(Archived document, may contain errors)

Congressional Misperceptions and the SDI Battle of the Budget

By Ambassador Henry F. Cooper I welcome the opportunity to talk with you at this critical time in our program, in view of the upcoming continuation of the debate in the Congress, and in the Senate in particular, on the President's FY1993 budget request for the SDI program. This is a continuation of the many con- tentious debates inmveral quarters -regardi n g SDI throughout its history. . Generally I have categorized our efforts to advance the SDI objectives in terms of three catego- ries of negotiations: 1) with Congress, 2) within the Pentagon, and 3) with the Soviets, and now the Russians. It is hard to k e ep the progress in these three key areas uniform. It seems rather nor- mal that we take two steps forward and one step back-and this is a very complicated process to manage since the three areas of activity are coupled, and yet they are, not being conduct ed in any sort of a synchronous fashion.

Congressional Backsliding Witness the performance of the Congress over the past year. Last year, the Missile Defense Act of 1991 was an enormously important step forward, and now the congressional debate is over how far to regress from that very positive step. The Bumpers-Sasser Amendment, which is the principal issue to be taken up if the Senate does move the Defense Authorization Bill back on the floor, is potentially lethal to our program. If it becomes law, it w o uld scuttle any meaningful defense for the United States. You should understand that the Bumpers-Sasser amendment is not only premised on a $3.3 bil- lion budget this year-a cut of $2.1 billion from the President's FY 1993 budget request, but it is derive d from a flawed plan put forward by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which would essentially cut the President's planned budget in half for the out years. In my judgment, that plan would leave us with no executable program for defending the United Sta t es against ballistic mis- sile attack. We would have a viable program for theater defense, but everything else would be research only. There is some argument, I would suspect, as to whether the CBO-proposed level of funding for the non-theater defense pro g ram is sustainable-it is clearly sub-critical for a seri- ous development activity, and it may not be sustainable as a research activity during the current time of severe budget pressures. During the Senate debate in August, some Senators (particularly Se n ators Sasser and Levin) al- leged that with these reduced funding levels one could proceed with a program aimed at deployment in the 2002 time frame. In fact, as I will discuss in some detail in a moment, that is just simply not the case. If this major cu t were approved, it would be particularly disappointing given the progress that we have made over the past year in the other two problem areas; i.e., in negotiating our way through the Pentagon acquisition process and in our discussions with the former Sov iet Union, notably with Russia. Let me review our progress in those areas and then discuss in more detail

Ambassador Cooper is Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on September 8, 1992. ISSN 0272-1155. 01992 by The Heritage Foundation.

the flawed Congressional Budget Office analysis and assumptions, which I think are a major cause of misperception on Capitol Hill.

Progress In the Pentagon Probably the most important thing that has happened in the Pentagon's battle over SDI since the advent of the program was the 180-day Report to Congress describing the Secretary's plan for implementing the Missile Defense Act of 1 9 91. 1 want to emphasize that this plan, signed out by Secretary Cheney on July 2, was coordinated from the bottom up through the various staffs of the Pentagon. It was fully coordinated with all of the key acquisition officials, who signed on to that repo r t. There were disagreements along the way. But at the end of the day, we had a Depart- ment report and not just simply the Secretary's report mandated from the top to be executed somehow later. So, now we have a serious acquisition plan. It is an event - d riven plan-and through the dem- onstration/validation phase over the next five years, we have thought through the specifics of the program to identify and schedule specific key events, in many cases test events, where successful performance is necessary t o take the next programmatic step. If Congress doesn't provide the money to do the testing or to go through these events, obviously the program will be delayed. Let me say just a word or two about our baseline acquisition plan, which I think is misunder- s t ood. Assuming that the President's budget request is honored-and that is an important premise, our acquisition plan begins with five years of a highly intensive demonstration and vali- dation (Dem/Val) testing program with heavy involvement of the user, f o llowed by a three-year engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase, which leads to a normal production decision in the year 2000. This normal progression of the program, in turn, would lead to the ini-' tial site capability in around the year 20 0 2, or 2003, and a fully operationally capable system, including both Brilliant Eyes and Brilliant Pebbles by the year 2006. That is the baseline plan. These schedules were included in my testimony to Congress, and they are explicitly provided in the 180-d a y Report to Congress as well. The reason I'm making a point of these dates is that the CBO has misrepresented our planned schedule, as I will describe to you in a moment. Now, under a normal program, the first site initial operational capability, or IOC, w ould be around the year 2002. However, in order to be responsive to the Missile Defense Act by provid- ing an early fielding option for an initial site, we have pursued a plan to field prototype hardware developed in the demonstration and validation phase of the program as early as late 1997. This date, which coincides roughly with the end of the demonstration and validation phase, is as early as we believe is possible in conjunction with our event-driven strategy. I want to emphasize that this fielding ac t ivity does not result from production in any normal meaning of the term. We would field prototypical hardware, trying to plan from the outset of the acquisition program to do what we did with JSTARS in the Gulf War. If our program is fully funded, such an initial site capability could be achieved as early as 1997-as Deputy Secretary Atwood testified-but 1998 would be a more likely date for achieving such a contingency capability. In any case, there would be no dollar implications associated with making suc h a decision be- fore 1995. The program in 1993 and 1994, under the normal demonstration and validation .. program, is the same whether this option is exercised or not. If the option is exercised, there, Will be a dollar impact in the 1995 time frame to be g in the necessary activities to field the prototypi- cal hardware and have a contingency defense capability by the end of 1997. This idea of fielding early prototypical hardware is a new acquisition approach that we have in- jected through the SDI program. Most notably, I consider our successful advocacy for THAAD, orTheater High-Altitude Area Defense, to be a major victory in our battles to overcome business-

