make which will not aid their economy, they are so lacking in basics. That is not true in this country, so it is difficult from that standpoint.

It is difficult, also, because unfortunately we have not put enough emphasis on the dual use of those technologies that we have been developing for defense application. Therefore it is not an easy task to convert, in this country, from a defense operation to a commercial one. In fact, there are not many success stories. And therefore it is a difficult thing. I would be perfectly willing to have a commission study this and come up with some definitive recommendations.

Senator DOMENICI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator INOUYE. Thank you.

Senator Bumpers.

Senator BUMPERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, first of all, I know that you and the Secretary are sympathetic to our chore of trying to make sure we do not disarm to a dangerous point in our rush to do something about the deficit, which is out of control by everybody's standards. But I must also say it is very difficult for us in trying to reach these judgments when the Defense Department comes out with the set of scenarios such as those we saw last week.

And it is not that all of those things cannot happen. As a matter of fact I probably could have added three or four to them. But I think it hurts your credibility. And it leaves the impression that the Defense Department will do almost anything to maintain a budget level higher than most Members of Congress feel is justified under what the President calls the new world order.

Now that is just a statement, not a question. But almost everybody here, from the chairman of the Armed Services Committee over on the House side to a host of others, including the majority leader, feel that we can sensibly cut considerably more than the Defense Department has suggested would be appropriate. So I will probably ask you a few questions in writing, but I had my own staff do a study on just things that they could come up with that they thought we could live without. And, incidentally, that only includes cutting two aircraft carriers. And, as you know, Chairman Aspin suggested we go from 12 to 8.

AIRCRAFT CARRIERS NEEDED

In that connection, while I am on that, what is the Defense Department's view as to how many carrier battle groups we need by 1997?

Mr. ATWOOD. Twelve.

Senator BUMPERS. You are asking in this budget for $852 million to start construction of a new aircraft carrier.

Mr. ATWOOD. Correct.

Senator BUMPERS. And I wanted to ask you, what is your view, now, as to how many we actually need in 1997?

Mr. ATWOOD. Our base force structure is forecast to be 12. Let me explain the one that we have added. Let me check security a minute. [Pause.]

Of those 12, by starting, this one will be our ninth nuclear carrier. The other ones, and the ones that are going out, are fossil-fuel

carriers. So that as we look ahead this will give us nine nuclearpowered carriers.

Senator BUMPERS. Does that mean two nonnuclear carriers will be retired between now and 1997?

Mr. ATWOOD. Correct. May I check that back to you. That is my recollection of it.

Senator BUMPERS. Those two that you intend to retire are past SLEP'ing and refitting.

Mr. ATWOOD. I would have to get the specific units, specific carriers we are taking out, and give you the history of them, whether they have gone through SLEP or not.

Senator BUMPERS. According to my staff, if we cut two battle groups between now and 1997 and eliminate the one you are planning to build, that you are asking for $852 million to begin, we could have $11.2 billion over the next 5 years.

Now those are just things that we are going to be debating here. I do not know whether Les Aspin's 8 will prevail, or whether somebody else's 10, or whether the Defense Department's 12 will prevail, but that is a big ticket item. And I am quite sure, and I would suggest that you all reconcile yourselves to the idea that the cuts will be considerably greater than even the President has suggested. But SSN's, we have 23 of the old Sturgeon SSN's left. Do you know how much we could save if we retired those over the next 5 years?

Mr. ATWOOD. I do not have that figure at my fingertips.

Senator BUMPERS. According to my figures it could be a substantial amount.

STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE

Now on SDI, Mr. Secretary, in your statement on page 3, under a new approach to defense acquisition, I will read back the appropriate part that I want to question you about.

Production of new systems using advanced technology. In other words this is the format. You are saying we will produce new systems using advanced technology only when, quote, the technology and associated subsystems are thoroughly tested and proven. The technical production and operational risks are significantly minimized. The production program is cost effective, and the absolute need for a new system is verified.

