge, and each and every one of
you have talked about it in that context as well, and we know
that overhanging everything you are talking about is this
discussion about near peers and Russia and China and others in
terms of where they are at.
So, from my perspective here, I want to tell you that it is
hard for me to understand our budgeting and the work that you
are doing if it is--if it were at the right pacing and the
right levels without understanding, you know, where that stands
vis-a-vis that competitive edge.
You know, Dr. Roper, I think I really enjoyed how you
crystallized it in a couple different frames here, and I wanted
to just dive into that. You were talking about that competitive
mindset, which includes, you know, the staffing competing for
the talent. You talked about the competitive speed, including,
you know, the speed with which we get--bring things to the
warfighter, and then also that competitive ideas that make sure
that we are on that edge.
So I guess I would like to start with you and just get a
sense, with those three competitive, you know, categories,
should we say, what is your assessment of how we stack up
against our--the near peers, China and Russia, that is
overhanging a lot of the discussion that we have today? You
know, are we ahead? Are we keeping pace? Do we have some
catching up to do? It will help provide me with some context as
I am trying to assess the budget levels that we are talking
about.
Secretary Roper. Congressman, I will keep comments at a
high level to not go into details we shouldn't discuss openly.
I am comfortable with where we are now but not comfortable
with the trend. So China has made significant advances in
innovation and technology, but we are a country that has been
good at it for decades. The impediment that I see is that
technology development has transitioned from being mainly led
by the U.S. Government in the Cold War to now being developed
across the world.
So we have to change from being a technology inventor to a
technology user. And we are not going to quit inventing
technologies, but primarily we need to be able to ingest and
get new technologies to market and our systems.
So I think the paradigm we have got to adjust to is not
being a military that has technologies no one else has or will
have, but having technologies first and keep putting our hand
up on the baseball bat faster and faster than any other
opponent.
And I like our chances because we are an innovative country
with innovative universities and innovative companies to work
with. We need to get everyone connected. We need to get the
bureaucracy out of the way we do contracting and small business
work and get moving.
Mr. Kim. I appreciate that.
And, Dr. Griffin, I would like to go to you for your
assessment here, you know, in this unclassified setting, just
to get your overall impressions of where we are stacking up.
Secretary Griffin. Well, my overall impression is that
overall the United States is still the world's superpower, the
world leader in most technologies of interest to the Department
of Defense. There are some areas where we have some catching up
to do.
In a completely unclassified setting, I can say go to the
internet and look up the Chinese DF-26 [Dong-Feng 26]. It is a
hypersonic missile that, in an unclassified setting, you can
see that they refer to it as a carrier killer. It is
operational. It can range Guam from the Chinese mainland. That
is a concern. We don't have similar systems yet. We will.
On the other hand, it is often touted that, because China
is spending a huge amount of money on AI, that they are ahead
of us. They are not. Our best assessment is that, although we
are spending much less, we are spending it wisely and that this
is still an American province.
We cannot take comfort from parity. We cannot take comfort
from the fact that in some areas we are ahead. We have to
recognize--and I will give credit to Will for pointing out that
much of what is going on in the R&D world today is being done
commercially as opposed to being solely the province of the
national security community.
So, if it is in the commercial world, it is available to
everyone. So we need to take advantage of that. We need to do
it quickly. We need to keep up our own efforts on those areas
which are not commercial. There is no finish line here.
We will not maintain the national security capability that
has, broadly speaking, kept peace in the world for 75 years, we
won't reach a point where we own that and no one else can touch
it. There is no finish line. It is a work in progress and
always will be if we want to support peace and freedom in the
world.
Mr. Kim. Well, I appreciate that. I yield back.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Kim.
Mr. Waltz is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for coming out today.
Just to very quickly just share with you kind of, you know,
we all are influenced by how we approach a problem, right. Mine
is as a special operator, spent time in the Pentagon in the
building and then as a small business owner where it was
incredibly frankly painful to do business with the U.S.
Government, with probably about an additional 25 to 30 percent
of overhead just to handle all of the regulatory stuff
required.
So I have seen this movie from a couple of different
angles. A few questions. Our S&T ecosystem, I agree, is one of
the best in the world. We are great. We are fantastic as a
government at throwing money and resources at a problem.
And just as, you know, as I look across the DOD labs and
centers, dozens and dozens of these, as I look at what we have
tried to do in the last few years to fix the problems in those
labs by creating additional parts of the ecosystem, like SCO
and DIUx [Defense Innovation Unit Experimental], I mean, how
are you, Dr. Griffin, getting your mind around and getting it--
bureaucratically getting our arms around everything that we are
throwing at this problem, from the labs to SBIRs [Small
Business Innovation Research programs] to academia.
You have stuff that is not even mentioned like CTTSO
[Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office] at SOCOM, DARPA,
all of these centers, how the heck do you know what is going
on? How is that bubbling up? How are you synchronizing that
entire ecosystem?
Secretary Griffin. If I have somehow created the impression
that I know what is going on, please let me----
Mr. Waltz. I hope so.
Secretary Griffin [continuing]. Disabuse you of that
notion.
Mr. Waltz. Because you are asking for yet more resources to
throw at it.
Secretary Griffin. We are. And we are trying very hard to
make sure we do understand the overall landscape and that we
can address exactly the issues you have raised.
I have run two medium-sized companies, and one of them was
a GPS [Global Positioning System] company some years back, and
I sold--the company sold GPS navigation products to the U.S.
Government. We also made commercial, handheld GPS units, and we
also made survey equipment.
We did not allow the survey equipment folks and the
handheld commercial unit manufacturing folks to have anything
to do with the people who made missile guidance and navigation
stuff because they were contaminated by U.S. Government
processes, and if we allowed those two to mingle, the only
practical effect was going to be I was going to ruin my
commercial company.
Mr. Waltz. I totally understand the problem. Just----
Secretary Griffin. I get your point. So, to that end, sir,
we have recently expanded the entire Defense Innovation Unit,
its scope, and its authority, and its funding because the goal
of that group is to offer a low-impedance approach to pieces of
the commercial industrial base who could be but don't think of
themselves as defense contractors. That is one of the things we
are doing.
Mr. Waltz. Oh, that is great. So I would just leave with
you a few other questions. We just have to be very careful. We
do it across the government. It is not blaming anyone here.
Rather than fixing a problem within our government we throw
additional pieces on top of it. So, if you could just submit
for the record, it is still not clear to me, SCO, DIUx, the
labs and really what they are doing better and differently.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 96.]
