Hearing of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Technologies to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction

SEN. REED: (Finally ?) call the hearing to order. Good afternoon. The subcommittee meets today to hear testimony on technology to combat weapons of mass destruction, WMD.

We are fortunate to have started with a demonstration of a number of technologies being developed or fielded for our military and other government agencies, including some technologies that are used here in the homeland to protect our population.

I want to thank all the organizations that have brought these technologies to us today, including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force, the Navy and a number of Department of Energy laboratories.

I also want to particularly thank Jessica Kingston of our committee staff for organizing this technology demonstration.

Jessie, you did a superb job. Thank you very, very much.

This tech demo is a great opportunity for us to see firsthand what you have developed and put into the hands of those who we ask to protect us and to detect, decontaminate or defeat threats from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive weapons and materials.

We are pleased today to have three experts on the technology to combat weapons of mass destruction. Dr. James Tegnelia is the director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency which is the Defense Department's agency with the lead for protection against and reducing threats from weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Tegnelia also serves as the director of the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating WMD. His agency has expertise and responsibility across a spectrum of all weapons of mass destruction and supports the combatant commands and other government agencies in their operational needs relating to these weapons.

Major General Stephen Reeves is the joint program executive officer for Chemical and Biological Defense at the Department of Defense. His responsibilities include research, development and acquisition of all chemical and biological defense equipment and medical countermeasures for all of the United States military. It is one of the less-well-known success stories that the Department of Defense has a single joint program for all chemical and biological defense efforts. His organization cooperates extensively with both Defense Threat Reduction Agency and with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, both of which conduct critical research and development on chemical and biological defense technologies.

Dr. Jan Cerveny is the assistant deputy administrator for Nonproliferation Research and Engineering of the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Department of Energy. The NNSA is our nation's expert agency on nuclear weapons and related technologies. The labs that this agency works with are among the exhibitors at today's tech demo. They conduct research and development on the technologies for detecting radiation, for detecting, monitoring and analyzing nuclear weapons activities of other nations.

We hope to learn today about the challenges you all face in trying to develop these technologies, the successes that you have had and how this technology fits into our numerous efforts to combat weapons of mass destruction. We thank you and all of those who you work with for your dedicated efforts to keep our nation and our military forces safe from these dangerous threats.

We appreciate that your agencies also had a role in a response to and decontamination of the Senate office buildings after the anthrax attacks of October 2001. We look forward to hearing your testimony.

And now let me turn to Senator Dole for her comments.

Senator Dole, please.

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SEN. REED: Thank you very much, Dr. Cerveny.

I want to thank the witnesses for their excellent testimony.

I also want to thank all of your colleagues, some that are here today and some that are across the globe, for the work they do, not only employees of DOD and DOE but also civilian contractors who work with you. They provide an extraordinary advantage to us as we confront these serious problems.

I'd like to ask a few questions then recognize my colleague. And I would assume also the opportunity to do a second round, too. But it was excellent testimony.

You've laid out several serious challenges. And I just wonder if each of you could respond. Because of your experience, what is the issue that causes you most concern? Some were already highlighted in your initial remarks. But you might want to emphasize it or provide additional perspective.

And also if you would advise this subcommittee, which in fact you are, what should we be focused on? What should we be making sure gets done throughout the research structure?

Dr. Tegnelia.

MR. TEGNELIA: Yes, sir. I would give you the perspective that, you know, there's this question which is usually asked of our leaders, what keeps you up at night or what's your worst nightmare? And I would second the thought, as I indicated in my testimony, that it's a loose nuclear weapon in a city in the United States. I would just suggest that. I think that is today's current problem. And I just would reiterate, I think you've heard testimony on this before, that the expansion of the Nunn-Lugar program to help prevent that kind of an activity, both we and the Department of Energy, is maybe the most important function that we are performing today.

For the future, I think the problem that General Reeves and I discussed, which is the advancing of biological sciences and the potential for negatives that's associated for that and preparing for that, I think, is the threat of the future.

And again, I would suggest to you that in addition to the research and development, you've heard some ideas, I think, in testimony about the idea of expanding Nunn-Lugar to be able to do worldwide prevention of these kinds of problems. And the idea of migrating to these biological weapons tools that we're building worldwide, I think, would be a very valuable thing.