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as-usual attitudes. After some considerable debate in the acquisition community, the Pentago n powers-that-be agreed to buy on to this idea. and the THAAD contract -was let, as you probably know, last Friday. The Lockheed team that won the THAAD contract is now working on a pro- grain that will give us an early fielding option in the 1996 time pe r iod using prototypical hardware. My point here is that our efforts with THAAD represent real progress in the way SDI pro- grains are being done in a fully coordinated way in the Pentagon. When the truth is all out on THAAD sometime in the future, you'll f i nd just about everybody got into the act before that con- tract was awarded. So SDI is not a loose cannon in the Pentagon. We are, in fact, executing a coordinated acquisition program. I might say that the THAAD contract award was the culmination of a 24- m onth effort. Some of you may recall the early days when I started talking about THAAD and the idea of using pro- totypical hardware as a part of our acquisition strategy. While I never met resistance in this audience, I can tell you I met considerable res i stance in the Pentagon. So THAAD is a major vic- tory, in my judgment. My main point though is, as I said earlier, that the key Pentagon officials agreed on our plan to implement the Missile Defense Act. Secretary Cheney's July 2 cover letter to the Congr e ss indi- cated that he had given instructions to the Pentagon to execute the plan as a top national priority. So in the Missile Defense Act, the Congress in effect said, "This is what we want you to do; these are the priorities we want you to take," and t h e Department's plan was fully responsive to execute the prograrn that Congress had laid out. And, as I said earlier, to satisfy the acquisition process of the Pentagon, our plan calls for an event-driven program. If Congress cuts out events, or we fail ev ents, or we delay events, because of budget cuts or whatever, then the whole program slips-and I'll come back to the importance of that point in a moment.

Progress with the Russians I think we can also point to a great deal of progress in our discussion wi th Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union, and with our allies. This progress has been steady over the last eighteen months. I consider that there was a real watershed when President Yeltsin, at the end of January, spoke at the U.N., ca l ling for cooperation on a joint global defense system-and it was absolutely clear to me that he was talking about the kinds of things that we wanted to do. He said he wanted to redirect the SDI program to take advantage of Russian technology-and we are sy m pathetic to his proposal. Since then, I think we have made a great deal of progress in moving in the direction advocated by President Yeltsin-which was entirely consistent with President Bush's redirection of the SDI program a year earlier. In June, at th e Washington Summit, President Bush and President Yeltsin gave impetus to the discussions by agreeing to establish a very high level group to agree on how to create such a Global Protection System. Dennis Ross, now Assistant to the President for Policy Pla n ning, is leading the group on our side, and Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Mamedov is leading on the Russian side. There was a High Level Group meeting in Moscow in July at which time three working groups were established: one to thrash out the specifics o f what is meant by the concept of a Global Protection System, one to deal with the area of technology cooperation, and one to deal with the agreed problem area involving the proliferation of missile technology and weapons of mass destruction. The High Lev el Group will also deal with any now agreements or changes to existing agreements as necessary to bring a Global Protection System into existence. We are an-