Mr. Waltz. Dr. Roper, you mentioned in--the last time we
were here, you made a statement that I found interesting, and
frankly concerning, as someone who has been out on the ground
the last 20 years, that if we prepared for great power
competition, that we would therefore--you submitted we would
therefore be prepared and continue to be prepared for
counterterrorism, stability operations.
I think if that were the case, we wouldn't have found
ourselves scrambling post-9/11 things like JIEDDO [Joint
Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization], MRAP [Mine-
Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle], all of those other
technologies. And as someone who was on the ground, who we
didn't have what we needed, and often what we did, when it
arrived, we threw it in the CONEX [shipping container] because
it wasn't what we needed.
I am concerned, and I just would like to know, you know,
obviously building things that fly high, fast, and far is very
different than understanding culture, language. We have special
operators--I know you know this, Mr. Geurts--on the ground in
60 countries. What do we do in--we can't take our eye off that
ball, and I am concerned the pendulum is swinging too far.
Secretary Roper. Congressman, I appreciate you raising that
because I certainly don't want to imply that, in a generic,
abstract sense, that if you are designing for the high-end
threat, you are always good for the violent extremist threat.
But in this case, as we think about conflicts in the future,
potential conflicts in Europe or in Asia, by designing----
Mr. Waltz. Keep in mind, we are still in these conflicts.
Secretary Roper. Absolutely.
Mr. Waltz. As much as people would like to wish them away,
and a lot of people in this town would, we are still there.
Secretary Roper. Absolutely.
And, Mr. Chairman, I will ask just your forbearance to
answer the Congressman's question, if you wouldn't mind. Thank
you, sir.
Mr. Langevin. Just briefly.
Secretary Roper. So, in one case, to give you an example,
we are working on the advanced battle management system, which
is to provide support to Marines and soldiers that are on the
ground, similar to what JSTARS [Joint Surveillance Target
Attack Radar System] does today. We are designing that to be
able to go into areas where things are going to try to contest
our ability to operate there, but we are mindful that we need
that system to also be able to go into the Middle East and
Africa to do mission today.
So we are very mindful. If we design for the high-end
threat, there has to be an offshoot for the uncontested
environment. So my statement is a forward-looking statement,
not a rearward-looking one. So I appreciate you asking that
question, sir.
Mr. Waltz. Thank you.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Waltz.
Ms. Houlahan is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for coming here today. And I
think I join many of the other colleagues who came before me,
including our chair, in our concern about the fiscal year 2020
budget and the cuts that I think are in there for S&T and DOD
related research.
Many of the technologies that I worked on when I was Active
Duty in the military are now in the field today. We benefited
from investing 20, 30 years ago, and the warfighters of today
are reaping those rewards. And it is really important that we
continue that sort of effort to be forward thinking.
I have three questions, and so I will ask the three of
them. I believe they are mostly for Dr. Griffin, and the final
one is for you all together. The first one is on artificial
intelligence and recognizing the importance of the DOD
relationship with industry, with universities, and research and
development in the labs.
My first question has to do with what you are doing to make
sure that we align and better engage basic research in our
laboratories and universities in supporting the advancement of
AI technologies and initiatives. So that is my first question
which relates to AI.
My second one relates to advanced manufacturing. I was an
entrepreneur and an engineer, and about 15 years ago, I was in
the footwear industry working with 3D technology working to
innovate with printing footwear using 3D printers overseas.
And so, 15 years later, I am really intrigued by--still
intrigued by supply chain improvements and initiatives that
reduce costs for us, that increase our flexibility and our
supply chain and reduce our reliance on foreign manufacturing.
And so my second question has to do with what opportunities
exist in research and advanced manufacturing that can help
transform the DOD and the industrial base and what research
activities are underway to support them and to the degree that
you can answer that question in this setting.
And then my final question for the entire panel actually
has something to do with what the chairman introduced with,
which he said he was pleased to see the highest leadership here
today. And I also am pleased. I am very grateful to see you
here.
But what I also see is something different because what I
see is a bunch of White men, and what I am interested in is
what we are doing to make sure that we elevate people of color
and women to those highest positions of responsibility, STEM
and STEAM [science, technology, engineering, the arts, and
math] education. What sort of specific initiatives are we doing
within our communities to make sure that I, as a young engineer
and now as a Congresswoman, would like my children to be able
to see a different face in front of me when I next see people
here?
So that would be my final question, and I have about 2\1/2\
minutes if you wouldn't mind helping me with those answers.
Secretary Griffin. We are actively working in AI across the
entire industrial base, universities, laboratories, companies.
I mentioned earlier that the U.S. Government investment in AI
is not the biggest dog there. So we get that, and we are
working with them.
With regard to advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, all of
that, what are our options, I am going to have to that that for
the record. I am--as I like to say, sometimes I am a simple
aerospace engineer from a small town, and I am not up on 3D
printing and manufacturing, so we will take it for the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 94.]
Secretary Griffin. With regard to the leadership, the USD
R&E Deputy Under Secretary, Dr. Lisa Porter, as her name was
brought up by Ranking Member Stefanik in another context,
unlike me, she is not an old, White guy. And she is sitting at
home cringing now watching this because I would be happy to
have her being here instead of me. Trust me.
Ms. Houlahan. No. And I completely appreciate that. It is,
you know, making sure that it is more than just one person that
we can point out, you know, making sure that we have a pipeline
of people who look different than all--than, you know, who
reflect the face of our Nation.
Secretary Griffin. Well, Dr. Nikolich will be testifying in
the closed session. His deputy is Mary Miller, whom you, I
believe, know. She is a long-time employee.
The Assistant Director for Microelectronics is Nicole
Petta. Microelectronics was raised by Mr. Banks earlier. Nicole
ran a division for me in a company that I previously ran. I
managed to trick her into coming to the DOD to help.
Ms. Houlahan. Are there programs----
Secretary Griffin. I think we are doing everything we can.
Ms. Houlahan. Are there specific programs aside from
specific seats that--you know, maybe, Mr. Geurts, it seems as
though you might have an answer to that.
Thank you, sir, for your time.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. I am happy to bring you some
more of the details.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you.
Secretary Geurts. We have got a number of programs, our
Chief of Naval Research Deputy, senior civilian for our
research, is a female. But to your point, we are not going to
compete and win if we cannot fully leverage diversity in all of
its elements, and so we would be happy to talk about that. We
have got an Asia-Pacific partnership STEM program. We have got
a lot of other ones we can describe for you. It is such an
important topic.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you.
And if I could just have 10 more seconds, I just wanted to
conclude by asking if we could, in fact, get more information
about the 3D printing. And I would love to hear a little bit
more about how we are engaging the universities and R&D labs
more effectively for the record. That would be great. So thank
you so much for your time.