So summary, today it's the nuclear problem, and tomorrow it could be the biological problem.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

Major General Reeves.

GEN. REEVES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would certainly second for the future threat what Dr. Tegnelia just mentioned. It is the biological threat that potentially concerns us the most.

As you may know, four years ago, a university in New York, simply by ordering strands of DNA on the Internet, put together a polio virus. Just a few weeks ago, a California firm announced that they had created the first synthetic bacteria. Things that are being done today in high schools, in colleges, just a few years ago were only done by post-doctorate students. That's how fast the biological sciences are advancing. And so that certainly concerns us the most.

In the near term, our experience with the terrorist threat in DOD is that it is strategically sophisticated but tactically very simple. They use what is available, and what is most predominantly available are toxic industrial chemicals. I know that Congress is currently taking action on securing the U.S. chemical industry, and I certainly applaud those actions.

As we look at where we need to do additional research, particularly in understanding the performance of these toxic industrial chemicals to protect our force is where we are focusing some of our efforts. And let me give you just a very simple example.

Many of the models that you have seen that show what happens when a chemical starts to proliferate through an urban area or over open terrain simply models that chemical. Take something like boron trifluoride which is a common chemical that's used in the semiconductor industry. When that chemical hits the air, it changes. It changes into hydrogen chloride. It changes into an acid. Models don't accommodate for those changes. It has different performance characteristics. And so we need to go through literally our entire inventory of equipment to look at how do we deal with those threats and how do we provide immediate and near-term protection for our force.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

I want to ask the same question to Dr. Cerveny, but if I may follow up. Essentially, the barriers, as you said, the barriers to entry to the biological business are much lower than the nuclear business.

GEN. REEVES: Yes, sir.

SEN. REED: And you know, the model and the mind-set we've applied to nuclear deterrence and nuclear nonproliferation might not be adequate because, again, it seems everybody can get in this business of biological or chemicals. And it raises the question of, you know, even if we're innovative and improvise very well, can we keep up? And you might comment, then I'll recognize Dr. Cerveny. Do you have a sense? I mean, this is a different dynamic than the nuclear situation.

GEN. REEVES: It certainly is. And I think what you have to do is look at how do you go about developing the tools for rapid, broad- based identification of these threats. And that's exactly where we are focusing our efforts right now. We are focusing them on things like genetic sequencing and bile informatics. How do we leverage the, if you will, mega technologies of information technology and biotechnology to, first, develop the platform so that we can identify what's going on? Secondly, you have to develop a very rapid means of developing a countermeasure and then ultimately producing that countermeasure.

That's a lot of what the Transformational Medical Technology Initiative is all about is the identification and having prepositioned, if you will, platform technologies that we can rapidly build on to develop countermeasures and, with our partners in DARPA, developing the manufacturing capabilities to rapidly produce the countermeasure.

SEN. REED: Thank you, General Reeves.

Dr. Cerveny, the larger question was Dr. Tegnelia's. What keeps you up at night?

MS. CERVENY: The concerns that I have have to do with the three major missions that we have to ensure that we can try to accomplish. And one is to look at the nuclear fuel cycle and try to find those who may be trying to proliferate. That's a big issue for us. In addition, if we miss that and it does get into a weapon system, we want to be able to find that weapon system. And then, God forbid, it should go to the end and a nuclear weapon is already full up, gets stolen and detonated somewhere, we want to be able to do the aftermath detection of what's going on and to be able to do all the forensics associated with that. So those are my three major areas of concern.

SEN. REED: Well, following up on that, Dr. Cerveny and Dr. Tegnelia, National Security Presidential Decision Directive 17 and Homeland Security Presidential Decision Directive 4 assigned nuclear forensic and attribution responsibilities, your final point, across the executive branch. Could you comment and essentially your responsibilities and how this is preceding the coordination process?

You could start, Dr. Cerveny.

MS. CERVENY: I'm doing some of the research at the front end. So I've been transitioned out both to DTRA as well as to the FBI as well as to DNDO and/or other components of DHS.

SEN. REED: Doctor.

MR. TEGNELIA: Sir, NSDD 17, HSD 4 basically indicated that DHS was the lead in the attribution and forensics capability. They work with the intelligence community which has the responsibility to provide the information for decisions.