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ticipating a follow-up meeting here in Washington very shortly, and I am counting on there be ing progress at this coming meeting. I can't help but note a meeting I attended in Erice, Sicily, a couple of weeks ago when Acade- mician Yevgeni Velikhov came in wearing an SDI tie. Now Dr. Velikhov is Chairman of the Russian Academy of Science, as he w a s of the Soviet Academy of Science. In the early days of SDI, he co-authored papers with a number of people that were very, very negative on what were vying to do. That was their Party line in a different era, an era of confrontation; whereas today we are seeking to reflect an underlying principle of cooperation. Accordingly, he has changed his position considerably. He is a member of the Mamedov group, I might add. At the Erice meeting, Velikhov said that -/,?e should replace Mutual Assured Destruction wi t h Mutual Assured Protection as the underlying principle upon which we design our national secu- rity interest. It was clear from his discussion that he was thinking in terms of cooperation on a Global Protection System under a new arms control regime whic h would be multi-national in its basic framework-such a defense system could provide protection on a global basis for the en- tire world community, and we might operate it more as partners than as adversaries in some kind of an arrangement involving a join t command center, perhaps patterned after the model used in NATO or in NORAD where our Canadian friends participate directly with us in various com- mand and control activities. It was made clear that he was thinking in terms of space elements in the Globa l Protection Sys- tem-both sensors and interceptors, and that this Global Protection System would be accomplished in consultation with our allies, as I said earlier, in a multi-national framework. This development was very hopeful. This Erice conference wa s an informal meeting in an in- formal setting, of course. When Deputy Foreign Minister Mamedov comes to Washington, I'm not sure exactly what he will have to say. But, that will be when Russian statements will really count because the High Level Group is t 116,3offinial government to government forum for such discussions; and I look forward to the outcome of those sessions with hopeful anticipation. I think that it is somewhat sad that Congress is threatening to pull the rug out from under us at just the ti m e when the negotiations show the most promise that they have shown in nine years for moving toward a negotiated outcome and a settlement to many very contentious issues that have to do with the political perceptions surrounding the ABM Treaty and other re l ated matters. And I know something about the hard times in the past negotiations-I spent five years in Ge- neva, and before then I was worked these issues at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, in backstopping all of our negotiations with the former S oviet Union. I can say with authority that we have the first real opportunity of ending up with agreements on how we will proceed to- gether to build and to operate a Global Protection System. This does not mean we're going to give away the family jewels; that's not going to happen- and need not happen in order to work cooperatively to mutually benefit from a Global Protection System. I believe that, toward this end, we could agree on doing joint experiments, joint simula- tions to understand and work thro ugh solutions for the conceptual issues, modifications to the ABM Treaty regime that will be satisfactory to both sides-and I think such an agreement may be relatively close at hand.

Why the Congressional Backsliding? So I have to ask myself, in coming back to the original point of my talk, "Why is Congress now attacking our program? Why are they backing away from the Missile Defense Act at this juncture?"

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I think there are two sources of the reason why. There may be an ideological reason that under- lies the entire pr9blem for some in Congress-but there are two logical reasons whose merits can be debated.

A Reduced Sense of Urgency First, there is a reduced sense of urgency this year, that's clear. We are no longer on the heels of the Gulf War. And Bo b Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence, in his testimony indicated that it was unlikely that there would be any new threat to the Continental United States within ten years. He said it two ways: within this decade and within ten years. But if you t a ke ten years, 2002 becomes a magic target-and that is a piece of the litany in the current congressional de- bate. From my own personal perspective, I don't believe the analyses that underpin Director Gates' testimony take into account what the situation w ould be like if the proliferation issues become different over the next ten years than they were in the past ten years. And I refer not only to the proliferation of technology, but also of the technical know-how as citizens of the former Soviet Union deal with their rather severe economic pressures and where they have such a highly mar- ketable skill. I don't mean to throw rocks at our new friendly colleagues and potential collaborators in a Global Protection System in bringing this up. In fact, it is a pr o blem that they willingly acknowl- edge and are concerned about themselves. So I think that many in the Congress have developed a false sense of security-perhaps like the sense of security that many had before the Gulf War based on the rather commonly held judg- ment that Saddarn Hussein could not develop nuclear weapons any time soon. And we found out how wrong we were. Speaking personally, I am very uncomfortable with taking a relaxed attitude in this regard when considering the proliferation problem. But I would point out, as I said earlier, that the year 2002, or 2003, is a sound estimate for the IOC for the first site under the President's baseline plan anyway, assuming that we don't exer- cise the option to deploy prototypical hardware. Budget cuts wil l delay this IOC for the baseline program. I pointed out earlier that there are no budget requirements for at least two years to provide early fielding options, so there is no FY1993 budget impact if this option is decided upon now- either way. Our strateg y fundamentally defers that decision to a time, at least two years hence, when we can see how the threat develops, and how the testing progresses. Budget cuts now delay all options, including especially these early fielding options.