Secretary Griffin. Yes, ma'am. We will take that for the
record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 95.]
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Ms. Houlahan.
Mr. Brown is now recognized.
Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Starting on a lighter note, Dr. Jette, great to see you. I
will not report back to the Army that you used a naval metaphor
stem to stern to talk about the approach of the Army Futures
Command. Yeah, it is a joint force. I get it.
So my question, so I also have concerns that in the 6.1,
6.2, 6.3 categories where we seem to be, you know,
underfunding, that is where we are planting the seeds for the
military's future technology.
In the 6.4 funding area, advanced component development and
prototypes, let me ask you this: What percentage of that
prototyping is done inside established systems of acquisition
oversight for programs of record, and how much of that
prototyping is done outside of a program of record? Any
ballpark?
Secretary Griffin. I do not know. I will take that for the
record. If my colleagues happen to have that at their
fingertips, I welcome their answer.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 94.]
Mr. Brown. And the reason why I raise it, and I think, Dr.
Jette, you will be able to speak to it is because, you know, as
I understand it, the GAO [Government Accountability Office] has
expressed a concern that when it comes to prototyping--and they
were looking at the Army Futures Command--that a lot of
prototyping more and more seems to be done in a relevant
simulated environment versus in an operational environment. And
they expressed the concern that we are moving to weapons
systems development at a lower level of maturity. Does that
have to do with where the prototyping is taking place?
Secretary Jette. Congressman, I think that, first, to give
you an idea, I mean, the vast majority of our prototyping is
done in a controlled approach, so there is a program manager or
a lead integrator that is responsible for doing a prototype,
and probably on the order of 90/10.
So we try to make sure that, as we are doing prototyping,
it is not just willy-nilly and that it is also associated with
a program--a plan to some success if the program plan is, in
fact, successful.
Mr. Brown. So, given that it is not willy-nilly, you still
have the difference between a relevant simulated environment
and an operational environment. I am sure you are familiar with
the concern that the GAO expressed. And what is the response of
the Department of the Army?
Secretary Jette. Well, so I think there are two approaches
the Army is taking to that. First, we work very hard at trying
to make our simulated environment as close to those
characteristics of the actual environment we expect to see or
are seeing as possible.
And we have organizations specifically designed to do that,
and it is part of our test and evaluation master plans that we
put together: How close are we to what we need from the
operational perspective to make sure that we have actually
tested the equipment in an environment that is relevant? So
that is a significant part of how we come up with the test
plans.
The second piece is that we do an awful lot of prototyping.
The other 10 percent, in many ways--we have the Rapid Equipping
Force. We answer calls from theater for various types of
equipment. And those in many ways also form a variant of a
prototype because they are usually small sets, certain
missions, certain numbers. We go out. We study how they are
doing in the actual operational environment and then return
them.
I think the--probably the other one thing is we have a lot
of partners internationally, other countries who have various
issues in their environments, and we work closely with them to
try and see how they are using their innovative components
early.
Mr. Brown. Let me see if I can just get one more question
in. Is there an idea--and, again, I always go back to what the
GAO kind of recommends or highlights to Congress. And they are
recommending a high-level DOD-wide strategy that communicates
strategic goals and priorities and delineates roles and
responsibilities among DOD's prototyping and innovation
initiatives.
They claim that there is not such a strategy. What is your
response to that? Is there an overarching DOD-wide science and
technology strategy that delineates roles and responsibilities,
and is it in writing?
Secretary Griffin. I guess the best I could tell you, sir,
is that from their R&E under secretariat that is a work in
progress.
Mr. Brown. Okay.
Secretary Griffin. The National Defense Strategy has been
referred to here several times earlier. That is our guidebook
for what modernization should look like. We are trying very
hard across the Department to reorchestrate our development
portfolio in line with those modernization priorities.
We are judging new programs according to whether they fit
within this priority scheme or not, not that they can't be
funded even if they don't, but that that certainly is a
relevant fact. We are trying to realign our S&T and portfolio
and right through RDT&E to fit what it is that the Nation's
overall defense modernization strategy supports. We are not
done yet. The NDS was released 14 months ago.
Mr. Brown. And will that--and, Mr. Chairman, just one
followup.
The end result, will that be a work product? Will that be a
document that can be reviewed and evaluated?
Secretary Griffin. I think we will be able to put together
the end products from a number of these different areas and
bring them to you if you wish, sir. I don't believe we are--I
am not working on preparing one document which summarizes all
of it in one place.
Mr. Brown. Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Langevin. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Brown.
We are going to go into a brief second round, but I want to
start with a question for all of you. According to the 2017
report by the Defense Science Board, most lab directors feel
that they are unable to maintain the facilities and
infrastructure at a reasonable standard.
So I want to know, can each of you please discuss the state
of your research labs and how the budget addresses concerns
about maintaining the labs at the standard necessary to conduct
cutting-edge research.
Secretary Griffin. Chairman Langevin, I guess I will start.
We have had challenges in this area. When we get military
construction money it goes for a very wide range of priorities,
all of which are real, and only some of it goes to laboratories
and facilities.
So I have had occasion to see--in my 14, 13 months in the
job so far, I have had occasion to see quite a number of
facilities and laboratories which are in the process of being
upgraded. I have seen many more which need it, and it isn't
happening soon. I think I should stop there. It is a very
difficult problem. We don't have all the money for laboratory
and facilities upgrades that we would like. We are working on
it.
Mr. Langevin. We need to keep focused on that. We can't----
Secretary Griffin. I could not agree more, sir.
Mr. Langevin. Okay. Dr. Jette.
Secretary Jette. Mr. Chairman, this is an area of concern
certainly for the Army. If you just take a look at the
capitalization in the laboratory systems and the funding that
is directly applied to that, we have insufficient funding to
make sure that the labs remain up to date if that is the only
method by which we actually do so.
One of the benefits we have is you have given us
authorization in 2363 to tack 2 to 4 percent onto our research
and development efforts, take that money back in, and then
provide it to the lab directors to do upgrades and enhancements
that are necessary to keep the lab at a cutting edge.
We fully implemented that. It took a little bit to get it
past some cultural issues, but that, in fact, is working well
and helping us. We do have a number of MILCON [military
construction] projects, and we are I wouldn't say accelerating
but we are getting a few more per year.
Picatinny has $41 million in Explosive Ordnance Disposal
Technology Facility. Soldier Center at Natick has $44 million
in Human Research Engineering Lab. There is--Aviation & Missile
Center has a propulsion systems lab for $30 million in 2022.
ERDC [U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center] has,
in 2023, communications center for 14.8, and 2024, a risk
assessment lab for 30.