They broke that activity up into two pieces. One was pre- detonation and one was post-detonation. DTRA is responsible for worldwide post-detonation collection of the debris for analysis. And we work with DHS, as I mentioned, as the lead. We work with the Department of Energy, because their laboratories are the people who are going to do the analysis of these remains of a device and make the attributions as to who is technically. And then we also work with the FBI, because the FBI has responsibility inside of the United States for the investigation of these types of devices. That's how the NSDD separates out the responsibilities.

SEN. REED: And one follow-up question to Dr. Cerveny, then I'll recognize Senator Dole. And I do have more questions for the whole panel.

But this attribution process assumes that you have a database which you can match up or that you can in fact identify and attribute to an entity or country. How are we doing on that database creation?

MS. CERVENY: That database creation, I believe you're talking about the NMIP that's being created by the intel community. Is that what I'm presuming you're saying?

SEN. REED: I'm just generally talking about, from your perspective, because you are doing research to identify materiel, but then you have to match it up with something. And I'm asking, from your perspective, how's the something coming?

MS. CERVENY: Exactly. From the testing era, when we had the Cold War testing era, there's quite a bit of data from there from the Russians and from us, you know, from our testing itself. And what we do with that is match against that. Some of the newer stuff that the proliferants may be trying to make, it's going to be a bigger challenge for us, because there is no database on that.

SEN. REED: Any other comments, Dr. Tegnelia?

MR. TEGNELIA: I guess I would add to that that the subject of broadening our database is under active pursuit by the intelligence community. And at least my experience is they are paying full attention to trying to do what you're suggesting.

SEN. REED: Thank you very much.

Senator Dole.

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SEN. REED: Thank you very much, Senator Dole.

Dr. Tegnelia, in your comments, you said that local responders are proficient in handling a low-yield incident, but that there's a gap with high-yield incidents. How difficult is it relative to a low yield to stage a high yield? I.e., if a high yield is something of a probability of 1 percent, then that gap is not as worrisome if that probability is something close to 50. Can you give us an idea in this session of how much we have to worry about that lack of capability?

MR. TEGNELIA: I was thinking about that question, and it's an important question. I would just tell you that in an open hearing, it would be hard to discuss that (technically ?). But we are thinking about the question that you're concerned about.

SEN. REED: So it's an important question --

MR. TEGNELIA: Yes, sir.

SEN. REED: -- but it has to be handled, I think, in a more confidential manner.

Let me ask all of you, because one of the issues that perennially arises when you develop new technologies is getting it into the hands of the field workers, the people out there that actually do it. Can you give us a notion of how do you think we're doing in transitioning technology? What are the choke points that we have to worry about? And I'll each witness.

Dr. Tegnelia.

MR. TEGNELIA: My perspective, sir, is the mission, the military mission, of combating weapons of mass destruction as a mission is a relatively new operational responsibility for the Department of Defense. We've just put together the national strategy and the military strategy for combating weapons of mass destruction. And we're now in the process of beginning to field capabilities, not only with the individual soldier, which General Reeves spends a lot of time on, but also unit capabilities to handle the missions of weapons of mass destruction.

We've done something which I think is extremely important as a lesson learned from Iraq. And that is, how would you eliminate chemical, biological or nuclear weapons should you encounter them on the battlefield? Very important problem, something we were concerned about in Iraq.

We've fielded a capability now through STRATCOM, which takes work from Edgewood arsenal, from the research organizations at Edgewood arsenal, and fields an operational capability that could help in South Korea, it's actually deployed now in Iraq, eliminating these kinds of weapons from the battlefield. That's a new capability. It's a brand new thing that's been developed.

So you can see another example of that is fielding an attribution capability which the NSDD, as you pointed out, is just now calling for. So these new units are coming online through STRATCOM activities, and they're being deployed to our combatant commanders, including NORTHCOM. And we're beginning to exercise with them, and we're beginning to build the capability. So we're started, but we have a long way to go. This is, as I indicated, a new mission. And it's now beginning to get the emphasis to field this kind of capability.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

General Reeves.

GEN. REEVES: Sir, in the chem-bio defense program, we do three things. First, we have a formal process to ensure that our investments in science and technology transition to advanced development. We use something called technology transition agreements which are a formal agreement between the S&T developer and one of my project managers to ensure that they're mutually understanding what that technology is, and they're ready to accept it, and we've put the resources in place to use it. Secondly, we conduct quarterly reviews. And third, on a biannual basis, our joint staff looks at the roadmaps to ensure that those investments are reaching to advanced development and to procurement.