Now, I would like to ask you, relative to that statement about SDI, and refer you to Bob Gates' testimony, I think late last year, in which he said that for the rest of this decade there are no new countries that will pose a ballistic missile threat to the United States that do not already pose a threat. And yet we are talking about going operational in 1996 or 1997 with the North Dakota system.

Now if the answer to that is that we still have to worry about an accidental launch, what is the threat of an accidental launch right now compared to, say, a year or two ago?

Mr. ATWOOD. The threat of an accidental launch today is not as severe as the potential if one looks ahead 3, 5, or 8 years. That comes about because there is launch capability throughout the world which could become available to those countries and I refer

specifically to those that are trying to sell that capability throughout the world today. I want to say this in a proper way.

Upon visiting the Soviet Union we found their Proton launch vehicle is for sale and they would love very much to sell the Proton booster to other people. In particular, you recall, they formed a joint venture or tried to form a joint venture in Australia, to make it available. We demurred on the basis that, if that were a one-time device that would be something that might be acceptable in Australia, but that, in fact, they were not willing at the time to say that the sale was a one-shot device.

There are other countries that are interested in buying the Proton and they are interested in selling it today. Second, the Chinese, with their Long March, have a booster capable of launching weapons of mass destruction. The Chinese have been equally trying to sell that capability throughout the world. Although there is no existing Third World country which has weapons of mass destruction, there are those capabilities around and it is one of the serious questions that we have to address when we talk about the Soviet Union.

Senator BUMPERS. If you were in my position, knowing the Chinese were trying to sell that system, we are going to vote this afternoon at 4 p.m. on the President's proposal for most favored nation treatment for China, would you vote for that?

Mr. ATWOOD. Let me clarify what I said. These Chinese have, for many years, been trying to sell that booster as a way of getting objects into space. I did not mean they are trying to sell it to someone else. I have no knowledge of that.

Senator BUMPERS. Mr. Secretary, so we are both on the same wave length, neither that system nor the Proton have a reentry system, do they?

Mr. ATWOOD. No; but it is the weapon that is the reentry vehicle. In other words, the booster just gets it up there into a ballistic trajectory, and then it is the weapon which goes into free-fall.

I want to make clear on this Chinese one, we are talking about utilizing the Long March to boost things into space. It has the capability therefore of being the booster for a ballistic missile. What they are trying to sell they have been trying to sell on the commercial market and, in fact, we have used it some.

Senator BUMPERS. Tell me, precisely, for example, if the Soviets succeeded in selling a Proton booster, to Iraq, what kind of a threat would that pose to the United States?

Mr. ATWOOD. I would have to know more about the exact status of their chemical, or biological, or nuclear weapons.

Senator BUMPERS. We are talking about nuclear.

Mr. ATWOOD. I am sorry, I want to distinguish between the booster and the weapon. The booster is the mechanism to deliver. Senator BUMPERS. Right.

Mr. ATWOOD. It has a long-range capability. There are some 15 countries which I think Mr. Gates said who are developing or have already developed, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological, or chemical, but they have not had the booster to get them there. Senator BUMPERS. I do not know whether he testified to this or not, but in discussions on this subcommittee and in staff conferences, there are no countries that are capable of achieving the

production of an intercontinental ballistic missile before the year 2000 that do not already have that capability. You have India, Brazil, and Israel as the only people that I know of who will possibly have this capability that do not have it right now before the turn of the century might be, is it Brazil, India, and Israel, and they are not considered enemies of this Nation.

I am not suggesting, you know, that we not go forward with research on SDI. I have always favored an SDI system, something along the GPALS proposal. What I have objected to is spending $5 billion a year discarding one technology after another, and winding up essentially where we just started. Now, I remember Lowell Wood out at Livermore Labs said, just less than 32 years ago, that Brilliant Pebbles would cost between $50,000 and $100,000 per pebble.

That is just a short time ago, and today we estimate that the cost is going to be about $5 million per pebble, 50 to 100 times more than what we started on. So, my suggestion is, you know, I am perfectly willing to put $1 billion, maybe even $2 billion into continuing research. I do not think Brilliant Pebbles has a very good future, but be that as it may, I am willing to put $1 or $2 billion to continue the research program, but the President is asking for, I think, a 25-percent increase this year.