So we are trying to work with the labs to help them
identify specific things that we can get through the MILCON
process.
Mr. Langevin. Secretary Geurts.
Secretary Geurts. Sir, briefly, the average age of our
facilities in the labs is 61 years old. So the problem is real.
It is something we have been attacking. As Dr. Griffin said,
you are competing the average age of the Navy dry docks and
piers is 62 years. So, you know, there is certainly competition
for it.
I would like to thank the committee. You have given some
additional funds in 2018, $20 million, which allowed us to burn
back 25 percent of our backlog in minor MILCON, which was
really powerful for the labs, and we have taken full advantage
of that.
I do think there is more opportunity. We are looking at
both using some of the authorities, like the 219 authority, to
allow us to do some more without going through the former
MILCON process for some of the minor mods. There are probably
some opportunities to relook at that authority to see if there
is a little more flexibility.
And then, finally, we are looking at some new models, as
Representative Stefanik talked about the ecosystem. It is not
clear we have to wholly own every one of these facilities if
there is a way we can work with some of our partners and come
up with win-wins in terms of joint research facilities and
whatnot. So we are just on the front end of that. We are
looking at all the available means to take on this problem
because we will not stay relevant and attract talent if we
don't.
Mr. Langevin. Great.
Secretary Roper. Mr. Chairman, I will say briefly, I think
it will always be a systemic problem that modernization of
laboratories will have a difficult time competing against
MILCON that is for immediate readiness, a warfighter who needs
something done immediately.
So I am very appreciative of the authorities that this
committee and Congress writ large has given us to use RDT&E
funds to do minor modernization, minor MILCON, so the section
219 authority. We have been able to do modernizations at AFRL
[Air Force Research Laboratory], about $83 million worth that
would have never made the MILCON budget.
I believe these authorities are set to expire in the
future, in 2025, so I would ask to be able to work with you and
other members to either extend the authority or remove the cap
and potentially raise the threshold of funding we are able to
spend.
I think it makes sense for modernization of facilities that
do science and technology to be funded out of science and
technology work. The laboratory is much more than a building.
It is a factory for new ideas and technologies. So we should
have a different way of working with it. Thank you.
Mr. Langevin. All right. Thank you all.
So I am going to state this question, and then I would like
you--for the record, and then I would like to have you respond
to that one, this last one in writing.
But, Secretary Geurts, you have told us that the Navy is
leaning forward on fiscal year 2017 NDAA, section 233, which
allows each acquisition executive to waive policies and
guidance of the Science and Technology Reinvention
Laboratories, the STRLs, to allow for the development and
implementation of alternative and innovative methods for
effective management and operations in your laboratories,
warfare centers, and system centers.
Your letter from October 2018 mentioned that the Navy
implemented 12 management initiatives, including expanded
personnel authorities, revised contracting and procurement
thresholds and provided business process relief. To our
knowledge so far, you are the only service to use this
authority.
So, from you, I just wanted to ask, again, for the record,
what kinds of implementation have you already seen in your
STRLs with these authorities, and do you have suggestions on
how it and any of the authorities given can be improved to
facilitate quicker development and delivery of cutting-edge
technologies to the warfighter?
For Dr. Jette and Dr. Roper, I want to know, what is
preventing the Army and the Air Force from also taking
advantage of section 233 authorities?
And then, Dr. Griffin, for you, finally, what can you do to
better help and incentivize the services to use section 233 and
other authorities to improve lab management and operations?
Time doesn't permit for us to get to that--these right now, in
this session right here, but I want those for the record, if
you would please.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 93.]
Mr. Langevin. With that, I will turn to the ranking member
for final questions.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you.
I wanted to follow up on my first line of questioning, Mr.
Geurts, regarding additive manufacturing. You talked about the
Department's understanding of how transformative this is to
many of the challenges we face. Can you talk about how we can
leverage private sector additive manufacturers and use their
investments that they have made to benefit the Department?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. Just as a followup, we have
already declared thousands of parts as 3D printable, certified
for use. And so the first easy answer to that is then you go
for the first provider who can provide that part at the best
price, 3D printed, from wherever they live.
So I think the first item is getting the parts certified
for 3D printed, getting the specifications set for those, and
then allowing the marketplace to compete and build those parts
for us.
As I said, we are also working on the networking and the
R&D aspect of it. I am sorry the Representative left there. We
have got $23 million in our 2020 budget in R&D just for the
research and development of 3D printing technologies and $66
million across the FYDP [Future Years Defense Program]. A lot
of that is so we can network all of our 3D printed files
together, create models.
One of the challenges is how to certify a part where the 3D
printed technology that has been certified traditionally. That
is where that research is going. So those are two pretty close
ones. And then we are the executive agent for a 3D printing
center for the government, and we are using that as well to get
to practical ways to get that out.
And then I would comment that Dr. Jette's policies on
intellectual property and 3D also play into this.
Ms. Stefanik. Absolutely.
I also wanted to give Dr. Roper an opportunity to comment
because I know you have thought a lot about additive
manufacturing and 3D printing from your perspective. Did you
want to comment on my question?
Secretary Roper. Yes, ma'am. When you are waiting months,
sometimes years, for airplane parts, you think a lot about
different ways to make them. It is making a huge difference
already in the Air Force. We have certified broad swaths of
parts that can be printed and put on aircraft. We are trying to
go after certifying materials and machines so that even parts
we haven't thought about can be made and certified and get a de
facto air worthiness agreement.
We created an entire permanent executive officer, a three-
star that is responsible for bringing in innovation into
sustainment. That is 70 percent of our budget, and we are not
focusing innovation there. So now we are starting to do that.
They have transitioned 3D printing and additive
manufacturing and additive repair into our depots. They have
done other innovation and sustainment initiatives, like
predictive maintenance, which is AI applied to maintenance.
I think the thing I am seeing, Congresswoman, is that when
you are pushing the fundamental science and engineering, that
is something that is not being done in the broader ecosystem.
Companies are holding onto their tradecraft, and since we don't
own IP in the government, we are publishing everything we are
doing and are having companies come to us to try to apply
technologies that we have developed to their own individual
investments.
And I won't say the specific companies here, but I would be
happy to share with you offline. But companies that are working
on cutting-edge engines are coming to the Air Force to
determine how are we printing high-temperature materials. And
the reason that they know to come to us is that we publish our
results. So I think the government can play a huge catalyst
role in the broader ecosystem for additive just by driving the
fundamental technology.
And then, to Secretary Geurts' point, once we have our
processes and certifications in place, we should let the market
do its job, which is bring our prices down and get ultimate
readiness up to the warfighter.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you for that.