The second thing we do, as I mentioned a moment ago, are technology readiness evaluations which are independently assessed, which gives laboratories and commercial industry the opportunity to demonstrate their technologies and what their technology readiness levels are. And we use a formal process by an independent assessor to do that.

The third part which is just now beginning, and I think it is an important initiative, and I would specifically compliment the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center from doing this, is an educational component. One of the things we need to do with our researchers and scientists is to get them to understand that not all technology is necessarily good or useful. At some point, you have to look at technology from the standpoint of, is it affordable? Can it be produced? And can you sustain it in the field?

And they have developed a formal program to educate their basic research scientists to help think in those terms and use those kind of filters before we make substantial investments in a technology we discover we can't use in the end.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

Dr. Cerveny.

MS. CERVENY: Thank you. For my program, we have instituted a whole host of things.

Because the transition for a program is a long-term R&D program, it's considered to be like sort of a valley of death that can occur for research technology that you develop and suddenly nobody's really interested in it.

What we've tried to do is include the operators. And tried to do, we actually do include the operators on the up front of developing what our roadmaps are going to be and where we're going to go to ensure that we have what their needs and requirements are. In some cases, that requires translations on our part, because often times our users don't know how to tell us in technical terms what it is that they want to be made better or lighter or more power-friendly. So we have to be able to do that integration in between.

In having the users on our committees for deciding what proposals are actually going to get funded in an area once we decide where we're going to go, then having them also in our annual program reviews for each of the 13 separate programs that we have, it has seemed to become very easy for us, as the ones that I showed you back here on our display table. The integration or the movement, transitioning those to the users, has happened quite easily for us. And they have actually been anxious to receive them.

Does that mean we've solved the entire problem? Not entirely. It is still a challenge for us, and we do many of the things that my two colleagues here have mentioned as well.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

Dr. Cerveny, the budget request for NNSA for nonproliferation verification in fiscal year 2009 is $275 million. That's $112 million below the fiscal year 2008 appropriation. That's a substantial reduction. What is not going to be accomplished with the result of that reduction?

MS. CERVENY: The major difference there is the generosity of the Congress when they passed the omnibus and gave me the $112 million plus-up, which was very kind of them. And what I did was place it into the prioritized areas that we have to ensure that we had full-up proposals funded.

The 275 (million dollars) actually is level with the real 2008 request that we put in and the 2007 request. In 2010, I believe we're going to be going up, though that number has not been established yet for us.

SEN. REED: The fiscal year 2009 budget eliminates a line called supporting activities. Can you describe what this -- (inaudible) -- is?

MS. CERVENY: Yes, sir. The supporting activities was an usual thing that was a leftover. I've been there for four years, and it was a leftover none of the other components of NNSA really showed such a thing. And when I inquired what it was, it was really money that we transitioned into the two major programs that I discussed, the Proliferation Detection and Nuclear Detonation Detection. What I did was just transfer those functions that belonged to them into them. So nothing really vanished, it just moved to where it belonged.

SEN. REED: You know, I think the Congress was persuaded that you needed the money. And I think we, given what I've heard today, I'm no less persuaded. So it is a substantial reduction in these activities. And I think you're going to have, I think, a challenging time to manage with all the responsibilities with $100 million or so less.

MS. CERVENY: That is correct. But we have tided folks over to ensure that we could use the generosity of the Congress to cover them for a year or so.

SEN. REED: So we're --

MS. CERVENY: Forward funding.

SEN. REED: -- fasting for a year, but we're looking for something much better in the future?

MS. CERVENY: No. I forward funded specific projects to ensure that they had continuity to go to their conclusion.

SEN. REED: You've also suggested that you would need additional funding in the succeeding budgets after '09.

MS. CERVENY: Yes. And I believe we're going to be getting that. But I don't know right now. It's not been given to me yet.

SEN. REED: Okay, thanks.

Let me yield to Senator Dole if she has additional questions, then I have a couple more.

Senator Dole.

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SEN. REED: Thank you very much.

If I may, I don't want to go too long but a couple of other questions.