Up to $5.4 billion from this year's $4.1 billion. I am absolutely persuaded, Mr. Secretary, that a big portion of that is being utterly wasted, in the name of getting more every year and not because we have a technology on the threshold that we can say to the American people with any degree of certainty, this is going to pro

tect us.

Mr. ATWOOD. Obviously, we need to make sure that we are talking from the same facts, and perhaps we should visit you to discuss that in more detail, but one thing I want to point out very clearly. The implementation of an SDI Program is based upon continuing development and initiation of various phases of it and the one phase that you are talking about is a ground-based phase, which would be a ground-based radar, ground-based interceptor. A future phase is the Brilliant Pebbles portion of it. We are not talking of implementing something by the mid or latter part of this decade with Brilliant Pebbles, the GPALS portion of it.

What we are talking about is a continuation of this approach which, in fact, continues to do the development work, implements one phase at a time. Now, beyond that we should also recognize that we are talking about the Theater Missile Defense Portion of it, not commonly thought of as SDI. We did, within the Department of Defense, consolidate the SDI Program and the theater missile defense program, so that you are now looking at two facets of it, in addition to what I just described.

Senator BUMPERS. Well, I must say that I think for the limited purposes for which we are proceeding along this ground-based system in North Dakota, that something along with lines of an advanced Patriot might make sense. I am just convinced that we are spending a lot more money than is necessary to arrive at a system both there and in the future, with Brilliant Pebbles, to deal with the problem as it actually exists.

I might also say in that connection, I am troubled as you are about the Chinese and the North Koreans, and their export of these, attempted export of these systems. The Chinese, supposedly, have given us assurances that they are not trying to sell these systems and I saw in the paper a couple of days ago, we are tracking a North Korean vessel on its way to Syria right now with an intermediate-range missile.

F-22 FIGHTER

Well, let me just conclude by asking you about the F-22, the attack fighter that we were going to build 600 of, at $100 million a copy? What are you proposing on that now?

Mr. ATWOOD. We are speaking of the F-22?

Senator BUMPERS. Yes.

Mr. ATWOOD. The F-22 is now in what I call full-scale development or engineering and manufacturing development. It has been through demonstration and validation, we downsized from two contractors to one and the program seems to be on schedule. The difficulty there is that it has yet to go through production milestones. They quote the milestone before they get into either limited or fullscale production. It will be coming before the Defense Acquisition Board, before any commitments are made to make sure, No. 1, that it passes all of the milestone criteria, and No. 2, that the funds available, based on the costs, warrant going into it at some rate, either the rate that is presently projected or at a lower rate or even higher rate.

The Defense Acquisition Board criteria will be met before any goahead will be given for any kind of long-term production.

Senator BUMPERS. So you have not arrived at any decisions of how many-assuming everything goes swimmingly, how many are you going to procure?

Mr. ATWOOD. That is always the result of the Defense Acquisition Board. Now we have the plans. The plans are there and the money is into the plan, into our 6-year plan, but a decision as to when they are going to production and at what level they go into production, always is done under the Defense Acquisition Board.

F-117 AND B-52 RETROFIT

Senator BUMPERS. What did we do on the F-117 last year? Mr. Chairman, did we put money into that?

Mr. ATWOOD. Congress appropriated an additional $42 million in RDT&E funds over what was requested in the fiscal year 1992 President's budget. This addition was for F-117 improvements

Senator BUMPERS. I think maybe the Senate maybe did and we dropped it in conference. You state in your statements, the current bomber force of B-1's and the B-52's can be adapted to insure that our total aircraft inventory has adequate capabilities. I totally agree with that and in 1990, it has been 2 years ago now, I got inserted into the 1991 defense appropriation bill, a request for a study and a report from DOD regarding a Boeing proposal on retrofitting the B-52's with new engines and some other things which they said would extend the life of the B-52.