In my minute remaining, Dr. Griffin, I wanted to go back to
you. Shifting gears, I wanted to ask about 5G. You have tapped
your deputy, Dr. Lisa Porter, to spearhead the initiative in
your Department. And there has been a lot of public debate on
5G and what should be done to contain China's global influence
in this space but little coverage on what more we need to do
domestically to mature and deploy 5G technology.
Can you talk about your Department's approach when it comes
to 5G and specifically what we need to do to jump start our
technology to compete in the 5G space?
Secretary Griffin. Very briefly and we can--I am sorry. I
can answer very briefly, and we can take more for the record.
Yes, the R&E establishment in DOD has been assigned the
lead for developing a DOD strategy, and as you mentioned, Dr.
Porter has the baton for that.
What needs to be understood, despite all the hype, is that
5G is in its infancy everywhere in the world. It is in its
infancy. It encompasses both standards and hardware, and much
of that is hardware yet to be developed. The so-called Internet
of Things depends upon the routine use of much shorter
wavelengths, higher frequencies than is in common practice
today.
So there is a huge development challenge. There is a huge
infrastructure build-out challenge. We will need--in comparison
to, as a very rough number, 10,000 cell towers in the United
States today, we will need north of 10 million cell towers or
equivalent base stations. So there is an infrastructure build-
out challenge.
DOD and the U.S. Government broadly can be part of the
solution. We want to be. We think the part that we can play is
in the development of some of those fundamental technologies.
DARPA is the world leader in the development of millimeter wave
technologies, the kinds of frequencies and wavelengths that we
will need for 5G.
So the technology end is one piece of it. Another piece of
it is providing the testing ground, if you will, for how we are
going to actually build out and deploy some of these things.
Security is going to be--cybersecurity is going to be an
extremely important part of this, and DOD can't afford to use
any technology, no matter how attractive, if we can't make it
secure.
So offering to our developers, commercial developers,
government developers, whatever, offering them the geography
and the opportunities for experimentation, putting things into
practice, prototype systems, without the necessity of gaining
State, local, county permits to erect a tower, that could be
extremely powerful.
So, on those fronts, broadly speaking, I think is where our
ability to contribute lies. It does not--it emphatically does
not lie in having the DOD take custody of a national telecoms
build-out, infrastructure build-out. That is not the right
path.
Ms. Stefanik. I wanted to just add one comment. You talked
about how we can be and we want to be part of the innovation
and solution when it comes to 5G. I want to add a note that I
think we have to be when this is a global race for 5G
technology. And as you correctly point out, the security risks,
specifically the cybersecurity risks that come from 5G, it is
incredibly important that we have a strategy to mature and
deploy 5G technology that meets our security standards.
And, with that, I yield back.
Mr. Langevin. I thank the ranking member.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for your testimony
today. I ask that you follow up on the questions I posed at the
end, and other members may have questions that they will submit
for the record. And I ask you to try to get back us to with
those answers in a timely manner.
With that, thank you all for your testimony, the work that
you are doing.
This hearing stands in recess--adjourned, and now going
into the closed session.
[Whereupon, at 12:52 p.m., the subcommittee proceeded in
closed session.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 28, 2019
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 28, 2019
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[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
March 28, 2019
=======================================================================
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN
Secretary Griffin. First, I would like to thank this body for the
authorities granted which have been extremely useful for the Defense
Laboratories. These authorities have been implemented extensively
across the Services, particularly those affecting Personnel,
Infrastructure, and Technology Transfer. In the FY17 NDAA, Section 233
provides an opportunity for the Services to consider and approve
alternative and innovative methods which would provide eligible centers
more flexibility to manage and operate research and development
activities; facility management, construction and repair; business
operations; personnel management policies and practices; and intramural
and public outreach; as well as enable more rapid deployment of
warfighter capabilities. To date, 18 methods were approved by Assistant
Secretaries concerned (12 were approved for the Navy and 6 were
approved for the Air Force). The Army is currently proposing one method
for approval. The Military Departments expect to submit more
initiatives for approval as they continue to work on streamlining
internal departmental processes. The wider adoption of this authority
and others is not a case where incentives are lacking, but rather a
case where higher commands are prohibiting the use of the available
authorities. Section 211 of the FY17 NDAA formally established the
Laboratory Quality Enhancement Program (LQEP) which has facilitated the
use of the authorities to convening quarterly to review policies and
practices affecting the Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories
(STRLs). The panels for Personnel, Infrastructure, and Tech Transfer
created as a result are charged with reviewing and reinterpreting
existing statute and implementing regulations with emphasis on
component policies that present barriers to innovation. Military
Departments have used several authorities to fund minor MILCON projects
that have greatly impacted the laboratories. Over the last three fiscal
years, the Army has spent $211.2M; the Navy has spent $70.3M and the
Air Force has spent $78.2M on minor MILCON. Funding for these projects
was authorized by section 2363 (Mechanisms to Provide Funds for Defense
Labs for Research and Development of Technologies for Military
Missions) and section 2805d (Unspecified Minor MILCON). These
authorities are vital to maintaining and modernizing the laboratories
and warfare centers. [See page 30.]
Secretary Jette. The Army sees tremendous value in the pilot
program under the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act
Section 233. In June 2017, ASA(ALT) established a policy that enables
rapid adjudication of waivers submitted for the Section 233 program,
and provided a mechanism for all Army labs to implement the waiver
under the auspices of their command structure. Such an innovative
program has taken some time to instill in the organization. But we have
a significant number of pending waivers that are currently being
considered. [See page 30.]
Secretary Geurts. The Navy has implemented Section 233 of the FY
2017 NDAA in the following Navy Science and Technology Reinvention
Laboratories (STRLs) as part of the pilot: Naval Sea Systems Warfare
Centers; Naval Research Laboratory; Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft
Division; Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division; Naval Information
Warfare Center, Atlantic; Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific;
and Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center. The
Navy's implementation approach has been in phases so as to best
evaluate the impact. The first phase implemented 12 business
operations, contracting and facility management initiatives on November
16, 2017. The second phase has been comprised of initiatives in the
following focus areas: business operations, personnel management
policies and practices, and facility management construction and
repair.
The vetting of the initiatives with stakeholders is ongoing and
will be incrementally implemented in three sprints.
Sprint I approved 12 contracting and facility management
initiatives on March 5, 2019.
Sprint II will approve 10 Information Technology Purchase
Request and Authority to Operate and business process initiatives in
April 2019.
Sprint III to provide additional business process relief
is targeted for approval later in CY 2019.