Flawed CBO AnalysIs Now I want to come to the second cause for congressional backsliding: the CBO Report. I think the August 7 report, which draws from an earlier May report, is the root cause of many of our problems. The CBO alleges that with $3.3 billio n in FY 1993 (that is, a cut of $2.1 billion from the President's request) and cutting our out-year budget in half (and I think it is important that you understand that is part of their proposal),. we can still deploy the initial site in the year 2002-the same as is planned under the Administration's plan. And not only do they allege that we can deploy at the same time frame as under the Administration's plan for half the funding, but that we can do so with less risk and less concurrency.

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It is incredib le to me that such a naive and misleading masquerade for serious analysis could be given the weight that this report is being given. And I'm more than a little suspicious that it was published on the 7th of August just in time for its use in the floor deb a te on that date as the Bumpers-Sasser Amendment was tabled. Attached is a copy of a letter I sent to Senator Warner and Senator Nunn at Senator Warner's request evaluating the flawed analysis in the August 7 CBO Report. But let me go through here, in perh a ps more detail even in some cases than is in that letter, some of my problems with that badly flawed analysis. Fundamentally, if you believe you can cut over $2 billion. from our FY 1993 budget and cut a half, some $20 billion, out of the FY 1993 through 1 997 five-year budget and deliver on the same schedule, and with less concurrency and less risk than the Administration's program, then after the meeting I want to talk to you over on the side; I have this bridge and I would like to so- licit your investme n t in purchasing it as a group venture. The CBO Report falsely represents the Administration program. It claims, for example, that the budget called for in the out years would lead to deployment of thefull GPALS program in the year 2000. And, as I told you earlier, we anticipate that year would be 2006 with the Admin- istration plan and budget. That was presented in my congressional testimony which the CBO had before they wrote their report-I checked it this morning. They have no excuse for this misrepre- s e ntation. They cannot justify this gross error by saying they didn't know because our Report to Congress was not published until early July. So they falsely claimed we planned a fully deployed system by the year 2000-that way, you see, they could allege to stretch the program to "after 2005" while cutting our budget. They also pursued a contorted analysis implying that we planned to deploy the initial site in 1997 based on an earlier "production" decision, whereas, as I described it earlier, we planned op- t ions to fabricate and field prototypical hardware that could be exercised if the threat develops, and if our testing shows it's warranted. As discussed in our 180-Day Report to Congress, we could field prototypical hardware in 1997, 1998, or 1999 under th e President's budget depending on decisions to be made at least two years hence. But, such decisions to field prototypical hard- ware for a contingency capability would not involve a production decision or process. We would make a production decision in th e year 2000 in any case, and could have an IOC in the year 2002, or 2003, if none of those options was exercised. I emphasize that we clearly stated our plan to make a production decision in the year 2000-that was in our Report to Congress. But they mis-ch a racterized our plan. They called the Administration's possible decision to ex- ercise the earliest of these options to fabricate prototypical hardware a "production decision" and used that in a very trumped up definition to achieve a high concurrency esti m ate. They totally ig- nored the fact that in our report we explicitly stated that the production decision would be made in the year 2000. Of course, if they had accepted the Administration's clearly defined production decision, then their definition of co n currency would lead to zero concurrency in the Administration's program-and they apparently sought to characterize the Administration's plan as involving a lot of concurrency so they could justify stretching the program and to allege to be reducing concur r ency. This is particularly intriguing when you learn from their fine print in a footnote that they de- fined as "production" a decision at Nfilestone H to build low-rate initial production, or LRIP, equipment for testing in full-scale development or engin e ering and manufacturing development. This is most curious, because we are directed by law and Administration directives to use LRIP equipment in Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) prior to making a production de- cision. And IOT&E normally oc curs during the engineering and manufacturing development