Dr. Tegnelia, in response to Senator Dole's question about sort of the bench, if you will, for scientists, et cetera, it underscores that one of our key allies in this effort are university research programs, basic research. One (here ?) that I have heard is not sufficiently supported with programs is radiochemistry. And I'm just wondering if, one, in your view, that's right. And two, what are the other areas of shortage that we might think about in the future? Because without these talented scientists, this is a much more difficult problem.

MR. TEGNELIA: First of all, the subject of radiochemistry is the key technology associated with this problem of attribution. And Dr. Cerveny might comment on this. But my sense is we're using capabilities that were built in the nuclear weapons laboratories that go back quite a ways. And building the next generation of nuclear chemists capable of being able to do these 21st century problems is extremely important to us.

We put a lot of basic research into that particular activity aimed at finding new radiochemistry techniques to reduce the time and put in modern equipment to reduce the time of analyzing these nuclear events that we have. So that's a very important area.

I keep emphasizing, and maybe I'm beginning to get repetitive here, on the subject of nuclear detection. The problem doesn't start if you can't find the nuclear device. So it really is extremely important. And there has not been a lot of money that was put into innovative ideas associated with nuclear detection. And like I mentioned in my opening statement, we do that with the Department of Energy. But bringing the universities into this problem to come up with new ideas is also an active area of research for us. And I think that the people are interested in trying to do that kind of work.

I'll just give you a vignette. We're relatively new in the basic research activity. This is our second year. You've helped us a lot with the research there. In our second year, when we went out with our advertisement for new ideas in combating WMD, we got 1,000 proposals back from the universities to fund this work. So there's a demand out there. The ability to spend basic research money well in the universities is there. And I think it gives us this dual benefit of new technology as well as people introduced to the topic. So I would encourage that kind of work.

SEN. REED: Let me just get to Dr. Cerveny then ask General Reeves the same question about shortages.

Dr. Cerveny.

MS. CERVENY: The radiochemistry is in the forensics arena that we're discussing here. As the National Academy of Science study that we just recently mentioned, when Mrs. Dole mentioned it and asked me a question about it, indicates, that to manage the entire system the way we have it, if there are less than 10 -- somewhere between four and eight -- Ph.D. graduates per year, we would be able to replenish the entire work force within about five to 10 years.

The number of people who do this work in the laboratory are really quite small. It's not a huge number of folks who are doing this and have this kind of expertise. So it's wonderful that we have the individuals who are senior and have the significant experience that we would like to do a data dump from. But at the same time, we do need to find the replacements and get them learning how to do the same sorts of things that they do.

Is there a shortage of radiochemists? Yes and now. From the yes side, the shortage is that they don't have the experience that we need. And that's where the lacking really is from the standpoint of what I do. Now, from the standpoint of some of the other components, perhaps they need them for a different reason, because there really is a deficit. But for me, it is the experience that I need for them to attain, and we're working on trying to get that for them.

SEN. REED: Major General Reeves, your comments about the shortages, choke points in terms of talented scientists.

GEN. REEVES: We absolutely recognize the problem and share the concern. And as Dr. Tegnelia alluded to, you combine the aging work force with a precipitous drop in mass science and engineering graduates and you've got a pretty bad recipe. We engage in a range of programs in DOD as well as in the Army to address the issue. The good news is we have seen a small uptick in the number of biotechnologists or multidiscipline biologists. But hard math, hard science, engineering as an aggregate remains problematic.

Some examples of what's going on in side the Chemical and Biological Defense Program, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center is engaged with eight different universities and colleges, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, on an internship basis. The Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick, Maryland is engaged with four different colleges and universities on the same type of program. The chem-bio defense program itself funds some interns and post- doctoral studies.

And the Congress actually has indirectly assisted us in something called the Veterans Reassignment Act which allows us to rapidly bring into the government, non-competitively, people. And so as we look at our veterans, we look for those who have hard science backgrounds, and we get what we call a two-fer. We get someone who has got not only the military background and experience and brings that operational perspective to us but also the hard science background and then be able to apply that to the technology problems that they know are there.

SEN. REED: Thank you very much, General.

Senator Dole, if you don't have any additional questions, I would ask that you be prepared perhaps to respond to written questions if the staff would develop those questions.

But I want to thank you for excellent testimony and a wonderful demonstration. And you have outlined some significant challenges, and so we'll need your help going forward just as we needed it today.

Thank you very much. The hearing's adjourned.

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