The Navy has been looking at pilots in five focus areas: business
operations, contracting, personnel management policies and practices,
IT policies, and facility management construction and repair with
benefits resulting in a 30 percent decrease in contract processing
time, equivalent to 354,000 processing days saved. The Navy recommends
extending the sunset clause beyond FY 2022 to at least FY 2025. This
extension will allow time to incorporate lessons learned and to
investigate new opportunities. [See page 30.]
Secretary Roper. I greatly appreciate the authorities that Congress
has provided our Service laboratories over the last few years. The
Section 233 authority is a powerful tool for our laboratory commander
to remove barriers to innovation. I'm confident that we've worked
through our internal challenges and have developed the level of
advocacy we need to get proposals through the approval process. This
will definitely enable the Air Force Research Laboratory to take full
advantage of this authority. A new call for proposals recently went out
by the Air Force Research Laboratory. After a review by the Commander
of the Air Force Materiel Command, I look forward to seeing and
approving the proposals when they reach my desk and hope to do so this
year. [See page 30.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. BROWN
Secretary Griffin. From RPP: The Rapid Prototyping Program (RPP)
began in 2017 and is DDR&E(AC)'s only enduring prototyping program with
6.4 funds. Over these three years, 96% of RPP funding is associated
with Service/Agency programs. Additional details here:
FY 2017-2019 Total execution value $234.4M (FY17: $100M; FY18:
$45M; FY19: $89.4M)
Associated with Programs of Record: $223.9M/93% (FY17: $91.7M; FY18
$42.8M; FY19: $89.4M)
Not directly linked to a Program of Record: $10.5M/7% (FY17: $8.3
FY18: 2.2M; FY19: 0)
From RIF: 100% of the RIF program ($250M annually) is outside of a
Program of Record (POR). The purpose of RIF is to insert emerging
innovative technologies that DIRECTLY SUPPORT the National Defense
Strategy (NDS), Modernization Priorities, and Component goals into DOD
Programs of Record (POR). RIF leverages innovations from Phase II Small
Business Innovative Research (SBIR), defense laboratories and other
sources to enable PORs to insert new technology with minimal program
disruption.'' Since 2011 RIF has invested $1.8B in over 800 projects,
transitioning over 60% of successful projects into PORs, program
requirement documents, or other Agency programs.
From SCO: All of SCO's 6.4 work is similarly outside of PORs. SCO's
mission is to identify, analyze, and prototype new and disruptive
applications of existing and emerging systems, as well as near-term
technologies, to create operational strategic effects, specifically:
deterrence, power projection, cost imposition, surprise, and overmatch.
The resulting prototyping projects--motivated primarily by INDOPACOM
and EUCOM operational challenges--either transition to enhance existing
PORs (e.g., buy down risk, prove out new missions/capabilities) or
establish new PORs. [See page 26.]
______
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. HOULAHAN
Secretary Griffin. AI Efforts: The Department is moving across a
broad front to engage and align the numerous efforts of our
laboratories and agencies to increase our outreach to Universities for
their key contributions. Basic research investments in applied
mathematics will allow us to push the envelope on AI technology to
enable capabilities that do not currently exist. First, new applied
math methods might allow the Department to work with data sets that are
not well curated. In essence, new methods are required to take optimal
advantage of sparse data sets that are incomplete and noisy. Second,
better understanding of cognitive neuroscience and biological neural
nets may allow us to develop the next generation of AI that mimics the
human or animal brain. Finally, both of the above activities will allow
for the Department to generate AI that is more understandable to humans
for optimal human-machine teaming. In the months leading up to the
publication of our AI strategy in June 2018, the Department's research
laboratories and agencies such as DARPA, as well as the intelligence
community collaborated to forge a strategy. We have continued to
develop and strengthen our engagement by using our Communities of
Interest to host focused workshops on the impact of machine learning
and AI to areas including: autonomy; Command, Control, Communications,
Computers and Intelligence (C4I); and cyber. We have also reached out
to our Allies including the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan,
and Korea and found them ready to engage and align efforts in this key
area. Through our Basic Research Offices, we continue to reach out with
the Services and DARPA as part of the AI next campaign. We are also
engaging with some Universities through FFRDCs including the Software
Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon and MIT Lincoln Laboratory
where we are ramping up efforts. We are discussing with Universities
the key role they can play in strengthening discipline of ``AI
Engineering'', increasing the production of talented AI graduates, and
contributing new ideas that greatly improve our ability to trust and
understand AI systems. The Department is increasing scholarship
offerings for those pursuing AI studies. And the Services are reaching
out to Universities to establish new AI institutes.
Additive Manufacturing: DOD's research and development community
has multiple investments in advanced manufacturing under the
Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) Program. ManTech is authorized by
Section 2521 of Title 10, United States Code and is part of the
USD(R&E) portfolio. ManTech, as an investment program, began in 1956
and continues to this day with funding across USD(R&E), Army, Navy, Air
Force, Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), and Missile Defense Agency
(MDA). The other two funded investment programs in manufacturing are
the Defense Production Act Title III, and the Industrial Base Analysis
and Sustainment (IBAS) efforts, both managed by the Industrial Policy
Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition &
Sustainment. DOD uses these accounts to address issues with the
capability and capacity of our manufacturing industrial base. Within
USD R&E DOD ManTech programs invest in individual manufacturing
projects focused on bringing new manufacturing and production processes
and systems to acquisition program managers, thus helping to bridge the
gap between discovery and implementation of new capabilities for the
warfighter. Sample projects funded out of the USD(R&E) Program Element
include:
Cold Spray Additive Repair
High Temperature Engine Components (HighTEC)
Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) Inertial
Navigation System
Manufacturing of Carbon-Carbon Composites for Hypersonic
Applications (MOC3HA), and
Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers
The USD(R&E) ManTech investment uniquely supports the eight DOD
manufacturing innovation institutes. DOD established the Manufacturing
Innovation Institutes (MIIs) as public-private partnerships to address
critical manufacturing risks, boost manufacturing innovation for the
DOD, encourage re-development of US manufacturing capabilities, and
provide an integrated whole-of-sector approach in each of eight
technology-focused areas. To date, the DOD has invested over $600M to
establish MIIs for additive manufacturing; lightweight and modern
metals; digital manufacturing, design, and cybersecurity; integrated
photonics; flexible hybrid electronics; revolutionary fibers and
textiles; regenerative tissue manufacturing; and advanced robotics. DOD
funding for the MIIs has engendered more than $1.6B in additional
state, industry, and academic cost-share contributions that
substantially improve the DOD return on investment.