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phase after Mlestone H. With their definition, one always gets 100 percent concurrency for a nor- mal acquisition program. Our innovation of including a Phase I of IOME in our demonstration an d validation program, meant that they only could come up with 64 percent concurrency for us even with this trumped up analysis. So they resorted to backing up further into the Dem/Val phase of the program, referring to the possible fabrication of prototyp e s as a production decision to suggest an even higher level of concurrency. Now this is more than a little curious way to define concurrency. But it goes beyond that. They are basically dishonest in claiming that their definition for production is the DoD d efinition. And it is absolutely outrageous to characterize the fabrication of prototypical hardware as a produc- tion decision when it was made explicitly clear in our Report to Congress that the production decision is the year 2000, and that we could dec i de earlier to fabricate:prototypes if we think we need them on the basis of demonstrated capability and the developing threat. Of course, if they had admitted that our production decision was in the year 2000, their false suggestion that our full system w o uld be deployed in the year 2000 would have been apparent. Now they went further with more nonsense to justify their arbitrary budget cuts. For example, they falsely rationalized the deep cuts in such activities as system engineering and integration, test and evaluation, and risk mitigation by alleging that such critical activities are unessential, or as they said, and I quote . ..... relate only indirectly to the system to be deployed." Give me a break! This really is utter nonsense. Since when does anyon e build a system without system engineering and integration? And since when does one cut out the funds for the risk mitigation and create a less risky program? Finally, I should let David Chu speak for himself, but I think to suggest, as the CBO does, that their $3.3 billion plan would support his preferred option is grossly unprofessional. I'd love to have David and his staff subject the CBO plan to the same scrutiny that they gave SDIO's plan. I can guarantee you it would not survive one day's serious loo k in the Pentagon. This all leads me to make a half-serious suggestion that some of our friends in Congress ask for a GAO review of the CBO's Report. They should have some fun with that, especially if such a review were done honestly. The only good thing I can say about this CBO report is that it included some fine print dis- claiming responsibility for what I think is a pretty foul portion of magic elixir befitting the snake oil salesmen of another era. It basically says, "Let the buyer beware." So if you r ead the report, look long and hard, you'll eventually find disclaimers about their schedules; that their plan might, in fact, not cost less, but more, after all is said and done; that concurrency may not be all that important anyway; and so on. The fact i s that the CBO option touted by the Bumpers-Sasser Amendment and masqueraded as Dr. Chu's low concurrency option is fundamentally a product of unprofessional analysis. It is not Chu's option. In fact, it is no seriou's acquisition program at all. It is a g uaranteed recipe for failure-and would provide no effective defense for the American people.

There Is a Viable Plan, But Will Congress Support It? The President's request of $5.4 billion supports a low-concurrency, moderate risk program- and we judged mode rate risk because we are dealing with a complex system of systems-not be- cause the program for any of the system elements themselves, taken singly, is risky. Otherwise it would be a low risk program on an item-by-item basis.

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The President's plan is t o reach an IOC, if conducted in the normal way, in the year 2002 or 2003. It provides options for fielding prototypical hardware earlier, as early as 1997 and more likely in 1998, but decisions to exercise these options are to be made at least 2 years hen c e. Our acquisition strategy is event driven. And I'll repeat again, if Congress cuts our budget, they will delay key events, and that will delay the schedule-and probably increase overall costs. The $1.1 billion cut, as suggested by the Senate Armed Servi c es Committee or by the House Armed Services Committee, would end up causing delays in the dates I've just given you. Cer- tainly, it would cause a year's delay in our ability to exercise a prototypical hardware option, and the 2002 date would also be at r i sk. The $2.1 billion cut called for by the Bumpers-Sasser Amendment would leave no viable ac- quisition program beyond Theater Nfissile Defense. Senator Nunn, during the August 7 floor debate, referred to the $3.3 billion plan and said, that this budget " w ould stretch out the program to such a degree it would render implausible any claim by the Congress that we are on a steady course toward deployment .... .. I can only say "Hear, hear!" Indeed, the $3.3 billion would sup- port only Theater Defense and R&D we could have defense for allies but not for Americans.