Since 2011, the DOD has invested $113.5 Million in research and
development projects for Additive Manufacturing, sometimes also
referred to as 3D Printing, in a public-private partnership with
America Makes, the national AM innovation institute to advance the
technology for DOD and the nation. Similar to 3DP, Additive
Manufacturing (AM) is an emerging technology based on building up
material using computer-controlled equipment to make sophisticated
parts and assemblies. AM technology is used in sustainment to
manufacture noncritical replacement parts in the field and support
activities resulting in increased readiness and reduced operational
problems on the front lines. AM enables the manufacturing of parts that
weigh less and perform their functions better than those made with
traditional subtractive techniques. DOD also established the Joint AM
Steering and Working Group to work to foster coordination and
collaboration between the Services and Defense Agencies. These groups
seek to maximize the application of additive manufacturing in support
of the warfighter and sustainers and promote AM-based designs where
beneficial. These groups are tasked to: develop a DOD AM vision;
disseminate information on DOD AM efforts throughout the Services and
Components; provide recommendations for a joint AM investment strategy;
identify and share AM best practices; and encourage joint approaches to
accelerate AM qualification and certification. [See page 25.]
Secretary Griffin. Since 2011, the DOD has invested $113.5 million
in research and development projects for Additive Manufacturing (AM),
sometimes also referred to as 3D Printing, in a public-private
partnership with America Makes, the national AM innovation institute to
advance the technology for DOD and the nation. Similar to 3DP, AM is an
emerging technology based on building up material using computer-
controlled equipment to make sophisticated parts and assemblies. AM
technology is used in sustainment to manufacture non-critical
replacement parts in the field and support activities resulting in
increased readiness and reduced operational problems on the front
lines. AM enables the manufacturing of parts that weigh less and
perform their functions better than those made with traditional
subtractive techniques. As a result of the America Makes partnership,
the DOD developed a strategic roadmap for AM across the Department.
Within the strategic roadmap, each Service maintains an AM
implementation plan, which details specific actions and milestones to
incorporate AM technologies through investments in AM research,
development and deployment projects.
The Services are also experimenting with the application of AM to
mission critical parts. A full Report to Congress detailing these
activities was provided in 2017 to the House and Senate Armed Services
Committee. DOD is working to more effectively engage the universities
and R&E labs in AM in a number of ways. Universities currently
participate in AM as members or hosts of the Manufacturing Innovation
Institutes and through ManTech funded projects. Universities such as
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, SUNY Polytechnic Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Michigan are closely
coupled with the non-profit organizations that operate the MIIs. They
bring access to existing resources to support the federal investment in
the MIIs. Other university members are engaged in the development of
advanced manufacturing technology projects and the support of education
and workforce development training and programs accessible to both the
public and private sectors. [See page 26.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. BANKS
Secretary Griffin. Huawei has a strong market position, but the 5G
ecosystem extends far beyond Huawei's market penetration. This 5G
ecosystem has many parts and a specific claim about market penetration
in any of these aspects is problematic. DOD's perspective is to provide
for national security to create an environment where U.S. companies are
free and empowered to do what they do best: innovate and globally
collaborate to bring transformational products and services to the
market. [See page 20.]
______
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WALTZ
Secretary Griffin. We, in USD(R&E), are collectively taking best
practices across the research and engineering enterprise such as SCO,
DIU, the labs, and others and institutionalizing their missions while
also utilizing pilot programs such as the Army Open Campus initiatives
that leverage regional expertise and facilities to accelerate the
discovery, innovation, and transition of science and technology in
places like Boston MA, Chicago IL, Austin TX, and Playa Vista CA.
Another example is the Navy innovation hub formed around NSWC Crane as
an anchor technology driver that is in partnership with major regional
universities (Indiana University, Purdue University, University of
Southern Indiana, Notre Dame) and industry (defense, commercial, and
non-profit).
1) Bringing the Missions of Core DIU, NSIN, and NSIC Together
In February 2019, OUSD(R&E) directed DIU to assume operational
management of two entities: (1) NSIN, formerly known as MD5-National
Security Technology Accelerator, and (2) NSIC, a new entity authorized
in the John S. McCain NDAA for FY 2019. To avoid confusion as DIU
assumes responsibility for three organizations, DIU uses the term
``Core DIU'' to refer to the DIU activities focused on prototyping
existing commercial solutions for DOD customers. Together, Core DIU,
NSIN, and NSIC encompass the full range of technology readiness levels
and create new opportunities for National Security Innovation Base
(NSIB) participants to solve national security challenges.
Consolidating these activities under DIU--and more broadly under
OUSD(R&E)--will streamline operations, improve coordination, and foster
growth in the NSIB. The graphic below depicts how core DIU, NSIN and
NSIC will operate across the technology maturity spectrum and with
different elements of the NSIB ecosystem. [The graphic referred to was
not available at the time of printing.]
2) Overview of DOD Innovation
In February 2018, the DOD re-established the Office of the Under
Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)). This
reorganization consolidated a number of organizations tasked with
specialized yet complementary missions under OUSD(R&E) leadership to
advance research and increase the speed of delivery and return on
investment of new technologies and discoveries for the services and
DOD.
DOD laboratories: Conduct basic and applied research on
service-specific challenges.
DIU: Prototypes existing commercial solutions for DOD
customers. It is also a member of a working group with the Defense
Innovation Board (DIB) and NSIN to develop frameworks and paths for
enhanced collaboration across the NSIB.
Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO): Creates near term
strategic operational effects to support U.S. Indo-Pacific and European
Command, using existing and emerging government and commercial systems.
These three organizations are an example of the broader R&D
ecosystem that the Department relies upon to provide superior
technological capabilities to the warfighter, now and in the future.
[See page 23.]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 28, 2019
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CONAWAY
Mr. Conaway. Thank you for taking the time to appear before the
committee. With regards to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service and
ensuring the most effective spectrum management, I have a few
questions.
a) Does DOD foresee any issues with the CBRS Spectrum Access System
(SAS) [the SAS is tasked with protecting the higher tier users from
harmful interference and assures efficient use of the 3.5 GHz band for
everyone] and Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) certification that
could be a hurdle to a quick approval process?
b) Has the DOD and FCC finalized the approval process for CBRS
certification reports?
c) The NTIA, DOD, and other Federal agencies have identified the
3450-3550 MHz band for potential repurposing to spur commercial
wireless innovation. What is the timeline for the DOD submitting a
proposal under the Spectrum Pipeline Act of 2015 to study the potential
for introducing advanced wireless services in this band without harming
or interference with critical government operations?
d) Is the NTIA or FCC considering the 3.1-3.45 GHz band for sharing
with commercial operations as well? Are there dynamic techniques that
can be used for more efficient spectrum sharing?
Secretary Griffin. a) The Department has been proactively engaged
in working with industry and the national regulators (i.e., FCC, NTIA)
on this innovative sharing framework and see no hurdles to approval at
this time. In general, the SAS/ESC construct is designed to not only
protect DOD systems, but will enable mid-band 5G spectrum. Our work
with WinnForum is a good example of the value of partnerships with
industry and how trusted engineering can be used to assess the
feasibility of a new sharing concept between federal and non-federal
applications. We would defer any questions on the approval process
regarding certifications to the national regulators (i.e., FCC).
b) The approval process for CBRS certification reports has been
established and we have a way forward. DOD looks forward to continuing
to work in partnership with NTIA and FCC to conduct a comprehensive
review of each ESC and SAS certification report to ensure each
company's technical solution satisfies DOD requirements.
c) DOD is engaging with other key stakeholders, including NTIA,
FCC, and interested commercial entities, to define the scope of funding
required for DOD under the Pipeline Act for specific activities that
would potentially increase commercial access to the band on a shared
basis.
d) This sub-band is part of the 3100-3550 MHz range, for which the
MOBILE NOW Act requires NTIA, in coordination with FCC, to submit a
report to Congress, which is currently in development. DOD is
supporting NTIA studies to determine the feasibility of sharing the
band with a commercial system. We defer any specific questions on this
effort to NTIA and FCC.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you for taking the time to appear before the
committee. With regards to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service and
ensuring the most effective spectrum management, I have a few
questions.
a) Does DOD foresee any issues with the CBRS Spectrum Access System
(SAS) [the SAS is tasked with protecting the higher tier users from
harmful interference and assures efficient use of the 3.5 GHz band for
everyone] and Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) certification that
could be a hurdle to a quick approval process?
b) Has the DOD and FCC finalized the approval process for CBRS
certification reports?
c) The NTIA, DOD, and other Federal agencies have identified the
3450-3550 MHz band for potential repurposing to spur commercial
wireless innovation. What is the timeline for the DOD submitting a
proposal under the Spectrum Pipeline Act of 2015 to study the potential
for introducing advanced wireless services in this band without harming
or interference with critical government operations?
d) Is the NTIA or FCC considering the 3.1-3.45 GHz band for sharing
with commercial operations as well? Are there dynamic techniques that
can be used for more efficient spectrum sharing?
Secretary Geurts. a) The Navy has expressed concerns about the
potential risks and vulnerabilities related to the interoperability of
the SAS platform. The Navy participated in multiple Service, joint and
interagency working groups with DOD, FCC and NTIA to identify the risks
that are most relevant to maritime operations. The Navy has provided
input at all levels to shape the guidelines related to the ESC and SAS
certifications.
b) We defer to DOD and FCC on this question.
c) We defer to DOD on this question. The Navy has participated in
the planning of this effort and has submitted multiple proposals for
feasibility studies, which are now informing the efforts of the lead
organization for this project, NTIA. The Navy has and will continue to
provide a member to the NTIA-led working group to advise on Navy
equities and concerns.
d) We defer to NTIA on this question. While the Navy is not
currently included in NTIA's efforts for this study, the Navy stands
ready and looks forward to the opportunity to collaborate with NTIA on
a more strategic way forward that prioritizes projects as band-width
allows.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SCOTT
Mr. Scott. Dr. Griffin, I appreciate the letter you sent to me on
March 8, 2019. expressing support to Hacking for Defense, where you
stated that programs like this ``provide clear value to the
warfighter'' and ``stimulates the National Security Innovation Base.''
I was happy to see that your support of this program is reflected in
the President's Fiscal Year 2020 budget request. Programs like this are
key innovation programs within the Department of Defense because they
not only work on real-world DOD problems but help produce real-world
solutions for the Department.
a. Given the success of Hacking for Defense, what other
applications are available to support the DOD?
b. Have we incorporated successful practices into other facets of
the Department?
Thank you for your attention to the subject.
Secretary Griffin. From DIU: Hacking for Defense has been
successfully delivered at more than 21 universities throughout the
country, but it is only one of myriad programs offered by the DOD
sponsor for Hacking for Defense, the National Security Innovation
Network (NSIN; formerly MD5). In addition to Hacking for Defense, NSIN
also manages and executes 13 other programs designed to combine DOD end
users with students and faculty from top research universities and
early stage ventures from commercial innovation hubs throughout the
country. Among these are NSIN's ``Hacks'' program, which delivers 48-
hour hackathons focused on a DOD capability gap and includes transition
funding to develop rapid prototypes of the Minimum Viable Products
(MVPs) developed at the hackathon. Additionally, NSIN sponsors the
Washington, DC-based ``Fed Tech'' program, which is designed to
identify extant DOD Lab Technology that could answer a current DOD end
user pain point, build an entrepreneurial team around it, and then
launch a dual-use venture that can be added into the National Security
Innovation Base (NSIB) and improve the technology transfer and
transition (T3) rates of the DOD Labs. NSIN also leverages a network of
more than 30 universities throughout the country to engage students and
faculty in applied problem-solving to help enable the Department's
modernization priorities by focusing on areas such as AI/ML, quantum
computing, edge processing, advanced materials, and counter-drone
measures. Applying the Hacking for Defense methodology to other areas
of the Department is certainly worthy of further study; the most direct
applications to other areas of the Department are probably in areas
like advanced manufacturing and supply-chain management issues, both of
which fall under the purview of the Office of the Under Secretary of
Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.
Mr. Scott. In January 2018, the U.S. Army renewed a 10-year, $2.3
billion dollar contract with Georgia Tech to assist the Department of
Defense (DOD) with research and development and provide increased
responsiveness to the nation's warfighters. I appreciate the addition
of some of the nation's brightest STEM professionals in solving our
toughest research problems.
a. How effective have DOD partnerships with universities been to
lighten the load of DOD research?
b. Can you give a few specific examples of how our investments in
universities have made impacts to today's warfighters?
Secretary Jette. a. Army scientists and engineers work closely with
academia to extend our core competencies across a number of
disciplines, bringing together cutting-edge academic research with Army
research staff who keep the collaboration oriented towards solving
Army-relevant problems. This approach lightens the load of DOD research
not only by leveraging academia's intellectual capital, but also their
world-class facilities, instrumentation, and other infrastructure
investments as well.
b. The Army's investments in universities through Army Single
Investigator Grants, University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs),
and other extramural programs have resulted in knowledge products that
have impacted Army investments. For example, the Army's support of
Nobel Prize winning research into ground-breaking methods to produce
new enzymes directly led to commercial, cost-effective synthesis of
biofuels for aviation platforms. Army support to universities has also
resulted in the development of extended range munitions; informed
development of next generation weapons; improved computer network
defense; and resulted in advancements in vehicle armor.
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