Closure Finally, let me just say that in 1988 George Bush, campaigning for the Presidency at that time, stated that the technology is here to support strategic defenses; the issue is political will to take things out of the laboratory and to move them to deployment. He promised that he would pick the architecture in his first term, and that he ultimately would not leave America defenseless. I would submit that he has fulfilled his part of the bargai n . The GPALS, or Global Protection Against Limited Strikes, idea, which is his architecture, folds directly into the Global Protection System subsequently proposed by President Yeltsin and now being advocated by our new friends in Russia as well as ourselv e s. The Nfissile Defense Act of 1991 adopts all of the key ele- ments of the President's program with a shift in priorities, which was acceptable to the President last year-that is, to move ahead with deploying the ground-based defense so long as there is r o- bust funding for developing space-based interceptors. Unfortunately, Congress is now apparently playing around with welshing on this aspect of the deal this year. In the final analysis, Congress now holds the fate of the program in its hands. They prov ide the funds-that's the way our system works. I have no reason to suggest changing our system, and I only hope that for the good of all Americans that Congress does the right thing this time around.

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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE ORGANIZATION WASHINGTON, DC 20301-7100

A ugust 10, 1992

Honorable John Warner Ranking Minority Member Committee on Armed Services United States Senate Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Warner: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the August 7 CBO report regarding issues of concurrency and cost estimates for the SDI program--particularly those est'imates that allege to support a 2003 deployment of an initial ground-ba sed interceptor site. Let me discuss these two issues in turn.

Concurrengy_. I must say that I am surprised by the lack of understanding in the CB01s discussion on concurrency and characterization of our program as presented in our June 1992 Report to Con gress on our Plan for DeRloyment of Theater and National;Ballistic Missile .Defenses. For example, the CBO report states that its definition of concurrency depends on the date at which production begins-- and then alleges that this date is not clearly def i ned by the Administration's plan. Yet our reRort clearly states that production @egins at Milestone III (as in every-standard acquisi- tion Rrogram). which occurs in our Rlan in the year 2000--as shown on Figures 5 and 7 and as explicitly stated on page 2 3 . Here, in discussing our acquisition strategy as illustrated by Figure 5, the report indicates that the Administration plan employs "a normal acquisition strategy involving a robust five- year Dem/Val program with heavy user involvement, followed by a th r ee year EMD phase and concluding with a production decision in the year 2000 for items produced in quantity.,, Thus ifi our baseline program, a production decision for the 11100011 interceptor missiles of the CBO report would be made after completion of I OT&E Phase I and Phase 2, as shown in Figure 7 of our 180-day Report to Congress. The Administration's baseline Rlan is, therefore, a "low concurrency" Rrogram by the CB01s own definition.

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is hard to imagine how the CBO could misunderstand our acquisi tion strategy--or Kh_y they would choose to characterize our Rlan solely in terms of an option to field contingenc cARability in 1997 using Dem/Val hardware as a 1997 Rroduction decision. which it certainly is not. In fact, our plan considered three conti n gency fielding options, none of which involve production hardware--they all involve 60 Dem/Val interceptor missiles, with fabrication of those Dem/Val missiles beginning-at some future time fas early as 1996)., pending evaluation of progress in our baseli n e program and our perception then of the evolving threat. "Concurrency" for the 60 Dem/Val missiles would vary depending on which of the three options, if any, is selected in conjunction with IOT&E Phase 1: option 1 (High Concurrency) leading to an initia l contingency capability as early as 1997 would initiate fabrication of the initial 12 Dem/Val missiles after 2 tests; the next 24 Dem/Val missiles after 6 tests; and the final 24 Dem/Val missiles after 8 tests. Option 2 (Moderate Concurrency) leading to a n initial contingency capability as early as 1998 would initiate fabrication of the initial 12 Dem/Val missiles after 6 @.ests7. the next .2.4 Dem/:Val missiles after. 8 tests-@. and. the final 24 Dem/Val missiles after all ifte'sts. Option 3 (Low Concurre ncy) leading to an initial contingency capability as early as 1999 would initiate fabrication of the initial 12 Dem/Val missiles after 8 tests; and the remaining 48 Dem/Val missiles after all 11 tests.

In this analysis, I have used the CBO estimate of 11 I OT&E Phase 1 tests. We may actually conduct more (or less) testing, but the basic point will be the same. Meeting the dates above depends on funding and technical progress, but our overall strategy is "event driven", and the conclusions regarding concurre n cy would not be affected by schedule slips. I would also observe that, if one of the above options is exercised, the 60 Dem/Val interceptor missiles composing an interim contingency capability will be replaced later by normal production missiles, produced after Milestone III, which is planned-for the year 2000. In any case, it should also be kept in mind that the Committee Bill Rending action on the floor makes no decision to groceed with any of the above options to field an early initial contingency-dapab i lity. In fact, no such decision is called for even under the Administration's Rlan for several years. The central issue of concern is the Administrationfs and the Committee's baseline plan leading to a production decision in the year 2000. That baseline R roaram involves low:concurrency by the CBO's own definition.

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I would note, with some humor, that in their discussion on concurrency, which builds upon a premise that low concurrency is better, the CBO notes that in a 1988 study, they found "no strong relationshiR between concurrency and the two measures associated with the success or failure of weapon programs: cost and schedule delay". This obscure comment suggests that too,much is being made of the risks associated with concurr&ncy. The-more importa n t variable, I would suggest has to do with the robustness of the baseline development Rrogram. including sound risk mitigation efforts. It is therefore ironic that the CBO report couples its allegations of high concurrency in our Dem/Val program, which is , by any reasonable measure, a robust testing effort to mitigate risk, with suggestions that cutting severely the support for those very risk mitigation activities would achieve lower concurrency and lower risk in our baseline program aimed at an initial o perational capability in 2002-3. This is an absurd DrOROsition on its face.

Costs. In fact, the CBO cost estimates, which adopt the analysis in their May 1992 report.on Costs of-ALternative-ARPXoaches to SDI.. are simply fallacious. In the fikst place'tha t report states that the CBO reflects the Administration's current estimates of cost--but I simRly cannot reconcile the gross discreRancies between our cost estimates. as presented in our.june 1992 180-day ReRort to Congress, and the CBO estimates. For ex a mple, there is a difference of almost $900 million in FY1993 for the Limited Defense System line item alone--not to mentiondiscreRancies of over $400 million for work in the Other Follow-on and Research and SuRRort line items that suRRort the Limited Defe n se Syst and Theater Missile Defense line items--as I discussed in my hearings before the SASC and as discussed in our June 180-day Report to Congress. Secondly, the CBO report is factually very wrong in stating that $3.3 billion in FY1993 would support "D r . Chu's preferred approach". Dr. Chu supRorts the baseline event-driven strategy described in the June 1992 DoD 180-day ReRort to Congress, which leads to a Milestone III decision in FY2000 and an initial capability with production interceptors in the 200 2 -2003 time frame--provided the technical progress stays on schedule. Less near-term funding than in the DoD plan will slow progress, delay the key events and stretch the schedule beyond-that alleged to be achievable with the CBO's Alternative III. Thus, t h e CBO makes a gross understatement in qualifying that the CBO cost estimates for "Alternative III" (which CBO characterizes as Dr. Chu's option) makes assumptions "not discussed in Dr. Chu's memo". I would like to have Dr. Chu and his staff subject the CB O's Alternative III to the same scrutiny applied to the SDIO plans before he concurred-in them, as

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reflected by our June Report to Congress. There is no chaDgg that the CBO option would survive any serious scrutiny by the DoD acquisition community. Th e fact is that Alternative III of the May-1992 CBO report has nothing to do with the baseline Rrogram presented in the Secretary's 180-day Report to Congress to V hich Dr. Chu Lqpd every other senior DoD official with acauisition-resRonsibil- ities) concu r red and which called for $5.4-billion in FY1993. In fact, the $1.1 billion cut by the SASC jeopardizes the schedule for meeting a 2002 initial operating capability--regardless of whether an early contingency capability using Dem/Val hardware is sought in the future. An additional S1 billion cut would be devastating--leaving no viable SDI develop_ment program beyond Theater Missile Defenses.

I would note that on page 36 of our June Report to Congress, this baseline pr Judged by the QoQ acguisition community to be "moderate risk", primarily because of the complexity of integrating a system of systems. The CBO suggested cuts would clearly turn i t into a high risk Program. In my judgement, it would destroy our ability to mitigate risk in meeting any pre- assigned schedule. In short. the CBO Alternative III. which the CBO most recently masguerades as Dr. Chul's "low concurrency" program. is naive and grossly misleading, It is not Dr. Chul-s agggisition program: it is not a serious acquisition Rrogram at all. It is -a gMaranteed recipe for failure. To sugRort it is to suRRort no active defense for the American peoRle.

I have also enclosed a copy of my response,to Senator Levin's question for the record following my April 9 hearing regarding the May 1992 CBO report.

HENRY F. COOPER Director

A ttachment: As Stated

cc: Honorable Sam Nunn

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